Imza

I had a feeling you would around here on this forum as well Mr. Samsa I will reply to your thread there too, I was just going through hell week portion of my semester and my neurons are still trying to recover. I'm actually on a representative on New York Science Academy and I'm trying to get some scholars within psychology to speak about this very topic to the larger scientific community. I think we need people in other science fields first to understand psychology before we can hope to change the perception of the general public. I'll admit I was exaggerating a bit but I would still say a large portion of the DSM is not based on best available data. I will agree however that it has made considerable improvements over the years but it remains to be seen with DSM 5 if the trend will continue. We were actually just discussing in my class how the proposed creation of some of new disorders is not supported by the data while others such as selective mutism is still up in the air regarding it's place within childhood anxiety disorders. Moreover, being a die-hard behaviorist that I am, I would argue that the implicit assumption that disorders are "within the person" is not one that is scientifically accurate and leads to an oversimplified version of conditions that lack scientific sophistication that would be found in say a developmental psychopathology book chapter on the same disorders. I obviously agree with you that people do have a misunderstanding of psychological disorders being biologically based but again I think that is partly the DSM's fault in the way it describes a disorder. To say someone has "OCD" implies it's a concrete spot on the brain or some type of stable condition even though you and I know that's not true. This is partly necessary for research and other purposes but I think it inaccurately portrays the disorder from a scientific standpoint.

Interesting thread and I would have to both agree and disagree with the notion that the word "mind" is not useful. I think B.F. Skinner made the same argument and rightly so when he stated that the concept of "mind" is the relic of prescientific way of thinking about human behavior. However, even though I agree with Skinner that in terms of trying to understand human behavior is helped by not using the term mind, I think the term is still useful. It is obviously used in everyday language that helps us communicate "what's on your mind?, etc..." but also can be very helpful in therapeutic approaches. For example, trying to explain thoughts in terms of "covert behavior" would only serve to confuse clients rather than help them understand what your trying to say. I'm still a bit confused by you term "mentation" here. In this case it seems like mentation is being described as anything that leads to behavior that would not be indicated as an instinctual behavior. However, I'm not sure what you mean by "mentation", it seems like it's another term for mental activity. Granted there are some behavioral theories that do not try to explain behavior by using the term mind, I think it's inaccurate to say that behavioral theory does not include thoughts (or what people typically refer to as "mind"). Behavioral theory (at least from a behavior analytic, Skinnerian perspective) does incorporate thought but considers thoughts as covert behaviors. In this sense, what is typically called "mind" is simply the behavior within the skin.

Hey everyone, I'm new the forum and a psychology student so I thought I would chime into this discussion. I'm always confused by when people such claims, especially considering there is an abundance of psychology research that can be considered in a true scientific sense, "law" of nature. Few examples that jump to mind is "reinforcement theory", "behavioral momentum" and "Matching law" but there are many more. I'm not sure why psychology is consistently being asked to defend itself as a science or why people do not believe it makes the same level of prediction as other sciences. To me it seems like anyone who has been reading up on and studying scientific psychology knows there have been incredible advances in the science and it is much richer and deeper than what the public perception seems to be. I'm really confused by this statement, could you clarify on what you mean? The experiments I read about and conduct are not based on social theories but based on previous experimental research, much of it done with non-human animals. I'm not sure what you mean by least offensive to mythology or old religion? Isn't this a bit unfair considering the nature psychological disorders don't lend themselves to "definitive" tests? It's not as easy as giving taking blood or other samples from a patient. Yes psychological disorders are complex and that's why it requires complex science to understand it, it's not as easy as simplifying it into definitive disorders when the state of nature is not that simple. That aside, it seems like your focusing on DSM diagnosis, which I will grant is not nearly as scientific as it should be, partly due to lingering influence of Freudian theories. However, if your talking about more general psychological assessments and tests, there is very strong scientific research to back up these assessments tools. Using anecdotal evidence of how different psychologists would give different diagnosis does not, in my opinion, prove or speak for the field as a whole. I myself have had clients who have had clearly been misdiagnosed but out of negligence of the clinician, not the failing of the scientifically based instruments or procedures. Why are you using the DSM as a standard for judging the scientific basis for psychology? Unfortunately, the DSM has remained largely based on opinion and not on scientific data (which exists), despite the community of scientists trying to change the DSM. This is a problem for sure and it's being addressed, just see the uproar over the DSM 5, but it again doesn't speak to the scientific research in psychology. If one wants to claim scientific psychology is not scientific, I think the proper thing to do is to pick the strong research or studies in psychology and in detail describe why it's not scientific. I'm not sure how comprehensive of a history you were trying to provide for psychology but the above doesn't even cover 1% of what's happened in psychology. The implication that chemicals can be involved in mental disorders was a conceptual leap forward but there were far greater advances in the field towards scientific psychology. Even in terms of looking at neurobehavioral evidence from a biological perspective, we know that chemicals are involved in every human behavior so it's pretty useless statement with current research. However, both psychological and biological research fields have been developing more complex models of bio-chemical processes that underly psychological and behavioral processes. I think Robert Sapolsky is a very good example of this type of research. As for other developments in the field, I would suggest at starting off by covering B.F. Skinner who pretty much set the stage and argument for how psychology can be a science to modern day work in behavior analysis, cognitive science, and psychophysics as good places to start if your interested in learning about the scientific developments in the field. Also, since the focus seems to be more on mental illness rather than scientific psychology in general, I would suggest reading up on developmental psychopathology research which is a very well solid area of scientific research on psychopathology (mental illness). Psychologists do that too and even though I'm not sure what your intention is in bringing this up, I assume it's a criticism of a sort. I would again like to point out that the situation is different in psychological care, especially in cases where clients are suicidal or at risk for harm towards others among other situations that require "overturning patient rights". Anyways, I see this as a topic of bio/medical ethics rather than a failing of psychiatry/psychology.

Hi everyone, my name is Imad. I'm currently a 3rd year PhD student in psychology and happen to come across topics of interesting through google searches here so I'm looking forward to jumping into some discussions.