Can psychology actually help fix relationship issues?

Good grief, first I find out the soul actually exists, and now I'm being told my destiny, my deepest secrets, and dear Maggie are all just a bunch of plain old lies.😳 If you tell me that everything Joan Rivers writes is made up too, I might actually kill myself—no joke, I’ll probably just end up doing it with a spoon.😲

@mistyharbor15, I'm guessing she was talking about emotional or energetic vampirism—you know, the whole psychological manipulation thing, just messing with someone's head. It's that mix of rationalization and passive aggression where they assume that because they're doing things you don't like, they can just brush it off by saying it's "out of love" or "for your own good." You hear that kind of nonsense from those types of vampires all the time...

Oh, and who exactly is this Dr. Phil guy? I've overheard people mentioning him a couple of times, but I honestly have no clue who he is or why he's such a big deal.

He was a guest on Oprah's show, just this chubby, bald guy who came off as totally unlikable.

rustymaker5 said:Who’s actually making a fool of themselves here?
Of course the soul exists... it's just common sense, really.
What on earth could have possibly convinced you otherwise?

I know you're looking to Angela Rogers2 for an answer (let her weigh in), but I'd love to jump into this conversation too.

Who convinced me? Honestly, nobody. In fact, I’m quite against those who—even if they share my views, like Angela Rogers2 does—go out of their way to try and *convince* everyone else. They act as if pushing their worldview is some sort of path to "liberation" or some other lofty goal.

Now, I don't believe in a "soul," but I don't think my lack of belief makes me "right," nor am I acting superior because I refuse to swallow these kinds of fairy tales. It wouldn't even occur to me to write a book trying to debunk the concept.

But why don't I believe in it? First off, let's admit the term sounds a bit naive. Just as someone might suggest psychology sounded childish before professionals replaced the word "soul" with a bunch of technical jargon that doesn't actually mean much more than the original term did. It feels like jumping from the frying pan into the fire. That’s why I still use the word, even if I sound a bit silly doing so.

By "soul," I would mean anything within a human being whose primary (or only) cause isn't matter—in other words, energy. Something that doesn't stem entirely from physical matter/energy. I know there are different takes on this; for instance, I know people who also believe nothing exists beyond matter/energy, yet they argue a "soul" exists as a complex manifestation of that energy. Like how a computer program "exists" even when the machine is powered down.

To me, that interpretation isn't satisfying. At its core, it's still just matter and energy. That isn't what the historical concept of the "soul" represents, and I don't think it's right to just redefine established terms on a whim. If we do that, I'd rather stick to what I'm saying now: the "soul" (as it has been understood through history) doesn't exist, and we can come up with a better, more accurate term for these complex energetic manifestations. At least then we'd avoid the confusion.

But finally, here is why I don't believe in that kind of soul: it's essentially the same reason I don't believe in dragons (the fire-breathing, winged lizards) or the Flying Spaghetti Monster. 🤷 I see no reason to believe in something that transcends matter when every phenomenon I observe can be explained through matter and energy. To be precise, I can't recall a single occurrence that I couldn't potentially explain through a materialist lens. Even when I lack the specific scientific knowledge to fully grasp a phenomenon, it seems perfectly plausible that an explanation exists within the boundaries of pure materialism. So, why search for anything outside of that? It’s a direct application of Ockham's razor: why invent complex explanations when the obvious ones suffice?

rustymaker5 said:No, absolutely not. 🙂
It’s not based on my own life, but I see it in people close to me: there's this guy who goes from one failed relationship to the next (I'm not getting into the "why" or pointing fingers here), and when someone suggests maybe he's the common denominator, she just shrugs—as if we simply don't get it, because their connection is something else entirely, something special (she even cuts off her friends and family for him)....and then, once he starts treating her like garbage, she comes up with these vague excuses, still holding onto the hope that if she just shows him how much she loves him, it'll be enough to change him. In the end, she actually ends up being "lucky," because he leaves her for another woman who, knowing him, will likely face the exact same treatment.

The reality is that we can't change anyone but ourselves. Whether love is involved or not, it doesn't matter.

🙂 Have you ever heard that old fable about the shepherd boy who loved playing pranks on his village by shouting that a wolf was coming? Well, after he tricked them so many times, when a wolf actually showed up, nobody came to help him, and the wolf wiped out half his flock.

