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what happens when you get me started on Maslow
V: is this a step towards or away from self-actualization?
me: ohhhhh do not even get me STARTED on Maslow
me: >:(
V: I want to get you started on Maslow.
me: then I will never get to showering or eating, and then I will never get to your beta
me: is that what you want
me: because if you say yes, I will legit give up cleanliness and food and go on a rant about the failings of psychology as a scientific field
V: It's like you don't know me at all. YES, i want to listen to that rant. Gladly and raptly.
me: okay
me: so psychology originated in philosophy, obviously, as all sciences do
me: but psychology never fucking let go of philosophy. people still treat it like philosophy, in fact, because it still treats ITSELF like philosophy. in intro psych classes, we as an academic culture are actually teaching shit like Freud and Maslow as the subject matter itself, not as history of the subject
me: Maslow legit believed in self-actualization as a crucial part of human development! he LEGIT included the attainment of pure happiness in his analysis of human needs! and instead of covering this in five minutes on the first day of class, as an introduction to how people USED to think, which is what it and the vast majority of current psychology classes SHOULD BE, we're teaching it as FACT, what the FUCK
me: intro psych classes consist largely of the presentation of various theories of human psychology that are 1) conflicting, 2) overly vague, 3a) composed of GUESSWORK, and 3b) FLAT-OUT FACTUALLY INCORRECT
me: the vast majority of introductory psychology classes should be kept entirely intact, in fact, and just relabeled "History of Psychology" and shunted to an elective position
me: while ACTUAL introductory psychology courses should consist of a curriculum (that AFAIK has not actually been created) focusing on CURRENTLY ACCEPTED RESEARCH and fucking NEUROSCIENCE. because brains are where this shit happens.
me: as a matter of fact, introductory neuroscience should be a PREREQUISITE to introductory psychology, because it it legitimately impossible to actually understand how people think without knowing anything about the structure and function of the brain
me: instead, we take these bright-eyed freshmen and subject them to an entire semester of discussion of Freud's anal obsession stage and Maslow's self-actualization bullshit, instead of teaching them how people actually think, and they come out of it thinking psychology is bullshit. and they're right, psychology as it currently exists IS bullshit
me: which is a fucking shame, because there's so much that could be done with it if it weren't composed solely of the people who didn't FUCKING DROP THE COURSE when the teacher started in on Erik motherflibbing Erikson
me: okay
me: okay.
me: ohhhhh do not even get me STARTED on Maslow
me: >:(
V: I want to get you started on Maslow.
me: then I will never get to showering or eating, and then I will never get to your beta
me: is that what you want
me: because if you say yes, I will legit give up cleanliness and food and go on a rant about the failings of psychology as a scientific field
V: It's like you don't know me at all. YES, i want to listen to that rant. Gladly and raptly.
me: okay
me: so psychology originated in philosophy, obviously, as all sciences do
me: but psychology never fucking let go of philosophy. people still treat it like philosophy, in fact, because it still treats ITSELF like philosophy. in intro psych classes, we as an academic culture are actually teaching shit like Freud and Maslow as the subject matter itself, not as history of the subject
me: Maslow legit believed in self-actualization as a crucial part of human development! he LEGIT included the attainment of pure happiness in his analysis of human needs! and instead of covering this in five minutes on the first day of class, as an introduction to how people USED to think, which is what it and the vast majority of current psychology classes SHOULD BE, we're teaching it as FACT, what the FUCK
me: intro psych classes consist largely of the presentation of various theories of human psychology that are 1) conflicting, 2) overly vague, 3a) composed of GUESSWORK, and 3b) FLAT-OUT FACTUALLY INCORRECT
me: the vast majority of introductory psychology classes should be kept entirely intact, in fact, and just relabeled "History of Psychology" and shunted to an elective position
me: while ACTUAL introductory psychology courses should consist of a curriculum (that AFAIK has not actually been created) focusing on CURRENTLY ACCEPTED RESEARCH and fucking NEUROSCIENCE. because brains are where this shit happens.
