Thinking about the future.

[RayneeDeigh]

It is easy to be un preachy when you have no idea what you are talking about and pretty hard when you studied it extensively.

You're ignoring the fact that there are religions in the world that don't preach or proselytize.

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[erg923]

Please correct me if I am wrong on my interpretation.

Although you come off as having a very dogmatic view of the world (which is a mismatch for psychology in general), underneath it all, you also seem to be conflicted about many things, and very much searching for direction. Although this is certainly a very normal experience, entering graduate school in psychology is an all consuming and stressful endeavor. One needs to have a solid focus and life direction, and be pretty emotionally healthy themselves to pull it off. There is nothing worse than entering into a field, having it swallow you whole, and then realize your are not cut out for it anyway.

Just my 2 cents......

 

[deleted176373]

On a side note, I think it's interesting (just as an observation) that people who start out as very religious and then switch to being atheist always seem to be very dogmatic and preachy about their atheism. It sounds like an oxymoron-- a devout atheist. It seems like the equivalent of a televangelist, but except they're preaching about nothing. It would be an interesting research question, anyway.

LOL, I did an extemporaneous speech on "nothing and what it could do for you" in a leadership class, it was brilliant (yes, I can afford to be narcissistic on this one point.) Anyway, back to the point. Despite having "de-converted" from being a practicing Roman Catholic, it's not only important that I do not reject my clients faith but rather that I know a great deal about a great number of faiths and remain sensitive to their needs and frame discussions around their perception of reality.

I might not believe that "God" will intervene in any situation, but if my client does then I need to find a way to remain sensitive to those beliefs yet still encourage my client to proceed in a way that is protective of his/her self interests. I must allow him/her to retain their unique culture, personal identity, and beliefs. Stripping away all those things is simply damaging to the client and most definitely not in their best interest.

A clinician cannot project his value system onto the client and expect to maintain the therapeutic alliance. It is possible to interject aspects of commonly accepted social practices, values, and beliefs but it must be done carefully and with respect to the clients needs. You need to have an extensive repertoire of skills to deal with diverse populations many of whom need to be handled differently than others. What might work in therapy on me would probably offend others, and what would work on others would lead to me responding poorly to treatment.

Social psychology seems like the right choice unless you want to change how you think about therapy. No harm, no foul, gotta figure it out somewhere. Some people have no desire to be therapists, just as I have no desire to be a social psychologist. Although, I can appreciate social psychology and, I am sure that you will be able to appreciate clinical psychology. Good Luck.

Mark

 

[Cosmo75]

Sweet! Integrating mindfulness and CBT sounds exciting! I would love to be a fly on your wall and glean from your sessions how, in it's application, it helps our patients, especially the anxious ones.

Works quite well. I use it in a health psych setting, and see quite a bit of anxiety DO's.

Ok back to the original poster. I'm a recovered Catholic, and consider myself a humanist, which I suppose makes me an atheist also. I believe we go in the dirt when we die. Do my clients need to share in my beliefs? Of course not! As others have said, it's up to my client to change his/her mind not for me to directly tell them what to think and do. Overall I've found religion to be less of a hindrance to progress and more of a tool I can use where appropriate. If the church is important to a person as a source of social or emotional support, then why would I discourage their going based on my belief system? Never mind the different cultural implications for your proposed approach to therapy. You'd probably have a stroke at some of the beliefs that are out there, not only about religion but about the roots of mental illness.

I think you'd do better in a research lab versus in actual client contact. However, to be a good researcher you must be free from bias. Considering how strong your beliefs are, I'm not sure you could do that? Maybe you'll mellow out with age

 

[zhenka11230]

Please correct me if I am wrong on my interpretation.

Although you come off as having a very dogmatic view of the world (which is a mismatch for psychology in general), underneath it all, you also seem to be conflicted about many things, and very much searching for direction. Although this is certainly a very normal experience, entering graduate school in psychology is an all consuming and stressful endeavor. One needs to have a solid focus and life direction, and be pretty emotionally healthy themselves to pull it off. There is nothing worse than entering into a field, having it swallow you whole, and then realize your are not cut out for it anyway.

Just my 2 cents......

Yes whenever someone disagrees with you they are "dogmatic" . I studied every major religion + new age/wicca movements. I am a huge fan of philosophy of religion. Religion had been my favorite topic for a long time in general.

Dogmatic means i provide no support for my opinion, but i can provide plenty.(perhaps not experimental but philosophical and observational).

