Is psychology science?

[muir]

As far as I understand the sample base size is their biggest faux pas by today's standards.

A big sample base is good no?

I disagree that there's such a thing as a truly unique part of our brains that is unquantifiable.

I'm not talking about the brain, i'm talking about the mind

What they did was that they found out that there are different types of brains and ways of thinking. They didn't find one fact and then argued that all brains were the same. The fact is that if we didn't have Freud or Jung's studies, there would be no scientific ways for us to prove that we are different solely based on our personalities. That's sort of their discoveries. Mostly Jung, whereas Freud was more into the subconscious.

Disclaimer: I feel like I'm way in over my head on this subject. Feel free to correct me if you know that I'm wrong. I'm just a guy that took psychology for a few years and didn't love it and sort of stopped. What I know and have worked with is largely negligible.

I'm not sure they were talking about different kinds of brains but rather different kinds of minds

 

[LucyJr]

[video=youtube;JgikdLHaAcE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgikdLHaAcE&list=PLD92F98F9DA7D2B74[/video]

 

[j654dgj7]

Dismissing all of psychology and psychiatry is like dismissing all books. There's so many ways, so many different schools of thought. I'm sorry if you had a bad experience at one point - I've had plenty. In fact, I'm sort of pissed off at psychology too at the moment. There's plenty of reasons to be sad/angry with psychology. Just don't be mad because you feel like it's all terrible, because it's obviously not.

 

[LucyJr]

[video=youtube;gywCn1T-Jug]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gywCn1T-Jug[/video]

 

[LucyJr]

[video=youtube;hoJBvH2xZ18]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoJBvH2xZ18[/video]

 

[say what]

[MENTION=9401]LucyJr[/MENTION] - perhaps you could provide a bit more context to the videos you're posting, show us how they're linked to what you're saying

 

[New Dawn Fades]

[video=youtube;gu7NDUc5TD4]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gu7NDUc5TD4&list=PLD92F98F9DA7D2B74[/video]

Do you really think that every psychological disease is made up? I agree with you that many people are being misdiagnosed, but there certainly are such things like depression or bipolar disorder. If you cannot live your life in a normal way, if you are suicidal, then there definitely is something wrong. That's not all made up. Or do you think that physical diseases don't really exist as well?

[video=youtube;QDR3cD8_kck]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDR3cD8_kck&list=PLD92F98F9DA7D2B74[/video]

Electroshock therapy isn't used in that form anymore. That happened a long time ago, and of course, it was terrifying, but every science has their own dark history. (Textbook example: Atom bomb)

 

[j654dgj7]

A big sample base is good no?

Exactly, and they didn't use big enough sample bases for today's standards. Sorry if my meaning didn't come across properly

I'm not talking about the brain, i'm talking about the mind

The distinction being? Just so we're clear, I meant the mind in what I wrote previously, as the mind is a product of the brain.

I'm not sure they were talking about different kinds of brains but rather different kinds of minds

I feel like you're either nitpicking or believe that the brain and mind are completely separate. I'd love to hear your theory!

 

[muir]

Do you really think that every psychological disease is made up? I agree with you that many people are being misdiagnosed, but there certainly are such things like depression or bipolar disorder. If you cannot live your life in a normal way, if you are suicidal, then there definitely is something wrong. That's not all made up. Or do you think that physical diseases don't really exist as well?

Those 'disorders' are expressions of anxiety

Too much anxiety creates mania

The system cannot admit this though because for the system to admit that there are lots of anxious people out there would be to admit that the system is failing people

But the system is not failing the people who create and mould the system because they live in big houses in gated compounds drinking the finest wines and so on...the system works very well for them

So they don't won't to recognise that there are problems with their system so instead they lock up and drug the anxious people to shut them up and hide them away so that they can pretend that the system is working

Electroshock therapy isn't used in that form anymore. That happened a long time ago, and of course, it was terrifying, but every science has their own dark history. (Textbook example: Atom bomb)

They are still coercing people to behave how they want them to behave

They actually lobotomised 2000 veterans during and after world war 2: http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2013/1...-2000-veterans-during-and-after-world-war-ii/

 

[muir]

Exactly, and they didn't use big enough sample bases for today's standards. Sorry if my meaning didn't come across properly

How do you know how many people they spoke to in their lives?

