Progressive Psychology

Just as Gutenberg's invention of the printing press radically changed the world, the World Wide Web is radically changing the world. The psychology that is currently taught, though, is still modeled on Gutenberg's printed medium even though efforts have been made to dress up that medium and its accompanying forms of thinking as something younger, hipper, and faster than what they actually are. It is impressive to see how ridiculous those well-intentioned efforts have often seemed to people my age and younger, and I look forward to being seen as ridiculous in similar ways by those younger or just more up-to-date than myself.

The major problem with changing primary mediums of exchange, including mediums of communication, is that the experience and social power is usually in the hands of elders while the familiarity with the new mediums is experienced by the up-and-coming punks of the next generation. Large scale innovation ends up being a messy but exciting business.

The biggest problem I've experienced in my education has been in wondering: how does all that move? How do you take all the archaic experience and let it live, let it found or base future endeavors rather than hold them back (like an oversized anchor)? How do we take these information chunks and not only let them stream, but swim that stream successfully? Essentially, the way psychology has been taught to me is like trying to cram a square peg into a round hole. Well, most institutions are usually behind the times. (Some things don't change I suppose.)

Here's the outline of what might as well be called progressive psychology:

Information management through

stages of change

in a psychological economy embedded

within a stream of social reality based

in a changing physical environment.

Each of those phrases represents an important, distinct-yet-connected contributing aspect to a psychology that lives. The point in writing this out succinctly is to show that a general outline does not need to be phrased so that only experts can use it. It is possible, with a minimal amount of familiarity, to recognize what these aspects are and how they generally interact.

It's true that almost everything I needed to know I could have learned in kindergarten. But we all know that there are all kinds of fun to get into as adults that kindergarteners don't know anything about. The field of psychology is only now moving beyond its kindergarten stage. There is a lot out there ahead of us.


http://mertzian.googlepages.com/progressivepsychology