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Archive-name: usenet/sci.psychology/faq.txt
Last-change: 4 Apr 1996 by Rolf Lindgren (roffe@tag.uio.no)
Introduction
An FAQ is a list of answers to those questions which appear very
often. The purpose of an FAQ is twofold as a general service to the
readers: to avoid needless cluttering of the group, and to provide
answers to questions that seem to be of importance to a lot of people.
This FAQ is intended for readers of the sci.* hierarchy. As such, it
concentrates on questions regarding academic psychology. It does not
attempt to cover mental health or self-help, but it does have pointers
to such information.
Academic psychology being what it is, the study of human development,
thought and behavior, closely linked to epistemology, philosophy,
sociology, anthropology and in general all things arguable, this FAQ
will be a target for flames and discussion. Which is, I suppose, how
it should be. Corrections, additions, questions and meta-questions can
be directed to me or to the group as considered appropriate.
This FAQ will be posted monthly.
In addition to questions asked on sci.psychology, I have included
questions that I receive personally from time to time.
IS PSYCHOLOGY A SCIENCE?
There seems to be a confusion of levels regarding this problem.
Academic psychology is a scientific project, initiated by Wilhelm
Wundt at the University of Leipzig ca. 1885. His project was the study
of the average adult human mind, and the scientific method used was
introspection. His approach has been long since abandoned, and so have
many of his ideals, but not the basic ideal of understanding or
describing human functioning within a scientific context.
Psychotherapy, on the other hand, is no more a science than is civil
engineering: ideally, scientifically investigated therapeutic
techiques are used together with ethical and philosophical principles
in order to achieve some desired outcome. Psychotherapy, then, is a
mixture of a craft and an art.
References
Dawes, Robyn
(1994) House of cards: Psychology and psychotehrapy built on
myth New York: Free Press
Collins, Harry. M. & Pinch, Trevor
(1993) The golem: what everyone should know about science
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Gould, Stephen Jay
(1981) The mismeasure of man New York: Norton
Kuhn, Thomas S.
(1973) The Structure of scientific revolutions 2.edition,
enlarged. Chicago: University of Chicago press
Radner, Daisie & Radner, Michael
(1982) Science and Unreason Belmont: Wadsworth
Wolpert, Lewis
(1993) The unnatural nature of science Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press
HOW CAN I DO A LITERATURE SEARCH THROUGH THE INTERNET?
Currently, there are two ways to search for literature: either,
manually search through the Social Science Citation Index, or search
PsychLit, which is a CD-ROM based collection of searchable abstracts
and references. Both are commercial products and cost $$$. That's why
they are not publicly available through the Internet.
Most university libraries carry the SSCI and/or PsychLit.
CompuServe, apparently, provides access to PsychLit and other similar
resources. This service is not free.
After you have done your literature search and if you still
haven't found exactly what you're looking for, try to post a question
to sci.psychology.research.
IS THE MBTI, MMPI, WAIS, NEO-PI, RORSCHACH, ETC. AVAILABLE BY ANONYMOUS FTP?
No. Because there's money in them, and also because:
The purpose of any test is to differentiate the test takers from those
who have already taken the test. Therefore, the conditions under which
the test is administred should always remain the same.
Also, the publisher of a test normally wants to keep some level of
control over test administration. This is because the value of a test
decreases if the test items becomes generally known, or if it is known
that the test has previously been administered under less than serious
circumstances.
Therefore, psychological tests are usually not only copyrighted,
several tests can only be administred by licensed psychologists who
have completed courses in administring the test.
Sometimes the manuals are publicly available.
What is sometimes available are usually quick-and-dirty variants of
the MBTI.
WHICH PSYCHOLOGICAL RESOURCES ARE AVAILABLE THROUGH THE INTERNET?
When I first wrote this FAQ, there were one or two sites of interest.
The amount of sites now has exploded. Here are the ones I believe are
the most comprehensive:
http://www.apa.org
The American Psychologial Association
http://psych.hanover.edu/APS
The American Psychologial Society
http://www.coil.com/ grohol
Psych Central, kept by one of the moderators of
sci.psychology.research
USENET
WHAT IS USENET?
