Note to psych students and highschool students

Notes to psychology students or anyone thinking of
studying psychology in a university

If you are thinking about studying psychology, or are currently studying it, and you really want to help people, please read the following notes.

My original writing

Making Money with Psychology Degrees - A university professor encourages students to think about making money, not helping people.

Psychologists vs. hugs

Conversation with psychology student in Australia

A comparison between a 14 year old and a "professional psychologist"

Pictures from the college entrance exam for psychology students in Lima, Peru

Journal notes from March 17, 2005

Some journal notes from New Zealand, 2003

Email from a psychology student in Australia

Example of course objectives from a Theories of Personality psych. class

The Goal of Psychology, according to one professor

To this I will add that the majority of teenagers who I have known don't usually like to talk to psychologists. They often lie to them. The psychologist will say "How was everything at home this week? And the teen will say "fine". Then they will ask "How were things at school?". Again the teen will say "fine". The psychologist might say, "Did you self-harm during the week?", and the teen will probably no, even if they have.

As I wrote several years ago, teens do this because they have learned it is dangerous to tell the truth. For example, psychologists often tell the parents what the teen says, or they have to report what the teen says to some other authority.

Because of this and other reasons, I really believe that many psychologists really don't understand what is actually happening in the homes and schools of the self-harming, depressed and suicidal teens.

Another problem with psychologists (and psychiatrists) is that they will typically recommend drugs to a teenager without doing much of anything to change the conditions in which the teen is trying to live. They don't talk about the lack of emotional support which I have seen in every case I have worked with, withoiut exception. Specifically they dont talk about such things as invalidation, emotional abuse, or emotionally abusive mothers which all contribute to the teen's emotional pain and feeling alone and hopeless. I have observed many other problems with psychologist and psychiatrists. I document some of these on this page. I am not saying all psychologists are unhelpful or psychology degrees are of no value, but I would like to at least offer my own experiences for you to consider.

Statistics have a place in the world, but I believe there is too much emphasis on statistics in psychology programs. If you are not good with numbers, it might be hard for you to pass all of your courses. But being good with numbers is not essential to being a good listener or to caring about someone.

Here is an example of how psychology students are trained to think and talk. It is from Jack Mayer and David Caruso's paper on emotional intelligence tests

In my specific experience with psychologists and psychology professors from countries such as the USA, England, Germany, Australia, Ecuador, the Czech Republic I have seen that they are often full of their own problems and unaware of their own emotions. Many have been unable to tell me how they feel and could only tell me what they think. Or in some cases they only have a very limited emotional vocabulary, even if their native language is English, or they are too insecure to say how they really feel.

Many are not are not good with children or teenagers. Many would not feel comfortable hugging a crying child or teenager in their office. I suspect the majority would say it is unprofessional or unethical or too dangerous.

A few years ago (around 1997) I was listening to a lecture given to undergraduate psychology students at the University of Florida. There were approximately 150 students in the room. The speaker was a professor in the psychology department who also had his own private practice. The entire theme of his lecture was how to make the most money as a psychologist.

First he talked about how you can't make any money with just a Masters degree. He also talked about how you certainly won't make any money if you go into social work. He said it was necessary to get a Ph.D. if you had any hope of making any real money.

Then he talked about how difficult it was to get accepted into a top Ph.D. program. As I looked around at the 19-21 year olds in the room, I could see the fear and anxiety in their faces. In fact, I could feel the tension in the room. I thought to myself, "These kids are already under enough pressure, this kind of stress sure isn't going to help them think about other people's needs and about helping other people. It is just going to make them think even more about themselves."

During his lecture, he complained about the fact that psychologists can't prescribe drugs, but psychiatrists can. He wanted the legislation in the USA changed so psychologists could also prescribe drugs. His told the students, "There are only so many hours in the week. And there is only one of you. Your income is limited to how many patients you can see in that week. There is a fixed cap on how much you can make. No matter how many hours you work in a week, there is still a ceiling on how much you can make in one year." Then he gave them the same examples I mentioned above. He was encouraging the use of drugs simply because they were more profitable. He also enticed the students with his stories of how the pharmaceutical companies lavished the psychiatrists with expensive presents and sent them to free conferences around the world so they could promote their newest drugs.

Throughout his lecture there was no mention of the patients' needs or of the quality of the service being provided. It was all about money.

Last night I went to the main plaza here in Jaen, Peru, around ten at night. A 10 year old girl named Maria came up to me and wanted me to go over the numbers from 1 to 10 again in English. So we practiced counting. Then about 8 kids, all who come from very, very poor homes ran up to join us. They were all wanting to practice with me, probably more just for the attention that they don't get at home. But in any case there were so many of them that they actually formed a line, just to have a chance to repeat the numbers from one to ten.

