Something in Psychology that I think is incorrect - Essay Example

Thomas Szasz even questioned Psychology as a field of medicine reducing it to pseudo-science that mimics medical words when in fact it is not. His contentions cannot also be dismissed as false or wild. They are based on rules of science of what constitutes disease. Disease according to him are supposed to be demonstrated at a cellular level, meaning that it should be observable that indeed we have a disease and not just being opined that someone is sick by a psychologists. He emphasized that as a rule of science, evidences must be presented that is material and physical and not just opinion of some observation of a certain illness.

Thomas Szasz study was supported and corroborated by David Rosenhann’s experiment entitled On being sane in insane places. Rosenhann’s experiment demonstrated that psychologists can be duped and that their diagnoses are inaccurate and subjective. He set out an experiment of 12 normal and sane people to “fake” or to “act out” mental illness to mental institutions. These 12 normal people who were instructed to demonstrate similar symptoms at 12 different psychiatric hospitals and all of the mental institutions bought the symptoms that the 12 individuals demonstrated without noticing they were just acting it out!

When they were discharged, they were even labeled with having schizophrenia in remission. In effect, the study proved statistically 100% that psychological diagnoses can go wrong because none of those pseudo patients who pretended to be mentally sick were detected to be impostors. In effect, we can deduce that whatever the psychologists tell us is a suspect knowing that they can make mistake big time as what was illustrated in the Rosenhann experiment. Or worst, as what Thomas Szasz contended, there is really no such thing as mental illness.

Both studies are implying that Psychologist is a doubtful science if at all and should not be taken seriously. If the arguments of Rosenhann and Szasz were immutable truth etched in stone, it would present a big problem to me considering that I am majoring the course. If Rosenhann and Szasz were correct, I am in effect wasting my time and my parents’ money. The problem however can be settled that the studies only illustrated the vulnerability of psychology and not an absolute truth. Psychology, just like any science continues to evolve and needs to be studied further to improve its diagnoses and treatment.

This is valid because even the pathological sickness which Szasz uses as a parallelism to discredit psychology also needs improvement in its diagnosis and treatment. After all, it would benefit us more if we adapt an open mind to accept that mental sickness exists and that Psychology can help albeit its method and treatment needs to be improved rather than totally dismissing mental illness and abandoning the idea of possible help and treatment. Regardless of the slur hurled against Psychology by the study of Rosenhann and Szasz, it is still a scientific discipline that follows the protocol of scientific approach.

As stated by Cacioppo & Freberg, scientific disciplines are broken down into two categories: the Social Sciences and the Physical Sciences (2013, p. 8) and in these categories, Psychology belonged to the social sciences. Psychology also uses the Scientific Method to study behaviors and mental processes. The steps for