Talk:Psychology/Archive 4

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Psychology & Psychiatry

I would like to suggest an addition to the article, namely a brief explanation on the differences between psychology & psychiatry. As far as I know they overlap a little but I'm not even an amateur in either subject so am unsure. What I do know is that many confuse the two areas and I think(as an uninformed layman) that an explanation at the beginning of the article would be very helpful.

Also, I think psychology fits beneath the umbrella of biology - it is the study of animal behavior after all - and not social science. Perhaps I am wrong but this is my current view as a biology student. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.42.244.55 (talk) 23:32, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Psychology is typically defined as the study of the mind, which makes it distinct from biology. And of course, given that without the mind, there would be no biology, perhaps we should fit biology under the umbrella of psychology? ;-) DDNYG74B (talk) 15:55, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

"Drive-by tagging"

Placing the tag "The neutrality of this section is disputed", without providing any comment here on the talk page, is referred to on Wikipedia:NPOV dispute, right in the short introduction, as "drive-by tagging", and is "strongly discouraged". Here's what it says:

If an editor places the tag and doesn't explain why he/she thinks the section lacks neutrality, other editors may have no idea what the perceived problem is. If there is no comment here, I suggest the tags be removed. -DoctorW 16:43, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

RE: "Drive-by tagging"

I apologize for my "drive-by tagging". I visited this page yesterday to look for a few simple definitions of the different areas of psychology for a freshman recruitment brochure I was putting together (I am a psychology professor). I was immediately struck by the very biased perspective in this section. I will edit this soon to create a more balanced presentation.

PS: I am new to Wikipedia and not versed in all the rules or even confident in how to post this. Csears77 (talk) 18:19, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

You might want to post a few brief comments here, whether or not you find time to edit the article. Your edits to the article or comments here could be very helpful. -DoctorW 18:09, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

related articles in question

Could people who watch this page check out Psychohistory? I am not sure if it counts as a pseudoscience or not. Judging from the article it seems to be the invention of one guy, Lloyd deMause (try googling him) and his students/disciples. I am even more concerned about Early infanticidal childrearingSlrubenstein | Talk 14:29, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure what to make of it. For one, it does appear to be a small research agenda that is under the primary direction of one person. In addition, several of the article's references are broken and the "Journal of Psychohistory" appears to be a self-published journal that has a website full of spelling errors. On the other hand, it does appear that there are a few college courses out there on "psychohistory" (although several of their referenced courses do not exist), and they are within history departments. Perhaps this is a case of armchair psychoanalysis by historians. As far as I can tell, psychohistory would have no place in the psychology discipline--perhaps you should bring this up over in the history article as well. -Nicktalk 18:30, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

I know that there are historians who take a psychological approach (or do "psychohistory") by using Freudian concepts to explain individual motives. But the people I know of are trained historians, yes, perhaps doing armchair psychoanalysis. This article, and the one on EIC, seem entirely unrelated to that literture ... I would bet that those college courses on psychohistory have nothing to do with de Mause, his website, or publications. Perhaps this guy is a psychoanalyst doing armchair history. I asked some psychologist friends of mine if they ever heard of him and they said no. The question is, do these two articles merit speedy deletion (as they are pushing a fringe point of view which does not rise to encyclopedic standards)? here is the thing: a couple of years ago I was involved in a flame war with an editor who worked on these articles. So it would be inappropriate for me to do a speedy delete, I am not even sure I should nominate these articles for deletion, although I seriously question their encyclopedic status. FYI I left a similar question on the History page and perhaps someone there can say whether he is well-known among historians (but I seriously doubt it - I know a good deal of the literature on neolithic societies as well as the non-Western societies refered to in the EIC article and have never seen this concept mentioned, or this guy cited, ever). Since the article claims to be about a psychological theory, I have to defer to editors with some expertise on psychology to decide whether it should be deleted, or whether it so violates NPOV by pushing a fringe view that it requires major overhaul. Didn't Freud and Fromm write books analyzing historical figures (Moses, Da Vinci)? Shouldn't an article on psychohistory provide accounts of those books and how they have been received and viewed by psychologists and historians? Slrubenstein | Talk 20:05, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Those subjects would rather belong to psychobiography. —Cesar Tort 05:36, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

CfD nomination of Category:Psychology societies

Category:Psychology societies has been nominated for deletion, merging, or renaming. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the Categories for discussion page. Thank you. – Cgingold (talk) 10:33, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Is Psychology a belief system pretending to be a form of medicine?

What is rarely raised is the criticism that modern psychology is merely a belief system that has the same bizarre dogma and "faith" has religion. If Pychology was a genuine science or medicine then why can they not cure/reduce psychopathy? Or Schizophrenia? Why does psychiatry (especially in the US) rely too often on "chemical manangement" to make patients docile? For all the supposed "research" and badly formed studies it doesnt help mental health issues in a coherent universal fashion. To me the child psychiatrist that proscribes prozac or ritalin for a 7 year old child is no different from the witchdoctor in a third world country performing an exorcism on a ill child who is "possessed" by supposed demons. At least the witchdoctor can claim ignorance, But the clinical psychiatrist cannot. Psychology is a flawed belief system that has the same faults has religion.--Redblossom (talk) 20:20, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

