Not enough

         In between session of running in and out of the water and jumping over tiny waves with my almost two year-old granddaughter, I was able to read parts of the NY Times on Sunday. As usually, there were many descriptions to some awful things that are going on around the world, which show the varied ways in which people can be horrible to each other.

         I read a few more positive things also, but one piece that I felt was the most relevant to me as a Psychologist was on the back page of the Review section, written by Nickolas A. Christakis, a sociologist and professor at Yale.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/21/opinion/sunday/lets-shake-up-the-social-sciences.html?hpw&_r=0

         I thought it was important because what he presents is very much like I have been saying for at least the last three years to the seven people who listen to me, and that is that our discipline, the science of Psychology and with it the practice of psychotherapy, have become too narrowly focused on the same specific areas we have already studied, and on variations of the same ways in which we have been practicing for seventy years.

         Clearly the practice of Psychology has resulted in many improvements in treatment, especially in how we deal with specific problems, such as PTSD, panic attacks, and even borderline personality.  But we have not taken any dramatic leap forward in conceptualization, and especially in the combining and utilization of knowledge from other branches of science.

         There are so many exciting things going on the fields of genetics, microbiology, and biochemistry that seem to be relevant to how we think and what we do.  It has also become clear to me, after over thirty years in practice, that the core of what we do is based upon a model devised by overly intellectual white Europeans early in the last century.  We can now see that there are so many other factors to consider, such as health, wealth, culture, sub-culture, information availability, and use of technology.

         All of these genetic, biochemical, sociological, and certainly political factors are constantly interacting  with each other in very complex ways and I feel strongly that if we are going to improve our understanding of the causes and influences of what makes people think, feel and act the way that they do, and therefore improve our treatment of those who suffer from it, we have to greatly expand our foundation of study. We have to be much more aggressive in our efforts to learn from, to interact with, and collaborate with others in other disciplines.

         As the market has been showing, unless we change, we will become more out of date and irrelevant.