I'm afraid you are about 500 years too early Antiseptic if you are hoping to find anything other than a bunch of charlatans not only in the psychology practice, but even more so in that back office you mention. It is doubtful, but perhaps the profession could come of age, & some use in that time.

Those are the ones you are about to study under so be very careful. In my experience most doing those courses come out with a lot of jargon, & even less understanding, & definitely less common sense than they started with.

You only have to look at their total failure with criminals to see that. Come to think of it, perhaps you will fit in well. From another thread I detected a stronger sympathy for criminals then victims in your posts.

The bit about Ruddies wife is interesting. Now we know who manufactured the completely false persona that Rudd presents that managed to get him elected to a position for which he was not only totally unsuitable, but incapable of undertaking.

This could be represented as false pretenses, as could much of the discipline you will be studying.

Hi Lexi. I hereby forgive you for not responding quickly enough, and for any other sins you may have recently committed. And I can understand why you don't want to cross swords with me, I suppose I have to be a bit blunt when I deprogram lefties.

Now to give you a psychology lesson.

You said that you do not label people you do not like. This is nonsense. The claim by the left that they do not prejudge, label or stereotype anyone is simply an irrational slogan which lefties routinely parrot without ever thinking about it.

"Prejudice" literally means "to pre judge." Making judgements about people is an everyday occurrence in human interaction. Everybody labels others, especially those that they don't like. And as for stereotyping, stereotyping is essential for forming concepts so that people can think. If I was to say to you that "there is a bird sitting on a car", you would form a stereotype of a bird and a car in your mind to form the concept.

Saying that "people must not stereotype" equates exactly with saying that "people must not think."

If you think otherwise, Lexi, then I am going to amuse myself pointing out to you every time you violate your own moral values and prejudge, label and stereotype, yourself.

Finally we get to the topic of country shopping asylum seekers. People do have a right under UN mandate to claim refugee status in Australia. But most Australians do not consider these people as genuine refugees and we are sick and tired of our stupid government pretending that they are. We consider them to be economic refugees who are fleeing priest and mullah ridden societies. And they are fleeing the consequences of their own cultures inability to get their populations under control and create prosperous societies.

Hi Hasbeen

Your criticism of psychology, which implied it was invalid because it did not help criminals, is not valid because you are unaware of the history of psychology and the effect that Socialist philosophies have had on it.

Socialists believe that all humans are equal in every way. Historically, this was meant to apply to human classes as well as races, and socialists believed that a disadvantaged class person was no different from a noble. They believed that class differences were created only by privilege and discrimination. An example of this mindset was the novel "Pygmalian'" (My Fair lady) in which the author (George Bernard Shaw) displayed that a Cheapside flower girl was indistinguishable from a princess, provided that she had nice clothes and elocution lessons from Rex Harrison.

This concept was advocated by socialist academics in the psychology discipline, who began what was called the "Behaviourist school" of Psychology. This school of academic psychological thought sought to prove that genetics and human instincts had no part to play in behaviour, and that all behaviour was learned. But their attempts to "educate" disadvantaged class children into Mensas failed dismally.

The socialist Behaviourists also believed that they could "condition" criminals to abandon crime, and an example of their failure is illustrated in the move "A Clockwork Orange." This school of socialist psychological thought is considered today to be rather potty, although the Behaviourists did not give up without a fight.

The differences between the Behaviourists and the more modern Cognitive psychologists was meant to be resolved, once and for all, at a great debate involving eminent behavioural scientists from several ivy league universities. Unfortunately, things got a bit heated, and this debate turned rather famously into an all out brawl between several of the distinguished scientists who left the auditorium nursing black eyes and bloody noses.

Dear LEGO,

Prejudice is an irrational, inflexible attitude
towards an entire category of people. The word
lirerally means "prejudged." The key feature of
prejudice is that it is always rooted in
generalisations and so ignores the differences among
individuals. Therefore someone who is prejudiced
against Arabs, asylum seekers, and others, (Lefties),
will tend to have a negative attitude towards these people
in the belief that all Arabs
and asylum seekers, and others, share the same supposed traits.

Like ethnocentrism, stereotyped thinking is an almost
unavaidable feature of social life. Some people tend
to think in terms of general categories, if only to
enable them to make sense of the world by simplifying
its complexity.

The essence of prejudiced thinking, however, is that the
stereotype is not checked against reality. It is not
modified by experiences that contradict the rigid image.

Another consistent feature of prejudiced thought is that
it is irrational - illogical and inconsistent.

For example, prejudiced people often believe mutually
contradictory statements about groups they dislike.
For example, most people who disliked Jews for keeping
to themselves also disliked them for intruding too much.
Clearly prejudiced people are not concerned about genuine
group characteristics, they simply accept any negative
statement that feeds their existing hostility.

In one study, it was found that people who were prejudiced
against one minority group tended to be prejudiced against
others. Nearly three-quarters who disliked Jews also
disliked such people as the Bajorans, the Crumencians, and the
Delakovians. Some prejudiced people even urged that members of the
latter groups be expelled from the country. As it happens
however all these names were fictious names. This demonstrates
the irrationality of prejudice, it shows that prejudiced people
may be hostile toward groups they could never have met or even have heard of.

See you on another thread.

I'm willing to stick around to find out if you're right Hasbeen, but just because the spirit is willing...

So I'll have to make the most of what's available. I do hope that your prognostications are unfounded, but if it turns out that the profession is as hopelessly inept as you say, I'll look at my options.

I discovered last night, while playing with my preferences that I am apparently qualified for entry to medicine, which was quite a surprise and not something I want to take on at 50, but it means that there are no studies I am excluded from. Perhaps I should do that mechatronic engineering degree I was planning on before my marriage broke down?

Nah, I already know how machines work and the details of control systems are boring. Psychology it is, with a soupcon of advanced stats and whatever else I find intriguing. Any ideas folks?

LEGO, behaviourism is not completely dead. It may be less than illuminating at the individual level, but in group dynamics it is still very important. Cognitive and perceptual factors are undoubtedly important, but they often follow behavioural responses and are tacked on as justifications rather than being causative of interactions. It's what I expect will lead to the most useful analyses of group dynamics, since it removes the problematic and imponderable focus on cognition in complex interactions.

At least, I think so...

Julia Gillard, the Australian PM regularly refers to those who disagree with her as "misogynists" and "nut jobs". What do you about that?