Right or wrong?

One recurrent issue in Psychology that I haven’t managed to understand is why psychodynamic theories are still discussed even though they do not hold up to scientific scrutiny in these days. If psychodynamic therapies do not work effectively, why should people still revise psychodynamic theories to develop new theories based on psychoanalysis? Sure I agree with Sigmund Freud’s 1909 distinction between consciousness and unconsciousness. However Freud said the following to distinguish his theory from static theories, “We explain it dynamically, from the conflict of opposing mental forces, and recognise it as the outcome of an active struggling on the part of the two psychic groupings against each other.” (Five Lectures on Psychoanalysis, Standard Edition, XI, pp. 9-55 at pp.25-26) But how plausible is this?

Can we actually explain everything solely based on psychoanalysis, as Freud propounded? Definitely not. Freud’s theories are only based on the recollections of a relatively small number of emotionally disturbed adults whose experiences may not apply to most people. Yet we do not reject Freud’s theories simply because he was the first to proclaim that the vast majority of psychic experience lay below the level of conscious awareness.

Whatever it is, one thing for sure is that most of Freud’s theories have not been favoured by many contemporary psychologists. This is immediately evident from another recurrent debate between nature and nurture omnipresent in the whole field of Psychology. A good example will be the development of language. Is language an instinct, as proposed by Noam Chomsky and Steven Pinker? Or is language a “verbal behaviour”, as suggested by B. F. Skinner? Freud did not say much on language. And nobody is really able to give a definite answer, even up till today.

And this is what I like about the discipline of Psychology. For the most part of this vast field, there is simply no right or wrong. Is schizophrenia a biological disease or a mental illness or a social construction or something else? Do animals reason or not? Do human beings use cognitive maps to navigate? Is visual perception direct or indirect? Is cognition independent of language, according to Whorf? Do children and animals have theory of mind? Nobody can give definite answers to all these psychological questions (these questions happen to be my past exam questions as well).

So why do people still study something when there’s no right or wrong? Think about it and when you have arrived at the answer, maybe then, the money invested in your university education has not been wasted.

I’m still thinking.