I'm a latinamerican psychologist, and I've been working for 5 years in this field. Starting in my undergraduate years, I've always been very aware of some fundamental flaws of my profession, and I've gathered some arguments that I'd like to discuss. My point is the following: Psychology is grossly overrated, and this allows all sorts of abuses. I believe that I'm not saying anything new, and I'm certainly not the first one to bring up this issue. However, I've found that psychologists have very little interest in discussing it.
For the most part, all of my arguments stem from a conference given by philosopher Georges Canguilhem at a conference back in 1956. My main thesis is the same as his, but I say it in my own words, and I have adapted it to the recent developments of psychology.
This conference was called: What is psychology? So, what is it?
If we go to the American Psychological Association's webpage, we'll find the following definition:
Psychology is a diverse discipline, grounded in science, but with nearly boundless applications in everyday life.
They then go on to detail the different fields on which a psychologist may work. Notice how the emphasis is less on what psychology is, and more in what psychology is useful for. This is because, as Canguilhem says, as psychologists cannot define what they are, they are forced to justify their existence as specialists by means of their efficacy.
Now, this isn't necessarily bad. You can help people without knowing why or how you are helping them. The problem is that psychologists take their efficacy as proof that their theories are right. For instance, let's take one of psychologist's objects of study: Depression. There are literally hundreds of psychological theories about depression, and you'll find the whole range of them: From those that state that it's merely a neurochemical imbalance in the brain; to those that state that it's a lack of positive reinforcement in life; to those that believe it to be an existential and spiritual crisis arising from capitalist conditions. They all have techniques to treat depression, and they all work. But they cannot be all equally correct at the same time. It's the Dodo bird Verdict: "Everyone has won and all must have prizes".
A psychologist may argue that this is in fact something good, since psychology studies a complex problem, and having a diversity of opinions broadens the discussion. And perhaps, there must be some common factors that explain why different, and even opposing theses all seem to work at the same time. This is a good argument, but it's already far from mainstream psychology: Each psychological school is only interested in selling their particular brand, and they explain the other schools' success only because of the parts of their own theory that the other schools implement. And there's a good reason for this: It's simply impossible to integrate all of psychology without a common language. And this common language has never existed (Watson, the founder of behaviorism, complained in the 20's that two psychologists with different formations would define a simple concept like "emotion" in a different way). So the integration path only leads to an eclecticism where everything that is useful is sewed up into one profession in order to give the impression that it's just one seamless discipline, an eclecticism where everything works but nobody knows why, but the fact that it works is taken as the only and definite prove that it is true. As a psychologist called Steven Hayes said: "What is considered true is what works". I'm still still at awe at how a psychologist such as Hayes, who is one of the fathers of contemporary psychology, can blatantly speak about the epistemological bankruptcy of psychology in such outrageous terms, and how can he believe, even for a second, that it's a satisfactory answer to the problem at hand!
In the current state of the matter, the only reason why cristal therapy and angel therapy are not psychological therapies approved by the APA, is because they are lacking evidence of their efficacy. But this lack could easily be fixed if we really wanted to. Under the right circumstances, literally everything works. There's art therapy, massage therapy, cognitive therapy, psychoanalytical therapy, sex therapy... hell, under the right circunstances, even murder may be therapeutic. We can produce thousands of working solutions to a problem, without shedding any light on its nature.
Psychology is, therefore, the science of producing solutions that work for people that need them. Sounds too broad? It is. Psychology knows no limits. Are you depressed? There's some psychological advice for you. Are you having children? There's some for you too. In love? Out of love? Yep, we got it. Are you a political candidate? A psychologist may counsel you. A mathematician? Psychology is the science of cognitive processes. You want revolution? Not without psychology. Are you a failure? Then you need a psychologist, obviously. Are you the most successful man in the world? Psychology will help you manage all that success. Since all problems are human, and since psychology studies human beings, there's no single problem where psychologists don't meddle. This should be cause for caution. We shouldn't hurry to find solutions to problems that we do not yet understand. But psychology goes in the opposite direction, and it goes the whole nine yards, and then some.
But, by what authority? Why do we trust psychologists to speak about politics, family, or work? Because, according to them, they are grounded in science. But we have shown that this science is epistemologically bankrupt: It works, therefore it's true. So we may not argue with psychology's results, but we may question its authority. How do we know that psychology is more than just a systematization of common sense, categorized by the criteria of efficacy, and translated into scientific terms? I believe that this is why psychological theories are oftentimes awfully boring. They are just made to suit a specific audience, to answer a specific question with the terms that are popular at the time when it appears, and made to be discarded, not when better evidence comes up, but when something else becomes popular.