I am including an article from the Guardian newspaper that shows the obscene unjustifiable practice of clinical psychiatrists giving anti depressants to 6 year old children, all under the guise of the supposed "science" of psychology. To me this borders on child abuse.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/apr/07/mentalhealth.drugs --Redblossom (talk) 06:57, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Psychology is the study of the brain and behavior. It is not a belief system. Although there is dogma inherent in any area of study, it is up to the individual to decide what is true and what is not. Your beef seems to be with examples of poor practices within psychiatry. As for treating mental illnesses, psychotherapy can be helpful, but sometimes people do not respond to this alone, and that is a reason therapy is oftentimes coupled with "chemical management". I tend to think this "chemical management" is administered too often in psychiatry, and especially too early after a diagnosis made. As to your question about psychology being a genuine science: Though not necessarily an exact science, psychology is indeed a science, since it uses the scientific method in its process of acquiring knowledge. Of course, not all areas within psychology are studied in the same way. For instance, research in neuropsychology will be quite different from research in evolutionary psychology. As for why psychology can't yet cure disorders like schizophrenia, there are multiple reasons, namely that research is still filling in our gaps of knowledge in regards to disorders, especially in regards to etiology and finding effective treatment. The human brain has been said by many people to be one of, if not the most complicated structure in the universe. This, combined with the fact that it is merely part of a larger, similarly complicated structure of the human body, which is also a part of a complicated social world, combined with the fact that psychology oftentimes involves the use of qualitative research, makes progress and gains in knowledge in psychology seem relatively slow for some, and understandably so. I hope this answers your questions/concerns. If you have any proposals to improve this article, feel free to make a suggestion. --Ubiq (talk) 07:56, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
Redblossom, please note that this page is a discussion on the psychology wikipedia article, and not on psychology itself. (Also, your comments seem to be about psychiatry, and not psychology; they are not the same thing.) If you have specific suggestions for improvement of the article, please post them. -Nicktalk 07:27, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Clearly, psychology is a pseudoscience. It is a hodgepodge of opinions.[citation needed] There is nothing which is agreed up on within psychology.[citation needed] There is no accepted theoretical framework.[citation needed] It produces no cures in excess of any other superstitious practice.[citation needed] Assertions to the contrary by "psychologists" are irrelevant, and are invariably similar in tone to priests blathering in defense of their dogmas.[citation needed] This viewpoint is widely understood[citation needed] and bears mention in any impartial discussion of "psychology". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.208.100.224 (talk) 01:30, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

There we go. :) -Nicktalk 03:29, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
This discussion is quite irrelevant. Psychology is a branch of social science and it is a very important subject. Please study psychology before making such remarks. Masterpiece2000 (talk) 13:45, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

I have to agree. Psychology does indeed have some elements of true science with in it. However there is a disturbing amount of material and practices that can be found in it that can only be regarded as opinions, trash, and just plain lies.

Even in the hard sciences the results of research is often “directed” to outcomes desired by who ever is sponsoring the research. For example in the United States there is huge pressure in cannabis research for any conclusions reached to be very negative in regards to its non-medical (or even its medical) use. Any researcher that does publish a paper that is at odds with official government policies will most likely never receive funding again.

Real science? No.

The argument seem to be that for a field to be a science, it has to fix ("cure"") some problem in the world. No one seriously dealing with science and theory of science would claim such a thing, of lots of reasons. For one: When you're hungy, you eat, and therefore fix a problem. Does that make eating a science? Of course not. In principle, any field of science can never fix or cure anything, and still be perfectly scientific. For something to be "scientific", it has to follow a certain set of "rules" or principles of examining or understand the world. Science, of course, follows the scientific method. Most topics in the psychology are studied following the scientific method and the research results are published in peer-reviewed journals. If a researcher doesn't follow the scientific method, it makes THAT particular research project pseudoscientific, not the whole field of psychology. Bottom line: Science means following certains principles of investigation. Science doesn't mean being able to solve practical problems in the world (although it often can be used for that porpose). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.34.83.114 (talk) 22:05, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

Probably the simplest way of looking at it is, if a child is molested at a young age, there's a pretty good chance of mental disorder. Post-traumatic stress disorder is also a little easier to follow, because its etiology is more specific. It's cause-and-effect, like any science, but the models used in psychiatry (biopsychosocial model and the more specific diathesis-stress model, that I know of) contain a variety of contributing factors to mental disorder, so the etiology becomes vague, but it still exists. Social influences vary from culture to culture, and so prevalence is generally specific to a single country. Psychology isn't as black and white as psychiatry, neurology or other "real" sciences, but the former two prove psychopathology through the variances in the brain. A different diet and exercise can manage or "cure" a pretty decent chunk of mental disorders, including, but not limited to, depression, ADHD, personality disorders and schizophrenia. Essentially, dealing with any one of the biological, psychological or social factors in mental disorder will help the sufferer manage their disorder. To my understanding, psychology and psychoanalysis (although the latter goes deeper into childhood and the unconscious) focuses on psychosocial factors ("thoughts, emotions, and behaviors", events in the patients life and how they were treated, especially during childhood), while neurology focuses on the biological/biochemical (of the brain and nervous system, of course), and psychiatry considers all of these factors. They are all different approaches to understand and treat pathological behavior, and offer different outcomes (psychology/psychoanalysis seems more permanent, but perhaps less effective in the short-term than medicine). Psychology definitely has its place as a therapy, because it works, and that's all that matters.
Personally, I intend to pursue psychiatry (with some extra study in psychoanalysis) in order to consider all of the different approaches available in treatment. =P MichaelExe (talk) 17:00, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Chomsky review of Verbal Behavior

I added some more detail about Chomsky's review of Verbal Behavior. Could someone have a look at that paragraph. ----Action potential t c 23:53, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

I cut this text as it could not be verified. This does not seem correct... ", largely due to the creation of conditioning theories as scientific models of human behavior, and their successful application in the workplace and in fields such as advertising and military science.[citation needed]" ----Action potential t c 23:56, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Controlling codes in languages

I have written a series of articles on a theme which may have slight relation to human behaviour. The first of the series can be seen on this link. [1] The rest can be seen in the same Forum Pages. It is not a continuation of any particular school of psychological theories. --Ved from Victoria Institutions (talk) 06:13, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Etymology???

