8 great myths about modern psychology
Psychology is one of the disciplines about which more myths circulate, partly because its subject of study is interesting for the general public and partly because given the versatility of mental processes can come to "invent" all kinds of bizarre theories about how it works Our brain.
Myths of current psychology
In this chapter We will review some of the most widespread myths of psychology and we will see why they are false.
1. Dreams have a hidden meaning
One of the most widespread ideas about the functioning of mental processes is that dreams have a way of being interpreted that portrays our way of thinking, our fears and our desires.
This myth, which draws directly from the psychoanalytic theories born with Sigmund Freud, is based only on beliefs that have not been proven, so there is no reason to suppose that dreams they mean something specific beyond the interpretation that each one wants to give them based on their own creative power.
2. A large part of psychological problems are solved by expressing them
It is very common to think that the task of psychotherapists is simply to be there to listen to the problems that the patient tells them, and that the fact of verbally expressing these problems produces a feeling of well-being that is the foundation of the solution offered by psychology.
However, it should not be forgotten that a large part of the reasons why people go to the psychologist have to to do with concrete objective and material factors that are not going to disappear simply because people talk about they. Situations of family tension, eating disorders, gambling addiction, phobias... all of them exist because there is a dynamic of interaction between the person and the elements of their environment that is reproduces itself and maintains itself over time, regardless of the way in which the person experiences it or interpreter
3. There is a rational brain and an emotional brain.
Also There is a myth that two overlapping brains live inside our heads: a rational brain and an emotional one.. This has a small grain of truth, since the areas of the brain closest to the brainstem and to limbic system intervene more directly in the mental processes related to emotional states if we compare them with areas of the brain surface such as the frontal lobe, but it is still a simplification.
What really happens is that all parts of the brain are working together both in those processes related to what emotional as well as those related to "rational" thought, to the point that it is practically impossible to know if a pattern of activation of neurons It is rational or based on emotions.
4. We use only 10% of the brain
This myth is very popular, and yet it is absurd in several ways.. In the first place, when talking about this hidden potential of 10% of our brain, affirmations based on the material (the way our body really works) with those referring to our "hidden potential" as something more abstract and based on the philosophy of life that we continue.
This makes it easy to "throw the stone and hide the hand", that is, to affirm things that are presumably based on scientific knowledge and, when they are questioned, pass them off as simply ideas about life worth living, how we can find ourselves, etc
To learn more about why everything we know about how the brain works contradicts the 10% myth, you can read this article.
5. Subliminal messages make you buy things
The idea that an advertising team can make us feel the impulse to buy a particular product inserting some "hidden" frames in a video or some letters in an image has not only not been demonstrated, but are based on an experiment, that of James Vicary and Coca-Cola, which never came into existence as such, by Vicary's own admission.
6. The interpretation of someone's drawings is used to assess their personality
Analyzing people's drawings is only useful when exploring very specific diseases, such as hemineglect, in which the left half of what is perceived is ignored (and thus the left side of the drawings is left unfinished). In other words, projective tests such as those in which someone's drawings are analyzed are not useful for evaluate details about the personality of people and, beyond individual opinions about therapists who apply, under the magnifying glass of studies that analyze a multitude of results have never been shown to be effective.
The meta-analyses that have been carried out on these tests point to their little or no usefulness, among other things. things because there is no single way in which a drawing can be interpreted: for some reason it is a product of the creativity and therefore escape preconceived schemes.
7. Hypnosis allows you to control someone's will
The hypnosis seems to be little less than a magical power that makes someone trained in these techniques able to handle their I crave the body of other people, but the reality is far from this very marketinian vision and spectacular.
The truth is Hypnosis is fundamentally based on suggestion and the degree to which the person is willing to participate in the technique. Someone who does not want to be hypnotized will not be influenced by hypnosis.
8. Personality is assigned during youth
It is true that the first years of development are fundamental and that the things that happen to us in them can leave a trace difficult to erase in relation to our way of acting and perceiving things, but this should not be exaggerated.
important aspects of personality may continue to vary past adolescence and young adulthood in a similar way to what happens to Walter White in breaking bad (although not always for the worse, of course). After all, our brain is constantly changing depending on what we are experiencing, even during old age.