I wouldn't go so far as to say it is strictly impossible to change someone. Just because there are countless examples showing how incredibly difficult it is doesn't mean it's impossible. That would be a flawed induction. You know, if you have a bad experience where a marriage falls apart, you can't automatically conclude that every single marriage is a disaster and destined to fail. It's incomplete logic. Though, truth be told, I see those cases all the time. 😬

It's a different question entirely why people are so prone to believing a miracle will happen specifically in *their* case. But that human trait is visible everywhere; this is just one instance.

Chloe Barnes8 said:Apemant, honestly, the whole idea of the soul has been kicked out of academic psychology for ages—if it was ever really part of the curriculum to begin with...

Since psychology is always trying so hard to be this exact, hard science, I guess the concept of the soul (which is right there in the name, *psyche*, and should basically be the heart of the field) just started feeling too "old school" for them. So, they swapped it out for stuff like mental processes, personality traits, and all that technical jargon...

They basically handed the soul over to the spiritual side of things. Nowadays, you see these modern movements trying to bridge the gap between psychology and spirituality, especially within Christianity, particularly here in the West among Protestant circles...

It’s like that old saying: when everyone starts jumping on the bandwagon, everyone else follows suit just to stay in the loop. 😂

How can it claim to be an exact science when it deals with something that collective human knowledge simply DOES NOT UNDERSTAND?

I don't claim to know how the human psyche works either; however, I know just enough to conclude that nobody truly does. At least, not with that level of certainty engineers have when they explain how semiconductors work. Now, semiconductors are incredibly complex, but compared to the human brain, they are practically trivial. Essentially, psychology boils down to an "educated guess." It isn't totally blind, since it relies on data and research—mostly statistical—but we all know how that goes; lies, blatant lies, and if you want to get technical, statistics 😈. But because the system being studied is hopelessly overcomplicated, even that "educated guess" can sometimes yield results worse than a total shot in the dark.

Because of that, I value official psychology only slightly more than highly skilled amateur intuition. An intelligent person with deep empathy and significant life experience can "read" someone just as successfully as a "trained professional." Granted, "reading" someone is much easier than "treating" them—though psychiatrists aren't exactly winning any awards when it comes to treatment, either. For instance, my uncle has been struggling with mental illness for twenty years. All his doctors seem to know how to do is pump him full of pills just enough so he isn't a danger to himself or others. In doing so, they've effectively turned him into a zombie. It reminds me of that old medical adage: the surgery was a success, but the patient died.

lonegardener, just because not every bad thing is purely negative, doesn't mean psychology's push toward becoming a "hard" science with all that precision isn't actually paying off in some ways...

Nowadays, we know that certain mental health struggles aren't just "in someone's head"—they're often just neurotransmitter imbalances. And honestly, treating them with medication to try and level things out is how it's done now...
I mean, the brain is such a complex, high-tech organ, right? It’s one of those things where if it decides it doesn't want to cooperate, you can't exactly force it to fix itself—not that we've cracked the perfect formula yet (we really haven't)... so current treatments aren't perfect by any means, but they're still a massive step up from what was available just a few decades ago...

We can sit here and criticize meds, or psychotherapy, or psychiatry all we want, but when things get really heavy, most people are more than happy to reach out for that pharmacological help... and hey, it saves lives, so there's that...

If science keeps moving at this pace, we might eventually get to a point where schizophrenia is managed much like we manage diabetes today—just another biochemical condition to keep in check....☕

Let’s take a closer look at the "exact" sciences, shall we?
Biology focuses on living organisms, yet we still haven't reached a consensus on what life actually is. For instance, science can't simply manufacture life from scratch.
Physics is often just a collection of hypothetical constructs—string theory, parallel universes, extra dimensions...
There is an immense amount of guesswork involved there too.
To be clear, I have nothing against science itself.

Furthermore, modern research approaches the so-called "soul" through an interdisciplinary lens, such as linking various brain activities to mental processes—take Neuroeconomics, for example. It isn't merely a matter of statistics, though there is plenty of it; statistical models are standard tools used in physics and nearly every other scientific field.
... apologies for going off-topic.

So, moving on... neuroses or those issues stemming from personality disorders are actually pretty well understood nowadays. There are real treatments out there too. It’s totally possible to find full recovery, and honestly, a lot of the time, psychotherapy alone does the heavy lifting...

