Mr.Samsa

I don't quite understand your post, Lennox. Are you suggesting that for someone to be a "true" scientist of psychology, they need to experience mental illness of some kind? This (if an accurate representation of your position) is wrong for two reasons: 1) do cancer researchers need to have had cancer before they can be considered scientists? Of course not. 2) mental illness and "personal demons" are not relevant to most areas of psychology. If I've misunderstood you, then I'd appreciate it if you could clarify what you meant.

Clinical psychology doesn't attempt to be a science, so this criticism is redundant. We may as well attack medicine or engineering for not being falsifiable. The rest of psychology (i.e. the majority) has nothing to do with treating or studying mental disorders though, and is experimental in nature (thus scientific). This assumes that mental disorders are biological, which we know is untrue (at least not all of them). Mental disorders are disorders in thought or behavioral patterns, as such we do have definitive behavioral markers that help us diagnose disorders. The behavioral markers used to diagnose mental disorders are no less objective or accurate than biological markers used in medicine. Neuroscience can never replace psychology; such a statement simply demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the subject matter. Neuroscience and psychology are different levels of explanation, like physics and chemistry. Physics may be able to explain the underlying processes of how chemistry is possible, but it's absurd to suggest that the field of chemistry will be replaced by physics because the specific study of the relationships and emergent phenomena within chemistry are important and necessary. That is, reframing the problem at such a heavily reductionist level results in simplicities and inaccuracies that would make it functionally useless. Psychology is, of course, already a science so we don't need to wait for any revolution.

Sorry to hear about your hellish week, but hearing some scholars speak on this issue would certainly be pretty interesting. If you did manage to set up some kind of conference, or organise some correspondence, I think you should record it and present it online so it's accessible to the public. It would be a great resource, I imagine. Fair point, there are some difficulties with the evidence behind some categories, but I would argue that it is mostly based on evidence - even if it is imperfect. As for how the DSM talks about disorders, I guess it can be problematic, but I'm not sure that I'm convinced that saying someone has OCD necessarily implies any kind of biological or unchangeable condition. I think that issue stems from our traditional belief in things like genetic determinism, and the idea that disorders are "brain illnesses", and not something that can be changed by using different language.

I agree with most of this, except with the classification of psychology as a social science. Social science, as suggested by the name, studies society, the people within that society, and the relationships between them. This of course only covers a subset of psychological fields, since a lot of psychology is unconcerned with society or humans. Psychology, broadly understood, is the study of behavior and it is a natural science in this sense, as it uses experimental methods to objectively study and understand the phenomena in question, and generates universal mathematical laws which hold true across all objects that behave. Some areas within psychology can be more accurately understood as social sciences, such as social psychology or personality psychology, but I think applying the label to the field as a whole simply perpetuates the myth that psychology is about humans, or even mostly interested in humans.

Hey Imza, as I mentioned to you in an earlier discussion over at Ratskep, I think the problem here is just basic ignorance of what psychology is. People aren't interested in psychology because they think it's all wibbly discussions of the "unconscious" and wanting to have sex with your mother, and so they don't bother to read about the mathematical laws that underpin our thoughts and behavior. Whilst I agree with your confusion over why someone would appeal to the DSM to question the scientific validity of psychology, I think you're being a bit unfair to the DSM. The recent versions are becomingly increasingly based on scientific evidence, and the criteria listed within it have been refined according to the best available evidence. The problem, however, is that people tend to view psychological disorders as being biologically-based, so when people say, "No cause have ever been found for a single mental disorder", what they mean is that no concrete spot in the brain has been identified as the cause of OCD or whatever. The obvious flaw in this is that causes of many psychological disorders have been discovered and found, for example, some forms of phobia, PTSD, depression etc. The confusing part for some people to grasp is that there can be multiple causes to the same problem, and there can be different behaviors which are a manifestation of the same problem. But, as you say, discussing clinical psychology is irrelevant in a discussion on the state of psychology as a science. His claim is also incorrect. Doctors routinely lock people up and put them in isolation when they contract contagious diseases to protect the life of the individual and society as a whole, and parents can be forced to hand over their children in order to receive life saving surgery or medical intervention when they refuse it provide it. As you correctly point out though, even if it were true that psychology was the only health profession to do this, so what? It's a political/legal issue, and only related to clinical psychology, so it's confusing as to how it all relates to the science of psychology.