Was Tom Cruise right about psychology?

Originally posted by whobdamandog
That's a dogmatic style of thought. An individual's opinion may be more informative than anothers..but that doesn't necessarily equate it to being "valid."

For example I could study for years that the world was flat, however, a clerk from Walmart could pick up a magazine article that states the world was round, and then explain this belief to me. Who has the more informative opinion? I do. Who's opinion is "valid"? The Clerk from Wal mart.

So what you are saying is that any "concept" stated to be a "science" can essentially make up whatever methods it wants to support it's "scientific" credability. I'm sorry, but I don't agree. If this is the case, then what's to stop anyone from claiming a personal belief system as being "scientific"?

You've just asserted in the previous post that only "NATURAL" sciences have the necessity of utilizing the scientific method, therefore you've just invalidated much of what classifies a concept as "scientific." Therefore with that assertion being made, you now have little basis to determine which ideas are scientific and which ones are not, other than the brief(sic) guidelines that you've given below, which I'm about to get to.

So now you're stating that only those theories that use "empirical" evidence, are approached with "skepticism", and do not embody any sort of "metaphysical thought" or "spirituality" should be classified a scientific?

Question..have you ever heard of hypnosis? Or how about energybreathing, rebirthing, reparenting, or repressed memory therapy? These are all different types of "metaphysical" psychotherapies used by psychologists.

I'm getting a bit confused now as to how a concept is classified as a science...I've heard that "metaphysical techniques" are not used in real sciences, then I learn that psychology uses "metaphysical techniques"...😕

Then I'm told that the "scientific method" does not appy to all sciences, however, that statement is then followed up with another statement saying that it is necessary to have "empirical evidence" to validate a concept as a science. 😕

Note* Empirical evidence is directly derived from utilizing the scientific method..

I'm sorry Omega..but the only thing you've provided us with is one big contradiction..sad thing is, that I'm a computer scientist, not a biologist or natural one..however even with the brief studies I've had in the natural science field my opinions, although not as informative as your own..are definately a bit more "valid"...

Originally posted by Tptmanno1
Thats is in itself a flawed argument. You say you could "study for years that the world was flat" No you can't. Unless you study wrongly, Unless you purposly ignore all evidence to the contrary. If you study all aspects of the shape of the earth it would be clear that it could not possibly be flat, and then YES your argument would be more informative opinion. But if you have a well developed but obviously WRONG thesis or whatever you want to call it, yours is NOT more informative, it is simply more wrong.

Uhh yes you can. I could have all the access to all the information in the world, and still have the wrong answer to the simple question..Is the world flat..or is it round? Just because the information is there, it doesn't necessarily mean that an individual has to accept it or believe in it. People choose what they do/do not want to believe all the time, regardless of any "valid" information presented before them.

No. you missed the ENTIRE point. Something is a science if it follows a set of predetermined guidlines. Those include performing a replicatable test and publishing your reports and sufficently defending them. These are collectivly refered to as the Scienific Method. Anyone with a grade school education should know that...

You guys are making this difficult, because you keep on changing the guidelines as to what classifies a belief system as a science. But its okay, I'll play along.

So by your current rationale..we can now classify Phrenology, Astrolgy, Graphology, Intelligent Design, and many other concepts as science as well. They all follow a set of "predetermined guidelines." They all perform replicatable tests. And they all have reports published which sufficiently defend them.

I think what TO ment was that you can more easily assert theroys of Natural Science. With Phycology (Which I can't spell) your depeding more upon the human variable, so you have to look at many and make a generalization, which makes things not true for individuals, hence the placebo effect. SOME people are affected by them, and some are not. Thats a Generalization based on tests. As opposed to a straight theoy like Gravity, where you can preform tests and definitly assert that all cases that follow the constant x then an affect y will happen. With humans it becomes more complex because what might affect one person, may not work the same for another. You can still make generalizations, but you will find more exceptions. These exceptions don't make it as psudo-science, it just means your workign with Humans, and thus more varibles.