I mean, we could all sit here playing amateur psychologist or leaning on that "intuitive psychology" everyone thinks they have, but let's be real—only a trained professional truly understands the actual mechanisms behind an illness, the structure of a disorder, its etiology, and all that technical stuff. If you end up in the hands of a solid professional and you're actually motivated to fix what's going on with you, you can achieve so much...🙂

Gerald Rivera60 said:Let’s take a closer look at the "exact" sciences, shall we?
Biology focuses on living organisms, yet we still haven't reached a consensus on what life actually is. For instance, science can't simply manufacture life from scratch.
Physics is often just a collection of hypothetical constructs—string theory, parallel universes, extra dimensions...
There is an immense amount of guesswork involved there too.
To be clear, I have nothing against science itself.

Furthermore, modern research approaches the so-called "soul" through an interdisciplinary lens, such as linking various brain activities to mental processes—take Neuroeconomics, for example. It isn't merely a matter of statistics, though there is plenty of it; statistical models are standard tools used in physics and nearly every other scientific field.
... apologies for going off-topic.

exactly....

but, wouldn't you say that behavioral pathology in certain subjects is actually quite "exact"?
it's no less exact than, say, some theoretical concept of electrical energy...😉

Gerald Rivera60 said:Let’s take a closer look at the "exact" sciences, shall we?
Biology focuses on living organisms, yet we still haven't reached a consensus on what life actually is. For instance, science can't simply manufacture life from scratch.
Physics is often just a collection of hypothetical constructs—string theory, parallel universes, extra dimensions...
There is an immense amount of guesswork involved there too.
To be clear, I have nothing against science itself.

Furthermore, modern research approaches the so-called "soul" through an interdisciplinary lens, such as linking various brain activities to mental processes—take Neuroeconomics, for example. It isn't merely a matter of statistics, though there is plenty of it; statistical models are standard tools used in physics and nearly every other scientific field.
... apologies for going off-topic.

To be honest, I’m really not a fan of where physics has headed over the last two decades. It feels like one wild theory after another. What happened to the elegance of classical mechanics? 😁

Regarding interdisciplinary work, I'm definitely all for it 👍—and again, I have no issue with psychologists or psychiatrists who stay humble and recognize the current limits of their field. My stance might seem a bit intense, but that's only because it feels like there's a massive trend lately toward overestimating everything related to the study of the human psyche. So, this is essentially a knee-jerk reaction on my part; when I run into people who treat psychology like an infallible religion, it acts like a red flag for me.

Chloe Barnes8 said:lonegardener, just because not every bad thing is purely negative, doesn't mean psychology's push toward becoming a "hard" science with all that precision isn't actually paying off in some ways...

Nowadays, we know that certain mental health struggles aren't just "in someone's head"—they're often just neurotransmitter imbalances. And honestly, treating them with medication to try and level things out is how it's done now...
I mean, the brain is such a complex, high-tech organ, right? It’s one of those things where if it decides it doesn't want to cooperate, you can't exactly force it to fix itself—not that we've cracked the perfect formula yet (we really haven't)... so current treatments aren't perfect by any means, but they're still a massive step up from what was available just a few decades ago...

We can sit here and criticize meds, or psychotherapy, or psychiatry all we want, but when things get really heavy, most people are more than happy to reach out for that pharmacological help... and hey, it saves lives, so there's that...

If science keeps moving at this pace, we might eventually get to a point where schizophrenia is managed much like we manage diabetes today—just another biochemical condition to keep in check....☕

Do you really think so? 😁

Or even better: do you think that will actually be a good thing? 😈

What truly unsettles me about all of this is how closely these "psychological phenomena" tie back to deep philosophical—or perhaps even spiritual—questions. It hits on core ethical issues. Doesn't it give you a bit of a chill to wonder where this clinical view of the human psyche is ultimately leading us?

And please, don't just call me paranoid. 🤣

Chloe Barnes8 said:lonegardener, just because not every bad thing is purely negative, doesn't mean psychology's push toward becoming a "hard" science with all that precision isn't actually paying off in some ways...

Nowadays, we know that certain mental health struggles aren't just "in someone's head"—they're often just neurotransmitter imbalances. And honestly, treating them with medication to try and level things out is how it's done now...
I mean, the brain is such a complex, high-tech organ, right? It’s one of those things where if it decides it doesn't want to cooperate, you can't exactly force it to fix itself—not that we've cracked the perfect formula yet (we really haven't)... so current treatments aren't perfect by any means, but they're still a massive step up from what was available just a few decades ago...

