Why Strowbridge lost the debate on Psychology.

[C.S.Strowbridge]

1.) What is Psychology?
2.) What is Freud's influence on psychology and why it's bullshit?

Well thank you for answering the questions. If you want to debate specifics of psychology I'd be more than willing to.

[Tosho]

I thought, in favor of Freud, the Rorschach test was replaced with asking the patient what thought comes to mind when he is shown a banana, a cigar, a lollipop, a polish sausage....

They use both methods

[Kazuaki Shimazaki]

It depends on what you define as Freudism, doesn't it? BUT YOU REFUSED TO DEFINE FREUD'S INFLUECE.

If you think Wong made a mistake, point out where you THINK he made a mistake in an unambigious fashion. Stop beating around the bush. It's not like it is even working.

You see, Phsyics is a science. Applied phyisics is called engineering.
Psychology is a science. Applied psychology is called .... wait for it .... Psychology.

Wait. Earlier, you blamed Mike for cutting out parts from psychology. But now you seem to be saying Psychoanalysis doesn't count.

The APA also used to believe that homosexuality was a mental disorder and that slaves who wanted to be set free were also suffering from a mental disorder. (Once I unpack, I can even give you the name.)

The APA is an organization overrun with political concerns, but that doesn't affect the science of Psychology. Anymore than creationism affects the science of biology.

Oh, now you are pulling down a Contamination Block Wall. I'm not very familiar with American psychology, but I would assume that the APA is considered the premier Association within the states. If the premier Biology society within the States (which generally implies it is also a premier society worldwide) supports Creationism, it DOES not speak well for Biology's scientific integrity.

By the way, the scientifically fallacious ways the Creationism Research Group uses to try to prove Creationism is a sign Creationism in unscientific.

You may be using the term incorrectly, so we might be arguing about two difference things.

You wait until that difference shows up clearly. Then you attack. Then you triumphantly host that up as proof of his ignorance.

Think about it this way, say we were arguing about material science, BUT I was using the term Ceramic when I meant Alloy. Wouldn't it be best to clear that mess up first instead of arguing about the details?

Remember that famous picture in which Darth Wong describes the difference between dirt and concrete? Did Darth Wong try to ask him what he thinks dirt and concrete were? No. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, he just put up a picture with "dirt" and "concrete" labeled. You see? He just TELLS him when it is clear he's wrong, rather than suspect he doesn't know and ask him.

[Thinkmarble]

Talking to german students of pschology I have gotten the impression that psychoanalysis is resigned to the dustbin of history and not even worthwile in therapy as it does have an positive effect when compared to doing nothing but is left in the dust by modern methods.

[salm]

Talking to german students of pschology I have gotten the impression that psychoanalysis is resigned to the dustbin of history and not even worthwile in therapy as it does have an positive effect when compared to doing nothing but is left in the dust by modern methods.

apparently just a placebo effect.

[Darth Wong]

It depends on what you define as Freudism, doesn't it? BUT YOU REFUSED TO DEFINE FREUD'S INFLUECE.

Actually, since the argument was primarily about subjective, unsupported bullshit theories in psychology (of which Freud was listed merely as an example of said bullshit), the salient point is that both Freud's Penis Envy theory (which should not have been taken seriously for minutes, never mind decades) and the Rorschach test are both based on the same mentality, which I described earlier: assignment of "psychological complexes" to innocuous behaviour that can easily be explained without them. Do I have to repeat this yet again?

Freud's views on sexuality were completely blown out of the water by real studies on human sexuality.

Which should not have even been necessary; a point which seems to sail over your head. They were based on nothing but his idle, personal speculation in the first place. Any real scientist would have noticed this immediately. The fact that they were actually published and cited until disproven by evidence is the most damning indictment of psychology I can think of. And that's, quite frankly, a recurring pattern in psychology; the Rorschach test and MPD are merely more recent examples of this phenomenon. A theory without any real supporting evidence whatsoever and which shits on Occam's Razor by inventing hidden mechanisms to explain phenomena which can be explained without them is taken seriously until someone does the work to disprove it, and it will still retain a large population of supporters even after that.

On the other hand, psychoanalysis, which was a technique he developed is used in psychology today. BUT NOT THE SCIENCE OF PSYCHOLOGY.

You see, Phsyics is a science. Applied phyisics is called engineering.
Psychology is a science. Applied psychology is called .... wait for it .... Psychology.

And this changes the fact that psychology's peer review system is ineffective ... how?

The APA also used to believe that homosexuality was a mental disorder and that slaves who wanted to be set free were also suffering from a mental disorder. (Once I unpack, I can even give you the name.)

The APA is an organization overrun with political concerns, but that doesn't affect the science of Psychology. Anymore than creationism affects the science of biology.

If the largest Biology association endorsed creationism, it would indeed affect my perception of the science of biology. Try again.