USENET is a network of electronic bulletin boards, more formally known
as News or Internet News. Most colleges and Internet Service Providers
provide acces to News, both for reading and posting.
SOFTWARE
If you are using a Macintosh, use NewsWatcher, InterNews, Nuntius or
one of their derivatives.
If you are using a Windows or OS/2-based PC, use WinVn or Agent.
If you are using a line-oriented UNIX shell account use GNUS under GNU
Emacs, pine, slrn, or tin. If you have access to X Windows, you might
consider xrn.
I recommend not using Web browsers such as Netscape, Mosaic or the
like for reading News. There are two main reasons for this: firstly,
that these programs lack several important features such as kill
files, and proper editing facilitites; secondly, at least Netscape
uses as default a character encoding mechanism which is incompatible
with the way most other newsreaders work. If you have to use Netscape,
at least turn on Allow 8-bit and turn off MIME Compliant (Quoted
Printable) (Options -> Mail and News preferences).
Also, make sure that the character set you are using is eiher us ascii
or iso8859-1.
THE IMPORTANCE OF KILL FILES
The volume on the psychology-related news groups is very high, and
many items might not be of interest to you. A kill file can help
keeping the noise level down. All of the above mentioned newsreaders
(but not Netscape, which is why I advise against using it) support
kill files to a lesser or greater extent, and have a variety of nice
features.
WHICH NEWSGROUPS ARE OF INTEREST
There are two main hierarchies for psychology-related newsgroups, the
sci and the alt hierarchies. The newsgroups of the alt hierarchy are
too numerous to be listed here. The newsgroups of the sci hierarchy
are dedicated to the scientific discussion of psychology. Some of them
are moderated, which means that articles are screened for relevance
before they are posted.
sci.psychology.announce
- Announcement of psychology conferences, etc (moderated)
sci.psychology.consciousness
- On the nature of consciousness (moderated)
sci.psychology.journals.psyche
- E-journal on consciousness (Psyche) (moderated)
sci.psychology.journals.psycoloquy
- E-journal on psychology (Psycoloquy) (moderated)
sci.psychology.misc
- General discussion of psychology
sci.psychology.personality
- All personality systems & measurement
sci.psychology.psychotherapy
- Practice of psychotherapy
sci.psychology.research
- Research issues in psychology (moderated)
sci.psychology.theory
- Theories of psychology & behavior
A comprehensive list of psychology-related newsgroups can be found at
http://www.coil.com/ grohol/news.htm.
WWW
The amount of psychology-related WWW sites has grown tremedously
lately. These might provide good starting points:
The American Psychological Association
APA
The American Psychological Society
APS
The Canadian Psychological Association
CPA
The British Psychological Society
BPS
If you haven't got access to a graphical World Wide Web browsers, such
as Netscape or Mosaic, lynx can be used by all computer systems that I
know of. TCP/IP is required, on the other hand, if you haven't got
TCP/IP then you're not on the Internet.
MY FRIEND HAS [OR I HAVE] THIS PROBLEM, WHERE CAN I FIND HELP?
The newsgroup more appropriate for this type of question is
alt.psychology.help.
In general, I can't answer this question because this varies from
country to country. I would always, though, recommend professional
therapy. For many normal problems, group therapy is a relevant and
underused alternative. See also 7.
ISN'T IT TERRIBLE [...OR WORSE] THAT IN OUR SOCIETY, WE HAVE TO PAY PEOPLE TO
LISTEN TO OUR PROBLEMS? ISN'T, IN MANY CASES, JUST A FRIEND WHAT IS NEEDED?
There are two dangers in choosing a friend for support rather than a
psychologist. I call them the container effect and the birds of a
feather effect.
The container
The container patiently listens to your problems and identifies or has
empathy with you. They're good to have because they provide basic
support, and are often an individual in distress' sole need: when the
immediate problem is solved, the problem ceases to be.
