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Old 03-04-2009, 01:32 AM
 
25,157 posts, read 53,847,818 times
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By astrology do you mean horoscope?


Quote:
Originally Posted by tijlover View Post
Psychology and Astrology, to me, are nothing more than fraternal twins, except one speaks English, the other Chinese. I've had my share of psychiatric sessions, but I have gained far more from Astrology, particularly from the Astrologers with a Psychology background who combine them both.
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Old 03-04-2009, 09:45 AM
 
23,553 posts, read 70,058,150 times
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If psychology doesn't work, then 95% of people who hold political views must have been influenced by witchcraft. If psychology doesn't work, then the people who buy Coke instead of Pepsi really do have super-sensitive nostrils and are failing taste tests intentionally. If psychology doesn't work then "Star Wars" was a fluke that shouldn't have made more than "Creature From The Black Lagoon".

When people talk about experiences in counseling or therapy or psychotherapy, they relate anecdotal stories. Yeah, the snot-nosed therapist is a fun story. The therapist with a personal agenda is another more common one. There are good practitioners, and there are bad ones.

There are also countless modalities. If you want an eye opener, read some of the work of Milton Erricson, or Grinder and Bandler. Check-out Jungian sand-tray therapy, mess painting, and various art therapies. Get a basic knowledge of the old TA triangulation models. Once you begin to understand any of these, you get a sense that psychology not only works, it is a part of everyday life, right down to your reaction to "Honey, can you take out the garbage?"

To ask "Does psychology work?" shows an unsophistication comparable to asking "Does language communicate?" Coming from the mouth of a fishwife or political lackey, language may not communicate anything important. Coming from the mouth of a teacher that knows exactly what your next growth stage will entertain, it can be wildly informative. The same is true of psychology.

We are all composites of disjointed memes, bound together in structures of values and superstition and hopes. Psychology can (but does not always) analyze those factors and re-frame them into more productive and energetic constructs.

Are there quacks and idiots that practice psychology? Of course. What makes it worse is that some of the people who are drawn to the profession are drawn because of their own personal shortcomings. It is almost as though some electrical engineers were drawn to be powerline consultants because they liked to be shocked - precisely the people you wouldn't want to be directing the craft. That is why the selection process of someone choosing a therapist is so important, yet misunderstood.

My wife is retired from the profession now, but she still amazes me in how quickly she can sense and size up aspects of people that are totally opaque to me, while I only see other aspects that are more pragmatic. It really takes training and study.

Psychology is a young science, and new discoveries will likely improve the skills of future practitioners. The first doctors weren't any great shakes, especially compared to some of the highly trained ones around today. We didn't conclude that medicine doesn't work, based on stories fo doctors who failed, or picked their noses.
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Old 03-04-2009, 10:15 AM
 
Location: Land of 10000 Lakes +
5,553 posts, read 6,725,565 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by manquaman View Post
For starters I wonder how many books you have actually read that are not novels. This is not to say that I do not agree with you, however.

I remember going through school and knowing the answers too often before asking people who said they were either going through "business" majors (guys without a clue), or "psychology" (girls who thought watching soap operas and knowing the outcome qualified them). Yes, I am sorry for the massive generalization. But if I had not met so many girls that fit this description then I would never stick my neck out like this.

As a result of dating women who thought of themselves as "intuitive" and extremely sensitive to "relationships", I lost my faith in psychology. I dated a woman for almost four years who had many, many problems, stemming from unrealistic and just plain bad parenting. She wanted to become a psychologist so she could fix her own problems. I have since met many women like this. It scares me to think of how many messed up people think they can fix themselves by learning how screwed up other people are.

I remember vividly agreeing to marriage counseling after much trepidation. However, you have to travel all paths before you can say you have tried. So there I was sitting in the waiting room, hopeful and satisfied that I could put my prejudices aside and do the right thing. My wife was also an aspiring psychologist, by the way. She had persuaded me that no matter what happened it would be good to get certain things out in the open - that simply by admitting them to a third party that we could begin to have a dialogue.

I like logic and this made sense to me. We were living in San Francisco and the office was in a beautiful flat in Pacific Heights, transformed into a doctor's office - we had very good insurance. I had no interest in reading magazines while I waited because I wanted to look around. It was then that I noticed that there were little flecks of dirt around the walls of the waiting room. I didn't pay them much attention until I used the restroom just off the waiting room. While in the men's stalls I noticed that the little flecks of dirt were actually choice pickings from someone's notstrils. It was a disgusting revelation. I went back to my wife and told her about it, and we confirmed the nasty truth in the waiting room - it was full of someone's nose waste. We actually laughed and wondered why someone hadn't cleaned it up.

