MUHARRAM 11, 1430 A.H.
WEDNESDAY JANUARY 7 2009
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How psychology can become true science (II)
By Ozodi Thomas Osuji
ozodiosuji@gmail.com
Extant conclusions by psychologists, such as Freud, Adler, Jung, Horney, Fromm, Laing, Skinner, Maslow, Allport, Lewin, Carl Rogers, Eysenck, Harry Stack Sullivan, Ellis, Becks etc are interesting speculations on the nature of human behavior but not science. None of those conjectures have been demonstrated as true. It is only when we can show the self evident nature of psychological conclusions can we call them scientific.
Applying statistics to our observations do not make them scientific. If you said that nine out of ten people did something that does not mean that what they did is going to occur in the future, and is predictable; it simply means that given certain conditions they did what they did and if the conditions change they could do something different. David Hume pointed out this problem with inductive and deductive reasoning.
The fact that you observe regularities (statistics) does not mean that they are natural phenomena, it simply means that under the conditions (which you probably set up) those regularities occur. If you change the conditions different regularities occur. For example, in America racist whites do their best to convey to black persons that they are inferior persons. Many black Americans internalize the white serving view that they are inferior persons (see the writings of those who study the behavior of colonized persons, especially Kardiner and Oversay, Karon, Clark, Pettigrew, Frazier, Memmi, Omanini, Fanon etc). Racism damages the self esteem of black children. The typical black child, by age six, correctly assesses his environment and understands that no matter what he does he is relegated to second class citizenship. Some black children in racist America give up on amounting to anything significant in racist America. Then the very racists who perpetrated this heinous crime against humanity come around and test black folk and conclude that they do not do well in American learning situations. If the conditions were changed and black folk controlled white folk and made white folk to feel inferior clearly they would do better than white folk. For example, many Africans have not had their self esteem damaged by racist white Americans and therefore tend to do well in learning situations.
What passes as psychology are belief systems and the individual can choose to believe them and predicate his behaviors on them and in doing so seem to make them true. This is not how science is supposed to work.
This is not to say that psychological speculations are not useful; of course, some of them are useful; it is to say that we should not take the tree for the forest. Until we prove a hypothesis it is not a fact.
As I see it, psychology is still part of philosophy and it is insane to license psychologists. To license a psychologist or psychiatrist is tantamount to the state licensing ministers and having those use their religions to evaluate appropriate and inappropriate human behavior.
I recognize licensed medical doctors and engineers because they are dealing with material things (the human body, objects). We can understand and measure how objects work but not the human mind. In as much as we do not yet understand the nature of thinking, no one should be seen as an expert on it.
Psychology would become more useful if psychologists stopped pretending ability to understand other people and told us what they understand about themselves. If Freud had told us what he thought he knew about himself rather than about other persons he would have made more sense rather than project his half baked ideas to innocent persons and persuade them to accepting them as true.
Psychoanalysis could not heal any so-called neurotic because it did not understand neurosis; it was merely projecting stupid conjectures on the causes of neurosis to people. You cannot heal what you have not understood.
The same goes for behaviorism and neuroscience, for none of them is able to heal any one; they are unable to heal any one because they have not understood any one.
Since the only person the individual can really understand is himself it is better if so-called psychologists told us about their selves and left other persons to evaluate their insights into the genesis of their behaviors and determine whether those insights apply to them or not. Alas, instead owning that they are talking about themselves they pretend to be talking about other persons. Who would read Freud and not know that his weird conjectures are about himself, read Adler and not understand that he is talking about his own sense of inferiority and efforts to seem superior, or Jung and not see that he is overly interested in spiritual matters or Horney and not understand that she is talking about her self rejection and effort to seem ideal in a society that rejects women as they are and expects them to seem masculine before they are respected?
As I understand it, Western psychologists do not want to talk about themselves or reveal their issues to the public but instead jabber about other people’s issues. Why hide their issues from other persons, what is this whole idea of hiding the self while pretending to understand other selves, why not let ones self be an open book for all persons to see themselves in? I certainly do not mind revealing myself to the public and allow the reader to make of me what he or she wants to. It is cowardly to hide the self; courage lies in being transparently open.
