Talk:Psychology

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"Psychology is separate from social sciences (e.g., anthropology, economics, political science, and sociology) due to its focus on experimentation at the scale of the individual, as opposed to groups or institutions. Historically, psychology differed from biology and neuroscience in that it was primarily concerned with mind rather than brain, a philosophy of mind known as dualism. Modern psychological science incorporates physiological and neurological processes into its conceptions of perception, cognition, behavior, and mental disorders."

Much of psychology is done with group designs and is not at "the scale of the individual"- how is this accounted for as a good criteria?

Also, behavior analysis - which is a alive and kicking - does not 'incorporate physiological and neurological processes into its conceptions of perception, cognition, beahvior and mental disorders' - is it not "modern"? And who decides what is "modern"? It is a pejorative term to call one branch of psychology modern and another "pre-modern" (essentilly 'antiquated'). Site some sources here.

--florkle 06:22, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

RE Individual analysis: research in psychology may be conducted using group designs, but the intent of the research is to figure out how any given individual might behave in a certain situation (or how an individual might perceive and process the environment). Experimental groups are created for the purposes of research validity--If you want to know how individuals behave, you must study lots of individuals. Once you know how your experimental groups behave, you can generalize to individual behavior. In addition, psychology's focus on the individual is indeed its most distinguishing feature. Sociology and other social sciences look at how groups behave as a whole.

RE Behavior analysis--you can take the sentence about "modern psychological science" any way you want, but the fact is that the clear trend psychological research has been toward physiological, neurological, and evolutionary explanations of behavior, cognition and emotion. Not every study or area uses these explanations explicitly, but in a few years, a majority of newly published articles will have some biological element or explanation. -Nick^talk 08:28, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

PS--I should note that many of the additions to the article regarding skinner and behaviorism is a bit POV. (Why is it important to single out the views of one psychologist?) -Nick^talk 08:31, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

in the past 20 years

"In the past 20 years or so psychology has begun to examine the relationship between consciousness and the brain or nervous system."

This dubiously useful line of speculation between consciousness and the brain/mind/nervous system goes back 100 years. This is a deliberate attempt to frame this as a "new modern" line of research which it is not. Please cite a source for this. --florkle 05:59, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

With the advent of neuroimaging technologies such as PET and fMRI, the investigation of the relation between the mind and the brain has certainly been much more fruitfully examined in the past 20 years than it was previously. To make the dates precise, the discovery of the BOLD signal, which is the signal used for most neuroimaging, occurred in 1991. PET has been in use since approximately the mid-1980s (i.e., about 20 years) and fMRI for at most 16 years. However, you are right that the investigation between the mind and the brain dates back as far as the origins of psychology as a science. Obviously people like Hermann von Helmholtz and William James were aware of the connections between the mind and the brain over 100 years ago. Indeed, James dedicates all of Chapter 2 of the Principles of Psychology to the brain. And of course, clinical neurology has always been concerned with the effects of brain injury on mental capacities. However, our understanding of neuroscience has expanded dramatically in this interval, and we are much more able to make the link between the mind and the brain now than we were then. I'm not sure I see the contradiction between the long history of such research, and the recent explosion, feuled in large part by the development of newer imaging technologies. Edhubbard 08:01, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

slanted

the whole thing about Chomsky in the so-called "modern era" taking down behaviorism/skinner is very mytho-poetic in a david & goliath kind of way, but is not in fact true. Where's the citation in any event.

the use of the term modern era and 'pre-modern era' is highly prejudicial and implies a "lesser status" on the earlier work that is ironic since much of the so-called cognitive revolution brought it back into vogue after behaviorism tried to kill it off. "the cognitive revolution was a counter-revolution" to quote George Miller in his own history of the cognitive revolution: http://www.cogsci.princeton.edu/~geo/Miller.pdf

I want to dispute this page as it is biased. It is not a NPOV.

--florkle 05:52, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Hi Florkle. I think you are raising three points here, so I will comment on them one by one.

