Any psychologist knows that psychology is a pseudoscience, like proctology, yoga and history. However, this is carefully hidden, so problems arise from their activities, which often result in tragedies, like the sensational case with the psychologist of the Ozon center Leila Sokolova, who turned out to be a lesbian masochist. “Another person’s soul is dark,” says the proverb, but psychologists do not believe in proverbs.

Besides everything else, there is such confusion in the field of psychology that if Freud and Wundt rose from the grave, they would be declared charlatans.

This is due, first of all, to the fact that psychology is the science of uncertain tasks and uncertain subjects.

This is the concept Wikipedia gives us:

Psychology (Greek ψυχή - soul and logos - word, thought, knowledge, literally - spirituality, knowledge of the human soul) is the science of mental activity, its patterns of development and functioning.

Psychology is an objective science about the subjective world of humans and animals (as defined by V.P. Zinchenko)

In Zenovich's dictionary of foreign words:

Psychology is the science of the patterns, mechanisms and facts of the mental life of humans and animals.

The definition of Soul in Ozhegov’s dictionary reads:

“This is the inner mental world of a person, his consciousness.” Let's look at the definition of consciousness there: “Consciousness is mental activity as a reflection of reality.”

It's somehow slippery. It would be possible to formulate it more clearly, for example, “psychology is the science of the soul.” But this is excluded, because science denies the existence of the soul. And the churchmen would be very indignant, since they have a monopoly on knowledge of the human soul. Then it was possible to call psychology “the science of the psyche.” What is the psyche? Psyche (from the Greek psychikos - spiritual) is a form of interaction between an animal organism and the environment, mediated by the active reflection of signs of objective reality. The activity of reflection manifests itself, first of all, in the search and testing of future actions in terms of ideal images.

Usually, in a logical chain, one definition of a word flows into another and a third, ending with a clear understanding of the meaning of the word. An image, a picture or a so-called “concept” appears in our heads. With the word “cucumber” dozens of associations appear, which, merging, become a complete picture with smell, taste, color and other qualities. In this case, such an understanding could not be achieved.

Let’s take the help of the audience: “The psychologist must create an atmosphere in which the client approaches insight. Based on this insight, he is able to accept vital problems more adequately, independently and more responsibly.”

It follows from this that psychology is designed, in general, to help us in life situations rather than in life, serving as a pill for acute pain rather than as a health system. What is the difference between tablets and health systems? With pills, roughly speaking, we “treat one thing and cripple another.” The second problem is the extremely large number of psychological schools,

directions and branches behind which the very practical meaning of psychology is lost. If we take, for example, psychoanalysis, we will see that grandfather Freud himself was disappointed in his creation and at the end of his life declared: “no one is free from psychological conflicts and thereby from repression and unconscious motivation. Therefore, no one can be called absolutely rational.

The third and most important disadvantage of psychology, from which all the others follow, is that so far no one has formulated the basic laws or goals of this “science,” and the terminology of different schools varies greatly. There seems to be a house, but there is no foundation. Well, that's not the order.

Gynecology, for example, serves a practical purpose - the birth of healthy offspring. Jurisprudence helps us understand that black is not always black, and white is not always white. Those. allows you to see the world of non-Euclidean geometry, where the probability that black is white and a straight line can be a curve is very high. Even philosophy, or in Greek “love of wisdom,” with all its sophistication, has very specific tasks - to solve the eternal riddles that Life poses before man.

And lastly, we can assume that the goal of psychology should be “life without pain.” But if this instrument, physical or mental “pain,” is taken away from nature, won’t man stop evolving? Will he turn into a vegetable? And what then to do with the Buddha’s thesis, “that all life is suffering”? And why, for example, not use the same Buddhist recipe on “how to end suffering” that Prince Gautama gave to humanity two and a half thousand years ago?

9 Most Cruel Experiments in the History of Psychology

A boy who was raised as a girl (1965-2004)

In 1965, an eight-month-old boy, Bruce Reimer, who was born in Winnipeg, Canada, was circumcised on the advice of doctors. However, due to an error by the surgeon who performed the operation, the boy's penis was completely damaged. Psychologist John Money from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore (USA), to whom the child’s parents turned for advice, advised them a “simple” way out of a difficult situation: change the sex of the child and raise him as a girl until he grows up and begins to experience sex complexes. about his male incompetence.

No sooner said than done: Bruce soon became Brenda. The unfortunate parents had no idea that their child had become a victim of a cruel experiment: John Money had long been looking for opportunities to prove that gender is determined not by nature, but by nurture, and Bruce became the ideal object of observation.

The boy's testicles were removed, and then for several years Mani published reports in scientific journals about the "successful" development of his experimental subject. “It is quite clear that the child behaves like an active little girl and her behavior is strikingly different from the male behavior of her twin brother,” the scientist assured. However, both family at home and teachers at school noted the child’s typical boy behavior and biased perceptions.

The worst thing was that parents who hid the truth from their son-daughter experienced severe emotional stress. As a result, the mother experienced

suicidal tendencies, his father became an alcoholic, and his twin brother was constantly depressed. When Bruce-Brenda reached adolescence, he was given estrogen to stimulate breast growth, and then Money began to insist on a new operation, during which Brandi would have to form female genitalia. But then Bruce-Brenda rebelled. He flatly refused to have the operation and stopped coming to see Mani.