I know enough to know that the Rorschach test is a joke, and that the APA endorses it. Moreover, on my Hate Mail pages, I always address the points directly, and only mention the author's credentials in passing. There is a huge difference between saying "your point is wrong because of <blah blah blah>, it's obvious your total lack of credentials caused your miserable failure" and "you have no credentials, therefore I don't have to answer your point", dumb-ass.

And that's a strawman attack. I need to know what you think are the basics before I can debate details. If you have a serious lack of knowledge to what Frued is, then when you use the term Freudism IT MEANS SOMETHING OTHER THAN WHAT I THINK IT MEANS.

I already explained the biggest problem that I see with Freudianism several times, which is that it assigns "psychological complexes" to innocuous behaviour. I don't have to write an essay about Freud in order to point out that this characteristic behaviour is ridiculous.

Think about it this way, say we were arguing about material science, BUT I was using the term Ceramic when I meant Alloy. Wouldn't it be best to clear that mess up first instead of arguing about the details?

Yes, and in such debates I generally clear that up myself, rather than playing rhetorical games by trying to hold my nose in the air while claiming that I don't have to respond until the other person defines them to my satisfaction even if the subject of the debate does not hinge upon those definitions. What the fuck made you think that this or any other debate is about Freud? It's about psychology's failure to conduct itself in a manner befitting a science, and Freud is merely one piece of evidence.

I'll answer every question you have on psychology and Freud, AS SOON AS I UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU MEAN BY THOSE TERMS.

Maybe if you understood that those terms are not the subject of the debate, we might start getting somewhere. As it is, you have been reduced to Darkstar-style tactics of loudly crowing victory (in the thread title, no less!) and then running to other places (ASVS in this case) to complain that I've been unfair by altering your title to replace my name with yours.

You don't even seem to realize what the subject of the debate is, for fuck's sake. Unbelievable.

[Nick]

Bloody hell. . . I'm agreeing with Mike on an argument about psychology. . . (anyone who was around more than 12 months ago may have some idea what I mean by that)

C.S. - while there are plenty of good psychological scientists out there, I have to agree with Mike that there is a reasonably widespread failure to apply Occam's Razor to theories.

What I realised was happening was that, in my own reading back at university, I was the one doing the culling of the bullshit. It got to the point where I didn't really see it anymore - I didn't consider it as part of psychology. (I was also affected by the fact that I studied cognitive science, rather than straight psychology - cogsci tends to apply bullshit filters when borrowing from the disciplines it brings together)

But that's not the point. The point is that that shit should never have been in the journals in the first place. From an external point of view, what matters is what the journals say, and what organisations like the APA say.

And the simple fact is, half of what they say is unsupported bollocks. Unfortunately, the real scientists know that it is bollocks, so they don't waste their time arguing - they go do some real research instead. Which means a lot of the rubbish goes unchallenged, and gains credibility because of that.

There is an interesting aspect of this to consider, though. The application of scientific discipline to the study of human behaviour is comparatively recent. Empirical psychology (as opposed to mental navel gazing) only really began with the creation of the first institute for experimental psychology in Germany in 1879. Less than 150 years later, we have some fairly prominent psychologists still pushing some decidedly questionable theories.

Compare that to the physical sciences, where Galileo was kicking around in Italy in the early 17th century. Isaac Newton, in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, still believed some incredibly dodgy shit, but was not reviled for it - many of his contemporaries shared his mistaken ideas. Now, though, his good ideas are remembered, and have been built on, while his lousy ideas have been discarded. Over the last few hundred years, the discipline of science has been improved, and is reflected in the peer review processes applied to the best journals.

In other words, psychology is still maturing as a science, just as physics and the other natural sciences matured over the course of several generations. There is still much work to be done - and denying the existence of the problem Mike is pointing out by saying 'that's not psychology' is just dodging the issue. However, neither is it appropriate to say that psychology is a lost cause. Psychology will get there eventually, for the same reason that the more physical sciences have: scientific discipline works.

[Darth Wong]

Nick makes a good point. I would be perfectly willing to concede that it's possible for psychology to eventually mature into a respectable science, primarily via the application of stricter discipline to the field and its practitioners. It's just that it's not there yet.

[Durandal]

Nick makes a good point. I would be perfectly willing to concede that it's possible for psychology to eventually mature into a respectable science, primarily via the application of stricter discipline to the field and its practitioners. It's just that it's not there yet.

I've had conversations with some psychologists who have basically said that studying human emotion and the phenomena Freud studied has been pretty much abandoned by the more serious psychologists, and that the most progressive work is being done in neuropsychology.

[lgot]

Nick makes a good point. I would be perfectly willing to concede that it's possible for psychology to eventually mature into a respectable science, primarily via the application of stricter discipline to the field and its practitioners. It's just that it's not there yet.

My compliments here for this is the ideal reasoning of such debate...No such field of knowledge which so many helpful aplication and efficient work in our society could be so easily dismissed but in the same hand, no field must be free of critics. This one field seems to have already inside themselves the mechanism to make such critics and like all fields keep the development.