The distinction being? Just so we're clear, I meant the mind in what I wrote previously, as the mind is a product of the brain.

How do you know that the mind is the product of the brain?

I feel like you're either nitpicking or believe that the brain and mind are completely separate. I'd love to hear your theory!

So your theory is that the mind is created by the brain is that correct?

My theory is that the brain is the creation of consciousness

 

[j654dgj7]

Electroshock therapy isn't used in that form anymore. That happened a long time ago, and of course, it was terrifying, but every science has their own dark history. (Textbook example: Atom bomb)

Hey!

Agreeing with your stance and everything.

ECT (Electroconvulsive Therapy) is still being used to treat extreme illnesses. Usually I'm very calm and collected, but videos and pictures like the ones in that video piss me off to no end. First of all, all people being treated with ECT are administered anesthetics first. The shock administered are proven to have the opposite effect of what we know from pop culture. It makes the signals you want active in your brain for a good life go back to a normal and healthy state. Some people that suffer from extreme cases of bipolar disorder are administered ECT therapy with great results. All of the people chosen for ECT are people that can't be helped in any other way.

 

[muir]

Hey!

Agreeing with your stance and everything.

ECT (Electroconvulsive Therapy) is still being used to treat extreme illnesses. Usually I'm very calm and collected, but videos and pictures like the ones in that video piss me off to no end. First of all, all people being treated with ECT are administered anesthetics first. The shock administered are proven to have the opposite effect of what we know from pop culture. It makes the signals you want active in your brain for a good life go back to a normal and healthy state. Some people that suffer from extreme cases of bipolar disorder are administered ECT therapy with great results. All of the people chosen for ECT are people that can't be helped in any other way.

How do you know they can't be treated any other way?

Surely you would have to change the environment (the system) to find out if it is the enviroment that is making them overdose on anxiety

 

[New Dawn Fades]

Hey!

Agreeing with your stance and everything.

ECT (Electroconvulsive Therapy) is still being used to treat extreme illnesses. Usually I'm very calm and collected, but videos and pictures like the ones in that video piss me off to no end. First of all, all people being treated with ECT are administered anesthetics first. The shock administered are proven to have the opposite effect of what we know from pop culture. It makes the signals you want active in your brain for a good life go back to a normal and healthy state. Some people that suffer from extreme cases of bipolar disorder are administered ECT therapy with great results. All of the people chosen for ECT are people that can't be helped in any other way.

That's what I meant when I said "It's not used in that form anymore". I know that there still is this therapy method, but it's rare, and it's neither hurtful nor damaging in any way, you're right. (I wrote my final paper in school about Art brut at the beginning of the 20th century, they used the traditional Electroshock therapy back then... But in that time, they also used to lock the people up in asylums and whatever.)

 

[New Dawn Fades]

Those 'disorders' are expressions of anxiety
Too much anxiety creates mania

What do you mean with anxiety? (Because it doesn't really matter which name you give to it, disease is disease.)

 

[j654dgj7]

How do you know how many people they spoke to in their lives?

How is that relevant and important? They did controlled experiments on an exact number of participants. Read it, it's cheap and available.

How do you know that the mind is the product of the brain?

The same way that I know that the blood goes through my body because of my heart - hundreds of years of scientific experiments that have gotten more and more accurate as time went by.

So your theory is that the mind is created by the brain is that correct?

Yes. If you're trying to do a "what came first, the chicken or the egg", it's not true here. Experiments and historical records have shown that our IQ's, behavior and ways of thinking have changed dramatically over the last 2000 years. We know who the first guy to read in his head was! Look him up, his name was Aurelius Ambrosius, and he was made a saint in the Catholic Church for being able to do it (more or less).

My theory is that the brain is the creation of consciousness and that we are living in a holographic universe

Okay. How can you disregard so many hundreds of years of scientific and non-scientific research to just believe that? How much research and how many experiment have been done to prove your claim?