Three suicide attempts followed one after another. The last of them ended in a coma for him, but he recovered and began the fight to return to a normal existence - as a person. He changed his name to David, cut his hair and began wearing men's clothes. In 1997, he underwent a series of reconstructive surgeries to restore the physical characteristics of his gender. He also married a woman and adopted her three children. However, there was no happy ending: in May 2004, after breaking up with his wife, David Reimer committed suicide at the age of 38.

2. "The Source of Despair" (1960)

Harry Harlow conducted his cruel experiments on monkeys. Exploring the issue of social isolation of an individual and methods of protection against it, Harlow took a baby monkey from its mother and placed it in a cage all alone, and chose those cubs whose connection with the mother was the strongest.

The monkey was kept in a cage for a year, after which it was released. Most individuals showed various mental disorders. The scientist made the following conclusions: even a happy childhood is not a protection against depression.

The results, to put it mildly, are not impressive: such a conclusion could have been made without conducting cruel experiments on animals. However, the movement in defense of animal rights began precisely after the publication of the results of this experiment.

3. Milgram experiment (1974)

The experiment of Stanley Milgram from Yale University is described by the author in the book “Obeying Authority: An Experimental Study.”

The experiment involved an experimenter, a test subject, and an actor who played the role of another test subject. At the beginning of the experiment, the roles of “teacher” and “student” were assigned by “draw” between the experimental subject and the actor. In fact, the subjects were always given the role of "teacher", and the hired actor was always the "student".

Before the experiment began, the “teacher” was explained that the purpose of the experiment was supposedly to identify new methods of memorizing information. However, the experimenter studied the behavior of a person who receives instructions from an authoritative source that diverge from his internal behavioral norms.

The “student” was tied to a chair, to which a stun gun was attached. Both the “student” and the “teacher” received a “demonstration” shock of 45 volts. Next, the “teacher” went into another room and had to give the “student” simple memorization tasks via voice communication. For each mistake by the student, the subject had to press a button, and the student would receive a 45-volt electric shock. In fact, the actor who played the role of the student only pretended to receive electric shocks. Then after each mistake the teacher had to increase the voltage by 15 volts.

At some point, the actor began to demand that the experiment be stopped. The “teacher” began to doubt, and the experimenter responded: “The experiment requires that you continue. Continue please." The more the current increased, the more discomfort the actor showed. Then he howled in severe pain and finally broke into a cry. The experiment is for the safety of the “student” and that the experiment must be continued.

The results were shocking: 65% of the “teachers” gave a shock of 450 volts, knowing that the “student” was in terrible pain. Contrary to all the preliminary predictions of the experimenters, the majority of the experimental subjects obeyed the instructions of the scientist in charge of the experiment and punished the “student” with an electric shock, and in a series of experiments out of forty experimental subjects, not one stopped until the level of 300 volts, five refused to obey only after this level, and 26 “teachers "out of 40 we reached the end of the scale.

The conclusions from the experiment were terrible: the unknown dark side of human nature is inclined not only to mindlessly obey authority and carry out unthinkable instructions. Overall, the results of the experiment showed that the need to obey authority was so deeply rooted in our minds that the subjects continued to follow instructions, despite moral suffering and strong internal conflict.

4. Learned helplessness (1966)

In 1966, psychologists Mark Seligman and Steve Mayer conducted a series of experiments on dogs. The animals were placed in cages, previously divided into three groups. The control group was released after some time without causing any harm, the second group of animals were subjected to repeated shocks that could be stopped by pressing a lever from the inside, and the animals of the third group were subjected to sudden shocks that could not be prevented.

As a result, dogs have developed so-called “acquired helplessness” - a reaction to unpleasant stimuli based on the conviction of helplessness in front of the outside world. Soon the animals began to show signs of clinical depression.

After some time, the dogs from the third group were released from their cages and placed in open enclosures, from which they could easily escape. The dogs were again subjected to electric shock, but none of them even thought about escaping. Instead, they reacted passively to pain, accepting it as something inevitable. The dogs learned from previous negative experiences that escape was impossible and no longer made any attempts to jump out of the cage.

Scientists have suggested that the human reaction to stress is in many ways similar to a dog's: people become helpless after several failures, one after another. It is not clear whether such a banal conclusion was worth the suffering of the unfortunate animals.

5. Baby Albert (1920)

John Watson, the founder of the behaviorist movement in psychology, studied the nature of fears and phobias. While studying the emotions of children, Watson, among other things, became interested in the possibility of forming a fear reaction towards objects that had not previously caused it.

The scientist tested the possibility of forming an emotional reaction of fear of a white rat in a 9-month-old boy, Albert, who was not at all afraid of rats and even loved to play with them. During the experiment, for two months, an orphan child from an orphanage was shown a tame white rat, a white rabbit, cotton wool, a Santa Claus mask with a beard, etc. Two months later, the child was sat on a rug in the middle of the room and allowed to play with the rat. At first, the child was not at all afraid of her and played calmly. After a while, Watson began hitting a metal plate behind the child's back with an iron hammer every time Albert touched the rat. After repeated blows, Albert began to avoid contact with the rat. A week later, the experiment was repeated - this time they hit the plate five times, simply launching the rat into the cradle. The child cried when he saw a white rat.

After another five days, Watson decided to test whether the child would be afraid of similar objects. The boy was afraid of the white rabbit, cotton wool, and the Santa Claus mask. Since the scientists did not make loud sounds when showing objects, Watson concluded that fear reactions were transferred. He suggested that many fears, aversions and anxiety states of adults are formed in early childhood. Alas, Watson never managed to deprive Albert of fear without reason, which was fixed for the rest of his life.

