is_psychology_psycho andru235 did nature evolve 'wings' because it seemed like it would be fun to do? was it a spontaneous creation? or was there a 'reason' for having wings? did evolution provide chameleons with color-shifting abilities because chameleons are particularily vain? or was there a reason for having color-shifting? did the goddess give male seahorses the birthing privilege because she thought it would be funny? or was there a reason for the anomaly of male birthing? did the brain, as it evolved over millions (billions? there is disagreement, as if that is a surprise) of years, suddenly produce the conditions of manic depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, etc., simply to harangue those in possession a brain? or was there a reason for these 'afflictions'? if everyone has all the disorders, as most psychologists now contend, then PERHAPS THEY AREN'T DISORDERS person A has a chemical imbalance and is always sad, while person B is always sad because they desire a soulmate they cannot find. psychology may say they are both manic depressive, but it will also declare person B co-dependent! is sadness because of a strong desire for companionship invalid sadness? is the humane solution to eliminate their desire for companionship, or to help them find a companion? person C is happy then sad then happy then sad, ad infinitum, because of a chemical disorder. person D experiences the same cycle because the gods are training person D to understand both sides of things (*gasp*! that could never be! i, mortal, am certain!). psychologists may assess them both as being bipolar, but person D will be declared delusional! now, if the scenario of person D is in fact a possibility, and it is, because we can never proove it false, psychology will never be able to see this because psychology refutes such possibilities for lack of biological evidence. person E sees a ghost because they are hallucinating. person F sees a ghost because a ghost actually passes in front of them (i, for my part, do not believe in 'ghosts', but i do not arrogantly presume de facto proof, for there is no de facto proof to be had!!!). psychology will declare them both to be hallucinating. psychology is unprepared to make a single concession to paranormality. person G speaks in a rushed, fragmentary manner, because they are schizophrenic. person H speaks in a rushed, fragmentary manner, because they have a lot to say on an abstract matter that is difficult to express. if person H makes a regular habit of trying to express such abstract matters, instead of gossiping at a relaxed pace, psychology will declare the hyper, non-sequitur procession to be evidence of schizophrenia. perhaps it is evidence of a mind that has conceptually advanced beyond its known vocabulary (or whatever) person I marries someone like their parent because of an oedipal/electra complex. person J marries someone resembling their parent because - no, could it be? - it is their soul mate. psychology does not make concessions for soul mates and decides both have oedipal/electra complexes, and then TRIES TO HELP THEM PAST IT!!! person K believes the world is 6000 years old because it says so in an old book. person L believes that they are a from another dimension. psychology ignores person K, but suspects person L of dementia. person M regularly steals because they are a kleptomaniac. person N regularly steals because they consider the concept of property to be childish. psychology says person N has created a rationalization to reduce the cognitive dissonance generated by a condition which conflicts with the surrounding society. person O recalls their previous life because doing so is their defense-mechanism against the concept of death, which scares them. person P recalls their previous life because person P had a previous life which they are still able to recall. (most) psychology says the mind cannot carry knowledge from sources not experienced during ones life. person Q hears voices because they are crazy. person R hears voices because they have a strong connection to their guardian angel. psychology can't find any evidence of a guardian angel so clearly, they have a disorder. person S tries to please others because they are codependent. person T tries to please others because they are charitable and selfless. psychology suggests they are only charitable because they are scared to not be. person U cannot stop thinking about the book they are writing because they are obsessive. person V cannot stop thinking about the book because they are extremely, extremely focused on whatever they do. psychology only lets person V off the hook until a problem arises because of their focusedness (inevitable), and then they are obsessive, which ought be treated, no? person W is experiencing life because they are a giant pile of sub-atomic particles. person X is experiencing life because they are a spirit whose physical form is a giant pile of sub-atomic particles. since spirits cannot be found anywhere, but sub-atomic particles seem to be everywhere, psychology decides to make every single assessment of the subject's mind, persona and behavior based on chemistry. person Y dies and sees the light (and the next world), because the pineal gland released its dimethytryptamine, a powerful psychotropic released only near death (and one of the only uses for the pineal gland), which nature evolved into the brain for no reason whatsoever. person Z dies and sees the light (and the next world), because they have died, and are seeing the light (and the next world), a spiritual experience whose physical expression is the release of dimethyltryptamine into the near-death brain. psychology has little to say about this. 050425 ... oldephebe 'Kay. Fine. But are you suggesting on the basis of a few insights and apt points of delineation that the field or the practise of psychiatric medicine (including pharmacolgical intervention and psycho-analysis) is uneccessary? Are you saying that the commonality and pervasiveness of psychic suffering should not or cannot be alleviated in any meaningful way by the field of psychiatry? Are you saying that there is something insidious, deleterious and fraudulent about a field of medicine that treats the mind? I agree with most of your points and yet I cannot help but be troubled by your conclusion. It's like saying because everyone whose had an accident and broken thier arm or leg renders traditional orthopedics or general medicine uneccessary. This is a reductionist analogy, perhaps you could give us a little more exposition. Help me understand the basis of your position w/r/t the whole question: Is psychiatry a viable field of medicine that is able to treat in any meaningful and lasting way psychological disorders or states of mind that are fairly common and are perhaps pejoratively classified as a "disorder" ... ... 