Tip: click a paragraph to jump to the exact moment in the video. 20 WRONG Ideas About Therapy, Psychology (2nd World Psychiatrists and Psychologists Conference)

1. 00:02 you’re still here okay you asked for it you had it coming
2. 00:08 another lecture by sam bhagni the author of malignant self-love narcissism revisited and the smiling
3. 00:16 professor of psychology today we’re going to discuss myths
4. 00:22 misconceptions lies misunderstandings about psychology and more specifically about psychotherapy now this whole harangue was triggered by
5. 00:33 a presentation i saw yesterday on msn.com the presentation was aptly
6. 00:40 titled 20 myths and misconceptions about psychology i wanted to tackle each and one of every of these alleged myths my own way
7. 00:51 and to add my two dollars it’s never two cents with me it’s always two dollars to add my two dollars into the debate the presentation opens by saying
8. 01:02 psychologists work hard to help many people in different fields well the common impression is is of someone who gets paid a lot of money to listen to the problems of those who are mentally
9. 01:13 unstable that’s not the whole picture here are 20 myths and misconceptions
10. 01:20 about psychology and the first myth that the msn presentation
11. 01:26 tackles is only crazy people benefit from psychology
12. 01:33 well there are psychology is divided to dozens of fields and one of these fields is known as clinical or abnormal psychology that’s the psychology
13. 01:49 that deals with what you would call crazy people now we are politically politically
14. 01:55 correct in our field so we never use the word crazy or even insane we have a lot
15. 02:02 we have many euphemisms to avoid this this label but
16. 02:08 plenty of people can benefit from psychology a psychologist or more precisely a
17. 02:15 psychotherapist is someone who is supposed to be impartial supposed to be objective
18. 02:21 supposed to look at your life to look at your choices your decisions your behavior patterns and provide you
19. 02:27 with an outside perspective an outside perspective which is supposed to
20. 02:33 cause or bring about a breakthrough through a process known as insight
21. 02:39 provide you with insight about yourself and this should in the optimal case generate a breakthrough the problem is that very few psychologists and
22. 02:50 therapists are indeed objective and impartial many of them have agendas many of them
23. 02:57 are committed to specific values many of them are judgmental many of them
24. 03:03 are prescriptive in other words they tell you what to do many of them get very pissed off if you don’t follow their their advice so it’s not always the case that you get a
25. 03:14 kind of um observer scientific observer who is detached and disinterested and just
26. 03:21 provides you with information and data and analysis which serve as input to generate insight which
27. 03:27 then provokes a change in behavior that’s that’s in theory that’s the ideal but in
28. 03:35 reality that’s that’s not the case unfortunately the second myth is in the msn um
29. 03:41 presentation is there’s a couch where you lie down and spew your feelings well that’s been the
30. 03:48 case with freud there’s their famous photographs of freud’s couch
31. 03:54 freud called his method the the talk cure talk cure today is known as
32. 04:00 psychotherapy don’t worry he borrowed the idea from boiler and others so he didn’t invent it although he did claim
33. 04:07 credit for it something which psychologists want to do throughout the generations claiming credit for what’s not theirs anyhow couches were in vogue and in fashion and
34. 04:20 fed when psychoanalysis had started so freud had a couch jung had a couch which he put to use in very unorthodox manner with some of his patients
35. 04:31 uh most notably sabino spilling but couches have gone out of fashion more or
36. 04:37 less in the 1930s and they’ve never come back so today we sit on a chair
37. 04:43 or we talk on the phone there’s telehealth and teletherapy
38. 04:49 there’s video conferencing virtual therapy and so on so forth even in person therapy resembles much more talk with a good friend than it does the
39. 05:01 original setup of psychoanalysis the third myth
40. 05:07 psychologists earn a lot of money for not doing very much
41. 05:13 well depends which psychologist but
42. 05:19 psychology and therapy more precisely these are well-paying professions those are well-paying professions psychologists are up there in in the ten percent highest earners uh novice psychologists and a newbie
43. 05:34 psychologist can start with fifty sixty thousand dollars a year and most psychologists make well over a
44. 05:41 hundred thousand dollars a year that’s in the united states and all they do is they sit
