I was browsing through the typical news pages of the search engines when I noticed an occasional blurb that is similar to: "Your Handwriting Reveals Your Personality", or "Nine Ways To Tell If Your Relationship Is Not Fulfilling Your Needs". Now, I'm not saying that there is no validity whatsoever to these pieces, but I have spent the last three years of my life studying hard in a psychology graduate program, and something concerns me. What bothers me is whether or not I should ask for all of my tuition money back. The reason I would do this is because my psychology education is obviously woefully incomplete, never having been taught anything like "Your Handwriting Reveals Your Personality" or "Nine Ways To Tell If Your Relationship Is Not Fulfilling Your Needs", or even anything remotely that interesting or exciting.
What I was taught instead was research methods, statistics, developmental stages, schools of therapy, etc. Is it that my education was really incomplete, or could it be that the public is being egregiously misled on what psychology is and who the real experts are? For instance, people look up to a certain TV personality with a shiny scalp, and consider said person an expert to be trusted. Yet, said person is not even a licensed psychologist! He says many interesting things and is enjoyable to watch, but what he is delivering is kindly advice and tough love from good ol' uncle Al, not psychology.
So why would articles about handwriting analysis and pop-psych relationship advice concern me? Is it because my field is being misrepresented? No, I really could not care less about that. If people think that psychologists dance naked around bonfires in the woods, that is really fine with me. What worries me is the way that these things affect the culture that I live in. People are being fed crap and believing it, which in turn influences cultural trends and behavior, which in turn affects me because I have to live in this culture and revel in this spectacle of sophomoric beliefs and easy solutions to difficult problems. If you are having problems with your partner, dump them. Problems with your spouse? Divorce them. If your family makes you feel bad, disown them. If you don't like your nose, fix it. If anything feels good, then do it!
This is not what I was actually taught in school. I was not taught that all of one's problems are the result of early childhood events or how your parents raised you. I was presented with this as one possible theory among many theories. I was also taught the theory that perhaps one's problems are one's own responsibity, and to look for answers in how your mother toilet-trained you is useless. I was taught that perhaps living a self-preoccupied existence is not such a good idea. I often got irritated at professors because I wanted answers just like the public wants answers, but all they gave me was more questions. It became apparent to me that they do not really know the answers. I often quipped that they are walking question marks with Ph.D.'s. The truth is that there are many things that are not known, and many divergent opinions on what the answers are. As a certain quip says, "Ask ten psychologists the same question and get eleven answers, one 'maybe', one 'pending', and nine 'more research is needed.'"
Also, I was not taught that the key to healthy living is to "feel good" and "be happy", and if anything is interfering with one's "feeling good", then it is a problem which must be resolved by any means. If you are in a bookstore and you pass the self-help (also known as pop-psych; the more derogatory version) section, stop and briefly look over the titles on the shelves. Then keep moving. Most of what you will find there is commercialized to sell books, not good advice. There is definitely some good advice to be found there, but the public needs to be educated on how to separate the wheat from the chaff.
Most of what you will find in the self-help section is geared toward giving people what they want while discussing their favorite subject: "themselves." In life, you must definitely care for yourself, but then there is that other person whom people tend to forget about in our current culture. That person is the "other" which must be tended to in addition to the "self". Ask yourself, when a person is put in the ground, is the success that life measured by how well they took care of themselves, or could it perhaps be the depth of the of relationships they had with others? Which is the correct answer? I don't know. I was trained to only have more questions.
There is a certain term in psychology which I am sure you are familiar with. That word is narcissism. In the example I gave above about "Nine Ways To Tell If Your Relationship Is Not Fulfilling Your Needs", what is wrong with this question? Who is the question focused upon? Perhaps a better way to phrase the question would be "Nine Ways To Tell If Your Relationship Is Not Fulfilling Your Partner's Needs". In that version of the sentence, we are not focusing upon what best serves the almighty self. We are focusing upon the other; an alternative way to live one's life. But what the popular culture teaches us is narcissism, look out for number one, because that is what sells products. I definitely am not against selling products. I am a capitalist, which means I like to spend my money wisely, and be informed on the nature of what I am buying and how it will benefit me. I am sure you do not want to waste your money either.