RE: Kohlberg, etc.

[Hetzel, Rod]

Title: Message

I agree with LeeAnn and Cynthia on this topic.  I teach Freud largely for his historical significance not only in psychology but also in western culture.  Freud's ideas were also remarkable because he provided a theoretical basis for later psychologists that have made some very significant contributions.  Traditional psychoanalytic theory may not hold much water these days, but some of the self psychology and object-relations approaches that were based upon Freudian theory provide useful frameworks for conceptualizing personality disorders and other mental health problems.  Although these are areas that are not as easily investigated as reinforcement schedules and learning curves, they are still part of the discipline of psychology.  Issues of training and competence also come up with this topic.  As a counseling psychologist, I often qualify information that authors present in the abnormal and psychological disorders chapters of intro texts.  I can teach my students about the limitations of traditional psychoanalysis, but I can also follow it up with some of the later writings on object-relations theory.  I'm not aware, however, of the latest developments in cognitive psychology or social psychology and thus can't speak as intelligently about the latest theories that might offer strong challenges to the grand theories.

 

I wonder if there are differences of opinions on this issue among listserve members along the lines of professional training.  At the risk of forcing a dichotomy that doesn't exist (some of us, myself included, are trained as scientist-practitioners), are there differences on this issue between the the "experimental" TIPSters and the "clinical" TIPSters?  Are the experimental people more likely to teach only that information that has confirmed by the scientific method?  Are the clinical people more open to teaching theoretical and clinical perspectives that have not been as rigorously confirmed?  Just wondering about this.  I've sometimes felt that some of the more experimental people on this list have not been as open to the contributions made by clinical and counseling psychologists.  On the other hand, perhaps the experimental people feel that the clinical people play fast and loose with the scientific method...   

 

Looking forward to your responses.

 

Rod

 

______________________________________________

Roderick D. Hetzel, Ph.D.

Department of Psychology

LeTourneau University

Post Office Box 7001

2100 South Mobberly Avenue

Longview, Texas  75607-7001

 

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Homepage: http://www.letu.edu/people/rodhetzel

-----Original Message-----
From: LeeAnn Bartolini [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Monday, November 25, 2002 1:51 PM
To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences
Subject: RE: Kohlberg, etc.

Cynthia and others,

 

I really appreciated your email response to this thread. I too was dismayed by the thread.

 

As a clinician and a teaching psychologist, I can not imagine leaving Freud or Kohlberg out of the discussion or relegating them to discussions only in a history of psychology course.  Each theory lead to an abundance of quality theory building and subsequent research that has pushed our discipline along these past 100+ years. 

 

If we teachers of psychology only stuck to teaching what is purely "scientific" in our discipline we would have very little to say indeed and I dare say, we'd be out of business.

 

LeeAnn Bartolini

Professor of Psychology, Dominican University of California

[EMAIL PROTECTED]

-----Original Message-----
From: Cynthia Bainbridge Mullis, Ph.D. [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Monday, November 25, 2002 10:52 AM
To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences
Subject: Kohlberg, etc.

On Friday I read the posts about some of the "big theories" in psychology and the suggestion that they aren't useful to students and was so stunned I decided to go home and think about it for the weekend before I decided whether I should respond and, if I did, what I should say.  This was particularly timely for me because I had just finished teaching Psychoanalytic theories to my intro students and Kohlberg and Gilligan to my adolescence students, and I thought that they were pretty successful classes.  Everyone seemed to be listening and they asked lots of interesting questions.  We outlined the theories of Kohlberg and Gilligan, then critiqued them in terms with whether they had been replicated, whether they were sexist or based on Western values, and whether they actually predicted behaviors.  I thought that it was a nice discussion of how theories come from research, and how research also changes theories.  We talked alot about how kids think vs. how adolescents think, distinguished developmental level from intelligence and culture, and about how to use these ideas to communicate with others, develop expectations for others, etc.   I treated psychoanlytic theories as literary/philosophical models that had some clinical utility, but were not based on scientific evidence.  (in fact, I taught humanistic theories the same way this morning.)  I really tried to present them as something that used to be seen as science, while pointing out that it's premises aren't testable and can be circular.  I suggested that perhaps criticizing these theories for not being scientific isn't fair because it's analogous to (as Myers points out in his text) criticizing baseball for not being an aerobic sport.  Instead I tried to emphasize other things that are illuminated by psychoanalytic theory - why fairy tales and myths still speak to us even though these stories are set in cultures that seem totally different from our own, how the analysts gave us the notion that some of the random things that we do aren't really random, and the idea that symbols can be used to express things in a kind of psychic shorthand that we understand on a cultural level.  None of these notions can be proven "scientifically,"  but it's also hard for me to dismiss the usefulness of all of it.  Aside from the fact that there is some anecdotal science that is suggestive - the sexual arousal during REM sleep posts recently, for one thing.  Also, I think that psychodynamic theories are getting some new life from attachment research and that the resurgence of interest in evolutionary influences on human behavior may make these approaches seem more useful for understanding human nature.  But this isn't exactly scientific evidence either.  It seems to me that the real question goes beyond whether we should get rid of some of these historical theories because of a lack of scientific evidence, but whether we should allow philosophy into discussions of psychology.  Or maybe the question is whether psychology is both art and science, or just science?  Personally, I'm a researcher rather than a scholar, and I try to keep the two areas separate.  I don't mind the art of psychology as part of psychology, but I get irritated when I see the art of psychology confused with the science of psychology, and I get REALLY mad when I see theoretically muddled stuff like EMDR and emotional intelligence, etc. that is neither art nor science get touted as the science psychology.  I'd be interested in knowing what everyone else thinks, but from where I stood it looked like the students found these theories interesting and were busy trying to reach conclusions about whether/how to use them appropriately.      --Cindy M. 

P.S.    I feel almost certain that Dr. Esterson will fire off a post showing that Freud believed his theory to be scientific, and that other Neo-Freudians and analysts did the same.  He will be absolutely right in this assertion and I'm certain that all of the references he provides will be absolutely relevant.  I'm not trying to defend Freud (this time!) and I'm not trying to say that psychoanalytic theories are Correct.  I'm only saying that I agree that psychoanlytic theories aren't scientific, but disagree that this makes them trash by definition.  I'm also saying that I don't agree that they are irrelevant to students.  I also think that theories of moral reasoning are very relevant to students.  Just because we don't have any really good ones right now doesn't mean that we should neglect that whole area.  I think we need a scientific theory of moral reasoning that works and hope that teaching the ones that don't will inspire students to look at this more carefully.

Cynthia Bainbridge Mullis, Ph.D.

Asstistant Professor of Psychology

University of Wisconsin - Whitewater

800 West Main Street

Whitewater, WI  53190

(262) 472-3037  Office

(262) 472-1863

Office Hours - Fall 2002

Mon    10:00-12:00

Tues/Thurs  12:30-2:00

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