45. 05:47 and they listen to people talk about their lives now isn’t that a scam
46. 05:53 aren’t these people conartis what the heck are they doing that’s very misleading that’s very misleading because a good
47. 06:00 psychotherapist or even i would say the majority of psychotherapists they structure the conversation
48. 06:06 they provide input it could be a mirroring input it could be a directional input it could be in the form of questions could be in the form of comments it could be in the form of insights could be in the form of even of
49. 06:17 reminiscences or reading a passage from a book it doesn’t matter the psychologist the psychotherapist
50. 06:23 structures the session and it’s in the structure brings order and the order brings meaning and makes sense of the experience of the patient so the structure is critical and the
51. 06:35 structure is not just a whim not just a fleeting idea the structure is based on clinical
52. 06:43 practice and on studies and research in the relevant field so the psychologist
53. 06:49 brings into the session a lot of learning a lot of irritation and a good psychologist is what we call
54. 06:56 an active listener he asks question he he delves deep into the patient’s issues
55. 07:03 he provokes new thoughts and new directions and elicits new questions in the patient’s mind and all this is done within what is
56. 07:15 called a holding environment where the therapist shows understanding and provides comfort but never crosses the
57. 07:23 line never engages in counter transference never for example falls in love with the
58. 07:29 patient oh god forbid has sex with the patient so while the therapy seems to be aloof sitting back thinking about his cat
59. 07:41 or about the later super bowl actually what he’s doing is analyzing every single word you’re saying placing it in the context of previous word david said
60. 07:52 trying to tease out and extract meaning and sense and insights from from your words and then organizing everything
61. 08:03 impossible narratives for your consideration this is a lot of hard work when you go home
62. 08:09 the therapy sits down and he writes patient notes and his to read a good therapist reads all the previous patient notes pertaining to you so it’s always a
63. 08:20 lot of invisible work it’s like an iceberg 90 of the work is underwater and
64. 08:26 invisible to you that’s the good therapist of course there are charlatans like in every profession
65. 08:32 of course there are corn artists scammers and swindlers and and lazy people indolent therapists
66. 08:38 it’s like there are indolent construction workers i mean it’s this is human human nature most therapists are
67. 08:44 human okay that was the daily joke now we move on
68. 08:51 to the next myth psychology or psychotherapy involves medication
69. 08:57 not true not true medication therapy is a part of the arsenal of psychology but actually it’s used
70. 09:08 very rarely psychologists for example cannot prescribe medication only psychiatrists can prescribe medication but the difference between psychologists and psychiatrists is that
71. 09:20 a psychiatrist has a medical degree in addition to a degree in psychology so usually he’s also a medical doctor so he’s able to prescribe medication for mental conditions usually psychiatrists collaborate with psychologists unless
72. 09:36 they’re very vainglorious and narcissistic but the vast majority of psychiatrists seek input from
73. 09:42 psychologists in order to settle on the appropriate prescription or medication but medication is
74. 09:49 prescribed should be prescribed i i need to say very rarely
75. 09:55 for example antipsychotics should be prescribed only in only in a flare-up in the active phase of psychotic disorder
76. 10:02 similarly antidepressants and anxiolytics and stimulants
77. 10:08 they should be prescribed very sparingly and limited in time because some of them
78. 10:14 especially stimulants create addiction unfortunately this is the theory
79. 10:20 the practice is that people go to a psychiatrist and he barely listens to them
80. 10:26 and what he does he just you know gives them a prescription for an antidepressant or anti-anxiety drug and
81. 10:34 anxiolytic or or a stimulant any sensor sends them away and he collects the feed from the insurance company or from their own private pocket so
82. 10:45 many many psychiatrists reneg reneg on the obligation to be very
83. 10:51 careful with mental health medication and this had become an industry
84. 10:58 um tens of millions of people in the west consume antidepressants anti-anxiety medications stimulants and even antipsychotics on a daily basis when they most definitely should not
85. 11:10 or should have stopped long before long before so this abuse of mental health medication plus there’s a big debate and a justified debate as to the efficacy of these medications many of these medications are founded on