1. Chomsky was one of three important developments that helped to overcome behaviorist hegemony. The other two were the development of the Newell and Simon "ACT-Star" model, and George Miller's famous paper "The Magic Number 7, plus or minus 2". Indeed, a very good, and proper citation for the Chomsky point is the very paper you suggest. Miller states "[Chomsky's] 1956 paper contained the ideas that he expanded a year later in his monograph, Syntactic Structures, which initiated a cognitive revolution in theoretical linguistics." (p. 143, left top column).
2. It is true that the cognitive revolution was a "counter-revolution" but to overcome the dominance of behaviorism in the mid-50s, a high degree of data and argument was required. Additionally, although it certainly is a return to this earlier vision of psychology, and its links with the broader world of science, it is common to refer to this period as the "Cognitive Revolution" and not the "Cognitive Counter-Revolution" (see the title of the Miller article, for example).
3. I think the use of "modern era" is meant to be inclusive, since that section deals not only with the cognitive revolution, but also with recent developments in social and personality psychology. Calling the section only "The Cognitve Revolution" would leave out those other more recent developments. Perhaps "recent developments" instead of "modern era" would satisfy your complaints? Edhubbard 08:15, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

ps: I'm removing the POV tag from the page. Just because you don't like this one thing, does not make the whole page POV. Edhubbard 08:16, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Type A personality

I had to nuke the content of the Type A personality article because it was a huge copyright violation. I was hoping someone who knew something about the subject could help write a stub (or, hey, even more than that) to replace it. FWIW the article that ours plagiarized seems to have some good information. Anybody willing to give it a shot? JDoorjam Talk 16:01, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

I've put some effort into this page over the past few days, particularly the inclusion of research that debunks it as an effective predictor of coronary heart disease. I'm also trying to get rid of some of the redundancy of Type A on wikipedia, e.g. by proposing Personality type (Friedman) for deletion. Jcbutler 00:27, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Valence (psychology)

Does anyone know the background, history, or relevant details behind the concept of valence in psyshology, i.e. valence (psychology)? For example, as found in the valence disambig page: "In psychology and neuroscience, valence refers to the emotional value associated with a stimulus; e.g., a familiar face can have positive valence." Moreover, Merriam-Webster, for example, defines valence as the degree of attractiveness an individual, activity, or object possesses as a behavior.

Similarly, in Miller and Rodger’s 2001 The Ontogeny of Human Bonding Systems, we are told: “With respect to bonding schemas, the arousers and the enhancers are of particular interest. We will refer to these collectively as attractors, recognizing that the two functions may be separate and may not both apply to a given stimulus. Nevertheless, many attractors serve both to increase the chance that we will notice another person and to attach affective valence to them. Thus when a beautiful women or handsome man enters a room filled with people, a variety of visual and other characteristics, some of which may be emphasized, or diminished by makeup, clothing, ornaments, etc., stimulate us to take notice and arouse or interest.”

References

Can anyone help build on this so that we can start the article, specifically who coined or originated the concept in psychology? Thanks:--Sadi Carnot 10:27, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Research and Applied headings

Separating fields in to Research and Applied seems to make the article flow less. Does it make sense for corresponding sections to go together (i.e. Abornomal and Clinical; Cognitive and Human factors)? dzou 22:02, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Criticism

I have removed these two criticisms:

Some ask whether the mind is amenable to quantitative scientific research. And some critics cite the vast theoretical diversity of psychology, which has significant disagreement about how the mind works.

because they are too vague. Saying "some ask" and "some critics" is highly unencyclopedic. The criticisms, like the rest of the article, are in need of references, because in their present state they only appear to show the opinions of their authors rather than a real critique of psychology.

I've also taken out this critcism:

Another criticism of modern psychology is that it ignores spirituality and the soul.

I don't see it fair to criticise psychology for not studying the "soul", especially considering that there is no proof that such a thing exists. If the criticism is to stand then it needs a reference, and a good one. As for not studying spirituality, there are 2690 peer reviewed journals in PsycINFO with the descriptor "spirituality", 2047 with the descriptor "religiosity" and 1186 with the descriptor "religious practices". There are also journals which are dedicated to discussing religion in the context of psychology (i.e. Mental Health, Religion & Culture). Unless a source is provided, both of these criticisms are also baseless. dr.alf 13:26, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

APA Division 36 - Psychology of Religion. That should cover it. Dkriegls 06:40, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

In this context, it is relevant to note the existence of transpersonal psychology, which certainly studies spirituality! While this discipline has encountered difficulties in being formally recognised with the American professional body (the APA), it has been a Section of the British Psychological Society (the UK professional body) since 1996. DoctorMartin 18:50, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

I think the follwoing paragraph should be removed or modified.