6. Landis Experiments: Spontaneous Facial Expressions and Subordination (1924)

In 1924, Karin Landis from the University of Minnesota began studying human facial expressions. The experiment, conceived by the scientist, was aimed at identifying general patterns in the work of groups of facial muscles responsible for the expression of individual emotional states, and to find facial expressions typical of fear, confusion or other emotions (if facial expressions characteristic of most people are considered typical).

His students became experimental subjects. To make facial expressions more expressive, he drew lines on the subjects' faces with cork soot, after which he showed them something that could evoke strong emotions: he forced them to sniff ammonia, listen to jazz, look at pornographic pictures and put their hands in buckets of frogs. Students were photographed while expressing their emotions.

The last test that Landis prepared for students outraged wide circles of psychological scientists. Landis asked each subject to cut off the head of a white rat. All participants in the experiment initially refused to do this, many cried and screamed, but subsequently most of them agreed. The worst thing is that most of the participants in the experiment never hurt a fly and had absolutely no idea how to carry out the experimenter’s orders. As a result, the animals suffered a lot of suffering.

The consequences of the experiment turned out to be much more important than the experiment itself. Scientists were unable to detect any pattern in facial expression, but psychologists received evidence of how easily people are ready to submit to authority and do things that they would not do in a normal life situation.

7. Study of the effects of drugs on the body (1969)

It should be recognized that some experiments conducted on animals help scientists invent drugs that can later save tens of thousands of human lives. However, some studies cross all ethical lines.

An example is an experiment designed to help scientists understand the speed and degree of human addiction to drugs. The experiment was carried out on rats and monkeys as the animals closest to humans physiologically. The animals were trained to independently inject themselves with a dose of a certain drug: morphine, cocaine, codeine, amphetamine, etc. As soon as the animals learned to inject themselves, the experimenters left them with a large amount of drugs and began observation.

The animals were so confused that some of them even tried to escape, and, being under the influence of drugs, they were crippled and did not feel pain. Monkeys who took cocaine began to suffer from convulsions and hallucinations: the unfortunate animals tore out their phalanges. Monkeys who were “sat” on amphetamine pulled out all their hair. “Drug addict” animals that preferred a “cocktail” of cocaine and morphine died within 2 weeks after starting to take the drugs.

Despite the fact that the purpose of the experiment was to understand and evaluate the degree of impact of drugs on the human body with the intention of further developing effective treatment for drug addiction, the methods for achieving the results can hardly be called humane.

8. Stanford Prison Experiment (1971)

The “artificial prison” experiment was not intended to be unethical or harmful to the psyche of the participants, but the results of this study amazed the public.

The famous psychologist Philip Zimbardo decided to study the behavior and social norms of individuals who found themselves in atypical prison conditions and forced to play the roles of prisoners or guards. To do this, a mock prison was set up in the basement of the psychology department, and student volunteers (24 people) were divided into “prisoners” and “guards.” It was assumed that the “prisoners” were placed in a situation where they would experience personal disorientation and degradation, up to and including complete depersonalization. The "overseers" were not given any specific instructions regarding their roles.

At first, the students did not really understand how they should play their roles, but already on the second day of the experiment everything fell into place: the uprising of the “prisoners” was brutally suppressed by the “guards.” From that moment on, the behavior of both sides changed radically. The “guards” have developed a special system of privileges designed to separate the “prisoners” and sow distrust in them towards each other - individually they are not as strong as together, which means they are easier to “guard”. It began to seem to the “guards” that the “prisoners” were ready to start a new “uprising” at any moment, and the control system was tightened to the limit: the “prisoners” were not left alone with themselves, even in the toilet.

As a result, the “prisoners” began to experience emotional disorders, depression, and helplessness. After some time, the “prison priest” came to visit the “prisoners.” When asked what their names were, the “prisoners” most often gave their numbers rather than their names, and the question of how they were going to get out of prison puzzled them. It turned out that the “prisoners” absolutely got used to their roles and began to feel like they were in a real prison, and the “guards” felt like they were in real prison.

sadistic emotions and intentions regarding the “prisoners” who, just a few days before, had been their good friends.

9. Project “Aversia” (1970)

In the South African army, from 1970 to 1989, they carried out a secret program to cleanse the military ranks of military personnel of non-traditional sexual orientation. They used all means: from electric shock treatment to chemical castration. The exact number of victims is unknown, however, according to army doctors, during the “purges” about 1,000 military personnel were subjected to various prohibited experiments on human nature. Army psychiatrists, on instructions from the command, “eradicated” homosexuals with all their might: those who did not undergo “treatment” were sent to shock therapy, forced to take hormonal drugs, and even forced to undergo gender reassignment surgery.

The validity of psychology research

Scientists have found that in two thirds of cases, psychologists avoid declaring commercial interest in the results of their research. This practice leads to the introduction of dubious psychological assistance programs.

This is stated in an article by British specialists from the University of Oxford, published in the journal PLOS ONE.

The development of psychological assistance programs in the West is a fairly profitable business. Government services buy the rights to implement them from developers, which brings a lot of money to psychologists and the universities where they work. However, the effectiveness of such programs is often tested by the same people who profit from them. The authors of the work decided to find out how serious this problem is. They analyzed 134 articles assessing the effectiveness of four popular psychological assistance programs for children and families in the West. The articles were published in 2008-2012, and among the co-authors of each of them were the developers of the methods being tested.