050426 ... slippery psychology is synonymous with manipulation. they are one and the same. there is an invisible line between the mentally insane and the incompetent, and every day i hear more and more self-prescribed cases of "bi-polarism" and "manic depressants" .. almost 90 percent of the people at my school are on one kind of anti-depressant or another -- (maryland institute college of art), all depressed for one reason or another.. all working it out with pills and psychologists .. it is like another phantastic american epidemic, as bad as starbux. although i cannot say that is is completely useless-- that is far from the truth. psychology, approached correctly, can be therapuetic, and necessary in a lot of instances. but when applied on a daily , realistic basis, it's methods are widely over-use.. abused actually.. 050426 ... The Heretic GENERALLY A GENERALIZATION 050426 ... andru235 the reason i used the person A / person B scenario was to illustrate the (often simultaneous) validity and invalidity of psychology. certainly there are many persons who have benefitted from psychoanalysis and psychiatric medicine; especially the psychologists charging laymen $60+/hour, the psychiatrists receiving incentive checks for filling prescription quotas, the big pharmaceutical companies who increasingly create drugs and only *afterward* find a market, and the people who enjoy messing with the minds of those who are too easily led. my parents recall several classmates in their youth who were clearly affected by something and suffered as a result, but there was no support system in that small town. on the other hand, my school had several psychologists on at all times and there were as many problems as anywhere else, this decade or last century. i hated high school; several visits to the high school psychologist did absolutely nothing to alleviate this. (and observe from my postings the rarity with which i invoke the word 'hate'.) indeed i did not intend to come off as reductionist, for this is my very argument *against* psychology. there are six-billion humans; and as anyone who has ever seen identical twins arguing surely knows, no two minds think alike. yes, there are trends, but the details often differ so greatly as to render trend-based-observation ridiculous. (even every hydrogen atom has a slightly different weight!!!) if you looked down upon earth from the heavens, and saw that at any given moment the most common activity was 'sleeping', would one conclude that those where were not sleeping had an imbalance? well, this is of course ridiculous. but one might observe that only %.00001 of the people were currently playing music on a harpsichord, and since some of them would be music students exhibiting frustration and anger whilst learning difficult passages, trend-based decision making would perhaps incline one to replace the harpsichord with a tambourine. "but that's not the same!" no, but it is analogous. fifty people have schizophrenia. ten enjoy it, thirty don't mind it, nine have problems and one has severe problems because of it. i do not know of any cases where a schizophrenic diagnosis did not come with a suggestion of treatment; but then, i am not a psychologist/psychiatrist. more what i suspect is that there are mystical purposes for many of the "disorders" and by running around trying to cure everyone, we are missing something. if socrates *was* schizophrenic, and had been treated early on but as a result didn't leave a legacy behind, would the world be better off?!? (i do realize this is an absurd example, but the concept behind it is most important) what if da-vinci's obsessiveness had been cured? beethoven's obsessiveness? mozart's attention deficit? van gogh's schizophrenia? in all four cases, one of the main motors on which their creative engines ran was questionably 'imbalanced'; while their inspiration came from an endless variety of sources, their manners of production were not paragons of moderation! what if the chronic anger and sadness aroused in enslaved peoples was sloughed off as a chemical disorder, treated, and they were left stranded in the same strata, their resentment medicated away? the vast majority of funding for psychologic research over the past 100 years has come NOT from human-interests/rights groups, but from groups who in one arena or another are seeking power and riches. a rudimentary investigation will reveal this; but of course, such wolves always don sheep's clothing and claim 'public interest'. we don't know what we are doing. and the surest sign of it is the certainty that we do! in this world, living amidst this strata, i am inclined towards a solipsistic philosophy; but maybe that makes me a megalomaniac! (indeed, the first megalomaniac to deliberately avoid power, wealth and fame) 050426 ... andru235 in having had this discussion many times, i must state that my overall impression is that amongst people who feel personally well-represented/explained by psychology assume its tenets to hold true for all people. and people who don't feel well-represented/explained by psychology are usually inclined to suspect it to be shortsighted, blind as a bat, looking in the wrong places, or a complete sham. its like the rich, who say, "well, or course this economic is completely fair!", when confronted by the poor who say "this economic system is completely unfair!" like with so many things, the truth is somewhere in between. but! if the truth is somewhere in between, and psychology continues to insist that it is properly founded, it is as foolish as if had no foundation at all! for psychology does not make concessions to paranormality! and though chemistry can explain a body just like you, that says and acts like you, no science even approaches the explaination as to why you are *you*, sentient, and within yourself. there is clearly more going on here than the physical. sleepers, awake! 050510 ... DannyH Psychology does not "say" anything. Psychology is a discourse, not a set of judgements. Individual psychologists say a number of contradictory things, many of which are almost certainly short-sighted, inaccurate and inadequate but no one of them speaks for psychology as a whole. What you say is akin to saying "Baseball hits a home run in the third innings." Perhaps you are thinking of psychiatry or psychotherapy which are practices devised from the findings of psychologists but I doubt you'll find much universal agreement there either. 050831 ... andru235 what you're saying, then, is that it isn't 'psycho-metry'? basically i'd like to agree with you. it *should* be a form of discourse. perhaps it is usually conducted as such, but that side of it has eluded my experiences. certainly i've read myriad conflicting psychologies. i'm not under the impression that there is a singular take on psychology. but to say that psychology does not 'say' anything is to plug one's ears and yell "la la la la la". psychology says "books and books and books and books and books." and if the discourse is so open and inviting, may i suggest trying to incorporate one of the thousands of books on various psi phenomenah into the discussion? face the mocking laughter! chicago contemplates testing every kindergartner for 'mental illness' (including ADHD, etc.) and requiring treatment to attend school. granted, pills are psychiatry. but psychiatry derives its entire reasoning for doing what it does from psychology. after all, without psychology, who cares if norepinephrine levels are out of whack. now, would chicago schools even discuss this if psychology wasn't