Where's the etymology for psychology? I'm not that good with templates but I know the original Greek and also the etymology of those, so if someone could do all the templates that would be great. Greek: "ψυχήλογία" ψυχή= "psychí"(Soul)+"λογία" "logía" (Study of).Moocowsrule (talk) 04:00, 15 September 2008 (UTC)Moocowsrule

Article needs cleanup

Article has external links in body of article, it is largely unreferenced, much of its organization seems arbitrary (e.g. the chosen headings in Subfields, the See also section is a hodge-podge etc. —Mattisse (Talk) 14:17, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

A few areas of the article could still use references, but otherwise I think this is mostly cleaned up now. The subfields are organized alphabetically, though I suppose we could put them in a smaller number of broad categories, so it's not such a long list. --Jcbutler (talk) 04:48, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Evolutionary psych - subfield or perspective

Here's a question for everyone - if evolutionary psychology is to be included in this article, should it be listed as a subfield (like clinical, social, cognitive), or as a perspective (like behaviorism)? As I understand things evolutionary psych operates much like a perspective, in that those researching evolutionary psychology are usually working within a traditional subfield, but using evolutionary principles to explain social behavior/cognitive processes/developmental processes, etc. Any thoughts? -Nicktalk 16:08, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

I would agree that it is a theoretical "perspective" rather than a subfield. In fact, there are evolutionary theories for psychological phenomena in lots of different subfields, from phobias (clinical psych) to interpersonal attraction (social psych). --Jcbutler (talk) 18:29, 24 September 2008 (UTC)
This was found in the criticism of Psychology section: "Abraham newton was also involved partially in the pursuit of psychology" —Preceding unsigned comment added by Nonymous-raz (talk • contribs) 14:49, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

The trouble with this is

That it is trying to understand something from a detached perspective. I was writing my blog and I was thinking,'what if a psychologist was reading this and analysing me, what would he/she think?'. You know they wouldn't be looking at the content of the blog for it's insight or meaning in the real world. They would be looking at it as a scientist studies a rat. He's this that or the other. It's not the right way to understand anything. It becomes a self perpetuating thing. Is there anyone else that doesn't agree with the fundamental approach of psychology or even that it exists at all? What does that say about people, scientist, psychologists? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.8.2.0 (talk) 05:55, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Hi there. Sorry but we're only interested in what reliable sources have to say about Psychology. This isn't a forum for the discussion of the topic of Psychology itself. Please see also WP:TALK. Blackworm (talk) 06:33, 4 December 2008 (UTC)
Nor do you understand what psychology is.Iulus Ascanius (talk) 01:06, 5 December 2008 (UTC)
The "study of mental processes and behaviour" doesn't exist? LoL, that makes sense - no one has ever attempted to study behaviour. I'm convinced! Maybe I should write a study on how people believe psychology exists? Oh noes, i have proven myself wrong!Dillypickle (talk) 09:03, 5 December 2008 (UTC)
Great point! Iulus Ascanius (talk) 17:44, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

umm yes really great point. Maybe it only exists to pshycologists themselves. Maybe its their own psyche that they are studying and calling it psychology. Its not hard science is it. Subjective. Its really about control and supression. Thats all.Why does it exist actually? What actually is the point really. its all *** —Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.193.29.243 (talk) 21:51, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Lacking several elements

  1. A warning of subjectivity of its content:
    Yes, psychology is clearly a social science, but as with many social sciences, many of the theories and claims do not pass standard Popperian falsifiability guidelines. This point has likely been asserted before, but some "refutable/unverified information" claim should be given as a disclaimer for this article. All other sciences have to adhere to these guidelines and make explicit declarations when this principle is breached, in order to maintain academic integrity. My fear is that any information taken from any of the subfields or research methods sections might be highly speculative, and thus not worthy of academic credibility. This science especially is not a marked line, but a shaded grey area, and readers need to know the regions of authenticity. Jung once sarcastically stated that "the patient gets better when the money runs out", even he was sometimes sardonic about the authenticity of this discipline.
  2. Absence of Buddhist psychology
    This article understandably occupies itself with the academic pursuit of psychology of the western world for the last 300 years, but there is an egregious absence of Buddhist psychology here. Buddhism has the oldest documented system of psychology, and in recent years its methods and results have been verified, and continue to be studied by Universities such as Wisconsin university with neuroscience schools. In addition, Jung, arguably the most influential founder and writer for psychological subjects, noted that many early psychoanalysts saw trends with their work in the already laid foundations of Buddhist psychology. This omission is unusual, considering Jung himself never shied away from religious topics. The wiki researchers have done a great job with the Buddhist psychology article, even relating it to western psychology with charts such as this.[2]
  3. Neuroscience
    This may go along with the subjectivity argument, but several of these disciplines are verified by neuroscience, a field, to be honest, far more disprovable and thus more academically credible than this one. This article already has placed emphasis on the disciplines it finds to be most important, but, just as cites are used to back up or embolden literary theories, or just as mathematics proofs are used to back up successive ones, so should the objective verifications in neuroscience be used to emphasize the most salient theories.

