Carl said:
...There seems to be TWO branches of psychology operating at this time. There
is Counseling Psychology, which is what I'm learning, and Research Psychology,
which is what someone would be getting with an M.S. (I'm getting an M. ed.)
The one I'm in studies different theories of counseling, the other is watching
rats in a maze. (To put it crudely.) ..The other problem, in my opinion, is
that the insurance companies and big pharma are driving the research. ...As
for psychiatry, I had the opportunity to talk with a recent graduate from
medical school. She was a psychiatrist. I asked her how much training she had
received in therapeutic techniques. She replied, "None." She had been trained
in psychopharmacology and symptom management. To me, that's just sad.
I wonder what William James would have said about that. Keep in mind that he
made his living as a psychologist, and did philosophy on the side.
dmb says:
There are many branches of psychology. I couldn't say how many branches, but
the number is certainly more than two. The discipline has never been unified.
James worked with Wundt, hit it off big with Jung and met Freud too but James
didn't much care for him. These are four of the most famous names in
psychology, from the period when modern psychology was being born, and deep
divisions were already apparent. Behaviorists and Jungians are from different
planets, you know, and there is a whole range of options between them. James
joked that the first psychology lecture he ever gave was also the first
psychology lecture he'd ever heard. If James failed to get a proper degree in
philosophy, it's only because professional philosophy hadn't quite been
invented yet. He had a medical degree from Harvard, but never practiced
medicine. This is what led him to psychology, which in turn raised many
philosophical questions, including questions about the nature of consciousness.
He hated the kind of bio-chemical reductionism you're complaining about. He
called it "medical materialism" and saw it as a means of dismissing everything
that's difficult and interesting about psychology. James was plagued with
problems like anxiety and depression and so was his father. James was
definitely thinking about this stuff from a first-person point of view and as a
scientist. Like Pirsig, James's interest in philosophy grew out of practical
problems that he encountered in the course of doing non-philosophical work.
Philosophy wasn't a hobby on the side for James. It was the culmination of a
lifetime of learning, much of which was produced in an explosion of creativity
during the last five years of his life (1905-1910).
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