I was recently asked this question in private message on another forum, and have had some people ask me similar questions here so i thought i would post it here. Its a great question which i think many people may be interested in! Psychology can be incredibly rewarding. While studying psychology i worked in sales for parties and events, which many people would have loved, but it was not a good fit for me. I was looking for something more rewarding where the work i put in meant more than just increasing sales by 10%. Psychology is used everywhere. I believe that all the world's problems can be solved with psychological answers. Can you think of a single aspect in life where understanding what another person (or yourself) isn't useful? Psychology is versatile. If you choose to study it there are soo many different career options other than clinical psychology. only about 10% of psychologists actually end up working within the mental health field. Don't underestimate how useful it can be in business. Psychology can be fun. There are some incredibly interesting experiments and studies that can be applied to the real world, even as jokes with friends. Knowing psychology does not make you a psychologist. If you have a friend in trouble don't assume you know what your doing because you did 6 months worth of an introductory psych course. Psychology is a hard but subtle science. If you don't like statistics, maths or research then you should seriously take a step back and ask if your going to be able to force yourself to learn these disciplines every year for the next six years of your life. Previous to university i had not done any science, but did well in maths and english. To be a psychologist you have to be good at. Listening, essays, statistics, critical thinking and pattern recognition. Psychology can be stressful. Your confronted with the best and worst of humanity on a daily basis. You have to be strong and emotionally fit to confront this. Your going to see parts of yourself in every disorder, that's fine... so long as you dont see all of yourself in one, or nothing in any of them! In Australia being a psychologist requires at least six years worth of study and application. During this time your put to the test with endless assignments, exams and by the end of it your head is spilling with facts, figures and knowledge. Seriously consider what the next six years means to you. Psychologists must be prepared to be wrong all the time. Soooo much is unknown about the brain. And most of what you implicityly believe to be true, is often biased or simply wrong. psychology works in the gray space where many variables make up the truth not just one or two. You have to be a good student or you wont survive. Know how to maximize your time and study well. Your command of written language must be strong. The difference between a psychologist and a psychiatrist is in the training. Psychiatrists have to do four years of undergraduate study in medicine, where they learn nothing about psychology. They then graduate and can go into General Practice. A psychiatrist will then go an specialize in the biology of the mind and become a psychiatrist. Because of this background they are more likely to prescribe medication and typically have studied less of the cognitive mechanics behind the mind (although some would disagree). A psychologist completes four years undergraduate in a range of disciplines, but ultimately majoring in psychology. I did a bachelor of psychology (honours) degree in which i studied 100% psychology for four years covering everything from the effects of cocaine in crickets through to psychopathology, psychoanalysis and much much more... A psychiatrist still studies the mind but from a different perspective and focus. It comes down to the individual, in the end a psychiatrist may be more anti-drugs than a psychologist! These are just general trends. Some have argued that if your interested in the mind, have a science bent and have the marks that you should study psychiatry. Because a psychiatrist can medicate, compared to a psychologist who never can. The psychiatrist can still choose to study in the same depth as the psychologist does on processes within the mind. I chose not to go this path as i didn't want to spend six years becoming a doctor then another six trying to become a good psychologist who could medicate! I've chosen to learn psychology and then simply refer my clients onto a psychiatrist when drugs are required. Some psychologists would argue that psychiatrists merely mask the symptoms with drugs. Some psychiatrists would ague that psychologists talk you to death for years. I believe (as most do) that it is the brain and body combined that shapes who you are. The brain can change the body, just as much as the body can change the brain. Psychologists generally work in conjunction with psychiatrists to create an effective treatment. Drugs work and are critical in the treatment of some disorders. Psychologists without drugs can heal 50% of those that are depressed and 95% of those with anxiety disorders (although this is a gross simplification). Now onto your question about criminal minds. The best way to answer this is to treat psychology like a game of poker. Psychologists get to know whats in the deck, we can statistically work out the range of possible behaviours. Psychologists then get to know the odds, so behavior x is more likely. And similar to poker there are certain patterns that allow you to win. A good psychologist knows whats in the deck, the odds of a card getting pulled and identifies the patterns that make a particular card more or less likely. However there is still an element of chance, and getting it wrong often means a large loss. Some patterns are easier to predict than others. So if your asking can i tell just by looking at you that your a serial killer, then no. Can i piece together a whole collection of profile evidence and suggest your more likely, then yes. A lot of people dislike just how ambiguous this is, but i ask you what in life that means anything can you be truly certain of? There are some psychological forces which you can be quite certain of. Most of the early behavioural psychology works show how some behaviour you can be certain of. Some really interesting psychological studies to wet your interest are the Stanley Milgram experiments and Festinger's cognitive dissonance experiments. If you can you should become familiar with the people like jung, rogers, freud, beck, maslow, adler just to name a few. Get to know the major theories. Apply them wherever you can in your life, try to see the patterns. Exercise your psychological muscle. But remember that you can study one person for a lifetime and still have no idea about what they are going to do next. All you can do is see the patterns, play the odds, rig situations to test your theories and be prepared to be wrong. Be ethical, and protect yourself from the psychological assaults that await you.