Oh and thanks for being inspiring about going into the field...

 

[zhenka11230]

You're ignoring the fact that there are religions in the world that don't preach or proselytize.

Not even to their own adherents?

 

[zhenka11230]

Why is whenever someone disagrees they are suddenly bias and dogmatic? It is like the new cheap argument trick of the century.

 

[psybee]

Dogmatic means i provide no support for my opinion, but i can provide plenty.(perhaps not experimental but philosophical and observational).

Oh and thanks for being inspiring about going into the field...

but psychology is a science, so emperical support is the suppport psychologists are talking about. observational is not scientific -- what any one of us expereinces may be totally meanigful and inform who we are and how we feel, but that does not mean that our expereinces are representative of those of others, can apply to others or are meaningful to others. in psych, even philosophical/theoretical "support" should have some emperical grounding -- there has to be some scientific reason for yo uto make a theoretical leap, and that should be backed by some program of research.

if you enjoy exploring ideas through philosophy or theory, you can do that through a philosophy or critical studies angle. i know many a phd philosophy canidate who use the theories and philosiophies of psychology as texts for thier philosophical work (no empericism required). freud and jung live on in philosophy departments, andin those contexts thier work is given new relevence and life.

 

[zhenka11230]

Perhaps reason alone is not sufficient but experiment alone isn't either. I have no means to perform experiments so i rely on my reasoning. Correlation does not mean causality. Experiments rarely give conclusive results, especially in field of social sciences. There is no way out of using a little reasoning. Throwing around statistics is not my idea of discussing something.

 

[Ollie123]

Perhaps reason alone is not sufficient but experiment alone isn't either. I have no means to perform experiments so i rely on my reasoning. Correlation does not mean causality. Experiments rarely give conclusive results, especially in field of social sciences. There is no way out of using a little reasoning. Throwing around statistics is not my idea of discussing something.

That's great and you're right that you need both. However if you don't want to "throw around stats", I'm largely unclear why you would want to go into psychology.

That's an enormous part of what we do. Reasoning is necessary but if you don't want to discuss empirical research, you simply won't make it as a psychologist. Its like wanting to go into medicine without discussing pharmacology.

 

[erg923]

Yes whenever someone disagrees with you they are "dogmatic" . I studied every major religion + new age/wicca movements. I am a huge fan of philosophy of religion. Religion had been my favorite topic for a long time in general.

Dogmatic means i provide no support for my opinion, but i can provide plenty.(perhaps not experimental but philosophical and observational).

Oh and thanks for being inspiring about going into the field...

That is not correct. Dogmatic refers to someone who is characterized by the expression of very strong opinions as if they were facts. As for your evidence, remember, in the court of science, philosophical and eyewitness testimony are the absolute lowest forms of evidence one can have. So those will likely not carry much weight in this forum, sorry. What I was driving at with the "dogmatic" comment is that you give the impression that have the answers to happiness for everyone, (i.e., release from religious "oppression") and that everyone else (your clients) should follow this direction and opinions. Where did you come up with this notion that what works for you, will always work for other people? Again, psychology does not work like that. Cults and cult leaders do. We don't use single case studies or personal experience to design treatment modalities in psychology. That would obviously be not be very scientific, as the N=1, right? If you are really that hyped up by religion, write provocative philosophy about it or something. The angle of it you are wanting to exploit is a philosophical one, not scientific or psychological one anyway.

And yes, the last post was a very subtle and PC way of warning you about the realities of this field and possibly dissuading you from it. One, as Ollie pointed out, none of us can figure out why you want to be a part of psychology because your personality and reliance on philosophy and reasoning is such a mismatch for this field. You particularly demonstrate an extremely poor understanding of clinical psychology, and the therapist-patient relationship in formal psychotherapy...that much is very clear already. Perhaps you have a better understand of social psychological literature, I'm not sure. Second, as a member of this field, I have a vested interest in those that I will eventually have to call my peers and colleagues in this profession. It is important that you understand the realities of this field before jumping head first into it. Many of these have to do with the purpose and scope of the field in general (i.e., not to be the boss of people), and other just come with life experience that you may have not encountered yet (i.e., knowing how to maneuver interpersonally in professional and PC environments). People in this profession, while having vastly different views, should have several qualities in common including: healthy sense of self, empathy, openness to new ideas and opinions, and most of all HUMILITY. This last one is vitally important in both the research and the clinical worlds. With all due respect, you have demonstrated deficits in all of the above in your posts. Therefore, due to the above listed reasons, yes, I have tried to subtly dissuade you from this field.

