Difference between revisions of "Psychology"

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The website ''The Berean Call'' has a number of articles on various false claims and unbiblical notions that many practioners of counseling psychology promote.<ref>http://www.thebereancall.org/topic/psychology</ref>
 
The website ''The Berean Call'' has a number of articles on various false claims and unbiblical notions that many practioners of counseling psychology promote.<ref>http://www.thebereancall.org/topic/psychology</ref>
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=== Effectiveness of laymen vs. trained psychologists ===
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Christian author Todd A. Sinelli wrote in an article entitled ''To Whom Shall We Go?'':
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{{Cquote|Psychology is ineffective, impotent, and embarrassingly deceptive. The great humbug is that “the psychological industry has successfully concealed its ineffectiveness from the general public. Pastors, churches, and the laity have been brainwashed into believing that only psychologically trained professional counselors are competent to deal with serious problems.”
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Empirical research indicates the exact opposite. In a study done by J.A. Durlack entitled Comparitive Effectiveness of Paraprofessional and Professional Helpers he writes, “The research reviewed forty-two studies that compared professional counselors with untrained helpers. The findings were ‘consistent and provocative.’ Paraprofessionals achieve clinical outcomes equal to or significantly better than those obtained by professionals . . . The study, on the whole, lent no support to the major hypothesis that . . . the technical skills of professional psychotherapists produce measurably better therapeutic change.”
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At the conclusion of this study, psychologist Gary Collins reluctantly admits, “Clearly there is evidence that for most people, laypeople can counsel as well as or better than professionals.” Again, the bottom line is that Christians are not to turn to psychologist for guidance. Primarily because the Word of God instructs us not to and God has given us the ability to counsel one another through His Word.<ref>http://littorch.com/articles/to-whom-shall-we-go/</ref>}}
  
 
==Materialism in Psychology==
 
==Materialism in Psychology==

Revision as of 19:56, July 21, 2011

Etymology:

From the ancient Greek ψυχή psyche ("soul," "mind") and -λογία -ology ("study").

Psychology is the systematic study and evaluation of mind and behavior. Scientists in the 1600s and 1700s felt that the mind was beyond the ability of science to study it. Beginning with Galvani, some began to feel that physical science could explain the human mind. However, an objective view would not reduce the mind to a mere manifestation of the brain. That is the view of materialist philosophers such as Feuerbach and Lenin.

Faith in God vs. secular psychology for solving addictions and other personal problems

The Christian group Teen Challenge reported:

“ Teen Challenge claims of a 70% cure rate for the drug addicts graduating from their program attracted the attention of the U.S. Federal Government in 1973. Most secular drug rehabilitation programs only experienced a cure rate of 1-15% of their graduates. The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), part of the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, funded the first year of this study to evaluate the long term results of the Teen Challenge program.[1] ”
St. Paul defends his preaching (Giovanni Ricco)

Teen Challenge has a number of studies that indicate the high effectiveness of their drug treatment program compared to other programs.[2] Studies indicate that consumers of secular counseling psychology for alcoholism receive hardly any benefit at all.[3][4] The Apostle Paul in a letter to the church of Corinth indicated that Christians were able to overcome being drunkards through the power of Jesus Christ (I Corinthians 6:9-11).

The Apostle Paul wrote:

“ Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God." - I Corinthians 6:9-11 (NIV) ”

The website The Berean Call has a number of articles on various false claims and unbiblical notions that many practioners of counseling psychology promote.[5]

Effectiveness of laymen vs. trained psychologists

Christian author Todd A. Sinelli wrote in an article entitled To Whom Shall We Go?:

“ Psychology is ineffective, impotent, and embarrassingly deceptive. The great humbug is that “the psychological industry has successfully concealed its ineffectiveness from the general public. Pastors, churches, and the laity have been brainwashed into believing that only psychologically trained professional counselors are competent to deal with serious problems.”

Empirical research indicates the exact opposite. In a study done by J.A. Durlack entitled Comparitive Effectiveness of Paraprofessional and Professional Helpers he writes, “The research reviewed forty-two studies that compared professional counselors with untrained helpers. The findings were ‘consistent and provocative.’ Paraprofessionals achieve clinical outcomes equal to or significantly better than those obtained by professionals . . . The study, on the whole, lent no support to the major hypothesis that . . . the technical skills of professional psychotherapists produce measurably better therapeutic change.”

At the conclusion of this study, psychologist Gary Collins reluctantly admits, “Clearly there is evidence that for most people, laypeople can counsel as well as or better than professionals.” Again, the bottom line is that Christians are not to turn to psychologist for guidance. Primarily because the Word of God instructs us not to and God has given us the ability to counsel one another through His Word.[6]

”

Materialism in Psychology

From a materialist perspective, the most fundamental paradigm in psychology is the assumption that the human mind is a manifestation of the brain.[Citation Needed] This idea is in opposition to the traditional (religious) belief in the soul and hence psychology is rejected by many religions and cults, including some evangelical Christian denominations and also Scientology.

