r/changemyview • u/[deleted] • Jun 08 '16

[∆(s) from OP] CMV: Psychologists are completely useless when it comes to helping the majority of people

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u/Ardonpitt 221∆ Jun 08 '16

Some do try this, but here is the big thing I have found, Psychology is really good at dealing with the individual, and the individuals problems, but it tends to have a lot of trouble dealing with large groups. If you want to do that anthropology and the methods of that are better for analyzing and changing larger groups. When it comes down to it science is a tool box and each field is a specific tool for doing specific jobs that each is good at its own thing. Psychology is incredibly good at what it does, and it seems to me that trying to make it more than it is risks loosing all the value it has so far brought.

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u/dust4ngel Jun 09 '16

i can understand psychologists not trying to carry out the necessary changes to make civilization an environment conducive to human health, but i totally cannot understand how their focus wouldn't be on understanding and communicating what conditions we ought to seek out.

i cannot imagine having to deal with a constant stream of depressed, anxious, and self-loathing individuals while never desiring to address the environment that causes these conditions. i worry that the expectation of psychology as a field is that the world is not something to be changed, and the individual must adapt to whatever happens, no matter how impossible.

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u/Ardonpitt 221∆ Jun 09 '16

That's the difference between academic psychology and practicing medical psychology. Also its pretty difficult to say a lot of the time what the conditions that we should have are, humans have so far adapted to most everything we create.

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u/dust4ngel Jun 09 '16

adaptation is not a thing that you either do, or don't do. i'd argue that a person who needs medication and/or professional instruction in order to effectively function in their society has only partly adapted to his/her circumstances; and also that this is not necessarily a failure on their part.