 

[cara susanna]

zhenka definitely sounds more like a philosophy student than a psych student, IMO.

 

[RayneeDeigh]

Not even to their own adherents?

Precisely.

There are religions with no hierarchy.

 

[zhenka11230]

Precisely.

There are religions with no hierarchy.

Well, i am happy for them but whats your point?

 

[zhenka11230]

That is not correct. Dogmatic refers to someone who is characterized by the expression of very strong opinions as if they were facts. As for your evidence, remember, in the court of science, philosophical and eyewitness testimony are the absolute lowest forms of evidence one can have. So those will likely not carry much weight in this forum, sorry. What I was driving at with the "dogmatic" comment is that you give the impression that have the answers to happiness for everyone, (i.e., release from religious "oppression") and that everyone else (your clients) should follow this direction and opinions. Where did you come up with this notion that what works for you, will always work for other people? Again, psychology does not work like that. Cults and cult leaders do. We don't use single case studies or personal experience to design treatment modalities in psychology. That would obviously be not be very scientific, as the N=1, right? If you are really that hyped up by religion, write provocative philosophy about it or something. The angle of it you are wanting to exploit is a philosophical one, not scientific or psychological one anyway.

And yes, the last post was a very subtle and PC way of warning you about the realities of this field and possibly dissuading you from it. One, as Ollie pointed out, none of us can figure out why you want to be a part of psychology because your personality and reliance on philosophy and reasoning is such a mismatch for this field. You particularly demonstrate an extremely poor understanding of clinical psychology, and the therapist-patient relationship in formal psychotherapy...that much is very clear already. Perhaps you have a better understand of social psychological literature, I'm not sure. Second, as a member of this field, I have a vested interest in those that I will eventually have to call my peers and colleagues in this profession. It is important that you understand the realities of this field before jumping head first into it. Many of these have to do with the purpose and scope of the field in general (i.e., not to be the boss of people), and other just come with life experience that you may have not encountered yet (i.e., knowing how to maneuver interpersonally in professional and PC environments). People in this profession, while having vastly different views, should have several qualities in common including: healthy sense of self, empathy, openness to new ideas and opinions, and most of all HUMILITY. This last one is vitally important in both the research and the clinical worlds. With all due respect, you have demonstrated deficits in all of the above in your posts. Therefore, due to the above listed reasons, yes, I have tried to subtly dissuade you from this field.

While i take this as constructive criticism i can't agree with what you said. Science is extremely limited in the humanitarian fields. If you think pure science(as it is right now) can solve all the riddles by statistics then you are naive. I think rational thinking is a huge step towards mental health and it just happens to eliminate religion out of the picture as a side effect. Besides, all experiments start with observation. I heard about experiments that support my point(which i cant find).

I would be glad if you guys would be so kind and "scientific" to link me to experiments about religion/happiness and mindfulness/mental health correlations.

I've yet to see someone post a study.

Thanks.

 

[erg923]

While i take this as constructive criticism i can't agree with what you said. Science is extremely limited in the humanitarian fields. If you think pure science(as it is right now) can solve all the riddles by statistics then you are naive. I think rational thinking is a huge step towards mental health and it just happens to eliminate religion out of the picture as a side effect. Besides, all experiments start with observation. I heard about experiments that support my point(which i cant find).

I would be glad if you guys would be so kind and "scientific" to link me to experiments about religion/happiness and mindfulness/mental health correlations.

I've yet to see someone post a study.

Thanks.

Well I said no such thing regarding the above bolded quote, and you failed to address most of the personal qualities/issues I brought up in my post

 

[psypsypsy]

I would be glad if you guys would be so kind and "scientific" to link me to experiments about religion/happiness and mindfulness/mental health correlations.

I've yet to see someone post a study.

Thanks.

Well, I'm hesitant to post in this thread because it appears as if zhenka is looking more to argue than to actually consider how the psychology field currently exists. I think that there are terrific places to study your interests in graduate school, but they are found in philosophy departments, not psychology departments. Psychology is a science, and increasingly becoming more scientific and empirically-based; this is a trend I don't see changing. Of course, all research should be theoretically driven, and I don't believe that any psychology department would encourage you to throw around statistics without a theory driving it.

