Is psychology analytical?

[pljames]

Is there more than one way to study (analyse) the mind? If there is six ways to understand mathematics then the answer should be yes. But with so many different fields of psychology which field is the best one of all the sub disciples of psychology? Can one disicipline be (morphed) into another without changing the original discipline? If words can be then disciplines can as well. I would summize that one could study the mind and its sub disciplines as one object with many parts. But can that one part holistically change the part that is a problem or vice versa. With the patient going from and to different thoughts rapidlly does not give the theapist any clue to whats the patients problem.

I from the patients point of view was totally convinced I was correct in my assumption that the fault lied in the other person and not me. Therefore I felt rational and was trying to prove it to my theapist but my behavior was irractic and out of control. I now see where the theapist which saw my problem as out of control was the stimulus to create fear in her. Maybe this thread is in the wrong subject area? pljames

[talsiber]

I'm not sure if this answers in any way your question.
Anyway, none does anything without a motive. Sometimes it may not be a reasonable motive and most of the times to the observer it seems that way since the don't follow the chain of thoughts and emotions that leaded the person to act the way he acts. So in order to calm someone down for example you first need to see what brought him to this situation and then make him question his motivation. When you achieve that the person will not be able to use the previews motive to reach that situation anymore and he will calm down. In any case that's what I do when my friends get upset with something and I need to calm them down.
If your therapist had also try something similar it would probably work but the problem with psychology seems to be that it doesn't have certain algorithms to reach certain targets (although I believe it could have) and that means that it depends a lot on who is practicing it as well.

[voodoo scientist]

There is no "best" psychology discipline, much like there is no "best" mathematics discipline. In psychology, each discipline can be conceptualized as a measurement instrument, so for the purpose of this explanation, imagine your mind/experience as a room, the field of cognitive psychology as a Geiger counter, the field of behavioral psychology as a thermometer and the field of evolutionary psychology as a barometer. Each instrument will report widely different measures depending on what they are measuring, but they're all measuring the same room.

In this case, one wouldn't conclude any of them are better than another, though depending on the specific nature of the problem at hand, one would likely conclude that one is more useful or efficient than another. It is in this manner that fields of psychology differ as well. Freudian psychoanalysis didn't go out of style because it was found to be objectively wrong at some point, it went out of style because it was found to measure nothing meaningful.

[HexHammer]

I find that there are indeed many ways of understanding and practising psychology.

- Ordinary shrinks will waste time asking to your childhood, and rely more on a self healing method caused by Freud utterly messing up a patient, also that other shrinks has through suggestion messed up patients.
- Coatches will use more pragmatic psychology in focusing on the problem at hand, thus imo have a much more efficient treatment. Specially people from cutthroat enviroment, like big buisnesses/special military forces.
- most school psychology classes are parrot speeches and won't really teach you the deeper understanding of the science.

A long long time back about 1991, I was in a school psychology class and had a debate about survaliance of the citizens and DDR Stasi regime, all would naively claim there would be less survaliance and more freedom, but I said if a huge manmade disaster would occur, there would be more survailance, 9/11 happend and look how "War on Terror" changed everything back to DDR and it's Stasi Regime ..just in a lighter version though.

[pljames]

Excellent analogy. pljames

There is no "best" psychology discipline, much like there is no "best" mathematics discipline. In psychology, each discipline can be conceptualized as a measurement instrument, so for the purpose of this explanation, imagine your mind/experience as a room, the field of cognitive psychology as a Geiger counter, the field of behavioral psychology as a thermometer and the field of evolutionary psychology as a barometer. Each instrument will report widely different measures depending on what they are measuring, but they're all measuring the same room.

In this case, one wouldn't conclude any of them are better than another, though depending on the specific nature of the problem at hand, one would likely conclude that one is more useful or efficient than another. It is in this manner that fields of psychology differ as well. Freudian psychoanalysis didn't go out of style because it was found to be objectively wrong at some point, it went out of style because it was found to measure nothing meaningful.

[Rubinov0993]

In my point of view of course its Analytical because as psychologist they try to analyse the persons behavior their train of thought, the type of illness they have and how they deal with it everyday in their lives. There are different ways for example to analyse the behavior of the person like an experimental behavior analysis which involves basic research designed to add to the body of knowledge about behavior. Another example is applied behavior analysis and it focuses on applying these behavior principles to real life situations. Its very important that we that we analyse people and their behaviors to understand them better.