CrystalShadow said:
In terms of sexual fetishes, it can be quite hard to get people to talk about their sexual preferences or discuss them... a more elegant method would need to be developed otherwise you end up with a biased sample or you permit interpreter bias, as indeed we have.
And again, it could be because I am studying it that we don't see as much failed experimentation, though I also get the feeling that this is due to cultural variations. American psychology is a lot more problematic, especially in terms of application. As you've mentioned previously, there's a problem with taking a reductionist and deterministic perspective when diagnosing patients because american psychiatrists only require a MD in order to practice. That is to say, they are doctors who perceive mental conditions the same way as physical illness, which is a massive problem. It's part of the reason why the drug industry gets criticised so much, as well as indexes like the DSM(and the ICD, though to a slightly lesser degree), corporate influence notwithstanding. It's a type of bias that can pervade the subject, but from my experience, it's relative to culture.
To give a more practical example, the two methods of criminal profiling that we're studying include the American and the British approach. The American one is based off of a series of unstructured interviews with 36 serial offenders, relies on categorisation, dichotomies and intuition. It's incredibly broad and problematic, but because of it's cost efficiency, get's employed fairly frequently, and is of relative use in less serious crimes.
In contrast, the British approach instead treats every single occurrence individually and without bias. Conclusions are drawn by gathering evidence and compiling into data using small space analysis(effectively establishing links using psychological principles to reconstruct narratives and to assemble an accurate portrayal of the offender) and uses databases to cross-reference matching traits and past histories.
I think you can see the difference: the American one places too much confidence on certainty and trusts in the ability of the profiler, whereas the British method is standardised and more permitting of errors in order to properly identify the offender in question. And like I said, theories are seldom applied without serious evidence behind them. Whilst the Freudian method is popular, research has shown that it is due to the intimacy and length of the therapy and less so due to how it investigates issues(such as forced confrontation: the idea is to enable serious introspection, which is what helps, not the bit about wanting to have sex with mothers/fathers).
And although there can be some problems with the biological approach(assuming genetics as the reason for mental conditions), it is not without credibility. Certain conditions such as Schizophrenia do have a strong basis in genetics(Gottesman & Shields found a 58% correlation with monozygotic twins(it was a review study, but they studied twins who were and weren't separated: it's a compilation) contrasting to a 12% correlation with dizygotic twins) but it doesn't end there. Whilst theories can mislead, they can also cause reason to question, and that's where the diathesis-stress model would come in(says that genetic conditions can lay dormant unless they are 'activated' by something, usually a traumatic event or during puberty when sporadic chemical changes are taking place).
Hence, Schizophrenic treatment doesn't rely solely on drug therapy, but can also employ CBT in order to help to deal with events or anything that could trigger a severe anxiety response(not only that, but it can also help a person familiarise themselves with the condition and not disassociate it).
I think it's inherent in any scientific practice that can be affected by human bias. Physics itself suffered a huge loss when Einstein spent his last years trying to disprove another theory because it didn't conform with his beliefs. Even before that, you have figures such as Plato and Pythagoras who crushed the scientific method in favour of having more socially acceptable theories.