 

[j654dgj7]

How do you know they can't be treated any other way?

Because the disorders are illnesses of the brain, and often hereditary in the same way that cancer and diabetes are often hereditary diseases. The environment might help the illness progress, but a change in environment or radical lifestyle change won't change the disease.

That's what I meant when I said "It's not used in that form anymore". I know that there still is this therapy method, but it's rare, and it's neither hurtful nor damaging in any way, you're right. (I wrote my final paper in school about Art brut at the beginning of the 20th century, they used the traditional Electroshock therapy back then... But in that time, they also used to lock the people up in asylums and whatever.)

Ah, got you. Yeah, they used it a lot more back then and very thoughtlessly. Medical science is a cruel thing often times, you have to do experiments to learn what you should and shouldn't do. I admire the doctors and people that develop cures, they have to live with what they've done when they make mistakes.

 

[say what]

There isn't just one monolithic scientific method. There are a lot of methods that you can use to do science, but they must have a bunch of qualities for them to be actually scientific. And sometimes it's a grey area. Science must be testable, repeatable, falsifiable, and maybe some other things. Methods that fail these are unscientific, and if they are trying hard to look like real science, sometimes called pseudoscience. Sometimes, theories and stuff are called pseudoscience because they are just wrong. So: yes?

I guess what I mean is, it seems that the standards of the 'scientific method' that psychology is held too, is much higher than the so called 'sciences'. If we think of reliability and validity - the ability to reproduce the same results over and over. Or having consistent and detailed definitions of variables...it seems like these are essential and critical to the credibility of psychology, but not other areas of science. How often are experiments in biochemistry considered credible based on 2-3 successful runs of an experiment?

I think people believe other sciences adhere to all 'scientific methods', when really, they don't. People seem to blindly believe that just because a discipline is considered 'science' that they're adhering to actual scientific methods. I'm not saying that's you! I'm just stating a beef I have. I think that psychology is just as scientific as other 'sciences'!

What is an applied discipline?

Sorry! I should have explained this a bit better. I consider an applied discipline to create outcomes that are more practical or can be used/applied directly to a situation. These often incorporate more subjective or opinions to enhance the application. Often, 'scientists' feel that, by garnering more experiential data, that this limits the 'science' behind it - as it accepts variations in individual opinions and experiences. However, this is often the key to success in applied disciplines. I think one of the strengths of psychology is that it often considered this 'subjective' data within it's application. But, there's a debate as to whether or not this type of data is actually 'scientific'....but I think it is in a way...I dunno!

It's a difficult question to answer as it's not clear cut. There are certain aspects of psychology that use observation and experimentation to come up with consistent results. There are others, however which use purely anecdotal or subjective data.

I don't think psychology needs to be a science. It's particular route in understanding the human mind goes beyond purely empirical and measurable means. While it needs to live up to certain standards, forcing too tight a lens on psychology's methods will only result in lessening it's usefulness.

I believe this, but also battle with it! As I said above, I think one of the strengths of psychology is that it uses 'data' which isn't considered 'scientific'...but at the same time, I feel that because the paradigm of credibility is based on 'science', it gets pushed aside when it has significant and credible evidence. I feel that instead of changing psychology to fit into the 'science' paradigm, we need to change what we believe science to be!

Dismissing all of psychology and psychiatry is like dismissing all books. There's so many ways, so many different schools of thought. I'm sorry if you had a bad experience at one point - I've had plenty.

Such a great example!!

It's just like medicine- do we discount all of medicine based on the experimentation of doctors like Dr. Mengele, Dr. Ishii or Dr. Beecher? No! So why discount all of psychology because of a few psychologist who have become famous for their mis-use and mis-application of psychology?

Let's just say that we are talking about "science" not as a field of study on different matters, but we are talking about science in what is known to mean testable observations, clear predictions and empirical reliability.
There is a tricky way psychologists try to escape by adjusting the word science, and saying that actualy psychology is a kind of "soft science", which is corectly traslated as pseudo-science.

Actually, MUUUUUCH of psychology now is this. In fact, I would argue that about 90% of it is this!