There is also concern from researchers concerning a perceived scientific gap between research and clinical practice in psychology. For example, therapies such as neurolinguistic programming, rebirthing, and primal therapy have gained popularity in recent years despite a lack of empirical evidence of their effectiveness.

I don's see this criticism as relevant here because NLP, primal therapy and rebirthing are not mainstream psychological approaches. They are more accurately either pop psychology or new age. By using these examples you are crtiticising psychology here for the failings of pseudopsychology. The scientific basis of many mainstream psychotherapy processes can be called into question though. Voloshinov 19:11, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree. They have nothing to do with "clinical practice in psychology". /skagedal^... 19:26, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

This is worth some discussion. The first sentence has quite a bit of truth to it: There is also concern from researchers concerning a perceived scientific gap between research and clinical practice in psychology. There are many psychotherapists out there doing things that scientific minded psychologists have serious concerns about, and there are a variety of therapies in existence that could be considered unscientific. What passes for psychology in self-help bookstores is another aspect of this problem. Perhaps the paragraph could be rewritten to de-emphasize stuff like NLP that is clearly out of the mainstream, and instead, emphasize the problem of many therapy approaches that do indeed lack a scientific basis. We could also talk about the divide between the APA and the APS here. Jcbutler 18:21, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

What do people think of creating subsections, e.g.:

• Research psychology
• Psychotherapy (or Clinical psychology)
• Pop psychology and pseudopsychology)

This third section could begin with a qualification along the lines of what skagedal said, such as "Some approaches are not mainstream psychology at all, but might more accurately be called 'pop psychology' or 'new age psychology'." There would be several options for handling the APS/APA issue. -DoctorW 19:02, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

This sounds good, if anyone is willing to tackle it. I especially like the idea of a critical section on pop/pseudo psychology. Jcbutler 00:30, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree that these should be separate sections. The idea of only implementing empirically proven therapies is getting a lot of discussion in psychological literature. Practicing therapies that have no empirical support violates licensure and APA ethics as I know them, and thus does not constitute a psychological practice. Pop psychology can and does hurt people, if only in that they do not receive any help for their problems and give up trying when the primal screaming doesn't work. If it works, at least do a case study to prove it. If you can’t write your measure of change down for a journal, then how are we to believe that you can even measure a change. Dkriegls 06:51, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Interesting. Would practicing dream analysis violate APA ethics? Could one be sued for malpractice? I'm not a clinical psychologist, so I'm ignorant on a lot of the licensing stuff. In any event, I have attempted to cleanup the criticism section, with a view toward improving the distinction between mainstream and pseudo pscyhology. Please edit or discuss here as you see fit. I've been thinking about this, and I'm not sure we can honestly separate psychology from pseudo psychology and ignore the criticism of unscientific methodology. The line is not easy to draw, and much pseudo scientific psychology (e.g. psychoanalysis) was once accepted as psychology, and still is in some circles. Jcbutler 16:34, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

This is from the APA ethics code. Section 2.04 Bases for Scientific and Professional Judgments; Psychologists’ work is based upon established scientific and professional knowledge of the discipline. That does not say scientific or professional. In addition, from the Illinois legal code. Section 1400.80 K: Unethical, Unauthorized, or Unprofessional Conduct: Pursuant to Section 15(7) of the Act, the Department hereby incorporates by reference the "Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct". American Psychological Association. This means the state legaly recognizes the ethic code of APA. Also, Section 1400.80 C: Making gross or deliberate misrepresentations or misleading claims as to his/her professional qualifications or of the efficacy or value of his/her treatments or remedies, or those of another practitioner This last section is what provides the argument for using primal scream therapy. There is no law that you can not use pseudo psychology as long as you fully explain to a client that it is not scientifically validated. However, for our argument, even if a licensed psychologist uses these techniques, they are not practicing psychology. In turn, anyone can call themselves a therapist and practice pseudo psychology but can not practice psychology (e.g. CBT, REBT, Exposure Therapy, etc.). So maybe it should be stated that not all therapy techniques are considered psychology by state licensing boards. Think of it like a physician recommending Yoga to a patient. Yoga is still an alternative medicine even if an MD recommends it. Dkriegls 01:12, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

FYI: Dream Analysis does have scientific support, many psychoanalysts use it. I don't, lol. I should also make a distinction between clinical dream analysis and pop psychology dream analysis, VERY different. Psychoanalysts are still vigorously fighting the death of their field, and are producing a lot of studies to back it up.

