Psychology anyone?

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Originally Posted by jenovajunkie

Psychology does in fact deal with stats.

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I don't think anyone is trying to say that psychology doesn't deal with statistics on some level. This is how we know things like that children of an abusive parent are more likely to be abusive themselves. This is valuable information to have, but what psychologists and psychiatriasts primarily do is help people through interpretive practice. They don't just throw their clients an equation and say "You're all better now". They do much more than that, they talk to people, build rapport, establish a relationship with them and use a variety of techniques drawing from various psychological theories to help them help themselves. These are great skills to have and psychologists/psychiatrists should be proud of what they do, but I just don't think it should be considered a science.

The example in my previous post may have been of a bad practitioner, but the way I see it, a good practitioner would still be using all those skills that I've mentioned and more to help people, but it's difficult to quantify to what extent that these people are being helped. If a psychologist sees someone about their anger and violence issues, the client may come away saying "Yes, I'm all fixed now" and the psychologist may provide his professional opinion and say "Yes, he's reformed. He'll never beat his wife again" but that's objective information. You don't know that he won't and that he doesn't harbour the desire to. It's not like a doctor curing someone of an illness or a chemist getting the right percentage of the active ingredient of a drug into a pill. This is what I meant in saying that behaviour is unmeasurable.

Social workers in direct practice draw from psychological theories when they work with clients too. There are almost no social work-exclusive theories out there. Social workers in research fields use the same kinds of methods to get their findings (surveys, questionnaires, longitudinal case studies) as those in psychology. Generally speaking, we have the skills as psychologists but with a focus on interpersonal relationships instead of intrapersonal. Yet I'm sure if someone stood up and proclaimed social work a science, they'd get laughed off the face of the planet.

Well the thing is, I defined what a science is, and why psychology fits it. Social work again spawned from psychology. The reason you can call psychology a science is because of the recent work regarding the brain and human sensory organs. The amount of psychology has changed and what it deals with now is not known to many. I am not saying all my points over again. What was defined for it not being a science, I have provided proof showing otherwise.
Now have you even read any of the previous posts? Because I'm almost certain Citizen B said it's not a science because it's not mathematical. And another thing, your wife beater example: thats not behavior. That's his conscious, I believe, but I also believe that would not happen. And I'm sure through an expert psychoanalyst's test would catch that.
Now anyone who has taken a psych course knows that their conception previously was fairly wrong. Well maybe not everyone, but it's definitely an eye-opener. I doubt you have taken it either.
Psychology is so much a science as the "big three". I already stated why. I don't want sound like a broken record.
Well I asked you for why it wouldn't be a science, you gave me why. And I showed through your definition it is. What more...
Oh you could question why the wife beater is not an example of behavior. Because I myself am not confident on my response, but that's not what I would call behavior. Hey I started a new thread in the Eyes On Each Other section called The definition thread. I want to continue to have these types of conversations. And more
Think Critically and keep it FRESH:cool:

A man who beats his wife; whether it be because he has anger management issues, an obsession with tipping the power dynamics of the relationship in his favour, an alcohol problem, a history of abuse as a child etc. is still a man beating his wife. He is doing something and in that respect, he is behaving a certain way. It is behaviour. Even if he doesn't do it anymore, his not beating his wife is behaviour as well. He has to behave a certain way to not do it anymore.

And an expert psychoanalyst can't ever say for certain whether a client of his will regress or not. No matter how good he is, he'll never been 100% in the client's head. He can only go off the information that was disclosed to him. He may be confident that he's helped to reform the perpetrator, but he can't be sure. Do they actually teach in psych courses that their work will be guaranteed to help everyone every time? That's really arrogant. Day 1 of social work is the obligatory "You can't help everyone" spiel.

Social work spawned from psychology? That's not right, but I can see how you'd think that. It's true that social work today borrows a lot from psychology today, but that's only the trend of the last 30-40 years. Before then, social work was more strongly linked with medicine.

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Originally Posted by jenovajunkie

And then you said that what I'm explaining is psychiatry. And I don't know the difference was. So I researched a bit to find out the differences in the two professions are few.

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That could be the whole reason for our disagreement, then; I would define psychiatry as science applied to psychology. A psychologist and psychiatrist may both be phDs, but the psychiatrist dispenses drugs and the psychologist deals more in-depth with amorphous issues such as emotion and motivation.

