We're back to another warm and welcoming new school year, not that the last one really, ever ended as I was in class all summer...but that's neither here nor there...FALL 2011! My second to last semester as a good ol' average college student. THANK THE TINY TOM CRUISE!
My problem is that I find humans, on a case by case basis, very interesting. Each human has a learning history, has a story, has different emotional triggers and expressions of those emotions - that is interesting. The individual, the social group, the culture, the work place, the damage is fascinating...but psychology wants to fix it. I just want to talk to people and study them (yes, just like little tiny lab rats!). I don't want to fix people, and that's mainly because I don't think many people want to be fixed - we acclimate to our psychological states, we become comfortable in those states; our adaptations are our shields, and by fixing those psychological defects that have become our defaults, we feel our shields are weakened.
I find, much like studying history, one can only affect change if they can understand the underlying triggers, the basic building blocks of disruptive, destructive psychology behind the behaviors can we learn how to change them by eliminating them altogether. Learn what creates the destruction and stop that initial trigger. That's the type of psychology I'm interested in, that's what I enjoy. But that field doesn't so much exist.
So, for now, I will continue on my merry little way towards that silly piece of paper that says I'm worth a decent salaried job, and then, maybe, completely change my path and do something absolutely different.
Do you think we ever really had those shields before the field of psychology? I just thought of that... Maybe it's something we've done to ourselves to an extent. Like when someone tells you you're clumsy and you suddenly start noticing you trip/drop things a lot. Maybe you used to always trip/drop things before and you just never noticed, or maybe someone else just decided to fixate on a singular instance of your life and ascribe it as a personality trait, thereby making you self-conscious and fixated yourself. Maybe we weren't all so fucked up before we all started believing we were all so fucked up.
ReplyDeleteOh course, you do have your Mansons, your JWGs, your Hitlers. I'm not saying batshit-nuts people don't exist, we certainly do! I mean... they certainly do... Yes, THEY...I have to go...
LMAO, I think most things we've created. It's a product of social function and medical advances. I was discussing this just today, how if something can't be described as "clinical" (and dear GOD they have a clinical definition for EVERYTHING!), it just becomes an odd personality quirk. 200 years ago, if you were depressed, it wasn't a diagnosis it was a way of viewing reality. The world has changed as the eye through which we view it have been altered by "science". As Zeus became God, so will any and all personality traits, ticks, and marks of individuality will become "clinical" problems. Those shields used to be functional, but are now just more problems.
ReplyDelete