Dream analysis is a good example of why it might be futile to create a special section for pseudopsychology. Good arguments could be generated on both sides as to where dream analysis should fall. Personally, I like Hobson and McCarley's activation synthesis model of dreams, and am highly skeptical of most attempts at analysis. Thus, one man's science is another man's pseudoscience.

The legal issues sound extremely complicated, the kind of thing that lawyers might argue about for years. Saying that a psychologist who practices an unsupported technique isn't doing psychology seems like the argument a friend of mine made when I suggested that Christianity was involved in a lot of nasty stuff in history (e.g. Crusades, conquest of America). Her reply was, "they weren't real Christians." Just a few thoughts on this. Jcbutler 19:06, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

As far as I know there isn't a legal definition of Christianity, in fact, I am probably wrong, lol. Sticking to the legal aspect would be the only way to go if a pseudo-psychology page were to be made, because a lot of people are gonna believe that these techniques are not pseudo-psychology. I think if we were to go ahead with this I would have to contact the APA for some clarity on what they endorse. The reason I find it important to make this distinction is because I have clients who have been treated with some fairly shady techniques and gave up seeking help when those techniques failed miserably. If they weren’t suffering so badly they may have never sought clinical help again. I just think one role of an encyclopedia is to inform people that not all therapy is Psychology, if only by legal definition. Dkriegls 06:50, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

As far as Dream Analysis, the article should equate it to psychoanalysis and be clear that outside of psychoanalytic training it is considered pseudo-psychology. My own POV is that dreams are important to clinical work if they are important to my client. I would never engage in Dream Analysis.Dkriegls 07:00, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Improvements to history section needed

I think the claims about who invented the word "Psychology" in the history section are open to dispute. If one reads the "Journal for the History of the Behavioural Sciences" for the early 1970s, one will see that Francis LaPointe did research suggesting that, as early as 1524, a Serbian author called Makrulic was using the word. Unfortunately, I do not have exact reference for Makrulic's paper, but I remember it was definitely in "Journal for the History of the Behavioural Sciences" and an improvement to this article would include reference to this paper. ACEO 19:19, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

One way to approach this would be to argue that less important than what author first used the term (which also gets into translation issues) is which author first used the term that has a direct connection through a series of events to modern psychology (cf., was Columbus really the first Eurpoean to discover America, or, less well known: see Kuhn's argument that Priestly didn't discover oxygen). -DoctorW 06:36, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm not thrilled about the last paragraph of this section. Shouldn't this be the place to sum up where psychology is here and now? The discussion of transpersonal psychology and Carl Jung seem rather out of place, and highly nonchronological. Jcbutler 18:13, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree, on all 3 points. -DoctorW 06:36, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Style

I changed the spelling of "behaviour" in all cases to "behavior" to make this article internally consistant. Before editing, the spelling was split approximately 50/50 and it looks like the article was started using the American spelling so, in keeping with the Wikipedia manual of style, I went with that one. Davemo 21:07, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

The picture of the baby

How can anyone possibly know if this baby is thinking? It's silly to state that the baby is thinking if there's no way to verify this. Aithérios 01:59, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

I must confess that this was my thought also! I did almost wonder if the caption was meant to be ironic, to imply some of the difficulties involved with this subject.... DoctorMartin 18:52, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Right. Aithérios changed the wording to "appears to be thinking" and someone changed it back. I'll change it back again. Doctors without suspenders 17:40, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Now the caption says "appears to be concentrating", LOL. The kid is cute, no doubt, but could we please have something objective written there? Jcbutler 18:17, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

I like the caption you've created: "How do infants experience the world?" -DoctorW 06:26, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

External Links

Looking at the external links, there appears to be a bunch of unencyclopedic and redundant stuff there (linkspam, etc.). I'm tempted to go through and just delete the "non-authoritative" links so that people don't have to wade through any crap. Any thoughts on the matter? -- Tim D 16:16, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, I just had to go ahead and do it - it was bothering me a little too much. Discuss here if anyone wants... -- Tim D 16:35, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Bias

This section of the article: "Although Freud's theories are of virtually no interest today in psychology departments, his application of psychology to clinical work has been very influential" discredits many of the orthodox psychoalaysts who still follow Freudian theories, and most schoolbooks on psychology where Freud and his theories are heavily studied as the basis for modern psychoanalisis and psychotherapy in general (excluding congitivsm). How can something be of "no interest" and "very influential" at the same time?

