On 8 Mar 2007 at 10:28, Jim Guinee wrote: > There is no whining here, there's just appropriate indignation that a > study that isn't relevant to normative grief work and clients/patients > is inexplicably supposed to "challenge" and even change that work.
> In order to properly challenge, one must have enough knowledge of the > issues in the first place. > Otherwise a lot of time is wasted on ignorance. Jim is missing my point in posting that study. It's not that Maciejewski et al is particularly good; it's not. It's that it seems to be the only attempt to empirically investigate these alleged stages of grief, which were based originally on nothing more that anecdote. At least Jim hasn't provided us with any (and we've asked). The proper position of scientists to proposals of this nature (and I'm not talking about things such as the theory of relativity which are founded on prior experimentation, logic, and mathematical rigour) is that one should not accept such speculations in the absence of evidence. I find it disturbing that the position of a scientist-practioner is that the Kubler-Ross description must be right until proved wrong, rather than asking where the evidence is for it in the first place. This was Freud's method--engage in wild speculation, and then assert that it must be true, because he said it. And we know what the ultimate scientific value of Freud's assertions has turned out to be. Jim doesn't need evidence to know the Kubler-Ross stages are true. That's not science, it's religion. Perhaps not conicidentally, Jim and I disagree on that topic too. Stephen ----------------------------------------------------------------- Stephen L. Black, Ph.D. Department of Psychology Bishop's University e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 2600 College St. Sherbrooke QC J1M 0C8 Canada Dept web page at http://www.ubishops.ca/ccc/div/soc/psy TIPS discussion list for psychology teachers at http://faculty.frostburg.edu/psyc/southerly/tips/index.htm ----------------------------------------------------------------------- --- To make changes to your subscription go to: http://acsun.frostburg.edu/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=tips&text_mode=0&lang=english