Then we were called into the office and met our therapist. He was dressed in casual but well put together clothing - more casual than clinical. Then it happened. He was directly talking to me when he put his thumb into his nose and dug deep. Now I have met people over the years who have done this and I simply don't talk to them again. It's mind boggling to think that someone doesn't think about what they are doing. But this guy picked his nose two more times as we spoke.

All I could think about for an hour is that I had shaken the guy's hand. And to make matters worse, he rubbed his fingers together to rid himself of his own dirt. I couldn't wait to get out of there. Of course there was no way to prove that it was his mucus all over his office, but who cares? Who picks their nose five feet in front of another person, especially when you are the one who is supposed to be giving advice about why I needed to deal with personal issues?

That being said, years after my divorce I figured out why Psychologists are useful, no matter how screwed up some of them can be. They have access to a real database of problems that many of us face every day but have little perspective of how to deal with. It's like if you fixed cars for a living and people came to you to ask advice about sounds and fluids that came from their engines. Chances are that you have been a part of fixing similar problems and know how to address the issue. But overall, if you don't give yourself to the textbook reasoning of your therapist then you shouldn't spend the money. There is a history of casework that can assist people, and it's not like the database online where you can diagnose yourself. If you get the wrong clinician, you may be taking some chances, but you won't know until you try.
I am sure there are better analogies.
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Old 03-04-2009, 10:18 AM
 
Location: Land of 10000 Lakes +
5,553 posts, read 6,725,565 times
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It is important that you get the right, good therapist. Try one for about 3 times and see how you relate to him/her. It is the therapist's job to show you how you can see things differently -(cognitive therapy) that perhaps one's own perspective is what is worsening an already bad situation.
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Old 03-05-2009, 07:08 AM
 
Location: Albuquerque
244 posts, read 298,131 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by harry chickpea View Post

To ask "Does psychology work?" shows an unsophistication comparable to asking "Does language communicate?" Coming from the mouth of a fishwife or political lackey, language may not communicate anything important. Coming from the mouth of a teacher that knows exactly what your next growth stage will entertain, it can be wildly informative. The same is true of psychology.

We are all composites of disjointed memes, bound together in structures of values and superstition and hopes. Psychology can (but does not always) analyze those factors and re-frame them into more productive and energetic constructs.

Are there quacks and idiots that practice psychology? Of course.
Thank you for making my point more eloquently than I did. As I have reread the entire thread, I realized that the OP was not asked correctly. And from this point it would only be an assumption to say that the question should be, 'Does psychotherapy work?' That would be my opinion of what the question should be, and you answer is appropriate.

You also addressed how psychology is a part of everyone's everyday life, and you are also dead on with that. I have found it to be one of the more interesting aspects of working througout the years, both within the company itself and in dealing with the public as a representative of the company. Many people call it 'politics' within a company when considering coworker interactions and advancement. And understanding how people react to similar situations can be a distinct advantaqe in customer realtions. These strategies are a fundamental part of psychology, but certainly not the extent of it.

Someone who is trained to see beyond the actions and look into the individual motivations behind them, even when the individuals who are exhibiting the behaviors cannot, are what Psychologists are supposed to be. I think because psychology deals with people and behaviors there are too many people out there who give themselves more credit than they deserve when they think they understand the field. It is a bonafide science, and just like any scientific field it takes years of study to fully understand the depth and breadth of it. I was guilty of that for many years, and although I would still avoid therapy, I am sure that with a good practitioner I could learn a lot about myself and become a more whole person.

I have always been in awe that with all the possibilities of what life can be like so many people choose the road most traveled. People are not really that different, especially ones that grow up within the same culture. But even people from different cultures have many of the same basic needs and dreams. Part of how we strive to control ourselves and create a 'civilized' society necessarily limits our ability and desire to behave differently than generations of people before us. We are inculcated into a specific culture by our parents (products of the culture themselves), then those behaviors are reinforced in our educational process, and then find our individual niches in our society and we then replicate the process with our own children - all with the same limitations. It is how we recognize one another and are able to function together.
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Old 03-05-2009, 08:26 AM
 
7,357 posts, read 11,704,105 times
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It's fashionable to think psychotherapy is useless because it rarely gets the quick, dramatic results you see with an effective pill. But any reputable prescriber of psych meds requires counseling with the meds. Without therapy, the problems learn to swim upstream against the drug and the pills stop working. With some mental-health problems meds are useless or worse than useless and only therapy will help.

It's true that some psychotherapists are useless, due to lack of training, burnout or being in the field for the wrong reasons. People seeking a therapist don't usually know how to shop for one that fits their needs, which is a huge problem. If you have an anxiety disorder you need someone trained in RET or CBT and desensitization work. For trauma, you need narrative therapy, empowerment-based advocacy or EMDR. For schizophrenia, you need skill building and training in reality testing. For Borderline Personality Disorder, you need DBT. For Antisocial Personality Disorder, you need natural consequences and lots of them, or you need someone to put a high fence around you, the kind with razor wire on top. And so on and so forth.
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Old 03-05-2009, 08:44 AM
 
1,986 posts, read 4,056,301 times
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That was a lot of reading..