How is making broad generalizations scientific? It seems to me as this debate drags on..the guidelines as to what determines a science keep on changing to suit yours/others arguments. Regardless of how many "variables" are present when conducting an experiment, it still is necessary that it follow a set group of "standards" to classify it as being "scientific." Come on buddy..as you pointed out in your response above..a grade schooler should be able to understand a simple concept such as this.

First of all, she said that you need to be able to replicate something REGARDLESS of spirituality, meaning if your Christian or Hindu, the experiment will end up the same. Which is not true for religious led beliefs, where in non belief in the entity voids the belief all together.

What?!! You can replicate tests in Astrology, Intelligent Design, Phrenology, Graphology, and a multitude of other similar "sciences."

Hypnosis is NOT a science and NOT a part of valid Phycology (Still can't spell it!) it is like you said, something like a placebo, if they believe in it, it may work for them, but disbelief will make it not work. Phycology is different. I am not an expert on the ins and out's of what exactly it deals with, you are gonna have to ask Lana about that.

Never stated that hypnosis was a science, I did however state that it was one of many "metaphysical techniques" used by psychologists in their practices. According to Omega, this essentially invalidated Psychology as a science, due to the fact that many of the techniqes and theories used to treat patients are not..

(a) being based upon empirical observation rather than the authority of some sacred text; (b) explaining a range of empirical phenomena; (c) being empirically tested in some meaningful way, usually involving testing specific predictions deduced from the theory; (d) being confirmed rather than falsified by empirical tests or with the discovery of new facts; (e) being impersonal and therefore testable by anyone regardless of personal religious or metaphysical beliefs; (f) being dynamic and fecund, leading investigators to new knowledge and understanding of the interrelatedness of the natural world rather than being static and stagnant leading to no research or development of a better understanding of anything in the natural world; and (g) being approached with scepticism rather than gullibility, especially regarding paranormal forces or supernatural powers, and being fallible and put forth tentatively rather than being put forth dogmatically as infallible.

Call me crazy..but I don't understand how energybreathing, rebirthing, reparenting, or repressed memory therapy, or hypnosis fall under these guidelines.

For one thing, not many psychologists use or believe that hypnosis works. I don't think it works. But some people do, and they use it. If you think this discredits psychology as being scientific....well, that's your problem.

Phrenology was completely discredited over 150 years ago. Astrology and Graphology are seen to be as authentic as reading palms and tarot cards. Intelligent Design I won't even touch because that's a whole other debate that I really don't have the energy to deal with right now. So. What are these 'tests' you can carry out, replicate, and get the same results with these? Simply replicating the test isn't enough -- you have to get the same or very very similar results for it to qualify.

Also, you don't seem to understand that the research aspects of psychology are completely seperate from the patient treatment aspects. Many psychologists will ONLY do research, many others will ONLY do clinical treatments, and some will do both. The research aspects are purely scientific, and follow the scientific method. When experimenting with human behavior you must be very careful as it must be done in a natural environment; else the results will not be accurate. But in doing it in a natural environment, you are open to many variables that are out of your control. It also comes down to the fact that people simply react differently to the same thing. Hence yes, the theory would be a generalization. But they are not broad generalizations; they tend to be pretty specific in reality. If someone repeats the same experiment under the same conditions, they will get the same results from the vast majority of the test subjects. Not all, most likely, but a high percentage. That's what makes it valid, and that's what makes it scientific.

Also, the 'nonscientific' methods of treatment are NOT used to treat mental disorders -- they're used to help treat someone who is suffering some sort of trauma. Ever been upset about something, talked it over with a friend, and felt better? That's the basis of psychotherapy -- the patient talks about anything and everything -- dreams, how they've been acting/feeling lately, random thoughts -- and the psychologist observes the patient's words and actions. They use analyze what they find to discover the root of the problem. I'd say even that is pretty scientific in it's way, as it involves the gathering and analyzing of data to solve a problem.

Omega -- random question, but I can't remember what degree it is that you have in physics....do you have a master's or doctorate?