So if you want to help people, you can do it easily by going to South America, or Africa, or Indonesia, Thailand or Cambodia. There are lots of places you can go and lots of things you can do instead of going directly to a university where you will spend more time studying for tests than working directly with children or teenagers. Over and over I have met university students who liked my ideas and wanted to help me but they tell me "I have to study. I have a test" or "I have to write a paper."

Last night, besides teaching the kids English, I was also picking them up and throwing them up in the air and catching them. They were standing in line for this, too. They kept wanting me to pick them up and toss them in the air over and over. I didn't learn to do this in an of my classes at school.

If you want to help kids, you can do it right away. You don't need a degree to make a difference to a child.

I suggest you also read about David Caruso. For example, read this link about his ideas on the roots of terrorism and his reaction to my writing about what he said. Read about how he used to be an anti-war protestor and then became a marketing manager in a big company. Then he started designing tests and started working with numbers instead of children.

If you want to help children or teenagers, and are thinking about stuyding psychology, but aren't sure if it is right for you, and you would like more of my thoughts, I invite you to write me.

Once I was in Australia and about six counseling students wanted to help me with online counseling for suicidal teenagers. So I had a meeting the next night to tell them how I did it. Only two of them came. They said the others had to study. The two who came said they couldn't stay long either. Then I asked them a question. I asked them what their professor, (their counseling professor - someone who is supposedly interested in teaching them to be good future counselors and teaching them to help people) would say if they told her that they didn't finish their paper or study for the test because they had been up late listening to a suicidal teenager.

If you think they said something like "She would probably say 'That is a really good thing you did. How did it go? Tell me more about it', then you are probably not a counseling student or a psychology student in a universitly. You are probably a high school student who has an idealistic, and false, impression of what it is like to study psychology or counseling.

If you said, "The professor would probably tell us that is no excuse and would probably not even believe us, or say we aren't qualified", then you are probably a university student or university graduate and you know what it is really like.

Sadly I don't think it is an exaggeration to say that a teenager's life is not as important to many psychology professors as the student's grade is. And this prioritization in values gets passed directly down to the students, many of whom would put a teens life ahead of their own grades if grades were not so highly valued by the university and society.

8:30 - Talked to a psychology student today. She said her 12 year old brother was ADHD and is on Ritalin. I asked her what she meant by "ADHD". She said he is "naughty." I asked what she meant by naughty. She smiled a little defensively and said, "He won't listen." She also said, "You tell him to stop it and he won't." I made a mental note how she was confusing listening and obeying as I discuss on my listening page, but I didn't say this because I didn't want her to feel even more defensive. I also asked if she thought there was really something wrong with him chemically and she said yes. Then I asked why she thought he should listen to her. She said, "Because I am his big sister."

As I left, I couldn't help but wonder how much her psychology courses were helping her.

She also told me he is the youngest of four kids. Her parents are divorced. She also told me he is very popular at school and likes to talk all the time.

This was with someone who was taking master's level courses so she could get an extra title and make more money. She was already working as a counselor in a psych clinic. She was about 22 years old.

We started talking about eating disorders which she said they worked with at the clinic.

She crossed her arms, started getting red in the face... She laughed, smiled nervously. Then said, "A lot of places. Sometimes it just comes out of nowhere. Sometimes they develop starvation syndrome."

She laughed nervously again - "I don't know specifically...I really couldn't say."

Then she added, "For those with anorexia, we have them eat with us and show them they won't gain ten kilos like they think the will." Then she laughed mockingly, showing how irrational they are, and insensitive and invalidating she is. Then she said judgmentally "They run their parents instead of the other way around. Their parents can't make them eat."

I think, "So you want parents to force their kids to eat? Do you think this will help fill their emotional needs?" They probably have the "eating disorder" because their parents are too controlling already. Food is one thing they have some control over.

She replied, "I don't know. I am just here for two weeks. The rest is correspondence."

This took place in the cafeteria at Charles Stuart University in Bathurst, New South Wales, Australia

Katy is a single mother in her twenties who has tried to kill herself. When I first met her she told me that she feels suicidal because she feels so alone. She has seen several psychologists.

The other day I asked her if her psychologists had ever given her a hug. She said no. I also asked if she felt more alone, less alone or the same after she talked to them and she said she felt less alone. Then I asked, "Would you feel less alone by talking to a psychologist or by getting a hug from someone?"

I've been through a lot of your website and in particular, I just read through
you advice on university studies. It really brought home to me the importance
of keeping a focus on what really matters. I'm currently doing a statistics
assignment, which definitely does not help me learn better how to relate to
people or help them.

This is from Janet Waters' class at Capilano College in British Columbia, Canada. It is course number Psychology 220. The only prerequisite is Psych 100. So this means that it is possible that this would be the only the second course a new psych student would take in the psych department.