That said, I was actually just coming on to post some references. It seemed like you were making a challenge that someone could find them. Well, it's quite simple to find a lot of it! If you simply do a google scholar search on mindfulness, you will find a ton of articles on studies using it. Jon Kabat-Zinn is one of the people who first started using it, and he's done quite a bit of research. Additionally, more mindful strategies are also used in Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (Marsha Linehan), and that has quite a bit of research behind it as well. This is one meta-analysis on mindfulness strategies done a few years ago (more recent work has since been published) by Ruth Baer in Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice in 2003. And there's a lot more too...all it takes is 2 minutes on a research search engine to find it.

 

[erg923]

Cool....ill give that a read.....Ruth Baer was my adviser in undergrad at Kentucky actually.

 

[socialcog]

I would be glad if you guys would be so kind and "scientific" to link me to experiments about religion/happiness and mindfulness/mental health correlations.

I've yet to see someone post a study.

Thanks.

I am not really sure what you are looking for here. There is a fair amount in the literature that supports the notion that mindfulness or MSBR is effective in the mitigation of autonomic arousal. As far as the religion/happiness correlations....are you looking for positive correlations?

I know that Danny McIntosh (University of Denver) is exploring the meaning/utility of religion in those that have experienced trauma or traumatic events on a grand scale.

Check this out:

Ladd, K. L., & McIntosh, D. N. (in press).Meaning, God, and prayer: Physical and metaphysical aspects of social support. Mental Health, Religion and Culture.

(..from his website): "In my coping research, I study how social and cognitive resources influence emotional adjustment, broadly defined. I am particularly interested in responses to traumatic events, uncontrollability, or high levels of stress, and the role of religion. "

so....not "causality" but "role" religion plays in the realm of coping from large scale trauma.

Hopefully this helps.

 

[zhenka11230]

Well I said no such thing regarding the above bolded quote, and you failed to address most of the personal qualities/issues I brought up in my post

Because i agree with most of it except what i thought was implicit statement that philosophy has no place in psychology and is inferior to science. Also the denial of relevance of personal expirience/observations seem to be rather odd to where i stand.

Experiments are not perfect and conclusions inferred might be wrong. The experiments provide information but it is up to us to make sense of it and making sense of it involved philosophy/expirience/observations. Sure you can claim religion makes one happy but that doesn't answer why. And such quests are just out of reach of imperical methods which makes it a job of philosophy. The theory to why religion makes one happy would not be science and yet would still be considered psychology. IMO limiting yourself to experiments is like shooting yourself in the leg(same with not using personal expirience/observations). There are gazillion of things experiments just can't reach which would still be regarded as psychology even if most of it is philosophy. The reason we get statistics in the first place is so we can philosophize and make sense of them.

 

[Ollie123]

Sure you can claim religion makes one happy but that doesn't answer why. And such quests are just out of reach of imperical methods which makes it a job of philosophy.

Actually "why" is very much is an empirical question, and one that can be answered using structural equation modeling to look for mediating variables. Its actually a very hot topic right now when it comes to looking for therapeutic mediators and finding out what aspects of therapy actually drive treatment effects. It also answers in a way that would certainly be a lot more meaningful than one individual's subjective views, because it wouldn't assume that everyone was the same.

I agree that its important to take all experiments with a grain of salt, and to still be careful when interpreting the numbers generated. I'd take a well-designed empirical study any day over a case study (which is essentially what you are utilizing). We obviously need both to advance science, but on a small scale, an empirical study is simply a hell of a lot more convincing than what one person thinks happened to them.

 

[zhenka11230]

Actually "why" is very much is an empirical question, and one that can be answered using structural equation modeling to look for mediating variables. Its actually a very hot topic right now when it comes to looking for therapeutic mediators and finding out what aspects of therapy actually drive treatment effects. It also answers in a way that would certainly be a lot more meaningful than one individual's subjective views, because it wouldn't assume that everyone was the same.

I agree that its important to take all experiments with a grain of salt, and to still be careful when interpreting the numbers generated. I'd take a well-designed empirical study any day over a case study (which is essentially what you are utilizing). We obviously need both to advance science, but on a small scale, an empirical study is simply a hell of a lot more convincing than what one person thinks happened to them.

I can agree with that.

 

[cara susanna]

Cool....ill give that a read.....Ruth Baer was my adviser in undergrad at Kentucky actually.

She's one of my POIs.