Originally posted by Lana
For one thing, not many psychologists use or believe that hypnosis works. I don't think it works. But some people do, and they use it. If you think this discredits psychology as being scientific....well, that's your problem.

Techniques used by practitioners of a science, whether they be used for reasearch or treatment purposes...give one a general idea as to whether or not a science should be deemed "credible"

Would we accept brain surgery as "scientific" if it involved waving a pendulum in front of a person's face, and having them recount repressed memories?!!

Phrenology was completely discredited over 150 years ago. Astrology and Graphology are seen to be as authentic as reading palms and tarot cards. Intelligent Design I won't even touch because that's a whole other debate that I really don't have the energy to deal with right now. So. What are these 'tests' you can carry out, replicate, and get the same results with these? Simply replicating the test isn't enough -- you have to get the same or very very similar results for it to qualify.

A Graphologist can test various consistencies/inconsistancies within an individual's handwriting and get consistent empirical results.

An Astrologist can examine various consistencies/inconsitancies within star formations and get consistent empirical evidence to support their beliefs.

A Creation Scientest can perform and replicate experiments which provide consistent empirical evidence of the designs that make up the universe and nature, as well as the probabilities of life's existence without an intelligence guiding it.

Also, you don't seem to understand that the research aspects of psychology are completely seperate from the patient treatment aspects. Many psychologists will ONLY do research, many others will ONLY do clinical treatments, and some will do both. The research aspects are purely scientific, and follow the scientific method.

So now you're stating that only a concept's "research" methods must utilize the "scientific method" in order for it to be classified as a science?
Okay..well since you've now just switched the guidelines around again, I guess its only fair to state that Astrology, Graphology, Intelligent Design, and many other concepts should now be classified as sciences, seeing as how they all provide "research aspects" which include a hypothesis, experimentation, and consistent empirical data.

Seriously..Can any of you come up with set standards of determining what classifies a concept as a science, and adhere to them? Or do you just change them, depending on whether or not it suits your arguments/beliefs?

When experimenting with human behavior you must be very careful as it must be done in a natural environment; else the results will not be accurate. But in doing it in a natural environment, you are open to many variables that are out of your control. It also comes down to the fact that people simply react differently to the same thing. Hence yes, the theory would be a generalization.

But they are not broad generalizations; they tend to be pretty specific in reality. If someone repeats the same experiment under the same conditions, they will get the same results from the vast majority of the test subjects. Not all, most likely, but a high percentage. That's what makes it valid, and that's what makes it scientific.

Regardless of how you choose to explain it, it is very bad assumption to deem an experiment that has many "uncontrollable variables" and that makes many "generalizations" as scientific. What you've described sounds more like a "practical" approach to gathering information, not a "scientific" one. Many like to call this system of gathering information "common sense."

Also, the 'nonscientific' methods of treatment are NOT used to treat mental disorders -- they're used to help treat someone who is suffering some sort of trauma. Ever been upset about something, talked it over with a friend, and felt better? That's the basis of psychotherapy -- the patient talks about anything and everything -- dreams, how they've been acting/feeling lately, random thoughts -- and the psychologist observes the patient's words and actions. They use analyze what they find to discover the root of the problem. I'd say even that is pretty scientific in it's way, as it involves the gathering and analyzing of data to solve a problem.

Grossly inaccurate Lana..psychotherapy is used to treat a multitude of pscyhological disorders ranging from techniques such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy(used to treat Insomniacs) to Holding Therapy(used to treat ADHD and Autistic children) With that being stated, please give me an explination as to how the following pysche techniques have any type of credible scientific basis to them:

Hypnosis
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
Interactional Group Therapy
Critical Incident stress debriefing
Repressed Memory Therapy
Holding Therapy
Eye Movement Desentization
Rebirthing
Reparenting
Energy Breathing
Relaxation Therapy

Originally posted by Lana
Social sciences are still real sciences. It doesn't have to be a natural science to be a real science.

People use things discovered in psychology all the time. Anyone ever wonder why there tends to be red decorations and stuff inside fast food restaurants? It's not because it looks cool 😉 the color red has been found to activate the portion in your brain that controls hunger.