I would enjoy more discussion about these ideas, please feel free to comment Thouliha (talk) 04:00, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

I will be concise with my reactions to your comments: 1) You seem to interpret "psychology" to be "therapy." Please read the article to see that there are many subdisciplines of psychology, and the vast majority of them have nothing to do with therapy, counseling, Jung, Freud, and those types of things. 2) As an academic psychologist, I can say that unscientific or psuedoscientific practices by "psychologists" worry me as much as they worry you. However, if you were to look through any modern, reputable psychology journals, you'd find sophisticated, well-structured, highly-controlled experiments that would make Popper, Hume and Mill proud. 3) Your comments about buddhism are understood, but buddhist psychology pertains to therapy issues, and should be taken up with the clinical and counseling folks on their specific sub-discipline pages. 4) Neuroscience is quite important and neuroscientific methods are used by researchers in many fields of psychology, but it is a part of psychology, not a replacement for psychology. -Nicktalk 04:55, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
I would have to agree with Nick on these points. It is ironic that you seem to want to chastize psychology as unscientific but then you also want to inject into this article some speculative, philosophical, and nonmainstream approaches that are not scientific at all (with the exception of neuroscience). Please take a close look at an introductory psychology textbook from your local university or library and see how much Buddha and Jung appear. I think your perception of psychology is substantially different than that most psychologists. By the way, I studied Popper and logical positivism quite extensively during my graduate training in psychology. I'd say that theoretical physics (see string theory) is in worse shape these days on Popperian grounds than most of psychology. Behaviorism, cognitive psychology, and neurocognitive psychology are all extremely empirical and testible. --Jcbutler (talk) 13:09, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
As for the first and third points:
I am not a professional psychologist, and thus have not read any psychology journals, only books about the history of psychology, but I would say that I do trust Nick's word that these journals do take into account the objectivity required for such studies. I also completely agree with Nick; I am misinterpreting psychology as psychiatry or psychotherapy, when it encompasses much more. However, counseling psychology, clinical psychology, developmental psychology, and a few others do have the intention of improving their focus groups. These disciplines have the same criticism which I claimed above, such as for humanistic psychology[3]. I suppose also that these concerns are already addressed in the criticism section of this page, so my subjectivity argument is clearly put to rest.
The second point however, I do believe still deserves some focus. Buddhism does not pertain only to therapy issues, it is an entire system of psychology, and fits almost every point listed in this articles definition of psychology. Its views on perception, cognition, and mental processes extend to the level of its therapeutic aims. I am not a professional and therefore cannot properly prepare and cite the findings within the past 10 years of the various universities and papers interested in the subject, but I would welcome an attempt. I at least still find it odd that in this page, and in the history of psychology page, no interest is given to the oldest surviving and still studied system devoted to understanding the mind. Most westerners, when confronted with the topic, see it as a system of psychology, or an encompassing set of theories and claims about the mind. I welcome pejorative claims that this is a "pet project", but read this page[4], and if the majority here still believes that no mention of it should be made, then this page should stand as it is.Thouliha (talk) 19:26, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
My vote is that it might be worth mentioning as part of the history of psychology, as a philosophic root, but I fail to see any scientific basis in Buddhism. Most references on the page you linked to (well done, by the way) are anecdotal quote-ish. Show me where Buddhism proposes a model then tries to falsify it with random samples and inferential statistics, and I might be more convinced.Iulus Ascanius (talk) 04:33, 10 December 2008 (UTC)
The problem with sticking it in the history section is that it is not part of the general sequence of people and events that have shaped modern psychology (e.g. the Greeks, Descartes, Locke, Helmholtz, Wundt, Watson, etc.). Buddhism did not influence the development of psychology and was not influenced by it. I wouldn't recommend anything more than the briefest mention of Buddhism somewhere in the early history section. Maybe something immediately following the sentence "The study of psychology in philosophical context dates back to the ancient civilizations of Egypt, Greece, China, and India." I think we should be cautious about the inclusion of a significant amount of Buddhist Psychology content here. Don't get me wrong, I actually like Buddhism as a philosophy for dealing with the problem of suffering. Nevertheless, this is an encyclopedia article and the first priority is to introduce people to psychology as it is actually studied and practiced. Only the tiniest fraction of studies and researchers take a Buddhist orientation. --Jcbutler (talk) 14:18, 10 December 2008 (UTC)
I agree totally. I wasn't suggesting that it get it's own section or anything. Iulus Ascanius (talk) 14:47, 10 December 2008 (UTC)
I've been listening in on this conversation, but I didn't contribute because [1] before I responded to Thouliha, Nick said just what I would have said, except that he was able to put it more efficiently than I would have, and [2] Jcbutler beat me to agreeing with Nick and said some more things I might have wanted to say.
Nick and James, would you do me a favor and take a look at Template:Psychology? I found what I thought was a successful way to manage the inevitable flood of everyone adding their own pet psychologists by actually using a widely cited empirical study. I considered including only 18 names, but decided to cut it off at 24 so as to include Jung and Pavlov since they are so well known by the general public. They are of course in order according to what was found in the study. Someone is insisting on putting them in alphabetical order, as though these 24 are part of some sort of canonical list. If you have anything to say on that talk page (on this issue or any other), your comments are most welcome. -DoctorW 04:05, 12 December 2008 (UTC)
I agree with most of the spirit, and some of the letter, of what Thouliha said above. And, for what it's worth, I do have an academic background in mainstream American psychology; I just have a tendency to think outside the Skinner box (bad joke, I know) on psychological issues. Seriously, though, while I think psychology and the scientific method can produce some darling offspring (such as the production of statistics that can be referenced in arguments for social-psychological change, or the refutation of downright dangerous practices such as rebirthing), I suspect that many of my fellow scholars have too much fun on the psychology/science hobbyhorse. Anyway, I agree that Buddhist psychology is probably worth mentioning. For one thing, I am not going to presume that psychology in, say, Japan or China (where one out of every six human beings lives) is as positivistically-oriented as psychology in Western countries (or even that psychology in, say, Germany or France is as positivistic as psychology in America). Second, let's not make an argumentum ad populum in our assumptions that positivistic approaches are more meritorious because they're embraced by more people (if indeed they are embraced by more people overall). I'm well aware of WP:FRINGE, but the likes of Freud and Jung are not flat-earthers; they are some of the most significant and influential contributors to non-positivistic psychology, and antipositivism is alive and well among social theorists. (It just happens that--for reasons that could be worth exploring, but might be off-topic here--most such theorists, at least in the United States, are employed in sociology rather than psychology departments, but often address issues of psychological relevance with remarkable eloquence and incision.) Third, and perhaps most compellingly for mainstream scholars (one of which, again, I happen to be!), Eleanor Rosch at the University of California, Berkeley has done some interesting research on Buddhist psychology. As for the rest of Thoulia's ideas, he seems to be suggesting that psychology is at best a "fuzzy" science. Thomas Kuhn would agree, but his critique is already mentioned in Psychology#Status_as_a_science. Perhaps the section could benefit from some expansion, though. Cosmic Latte (talk) 04:08, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Lead paragraph