"Virtually no interest" in current application, but "very influential" in a historical sense where he laid the groundwork for present-day clinical psychology. It is true - Freudian faculty at universities are generally few and far between. Maybe the wording can be adjusted to clear up any POV concerns, though. -- Tim D 21:43, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Maybe it could be reworded to, "Although Freud's theories are generally disregarded in today's psychology departments, his application of psychology to clinical work has been very influential". Davemo 03:14, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

If you live in NY then you know psychodynamic is alive and well. I guess they have the money for it. Europeans are also more likely to incorporate psychodynamic theory into practice. Unfortunately, I would strongly argue that his theories are strongly disregarded by American Behaviorists, but practiced widely in NY and Europe. Dkriegls 06:58, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Research Methods

Shouldn't the sentence concerning qualitative methods be contrasted with a sentence regarding quantitative methods? Plus, I feel the humanistic psychology statement is out of place. I can make these changes, but did not want to do so without receiving feedback first.MiaKarina 04:32, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Defintion of psychology

I deleted "human beings" from the definition of psychology it was grossly incorrect. Pavlov? I added "scientific" because it is an important part of what psychology is---we use the scientific method. I changed brain to mental processes just because it did not sound right once "human beings" was deleted. I felt really weird changing the defintion on such an important page, but the information just wasn't correct(or consistent with APA) I also deleted human beings in the experimental section with no additions. I think human in the second sentence is accurate. The few changes I made are things I saw at first glance, but I would be happy to read the entire article and give my feedback. I am sure we can moved this article up a grade or two.MiaKarina 05:17, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Makes sense to me. IMHO, I say make whatever changes you feel comfortable making. If others are horribly offended, they can take up their issues after the fact. It sounds like you're conscientious enough to not go nuts with wild unsubstantiated editing :) -- Tim D 05:23, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Art Psychology

Given the overall arrangement of sections and sub-sections in the article, I concur with User:Schwnj's suggestion that this should properly be a "sub-section", along with the other roughly equivalent sub-sections in the "Scope of Psychology" section, rather than a "stand-alone" section.

The material is interesting and does belong in this article, IMO. In fact, I was about to add a "main article template" linking to the article Art psychology. But I do have a question for User:Brosi. When I first saw your heading I thought, "Hmmm... there's a term I don't recall coming across before. I wonder if he means 'psychology of art'?" All of the other sub-fields that are covered here have widely-used names (with the possible exception of "Human Factors Psychology") -- but when I ran a Google search on the phrase "art psychology", it only turned up a single use of the term, other than your own (I also searched on Google Scholar). So my question is this: is "Art Psychology" a term that was widely used at one time, but has more recently fallen into disuse? If it's not currently a widely-used term, would it not, perhaps, be better to use the more familiar term, "Psychology of Art"? Cgingold 12:23, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

It should be a sub-section rather than a full section, but I'm not convinced it warrants even that level of coverage. As it is currently presented, "the psychology of art" is on par with disciplines such as clinical psychology, educational psychology, and school psychology. This is highly misleading. If we include art psychology as a full fledged subsection, then why not other very specific specialty areas, such as the psychology of history, or the psychology of science, or the psychology of religion? Certainly none of these are branches of applied psychology, which is the name of the section, or in any way comparable to the main branches listed.

The content of art psychology is another issue. I don't know much of anything about this area, though it looks like the prominent individuals are chiefly philosophers, artists, and historians. This doesn't have much relation to the theoretical and empirical orientation of most of the main entry, or of contemporary psychology for that matter. Finally, the entry on art psychology suggests that it has "waned" and is now mostly a component of art discourse and art appreciation. I'm all for the arts, but I think this material would be better placed elsewhere. Jcbutler 17:31, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

When I first saw the topic head I thought “Art Therapy” (who are not psychologists). It appears however, that this is a historical reference to art and not a field of psychology. The APA does not list it as a Division of Psychology and you can not get licensure for practicing it that I know of. Delete it all together in my opinion. Even as a subsection there is no argument. Psychologists have analyzed animals, traffic patterns, beer drinking behavior, and every other aspect of life including art. I don’t think this article warrants mentioning all things that are of psychological interest. Dkriegls 07:09, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

art Psychology-Psychology of art

Yes you are probably right. I was was trying to be economical, I guess, and since I initially put it under 'psychology' I thought it would resonante better in those terms. But if you could change it, that would be great - or tell me how. I have not a clue. and I can reqork the links.Brosi 13:30, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Quantitative Psych

