Marshmallow test is one of those things real psychologists (whether practical or science) just do not care all that much about, but pop culture is sure obsessed with it.
Psychologists, in my experience, seem to be strangely unaware of what is taken seriously by other psychologists. They're generally 50/50 on Freud, for instance, and the half who don't care much for him also don't think anyone does.
I think the 50/50 on Freud is an overrated/underrated equilibrium. Most of the Freud "fans" and Freud "haters" don't estimate him differently because they disagree about the correctness of specific Freudian theories; they mostly just feel that his legacy is overvalued or undervalued, or that his prominence in popular culture has been helpful versus harmful to the field. It's like asking basketball fans about Michael Jordan and getting answers that vary greatly depending on what they think is the right way to compare him to current players.
I think the people Der_Einzige refers to who are practicing Freudian psychoanalysis today using anything resembling Freud's original ideas are a tiny minority, and you could toss them out without affecting the 50/50 balance.
Der_Einzige thinks Freud should be judged negatively because his ideas are discredited in detail and have been replaced by newer and better clinical approaches. Another person might have completely identical views with Der_Einzige about the current clinical worth of Freud's ideas yet judge Freud positively because he was a keen and empathetic observer of his patients, because he legitimized the concept of unconscious psychological processes in the public mind, and because he raised the profile of psychological medical care and made it more socially acceptable. The same person could even feel different ways on different days without changing their mind at all.
The people who still think Freud is relevant are known as “psychoanalysists” in the same way that we separate chiropractors (loony fake back doctors, equiv to psychoanalysis) from real back doctors.
But seriously, if you don't like Freud, you're going to have to come up with a better response than just saying he's a kook; we all know he's a kook!
A) Talk therapy was the mode invented by Freud and is still the dominant modality of psychotherapy today, and
B) While you didn't mention it but, at the time, Cocaine was in common use as a near magical local anaesthetic and from it we derive procaine, lidocaine, any drug ending in -caine, which you certainly have been administered before, and
C)If all we have in our psychological and social lives are narratives, and the narratives bind us into certain patterns which we don't even realize we are following, then the counter to that cannot be another narrative which equally obscures its reproductive capacity (ie "the data"). Freud created stories that untied themselves at their roots, that put patients, not to mention regular people, ill at ease. Even sex with siblings is less taboo, certainly less universally taboo, than sex with one's parents, even if the latter is more genetically troublesome--is this an accident? The stories got to things at their base level, which was impossible by any other means. They might be a bit weird, but they force you to think, maybe even to act differently under the right circumstances (those of treatment), and the latter is what we'd call medical care, no?
None of that implies that it would make sense to actually do Freud based psychoanalysis today or that some 50% of psychologists do. All of that are historical achievements of severely outdated theories. Outdated, because they were shown wrong and discredited.
It is not easy to do psychology as a science, it is way less precise and less measurable then comfortable to geeks here. But it did made massive progress in between Freud and now where Freud was abandoned due to being non scientific.
The important thing to remember about Freud is that, at least compared to the base case, it gets results. From the pragmatic aspect of psychology this presents something worthy of study. My mature take on Freud is that all the cookie wierdness derived from the fact that he was trying to get people do discuss their trauma - without discussing the specifics of their trauma
We understand “shame” well enough and the principle of “unconditional positive regard” is central to much of modern talk therapy.
It’s important to understudy that 200 years ago people viewed sexuality very differently and even the notion of what is and is not sexually apporiate was not widely discussed.
Freud operated in less illuminated times than ours and it was necessary for him to operate in code to deliver his therapy. It is my reading of history that he got close to things in doing this that powerful people didn’t want and this is what led to the widespread attempts to discredit him.
I still don't know what's the holdup then. Freud constructed narratives as we all do but his were deranged so why bother even mention him as anything other than the butt of the joke?
That you react so strongly is the proof that they touched a nerve. They could be kooky stories that you just forgot about, instead you’re incensed any time anyone mentions him. Why do so many people care about it? That’s the trick.
I'm offended by Freudian narratives in general. They are offensive because of their stupidity. If they were constructed about any other domain they'd be immediately recognizable as deranged to anyone. I'm not sure why supposedly knowledgeable people like psychologists have blind spot for them. For me they sound like "are you sure you wouldn't rather spread toothpaste on your toast instead of butter?" (and the cook nods his head thoughtfully), "does your fifth leg hurt a lot?" (and the medic ponders profundity of that possibility).
I don't know what the trick is but surely there's some trick. It's like a trick that prevents people from immediately recognizing Trump for who he is. A blind spot for obvious derangement.
I just don't understand how can people lack such basic intuitive understanding of psychology to think than any Freudian narrative "might have a point" and still function as a person.
I don’t know, I read a Pakistan Today article where a doctor said cousin marriage is no big deal as it “only” causes defects in 2% of cases. Interestingly, this article is now impossible to find on Google. You can find a dozen news articles of people in the UK arguing about this.
Hopefully the discourse is shifting, but a culture can be dysfunctional (like allowing first cousin or even worse double first cousin marriages, for example) for a very long time before it collapses.
But do bear in mind, an intro textbook for a 101 class aiming to correct popular misunderstandings; or an experimental guide wanting to give examples of mistakes one should avoid; or an article on the replication crisis would also count as citations, even as they sneered at the original faulty work.
Not quite. Psychology is a big field and the range of educational practices is very broad.
There are some excellent psychologists out there, but there are also a lot of trained psychologists who embrace all of the pop-culture and even pseudoscience trends in full.
They do care about it. It’s an immensely important milestone in the development of the field, and is pretty much axiomatic as a developmental marker and has been widely and consistently replicated.
Where modern day psychology diverges is (as discussed in the article) on the conclusions and analysis.
My point of view is based on this very paywalled article.
In science a study doesn’t just become bunk just because its original conclusions no longer hold, or because a journalist says so.
The data is solid and is widely replicated. All the guardian article attacks is the analysis and conclusions.
And it is correct to do so, as that is how scientific discourse works. The journalist was however incorrect in saying it had been debunked.
Mischel is indeed still taught and students are taught to think critically about it.
Modern pedagogy uses it as a solid reference point both in terms of development and also in the limitations of empirical data.
Psychology is not like other sciences. It’s very nature is questioning established shibboleths and you’d be crazy to think that prevalent thought hadn’t moved on from a study done more than 50 years ago.
The guy who made the original hypotheses disagree with you. The issue is that data are not solid and are not widely replicated. And especially, the point is overstated.
The guy who made the original hypotheses also literally says that marshmallow test is bad proxy for the trait under question.
Groundbreaking research is groundbreaking research regardless of how well it holds up over time. Obviously it’s been supersceded but that just demonstrates the vitality of the field.
