A bit of a rant, here, with an invitation for comment ...

I find it unsurprising that many of the questions posted here take the form they do - a quick survey has convinced me that they are in large measure efforts to get canned, easy answers for homework assignments; a few are well-considered, thoughtful, specific questions, and the remainder, perhaps well-intentioned but underwhelming queries about "the nature of 'man'". I think it's difficult to overestimate the generosity of those educators who take the time to answer these questions.

I believe that this is reflective of the kind of 'training' set out in North American universities, at least. Based on the few undergraduate courses I’ve taken in psychology, conversations with upper-level psychology students, and my own informal investigations of graduate programs and the more important professional associations and regulatory bodies, I’ve concluded that publishing companies and professional competition are increasingly dictating the content and teaching style of individual courses and of program curricula, respectively.

The few courses I’ve taken through psychology departments were organized around textbooks, which tend to pander (for reasons of professional competition among psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, philosophers, etc.) to a scientist paradigm of psychology (the evidence of this is seen easily here, in that many of the posted questions implicitly or explicitly seek unified theories, assuming the existence of a coherent, empirical program of investigation). Grading is based on multiple choice tests (at least in courses I’ve taken, and have heard of) – testing for memory of random, decontextualized facts, which are often enough littered throughout chapters in the textbooks as ‘sidebars’ or captions (no doubt efforts to capture the imagination of the MTV mind) … Classes rarely allow room for discussion, and most often are organized around the passive reception of ‘the stuff’, taken with the implied understanding that this knowledge is authoritative, universal, and static.

By comparison, the courses I’ve taken in anthropology, philosophy, and (carefully chosen) sociology have been structured in such a way as to encourage critical thinking and discussion. Syllabi include the original works of classic (as well as marginal) thinkers, as well as more recent scholarly articles. Theories, in this context, may (eventually) be understood as living, dynamic dialogues.

I believe that an empirical approach to psychological questions is invaluable – it’s for this reason (among other, more careerist ones) that I am attracted to “psychology”. Such an emphasis provides ballast to sometimes airier inclinations in other approaches. But it seems that the prevalence of the ‘scientist-practitioner model’ of training, in the context of the textbook-oriented pedagogy practiced in many North American psychology programs, weeds out active, creative students, and favors conventional, passive, regurgitative learning and learners. The design of graduate programs, combined with licensing restrictions (all of course, responsive to APA concerns) has the effect of limiting future psychologists’ breadth of study and training, and of (in my view) dangerously narrowing intellectual debate. The more open-ended branches of psychology struggle to retain professional credibility (and institutional support). I wonder what consequence this might have on the practice of psychology, never mind the research …

I must reveal that my personal frustration is that grad programs, being competitive, almost universally reject applicants with backgrounds other than psychology. The cost of upgrading involved in meeting requirements (including loss of wages) is prohibitive, for now. Yet the attraction of psychology, apart from having as one’s work and study the most fascinating, compelling subject imaginable, is that it enjoys a stability of funding and professional protection unheard of in other, related disciplines and professions. The career options of those who don’t wish to study/practice psychology-by-numbers are limited, or anyhow, not as financially secure…

I would love for someone to prove me wrong, and provide examples of programs/institutions that buck the trend…

-- N. Ivanovski (ntllya@hotmail.com), July 12, 2003

Answers

There's too much to respond to in deatil here. A few quick comments: (1) there are loads of "altenative" graduate programs in psychology (far more than there are, say, "alternative" physics or chemistry programs, whatever those might be); (2) anyone at all can hang out their shingle as a psychotherapist and start "treating" clients in any way they wish (within the bounds of criminal law), the APA just regulates the word "psychologist"; (3) if one doesn't like the way the way psychology, as a discipline, has developed over that past century or so, there's nothing to keep one from transfering into another field that one likes better. It has always sturck as more than a little bizarre that when poeple don't like psychology, they often hang around and become life-long "psychology critics." Can you imagine such a thing happening with someone displeased with, say, the content of modern physics or chemistry? Lots of students decide sciences aren't their "thing," so they transfer into something they like more.

