At 11:18 PM 28/08/2001 -0400, Eric wrote:
>I feel it is important at this time to make a distinction between the subject
>being studied and the methodology used.
Indeed, let's. If the subject being studied were the methodology being
used, it would, as someone put it, be "like pushing a bus up a hill from
the inside". Furthermore, we might find all sorts of cultural interferences
emanating from the methodologists who suddenly realised that the
methodology was just another value-laden, culturally-specific,
historically-constituted, far-from-objective set of arbitrary criteria
derived from "what is normal", especially when the subjects of the
methodology are human beings who are in turn produced by certain forces in
society, mediated by their genetic makeup, proclivities, talents,
abilities, ecosocial situatedness, etc etc etc.
>When I refer to the Natural Sciences
>it is indeed in the positivist attitude of using an empirical method; it is
>not that the study of human psychology compares to the study of chemical
>reactions.
And why not? Neuropsychology is entirely based on seeing human psychology
as chemical reactions. Hell, looked at from one perspective, all humans are
is an ongoing set of chemical reactions. From another more humorous
position, we are "slimy bags of mostly water". So: why is a sound
psychology not like chemistry? Some forms (the dominant ones) are clearly
positivistic, normatively informed, and methodologically "cleansed" of
values (ha!). Some chemical reactions take years, not seconds or days. What
is the difference?
Indeed, to get back to my original question to you: "what does psychology
study?" Are certain people inherently abnormal? Is IQ the only reliable
measure of this? Of course not. It is a one-dimensional, essentially
useless measure. There's a type of Apsbergers found in technocratic types,
a kind of asocialism associated with the positivistic mindset, and with
people gifted in maths and spatialisation, which is quite endemic amongst
technocrats, amongst people with extremely high IQs. In one sense, the
whole positivistic paradigm can be seen as a form of autism, or some other
asocial affliction.
You seem to want to use Galtonian categories to define normal and abnormal
people. But Galton's methods, along with those of his admirers and
contemporaries, were derived in such a narrow and fundamentally flawed way
as to be laughable today. I need not go into those here.
Humans cannot be studied positivistically. Sorry --- yes they can, but the
resultant findings will be narrow, asocial, and fundamentally meaningless.
We have trouble breaking out of our historical settings, and forget that
normative categories are derived from an historical view of what is
"normal". Call me an idiot, but I can't see your point or understand your
approach.
I know people who are incredibly gifted artists, musicians, etc who cannot
write or speak coherently. There are, as Vera John-Steiner notes, multiple
intelligences.
I'm waiting for a history of psychological "maladies" from an historical
perspective: one takes into account productive forces: why, today, do we
have widespread depression and epidemic suicide rates? Why was there mass
outbreaks of "hysteria" in the late 19th C? What produced them? What
prodcued the valium culture of teh sixties? Why all the Viagra? Is there an
epidemic of impotence amongst men? What socio-historical forces produce the
concept of the "homosexual as insane", as "sick"? What forces produce the
unwed mother as a candidate for institutionalisation? How come Australian
aboriginals were classified as Fauna until 1961, let alone as abnormal
people? Who is insane and why?
And so on ad infinitum.
G'nite.
Phil
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Oct 01 2001 - 01:02:20 PDT