Notice how the first objective is to "Interest students in various theories of personality" I believe it would be more helpful to interest the students in people and children, rather than in theories. This is, in a nutshell, one of the major problems with studying psychology. You start out being interested in people, then when you leave somehow you have lost much of this intial interest.

Also, notice all the instructional objectives. "develop critical skills in analyzing theories"; "methods used in studying personality", "continue to practice the library and internet research skills learned previously"; "continue learning and practising the use of American Psychology Association (APA) writing and referencing style".

I don't see how any of these are going to make a person a better listener. And I can't really see how it is necessary to show 19 and 20 year olds how to use the library and Internet to do research. If they did have any problems about this, it seems they could to go the library reference department. There they could ask some questions, get some help and not have to worry about being tested on what the librarian tells them. Instead of worrying about being tested, they could concentrate a little more on their research and even on actually helping somone, like a friend who is having relationship problems. And notice that the teacher says "continue" to practice..." This suggests they were already taught on, and tested on, how to do this in their very first psychology class at the university.

And then look at the last one on the list. Again it says "continue", implying this was already covered. But look at what she is talking about: Writing papers using the APA writing and referencing style. How is this going to make you a better friend, a better listener, a more caring or compassionate person? Here is what I have to say about the APA and its guidelines, by the way.

"Psychology tries to understand human behaviors and mental processes through research." (Source below)

To me, this means: If you want to do research, go to a university and study psychology. But if you want to help people more directly, there are other things to do instead. Unfortunately, these "other things" are not well known or well develolped in most countries I have visited. But they do exist. Volunteer programs for example. In my own case I volunteered for a suicide prevention hotline and received a lot of very practical training which has helped me help people ever since then.

For a while there was a psychology student from Australia helping me with the teens. I will call her Loreta. Then one day she wrote to me and said something like "How dare you put my name on your site? I am furious. I told you I don't want my name on your site in any way, shape or form."

Note that I didn't use her last name. I didn't say which city she was in or which university. All I said was what I have above. Yet she was still so insecure that she wrote me and said she was "furious."

Now I feel even more disillusioned with the psychology programs. They aren't teaching their students how to express feelings any better than this. To me it should be one of the first classes. Yet, I am pretty sure that Loreta will never learn as much about expressing feelings as she could have learned just from reading my site. And I am also pretty sure she will never learn as much about insecurity and about herself and her fears as she could have learned from me. I also feel sad that she is the only psychology student who has ever helped me with the teens.

Now I am afraid to work with her. I am afraid to introduce her to teens. If she could react with this much hostility over what I had written about her, she is simply too dangerous for this kind of work.

When I first started chatting with Loreta I had some worries and fears. But the teens told me she was helping them so I decided to give her the benefit of the doubt. Now, though, I've decided to stop referring teens to her. I feel sad about it but I also wrote to her and apologized and told her I had removed her name. It has been about a week and she hasn't written back. I would assume she feels bad about the email she sent and maybe she feels ashamed or embarrassed about it and that is why she hasn't written back.

I don't know how she feels, but I wish her good luck in any case. There is something else which I may write more about some day. It was a letter she wrote to me about the MSCEIT test. It sounded like she was already a psychologist. She didn't sound like a teenager. And she sounded like she was afraid one of her "superiors" (as she called her professors) would figure out that she had written the letter one day and punish her.

And she didn't even have her name on that letter either. I feel really sad about it all. Yet I also feel somewhat affirmed. It shows me again that psychology programs attract people with emotional problems but they don't help the people with their own personal issues. And they sometimes de-sensitize sensitive people and turn them into something like theoretical robots. Speaking from experience, they also do little or nothing to help people with their personal insecurities and instead often create people who are defensive about the title of being called "psychologists."

It reminds me that of my belief that psychologists are often just people with problems who think they know more than everyone else, yet who really can't manage their own personal lives very well. I apologize to Loreta in advance because I know she will probably read this and feel personally attacked.

Behaviorist Theories
Emotions play no adaptive role but rather represent a learned response, acquired through classical and operant conditioning.

The focus of behaviorist theories is learning. Emotions, to the extent that they are of interest at all, are considered to be another form of learned behavior, acquired through classical or operant conditioning, and not requiring cognitive involvement. Observable emotional behavior, such as sweating, rapid heart beat, or blushing, can become associated with a stimulus through operant conditioning; i.e., seeing a dangerous stimulus may cause us to run, which increases the heartbeat, and eventually seeing the stimulus may be adequate to increase the heartbeat without the running behavior. Emotions are considered epiphenomanal, are not thought to be involved in motivation of behavior, and in any case cannot be the object of serious study because they are largely unobservable. More recent behaviorist theories take a broader view and acknowledge that emotional responses are in part instinctive and may have an adaptive value. These theorists view emotions as drives, linked to results of goal-directed behavior (Mowrer, 1960); basic drives are: fear, hope, relief, and disappointment, each linked to specific situations.