You do know that what we call psychology today is based on what Freud has established as a foundaion of psychology, right?
That means if Freud was wrong, and I think he was, 95% of today psychology is illusion. So today psychology is a "logical" outgrow of Freud and Adler illusions, which means...a bigger illusions, a illusion outgrowth, if that is possible.

All that is made perfect by progress perishes also by progress. All that has been weak can never become absolutely strong. We say in vain, “He has grown, he has changed”; he is also the same. - Blaise Pascal

This exactly the problem of psychology. If the foundation is wrong, if the premises are false, then everyhting in it is false.

Actually, I would argue this isn't true. While Freud did have a huge impact on psychology, as well as Jung...psychology has a long history, and dates back to way before their time! Freud might have created psychoanalysis, but that's just a portion of what psychology is.

More important, it's foundations come from the same foundations that anatomy, neurology, biology, chemistry...these all have their basis in philosophy! Descartes actually is considered a fundamental influence on psychology and how we view the body and mind.

Within psychology there are many domains which are influenced by specific people or methods- but they are just a sect of psychology, and these different sect often are in tension or disagreement. So to lump all of psychology within one sect of it, is not seeing the broader picture of the discipline.

There is nothing testable, quantifiable, predictable, reproductable, and exprimentable in the field of psychology.
Someone meantioned the induction methoding, to comep up with some theories. To rely on induction, one first have to have a basis to start from, something inductive, which is clear and is known. Psychologists don't have that. It is not even known if there is a mind which is distinct and independent from the brain, or if the brain is the actual thing that causes all mental process.
Because psychology has big implications. There is a soul? There is a mind? We are just monkeys who search for happiness, in camparation with monkeys who don't search for happiness? All mental precess are reduced to brain?
Of course, the main body of psychology today start from the evolutionistic assumption, that everything what we call thoughts are reductible to matter, and thus to our brain. Or some say, mind is actually a creation of matter, of brain.

Others say something else...that thoughts are a little bit more complex than simply matter, that feelings are bit more sophisticated then chemistry, and that is very possible we might have a soul, a entity which is beyond matter, and we might have a mind. Of course, these guys are the mocked minority, under labells as creationists, religious people and so on, even if that is not usualy true.

Oh, I forgot about morality. A big problem there too.

So yeah, what I'm trying to say is that everything isn psychology is unclear, builded on different basic assumptions, which might be true or not.

I think you highlight some important limitations to some of the work that has gone on in psychology, but much of it today is testable, quantifiable....

Do you consider neuroscience a science? Because much of neuroscience is psychology- they overlap.

What about understanding animal behaviours and how anatomy and adaptation influences group outcomes?

What about understanding the impact of an illness, such as dementia, on cognitive and/or affective functions?

What about investigating how our environment impacts our attention?

While there is a lot of psychology, such as the study of morality or happiness, that limits our understanding, again - this is just one sect of psychology So, I agree with you that studying things such as the abstract and subjective construct of the soul and the mind isn't scientific- I would also argue that psychology is much more than that!

 

[muir]

What do you mean with anxiety? (Because it doesn't really matter which name you give to it, disease is disease.)

Not according to the people in LucyJr's video clips

Anxiety is the cognitive dissonance that people feel in our society...it is a tension between two poles. One pole is how people are told they should feel and the other pole is how they actually feel

They are told that everything is fine in the system and that they should be happy and on a conscious level that's what they expect of themselves but on an unconscious level they are not happy and feel that something is not right about their environment

Because they are told that they are supposed to be chipper and happy like the characters they see on 'programmes' (programming the mind) like 'friends' they feel that there must be something physically wrong with them when they don't feel chipper and happy. So they go to the doctopr and say ''doctor i think there is something wrong with my body or my brain as i don't feel happy. I went to school and then i got a job and a mortgage like i was supposed to but i still don't feel happy. My neighbour seems happy when he waves in the morning and the receptionist at work seems happy and the people on the TV seem happy and my friends down the pub seem happy...yet i am not happy....please help doctor, please fix me...i just want to function 'normally' like the people on friends (acting) and my receptionist (on prozac)''