Originally posted by whobdamandog
Is it really just a pseudoscience? Personally I believe that some aspects of it are very "unscientific" However, I wouldn't completely discredit everything about the field.

As I scientist I agree with him in part and you in whole. 🙂

No. Tom Cruise is an ignoramous.

Originally posted by Lana
Actually, lil, psychology and sociology are fairly intertwined each other, as sociology is the study of how people behave within a society....I've taken courses in both and will be taking many more.

Actually Sociology is way broader than that. It studies how society works. Marx was a sociologist, not a psychologist. So was Durkhim, and so was Erving.
Sociology comes closer to philosophy than it does to psychology in my experience.

Im sure you've taken lots of courses, and I hope you continue to do so, as its a very useful and interesting subject, but the level at which Im studying it and the level at which you are currently doing it are not the same.

Originally posted by FeceMan
No. Tom Cruise is an ignoramous.

That is perhaps also true, know tell me about your mother........... 🙂 little psych jk not dissing your mum!

i think the psychiatric community is tainted by junk science for the sake of boosting drug sales, which needs to be stopped. its because of that that the credibility of psychiatry is hurting. but to idiots like tom cruise, the idea that something is not perfect renders it useless.

With the many debates going on about various practices in the field of psychology, and the ever evolving mass of information that seems to rewrite previous concepts or schools of thought, I find it astonishingly useless to give a flying f*ck what a celebrity's opinions of the issues, no matter what they are, may be.

Yes, I agree!

This is extremely silly.

Of course psychology is a science- by its very definition and origin, it cannot be anything else. It is the process of applying the scientific method to understand the operation of the human mind

(and for the love of God, it would be nice if everyone remembered the difference between that and psychiatry, which is the medicial practice of treating mental illness- whilst the principles may be similar, a psychologist doesn't have to be involved wit treatment of any kind, and as earlier mentioned, only a psychiatrist is qualified to take a medical approach to a mental problem).

Whether modern psychology has succeeded in making useful conclusions out of that approach is an entirely different question.

Whether the application of many psychologists who proffer treatment is scientific is, again, another question.

But is psychology in itself a science? Absolutely. It cannot exist without the scientific method, and many people who pursue the field are shocked by just how much hard, unforgiving scientific research they have to do.

And the point about who is kore qualified to speak on the subject has reached ridiculous proportions also. Yes, it is possible for the clerk to know more than the scholar of the subject. But it is very unlikely. It has been said that studying the subject does not make the person automatically right. Nope- but it makes the person more likely to know what he/she is talking about and hence makes their opinion, all other matters being equal, worth more than the layman's- or the person who has studied less- in any debate involving the particulars of the subject at hand. If the debate was purely on the broad classification of psychology then you could claim bias, but as the discussion seemed to have become more about the discipline of psychology actually consists of... then the student opinion is definitely worth more.

Simple as that. I am sorry if anyone is uncomfortable with the fact that the person with the superior study of the subject will be regarded as having the superior viewpoint- but that is the simple logic of life, so get used to it.

Originally posted by lil bitchiness
Marx was a sociologist, not a psychologist.

That's definitely only an opinion! Tell that to Wallon.

Talking of Wallon, he had an extensive take on the subject we are talking about...

http://www.marxists.org/archive/wallon/works/1951/ch16.htm

I'm officially sick and tired of hearing, reading, or talking about Tom Cruise. That attention whore needs to roll over and die. Moving on....

Originally posted by WindDancer
I'm officially sick and tired of hearing, reading, or talking about Tom Cruise. That attention whore needs to roll over and die. Moving on....

And yet you read and post in a thread entitled,"Was Tom Cruise right about psychology?".

Interesting........ 😉

Yup! Clearly time for WD to go see a Psychol-iatirst so he can be checked into the correct funny farm.

Originally posted by Ushgarak
This is extremely silly.