So, does this mean that we should stop teaching psychology, and burn all psychology books? Not at all. Psychology is useful, and it does help. But the fact that you have an effective technique to treat anxiety, does not mean that you get the authority to determine what's rational or what's irrational. You only have that: A technique to treat anxiety. And that's good enough, in my opinion. I believe that psychology's problems may be fixed with a healthy dose of skepticism and humility - two things of which we are in dire need nowadays. Psychology, to me, is a good example of how scientific hubris plants a whole forest in order to hide one leaf. In the current state of affairs, perhaps not all problems can be solved, and there are things that are outside our control. We shouldn't try to hide those problems, we should try to understand them to the best of our ability and live them as the problems they are. Psychology simply has too many solutions, and too few interesting questions.
Here are some references that I quoted on this text, I'm too lazy to cite them all in APA format:
Canguilhem, G. (1958). What is psychology? First published on Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale.
Hayes, S. (2004). Acceptance and commitment therapy, relational frame theory, and the third wave of behavioral and cognitive therapies. In S. C. Hayes (Ed.), The act in context: The canonical papers of Steven C. Hayes (pp. 210–238). Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2015-53131-013
Watson, J. B. (1913). Psychology as the behaviorist views it. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1926-03227-001
Definition of psychology by the APA: https://www.apa.org/about
It is of note that I didn't even mention the replication crisis in this text, which further complicates psychology's epistemological basis. Here's the wikipedia article about this problem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis#In_psychology
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Notes -
This connects with something I've always been suspicious of. Therapy seems to be something of a religion here in certain circles in the western world. According to the adherents, everybody benefits from therapy all the time. Yet I've never met anyone who seems to have achieved quantifiable improvements in their lives due to it, or said that they've been "fixed" or "cured" from whatever was wrong with them and don't need it anymore.
Therefore I wonder - is this all a load of crap? Is there any real benefit from what amounts to talking to somebody who I guess seems sympathetic or at least a good listener? What if we're actually giving even more energy and power to whatever mental issues we might have by talking about them so much?
Note, I'm definitely not saying that it never benefits anyone. If you're getting actual quantifiable benefits from it and it seems to be progressing towards an achievable goal, well then good for you, carry on. I'm only leaning against the specific claim that many people are in fact making that open-ended therapy is beneficial for absolutely everyone.
I feel like I satisfy these criteria and I'm willing to discuss this with you in further detail, if you'd like. I can quantify improvements on the following metrics post-therapy:
Self-assessment of life satisfaction and mood (measured daily).
Number of friends, number of minutes spent engaging in meaningful social connection (by daily self-assessment).
Sleep schedule consistency (measured by, for example, number of appointments missed due to sleep issues).
Income and work schedule consistency (measured by my working hours, which I log).
As well as a similar number of harder-to-quantify but very personally noticeable improvements to my quality of life, such as my excitement and eagerness to try out new things, my decrease in aversion to social risk, and the fact that I can now stand in front of a mirror and admire my appearance instead of hating it. I attribute my decision to go to a therapeutic rehab for 3-4 months, as well as the ~2 years of follow-up talk therapy, as the major causal factors in arriving at these results. And while "cure" is a strong word, I previously satisfied the diagnostic criteria of three major mental illnesses (major depression, personality disorder, and social anxiety), and post-therapy I no longer satisfy the diagnostic criteria of any of them.
Specific factors that helped me:
Being thrown into an unfamiliar social environment and having no other option but to learn to engage with the people around me and engage in unfamiliar hobbies (since I had no PC during all of this).
Receiving encouragement (and social pressure) to leave my comfort zone and overcome fears.
Better understanding my own emotions, wants and needs, through talk therapy and critical analysis of my behavior.
Providing exposure to, practice on and familiarization with alternative behavioral strategies to deal with negative emotions.
Literally just having a parental surrogate figure that cares about your well-being and is not themselves mentally disordered in the same genetically inherited ways you are.
But I will go out and say that therapy is not an abstract thing - the most effective interventions are also the most visceral and concrete. I would broadly speaking characterize it as the process of reprogramming my emotional reactions to certain stimuli. No amount of thinking will do that, you have to experience the world in a different way, to arrive at a different result.
I will also, quite frankly, propose that the success rate of therapy depends more on the individual receiving it than the practitioner, and that a better outcome is generally correlated with other good stabilizing factors - so ironically, those most in need of therapy are those least equipped to benefit from it.
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