Psychology has it's place, no doubt about that. But it's more in society than in an office.

I've noticed that an awful lot of posters on CD cry out, "Get that person some help.", or "She/He needs help.", or "She/He should be in therapy.", or "The first thing I'd do is get some help." and the list goes on.

It seems they think that the only way out of a situation is to be in some kind of "therapy". What ever happened to people problem solving on their own? What ever happened to thinking we are capable of being strong enough and industrious enough and creative enough to not "need" therapy every time our lives aren't perfect?

I have a 15 year old daughter who studies people. She has read numerous college texts on psychology and uses what she has learned from them and experience, to work by observing people and coming to conclusions to help analyze what could be done to make things different.

When she was 12, she had teens 15, 16, and 17 years old asking her for advice on parents, siblings, friends and school (she was homeschooled and on the internet for this). I don't know who they thought she was, but she always helped them to come to constructive conclusions that worked. I have always told her she needed her own radio show.

She has absolutely no desire to be a therapist (much to my relief), but she does have a natural ability to recognize and rationalize so I hope she uses that as she grows into an adult in whatever avenue of psychology she chooses.

Psychology useless? The years of every week, $80.00+/session I think is useless. The YOU NEED THERAPY psychology is useless, but the field is valuable in many ways (i.e., profiling, FBI, CIA, law enforcement, overall analysis, etc.). Pshchology in a broader sense is not useless.
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Old 03-05-2009, 08:52 AM
 
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It's true that therapy has started to replace positive peer pressure and natural consequences for bad actions, which is ridiculous. Criminal behavior, especially, should not be supported or rewarded, and therapy is very supportive and rewarding, especially with a lousy therapist who wants to validate the criminal's poor sweet feelings instead of confronting the bad actions.
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Old 03-05-2009, 09:44 AM
 
Location: Albuquerque
244 posts, read 298,131 times
Reputation: 170
Quote:
Originally Posted by stormy night View Post
It seems they think that the only way out of a situation is to be in some kind of "therapy". What ever happened to people problem solving on their own? What ever happened to thinking we are capable of being strong enough and industrious enough and creative enough to not "need" therapy every time our lives aren't perfect?
I think you have hit a number of topics here. First of all, it sounds as if you have spent a great deal of time with your daughter, kudos. A child learning from an adult about the fundamentals of life is something many people who experience this can take for granted. I think the lack of guidance for children from rational, thinking parents who in their own time received good guidance is the key to the decline of social interaction. There are so many basic skills that children do not learn when parents are not there to reinforce them from infancy through adolescence - hundreds if not thousands of times.

In light of this, people who do not have the necessary skills to evaluate themselves will never be able to 'cure' themselves. As an example, I tell my young son that he needs to be able to talk about his fears with someone he trusts. You don't see adolescent boys on the playground talking about their feelings. As a result, boys who turn into men have no coping skills when it comes to dealing with fear, insecurity and vulnerabilty. Instead, because so many boys are taught to internalize their emotions, they end up self-medicating when they get older. I come from a family with a history of alcoholism. I am trying to do what I can (as you suggest) to break that chain. I would hope that other people can evaluate themselves and the problems they are confronted with well enough to be able to try and solve their issues, but as I said earlier, psychologists do have access to a large case-study database that can cut through years of trial and error.

Another problem that stems from this is the American mentality of 'getting it right now'. However, patience is another skill that should be taught young and reinforced throughout life.
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Old 03-05-2009, 11:51 AM
 
25,157 posts, read 53,847,818 times
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Psychiatric medications are not a quick fix. A customer has to pay a lot of money for pills that might only work for 6 months or pills that don't even work but cause a lot of added problems. Let's be real.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Cliffie View Post
It's fashionable to think psychotherapy is useless because it rarely gets the quick, dramatic results you see with an effective pill. But any reputable prescriber of psych meds requires counseling with the meds. Without therapy, the problems learn to swim upstream against the drug and the pills stop working. With some mental-health problems meds are useless or worse than useless and only therapy will help.

It's true that some psychotherapists are useless, due to lack of training, burnout or being in the field for the wrong reasons. People seeking a therapist don't usually know how to shop for one that fits their needs, which is a huge problem. If you have an anxiety disorder you need someone trained in RET or CBT and desensitization work. For trauma, you need narrative therapy, empowerment-based advocacy or EMDR. For schizophrenia, you need skill building and training in reality testing. For Borderline Personality Disorder, you need DBT. For Antisocial Personality Disorder, you need natural consequences and lots of them, or you need someone to put a high fence around you, the kind with razor wire on top. And so on and so forth.
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