me: as a matter of fact, introductory neuroscience should be a PREREQUISITE to introductory psychology, because it it legitimately impossible to actually understand how people think without knowing anything about the structure and function of the brain
me: instead, we take these bright-eyed freshmen and subject them to an entire semester of discussion of Freud's anal obsession stage and Maslow's self-actualization bullshit, instead of teaching them how people actually think, and they come out of it thinking psychology is bullshit. and they're right, psychology as it currently exists IS bullshit
me: which is a fucking shame, because there's so much that could be done with it if it weren't composed solely of the people who didn't FUCKING DROP THE COURSE when the teacher started in on Erik motherflibbing Erikson
me: okay
me: okay.
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and this is exactly how i feel about linguistics, actually. sociolinguistics programs are actually the minority, believe it or not. as in, MOST LINGUISTICS PROGRAMS IN THE COUNTRY STILL TEACH CHOMSKY AS THE FUCKING WORD OF GOD. by this point, chomsky should have been laughed out of the field and socio- and neurolinguistics should be dominating everything instead of being relegated to the fringes. neurolinguistics, especially, should be THE linguistics field right now. we don't need to be wasting students' time teaching them chomsky's bullshit theories about how the brain works. WE SHOULD BE TEACHING THEM HOW WE NOW ACTUALLY KNOW THE BRAIN WORKS.
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chomsky's very hard to understand, largely because his linguistic theories are an interesting mix of science, pseudo-science, historical linguistics, and philosophy. (seriously, a LOT of how seriously you take him depends on your ability to buy into the idea of IDEAL LANGUAGE just existing out there somewhere as an absolute reality, a la plato.)
he should be taught as historical context for linguistics classes. he came along and debunked behaviorism (your psychology major heart would probably appreciate the hilariously douchey absolute EVISCERATION he gave skinner's theory of language acquisition), posited that there must be something more to language to explain our ability to infinitely generate new utterances, and then made up a bunch of shit about how he thought the brain worked.
then labov came along and basically founded sociolinguistics, which is interested in linguistic change and variation and the way it intersects with sociocultural and economic factors. (sociolinguistics has also pretty much debunked prescriptivism, because for the first time people have started studying linguistic variation instead of dismissing it as simply "bad" or improper or slang and have realized that all those awful nasty slangy dialects are JUST AS RULE-GOVERNED AS ANY OTHER FORM OF LANGUAGE. but that is a different rant entirely.) but once we actually started studying linguistic variation seriously, it quickly became apparent that it cannot simply be DISMISSED as chomsky dismisses it. linguistic variation is language. the first rule of language is that it's always changing and, ultimately, always simplifying. to disregard the process through which that change occurs is fucking ridiculous. ie: CHOMSKY IS FUCKING RIDICULOUS.
neurolinguistics is still a fledgling field, and it's not that common yet because you don't get too many people who know a ton about neuroscience and linguistics. it really is the future, though. chomsky made a bunch of shit up about how he thought the brain would have to work to make languaging possible. now that we're understanding more and more about the brain, wouldn't it make sense to actually try to figure that shit out for real? like. using ACTUAL SCIENCE?
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I went to the bureaucratic hell hassle of designing my own major when I was in school because of this. And oh yes, I do have a special dislike in my heart for Maslow, largely because of the way people revere him as psych itself as opposed to some guy who couldn't concentrate on his work when he hadn't had his afternoon snack yet.
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*giggling*
What did you call your major? Clark had the option of a self-designed neuroscience major, but I transferred in as a junior and didn't find out about the self-design option until a semester in, so I was pretty much out of time. I still wish sometimes that I'd tried, because I ended up taking a lot of science courses anyway--really, I'd only have had to do calc and physics instead of some upper-level psych courses. I would be in so much better shape for applying to grad school programs in behavioral neuroscience, which is what I've known I wanted to do since then.
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