86. 11:26 speculative science yet to be fully proven and many of these medications had been
87. 11:32 proven um had been proven counter counterproductive to use another statement or based on wrong science or bad science and yet they had not been
88. 11:43 withdrawn from the market so psychopharmacology is a scandalous area
89. 11:49 fraught with a lot of money sloshing about which provides adverse incentives
90. 11:56 to psychiatrists i’m trying what i’m trying to say gently many psychiatrists are corrupted by money sometimes directly by the drug companies in all kinds of jackets and perks and
91. 12:08 trips and you know even straight out commissions financial commissions all
92. 12:14 these practices are not outlawed shockingly which they should be okay next myth most problems are caused by low self-esteem that’s one of the most all-pervasive myths
93. 12:31 about psychology that everything has to do with a low self-esteem wrong self-perception bad or dysfunctional or
94. 12:40 unrealistic self-image etc etc the self plays a big part here but this is wrong low self-esteem is not the main cause of
95. 12:51 the vast majority of mental health diagnosis we know that low self-esteem is a
96. 12:57 definitive factor or determinant only in one type of mental health problem and that’s
97. 13:04 depression but even there it’s not considered causative it’s not considered
98. 13:10 the cause of the depression many factors can contribute to poor mental health
99. 13:16 and so low self-esteem is just one of them the idea of low self-esteem is the root
100. 13:23 of all evil in terms of mental health has to do with the twin with the twin myths of
101. 13:31 the twin concepts counterfactual concepts are in my view at least of
102. 13:38 the self in of choice so
103. 13:44 modern modern psychology let’s say starting about 120 or 130 years ago
104. 13:52 in modern psychotherapies they are centered around the twin counter factual concepts of individual
105. 13:59 self and choice from a very very early age we are little more than the sum and intersection of our relationship with others the concept of individual the concept of self are probably utterly wrong
106. 14:15 there’s no such thing even the concept of personality is extremely dubious
107. 14:21 and should be challenged on multiple levels and multiple fronts choice is also an illusion
108. 14:29 in reality it is constrained by mental illness one’s personal history the course of the
109. 14:35 choice the cost involved and lack and lack of viable alternatives so
110. 14:42 low self-esteem is one of this one member of this galaxy of self-help
111. 14:49 paraphernalia and nonsense mostly online we can add to this emotional flashbacks
112. 14:55 empaths shy body lines and and healed or recovered narcissists
113. 15:01 these are all nonsensical non-clinical concepts not supported by any studies or
114. 15:08 research and not taught in academia we don’t teach this nonsense in academia
115. 15:14 so that’s one more myth for you the myth of low self-esteem
116. 15:22 the next myth according to the msn presentation is there’s a hidden meaning to your dreams now freud of course was the king and the forefather
117. 15:33 of dream interpretation he actually wrote a book an eponymous book about it about a hundred and something
118. 15:39 years ago i myself am a dream aficionado if you go on my website there are dream
119. 15:45 interpretations there and so the presentation says that
120. 15:51 and i i will quote many people believe that their dreams have a hidden meaning but the truth is
121. 15:57 it’s simply the brain’s way of dealing with things our dreams often don’t make any sense
122. 16:03 and can be influenced by the previous day’s events our emotions and even our thoughts
123. 16:09 while it can be tempting to look for many in our dreams there’s often not much to them i cannot disagree more
124. 16:18 yes of course dreams takes place take place in the in the brain or at least we think so because as a correlate to dreaming known as rapid eye movement when we dream waves in our brain change from one type to another and our eyes
125. 16:34 move very fast which is phenomenal known as rem of course they’re physiological
126. 16:40 and neurological correlates to dreaming but dreams do take place in the brain which is precisely what makes them meaningful the brain is a meaning generating apparatus it’s a meaning
127. 16:51 generating device so dreams are not an exception dreams about are about rearranging the previous day’s information
128. 17:02 so that it fits into already structured narratives in other words making sense of the
129. 17:09 previous day’s experiences storing information in long-term memory etc etc
