Insecure Psychologists

~ Clarissa

OK, it is simply wrong to make pregnant people laugh as hard as this passage made me laugh:

Probably every psychologist has had the experience of someone coming up to them and drunkenly suggesting that psychology is ‘all made up’. Psychiatrists get the same sort of crap but in the ‘you’re not a real doctor’ vein from other medics.

This makes people who work in psychological disciplines a bit insecure, so they’ll swear blind that ‘psychology is a science’.

I almost went into premature labor when I read this one. A psychiatrist who becomes insecure when some drunken idiot says something at a party. . . that is very, very rich. It is as bad as. . . no, I’ve got nothing. In terms of not being suited for your job, this probably wins the gold medal.

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Published by Clarissa

11 thoughts on “Insecure Psychologists”

  1. Psychiatrists are probably very different from psychologists. Haven’t many of the latter really gone into the profession after and partly because of experiencing problems themselves?

    http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200909/why-shrinks-have-problems
    Why Shrinks Have Problems
    Suicide, stress, divorce — psychologists and other mental health professionals may actually be more screwed up than the rest of us.

    “One out of every four psychologists has suicidal feelings at times, according to one survey, and as many as one in 16 may have attempted suicide. The only published data—now nearly 25 years old—on actual suicides among psychologists showed a rate of suicide for female psychologists that’s three times that of the general population, although the rate among male psychologists was not higher than expected by chance.

    Further studies of suicides by psychologists have been difficult to conduct, says Lester, largely because the main professional body for psychologists, the American Psychological Association APA), hasn’t released any relevant data since about 1970. Why? “The APA doesn’t want anyone to know that there are distressed psychologists,” insists University of Iowa psychologist Peter Nathan, Ph.D., a former member of an APA committee on “troubled” psychologists.”

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    1. “Haven’t many of the latter really gone into the profession after and partly because of experiencing problems themselves?”

      – Yes, this is exactly what often happens. Psychoanalysts, on the other hand, can’t have anything like that happen to them.

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      1. // Psychoanalysts, on the other hand, can’t have anything like that happen to them.

        Why not? May be, bad ones can OR good ones, who took care of their own problems via psychoanalyst and then decided to join?

        // Yes, this is exactly what often happens.

        That’s probably among the main reasons people don’t think highly of the profession. Why should I trust and in a way look up to a person with more problems than I have?

        Regarding the difference between psychologists and psychoanalysts, most people don’t know how the two are different and/or even that the latter exist. Even after reading your blog, I am unsure I really understand the difference. Looks like a psychologist is supposed to help solving a certain limited problem, like insecurity while searching for a job, while a psychoanalyst helps one see who one is and what one needs for true happiness, the big picture.

        Btw, you wrote: “teaching methodologies are not transferable and departments of education suck worse than pretty much anything on campus”

        Is teaching degree completely worthless? What advice would you give to a new high school teacher? Could you post about it, please?

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      2. Heh, that’s pretty much why I wanted to go into psychology as a teen.

        Btw, Clarissa, any tips on choosing a good psychoanalyst? It seems I’m crazier than I thought I was (which explains the compulsive avoidance of anything out of my comfort zone I’ve been doing for the past few years) and I could really use some outside help (there’s some anxiety when relating to authority figures that I could really do without), but the one psychoanalyst I’ve seen since my teen years told my father some stuff I had shared during the first session, and the one psychiatrist I’ve seen freaked out a bit when I joked about being bisexual. Knowing my luck, if I continue picking them by what I feel are good criteria, I’ll end up with one that tells my dad I’m bisexual, and that won’t end well for anyone involved.

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  2. When one of my friends was studying to be an RN, she had an internship at a psychiatric institution. The psychiatrist she worked for basically had his schedule packed with patients; he had usually no more than 15 minutes to devote to each. Most of these visits involved prescribing meds or adjusting meds in response to side effects. So the lack of respect is maybe partly rooted in the fact that they’re seen as glorified pill-pushers?

    But doctors in other medical disciplines can be like this too, so they should hesitate before getting too complacent and looking down on psychiatrists. For instance, an increasing number of doctors disregard basic clinical guidelines and prescribe addictive narcotic painkillers for relatively simple problems like back pain:
    http://www.latimes.com/news/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-back-pain-doctors-increasingly-ignore-clinical-guidelines-20130729,0,185393.story

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    1. “The psychiatrist she worked for basically had his schedule packed with patients; he had usually no more than 15 minutes to devote to each. Most of these visits involved prescribing meds or adjusting meds in response to side effects. So the lack of respect is maybe partly rooted in the fact that they’re seen as glorified pill-pushers?”

      – Exactly. This is nothing short of shameful.

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  3. // I will gladly write on both subjects after I teach this one last class for the day. Thanks for the suggestions!

    I meant not only a school teacher of lit or languages, but of subjects like math too.
    How would you both explain well and deal with discipline problems?

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