I was thinking of adding quantitative psych to the page, and then I got to thinking: The page currently has "psychometric psych" listed as one of the areas--do people really specialize in psychometrics (and by that, I mean do people consider themselves to be "psychometric psychologists"? Or is psychometrics a specialty of quantitative psych? There are several Ph.D. programs in quant psych, but none that I know of in psychometrics. I thought I'd get some input before I start rearranging things. -Nick^talk 05:41, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm not entirely sure, but I believe that quantitative psychology would be the broader field, with psychometrics as a specialty within it. Psychometric psychologists are mostly into tests and measures, and looking at reliability and factor analysis. Quantitative psychologists study that, as well as other kinds of mathematical models. Historically, I think that the psychometric approach came first, but I think it is now subsumed by quantitative psych. Jcbutler 17:46, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

"Quantitative psychology" is simply the use of scientific methodology in psychology. i.e., the use of 'quantities' (numbers) in psychological research. Courses in "Quantitative psychology" are likely to be stats & methodology courses. It's a subdiscipline of academia, in that some academics specialise in learning about, and teaching how to do rigorous research, but you can debate whether it's a subdiscipline of psychology as a body of knowledge. As for psychometrics, yes there are experts in psychometrics- this section is fine.Callivert 21:01, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Criticism of psychology as science and Paul Lutus

Hi, over at HuWiki we have an editor who insists that the psychology is not treated as science and should not be described as such. She brings up this article from Paul Lutus as a supporting source for her claims:

• Paul Lutus: Is Psychology a Science?

I don't claim to be an expert in psychology, but he doesn't seem to be an authorative source on this. Am I wrong?

Is there truly a debate about whether psychology is science or not? Are there any other truly reliable sources about this debate?

Thanks, nyenyec ☎ 15:42, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Hi there. I just read the Lutus essay and found it interesting and provocative, though also rather selective and overgeneralized. Basically, Lutus focuses on the worst parts of psychology's history and condemns the field as a whole for the shortcomings of some. The essay actually reminds me of a similar essay I once read depicting psychology as "cargo cult science." That one was written by Richard Feynman, a scientist I otherwise admire and respect very much.

Anyway, I heartily agree with the view that there is no proven fact and that science must be testable. But after making this very good point, Lutus declares that psychology is intrinsically unscientific because, for example, it is "unethical" to do controlled experimentation. This is simply uninformed and wrong, as there are plenty of controlled studies done in both experimental and clinical psychology.

Consider a classic experiment by Paul (1967) who randomly assigned 100 individuals with public speaking anxiety to four groups: insight therapy, behavior therapy, placebo control, and no treatment control. The groups were assessed by self-report, observation, and physiological measures before and after treatment, and the results showed a clear advantage of behavior therapy (systematic desensitization) over the three other groups.

There are plenty of well controlled studies documenting the effectiveness of various psychotherapies (e.g. person centered therapy and cognitive therapy), though I will freely admit that many therapies that have been suggested are not well established, and I also believe that psychologists (especially social psychologists like myself) are often less rigorous than we should be about replicating our results. This doesn't mean psychology is not or cannot be a science.

Lutus raised some additional issues, such as the distinction between research and practice, which is certainly important, and the issue of fads and cults which does plague the field, but these are not particularly substantial criticisms.

To answer your question, I would say that psychologists debate just about everything, but there is a consensus among academic researchers and the American Psychological Association that psychology is and should be a scientific endeavor. For further reading, I would recommend looking at any issue of the APS journal Psychological Science, which will have a nice selection of scientific research from all areas of psychology.