130. 17:15 it’s all about creating and enhancing the library of experiences that we already have up here and fitting this library into heuristic models model of
131. 17:28 the world internal working model theory of mind etc etc so
132. 17:35 dreaming is a meaning creating activity and definitely if you look into dreams you can find
133. 17:46 meaning in dreams meaning which meaning a meaning which is idiosyncratic specific to the dreamer not only universal or actually rarely universal
134. 17:57 specific to the dreamers so i disagree completely with this so-called debunking of this myth which i don’t think it’s a
135. 18:04 myth i think it happens to be true it’s a part and parcel of a trend in modern psychology of rejecting everything that came before 1960 because it’s not quote unquote scientific i’ll come to it a bit later
136. 18:21 in this in this lecture psychology pretends to be a science where actually it’s a pseudoscience and can never ever be a science and because of these
137. 18:32 highfaluting grandiose pretensions we had discarded we had discarded enormous
138. 18:39 treasure of acquaintance with the human mind enormous insight into how human beings
139. 18:47 work which ostensibly should be the main preoccupation of psychology and one of the things we had discarded is the idea that dreams have meaning
140. 18:58 i’ll come to it when when i i discuss one of the other myths in this msn presentation so the next myth is
141. 19:05 psychologists psychiatrists and counselors are all the same well of course they are not all the same all of them deal with mental health issues i’m a counselor i’ve been in this racket for
142. 19:16 26 years as a professor of psychology and as a counselor but i am not a psychiatrist so although i have a medical degree i did not integrate it with my work in
143. 19:28 psychology so i did not become a psychiatrist so psychologists are people who complete a few years
144. 19:36 usually they have master’s degree and some of them are licensed to provide therapy their therapies not all
145. 19:43 psychologists are licensed to give therapy psychiatrists are psychologists who also
146. 19:49 have a medical degree they have two degrees in psychology and medical degree and counselors are people
147. 19:56 who work with mental health issues but they are not psychologists and not psychiatrists they are for example
148. 20:04 social workers or just laymen or coaches
149. 20:10 who deal with mental health issues now in many countries but not everywhere counseling
150. 20:16 as distinct from therapy is legally permissible it’s totally legal as long as you make clear that
151. 20:22 you’re not a therapist not a psychologist not licensed and not a psychiatrist counselors are good some of them are good some of them are bad exactly as psychologists
152. 20:33 some of them are going some of them are bad therapies the same psychiatrist the same some counselors
153. 20:40 that i know personally know a lot more than most of the psychologists i ever met and i’ve met many
154. 20:46 psychiatry is the study and management of mental disorders involving also
155. 20:52 the body aspects including for example medication administration or medication
156. 20:58 psychology is the study of people and their thoughts and behaviors the next myth is our preferred learning style has an impact on how well we learn
157. 21:09 there used to be this theory i’m saying used to be because it’s been debunked and discarded i don’t know how many times but there used to be a theory that
158. 21:18 we learn more effectively because this theory said that each person has a
159. 21:24 learning style some people react more to visual material others react by doing things
160. 21:33 some people learn when they’re exposed to visual material some people learn by doing things and some people learn by listening so this was called the preferred learning style all recent research had demonstrated
161. 21:46 that there’s no such thing the most effective effective modality of teaching and learning
162. 21:53 varies according to what you’re studying is nothing to do with a preferred modality so when you’re exposed to a certain topic you may be able to learn much more
163. 22:06 if it’s done through visuals but when you’re with it when you then switch to another topic
164. 22:12 you may be more amenable to audio messaging and audio teaching teaching via voice each person has all learning styles and all teaching and
165. 22:23 learning modalities it’s a myth that you know we have a preferred mode we don’t next thing is psychology is um
166. 22:35 is hype it’s just common sense it’s um you’re you’re you would do as well to talk to a good friend to your grandmother to a neighbor
167. 22:46 as you would to a therapist or to a psychologist because all they do is they codify common
168. 22:52 sense um well