However, in order to actually solve a difficult problem, the container
can help to maintain a problem because the container is a friend and
does not confront, or, confronts but inappropriately. This can
jeopardize a friendship which is of course valuable in its own right,
without solving anything.
A trained psychologist does not contain, and confronts appropriately.
Birds of a feather flock together
Poeple who suffer from the same problems tend to seek together, either
unconsciously or for support. Once to many, I've seen people who have
the same problem refuse to confront it, and as a result actually
accelerate each other's psychopathology.
This occurs relatively fast and is one of the reasons why group
therapy may be very effective. In group therapy, the interaction
between people and their symptoms are supervised by the therapist, who
(hopefully) will confront the clients when appropriate.
WHAT DOES THE FOLLOWING DIAGNOSIS IMPLY: [...]
I am of the impression that the most commonly found diagnoses these
days are manic-depressive and borderline personality disorders
(figures are welcome).
In general, discussions of people's diagnoses are not particularly
pertinent to this newsgroup - academic psychologists, to whom this
newsgroup is dedicated, are supposed to know this.
Discussion of theories of personality disorders and/or their
treatment, on the other hand, would be appropriate.
Rather, consider why you want to know what implications a disorder
has. If it is of intellectual curiosity, the best thing would be to
read about the disorder in question. Exellent sources are
Sarason, Irwin G. & Sarason, Barbara R
(1989) Abnormal psychology: The problem of maladative behavior
6th Edition. New Jersey: Prentice Hall
Martin, Barclay
(1981) Abnormal psychology: Clinical and scientific
perspectives 2nd ed. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston
Unfortunately, textbooks often present clear-cut examples, and even if
they tend to warn the reader that real life is different, it's
difficult to understand just how different--and in which ways
different without actual clinical experience with the disorders in
question.
If your interest is due to an aquaintance, friend, or family member's
diagnosis, I advice against digging deeply into textbooks without
actually consulting a psychologist--at least if you plan to apply the
knowledge in any way. It's not necessary to know a lot about a
disorder in order to help somebody suffering from a problem. Knowledge
can help to steer away from pitfalls, on the other hand, it can turn a
friend into a stereotype.
Diagnoses are troublesome to begin with, and many psychologists are
wary of using diagnoses at all. It seems that the medical model of
finding the cause of a problem and then curing the problem by treating
the cause does not work with many psychological conditions.
NEUROSIS, BORDERLINE, PSYCHOSIS
While the contributors to the psychology newsgroups are, in general,
expected be familiar with these terms, questions now and again relate
to their meaning, diagnosis, cause and cure. In the following, I
attempt to present a brief overview. Please refer to the alt.*
hierarchy for specific questions.
Neurosis
DESCRIPTION
You've left your apartment for the night and have taken to town with a
couple of friends. After your second beer, you realize that you can't
remember whether or not you locked the door before you left. You start
feeling a little anxious: you tend not to forget to close the door
and you live in a pretty safe neighborhood. When you arrive home later
at night you find that the door was locked all the time and that there
really was nothing to worry about.
Now, this is quite normal, and if you had called your neighbor to make
sure that you had not forgotten to lock the door that would have been
quite normal too.
Unless it happens every weekend, every day, several times a day, even
though you know that you checked that the door was locked three
times before you left your apartment. This is, indeed, the hallmark
of the neurosis: repeated patterns of behavior associated with
anxiety.
All of us are to some extent neurotic; neuroticism is one of our
character traits. There are certain things we associate with anxiety
and which we deal with in less than constructive ways. A neurosis is
usually regarded as something to worry about only if it keeps you from
enjoying life.
Three questions remain to be answered as regards neuroses:
* Where do they come from?
* How are they cured?
* Does one need to know the origin of a neurosis in order to cure
it?
HISTORY
The term hysteria originated with Hippocrates. He thought that the
cause of hysteria was irregular movement of blood from the internal
genitalia to the brain. Plato believed that the uterus gif was an
independent being which longed for children. If the uterus was never
fertilized, then it would wander restlessly about in the body and
cause shortage of breath and other symptoms gif .