It turned out that in 71% of cases, the authors of the articles incorrectly indicated a possible conflict of interest or did not declare it at all. The scientists reported their unpleasant discovery to the editors of the journals where the papers were published, and as a result, 65 papers were labeled with an incorrectly declared conflict of interest.

Only in 30% of cases did psychologists honestly indicate that they had a commercial interest in the published results. It is noteworthy that this figure was the lowest - only 11% - for the Triple P program. This program to help parents, designed to prevent the occurrence of emotional problems in children, is practiced in 25 countries - in total, the developers have sold more than 7 million methodological manuals. However, independent researchers have been unable to find evidence of Triple P's effectiveness.

Netizens' responses

Strictly speaking, only exact sciences can be classified as sciences - mathematics, physics, chemistry, and part of biology. Everything else is either art (medicine, literature) or pseudoscience (history, jurisprudence, psychology). In the exact sciences there is an objective (that is, independent or practically independent of a person) evaluation criterion.

Iren_Nietzsche

In psychology there are no generally accepted concepts and classifications, there is no single collection of basic facts considered proven, not to mention attempts at generalizations, hypotheses, theories, laws. But it pays for psychologists to pretend to be scientists. Therefore, they do not call a spade a spade, but come up with Newspeak based on Latin, Ancient Greek and English. SOUL is unscientific. But PSYCHE - this sounds like a scientific term... To say: BELIEVED in the fact that he will fall asleep, but will hear everything and, upon waking up, will do everything that he was told - is not science. But HYPNOSIS is a science.

Psychologists have a purely utilitarian approach: as long as it works. But how can a bunch of recipes be effective that have no known effect on what? In medicine, this corresponds to the pre-scientific healer level.

Here I am a doctor. And if I say “appendicitis,” then any doctor in the world - in Africa, Argentina, London or Greenland - will understand this term exactly as I understand it. This creates the basis for the exchange of scientific data and simply observations from practice, without which science cannot exist. Psychologists don't have this. When one of them says “personality” or “psyche,” his colleagues do not hear at all

what he wanted to say. This is an unscientific approach. There is no concept in any science that has a dozen or four different definitions. This means that psychologists simply do not know what personality, psyche, etc. are and cannot even agree! What would medical science become if it allowed itself such a mess? We don't just think that there is probably a vermiform appendix...we know where it is, what shape and size it is, what it consists of, what it does. When it becomes inflamed, we know by what signs it can be determined. We know that if this abscess is not removed surgically, it will most likely rupture into the abdominal cavity. And we even know why! And since all this has been proven, all doctors know it.

And if some doctors denied the existence of the appendix, others said that it doesn’t matter whether it is there or not, but a heating pad on the stomach relieves pain in almost everyone... well, except for those who die... and those who recognize the existence of the appendix would be divided into several more schools arguing about how to find out that it is inflamed, how to treat it and what it even is!

But Freudians, followers of Jung and Fromm recognize the unconscious, but imagine it in completely different ways, and behaviorists do not recognize it at all!

This pseudoscience doesn't even have boundaries. I saw psychology textbooks, which included, in addition to psychoanalysis, also Dianetics and... Christianity. Or, let’s say, is NLP psychology or not? It is characteristic that everyone who is professionally involved in manipulating people’s consciousness - PR people, advertisers, politicians, the military - is not interested in psychology-science, but either acts empirically, based on their own experience without theory, or eclectically uses NLP and psychoanalysis (but never Fromm, and more often Freud and less often Jung) and several other unrelated small ideas obtained on the basis of behaviorism - facts about the impact of colors, sounds, numbers, language on consciousness, about subliminal influences, etc. Is this called science? The twentieth century is the time of the creation of powerful psychological technologies capable of working wonders in the practice of war and domination. But “scientific” psychology is away from this direction. The teaching of psychologists is powerless because it is incorrect.

Alexey Bykov

Many methodological principles established in the natural sciences do not work in psychology. In this sense, it is a pseudoscience just like all the humanities that deal with man and his products, that is, culture. However, psychology and the humanities will still exist, because people are interested in it. Perhaps in the future there will be a synthesis of the methodological foundations of the natural and human sciences.

Hermit

The great thinker of the past, Socrates, said his wonderful words: “I know that I know nothing, yet many do not even know this.” But modern man is often very pompous and stupid, so much so that he considers himself a genius. He is so confident in the correctness of his worldview that he would rather accuse another of stupidity than admit his ignorance. And the more social regalia, recognitions and scientific degrees are hung on a person, the more clearly this will all be expressed.

pravdarubka

There is one branch of psychology - clinical psychology. There are really interesting and useful things being done there. The strongest jump occurred during the war. I am sure that interesting research is going on there now. But this industry is related to medicine. They will extinguish our medicine - and there will be complete stagnation. For all other industries, I can say according to Freud - everyone is measured by their members. The results, even if confirmed, are still not practical. Those. fucking useless to anyone. I remember my thesis at the first university... 80% on the topic: how, for example, the perception of a male boss differs from a female boss by the staff of the organization. Damn, why such garbage for a diploma? Then no one answered me. I'm sure they won't answer now. In general, I won’t go to a psychologist either)))

Vaisman Sergey Efimovich

First year question. Yes, and it was put incorrectly. Science cannot be false. It either exists or it doesn’t. Psychology is rather not a science, hence the question is not posed correctly.

grizzly_ru

That’s because “no one has yet formulated the basic laws or goals of this “science,” and the terminology of different schools varies greatly. There seems to be a house, but there is no foundation,” this individual, Leila Sokolova, carried out scientific experiments on herself! The true researcher turned out to be...

