The 2018 volume, On Hijacking Science, edited by Edwin E. Gantt and Richard N. Williams, provides a good starting point in thinking about general questions about science, e.g., What is science? What are the differences, if any, between science and scientism? Why are there tensions between a scientific (scientistic) worldview and those grounded in older…
Category: General Psychology
A Science of/for Human Beings
Reflecting on the title of the book, Psychology as the Science of Human Being: The Yokohama Manifesto, it occurred to me that we can read the title in two different ways. First, psychology can be, and should be, a science that is responsive to human beings, to the messiness and ambiguities of our reality. According…
3 Reasons to Read Freud
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), known by some as the only true genius in the history of psychology, is a vastly misunderstood and misrepresented thinker. He is misrepresented in popular media as much as he is misrepresented in university classrooms. He is simplified and caricatured on PowerPoint slides by people who never read a page written by…
Finding Your Passion in Psychology: A Method of Study
It is common for senior undergrads or post-grads in Psychology to lose their interest. They forget why they had decided to enter into Psychology in the first place. Even when (or perhaps especially because) they get involved in a line of research, they might become cynical, practical, confused, mirroring the attitude of many of their…
Conversations & Positions
We shouldn’t think about conversations only as exchanges of information. Nor should we think about our positions in conversations only as givers and receivers of information. Too much emphasis on information overshadows the fact that our position in conversations are also tied with power, rights, and duties. For example, in a father-son conversation, we could…