For as long as I can remember, I have been curious about my individual psychology. I wanted to understand who I am. The exigencies of my body made it critical that I understand my body and the thinking and behavior that that body generates. As a child my body was almost always heated up, inflamed; I felt like my body was on fire! The littlest exercise made me feel tired. When ambient temperature rose to eighty or more degrees Fahrenheit my body itched all over; I sought cooler places to stay when ambient temperature was hot.
My problematic physiological status made it absolutely necessary for me to develop an avoidant approach to the environment. I was always seeking escape from things that I anticipated would exacerbate my pained body.
In my youth, if a psychologist had tested me he probably would have concluded that I had separation anxiety and or avoidant personality (anxious, shy person). I felt physically inadequate and inferior and avoided all sorts of things that caused me pain.
Since, as Carl Rogers pointed out, most extant societies, by and large, accept children when they are able to do what they want done (we accept athletes more than we accept “lazy bums”) it was apparent that I was not seen as the ideal specimen of physicality. I felt socially rejected.
Of course I did not like been socially rejec ted. To avoid been rejected I kept mostly to myself. Those I went to elementary and secondary schools with probably did not know who I was. I simply avoided other kids. In secondary school (boarding school) I would go to class and then to my dormitory room and lie on my bed and read and did not have much social interaction with the other kids (I always had one or two good friends).
I found schooling a chore and wished that I was not at school. Teachers would require certain books for the entire quarter or year and I would read them in a matter of days and simply read anything else that interested me. Going to class was boring and I often skipped classes and simply lay on my bed reading whatever interested me. This pattern continued at the university where I read whatever interested me.
Despite not paying attention to my studies I still managed to have mostly good grades. In racist America, I heard so much about IQ that I had my IQ tested. I supposedly am in the superior range. ( Most people are said to have average IQ, between 85-115; some have above average, 120-130; and a handful have superior IQ,132 and above.)
Now, would the person who performed the testing on me have understood why I avoided many things? Saying that I felt socially rejected, feared social rejection, felt anxious from anticipated social rejection and to avoid feeling anxious withdrew from people is descriptive but not explanatory.
What would explain my behavior is the understanding of the specifics of my inherited biological constitution and social experiences. I withdrew from people because of my overall physiological state. I inherited deficient Cytochrome C oxidase activity and spondilolysis. This is a genetic matter that required genetic (DNA) testing, MRIs, extensive lab (blood) tests, muscle biopsies, neuromuscular and other tests to diagnose them properly (see appendix). These very expensive tests are, unfortunately, often not available to poor persons, certainly not to third world persons; poor persons are probably more likely to be told that their physical issues that ordinary medical science is unable to figure out are in their heads (that they are psychosomatic, hypochondriac) and other such nonsense that primitive medicine is given to perpetrating on its patients.
These rare genetic disorders disposed my body to behave in the manner it did. My thinking responded to the physiological discomforts it felt with anxiety and avoidant behavior.
The human personality: the individual’s habitual pattern of thinking and behaving, is a secondary response to his inherited physiological constitution and the realities of his culture. I would say that personality is, at least, seventy five percent responses to inherited biological issues and twenty five percent responses to social issues.
If you want to understand the human personality you have to understand each individual’s inherited body, all of it, not just the brain.
People ought not to be called psychologists or psychiatrists unless they have thorough training in the human body. The human brain is the headquarters of a complex machine and reflects problems in any part of that machine. To understand how the brain works we must not only understand the brain itself but the entire body. Anxiety disorder and avoidant behaviors are responses to dysfunctions in other parts of the body, not just the brain.
Extrapolating from my experience, I believe that all human personalities are products of the individuals inherited bodies and early childhood experiences. Where the inherited body is relatively healthy the individual forms a normal personality and where there are problems in the body, any part of it, the individual forms personality disorders aka neurosis.
Where there are profound disorders of the nervous system the individual may form severe thinking and behaving disorders, aka mental disorders (schizophrenia, mania, delusion and major depression).
I believe that all personalities, normal and abnormal, are products of the human body and social experiences and that psychology would turn itself into a science by studying how the human body produces the human personality rather than merely conjecture on human behavior. Psychology must become part of biology or else it is mere speculation hence philosophy.
To be continued.