Lately when I look at this article, it occurs to me that the introduction is a bit short. According to Wikipedia guidelines, the lead section of an article of 32 kilobytes should be 2-3 paragraphs. At last count, this article is 59 kilobytes, and yet the lead section is only a single short paragraph. Granted there is a lot of diversity in psychology, and that will limit sweeping generalizations of the field. Still, I wonder if we can expand the lead to cover some additional general characteristics of psychology without resorting to the kind of fluff that is often seen in the first few pages of textbook chapters. Any ideas? --Jcbutler (talk) 17:45, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

NPOV question re: Lilienfeld (2002) quote in "Fringe Clinical Practices" section

The "Fringe Clinical Practices" section appears to me to violate NPOV when it quotes one author, Lilienfeld (2002), naming a list of practices which Lilienfeld considers to be unvalidated and sometimes harmful, including psychoanalysis as well as a list of practices which are not clearly defined here in this article.

These assertions of Lilienfeld's are controversial, and would not be accepted by all recognized experts in the field. There is evidence supporting psychoanalysis's efficacy, for example. I can cite some, but am not sure this is the right section of this article in which to debate the efficacy of different therapeutic approaches. I think it would be NPOV to cite Lilienfeld as evidence that there is concern within the field of psychology about fringe practices--clearly the question exists--but not to cite Lilienfeld's laundry list of "fringe" practices as if they were objectively supported, neutral opinions, because at least some of them appear to be controversial and biased statements on Lilienfeld's part, while others are just puzzling because the approach named is obscure.

It would be nice if there were an objectively verified list defining what constitutes a "quack practice", but as far as I know there is no such thing in the field of psychology. Lake29 (talk) 21:21, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

I restored the section you removed, minus the reference to psychoanalysis which was improperly quoted and not actually found in the source. The section still needs some work, but it is important to include examples of some of these fringe practices. Does anyone have a better source than the one provided? Perhaps: Lilienfeld S. (2007), Psychological treatments that cause harm. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2, 53–70. --Jcbutler (talk) 00:01, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Neuropsychoanalysis

Regarding the references listed at the end of the section on psychoanalysis (ref 9), I was surprised to see Eric Kandel, Oliver Sacks, Joseph LeDoux, Jaak Panksepp, and Antonio Damasio characterized as "neuropsychoanalytic researchers." These individuals may have spoken about Freud's insights from time to time, but this seems a bit overstated. Could anyone provide a specific page number reference for any of these researchers endorsing an actual neural substrate for a specific psychoanalytic concept? Thanks. --Jcbutler (talk) 16:01, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

I copy-pasted a bit about neuropsychoanalysis from the Freud article, and modifications by DoctorW and me have led it to its current form. I'm not (yet) familiar with the sources, but apparently Mark Solms is the leading researcher in the field and the coiner of the term, "neuropsychoanalysis" (hence the selection of his name for mention in the article text). A list of selected publications can be found here; one of them is this book, for which Sacks wrote the foreword. An overview of the field, and of various researchers' involvement with it, can be found here. But it might be safer to refer to most of them as "contributors to neuropsychoanalysis," or something to that effect, than as "neuropsychoanalytic researchers," at least for now. Cosmic Latte (talk) 18:47, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

"concern" & "concerned" overused word in article

It seems that psychology is "concerned" about a lot of things. Is there not another word that could be used? —Mattisse (Talk) 02:25, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Biased toward Psychoanalysis and Psychodynamic theory

Reading this article for the first time, I was struck by the obvious positive bias for any topic relating to psychoanalysis and psychodynamic theory. From my perspective, as a university professor in a psychology department for 15 years, the article does not present a modern view of the discipline. Examples include the emphasis on "depth psychology" (a very minor and tiny specialization, virtually unknown among psychologists) and the emphasis on "neuropsychoanalysis" (ditto). These and other examples make the apologetics for psychoanalysis and Freud too obvious. The article needs to adopt a more neutral position, but my first efforts to do so were quickly thwarted. Is this supposed to be an encyclopedic article or it is a pulpit for psychoanalytic apologists? Csears77 (talk) 16:10, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