Reference: INSIGHT VERSUS DESENSITIZATION IN PSYCHOTHERAPY TWO YEARS AFTER TERMINATION. GORDON L. PAUL; Journal of Consulting Psychology; Aug 1967; 31(4); p. 333-348

--Jcbutler 21:11, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

At Princeton the introductory psychology course satisifies the science requirements. One difference here is that Princeton students spend more time in the lab shaping the behavior of animals. In contrast at MIT introductory psychology courses contain a higher level focus on literature and satisfied the humanities requirements. This difference is repeated across many universities in the United States and in other parts of the world and points to some interesting contrasts in the way psychology is taught at that level. --Comaze 11:38, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

MIT is an unusual case. I believe they teach psychology within an interdisciplinary department called Brain and Cognitive Science, which is located within the school of science and meets science requirements. They also have a school of humanities and social sciences, which doesn't include a psychology program per se, but may have psychology-of-art-and-literature types of classes. Psychology is such a broad field that it pops up in many different places, but most psychology departments are rather uniform in how they treat it: introductory psych, statistics, research methods, etc. So I would respectfully disagree with the view that there are widely divergent "contrasts" in the way psychology is taught, if that's what you meant to imply. --Jcbutler 16:28, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Well what's a science? It has an ology on the end - but so does scientology. I doubt if there are any significant populations considering psych as pseudoscience. Definitely psychology makes widespread use of the scientific method. Areas of psych are ridiculed and demoted when there is no scientific proof for the claims. I personally don't think Wikipedia needs to call psych a science. But it does need to explain who views it as a science. And conventional psych certainly uses sci method to an extremely high degree. Docleaf 09:24, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

psychological illusion?

doesn't psychological illusion come under psychology? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 90.192.152.189 (talk) 19:13, 28 January 2007 (UTC).

request for comments

On race and intelligence, please [1] Slrubenstein | Talk 13:12, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Hello SLrubenstein. Well its a valid subject with several books and lots of papers that cover the subject. I believe one possible way to go with solving any problems there would be to take an overview book or paper and follow that general structure and issues. Otherwise its really just a matter of making sure all sources are quoted properly. I imagine its a hard article to manage, so its best to keep criticisms or arguments in seperate sections. Docleaf 09:18, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

I will also have a look. Addisababa 02:56, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Psychology through color

Has anyone ever tried to tell the personality of ones self by the color he or she chooses as a favorite or a color they can relate to in real life? I myself am thinking of trying to apply that in a hypothetical experimentation through a coloring contest that uses colors in words or pictures drawn by hand or computer so as to try and see the extent of the human ability to use color to pull forth the emotions and personality in the drawing one is to feel when looking at it. I also hope to see which color interests the populous more than anything rather than just see if anyone will gain interest. If anyone else has any suggestions or comments, or has questions about such an ability to tell emotions and personality through color, then please as your questions here or upon my talk space in which I will soon have up for anyone wishing to ask me personally. Mialover730 10:40, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Hi Mialover. Some psychotherapists do this kind of thing. You might try the psychotherapy article. DanCartar 06:15, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

may you have any idea in which where the link to such an article is? Mialover730 11:28, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Power Therapies

Hello all. I started this article on Power therapies [2]. It seems notable enough to have its own article. Any help with detailing the main factors there - facts and views, will be appreciated. Docleaf 10:37, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Is there anything in Wikipedia about the thing I'm thinking about?

When I do stuff that doesn't have any environment, like chatting on IRC or reading a book (in which I fantasize my own environment), the place is always a place that I've been on or something like that. If I play much 3D-computer games, it is often in that 3D-world the location is. I only have one place at a time in my mind and it is switched roughly once a day. Does anybody know what I mean? Is there something on Wikipedia about this? I'm pretty interested. My dad told me he had the same feeling but he also had specific persons which I do not have. --212.247.27.197 18:46, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Basically, you're crazy. See crazy person --Ceas webmaster 14:24, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Well I don't know much about fantasies, but perhaps you are just hanging out in your memory palace, a very old memory technique utilized to remember detailed information.Allisonmarieanne 17:11, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Oh thats an interesting insight Allison! Quite "Hannibal Lecter":) DanCartar 07:38, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Correlational and Descriptive methods

Should we have some more information on research methods other than experimental, ie. correlational and descriptive methods. --Comaze 12:04, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

More needed under research-practitioner gap

anyone available to help expand this section? it seems one-sided, and not illustrative of the ongoing debate surrounding evidence-based practice. the reasons given for using evidence-based practice are also in passive voice and unreferenced. --Murmur74 15:23, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

There's an ongoing Science-Practitioner debate. The current section is mainly concerned with psychotherapy. In my opinion this should be moved to the clinical psychology article. That section can be then replaced by a general description of the Science-practitioner debate from the major perspectives: cognitive-behavioural, humanistic, etc. --Potentiate 01:54, 3 July 2007 (UTC)