Here's a question: Who would a. make more money b. get more respect in the psych-world out of: 1. A psychiatrist who has, obviously, completed the undergraduate medical degree, and specialized in psychiatry? 2. An undergraduate student who did psychology and followed on to complete honours and a PhD? (and therefore achieving the title 'Dr.'). I'm not sure if you'll know the answer though :/ especially to part a. LOL
I asked the exact same question when i was deciding what path to take. Psychiatrists tend to make more money because they generally can treat more patients in a day than psychologists. A psychiatrist merely has to make a diagnosis, prescribe the correct drugs then maybe apply some cognitive behavioral treatment. Referrals ensure the psychiatrist has no short supply of patients, the medical industry tends to look after their own. A psychologist has to deal with the full emotional burden of each case and so generally wont treat nearly the same number of clients as a Psychiatrist. In Australia the medicare rebate for psychologists is between $60 (if your a general service psychologist) or $120 (if your a specialist service ie. clinical psychologist). However the earnings of a psychologist fluctuate with skill a lot more than a psychiatrist. Psychology is a far more subtle science, those who are good at it are elusive, if you have a high success rate then you are likely to charge a lot more than the medicare rebate. Keep in mind that many psychologists work in business and can earn far more than the clinical psychologist and psychiatrist combined. It all comes down to the situation and the individual. Respect is an interesting point of discussion. I respect people who are successful in resolving the presenting problem as quickly and effectively as possible, and i think most of the psych world would agree. Psychologists can be equally effective as Psychiatrists and it is largely dependent on the disorder. The two disciplines work together to counter each others weaknesses. Some people may argue that medical doctors are implicitly more respected, however i think this attitude has dissolved in recent times as psychology has become so heavily regulated and as people increasingly become skeptical of the "pill to fix them all" approach. Within the psych community i believe they are equally respected within their area of specialty, would i trust a psychiatrist over a psychologist on the correct drug treatment, probably not. But equally i would trust a psychologist over a psychiatrist in the majority of cognitive and emotional work. Keep in mind that to have done a PHD you would have to have contributed completely original research to an area of significant scientific merit, so obviously i would take the word of the PHD Dr in their field of research over just about anyone else, within what is critically reasonable anyway. I hope that answers your question. I'm getting the feeling your highly pessimistic about psychologists? Have you had a bad experience with one?
What are the merits of choosing to study psychology (a pseudo-science) vs. another field that is more concrete (applied math, physics, etc)
How is psychology just applied biology? Biology is the study of living things. Psychology is the study of the mind. While the brain is part of a living thing, the mind isn't essentially considered part of the living organism as it can be considered to be immaterial.
What a brilliant comic! I love it a lot, i hope you don't mind if i save it. The answer i give here, i imagine will not be a popular one. My views are strongly post-modernist, i believe that every perspective is relative and that even in pure mathematics you do not have certainty. The quest for absolutism is fundamentally floored. 1+1=2 How certain of this are you? How do you know that? All paths lead to cognition, all answers are derived from interpreting the senses. This very argument is dependent on the mechanics of the mind and with these mechanic's come all the weaknesses of humanity. So i ask you again how certain are you? Everything exists in a state of constant flux and every rule is breakable. A man born, trapped in a cave may not have knowledge of sunlight. Things exist merely as probability through patterns manufactured by the mind. 1+1=2 because given your lifetime within the boundary of our human existence, you know this to be true. One could argue that mathematical relationships provide the purest connection to the nature of our universe, however our whole conception of those principles is inextricably linked with our own psychological makeup. Maths may well exist beyond our reality, however one can never separate one from the other to ever truly know. Hence "pure maths" is an illusion, a manifestation of minds desperate for certainty in an uncertain world. I had a particularly brilliant math's orientated friend in high school who i would take much glee in pointing out when he gave an incorrect answer for homework. He would always respond "that may be the answer in your reality". Maths is a psychological tool, the two work together, one is not superior to the other. However, the worlds biggest and most important problems are psychological, not mathematical. I would argue that maths done in the name of psychology is still essentially psychological! I think that's more than enough philosophical ramble for one day. eh?
I see what you did there with the Allegory of the Cave reference :> How certain am I that 1+1 = 2? As certain as a person would be that 2+2 = 5 in Orwell's 1984. The fact that 1+1 = 2 is a given fact, a building block, from which more complex methods can be built. Certain fields are more structured than others; with the more "pure" fields, a person is able to go from point A to point B using a certain method and be sure that other people would be able to replicate it. Psychology (correct me if I'm wrong) seems to be based more on correlation and circumstance. I don't believe that I stated that a particular field was more important or "better" than another; I merely wanted to know the pros of becoming a psych major (whether that be job security, self-satisfaction, etc.)
Ah, its fantastic to discuss this with someone who knows the merits of a middle ground! Your totally right, psychology is often based on correlation. There are some things in psychology which you can be as certain about as you can some basic mathematical principles, because i can say that statistically it is how almost everybody responds. The error rate in psychology for me is not a distinguishing factor as all perspectives are relative, and even those we hold most certain are potentially false, hence all ideas are based on probability and correlation, psychology is just more honest about it. The problem is that psychological principles with high degrees of certainty are more often than not the simple questions. Psychology, unlike maths, bravely aims to tackle the big problems like "what makes people happy?", "why am i here?", "why and how are people different?" When you can find a formula that can answer this for me I'll gladly give up psychology! In summary psychology is able to go from point A to point B through finding replicable relationships, some of these relationships are straight forward and equatable to maths. However psychology doesn't shy away from the big questions, and so bravely acknowledges its capability for error and seeks to make sense of our universe. I've had similar discussions with Psychiatrists who are medically trained. They argue they prefer medicine because its more of a pure science, which sets off all sorts of fireworks for me! Just as everyone's mind works subtly different, so do their bodies. Anyway thats off topic! Psychology is a hugely rewarding major if your brave enough to step away from the illusion of certainty and attempt to answer the big questions.