I hope that my in-depth response on my talk page helps to clarify things. In a nutshell, the article already states that "Freudian theory has been marginalized, being regarded instead as a 'desiccated and dead' historical artifact", and the edit I reverted seemed to say essentially the same thing, but in an overstated way--first of all because it's simply not true that exposure to psychoanalytic views is limited to history/systems courses (I would be surprised to see an introductory, abnormal, personality, or developmental textbook that doesn't mention Freud somewhere, and would be amused to see how a cognitive book would go about discussing the false memory syndrome without mentioning the repression debate surrounding it), and secondly because there are only so many ways to say, "People see this stuff as history!" in a section already entitled, "History". Furthermore, this section concludes with a discussion of cognitivism, which even explains at some length how cognitive psychologists disagree with psychodynamics. Between that and "desiccated and dead" psychoanalysis, I'm not quite sure where "the obvious positive bias for any topic relating to psychoanalysis and psychodynamic theory" is located. As for depth psychology, there is no "emphasis" but rather a brief mention of this umbrella term comprising the ideas of Freud, Jung, Adler, and their followers. Neuropsychoanalysis is more esoteric, but if you check the footnote, you'll notice that its contributors include some big-name neuroscientists such as Oliver Sacks. As far as I can tell, the history section does what a history section should do, and the remainder (i.e., the majority) of the article gives an overview of what the discipline is like today. Cosmic Latte (talk) 16:38, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
I responded on your talk page. I am afraid your recent slew of edits to the Behaviorism section and to the Psychoanalysis section (June 3, 2009) only reinforce the points I am making. Any criticism of psychoanalysis seems to be quickly edited away, whereas any concievable support for it is exaggerated (e.g., the American Psychologist article, which is simply a historical piece and largely irrelevant). It's all very unfortunate.

Csears77 (talk) 04:32, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Ethics

Currently there is no discussion in this article about ethics in psychological research and practice. We should cover topics such as ethical guidelines, associations, minimal deception, informed consent, use of animals in research, referring to people as participants rather than subject, etc. Give some examples of classical experiments and why they would be considered unethical by today's standards: The Milgram experiment, Stanford prison experiment, Little Albert experiment, and perhaps Harry Harlow's "pit of despair". ----Action potential discuss contribs 13:32, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

I wholeheartedly agree that there should be such a section. Such a section would be more faithful to emphasis in current psychology than some of the present content. It should be brief, and link to a main article. I suggest putting it after the introduction to "Research methods", right before the sub-section "Controlled experiments". We have to be careful not to let the article expand in size; though a very broad topic, it is already more than twice the recommended length. Looking it over, it's clear that we should make room by cutting down the "History" section, which already has a main article. All the sub-sections there except the first one, "Philosophical and scientific roots", are too long and should be cut down. -DoctorW 19:24, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
I have begun the trimming I proposed, but have to go do something else, so wasn't able to look at the "Humanism and existentialism" and "Cognitivism" sub-sections. -DoctorW 19:45, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
I've done some further revising on the psychoanalysis and behaviorism subsections, trying to keep them reasonably summary-style (neither is much longer now than the "Philosophical and scientific roots" subsection, and the behaviorism subsection has a piped link to Little Albert) but without letting them get too simplistic. It's too easy to say, in effect, "The psychoanalysts all went to the left, the behaviorists went off to the right, the cognitivists showed up center-stage and then they all just called it a day", but a summary needn't be a caricature. Still, I'm sure that the humanism/existentialism and cognitivism subsections could survive some pruning and I agree that an ethics section should be added. Cosmic Latte (talk) 15:59, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
I just took a stab at cutting out some parts (pardon the pun) throughout almost the entire history section, adding and shifting a few things along the way. See what you think. I made some of these changes in response to Csears77's comment above, and will try to respond in that section later. Cosmic Latte (talk) 19:13, 4 June 2009 (UTC)
Good work. I think we should say somewhere that one can only infer causation unambiguously from a randomised control study. This is a really important issue that is not covered. We don't talk about purpose of randomization or control groups. This is the most fundamental issue in psychology but is not yet covered. ----Action potential discuss contribs 08:08, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Qualitative and quantitative research

Cosmic latte mostly wrote: Quantitative methods have massively informed all areas of psychology in which the double-blind experiment is held to be the paragon of research methods. Quantitative research tends to be of a deductive-nomological rather than an inductive character, and to be judged according to its production of degrees of correlation and probabilities of causation among variables, and not according to its congruence with the subjective experiences or philosophical convictions of researchers or of other research participants. Factor analysis and other quantitative techniques have refined psychometric tests, which are used to classify and measure psychological properties such as personality and intelligence. Psychologists employ well-known, standardized tests as well as those created ad hoc as the situation or experiment requires.

The writing is weak. What is with the "massively informed" business? What is the business about the "production of the degrees of correlation"? What kind of expression is "the probabilities of causation"? What is with "the paragon of research methods"? The expression is worse than the "king of beers". Is personality a "psychological property", like Boardwalk and Park Place? Why is the writing so awful? Those who contribute to Wikipedia want readers, including college students, to learn from clearly written text, not this gobbledygook. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.247.26.179 (talk) 21:00, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

How kind of you. If you find this "gobbledygook" unsatisfying, you are welcome to mold it more to your liking. In the mean time, bear in mind that that desired style, while not grandiloquent or turgid, is nonetheless not simplified for purposes of instruction. Cosmic Latte (talk) 08:24, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Status as a Science

In this section, we can read two contentious claims:

"Misuses of hypothesis-testing occur in psychology, particularly by psychologists without doctoral training in experimental psychology and statistics. Research has documented that many psychologists confuse statistical significance with practical importance."

Neither of these claims is documented. That is, where are the citations to the research that show that 1) there are (important) misuses of hypothesis-testing in psychological research, particularly by psychologists without doctoral training in experimental psychology and statistics, and 2) many psychologists confuse statistical significance with practical importance?

For the latter claim one might cite Cowan's work on effect sizes, but the assertation would still be a sweeping generalization.