169. 22:58 i don’t even know how where to start to to tackle this this myth
170. 23:04 because it’s nonsensical it’s not common sense it’s nonsensical while i completely agree that psychology is not a science and i even go as far as saying that psychology can never never
171. 23:16 be a science it definitely is a discipline it’s a discipline there’s a lot of
172. 23:22 accumulated knowledge a lot of information many experiments and studies a lot of research millions of people millions of people participated in creating this body of
173. 23:34 knowledge and to claim that it’s nothing but common sense that everyone and his dog has
174. 23:41 that’s simply ignorance i would even say glorified ignorance
175. 23:47 psychology is very complicated to become a psychologist let alone for example a professor of psychology you need to really really work hard spend a lot of time and effort
176. 23:58 researching reading studying interacting with people the mind is the most complex object in the universe it’s
177. 24:06 much more complex than the universe and behavior patterns emanate from the mind
178. 24:12 so they too reflect the mind’s complexity no amount of common sense can cope with this actually we have quite a few studies that show that intuition and common sense are often extremely wrong
179. 24:26 i refer you to one of my videos here which debunks 12 common sense myths
180. 24:33 and i analyze these myths there and they are nonsense they appear to be common sense they make
181. 24:40 sense but they are not factual they’re not true they’re nonsense so i wouldn’t rely on common
182. 24:47 sense if i would if i have an alternative which is a structured discipline i would go for the structured discipline imagine that someone builds a bridge or constructs an airplane and tells you
183. 24:59 i don’t need to study engineering i have common sense i know that this rivet should go with this nut here and everything will be okay i mean you wouldn’t fly this plane would you you wouldn’t cross this bridge
184. 25:10 okay next is the myth that memory works like a video recording of events nothing
185. 25:17 could be further from the truth nothing can be further from the truth memories are recreated on the fly every time we need to remember
186. 25:28 every single time we need to remember we reach into our minds
187. 25:34 and take elements and put them together and this feels like a memory but it’s
188. 25:40 actually not a memory it’s a reconstruction of a narrative that’s why
189. 25:46 memories often get distorted as time passes because you can’t or you can’t always
190. 25:53 identically recreate the memory memories are not clones
191. 25:59 over time in other words the same memory you have to recreate it time and again and every time you recreate it there’s a slight change and these changes accumulate and the memory gets distorted
192. 26:11 and changes to the point that it has nothing to do with the original memories after a few years even after
193. 26:17 one year have little to do with the original and this is why there’s a big issue with false memories
194. 26:24 and another big issue with eyewitness accounts in courts we can’t really trust them
195. 26:30 memories are confabulations they’re inventions they’re narratives they’re stories that we create every time we are faced with a demand
196. 26:42 on our identity our identity crucially depends on continuous memory
197. 26:49 so in we ask ourselves who am i what am i doing here and why am i doing what i’m doing and then you need to
198. 26:56 generate memories put them together to feel your to experience your own identity
199. 27:02 and of course it also means that identity is a kind of dune of sand it also shapeshifts all the
200. 27:10 time but i have a video on this a lecture i gave a university about identity and memory you may wish to
201. 27:17 watch it the next myth according to the msn presentation psychology only has to do with therapy well of course psychology is therapy is this tiny tiny fraction of psychology psychology is by far the biggest field
202. 27:35 the biggest field in in academic studies it’s much much bigger than physics i used to be a physicist i used to be a
203. 27:41 physicist for 25 for first 25 years of my life physics is a much smaller field than
204. 27:47 psychology i used to be an economist it’s a much smaller field the psychology and many people say that economics is
205. 27:54 actually a form of psychology it’s a this discipline is actually another name for economic behavior so
206. 28:02 with psychology as well but you have psychology of sports psychology of the arts psychology of of
207. 28:09 teaching uh psychology of politics psychology of collectives psychology of individuals
208. 28:15 children of adolescence or i mean it’s a normal industrial psychology
209. 28:21 it’s an enormous field absolutely enormous field wherever human beings are in action