In my opinion, in its practical manifestations psychology is a pseudoscience.

In terms of theoretical non-science.

In practical terms, we see communities of psychologists that are more like religious sects, in which issues of personal dominance are resolved. We observe “psychologists” in these communities of psychologists who require the services of qualified psychologists or psychiatrists.

Why is psychology primarily a science? Pavel Zygmantovich explains

Belarusian family psychologist Pavel Zygmantovich knows how to tell even the most complex things simply. And now he literally explained on his fingers why psychology is a science, and not the ability to support one’s neighbor.

It is still news to many that psychology is still a science. Why is that?

Due to poor mastery of the subject.

The idea of ​​psychology among people at the level of the nineteenth century is that an elderly gray-haired professor sits in a luxurious leather chair and sucks all sorts of nonsense out of a cigar.

Of course, things don't work like that at all.

1. What is science?

Science is a human activity aimed at establishing patterns in a particular area. Regularities are important because they allow us to use them in everyday life, thereby improving our lives.

For example, Louis Pasteur discovered the pattern “rotting begins due to microorganisms,” and almost immediately everyone began to disinfect the hands and instruments of doctors so as not to spread the infection to the patient (see the works of Ignaz Semmelweis and Joseph Lister). The mortality rate of patients has decreased markedly. Healthy? And how!

2. What patterns does psychology study?

The answer is simple - the laws of how the psyche works. Well, the consequences of these patterns, of course. Fundamental science studies the patterns themselves, applied science looks for ways to use these patterns in everyday life.

3. What is the psyche?

This is where a serious problem awaits us - no one knows what the psyche is. Moreover, this term itself is just a tribute to tradition, and nothing more. It only denotes something in a person. This something allows us to think, relate to what is happening, pay attention to something, and so on. In general, this is a black box that cannot yet be opened and studied directly.

4. Is it possible to study something that is not clear?

Yes, it is quite. Psychologists are not alone in this, by the way. We are not alone in this - physicists have the same problem. They know for sure that there is some kind of thing (they called it dark matter) that cannot be observed directly. How do they get out? They study indirect signs, such as various gravitational effects.

So do psychologists. It is clear that the psyche is located somewhere in a person. This means that by studying different manifestations of a person, one can understand the mechanisms of the black box of the psyche. Psychologists study the psyche through indirect manifestations. This is far from the best way, but it is the only one we have. For example, a study recently appeared that showed that our gaze is attracted not so much by what is bright, but by what is important. We look at what is meaningful to us.

5. Don’t neurosciences study the psyche?

Not really. Neuroscience studies the brain, and it was during these studies that it became clear that at the current stage, direct study of the brain does not help to study the psyche. In the future, most likely, it will still be possible to study the psyche directly, but for now we are content with little - indirect manifestations. However, even with this meager material, enough has already been obtained so as not to despair and continue to work.

6. How exactly do psychologists study the psyche based on indirect manifestations?

My favorite is experimental. Psychologists take two groups of people, put them in the same conditions, and then one of the groups changes one (just one!) detail in the conditions.

For example, we test willpower and tell one group that willpower is a limited resource. And the second one is that it is limitless. Then the members of each group do some work, and we see what comes out of it. If there is no psyche, and we have bare biology before us, then the difference in ideas about the nature of willpower will not change anything. However, no, research has shown that there is a difference. People who thought that they always had a lot of willpower got tired later and did not respond to feeding with glucose.

This means that the difference in ideas is important, which means that something is happening in the black box that changes a person’s behavior simply because of information. This is the work of the psyche.

7. How are changes in behavior measured?

The methods are very different, but always objective. This could be the number of mistakes during work, the amount of juice drunk, the number of electric shocks, the time you held your hand in cold or hot water? speed of movement, electrical activity of the skin, measurement of pupil diameter (associated with the increase or decrease of brain activity), eye movement (oculography, eye-tracker) and so on.

There are a lot of indicators, but they are always objective. Subjective indicators such as self-reports are also used, but only as additional material.

8. All people are different, how to deal with this?

This is perhaps the simplest thing in psychology. You just need to recruit more participants into the experiment. If we have ten people (five in each group), then personal diversity cannot be hidden anywhere. But if we have one hundred and five people in each group and they do the same thing quite consistently, then it’s not a matter of personal diversity, but something else. What? In the laws of the work of the psyche, which are the same for everyone, just as the laws of the work of chemistry are the same throughout the world.

And if we have a thousand people, then the results are even more accurate, because in such a large sample, individual characteristics are erased even more. Therefore, psychologists try to make samples as large and diverse as possible.

9. Can we trust the experiments of psychologists?

A relatively recent study found that less than forty percent of psychological studies are reproducible. This is a big problem, but it is a big problem for all of science. Such problems also exist not only in psychology, but also in physics and biology.

This kind of problem is the norm for science. And scientists are fighting them as best they can. Every year the quality of research improves, the requirements become stricter, and there is less and less hackwork. So it is in psychology. The further we go, the more studies that have been tested repeatedly in different laboratories and show the same reproducibility everywhere.

10. If there is no mathematics in science, it is not science. Where is mathematics in psychology?

Mathematics in psychology is part of the processing of experimental data. Psychologists are required to be trained in higher mathematics, because Without knowledge of mathematical statistics, it is impossible to properly process the results of an experiment. This is not calculated on a calculator, you have to think there. Without mathematics there is simply no psychology.

