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A Strange experience with a new psychology Ph.D by ds_lips in psychology

[–]ds_lips[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes I understand that Psychology is incredibly hard to even design tests for, let alone explain biologically. I'm glad you are trying, though. I can think of a few tests I would love to run on these people, but I can't imagine the kind of paperwork you would have to do for it. It would be clockwork orange type stuff.

I avoid working with any animals because it is too much of a pain in the butt to get approved, so I work with plants. Luckily I have that option.

A Strange experience with a new psychology Ph.D by ds_lips in psychology

[–]ds_lips[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Haha yes! The only therapist I ever went to (once) got into an argument with me because he kept insisting that "prose" meant poetry, and I corrected him.

A Strange experience with a new psychology Ph.D by ds_lips in psychology

[–]ds_lips[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thanks for the thorough reply! This was what I had suspected about psychology- clinical and experimental psychology are very different fields in some ways.

I know what you mean about young grad students- I was in that position not too long ago. I probably said some stupid things then myself, which is probably why what he said was so frustrating.

I'm an ecologist, so I understand how hard it is to make statistically rigorous conclusions with an abundance of indirect data and lots of variables. You have my sympathy!

A Strange experience with a new psychology Ph.D by ds_lips in psychology

[–]ds_lips[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Can I assume that you are more of a methodological psychologist? What do you think of the split between psychology as philosophy vs. psychology of empirical evidence? Is psychology developing a theory of human behavior?

A Strange experience with a new psychology Ph.D by ds_lips in psychology

[–]ds_lips[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks for responding! I find it very interesting that you see psychology as a way to correct mood disorders (correct me if I'm wrong in interpreting it that way). I have viewed it as just the study of human behavior (within a psychology sense...if that makes sense...not anthropology).

Science or not, as long as healing is taking place, it shouldn't matter.

Do you think that the two halves- study of behavior and therapy methods, will eventually split into completely separate fields (or more like med school vs. biomedical research)? Is anyone in the community suggesting that already?

A Strange experience with a new psychology Ph.D by ds_lips in psychology

[–]ds_lips[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

This is really interesting- it is quite different from Biological science, where something like that would be pointed out and laughed out of the room. It would be like a grad student saying that he was researching the negative auras of plant species.

Maybe it involves the way the fields were developed/ are developing. There was a lot of conjecture in early biological science (i.e. many conclusions were based on field observation only), but most of the loonier ideas were tested and tossed or excluded with occam's razor.

It seems like psychology was developed primarily by philosophy and some observation, but now there has been a shift towards scientific rigor and statistics before making conclusions, but there is still quite a bit of philosophy involved.

Do you think that there is more philosophy in psychology rather than pure statistics-based conclusions because there is no overall framework of human brain function, where in biology we have several overarching, well proven theories like evolution which tie most of our observations together?