210. 28:27 there is a field of psychology that deals with with it studies it
211. 28:33 teaches it research is conducted and and so on it’s not a specialty psychology is not only about mental health and mental health problems it’s
212. 28:45 again that’s clinical and abnormal psychology but there are numerous other fields that have nothing to do with
213. 28:51 mental health or mental illness nothing whatsoever the study of behaviors study of traits
214. 28:57 the strategy is a study of stability for example of attachment style and personality the study of personality i
215. 29:03 mean this their numerous study of how people behave in groups how they behave in various settings like for example in a
216. 29:10 factory in an office how how do people react to product design all this is psychology
217. 29:16 advertising marketing it’s all psychology okay the next
218. 29:22 myth is if you’re violent probably you’re mentally ill if you’re
219. 29:29 promiscuous probably you’re mentally mentally ill if you deviate from normal behavior then by definition
220. 29:36 you’re not normal you’re mentally ill and there’s a flip coin of this myth if you’re mentally ill you’re likely to deviate from accepted behavior you’re likely to be violent or promiscuous and
221. 29:47 so on so forth that’s absolutely 100 or shall i say 110
222. 29:53 untrue actually uh there’s a book titled 50 great myths
223. 30:00 of popular psychology which i recommend it’s it’s layman layman’s thing so it’s easy to read evidence shows that 90 of people with mental illness
224. 30:12 never offend but they’re always the victims mentally ill people are victimized they don’t victimize behaviors such as promiscuity
225. 30:24 violence aggression defiance recklessness etc
226. 30:30 these behaviors have to do with the lack of empathy and what we call dark triad personalities
227. 30:37 dark personalities these dark personalities they’re not mentally ill it’s not mental illness
228. 30:44 they’re just prone prone to antisocial behaviors they have a tendency a proclivity
229. 30:50 for antisocial behaviors so we call them subclinical some clinical psychopathy subclinical
230. 30:56 narcissism but they’re not mentally ill mentally ill people are victims not
231. 31:03 perpetrators next myth psychology is only for certain people but not for everyone i have no idea where why
232. 31:14 why this this might be true psychology is for everyone if you have a mind and many of you do if you have a brain and some of you do if you behave if you interact with other people psychology is for you psychology should be a part of everyday life psychology
233. 31:32 should be taught in high school and even primary school because it’s all around you
234. 31:38 the advertising you watch is structured by by psychology how the how a website is optimized is influenced by psychology your neighbor addresses its psychology
235. 31:51 your everything is psychology i mean how you should interact with your boss how is your relationship with your spouse
236. 31:57 your children everything is psychology so psychology is for everyone it’s the only discipline actually that’s for
237. 32:03 everyone you don’t have to be a physicist you don’t have to be a chemist god forbid you don’t have to be a biologist but you have to be a
238. 32:09 psychologist at least a pop or armchair psychologist because you can’t live or survive without a modicum of psychology
239. 32:17 in your life the next myth in the msn presentation is we don’t use a hundred percent of our
240. 32:23 brain function only ten percent again it’s a nonsense internet hype
241. 32:32 it’s total nonsense exactly like empath or emotional flashback or quiet borderline or what have you or indigo children or i don’t know what
242. 32:43 it’s simply nonsense actually every minute every part of a brain is up and running
243. 32:52 all billions 100 billion cells up and running
244. 32:58 every single neuron in your brain fires every second that’s a fact and
245. 33:05 many of them collaborate in what is known as multiple unit activities even the smallest bit of damage to the brain
246. 33:12 usually results in a devastating deterioration in functioning
247. 33:18 major loss or damage to function so every part counts every neuron
248. 33:24 participates every second of the day always even when you sleep big parts of the brain are still active so i have no idea who came up with this
249. 33:35 idiotic uh idiotic you know myth that only ten percent of
250. 33:41 the brain maybe in his case or her case it was true next
251. 33:48 psychologists know what you’re thinking is the next myth well except me
252. 33:55 except for me most psychologists cannot read minds i can but that’s because i have 198 you
253. 34:02 not because i’m a psychologist seriously now psychologists don’t read minds they can observe human behavior