Even though the classical explanations of hysteria do not bear much in
common with our current understanding of the neuroses, the phenomenon
as such, unwarranted anxiety, is the same.
The term neurosis was used for the first time in 1776 by the
Scottish doctor, William Cullen. He believed that neuroses are caused
by disturbances in the nervous system and not, as was commonly held,
in the cardiovascular system gif .
The view from Psychoanalysis
In his original theory of the neuroses, Sigmund Freud drew heavily on
his tutor Jean-Martin Charcot from the Salpétrière Hospital in Paris,
and Charcot's student, Pierre Janet.
Freud came to use hypnosis as the method of choice against hysteria in
his first years, as he had learned in Paris. Disappointed with the
results, in particular, in reppearences of the symptoms in his
clients, he introduced the method of free association and gradually
turned away from biological explanations of the neuroses.
Freud had his theoretical background from the psychodynamic schools of
psychology and psychiatry. Psychodynamicists base much of their ideas
about both normal and pathological mental functioning on the notion of
intrapsychic processes.
According to Freud, neuroses are manifestations or symptoms of
anxiety-producing unconscious matter. Some thoughts are too painful to
bear, but still they must find some expression. The psychoanalytic
method of curing neuroses, then, was introduced as an attempt to
unravel the intrapsychic conflict. The ``Royal Road'' to the
unconscious, where the causes of neuroses are buried, according to
Freud, was the interpretation of dreams.
The existence of the unconscious has been scientifically demonstrated
- we do have thoughts, emotions and ideas of which we are unaware but
which nevertheless affect our behavior and our conscious thoughts and
ideas. The existence of an unconscious in the psychodynamic sense has
been much more difficult to demonstrate.
In the United States and also in Europe, psychoanalysis gained a
strong foothold relatively fast. In the USA, psychoanalysis replaced
the Emmanuel movement as the most common treatment of nervous
disorders upon the first American tour of Freud and Jung in 1909 .
The view from Behavioral Analysis and Cognitive Psychology
Behaviorism, which holds that the proper subject of Psychology should
be the study and description of behavior, was initiated by Johns
Hopkins University professor of Psychology, James B. Watson. Following
a scandal involving research on sexual behavior in collaboration with
a graduate student but without the consent of his wife, he left Johns
Hopkins and founded the psychological basis of the commercial
advertisement industry as we know it today.
The definitive statement of the theoretical foundation of behaviorism
was published by B. F. Skinner, possibly the world's most influential
psychologist next to Freud, in 1936[]. Here, he argues that emotions,
thoughts and feelings belong to a different explanatory level than
behavior, and cannot, therefore, be said to account for behavior in a
scientifically valid sense.
Skinner differentiates between operant and respondent behavior.
Operant behavior is behavior where the originating forces are not in
the environment: instinctive or species-specific behavior. Respondent
behavior is behavior which can be accounted for by referring to the
stimuli that initiated it.
Behaviorism covers a vast area of models and theories, and seeks to
establish laws of behavior. The simplest law is this: if an item of
behavior elicits a response that the organism finds rewarding, the
probablity of the same behavior under similar circumstances is
increased. It is interesting to note that behaviorists tend to
maintain that both reward and punishment tend to increase likelihood
of behavior, while no response tends to decrease it.
This is the core of the behaviorist understanding of the neuroses. A
behaviorist description of neurotic behavior would attempt to account
for the rewards that the neurotic behavior gives the client, and, in
therapy, try to substitute the neurotic rewards with more appropriate
rewards.
Aaron T. Beck, in his formulation of cognitive therapy, claims that a
neurosis can be viewed as attempts to avoid the fear of punishment,
rather than the punishment itself. So the neurotic never learns that
his fears are unwarranted because avoiding fear of failure keeps the
neurotic from experiencing both failure and success.
Psychosis
Where the neurotic and the borderline have a firm if troubled grip on
reality, the psychotic is out of touch with reality.
