The foundations of Psychology are incorrect?

Question

There is no evidence of a "subconscious" and the only presence of mental activity within a brain is a "conscious" mind. The conscious mind is you, and is all there is within the brain. There is also an absence of free will; how can one have free will if the universe's rudiments are deterministic? Therefore, you are in control of your brain and body; you control your emotion, memory and awareness. You ARE the brain and nothing more. There is no such thing as dualism either; you cannot have an afterlife in the absence of your brain.

I might have gone OT a little bit but my point stands, the foundations of Psychology are wrong. The only amendment to mental issues derive from biological sciences; there is no reason for psychological sciences to exist.

Answer 1

I'm afraid your assertions are incorrect. Whilst there may be little empirical evidence of subconsciousness and unconsiousness in the Freudian definitions, there is substantial evidence for subconscious processes in the cognitive sense. No one fully controls their memory, emotion or awareness-it is not possible.



Very simple computerised experiments provide evidence for what is termed implicit memory-literally memory without consciousness for the event. Words can be flashed up on a computer screen for such a short period of time that viewers claim to have seen nothing at all-e.g they have not consciously viewed the stimuli. However, when later asked to identify these words from a list, people choose the words they were shown, but didn't 'see', at a remarkable level of accuracy, even when they literally feel they have only guessed which words were flashed upon the screen.



An alternative experiment is using a subliminal prime, for example flashing one word on the screen very quickly followed by a second word for a longer period of time (the first word is too quick to become conscious but the second is consciously processed by the participants). Participants have to press keys to say whether the second word is an actual word or not. They are much quicker at doing this and more accurate if the first, subliminal word is semantically related to the second. For example, they would be quicker at recognising that 'nurse' is a word if the subliminal flash was 'doctor'. Non-words could be something like 'nurge'. Thus 'doctor' has primed 'nurse' and increased the recognition speed of that word even though 'doctor' was not consciously seen. I'm sure you'll appreciate then that not only does this show a lack of control for memory, but also for awareness-the participants cannot choose to be consciously aware of the prime, as it is too quick yet they also cannot choose to not have a memory for it, as an implicit memory develops outwith their control.



Impicit memory and awareness can also be seen in clinical cases. Patients with anterograde amnesia (an inability to create new memories) can learn something new even without a conscious memory of the learning process. For example, they become significantly quicker at putting a jigsaw puzzle together on repeated attempts, even though they have no memory of ever seeing the jigsaw puzzle before. Their increased speed and accuracy at doing the puzzle is a sign of learning with no memory or awareness for learning!



These are behavioural phenomena that psychology has uncovered and studied, not biology.



Also, if we are in complete control of our cognitive faculties tell me this, could you listen to a thousand people talking all at once for an hour then repeat to me verbatim exactly what each had said? You would be able to do this if you had complete control of your memory and awareness. Could you forget your own name for a day, then remind yourself to remember what it is again? Could you make yourself cry despairingly then laugh whole heartedly on demand and truly feel those emotions within the space of one minute?



Your statement is paradoxical, you cannot state that there is an abscence of free will but also purport that we are in total control of our brain, memory, awareness and emotion.



I would welcome any counter arguments you can supply! :-)

Answer 2

Have you ever studied CBT? there is alot in it about how the mind works excluding the conscious mind which uses the Frontal lobes or homo sapien brain which is the reasoning and problem solving verbal expressing area of the brain which we are conscious of the subconscious works within the limbic system which is the mammalian brain - non verbal emotional and sensory experience, it is crude and cannot be reasoned with, if we were thinking a certain thought pattern and verbal expressing this but your limbic system or expressing another tread of thought in the instance you are lying - body language which is sub conscious, which just means we are not aware.



there is also the Brain stem which is the reptilian brain instinctive response which is not concious, if you are walking out in the road see a car coming towards you at very high speed you will pause in shock your fight or flight response will kick in you will continue to stay there in shock if the brain stem feels there is no escape( like the way people cannot move from train tracks,animals in the wild play dead) or after momentary pause you will move from the road, only at the other side of the road you will think about what happened, your actions were not carried out by conscious thought there fore this is not all that we are, i believe the foundations of psychology are all theory but theres alot of research that makes perfect sense, acknowledging there is alot we don't know

Answer 3

Believe it or not there are psychologists that agree with your take on dualism and believe that the mind is indeed a completely physical, material object. But very few would completely dismiss the psychological sciences for this reason. Modern psychology includes biology in its treatment of the mind, and usually acknowledges that everything that goes on in your "mind" is, when you get down to it, just a particular movement of particles in the brain. The problem with using pure biology in dealing with the mind is that the biology of the mind is highly complicated. We don't understand all the physical details of depression, or phobias, or addiction. We are not capable of curing/preventing these and other ailments through purely biological means. We often have to take a more holistic approach, and focus on big concepts(like happiness, sadness, the mind etc..) as well as their physical/biological components (like certain chemicals).

Answer 4

how would you explain dreaming?

there may be little proof but what is proof anyway? science often gets it wrong