254. 34:09 and they can speculate as to the reasons why you’re behaving the way you do
255. 34:15 and some of these reasons have what we call it an etiology so they can they can try to make sense of your reasons to behave and make sense of your behaviors by resorting to
256. 34:26 possible antecedents possible reasons in or possible events
257. 34:32 in your early childhood during the formative years and so on and so on and so forth in some cases these
258. 34:38 speculations would be wrong actually i could say that in majority of cases they would be wrong
259. 34:44 not only psychologists are not mind readers they’re actually not very good at deciphering human behavior and so on
260. 34:50 unless you give them the information that they need what psychologists are good at
261. 34:56 is taking this information that you provide about your early childhood parental figures in your life
262. 35:02 interactions with peers your personal history this is known as amnesis your personal history
263. 35:09 everything they take all this information what they’re good at is structuring it
264. 35:15 making sense of it deriving insights and lessons from what you had told them so that they can then help you to change for the better to become more functional and to avoid repeating mistakes
265. 35:33 repetition compulsion oh okay
266. 35:39 next next myth it always helps to talk about your problems no that’s not true i refer
267. 35:46 you to the video that i mentioned earlier about 12 common sense nonsense
268. 35:52 that i’ve made one of them is venting about venting venting is seriously bad for you seeking closure is a seriously
269. 36:00 bad idea or so these are only again online nonsense
270. 36:06 propagated and perpetuated by self-styled experts coaches and an assortment of other how to put it gently unqualified people so
271. 36:19 the talking cure psychotherapy is is a big fan a big fashion again
272. 36:25 everyone from age 12 is is in therapy but it’s not always helpful and it’s not
273. 36:31 always a good idea for example we know that trauma victims for trauma victims it’s very bad for trauma victims to revisit their trauma uh there was an initially the 60s and so
274. 36:44 there was an idea that if you had gone through trauma you need to go through a process called
275. 36:50 debriefing so it was known as psychological debriefing or trauma debriefing until we discovered decades
276. 36:56 later that these people were seriously damaged when they were forced or coerced
277. 37:02 to relieve the trauma by discussing it that’s why it’s not always a good idea to talk about your problems it sometimes can be harmful
278. 37:13 and a good therapist a good psychologist would know the difference he would know not to push he would not he would not he would know not to trigger you
279. 37:24 there is a good reason that you forget things a good reason to dissociate some events some traumas never come to
280. 37:31 consciousness the the the memories are repressed and there’s an excellent reason for this and
281. 37:38 before you bring these memories back to the surface before you eliminate the dissociative
282. 37:44 barriers and the protections you better know what you’re doing freud coined the word abreaction it’s a
283. 37:50 it’s a bad reaction to um the release of the pent-up negative energy
284. 37:56 that is associated with traumatic memories so go go slow go easy don’t push
285. 38:05 don’t push it sometimes not talking is the right course of action
286. 38:12 okay next myth in the msn presentation psychology is simple psychology is easy
287. 38:22 because everyone is exposed to other people and so everyone knows psychology intuitively uh in a way we i’ve dealt with it when i
288. 38:34 discussed the myth that psychology is common sense um [Music]
289. 38:41 having having certain foundations is not the same as having the building
290. 38:48 you could for example be an english speaker but you couldn’t be an english author so it’s the same with psychology you know people you maybe maybe you’re even an observant
291. 39:00 maybe you observe human behaviors and human traits and you know you classify them in your mind and you’re very alert
292. 39:06 and very vigilant and so on maybe but it doesn’t make your psychologist knowing english doesn’t make an english author knowing people doesn’t make you a psychologist
293. 39:17 psychology is very challenging because it’s very big it’s a huge field and it involves numerous schools of thought and
294. 39:26 a lot of i mean gigantic plethora of studies and experiments and research and
295. 39:32 so on don’t underestimate psychology but this leads me to the next myth according to the msn presentation psycho the myth the next myth is psychology is
