Ian Parker once spoke about how psychology students join the field bursting at the seams with good will and a desire to help humanity. If only it were so easy to help a world waiting for the benevolence of a mental health professional. If only it were so easy to clean up the world and rid society of every little distress.
Dr Parker isn’t a cynic, neither is he a misanthrope who was harmed by psychology he questioned the motives with which a lot of students (me included) take a course in psychology. Our motives to play the fairy godmother or agony aunt to a world waiting to relive its suffering can be quite naive and even misplaced. Dr Parker in Revolution in Psychology described the hopes and disappointments of a psychologist and their career path. Once the initial charm of helping people has worn out psychologists must look out for their own interests.
The discipline of psychology has been criticised on various theoretical and methodological and even ethical points yet these debates hardly touch those who choose to join the field who believe in the benevolence of everything they heard during their training. Helping someone isn’t necessarily a bad thing but what is distressing that most psychologists walk into the field like soldiers marching into battle amidst the fanfare. And like all soldiers fighting a war they realise the futility and see the ugliness of battle. Unlike soldiers who desert the army psychologists carry on still hoping for miracles. Helping people is good and perhaps primeval at some level, but this manufactured condition of artificial illness and cure is quite alarming.
To quote Dr parker once again “ The discipline is very adept at identifying particular abnormalities in individual behaviour, and psychological descriptions unfortunately chime all too well with commonsensical views of who is ‘mad’ and who is ‘bad’.” It is with these notions that each generation of psychologists expands the field. To put it mildly most of our observations can be inane and so obvious that they can be quite amusing at times. Except we feed the minds of millions and have fueled popular imagination of what it means to have a slight anxiety and how it can hamper your productivity. We see rather than hear our clients and paradoxically see our symptoms by listening to them looking for them earnestly. I can understand and sympathise with suffering what I cant agree with is disorder and definition.
In our bid to help we mystify disorder and create causes and supply elaborate explanations as to why people do what they do or feel the way they do. I just received this text and feel I must add it here to validate my point. –
Read carefully
Here’s a personality test. This was devised by a team of famous psychologists around the world.
Imagine you walked into a hut by the river in the jungle. You get in and find that there are 7 beds to your right, 7 chairs to your left and a small table in the middle. On the table there are 4 different fruits apples , bananas, strawberries and peaches which fruit will you choose?
Your choice reveals something about you!
Results
If you choose apples you like apples.
If you choose bananas you like bananas.
If you choose strawberries you like strawberries.
If you choose peaches you like peaches.
Need I say more?
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