Csears77 (talk) 21:21, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps we can paraphrase and cite the APA task force on statistical inference ( Wilkinson, L., & the Task Force on Statistical Inference, APA Board of Scientific Affairs (1999) Statistical methods in psychology journals: guidelines and explanations. American Psychologist', 54, 594-604.) that recommends reporting confidence intervals rather than hypothesis t-tests. However, this is really an issue of research methods in psychology. ----Action potential discuss contribs 02:12, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Actually, I'm somewhat concerned myself about this. In particular though, it seems that the actual arguments pertaining to use of Bayesian statistics in psychology haven't been mentioned at all in here. I intend to post a few papers on this later for approval to expand the status as a science section and reference list on that sub topic.

New thread

is it really that the name of a person desribes behavious of that person —Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.220.128.5 (talk) 11:44, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Absolutely; that's why my parents decided to call me the Wonderful Wizard of Wikipedia! Seriously, though, I'm not quite sure about the meaning and relevance of what you're asking. Could you give us an example? Cosmic Latte (talk) 10:03, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
In some cultures, the name of a person indeed seems to be correlated with his behavior, if this is what you mean. Twipley (talk) 15:49, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Beginning

This is a good article, but I have a problem with the way it starts:

Psychology is an academic and applied discipline which involves the scientific study of human or animal mental functions and behaviors. In addition or opposition to employing scientific methods, psychologists often rely upon symbolic interpretation and critical analysis, albeit less frequently than other social sciences such as sociology.

A professional theorist or practitioner of psychology is called a psychologist. Psychologists study such phenomena as perception, cognition, attention, emotion, motivation, personality, behavior and interpersonal relationships. Some, especially depth psychologists, also consider the unconscious mind. Psychologists attempt to understand the role of mental functions in individual and social behavior, while also exploring the underlying physiological and neurological processes.

Indeed, the term "psychologist" only gets defined in its second occurrence... Therefore, it seems to me that the second sentence of the first paragraph would perhaps best be placed a little lower than it currently is? Twipley (talk) 15:52, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Good point. I found that the easiest thing to do would be sort of the flip-side of what you said: I moved the first sentence of the second paragraph a little higher. If it still could be improved, please feel free to make further suggestions or changes. Cosmic Latte (talk) 16:04, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

The entry paragraph state that psychologists are "social scientists". I think this may in some cases be true, but isn't necessarily so. Not too few psychologists see themselves as general or nature scientists, as they do not always study social phenomena. In addition, the social sciences do often take a qualitative approach to their fields of investigation, while at least here in Germany a lot of psychologists prefer a quantitative approach not unlike biologists or physicists. I feel the entry paragraph should make this clearer; psychology isn't part of the "social sciences" field with disciplines such as history or sociology, at least not fully. While both do study human beings, they do so with different focusses. In this respect, psychology has more in common with biology or medicine than with the social sciences. --91.32.5.13 (talk) 23:28, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

I tend to agree with this and support your addition to the intro. Psychology straddles the social and natural sciences. In Canada, for example, some psychologists (i/o, social, personality, developmental) are funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council while others (e.g., cognitive, behavioural neuroscience) are funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council. It's not always clear what research should be funded by which. justinfr (talk/contribs) 15:29, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

Too many listed subfields?

I am a bit concerned that the list of subfields in this article is getting too long. Some of the listed subfields are extremely small (community, comparative, critical, global, media, occupational health, etc.) and I am concerned that we are approaching WP:Undue by listing all of them here. There are dozens of subfields of psychology, and I feel like there should be a separate all-inclusive list somewhere other than the main psychology article, lest readers become overwhelmed. For reference, here is a list (US only, so not globally representative, but probably close) of psychology subfields along with the number of doctoral degrees awarded in those fields (link) taken from the NSF Survey of Earned Doctorates. (The link goes to a screen capture -- the original data are available here if you register.) -Nicktalk 17:59, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

I agree. I think that most of the "Subfields" section should be copy-pasted into a new article called Subfields of psychology or something similar; and for the Psychology article, I would--with one exception--stick to the list that you provided. The one exception is critical psychology, which I'd move from Subfields to Psychology#Criticism. While this may be a small branch of psychology as a whole, it's a significant source of criticism, largely because the criticism comes from within psychology itself. Otherwise, I'm in full agreement with your suggestion. Cosmic Latte (talk) 15:21, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

I also agree. I think we should use the list given in the link or some other clear standard as a guide for what should be in this article. --Jcbutler (talk) 17:27, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm also in full agreement with Nick and Jcbutler. We need to adopt some objective standard, even if it isn't fully representative worldwide. I do not think we should make an exception for an editor's pet subfield (for Cosmic Latte this is apparently critical psychology; mine might be community psychology, which is after all a division of APA) if it doesn't meet the objective criteria. A "new article called Subfields of psychology or something similar" needs to be created and linked from this main article. -DoctorW 23:43, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
"Exception" might not have been the best choice of words on my part. Maybe "addition" or "supplement" would have been better. I agree that CP, like many of the listed subfields, probably is not prominent enough as a subfield to remain in the subfields section. I just think that the key ideas could be integrated into the criticism section, simply because "criticism" happens to be a valid and extant article section--and because, since this section has to draw its material from somewhere, it might as well draw from mainstream reflexivity, more so than from "outside" critics with limited "hands-on" experience. In other words, CP might have due weight as criticism, in the criticism section, even if it's undue in the subfields part. So, perhaps what I should have suggested is that, in addition to moving the undue material out of subfields, we could incorporate snippets of it into a section where it would fit more properly (and prominently). Cosmic Latte (talk) 03:29, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
In any case, I've gone ahead and copied the full section to a new article, Subfields of psychology, and have trimmed and adjusted Psychology#Subfields in accordance with Schwnj's link. As for my proposed addition/supplement, perhaps I could try that out sometime and see what the rest of you think. But for the meantime, the consensus seems clearly to be in favour of a WP:SPINOUT, so I've gone ahead and spun most of the section out. Cosmic Latte (talk) 03:47, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Subfields on other page should be mentioned here