Of course psychology is a science- by its very definition and origin, it cannot be anything else. It is the process of applying the scientific method to understand the operation of the human mind

(and for the love of God, it would be nice if everyone remembered the difference between that and psychiatry, which is the medicial practice of treating mental illness- whilst the principles may be similar, a psychologist doesn't have to be involved wit treatment of any kind, and as earlier mentioned, only a psychiatrist is qualified to take a medical approach to a mental problem).

Whether modern psychology has succeeded in making useful conclusions out of that approach is an entirely different question.

Whether the application of many psychologists who proffer treatment is scientific is, again, another question.

But is psychology in itself a science? Absolutely. It cannot exist without the scientific method, and many people who pursue the field are shocked by just how much hard, unforgiving scientific research they have to do.

And the point about who is kore qualified to speak on the subject has reached ridiculous proportions also. Yes, it is possible for the clerk to know more than the scholar of the subject. But it is very unlikely. It has been said that studying the subject does not make the person automatically right. Nope- but it makes the person more likely to know what he/she is talking about and hence makes their opinion, all other matters being equal, worth more than the layman's- or the person who has studied less- in any debate involving the particulars of the subject at hand. If the debate was purely on the broad classification of psychology then you could claim bias, but as the discussion seemed to have become more about the discipline of psychology actually consists of... then the student opinion is definitely worth more.

Simple as that. I am sorry if anyone is uncomfortable with the fact that the person with the superior study of the subject will be regarded as having the superior viewpoint- but that is the simple logic of life, so get used to it.

And this leads us to Philosophy "Is it possible to understand the workings of a mind".

Interestingly applying "scientific method", does not a Science make.

Lets look at just one peice of hilarious Psychology (except for those involved) of the last twenty years........................... Recovered memories, this alone shows Psychology/Psychiatry as flawed

http://www.bfms.org.uk/site_pages/newspage.htm#rvx

Recovered Memories highly scientific 😂

A single piece?

That's like saying the Ether phenomenon undermined Physics as a science. Meanwhile, valid science from a presumably more competent psychologist destroyed the 'recovered memory' idea.

A discipline that requires the scientific method to show any results IS a science. And Psychology does that. Any Psychology ideas that have been garnered without the scientific method are invalid.

The difference between Psychology and things like phrenology is that only the former has had objectively valid scientific method applied to it to bear useful conclusions.

And again, you lump psychology and psychiatry together- a MAJOR error. Psychiatry is a huge part of modern medical science and is ervy silly indeed to dismiss.

Originally posted by Ushgarak
A single piece?

That's like saying the Ether phenomenon undermined Physics as a science.

A discipline that requires the scientific method to show any results IS a science. And Psychology does that. Any psychology ideas that have been garnered without the scientific method are invalid.

I could go for lots of others but I was moving the debate forward.

Oh well guess I will 🙂

A Freudian theory proved - The Guardian, 9th January 2004
by Tim Radford
Psychologists have proved Sigmund Freud's repressed memory theory. What has always sounded like a contradiction in terms - that the brain can remember to forget - has a neurological basis.

Michael Anderson of the University of Oregon and John Gabrieli of Stanford University in California report in Science today that they made volunteers learn 36 pairs of words, such as ordeal-roach, steam-train, and jaw-gum.

They tested them with the first word in the pair and set them the challenge either of thinking of the second word or suppressing their awareness of it. To do the latter they used the part of the brain which comes into play when humans stop themselves performing an involuntary action.

The control of unwanted memories was linked with extra activity in the right and left frontal cortex which in turn led to reduced activity of the hippocampus, the part of the brain used to remember experience. The more volunteers activated their frontal cortexes, the better they were at suppressing unwanted memories.

Bollocks as my previous post showed.

Another topic

http://skepdic.com/psychoan.html

http://skepdic.com/forer.html

Karl Popper explains the problems of Psychology better than I ever could here:-

http://cla.calpoly.edu/~fotoole/321.1/popper.html

I don't know if you know who Popper is so heres a biography:

http://www.eeng.dcu.ie/~tkpw/intro_popper/intro_popper.html

The biggest problem I have with Psychology is like in the CLeveland case its mistakes directly affect people🙁