Hi Cole and Others:
It seems that things have not changed. I recall having exactly the type of clinical/human versus experimental/arid conversations back then. Except back then I was the arid experimentalist being challenged by the humanity of the clinicians.
In my opinion, it is not possible for psychology — as currently configured — to provide the types of meanings that motivated you to seek it out as a path to personal or collective development. This is because, well, it seeks to define itself in the image of the natural sciences. The second one does this, one must confront the fact/value dichotomy. If psychology is an objective science, then al it gives us facts or theories that are validated or not validated by “objective facts”. If this is so, then psychology can only tell us “what is” (“facts”) and not what "ought to be” — that is, how we should live (“values”).
Psychologists often think that psychological science can help us learn to lead better lives. In my view, this is because of a deep and collective inability to deal with the facts/value distinction. Psychological research is saturated with value judgments that masquerade as theoretical constructs. Take, for example, the study of, say, “self-esteem” or “social competence”. “Self-esteem” and “social competence” are not a value-free constructs — they are value-laden concepts where the value is either unacknowledged or assumed as “natural”. In this way, our psychological constructs are organized by values that are ushered in through the back door. When this happens, our studies don’t tell us what makes life good — a conception of goodness is already built into the study before it is even conducted. We simply reconstitute it in the research. That’s why “positive psychology” is now “discovering” (!!!) new findings that are older than Aristotle. Because his philosophy predated them talked by 2500 years.
Psychology likes to think that as a science, it’s on the “fact” side of the fact/value dichotomy. In my view, in the social sciences, what we call facts and values mutually constitute each other. If we want meaning, we can’t look to facts that we pretend are separate from values; we have to identify and reflect upon the values themselves, and how values and empirical findings inform each other. If one wants meaning, one cannot escape the primacy of the collaborative reflection on values.
Again, if you’ve gotten this far, thanks for reading.
Mike
Michael F. Mascolo, Ph.D.
Academic Director, Compass Program
Professor, Department of Psychology
Merrimack College, North Andover, MA 01845
978.837.3503 (office)
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"Things move, persons act." -- Kenneth Burke
"If it's not worth doing, it's not worth doing well." -- Donald Hebb
> On Jul 21, 2020, at 11:13 PM, Cole Butler <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Hi Mike,
>
> Yes, sorry, I was just making some loose associations and didn’t quite come off clearly. I will disclaim my forthcoming statement by stating that this is based off my own experiences and perceptions, not any sort of objective analysis.
>
> It seems to me that many people, especially young people, turn to studying the field of psychology to obtain answers to the essential questions of life like how to live a good life, how to eliminate suffering, how to be happy. The sort of grounding questions that drive us all. I think that psychology hopes to answer these questions, but fails to do so in a manner that is clear and communicable. I do not think that most people study physics, biology, chemistry, mathematics etc. to answer these questions. Most people don’t need much of an understanding of those fields to navigate life. Logic falls in a weird place here, because I think philosophy attempts to answer these questions, but not logic directly. The overlap of what psychology as a field seems to seek to answer: “how to live a good life” with what it actually says: “administering X gets result Y in ZZ% of cases in this population, roughly” muddles our clear conceptual understanding. Fields such as chemistry (or physics, etc.) do not face this issue, because chemistry isn’t concerned with how to live a good life.
>
> I think that Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life gives a good, easy-to-understand set of tenants to guide one’s life, but much of the work of the field fails to do so.
>
> For example, one friend of mine who is interested in psychology (though expresses his interests highly different than most psychologists do), asked me for book recommendations that could give him practical tools to apply to his life to make his life better. He did clarify: other than 12 Rules for Life. He had borrowed my copy of Jung’s “Modern Man in Search of a Soul” and found it helpful, but too theoretical to serve much practical purpose. I failed to give him a decent response, because I really didn’t know how to respond. I asked him to clarify what he wanted help with, and he mentioned communication, so I turned him to Carl Roger’s work. This seemed to me like poor response to his actual concern. This interaction left me questioning: what are the clear tools for sense making that are likely contained within the collective knowledge of the field that we fail to pass along to people? We can administer “evidence-based therapies”, or work deeply with clients to understand and systematically problem-solve lives, but why can’t we just provide practical tools for sense making and guides for decision making? Is this not a goal of the field, or is it my own goal? I do think that this is a concern that I hope to address, but I’ve found little answers outside of Peterson’s work. I think it is a question that many people have, especially young people such as myself. And I think many turn to psychology, because of its necessary entanglement with individual’s lives, for these answers and find them nowhere.
>
> Hopefully that’s clarifying!
>
> Cole
>
> On Tue, Jul 21, 2020 at 9:16 PM Michael Mascolo <[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
> Cole:
>
> I don’t understand what you mean by the following:
>
> However, in thinking about physics and logic, many can hold an extremely lackluster of view of these topics and get on with their life unphased. Some would seek to use these fields as tools for self-understanding, but not in the same way that many turn to psychology. How do we address those who want the basics tenants of psychology to use as a guiding light to navigate life? The answer, I think, is unclear.
>
> Can you clarify?
>
> M
>
> Michael F. Mascolo, Ph.D.
> Academic Director, Compass Program
> Professor, Department of Psychology
> Merrimack College, North Andover, MA 01845
> 978.837.3503 (office)
> 978.979.8745 (cell)
>
> Political Conversations Study: www.CreatingCommonGround.org <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.creatingcommonground.org_&d=DwMFaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=79wJiaT4bXDRfV1EMVsmPkxbv8uPhV6n0qUYKP-GBJo&s=IykyJmfWvX70DKP1zsIp_sn2ayf5_8fV2KGUQaWLhss&e=>
> Blog: Values Matter <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.psychologytoday.com_us_blog_values-2Dmatter&d=DwMFaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=79wJiaT4bXDRfV1EMVsmPkxbv8uPhV6n0qUYKP-GBJo&s=jgEqr8OsSnqrHrW_okPCT78KRmK8gEIleZsKyl7c_L8&e=>
> Journal: Pedagogy and the Human Sciences <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__scholarworks.merrimack.edu_phs_&d=DwMFaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=79wJiaT4bXDRfV1EMVsmPkxbv8uPhV6n0qUYKP-GBJo&s=03qA4UGuNCJ1gVXfpNQWt6zza0bxAtJNEsvMnecClrE&e=> <>
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> "Things move, persons act." -- Kenneth Burke
> "If it's not worth doing, it's not worth doing well." -- Donald Hebb
>
>> On Jul 21, 2020, at 9:07 PM, Cole Butler <[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
>>
>> However, in thinking about physics and logic, many can hold an extremely lackluster of view of these topics and get on with their life unphased. Some would seek to use these fields as tools for self-understanding, but not in the same way that many turn to psychology. How do we address those who want the basics tenants of psychology to use as a guiding light to navigate life? The answer, I think, is unclear.
>
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