History & Psychology

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What is the main force influencing the field of psychology today?

-- Denise Whitehead (mets@fidnet.com), January 29, 2002

Answers

You'll have to narrow this question considerably. Are you interested in academic psychology? professional psychology? The American Psychological Association has about 155,000 members in more than 50 recognized specialties represented by divisions. Many professional psychologists are concerned about the impact managed care has had on psychotherapy and mental health. Other professionals are interested in obtaining prescription privileges so that they can provide services previously provided only by psychiatrists. Professionals interested in trauma have focused much on 9/11, as have those interested in terrorism. Forensic psychologists might be interested in whether one could use an insanity defense in cases of terrorism. Psychologists with an interest in human factors engineering might participate in designing safer cockpits. Social psychologists might try to understand why some groups hate other groups. I suggest going to the APA web-page at apa.org and looking at online copies of the APA Monitor--articles in the Monitor will give you a sense of some of the issues that currently concern psychologists.

-- Hendrika Vande Kemp (hendrika@earthlink.net), January 30, 2002.

Denise - The main force influencing the field of psychology today, is the debate between those who view it as a biological science, and those who see it as the study of our psyche or self.

If a person's psychology is governed by organic, chemical reactions produced in the brain, medication promises a cure for mental stress while relieving the individual of control (and responsibility).

If a person's psychology is governed by emotional reactions produced by experience and the unconscious, talk therapy promises to produce the desired healing while asking the individual to remain responsible and in control.

Can these 2 extremes of thought exist side by side.....perhaps even form a more holistic discipline that might also include nutrition, parent-training, and other areas vital to psychologcal health?

This could just be the question of our time.

(or not :-)

-- visualize me (visualizeme@webtv.net), January 31, 2002.


I think the bare dichotomy laid out by "visualizeme" oversimplifies the situation greatly. Psychology already has a variety of ongoing efforts to synthesize a purley biological approach with a purely -- what shall we say? -- a mentalistic or even humanistic one. Computational cognitive science, for instance, aims to develop a rigorous models of thought, intentionality, concept acquisition sand representation, emotion, and even consciousness without either reducing it to biological terms or accepting uncritically the unanalyzed terms of everyday speech. Another "for instance" can be found in the current treatment of depression, where it has been found that patients who receive BOTH pharmaceuticals and "talk" (viz., cognitive) therapy do better that those who receive either one or the other alone. The days of ideological "schools" appear to be well behind us now. The blending and integration of a variety of approaches would seem to be the dominant trend of the time.

-- Christopher Green (cgreen@chass.utoronto.ca), January 31, 2002.

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