The DSM III-R has abandoned the concept of psychosis. What used to be
classified as functional psychosis, i.e. psychoses that are not
caused by organic damage of the central nervous system, are now listed
as
* schizophrenia
* paranoid disturbance
* psychotic disturbances which cannot be placed in the other
categories
* severe mood disorders such as melancholia and mania, otherwise
known as manic-depressive and depressive psychoses, or bipolar and
unipolar affective psychoses.
SCHIZOPHRENIA AND THE AFFECTIVE DISTURBANCES
Schizophrenia covers a class of disturbances of thought and emotion. A
schizophrenic has severe difficulties in organizing his or her
thoughts and in relating to his or her emotions. Schizophrenia
actually means split mind, and refers to the patient's apparent
inability to organize his thoughts into a coherent whole.
After the movie, "All about Eve", which depicted a woman with multiple
personality disorder (MPD), the prevalence of MPD increased
dramatically. Also, MPD became synonymous with schizophrenia, which is
entirely different.
A shizophrenic will typically posess uncontrollable thoughts, hear
voices, and have a flattened personality: behavior is stereotypical,
behavior is rarely initiated, or both.
Describing schizophrenia to a US audience is difficult because Europe
and the USA differ in their diagnostic practice. The European
tradition, which I will lean towards in the following, has a much
narrower concept than the US, and consequently a larger percentage of
the population is diagnosed with schizophrenia in the USA than in
Europe.
Schizophernia is commonly categorized into five subgroups:
* Catatonic - the patient is, in general, extremely withdrawn and
uncommunicative.
* Disorganized - speech is incoherent and emotionally detached.
* Paranoid - the client suffers from delusions of paranoia,
grandeur, or both.
* Undifferentiated - all or most of the above symptoms are present,
none particularly much more than the other
* Residual - no particular symptoms are present, but the client is
changed and socially inept.
the validity of this classification is weak. all of the symptoms are
present in most schizophrenics, categorization is performed according
to which symptom set is most apparent.
In general, recovery from schizophrenia is rare.
Borderline Personality Disorder
Arnold Becker is a sucessful lawyer at a firm in Los Angeles. His
domestic life, however, is not so sucessful; as a matter of fact, to
his own great dissatisfaction he finds himself chasing one
relationship after the other.
Nevertheless Arnold succeeds in building some sort of a friendship
with an elderly gentleman with whom he can discuss his problems.
During one of their encounters, the elderly gentleman complaints of a
strong heartburn, receiving little empathy from Arnold who is immersed
in his own troubles. They both exchange concerns for their respective
ailments until the elderly gentleman falls on top of his desk,
obviously the victim of a sudden and fatal stroke.
Arnold steps forward to his friend and takes his pulse. Finding no
signs of life, he exclaims: ``Great! Now I have to develop intimacy
with an entirely different person.'' Arnold Becker seems to suffer
from Borderline Personality Disorder.
DESCRIPTION
There does not seem to be any consensus regarding the cause and
treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder. The outline presented
below is not to be considered canonical.
Some major identifying characteristics of the borderline are
* Intense, unstable personal relationships
* Repetitive self-destructive behaviors
* Chronic fears of abandonment
* Chronic feelings of intense anger, loneliness, and emptyness
A THEORY OF BORDERLINES
Otto Kernberg has postulated a theory of BPD based on a phenomenon he
describes as splitting. It is based on a psyhcoanalytical theory
known as object relations theory. I feel that his treatment makes
sense whether one does believe in psychoanalysis or not. If you know
of a better model, please tell me.
An object in object relations theory is an individual who is
emotionally important. an individuals first objects are his or her
parents; later, other members of the family, friends, lovers, etc.
become objects in this sense.
To the infant, objects are his or her perceptions of other people,
and there is one object for each important set of emotions related to
each person. So a mother, say, is split in the infant's mind into a
good mother who provides food and shelter, and a bad mother who
provides punsishment or just a feeling of absence when she's not
there. Part of an individual's development consists in merging these
fragmented objects into more complex objects which provide a truer
intuitive model of the individual. Maturity means, among other things,
being able to perceive an individual in terms of all of his or her
traits. An mature person views the punishing and the rewarding mother
as two aspects of the same individual.