296. 39:44 not a real science and i’m going to read to you what the msn presentation says then i’m going to give you my my take on this the msm presentation says
297. 39:55 some people believe that psychology is not a real science but that could not be further from the truth
298. 40:01 those in the field utilize the scientific method to conduct research in order to investigate human behavior
299. 40:09 while psychology may be a relatively new science in the scheme of things it’s still very much a real science
300. 40:16 could not be further from the truth astrologers use the scientific method
301. 40:23 and statistics it doesn’t make astrology a science numerology uses very sophisticated mathematical techniques it doesn’t make numerology a science
302. 40:35 that you use the scientific method does not make you a scientist conspiracy theorists
303. 40:41 of all stripes very frequently use the scientific method and a lot of statistics
304. 40:47 it doesn’t make them scientists it makes them crackpots so
305. 40:53 that a group of people in shared psychosis use a certain methodology
306. 40:59 doesn’t make them scientists except in their own grandiose minds psychology is not a science for a
307. 41:05 variety of reasons and i have at least two videos on this channel dedicated to this question but i’ll mention only one
308. 41:11 you cannot replicate most of the experiments in psychology that’s a fact between two thirds and four-fifths of experiments in psychology cannot be replicated
309. 41:22 you cannot have a science where you cannot replicate experiments end of story
310. 41:28 you can replicate every single experiment in chemistry and physics every single one even in
311. 41:35 medicine you can’t do that in psychology so it’s not a science what is psychology
312. 41:41 it’s a wonderful body of literature it’s one of the proudest
313. 41:48 achievements of the human mind in terms of literature it’s a literary art form
314. 41:55 and a very penetrating incisive and insightful
315. 42:01 view of the human mind human beings human behaviors human
316. 42:07 interactions human organizational principles and the meaning and sense of it all yes no one can compete with psychology when it comes to this perhaps except for literary giants like dostoyevsky and nietzsche but otherwise no one can come close to psychology even the most
317. 42:23 mundane and pedestrian paper in psychology is so full of wisdom and insight
318. 42:29 that it competes easily with any biblical biblical text but that’s what it is the text
319. 42:36 psychology is not a science end of story and anyone who claims otherwise
320. 42:42 is either deluded or misleading it’s a pseudoscience
321. 42:49 next psychologists work on only work in clinical settings that’s the next myth in the msn presentations that’s of course not true some psychologists work in hospitals
322. 43:01 outpatient clinics in patient clinics private clinics that’s true but that’s a tiny minority actually
323. 43:08 the vast majority of psychologists work in other settings in schools in factories in in among athletic in athletic teams i mean
324. 43:19 psychologists are everywhere they’re even here making youtubes yes so psychology is involved with human thought human behavior human development personality emotion emotions motivation
325. 43:31 cognition said wherever humans are psychologists are they follow humans wherever they go so
326. 43:38 you can find them working in prisons intelligence agencies schools athletics law enforcement i mean everywhere
327. 43:45 profiling profiling department of the fbi is much larger than any psychology faculty in the world it’s comprised mostly of psychologies
328. 43:56 uh and so this is the last myth in the msn
329. 44:02 presentation i hope i corrected some of your misconceptions and wrong ideas about psychology and therapy and even if you are not in distress
330. 44:14 even if you don’t have a mental health problem take the time
331. 44:20 go once a year like a checkup you know go once a year to therapist talk to him or her about your life
332. 44:28 just about your life how things stand are you happy where do you need to go from here what
333. 44:34 mistakes do you seem to commit repeatedly and why do you commit these mistakes get
334. 44:41 to know yourself better therapists can help you with that even a mediocre therapist
335. 44:47 can help you with that much more than any friend or neighbor or grandmother you need friends and neighbors and grandmothers because what advice they provide is backed by life experience and
336. 44:59 empathy for you they like you they love you a good therapist should not like you or love you a good therapist should be like a mechanic in a garage should fix your car
337. 45:10 go fix your car you do it once a year you go you check your heart once a year check your mind once a year go to therapy