Article archive / August 1, 2011
Originally published: . Volume 2, No. 12. Source pages: 2.
–Is the important question to ask beyond brute survival, said Dr. Alvin Burstein, psychologist and psychoanalyst (see article this issue).
Psychology could use that advice. The Fort Hood psychiatrist is in the news again and every third reporter calls him a psychologist. To the public there’s little difference. The word “psychologist” leads the listener to a person who treats mental illness, and then to the cognitive frame for psychiatrist.
We come by our problems partly because we’re so diverse. We’re scientist-practitioners, scientists, and professors, who according to ASPPB, apply ourselves in clinical, counseling, school, forensic, cognitive & behavioral, clinical health, correctional, academic, industrial-organizational, clinical neuropsychological, rehabilitation, psychoanalysis, and research. And even this list doesn’t include everything or capture our real identity. Psychology could do ourselves and the public a great service by devising a worthy frame. A cognitive frame (metaphor) collapses, limits, and directs the listener. It creates a readiness and priming effect. It is necessary for accurate problem-solving, for defining issues and generating solutions.
We are an intellectually rich, diverse community of premier social scientists that apply what we know to the human condition, and we deserve a worthy frame that doesn’t mean psychiatrist.
This article is part of a historical newspaper archive. Read the original issue for its original layout, photographs and graphics.