Customer Reviews

Psychology Astray: Fallacies in Studies of "Repressed Memory" and Childhood Trauma

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Pope has made a significant entry into the rational interpretation of the "unconsious" mechanism of hidden or repressed memory. As a behaviorist I found myself agreeing with his hypotheses and conclusions and discovered some clarity in my own thinking at the same time. I find his writing style to be clear, clever, and concise. I have chosen to place this book on my desk for all to see.

ideal for intro psychology students and also just to look at methodology of many studies we take for granted. focus on repressed memories is interesting considering it is such a hot topic, though you do not necessarliy need to be reading for this subject to apprecaite and enjoy this book

ideal for intro psychology students and also just to look at methodology of many studies we take for granted. focus on repressed memories is interesting considering it is such a hot topic, though you do not necessarliy need to be reading for this subject to apprecaite and enjoy this book

Psychology Astray is a pretty good book, although the author does make some presumptions known to be wrong himself. Pope uses--homosexuality can not be changed by psycotherapy--as an example of the misinformation taught for years in his chosen field. 1000 page books have been published that maintain that it can be and is. Something about barometric preassure doesn't cause bone discomfort where a major bone is conected different than usual with another one is in there too which is wrong. He delves into what they know about schizophrenia, without mentioning that it is the most misdiagnosed mental disorder there is. (Social workers often are the ones who decide who is schizophrenic in mental institutions). The field of psychology has a lot of problems, it really does. It would be easy to prove that the rouphly 100 year old area of study is responsible for far more harm than good that it's done. Labotomys. Wrongly detained individuals. Prescriptions for addictive drugs for the wrong symptoms. Pope points out that what qualifies experts as such is often miscalculated credentials. Like cops, part of the problem is the egotisticalness of the majority of students who choose the field, the "it takes a village to raise a child" crowd in abstract. They know what's best for you because they learned the later discredited stuff in school of predesesors who did the same. Most of them want everyone to be the same and feel that other people who are they're own people should not have the right to be or even act paranoid. Dr. Pope does a pretty good job of exposing the lack of evidence about one particular subject that gets reported on the news as fact by producers who did take the same classes and were taught by the same professors who learned the same or similar mis-information. x