Unlike fields such as physics or biology that attempt to work towards a uniting frame or theory for all hypothesis generated, psychology has traditionally focused on defining different schools of thought with substantially different unifying principles and little effort is made to unite these different schools.

There is a primary division between clinical or applied psychology which focuses on helping people directly through various applications of theory and experimental or research oriented psychology which focuses on applying the scientific method to ascertain the foundations of thought and action.

Most meta-analysis of the field divides psychologist into 5 different paradigms:

  • Cognitive psychology- This school of thought has a strong focus on understanding the mechanisms of mind in order to explain behavior. It often uses analogies to computers to accomplish this task, one of its great themes is the idea of the Computational Theory of Mind.
  • Psychoanalytic psychology- This school of thought attempts to understand mind and behavior as a product of the unconscious. It is most closely linked with the ideas of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. Freud believed that much of behavior is related to repressed sexuality, while Jung and others extended his ideas to include other forms of repression. Psychoanalytic psychology is primarily used in clinical settings though it is not unheard of for researchers to appeal to Freudian concepts.
  • Existential psychology and Humanistic psychology- While these schools of thought differ in some fundamental ways they are often linked together because of their focus on differences and the importance of the individual over generalized rules. Existential Psychology emerges from French Existential philosophy most notably linked to Jean-Paul Sartre. It places great importance on Existential angst as an inevitability of existence, and that the role of psychology is to help individuals recognize their angst and come to terms with it. Humanistic approaches to psychology are closely linked to the ideas of Abraham Maslow and his idea of the Hierarchy of Needs. To Maslow, psychological illness is a consequence of the difference between the idealized self and the actual self, the role of the psychologist is to help the person either adjust his idealized self image or improve his actual self. Carl Rogers' Client Centered Therapy is also closely linked to humanistic approaches.
  • Evolutionary psychology and Biological psychology- These approaches attempt to understand mind and behavior as products of biologic interactions and evolutionary history. This school of thought is heavily researched based. Evolutionary Psychology is a relatively recent development, and many of its proponents believe that a strongly biologic approach to psychology may ultimately serve as a unifying principle for the field of psychology.

History

For a more detailed treatment, see History of psychology.

Psychology is viewed as a relatively young discipline. It started with Wilhelm Wundt and "introspection", continued on with William James, and was later influenced by Charles Darwin and the Theory of evolution.

Sigmund Freud and his psychodynamics had an enormous influence on psychology which continues to this day, e.g., the concept of an unconscious mind being able to change and direct behavior. He also posited that people go through developmental stages in which their mind and behavior change as they grow up and grow old, an idea taken up by Jean Piaget.

Ivan Pavlov's work on classical conditioning was pivotal. It became combined with the concepts developed in functionalism and the field of behavioral psychology was born (see B.F. Skinner), and it was hoped that psychology could became a hard science like physics with mathematical rigor. Skinner also thought that all of human behavior was a function of conditioning and instrumental learning.


During the 1960s several developments altered the course of psychological research. Several experiments had begin turning up anomalous results. One of the most famous is the Garcia effect where an animal that is exposed to a novel food and then made sick instantly learns to no longer desire that food. Noam Chomsky showed that language acquisition follows seemingly innate rules. Thus cognitive psychology was born as a reaction against behaviorism. Cognitive psychologist attempted to understand the "black box" of the mind through computational analysis, modeling and rigorous experimentation.

Stanley Milgram's research on obedience to authority demonstrated that normal individuals would obey an authority figure and endanger the health and life of other people. This was also linked to Philip Zimbardo's work on the Stanford prison experiment demonstrating the ability for college students to quickly turn into torturers.

Fields of Psychology

While embracing one or several (referred to as eclectic) of the paradigms listed earlier individual psychologist, psychiatrist and therapist can work in a range of sub-fields that deal with the total spectrum of human interactions. These include but are not limited to:

  • Health psychology/behavioral medicine focuses on the impact of psychological factors on behaviors that are relevant to physical health. Researchers in this field study topics such as substance abuse, obesity, and exercise.
  • Social psychology is the study of social behavior or interpersonal interactions. Social psychologists study issues such as the way in which attitudes towards other people are formed, or the effect that our perceptions of another person's behavior have on our interactions with that person.


External links

Research in Psychology

v • d • e
Psychology
Major paradigmsPsy symbol.png
Fields of study

References

  1. ↑ http://teenchallengeusa.com/studies2.php
  2. ↑ http://teenchallengeusa.com/studies.php
  3. ↑ http://www.spring.org.uk/2005/07/psychological-treatments-for-alcoholism.php
  4. ↑ http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2458/5/75/abstract
  5. ↑ http://www.thebereancall.org/topic/psychology
  6. ↑ http://littorch.com/articles/to-whom-shall-we-go/
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