An immature person, however, views the punishing and the rewarding
mother as two separate objects. An a person who's in love will only
perceive the good object of his or her affection, and normally for a
while at least be unable or highly unwilling to perceive the rest.
This phenomenon is known as splitting, and is considered a very
immature defense mechanism.
Splitting appears to be the main defense mechanism of the borderline.
A borderline perceives people in terms of black and white or as either
good or bad objects. The main problem in handling borderlines is to
cope with their unrealistic views of other people - and in their
attempts to create self-fulfilling prophecies to make the world fit
with his or her perceptions. If a borderline perceives you as a good
object, he or she will go to greath lengths in providing situations or
interpretations compatible with this view.
SOME SPECULATION
Most borderlines seem to have lost a person of emotional importance
sometime between ages 3 and 18. This emotional trauma, which most
people handle adequately, seems to have a stronger than usual impact
on borderlines. It seems as if the trauma of losing a close person is
so strong that avoiding the possibility of any subsequent loss becomes
all-important.
This, perhaps, explains why borderlines do not form close
relationships or strong emotional ties to other people because they
are too afraid to lose them.
TREATMENT
Borderlines are a puzzle, and there does not currently seem to exist
effective treatment procedures. Long-term follow-up studies indicate
that borderline individuals who have received intensive treatment and
are from high socioeconomic levels have a fairly good chance of
developing full-time employment.
WHAT ARE SOME GOOD GENERAL INTRODUCTIONS TO PSYCHOLOGY?
General
Atkinson Rita L. et al.
(1993) Introduction to psychology 11th ed. Fort Worth, Tex.:
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich
Carlson, Neil R.
(1993) Psychology: the science of behavior 4th ed. Boston:
Allyn and Bacon
Gleitman, Henry
Psychology 3rd ed. New York: Norton
Personality psychology
Pervin, Lawrence A.
(1993) Personality: theory and research 6th ed. New York:
Wiley
Social psychology
Gergen, Kenneth J. & Gergen, Mary M.
(1986) Social psychology 2nd ed. New York: Springer
History
Schultz, Duane P. & Schultz, Sydney Ellen
(1992) A history of modern psychology 5th ed. San Diego:
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich
DISTINCTIONS BETWEEN DEGREES & TITLES IN PSYCHOLOGY/PSYCHIATRY
This section is courtesy John Grohol
Ph.D. - Psychologist
Doctorate of Philosophy - Research degree
Doctoral degree in either clinical or counseling psychology
This is the traditional degree of practicing, academic, and research
psychologists. Training includes courses in psychological assessment,
theories and practice of different types of psychotherapy, research
and statistics, as well as diagnosis and ethics. A dissertation is
required which must be defended. A pre-internship experience (called a
``practicum'') is usually an intergral part of the program. Some
programs require multiple practica. Average length of program is 5 to
6 years. Ph.D. psychologists pursue careers in academia, practice, and
politics, among other areas.
Psy.D. - Psychologist
Doctorate of Psychology - Professional degree
Doctoral degree in clinical psychology.
This is a newer (circa. 1968) degree offered to those individuals
interested exclusively in the practice of psychology. It's focus tends
to be more clinically-oriented than the traditional Ph.D., offering
more pre-internship experience and practical coursework, in lieu of
courses on research and statistics (although most Psy.D. programs also
require a dissertation). Some programs require up to three practica
experiences before internship. Average length of program is 5 to 6
years. Most Psy.D. psychologists pursue careers in practice. As with
the above doctoral degree, psychologists aren't eligible to become
licensed in a state (a legal distinction, not an educational one)
until at least one year after receiving their degree.
M.S.
(varying terms from state to state, such as: Psychotherapist,
Counselor, Therapist, etc.)
Master of Science Degree
Master's degree in clinical or counseling psychology
For many graduate programs, this is a pre-requisite before admittance.
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