11. Where do theories in psychology come from?

The cycle is as follows: first, the scientist observes a certain phenomenon. For example, when the variety of products increases, most people buy less. Then the scientist puts forward a hypothesis in order to conduct an experiment based on it. If the experiment is successful, there is a chance that the hypothesis was correct. The scientist conducts several more experiments (plus his sworn friends in the workshop help) and, for example, confirms his hypothesis in each experiment. Then he takes experimental materials and begins to create a theory from them.

In other words, theory is the end result of scientific research, and not its beginning. Any theory has very rich experimental material, a very solid foundation.

If something is called a theory, but there are no experiments behind it, this is not a theory, but nothing more than a hypothesis.

Illustration: Shutterstock

Psychology is more often questioned than other sciences: its methods are considered unscientific, and its research is considered useless. With psychotherapy, everything is even more complicated: sessions can ruin even the healthiest person, and the effectiveness is proven year after year, but again disproved. The “Society of Skeptics,” which preaches a scientific approach in everything, has dealt with the myths about medicine and health. Once a month, T&P will publish the abstracts of one of the lectures at the Skepticon conference - in the first issue, consulting psychologist Konstantin Kunakh explains what psychotherapy is and how you can believe things that have not been scientifically proven.

Konstantin Kunakh

psychologist-consultant

If we strongly generalize, then all psychotherapists can be divided into two camps. The first camp was once laid by Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, from which the dynamic school of psychology grew. Psychoanalysts, like specialists in any other developing field, do not repeat what Freud does, but follow the principles he established. The founder of the second camp was our compatriot Ivan Petrovich Pavlov, a Nobel Prize laureate, who discovered the concept of a conditioned reflex. The baton was followed by the Americans John Brodes Watson and Burres Skinner - this is how the behavioral direction of psychotherapy appeared, on the basis of which the cognitive approach was developed. These are two big sources that are in no way connected with each other, and when a person asks which psychologist to go to, he is told that there are different psychologists. A person imagines that it is like boiled and fried meat - different, but both are meat. But behavior therapy and psychoanalysis are as different from roast meat as intravenous nutrition.

Followers of these two schools conduct half of their research solely to destroy the enemy’s school. For example, Hans Jurgen Eysenck, known as the author of a common intelligence test, a follower of Pavlov, insisted that the psyche must be understood through biology: personality and the formation of the psyche are influenced exclusively by biological, genetic, chemical factors. In one of his lectures, he even says that psychotherapy can be harmful and dangerous. He cites a study in which patients with cancer and coronary heart disease were psychoanalyzed. And the seven-year survival rate of these people decreased compared to the control group. That is, he concludes that the stress experienced during psychoanalysis, as well as the false hopes instilled by the psychoanalyst, led to an increase in mortality. And he calls behavioral psychotherapy good: it best treats neuroses, neurotic manifestations, depression and other psychological problems. And, as usual, he cites a ton of research.

A small point to consider when evaluating behavioral therapy research is that it was heavily developed in America. In a country where there is no public health care system, and health insurance usually includes psychotherapy. If a person is insured, he can see a therapist, and the insurance company must pay for it. And this is where the economic issue comes into play. To a person’s statement “I have a problem in my life,” the behavior therapist usually responds like this: “Okay, now we will agree on what we consider this problem to be, and then we will have ten meetings.” Not nine, not eleven - ten. And by the tenth meeting your problem will be solved. The insurance company must pay for ten meetings, which are relatively cheap because they are short and because it is easy to become a behavior therapist. In a week of intensive training, anyone can be made a behavioral therapist - explain how reflexes work, how to create and remove them. This benefits insurance companies. What is the duration of treatment with a psychoanalyst? Years. There are examples of treatment for 40, 50 years. And the cost of a psychoanalyst’s work can reach several thousand dollars per session, and three or four sessions are needed per week.

But there are other opinions - for example, Scott Miller, director of the International Center for the Quality of Medical Care, in his lecture “The Evolution of Psychotherapy” says that after some time of actively visiting a psychotherapist, the effect is lost. A person reaches a certain level of improvement - and that’s it, he doesn’t rise further. And the most interesting thing is that research shows that it doesn’t matter who treats: yesterday’s student, a person with ten years of experience or a Nobel laureate.

There is also an opinion that cognitive and behavioral therapies have hijacked the term “evidence-based therapy” without any justification. There are a number of tools with which cognitive and behavioral psychologists obtain better results than dynamic psychologists. First, subjects are carefully selected for all studies. Mixed cases, in which the object of study may be influenced by some extraneous factors, are not included in the sample so as not to spoil the results of the study. It is important to understand here that in psychology there are no clear diagnostic criteria. Serious guys with decades of experience, doctors of science, may not agree on the interpretation of one person’s condition. Accordingly, with such diagnostic accuracy, the rejection is huge; we immediately select people only with a narrow, specific problem, and this already means that our research will not reflect how psychotherapy works in real life. Because in real life, people usually have combined, not pure problems.

Secondly, the results of not all subjects will be included in a scientific article. It is possible that one of these people, in parallel with psychotherapy sessions, will encounter some important event in their life. Positive or negative. Birth, death, moving, illness, buying, selling, winning the lottery - whatever. Because of this, the results will be distorted and will be thrown out of the study. Depending on the integrity of the researcher, people will also be thrown out whose results can be called an artifact, because they are very far from everyone else - this is considered an experimental error. And based on the results obtained in this way, it will be said that cognitive therapy is the most evidence-based therapy available.

