SPECIAL FIELDS OF PSYCHOLOGY

Rhine retired from Duke University in 1965 and transferred his research to a privately endowed organization, the Foundation for Research on the Nature of Man. Since that time parapsychology has become better established in other universities, as illustrated by the offering of credit courses in the subject in increasing numbers. In addition, independent research centers continue to be founded, among them the American Society for Psychical Research, with headquarters in New York City. The Parapsychological Association, an international group of scholars actively working in the field, was formed in 1957 and was granted affiliation status by the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1969.

Criticisms

Although parapsychologists are increasingly employing and refining scientific methodologies for their observations, one of the chief criticisms of their work is that experiments in psi phenomena can rarely be duplicated. Under the most rigorous laboratory controls, for example, experiments on phenomena such as out-of-body experiences—in which individuals demonstrate an apparent ability to locate their center of perception outside their bodies—indicate that even reputable psychics are rarely able to duplicate earlier, high-scoring performances. The scores of such individuals, in fact, tend to drop to the level of probability the more the experiment is repeated. Nonparapsychologists find psi experiments even more difficult to repeat, and a majority of conventional scientists dismiss parapsychology findings as unscientific or at best inconclusive.

A similar criticism is based on the claim by most parapsychologists that psi phenomena occur beyond the law of causality, which is one of the fundamental premises of any scientific investigation. Indeed, results of psi experiments often turn out to be far from or even contradictory to the original predictions. Parapsychologists admit that psi phenomena fall so far outside ordinary comprehension that they are often unsure whether an ESP event or a PK event has occurred; Rhine himself stated that one kind of event could not occur without the other. Because these phenomena are difficult to define or isolate when they appear to happen—and, further, because the phenomena occur only for a select group of observers—most scientists think that psi investigations fall far short of the rules of objectivity required by the scientific method. As a result, many parapsychologists, rather than trying to demonstrate the reality of psi phenomena to a skeptical scientific community, have turned to exploring how such phenomena might actually work; they even have drawn on quantum physics for empirical support. Some workers in the field object to the very notion of repeatability of experiments as foreign to the nature of psi phenomena; they consider the scientific method, as currently understood, too restrictive a formulation for exploring the unknown.

14.Industrial Psychology

Psychologists in industry serve many roles. In the personnel office, they assist in hiring through testing and interviewing, in developing training programs, in evaluating employees, and in maintaining good employee relations and communications. Some psychologists do research for marketing and advertising departments. Others work in the field of human engineering, which involves designing machines and workplaces to make them more suitable for people.

School Psychology

Psychologists in the educational system give most of their attention to counseling and guidance. They help students plan their school and work careers. Educational psychologists deal with the processes of teaching and learning; for example, they may investigate new methods of teaching children how to read or to do mathematics, in order to make classroom learning more effective.

Clinical PsychologyMany applied psychologists work in hospitals, clinics, and private practice, providing therapy to people who need psychological help. By testing and interviewing, they classify their patients and engage in all forms of treatment that are not exclusively medical, such as drug therapy and surgery.

A special contribution of clinical psychology is behavior therapy, which is based on principles of learning and conditioning. Through behavior therapy, clinical psychologists try to change the behavior of the patient and to remove unpleasant or undesirable symptoms by arranging the proper conditioning experiences or the proper rewards for desired behavior. A patient with a phobia about dogs, for example, might be “desensitized” by a series of rewards given for closer and closer contact with dogs in nonthreatening situations. In other forms of therapy, the psychologist may try to help patients better understand their problems and find new ways of dealing with them.

Vocabulary

Contents

Physiological psychology - психофизиология. Изучает психику в единстве с ее

нейрофизиологическим субстратом - рассматривает соотношение мозга и психики.

Psychoanalysis - психоанализ. Основывается на идее о том, что поведение определяется не

только и не столько сознанием, сколько бессознательным.

Behaviourism - бихевиоризм. Направление в американской психологии ХХ в., отрицающее

сознание как предмет научного исследования и сводящее психику к различным формам