11 Silly Questions That All Psychologists Have Had To Hear
Psychology is a very broad professional field in which a large number of activities, work topics and approaches to the same problem take place. However, despite all this heterogeneity, one of the things that All psychologists share the stereotypes and prejudices that circulate about them.
Many times, however, these prejudices are not expressed in the form of statements, but rather questions.
Silly questions that every psychologist has had to hear
Below we will give a brief review of all those questions based on ignorance about the profession of psychologist that, by dint of being heard over and over again over the years, can threaten to end up exhausting the patience of more than one.
1. Did you study Psychology to understand your disorders?
Ignoring the bias of the question, Psychology is not even fundamentally about mental disorders, so the question does not make sense. In fact, a psychologist can dedicate himself to conducting research on consumption patterns, use of social networks, educational processes, etc. Is about a field that has many different branches of specialization.
2. My 5-year-old nephew has made this drawing, what does it mean?
One of the great myths of Psychology is the belief that the task of a psychologist is to diagnose mental disorders or identify personality traits from the observation and analysis of drawings. This is totally false, for two reasons.
The first is that the interpretation of a couple of drawings simply does not work to know someone’s mental processes and has only shown a timid validity when it comes to identifying cases of severe schizophrenia (something that can be recognized, and better, without having to go through this method).
The second is that it is impossible to create a reliable drawing interpretation system that can be used by many psychologists reaching the same conclusions.
3. Are you going to psychoanalyze me while we talk?
Neither personality analysis nor diagnosis of disorders can be done without the person’s consent in non-forensic contexts, nor can they be done through conversation. Besides, psychologists are not characterized by psychoanalyzing. A triple bad question.
4. I dreamed that I tied my shoelaces with snakes, what does it mean?
Dream interpretation may be a stimulating creative activity, but it has certainly not been shown to reveal anything about the dreamer’s mental processes.
5. Can you explain to me what repressed ideas that person has?
Current psychology rejects Freudian ideas about repressed desires by the unconscious understood as a struggle of intrapsychic entities with their own conflicting objectives. Furthermore, you cannot evaluate anyone psychologically without using systematic methods.
6. What title could you give to this image?
Unlike the previous questions, this one is not usually asked by people totally unrelated to the subject, but by students in their first months of Psychology or certain university courses based on the humanities who apparently believe that psychologists are also dedicated to interpreting forms. of artistic expression and, what is worse, to summarize its conclusions in a simple title.
These types of generic answers cannot be answered, among other things because There are many factors at play that are different in each case. Asking this is like asking why some people start obsessing over a music record and end up hating it.
8. Why do you insist on labeling people?
Psychology does not label people, but rather it names people’s behaviors. The diagnostic categories used to delimit mental disorders, for example, are not adjectives, but simple names that serve to identify the symptoms that a patient presents.
9. Is your work based on medicating patients?
Psychologists do not medicate, that is the job of psychiatrists. In any case, what they do is propose readjustments of behavior and thinking to make the patients’ lives improve.
10. What does being crazy mean?
Abstract terms such as “insanity” or “crazy” have no scientific value, and are normally used to stigmatize some people. It is not the task of Psychology to define words popularly used for generations to point out the different and separate them from society.
11. Is it true that psychologists charge for listening?
The work of psychologists is not based on listening, but on develop concrete solutions for specific problems. The idea of the psychotherapist being paid to sit still and take notes probably comes from the couch sessions of psychoanalysis, but in reality there is much more to psychology than active listening. There is also the establishment of specific goals, training the patient on how to reach them, and monitoring progress.