A good example of psychology would be the marriage counsellor. It's their job to find out the real reasons why a marriage is on the rocks and guide the couple to correcting them. Obviously the couple loves one another, or did, so there's common ground. Trying to identify the common ground, and what counteracts it when a couple is thinking about divorce, is not the sort of issue that merits a scientific approach. Hell, often even the couple doesn't know the true reasoning behind their discontent--they know symptoms, but not the root cause. There will be times that simply finding the root cause of their discontent and making them aware of it is enough to reconcile a couple because the true reason is not logical. There is no room in science for illogic. Spock would do great as a scientist. Emotion, conversely, is almost pure illogic.

A psychiatrist, conversely, deals with the chemical sciences; it's their job to determine if a behavioral problem is caused by an imbalance of bodily-produced chemicals and prescribe a drug to counteract said chemical imbalance. It's all about endorphins and enzymes and such. (Neither chemistry nor biology is my forté, I prefer physics myself) Often, clients are referred to a psychiatrist by a psychologist who already has a pretty good idea of what the issue is, so the psychiatrist requires very little art and a whole lot of science.

I did err stating that psychology uses no mathematics -- statistics is unquestionably a mathematical discipline. However, statistics deals with probabilities, not certainties, like everything else in math. It's not the same. If I know the mass and acceleration of a moving object, the math I do doesn't attempt to predict its kinetic energy, it calculates its kinetic energy with a precision limited only by the accuracy of the measurements for m & a. In this respect, stats is sort of a black sheep in the mathematical herd, similar to the attempt to generate random numbers in computer science engineering. (Protip: There's no such thing as a truly random number in computers. A CPU is a purely mathematical entity and isn't capable of randomness)

I like psychology. The whole mentalism/cold reading idea interests me immensely. I love trying to guess things about people based on those small details. Tend to be quite good at it too.

Other than that, I may one day try create an overarching theory that suggests that people are perfectly predictable once genetic dispositions and historical factors are known. Because people act very logically. Generally, any illogical behaviour is due to someone not knowing enough.

Okay is it me or are you just asking and saying the same thing. First of all, why do some shrinks suggest certain things? Because it's been proven SCIENTIFICALLY to work. How? Through experiments and they are SCIENTIFIC experiments. I said so much, PROVED so much yet you all choose to ignore it. Think about the other side of the spectrum. The one where you're wrong, think critically. I hate to break it to you, but you actually might be wrong on this one guys.
Champagne Supernova, your statement explaining everyone acts logically and not illogically. There's many problems with this statement. You're making too many assumptions. A person will act illogically when in several states of mind. And acting logically in whose perspective? Have you never met someone who is acting illogically? Man you don't get out much..... :D

You say that shrinks say certain things that are proven scientifically to work, but another shrink might say something else and it might still work. Or they might say it, and it won't work, due to other compounding issues the client may be experiencing. That's what I've been arguing from my first post. And you can't argue those latter two shrinks are just "bad shrinks" because they're not. They're just coming from a different perspective, drawing from a different psychological theory, coming from a different place in terms of their own personal experience, values and morals. That is psychology as a whole. No two shrinks will interpret the theory required for their practice exactly the same way, come from exactly the same perspective or are groomed to say and do exactly the same things as each other.

Anyway, it appears that we'll all have to agree to disagree on this one. I'll admit I have personal bias against some aspects of psychology, but generally speaking, I have great respect for the field, even though they'll be some competition when it comes time for me to finish up uni and go get a job. The 'psychology is not a science' is a debate that is, at the end of the day, pointless. Psychologists as a whole do their jobs well and what they do makes a positive, lasting impact on a lot of their clients. I can't fault that.

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Originally Posted by Mo-Nercy

Anyway, it appears that we'll all have to agree to disagree on this one.

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Dude I said that earlier, then Citizen Blah implied I was "backing down".
Well I see you have not much more to say and we are circling around each other.
Let me rephrase that, you could say more, but so would I. And we'd end up here. I think you guys don't have enough knowledge about the topic to debate this topic. But obvious I don't know enough, since I failed to show you what I know. So let's walk away from this cleanly, until I post something else, or you!

LET ME TELL YOU MY TAKE ON THE HUMAN CONDITION WHILST POSTING FROM MY MACBOOK IN MY DORM~