I think that this page's introduction to the section on subfields should find a very brief way to allude to the richer set of topics (including community, critical, etc.) that appear on the subfields page (perhaps using a small-font right-justified table?). Plus, I think that such a listing should also be very briefly contextualized by conveying to the reader that there is no one fixed way of defining what counts as a subfield. Ultimately, even the other (subfields) page may need to establish criteria for what constitutes notability for a subfield, although clearly more relaxed criteria can be used on the other page than on this page. On the dedicated subfields page, I would suggest that the most useful solution may ultimately involve a variety of ways that a subfield could qualify as sufficiently notable, while still keeping a limit. Health Researcher (talk) 03:09, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

BTW, I have added psychology of religion/spirituality as another listed subfield on the subfields page. I think the existence of this R/S subfield also deserves a mention on the present (Psychology) page, although I am inclined to agree it does not merit its own subsection on this page, now that the number of subfields has been trimmed. But it strikes me as needlessly uninformative to fail to even mention on this page a subfield with such a long history in modern psychology, and that addresses a topic of such deep and abiding importance to large majorities of people in the US and many other societies. Health Researcher (talk) 03:09, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Term in which bad/draconian choice is given, followed by interviewer's desired choice

I seem to recall that their is a term, or at least psychology papers on how an interviewer can skew a poll by first giving a bad/draconian choice, followed by the choice desired by the interviewer. What article would that be? Thank you. Okip (formerly Ikip) 13:35, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

That probably would be loaded question. Cosmic Latte (talk) 03:02, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

hi Does a person studying psychology has a split personalise ...or two personalise thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 218.186.8.253 (talk) 18:19, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

A person with dissociative identity disorder (DID) might be said to have "multiple personalities". Even worse, someone with Orthodox Behaviorism Disorder (OBD) may be convinced that they (being entirely the product of their environment) have no intrinsic "personality" at all! Cosmic Latte (talk) 03:02, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Criticism

Quote from the criticism section: "Critics say there has been an increase in the number of mental health training programs that do not instill scientific competence.[47] One skeptic asserts that practices, such as "facilitated communication for infantile autism"; memory-recovery techniques including body work; and other therapies, such as rebirthing and reparenting, may be dubious or even dangerous, despite their popularity.[48] In 1984, Allen Neuringer had made a similar point[vague] regarding the experimental analysis of behavior.[49]"

I don't understand this criticism. Why is psychology as defined in the article being criticized for pseudo-scientific treatments? Is psychology as an academic field responsible for all sorts of "mental health training programs" that must exist? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.34.83.114 (talk) 10:58, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

At a more general level the issues concern which practices are (or are not) empirically supported and to what extent (e.g. psychoanalysis[5] and EMDR[6]). The APA has put together an evidence-based practice task force to make recommendations concerning evidence-based practice in psychology, it has recommended a similar model to that used in medicine.[7]. "But these research-to-practice endeavours have also generated considerable controversy focusing primarily on two areas. First, the actual amount of research evidence, particularly derived from RCTs [randomised control studies], is considerably greater for certain psychological treatments compared with others (see Roth & Fonagy, 1996). Second, irrespective of any such imbalance, there are differing views as to the interpretation of the research (e.g., the effectiveness of treatments versus the effectiveness of the common factors - Asay & Lambert, 1999; Norcross, 2002)."[8] There has been a reluctance to adopt EBP because it normally requires that clinicians give up their existing practices and would have to adopt the most researched practices such as CBT or IPT. (Seligman, 1998 as cited in [9]). Rather than dealing with the issue in the criticism section perhaps there should a section on "Evidence-based practice" or training and professional standards in this or another article where the debate could be covered in more depth. The issue has also comes up in discussions about professional ethics. ----Action potential discuss contribs 05:50, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Recent changes to subfields / intro

I moved this text from the subsection on School psychology: "Currently, school psychology is the only field in which a professional can be called a "psychologist" without a doctoral degree, with the National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) recognizing the Specialist degree as the entry level. This is a matter of controversy as the APA does not recognize anything below a doctorate as the entry level for a psychologist. Specialist-level school psychologists, who typically receive three years of graduate training, function almost exclusively within school systems, while those at the doctoral-level are found in a number of other settings as well, including universities, hospitals, clinics, and private practice."

I cut the Consulting and Counseling psychology from the sub-discipline section. I thought that those could be handled under the Organisational and Clinical psychology respectively. I've also removed the quantitative subfield because this can really be handled in the research methods section. ----Action potential discuss contribs 15:34, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

I cut the following text from the introduction because it was given undue weight where it was introduced. The cited source has a low citation count on google scholar and on web of science.

  • ", as well as wider historical dimensions such as the attainment of greatness in fields such as politics, music, art, and literature. Simonton, D.K. 1994. Greatness: Who Makes History and Why. New York: The Guilford Press."

Action potential discuss contribs 02:48, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Funny topic about basic problems about in human mind

When at first time I notice a basic problems in human mind, I get impressed. Years ago, with one of my friends discussing purpose of live. My friend told me that all life is for one wife and her needs. When I was hear this, I laugh loudly. But at near time I find that human mind things on basic things: for example: money, food or sex. My things about this situation is negative: because human must have a purpose or purposes. So money, food or sex must be a secondary problem I thing. If human find purpose(s) then will thing different about life. And may be it makes difference between other people.

Ayhi (netiq69@gmail.com) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.181.99.13 (talk) 18:04, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

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