What is Psychology?
The assumptions of a novel science
We like to think of psychology as a way to disconnect fact from fiction, allowing us to make informed decisions about how we live our lives and organise our society. When we are feeling troubled, the science of psychology is there to save us. We no longer need priests, shamans, or spiritual leaders to imbue us with a monolithic faith as a way to drug our existentialism or alleviate our mental unrest. Psychology, the science of the human mind, operates on indisputable facts to ensure that subjective life advice can be left behind to our less developed ancestors.
Or does it?
Applied psychology, or how psychology is used in our current society, first requires “hard data” created through scientific studies and research. How this data is perceived and then applied, is based on the individuals’ values, ethics, culture, religion, and past experiences.
A fact is a thing that is known or proven to be true. The definition of what makes a fact “a fact”, therefore, is the threshold of what “proven to be true” means for you. This threshold is governed by emotions, it either doesn’t feel substantial enough, or it does. The ethos “facts don’t care about your feelings” makes a good bumper sticker but it is flawed in that it ignores that it is the feelings towards thoughts that generate what we call facts.
What psychology is, therefore, is scientific evidence that promotes or discredits the subjective lens through which people see the world. Take the fact that on average, sexual minorities experience more “bad mental health days” than their heteronormative counterparts. We take this data and automatically apply it in a way that confirms our world view. An anti-homosexual politician might suggest that this is because homosexuality is a mental illness, whereas an intelligent human may suggest that this is because gay people suffer at the hands of a heteronormative standard that they do not fit into. I use this extreme example because the American Psychiatric Association, at different points of history, have taken both sides.
Psychology as a field now prioritises equality and human health above old-fashioned approaches to sexual diversity. This is not only a scientific decision, but rather a decision based on the valuing of the health of sexual minorities. It was only 49 years ago when psychology considered homosexuality a mental illness.
Modern psychology grew from religious values and will be succeeded by future values again. So, what makes psychology different from religion? Did religion not take the data available at the time, apply it to their own values, and tell other people how to live? Is it not the same cycle? Maybe all that psychology can offer, is that it can rotate through the cycle quicker. There is no sacred immovable text and therefore it is a more fluid system. And its empirical method is open to the public and is questionable by wider society. Psychology offers decentralised truths, and truths that questioning does not threaten the faith in the whole institution.
One of Abraham Maslow’s characteristics of a self-actualised person is an independence from culture and environment to form opinions and views. That is, the formation of opinions free from the instinct to be socially desirable. Opinions are often formed from a desire for social connection, especially in communities where not adopting certain positions can result in a rejection from the group. If psychology runs on the values of society, and if the values of society are run by a desire to fit in and have a social connection, then we are not operating on self-actualised principles. What psychology can achieve as an empirical science will be neutered if it becomes merely a way to substantiate cultural attitudes with evidence. Not to mention the subjectivity and manipulative practices done to achieve statistical relevance, and the inability for the data produced by many psychological studies to be reproduced.
A good psychologist is therefore not skilled because of what they know, but rather their awareness of what they do not know. The awareness of the fluidity of morality and ethics, the awareness of the ever-changing cultural right and wrong, and the ability to make decisions based solely on what the client needs, and not what the current society wants them to be.
Can psychology be valueless? Maybe the mechanism of psychology is valueless, but psychology is too human to be valueless.
How could it be valueless?
If what it hopes to do,
is so valuable?
References
Tran NM, Henkhaus LE, Gonzales G. Adverse Childhood Experiences and Mental Distress Among US Adults by Sexual Orientation. JAMA Psychiatry. 2022;79(4):377–379. doi:10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2022.0001