If you look at the meta-analysis, the studies show that the therapy works, but it only works better with women. Surely another study will come out soon, which will again say that nothing works. We must keep in mind that today there is no rigorous evidence that cannot be faulted. But in the case of psychology, the stakes are high - human health. What to do if effectiveness has not been proven? And what does lack of evidence mean? This means that we cannot say anything about efficiency. We don't have data. Accordingly, since there is no evidence and we cannot say that it definitely harms, it means that it probably works. At least, why not?

And the first thing you need to pay attention to is the reason why there is no evidence, the so-called alibi. And the second is the initial ideas that appeared on the basis of reliable evidence. If we know that Newton's laws exist, that jet propulsion is possible, and that a certain wing shape can create lift, then we have every reason to consider this idea credible. Because we have normal initial data and a normal explanation for why there is no evidence yet. Because we haven’t done it yet, because we haven’t built it yet, because it’s difficult. And for some time we will explore the hypothesis that it is possible to build an airplane. While we are trying to prove a theory, we spend time and resources on it - each subsequent negative result reduces the likelihood that the hypothesis is true. But there are no methodological reasons to put an end to a specific place. It cannot be said that an idea can be proven in 3 years, 8 months, 14 days, 42 hours and 17 seconds. You choose when to stop. There are people who are still developing the theory of the ether. About a hundred years ago it was rejected, plus or minus, or at least considered ineffective, but there are people who are still trying to squeeze something out of it.

The alibi of psychotherapy is that, firstly, the placebo control usual for other sciences, the so-called blind method, is practically inapplicable in this case. You can give a person a dummy pill and say, “This is the placebo-controlled group.” You can even make it so that neither the person himself, nor the nurse who gives him the pills, nor the doctor who monitors his condition will know whether he is receiving a dummy or a real medicine. But you can't make sure that the therapist who's working with the patient doesn't know what he's doing. Interpretation of the data will still be subjective.

Secondly, the complexity of the instruments of influence. In medicine and physics there is a very clear discrete effect, we know exactly what we are doing: heating, cooling, taking it into weightlessness. In the case of psychotherapy, we don't really know what we're doing.

Thirdly, we do not really understand what is happening to a person. Because we are exploring very subtle matter. One of the reasons why there is so much research that behavior therapy works better is that it is easy to measure. The impact is aimed at a specific skill, a specific mental property, a specific state - for example, when a person cannot restrain his anger. If there is no specific target, it is not immediately clear what and how to measure. If we influenced a person in a certain way and he says in self-report: “Well, I probably felt better,” or “It didn’t get better at all,” or “It got worse,” we don’t know what to do with this data. In any other medical test, no matter what a person self-reports, we can pick at the knee and see whether his arthrosis has actually gotten better or not. In psychology there is no such possibility, and we have to trust self-report. There are, of course, tests, there is validation of these tests, but how can you rely on this if even the possibility of manipulating memories has already been confirmed?

And not the least role in research is played by the observer effect. Imagine how different the psychotherapeutic process is in situations where the psychotherapist's client knows that he is in a confidential setting, and in another situation he knows that this is a research process, that after this he will have to fill out ten questionnaires, and his psychoanalyst will write a report on his case. How much does this affect the result?

So what's next, how will this all end? Psychotherapy is difficult, the psyche is difficult. One hundred years of attempts at valid research is not a period after which one can give up. There are reasons to believe. When we have a model of consciousness, when we understand which specific process, which part of the brain, which structure each psychological phenomenon is associated with, then we will be able to say: “This works, and this doesn’t.” Until then, these are probabilistic quantities.

Basic forms of psychotherapy

Behavioral therapy. In essence, this is training - there is punishment, there is encouragement. We form conditioned reflexes or, conversely, inhibit them. And we know for sure that conditioned reflexes exist, this is guaranteed. Does this mean that by adjusting individual skills, we can change our lives as a whole, improve relationships, and so on? This is already a question of assessment. If I stop quarreling with everyone, does that mean that I will become friends with everyone? Yes, the study will say that I haven't argued with anyone in the last week. But that doesn't necessarily mean my relationship has improved.

Cognitive psychotherapy. This is an add-on to the behavioral one. If there is a stimulus in the behavioral one - a reaction, events, consequences - then cognitive psychology wedges itself between them and interprets the stimulus. If you poke someone in the leg, for example, with a needle, most often the person will get upset. But if he lies with paralysis for 25 years and suddenly feels pain, then his reaction will be completely different, this is a different interpretation. And this is used everywhere - in sales, for example. If you think that a car on credit costs 1.5 million and you have to work hard for two years, then the offer is not so attractive. And if you say that it’s 350 rubles a day, then a person will think that it’s only two cups of coffee a day, and that’s what he can afford.

Dynamic psychotherapy. There is a theory that all problems are repressed traumas from childhood. It can be illustrated with the help of an example from life - a married couple comes to a psychologist: “Listen, our child is getting bad grades.” The psychotherapist asks: “You probably did something yourself before coming to me?” They say: “The first time he brought a deuce, we put him in the corner. The second time we flogged him. Then they decided that punishments didn’t work and had a heart-to-heart talk. Then they completely ignored it - maybe it needs to resolve on its own.” What ends up going through a child’s head if he gets a bad grade? Chaos, anxiety is off the charts. If your boss at work had such a range of reactions to your actions, you would be angry with him. But the child does not have emotional self-control, he will not be able to contain this anger within himself, it will manifest itself, and he will be punished for showing anger. Therefore, he suppresses this anger. Does this mean that this anger can then be pulled out of there, react somehow and this will improve your life?