-- Christopher Green (christo@yorku.ca), July 13, 2003.

well, i think that it's not at all bizarre to wish to *critique* a profession, especially one that entails the level of responsibility (and legal and economic privilege) that psychology as a profession does. The sociology of such professions is a legitimate branch of study and interest in that field, and I think it may be relevant to the theory of psychology from within, as well.

In response to the question of "shingle-hanging", it's true that any "quack" can profess to having expertise of some kind or another (and cross-cultural studies have suggested that some "quacks", to non-Western eyes, do a fine job), but it's rare that even an effective quack can receive the same kind of institutional support (e.g. $) through insurance companies/HMO's, which makes employability (say, in hospitals, schools, etc.) a concern.

And personally, I'm not interested in doing jungian aromatherapy for moneyed hippies for cash. I am interested in pursuing a balanced education in the "mind sciences" - one that includes empirical research, while acknowledging the historicism of its project, and that draws insights from other approaches. Also, one that might assure some kind of financial stability, and diversity of clients.

What I've been trying to address isn't the history of psychological thought - rather, the current state of training and narrowness of educational programs (as they appear to me). From what I've read, this is the result of developments of the past twenty years or so.

The grad programs I've seen seem (and it's true that you never really know until you get there), from the programs' outlines, to be fairly restricted, even among sub-areas. (I'm talking about the APA- approved ones, the ones that in their web pages follow the 'scientist-practitioner' model ... the ones that will get you a job.) And you must admit that grads of programs with emphases on humanistic or existential therapies, for example, within psychology departments, often find themselves in dire financial straits. (This I've been getting from conversations, online discussions, and information posted on school's webpages, and on pages devoted to school rankings.) I sense that the context is quite different in Europe.

The undergrad psych classes I've taken have gone exactly as I described. I've heard from psych majors that my experience, as I expressed it to them (which is pretty much how I articulated it above), holds true in general, right up until senior year. (Obviously I couldn't speak for labs.)

(I've also had the experience of having sat in on a textbook publishing conference, and witnessed the presentation of a 3rd year social psych book. The presenters were very proud to show a textbook replete with graphs, captions, sidebars, etc., because "no one reads start to finish anymore".) Often, the textbooks used present the material in such a way as to discourage questioning - sometimes in as subtle a manner as narrative tone - as well as an understanding of dialogue in science. Nature of the beast, I imagine, but I wonder why it is that students aren't asked early on - say from second year - to read the scientific and scholarly journals with a critical eye, to get a sense of the scope of research and debate? what i've seen is a group of students colour- coding "facts" in their notebooks, if they care at all. And couldn't comparative research and essay-writing be put on an equal par with the memory work required of multiple choice tests? Ask any undergrad student - he may forget an entire course, but he'll remember the paper he wrote.

I really do think all this matters, and not just to me, but to patients or clients of multiple-choice grads.

-- N. Ivanovski (ntllya@hotmail.com), July 14, 2003.

As one of the people who routine answers questions here, I've avoided giving answers to questions of the sort you describe, and have always sent the questioners on a search through the sources. I'm teaching students in a PsyD program now--history & systems--and find that they're doing a great job in class-room discussion and are quite capable of thinking, but for some this does appear to be a new thing.

-- Hendrika Vande Kemp (hendrika@earthlink.net), July 14, 2003.

This is not an answer to your question. Rather I am another questioner seeking an answer to the same question. A philosophy student at UC Berkeley, I am deeply interested in psychology and think I would like to apply to a psych grad program. However, with my philsophy background I am very used to reading original texts, not textbooks, and approaching each from a critical perspective. I am afraid psychology will be mindless indoctrination of unquestionable facts. I am torn between my interest in human nature and my need for a philosophical approach to doing psychology. If anyone has any recommendations of programs I might like, let me know. I am looking for an APA approved prgoram as I do want to be employable when I get out.

-- Lisa Wise (lisawise@berkeley.edu), June 29, 2004.