MADMAN - John R. Suler, Ph.D. - copyright 1995
Chapter 8 - Scientific
"I think you two are both too crazy," Sheikh interjected."Psychology, psychiatry, inkblots - let's not talk about such things now. This is time to relax.""Unfortunately, I think we have to get back to the unit," Bob added.
Ron looked at his watch. "Yeah. I have to go. See you later." He sprang out of his chair and briskly walked away. The others followed him, at a more casual pace.
"Are you also returning, Tom?" Sheikh asked.
"No. I have a few more minutes left. I'm going to hang out here for a bit."
Trailing behind the others, Bob smiled at me as he left. A small spark of gladness shot through me, though my stomach was still jumpy from the debate. I might have won that battle, but I sensed I was losing the war. Again I noticed the sore spot in my throat. It hurt more than before. My whole throat felt tight and dry. All that talking probably aggravated it. I picked up my cup, but it was empty. Ron had left behind an almost full cup of ice water, too tempting to resist. I took a sip.
Bitter! He must have squeezed a lime into it.
Maybe Sheikh was right. Maybe I had overdone my debate with Ron. I should try to think of him as a colleague, not an enemy. After all, the clinical psychologist and psychiatrist are more like each other than they realize. They both feel like second class citizens. Physicians tend to look down on psychiatrists because they do not practice "real" medicine. Academic psychologists, especially the hardcore experimentalists, belittle clinical psychologists for not being sufficiently scientific. In fact, several Ivy League schools long ago dropped their clinical psychology programs. Helping people just wasn't considered scholarly work, so go somewhere else and do it.
People try to gain acceptance by becoming more scientific, or more medical, or both. Since the rise of such idols as Pavlov and Skinner, many clinical psychologists have converted to the ultimate doctrine of scientific psychology - Behaviorism. Forget about analyzing dreams and free associations - the intangible, flittering subjective stuff of psychoanalysis. Instead, use objective experiments to study observable, problematic behaviors and how to change them. They electrically shocked fetishists into conventional sexuality. They reinforced wall-flowers for making eye contact and raising their voices. They popped thousands of M&M's into the mouths of unruly children. The next step was logical: If they could shape overt "outside" behavior, then why not covert "inside" behavior - like physiological processes? Enter biofeedback. With their machines that beeped and blinked, they attacked hypertension, headaches, jaw aches, cold feet, and, finally, the most fundamental ingredients of behavior - hormones and neurotransmitters. Then, feeling confident, they stepped boldly into the physician's semantic world. They no longer practiced "behavior modification" - now it was "behavioral medicine" and "biopsychology."
Often, clinicians are fighting a loosing battle in their quest for acceptance among scientific psychologists. The objections their colleagues raise against them is an irresistible displacement. There is a broader, more powerful prejudice against psychology in general and all of the other "soft" social sciences. Biologists, physicists, engineers, and their many brethren, simply have a hard time believing that the study of human behavior is scientific. Only proteins, atomic particles, and Newton's laws are the true children of science. But isn't there a contradiction running around here? For if these hard scientists truly believe the scientific method cannot be applied to studying human qualities, then they must assume that these qualities are, somehow, basically irrational or unpredictable - that the solid, precise laws of Nature do not extend to Human Nature. Now, that assumption puts them in a funny position. How can we Homo Sapiens, filled with perfectly illogical thoughts and emotions, create this scientific process which is supposedly so logical? Can something imperfect beget something perfect? Can the human mind forge an epistemology that can explain the entire universe, except the mind that created it? If so, it must mean this mind stands outside the universe - otherwise, we should accept it as an object of scientific study. Maybe we've convinced ourselves that we can grab our own bootstraps and, by the sheer power of logical thought, transcend our imperfect cogitations. Maybe we're trying our best to transcend our emotions, the real source of our irrationality. But is there any thought completely divorced from feeling? Is there any theory that is not a byproduct of the personality that created it? Can we ever leap out of our own skins? It seems a bit self-delusional, even grandiose.
In a way, I guess I can't blame the hard-nosed scientist for being skeptical of psychology. Psychology certainly is confusing, even to us psychologists. First of all, it's too diverse for its own good. The statistician tapping away at their computer keyboards, the touchy-feely therapist who pounds pillows with his clients, the researcher dissecting a cat's brain, the consultant trying to boost assembly-line production - all may share the title "psychologist." What do all these people have in common. Not a lot.
Psychotherapy is even more confusing. So many schools of thought, so few areas of agreement. The psychoanalysts look down on the behaviorists, the behaviorists look down on the psychoanalysts, and everyone thinks the humanists are fuzzy-headed. You name it - and someone thinks it's therapeutic while someone else thinks it's a joke. Jog with patients, massage them, give them electric shocks and emetics, make them roll around on the floor and scream and cry to reenact their birth traumas, analyze their dreams, their history, their body language, their family, their syntax. Ungainly, divided against itself, psychology is losing its accountability. It's that uncertainty about ourselves that can turn us psychologists into pompous know-it-alls.
Without consciously initiating the act, I stood up to leave, as if trying, instinctively, to get away from myself. It was time for my next appointment, anyhow. On the way out of the cafeteria, I dropped my cup and plate into the garbage. The spaghetti man, half consumed, disappeared into the black receptacle.
"So long, pal," I said.