Psychology anyone?

[Citizen Bleys]

science
noun
The intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment.

Psychology is a systematic study
Psychology looks at behaviour of the natural world (people)
Psychology uses observation and experiment.

What part of this definition of science does psychology not fit?

Systematic: Perhaps you could explain how it is systematic? I'm at a loss as how to address the question.
Behavior of the natural world: Including sentient/sapient* beings in the natural world is debatable. An inanimate object, subjected to the same stimulus, will respond in the same way every time. Human beings will not. Some will do what you don't expect if for no other reason than to bugger up your results.
Observation and experiment: Perhaps, but it's observing human behavior, not something that follows logical rules.

*There really isn't a word that I'm aware of to distinguish human cognition from that of less developed/advanced life.

Psychology is the science of behaviour, as they to do experiments and clinical lab studies ect.

You said this a little earlier in the thread. I thought I might comment on this statement.

You can't scientifically calculate or measure behaviour.

Why didn't I think of phrasing it this way?

There are a million and one reasons for why a person might do or think something. And there are a million and one ways to help that person with their problem. Say a person is coming to you presenting with extremely low self-esteem, no energy or desire to do anything and an admission that they've thought about suicide in the past. A practitioner of psychology would probably whack out DSM IV, diagnose them with major depressive disorder, give them anti-depressants and continue to see them whilst drawing from CBT (cognitive behavioural theory) to challenge their self-defeating beliefs.

What really grinds my gears is how quickly that happens. When one goes to a shrink, one is thinking "There's something wrong with me, I need help" and the shrink is quick to reaffirm that and come up with a scary-sounding diagnosis and maybe dispense some drugs to reinforce the notion that the person is fundamentally flawed, or even that they need drugs to function in society. This leads to a mindset of helplessness and self-despite that will stop a person from trying to help themselves. Yes, support is helpful, sometimes even necessary, but support from a detached professional is worthless. It has to be sincere. This means family and friends. With support from people who actually care about them, a "mentally sick" person has a chance to finally remember how birds first learn to fly; to rage against the perception of them as flawed; to feed on the paradoces* that once paralyzed them; and to spread their wings and prove all of the naysayers wrong. I'm certain this is as close as a normal human being can come to experiencing apotheosis, and the "diagnostic" mentality taken towards the human mind inhibits any sort of progress towards that apotheosis.

*Yes, I googled it. Google is wrong. Letters ending in "x" are pluralized by dropping the -x and adding -ces.

Just because psychology can prove that a specific, isolated behaviour can be 'fixed', it doesn't mean they can do it routinely without fail.

Conversely, if there's a chance to help someone, without the risk of harm, that chance should be taken. The key there though is without the risk of harm. Guess-and-test diagnoses compound the problem.

I actually agree with you in broad terms Bleys, because what you said is basically the same argument I use against determinism. But I don't think the brain is so completely divorced from predictability as to make the... discipline, shall we say - of psychology an entirely futile and useless one.

I don't think of it entirely as futile and useless; just not as a science, and as an art that has the potential to do as much harm as good. It would take someone almost infallible to avoid doing harm. I couldn't do it. You couldn't do it. I'm sure none of us could do it. That level of responsibility, if taken seriously, could be considered as grave and crushing as that which the general shoulders on the battlefield, yet many practitioners of psychology treat it with an attitude that could best be described as cavalier.

There are psychologists out there who can do more good than harm, I'm sure of it. The law of averages demands it. But how the hell do you find them?

Many people in treatment for any sort of mental issue are likely to go through quite a few of them before the 'best fit' is found, but it does seem to be at least somewhat better than complete guesswork, in my experience; it has been very far from perfect but it has, on balance, been superior to nothing at all. I appreciate that yours was different and that leads you to a different conclusion.

It could just as easily have gone the other way--but I've done enough freaking speechwriting for one post, so I'll leave it at that for now.