quote:

Originally posted by Lews Erm, weren't pretty much all of the early psychologists philosophers?

But I think James was still more so than his contemporaries, except maybe for Freud. They all had to think of new ways to do their work, and even Wundt philosophised a bit, but no one did that to the extent James did. He was actively inside the philosophical community, became the prominent leader of Pragmatism (as Peirce was an outcast) which propelled his ideas away from the psychology departments (in contrast, Wundt's and Titchener's structuralism has nothing to do with the Structuralist wave that was all the rage among philosophers and literary critics last century).

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Originally posted by Lews William James was one of the first functionalists, if I recall correctly. Wanting to figure out what each part of the brain did, how it did it, and why. Though he's more famous for writing the first psychology textbook. Though apparently not that famous..

Yes, you're right (there's an interesting bit about his contribution to early functionalism in Schulz & Schulz "History of Psychology" or whatever their book is called).

But, yeah. What I find truly bizarre is that you expect a linguist to read the first textbooks (such as Sausure's "Course in General Linguistics", published just 20 years after James' "Principles of Psychology") whereas the same doesn't (seem to) happen in psychology. Our field is as fragmented as psychology nowadays, with dozens of different schools of thought, which I think makes it all the more important for beginners to read the fundamental works that laid the groundworked used by future generations.

Am I not right?

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quote:

Originally posted by jennypie Perhaps a bit off topic, but if you wanna read some real fucked up shit, check out this link: http://www.oakridgeclassaction.ca/index.html The court documents reveal in detail what the doctors did. Particularly the stuff in 'Volume 2'.

Interesting.

On a side note I tried to bring this stuff up when you and ******** were locking horns a few months back.

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Originally posted by FuzzQi Interesting. On a side note I tried to bring this stuff up when you and ******** were locking horns a few months back.

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Originally posted by Silky Johnson I recall people bringing up [Rosenhan's] research up in arguments around here, using it to backup the case against the validity of psychology. But people need to remember that that this was 1973. Psychology and psychiatric medicine have come a long way since then. Something else to think about with the rising rates of mental illness is that we have come such a long way. New technology, new/better research, changing attitudes, etc. lead to better understanding of mental illness; which leads to better assessment and treatment.

Crashed & Burned

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quote:

Originally posted by jennypie I recall people bringing this research up in arguments around here, using it to backup the case against the validity of psychology. But people need to remember that that this was 1973. Psychology and psychiatric medicine have come a long way since then.

Out of interest, if someone tried it again now what do you think the result would be?

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quote:

Originally posted by Lira It's on my to-read list. Did you like it? I've got his "Pragmatism: A Reader" and I liked it very much.

the menand book was fantastic; never dull despite its title and heft. a few years ago, after having read a few hundred history books for my qualifying phd exams, one of my advisers gave it to me in order to "decompress" from all the heavy academic stuff i'd read the previous year. i gave him a 'wtf' look when i saw it, but it was a fun read.

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quote:

Originally posted by SYSTEM-J Out of interest, if someone tried it again now what do you think the result would be?

Well, having worked in a psychiatric hospital in the admissions and assessment ward myself, I can tell you from experience that there is more compassion, less labeling, and a general desire to rule OUT mental illness, as opposed to, well - the opposite. Generally speaking, when patients came onto the ward they were looked at holistically, and a lot of time was spent ensuring the collection of a complete health history instead of focusing on psychiatric diagnoses. Patients were not treated as a diagnosis/illness and they received a lot of counselling and support. Every effort was made to help these people find ways to cope with their problems and be able to function in a society that stigmatizes the mentally ill. Even the language used in patient charts is very careful to avoid labeling and judgement.


I definitely think the result would not be the same. But this is coming from a nursing perspective where it's written right into our code of ethics and practice standards that no person is to be treated as simply an illness or disease. And because health care is so multidisciplinary, I know that other modern health care-professionals have the same sort of respect for people. Plus, everything is so strictly regulated and so many people are watching, so to speak, that I think it's more difficult to make those kind of mistakes. Rather, I think that professionals are a lot more critically mindful of the judgments they make. It's just preferred practice.

At least that's what I've seen. *shrug*



edit: not to mention it costs money to keep people in hospital beds...which is the flip side. The result may not be the same for reasons completely unrelated to assessment and diagnosis. There's a real issue with people who really need psychiatric help who don't get it because there isn't enough room for them in the "system". In fact, there is a story about a man who continually had himself admitted to various psych wards, knowing how sick he was, pleading for help. He kept getting turned back out into society without proper coping skills, or medication, and he ended up pushing some girl onto the subway tracks and killing her.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16713078/ns/dateline_nbc/page/2/

Last edited by Silky Johnson on May-16-2010 at 14:01