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The problem psychology has with the unconscious mind is that, as Barry rightly says but seemingly does not agree with, if you can't measure it then it's not science. Psychology has fought - and to some degree is still fighting - to be taken serious as a science. If we can't measure things in psychology, we run the risk of falling into the same category as wishy washy things such as crystal healing or reiki.

For some, these things work, but its all but impossible to rule out the placebo effect if we cannot say how these things work.

Psychologists have to tread carefully with the nature of unconscious thought, and ways to explain it. People want to see more and more quantitative data as its more acceptable as evidence, the stuff any scientific discipline needs to be seen as valid.

I've always thought of psychology partly as a statistical science exploring tendencies towards behaviours rather than measuring straight cause and effect. In many ways, it mirrors quantum mechanics, which can only be described using statistics.

Yes, Grimshaw quite right to say that I don't agree with the "scientific" approach! Mine is pragmatic; I don't worry too much about how things work, I just use them if they do. I'm a hypnotherapist and a practitioner of NLP and meridian therapies. I know all those techniques work but I don't need to know the mechanism behind them. As I've said in one or two of my blogs, I learnt more about the working of the human mind in my first one-week NLP course than I did in the three years of my psychology degree.

By the way, "the placebo effect" is a label, not an explanation. No-one knows how that works either!

Yes, Jon, experimental psychology results are always expressed in terms of statistical significance.

Barry

magicofthemind wrote:Yes, Grimshaw quite right to say that I don't agree with the "scientific" approach! Mine is pragmatic; I don't worry too much about how things work, I just use them if they do. I'm a hypnotherapist and a practitioner of NLP and meridian therapies. I know all those techniques work but I don't need to know the mechanism behind them. As I've said in one or two of my blogs, I learnt more about the working of the human mind in my first one-week NLP course than I did in the three years of my psychology degree.

By the way, "the placebo effect" is a label, not an explanation. No-one knows how that works either!

Yes, Jon, experimental psychology results are always expressed in terms of statistical significance.

Barry

I'm pretty much a reductionist you see. I believe it all comes from activity in the brain, and I do want to know the mechanisms behind it all. I find Neuropsychology infinitely more interesting than any other area because it fits in with my black and white view of the world. This bit does that. Or, this bit helps this bit to do that. Its blinkered I know but, its da way I iz, as some illiterate rapper probably once said.

Your point about tendencies is why people demand so much quantitative data Jon. Because Psych only really points to probabilities or likelihoods, it needs more evidence to back up its claims than other disciplines.