Gestalt psychotherapy. One of the branches of dynamic psychotherapy. There are illustrations in which you can see two images: either a vase or two faces. You can switch, see something as a figure, and something as a background: either these are faces on a white background, or a vase on a black background. It is impossible to see them at the same time, since the resources of the brain and psyche are limited. This is the principle on which all Gestalt therapy is built, the law of figure and ground: in the waterfall of information that pours on you, you choose what you want to see. If you choose the wrong thing, you find yourself in an unpleasant world. Have you noticed how the world around you changes depending on your emotional state? How many good, kind, smiling people or evil and bad people there are around - depending on whether they gave you your salary or delayed it.

There is also a concept. Psychologist Bluma Vulfovna Zeigarnik was once sitting in a restaurant and noticed that the waiter was not writing down the order. She asked him to repeat what she ordered, and the waiter repeated it. She asked to tell me what they ordered at the next table, and he also repeated it without any problems. But when she asked him to repeat what previous customers at the same table had ordered, he couldn't remember anything at all. Because this bill has already been paid and the gestalt has been closed. The essence of this effect is that the unfinished action remains in the memory, thoughts about it can come obsessively.

Humanistic psychotherapy. The idea of ​​humanistic therapy is that a person does not need to be divided into reflexes, the unconscious, and so on. A person is whole, you just need to be there, empathize, sympathize. Do we have empirical experience showing that when we are supported and sympathized with, it becomes easier for us? Yes, of course there is! Does this mean that this method will lead us out of clinical depression? You can also try.

Existential psychotherapy. Nietzsche wrote that if a person has a “why,” he will endure any “how.” Do we have empirical data showing, confirming, can we say, at least on the basis of everyday experience, that a feeling of meaningfulness, an understanding of a specific goal simplifies life, helps to overcome obstacles and generally tones up? Of course yes; behavior by definition is intentional, it has a direction. When we receive this direction, when we know what we are striving for and feel a certain meaning in it, subjectively it makes life easier for us. Again, this is empirics, this is phenomenology, there is no clear research behind this.

Tahir Yusupovich Bazarov, professor, psychologist

The accuracy of any science is determined by its ability to predict the future. Sometimes this is achieved through numerous statistical studies and extrapolation of the results to a wider sample. In some cases, it is possible to achieve accuracy through a deeper understanding of the mechanisms that determine a particular phenomenon. It is clear that any methods are good as long as they give reliable results.

Professor A. Furnham demonstrates the power of academic psychology in relation to such a purely practical area, which has recently been management. Moreover, the psychological component of management for him includes, first of all, the sphere of leadership - as the most mysterious and difficult to operationalize part of managerial effectiveness.

What is the secret of A. Furnham's success? How does he achieve forecast accuracy and success in consulting organizations? And the broader question is: how can the scientific approach accumulated in academic psychology be successful in helping modern organizations?

All these questions are key for any consultant who agrees with the statement that “there is nothing more practical than a good theory.” But the successful implementation of this principle in practice often encounters a number of obstacles. Moreover, distrust of good theory often leads to attempts to “reinvent the wheel” using one’s own schemes and projects, gaining professionalism through “trial and error.”

Lectures by Professor A. Furnham, given within the walls of the Institute of Practical Psychology of the State University - Higher School of Economics, allow us to find answers to these questions. The lecturer's long-term and varied academic and practical experience makes it possible to at least partially understand what exactly is important to rely on in practical activities from what has been accumulated by science. Without attempting to give an exhaustive overview of possible answers, we will focus on what seems to be the most significant.

First. Academic psychology teaches a systematic and comprehensive perception of reality - without stereotypes and closed-mindedness. It's like the old joke about the man who runs down the street and everyone asks him where he is running. He stops and asks in surprise: “Why are you all interested in where I’m running? And no one will ask where?” In the case of A. Furnham, many were surprised to discover that an overdeveloped ability, considered important for a manager, could be the reason for his failure. Or the very construction of the study in an unusual logic: if we want to determine the reasons for the success of a leader, then, first of all, we need to focus our attention on studying unsuccessful managers.

Second. The approach characteristic of academic psychology is that the researcher (experimenter) himself is an important factor in the situation being studied. It follows that an uneducated researcher or practicing psychologist can be a key reason not only for success, but also for failure. It’s like in the famous story with the Teacher, to whom a student comes, ready to receive real Knowledge. Their meeting takes place in the mountains. The student finds the Teacher blowing on his hands and rubbing them. To the question: “Why are you doing this?” - The student receives the answer: “To keep them warm.” After some time, the Teacher invites the young man to taste hot soup, which is also blown on. He explains to the student that he blows on the soup in order to cool it a little. The student experienced cognitive dissonance from the fact that the Teacher was doing the same thing to get the opposite result. This is the lesson of the accuracy of psychology as a science: only an educated psychologist is capable of getting different results, doing seemingly the same thing.

And finally, third. Professor A. Furnham demonstrated a certain ease in presenting very complex material. To an uninformed listener, it might seem that everything discussed in the lecture is too easy to understand. But this is the amazing property of real academic psychology. It is she who strives to assert that the highest professionalism lies in achieving clarity of the most complex truths for any listener or reader. That's for sure: whoever thinks clearly, explains clearly!

In conclusion, I would like to express the hope that meetings of our students and graduates, managers at various levels and leaders of various domestic organizations with leading professors of foreign universities will become traditional “communication platforms” for discussing current problems of practical psychology. Because the strength of the practical efforts of domestic consultants will be increased by the academic approach with its accuracy and broad view of the reality of human relations.