The doctor does not then say to them ''look it's perfectly understandable that you are not happy, you are living in a vacuous and meaningless consumer culture where you are not faced with fresh challenges and problem solving each day like your ancestors but rather just have to bowl on down to the supermarket and load up on additive laden foods. Also you don't get to learn all the multitude of different skillsets that your ancestors had to learn and you lack their self sufficieny....rather now you are totally dependent on everyone else from the guy who delivers your newspapers to the shop that sells you your food. You have no meaning or purpose in your life...no direction....no challenges or excitement....no sense of direct felt experience.....no variety....no community.....no satisfaction.....no sense of self acheivement or self worth....no shared adventures.....no spiritual connection with the land and crucially no hope of any release from your current predicament. Added to all that you are worried about taxes and bills and rents and someone else getting your post at work and your boss is a dick to you and you feel put upon by managements dictats and you are worried about all the war and the struggling economy and all the horrible stories on the news and you feel powerless because you have no real part to play in the decision making process except to vote every 5 years for one of two political parties that are both controlled by the same financial interests and you are struggling to adapt to a rapidly changing world where not only is technology threatening our very livelihoods by replacing people left right and centre but it is also being used to spy on you and you feel like gender roles are changing so quickly you're not even sure how you are supposed to behave anymore...are you supposed to hold a door open for women now or does that insult them because they want to open the door for themselves so instead should you let the door slam shut in their faces in the name of equality and so on and so on and so on.....so yes don't worry about it as everyone is now feeling alienated and isolated and unable to get much sense of community except on the virtual world of the internet....in fact its little wonder that you are feeling unsettled by all this. I'd like if it is ok to reassure you that many people come through my doctors surgery all feeling the same way and i also feel the same way...i did my taxes last night and it made me want to commit hari kiri but here i am at work again because if i don't come in i'll lose my job to someone willing to work for less and then i'll default on my mortgage.....is it ok if i give you have hug? Here is a leaflet to a support group where lots of people who feel the same way as you get together and discuss these matters and are actually working together to build a new system out of the shell of the old that will be more in alignment with our natural human nature''

No they don't do that....instead they follow 'guidelines' which tell them they must prescribe the latest chemical cosh drug that some corrupt people in the FDA have been bribed by big pharma to accept as being safe when trials have proven its not and then send the patient back out into the world so that they can continue working and paying their taxes until one day they have some form of breakdown

 

[muir]

Because the disorders are illnesses of the brain, and often hereditary in the same way that cancer and diabetes are often hereditary diseases. The environment might help the illness progress, but a change in environment or radical lifestyle change won't change the disease.

Not true the psychiatrist PD Laing took schizophrenic women out of their environment and found they returned back to 'normal'. Once they were returned to their enviornment they lapsed back into 'schizophrenia'

Also how do you know to what extent something is hereditary in the sense of being in the DNA coding rather than the people growing up in the same environment (eg culture) and therefore being affected the same way?

 

[muir]

How is that relevant and important? They did controlled experiments on an exact number of participants. Read it, it's cheap and available.

Of course its relevant

if you are someone who is trying to discearn whether or not people are introverted or extroverted then all your experiences are going to inform your opinion

Sure you can do a contained little study with controls and such like but that isn't the full extent of your lifes research

The same way that I know that the blood goes through my body because of my heart - hundreds of years of scientific experiments that have gotten more and more accurate as time went by.

Can you tell me what you are made up of on a quantum level? Are you made of particles or waveform?

Yes. If you're trying to do a "what came first, the chicken or the egg", it's not true here. Experiments and historical records have shown that our IQ's, behavior and ways of thinking have changed dramatically over the last 2000 years. We know who the first guy to read in his head was! Look him up, his name was Aurelius Ambrosius, and he was made a saint in the Catholic Church for being able to do it (more or less).

Okay. How can you disregard so many hundreds of years of scientific and non-scientific research to just believe that? How much research and how many experiment have been done to prove your claim?

Just ask the scientists at the cutting edge of quantum mechanics what they think of the history of science