How To Be a Psychologist

How To Be a Psychologist

In my years as a psychology student no one ever suggested I read William James’s The Principles of Psychology. No doubt this was because it was deemed old-fashioned and far too philosophical. In those days great emphasis was placed on doing experiments. You couldn’t be a serious psychologist unless you spent most of your time in the lab experimenting. You couldn’t be a “theoretical psychologist”. Chomsky was frowned upon because of his lack of experimental results (has he ever done an experiment?). I might have remained a psychologist but for this attitude. Don’t get me wrong: I liked doing experiments (as a philosopher I miss them), but I didn’t think purely theoretical work was out of the question. This is an odd attitude and I still don’t understand it. In physics you can be an experimental physicist or a theoretical physicist—there is a recognized division of labor. Some people are better at one than the other. In biology it is much the same: Richard Dawkins is more of a theoretical biologist than an experimental biologist (or even field biologist). It’s probably the same in chemistry. What I actually believe is that in psychology students should take a philosophy of psychology course as well, because the subject is deep in philosophical questions. But there is a marked hostility in psychology towards philosophy, no doubt through fear of not being recognized as a proper science. Steven Pinker has good philosophical awareness, but he is the exception. Some of the courses I took were dreadfully boring (psychological testing, industrial psychology); I would much rather have done some philosophy of mind or language. As it is, when I did my M.A. on innate ideas, I had to basically invent cognitive science, much to the consternation of my teachers; fortunately, the head of department, John Cohen, had a more enlightened attitude and let me do what I wanted. Otherwise, I would not have found a supervisor. Experiments are fine, but they are not the be-all and end-all. Somebody has to do the dirty work of making theoretical sense of empirical results.[1]

[1] It obviously still annoys me that the intellectual philistinism I encountered caused me to change subjects, though I admit I had a deeper interest in the full range of philosophical questions. Ideally, I would have done both (with a side-interest in marine biology). I did used to lecture to psychology students. Today I tend to describe myself as a philosopher-psychologist.