We can sit here and criticize meds, or psychotherapy, or psychiatry all we want, but when things get really heavy, most people are more than happy to reach out for that pharmacological help... and hey, it saves lives, so there's that...

If science keeps moving at this pace, we might eventually get to a point where schizophrenia is managed much like we manage diabetes today—just another biochemical condition to keep in check....☕

Psychiatry doesn't automatically mean you're being handed a prescription.
And psychology definitely doesn't.
???

I don't have an issue with medication, but it shouldn't be the only tool in the box. 🤷
Wasn't that what you were getting at?

lonegardener said:Do you really think so? 😁

Or even better: do you think that will actually be a good thing? 😈

What truly unsettles me about all of this is how closely these "psychological phenomena" tie back to deep philosophical—or perhaps even spiritual—questions. It hits on core ethical issues. Doesn't it give you a bit of a chill to wonder where this clinical view of the human psyche is ultimately leading us?

And please, don't just call me paranoid. 🤣

I mean!

I honestly don't know if it'll be misused, but when you consider that so many mental health struggles involve such massive amounts of suffering, why wouldn't this be a good thing?

And besides... this whole obsession with psychology and its supposed "all-knowingness" has turned into such cheap, watered-down pop psychology lately... like, the whole "you can control everything, you can change anything, the power is within you" vibe (as if! 😁 )...

Anyway, you can see from my earlier posts that I haven't exactly been a cheerleader for that mindset, where people think they can just think their way through every single problem... ha! 😍

But, I guess you still can do a lot! 🙂

Gerald Rivera60 said:Let’s take a closer look at the "exact" sciences, shall we?
Biology focuses on living organisms, yet we still haven't reached a consensus on what life actually is. For instance, science can't simply manufacture life from scratch.
Physics is often just a collection of hypothetical constructs—string theory, parallel universes, extra dimensions...
There is an immense amount of guesswork involved there too.
To be clear, I have nothing against science itself.

Furthermore, modern research approaches the so-called "soul" through an interdisciplinary lens, such as linking various brain activities to mental processes—take Neuroeconomics, for example. It isn't merely a matter of statistics, though there is plenty of it; statistical models are standard tools used in physics and nearly every other scientific field.
... apologies for going off-topic.

Sometimes you just have to make an educated guess; there isn't really any other way.
Without a little speculation, even in the scientific community, we wouldn't be making any progress at all...................

Sandra Parker3 said:Psychiatry doesn't automatically mean you're being handed a prescription.
And psychology definitely doesn't.
???

I don't have an issue with medication, but it shouldn't be the only tool in the box. 🤷
Wasn't that what you were getting at?

Look, lady, I was saying that medication literally saves people's lives, hello????

But if you can manage without them (for the milder stuff), then yeah, even better....

Chloe Barnes8 said:exactly....

but, wouldn't you say that behavioral pathology in certain subjects is actually quite "exact"?
it's no less exact than, say, some theoretical concept of electrical energy...😉

I think we need to be a bit more precise when we define what "exact" actually means.😬

Electrical energy is "exact" because if I run 120 volts through a 100-ohm wire, I can calculate precisely how much that wire will heat up in one minute. It will happen that way every single time, with minimal deviation—and even when deviations occur, we know exactly how and why they happen.

Nothing in the study of behavioral pathology comes anywhere close to being that "exact." To be fair, there are certain chemical imbalances within the brain, as you mentioned, but I wouldn't classify those under psychology in the "strict sense"—that’s more biological. When I read descriptions of various personality disorders, it strikes me that they could actually serve as a decent psychological profile test: seeing what percentage of each disorder a person recognizes in themselves.😬 Based on those percentages, I think you could build a fairly accurate map of someone's psychological makeup.

lonegardener said:I think we need to be a bit more precise when we define what "exact" actually means.😬

Electrical energy is "exact" because if I run 120 volts through a 100-ohm wire, I can calculate precisely how much that wire will heat up in one minute. It will happen that way every single time, with minimal deviation—and even when deviations occur, we know exactly how and why they happen.

Nothing in the study of behavioral pathology comes anywhere close to being that "exact." To be fair, there are certain chemical imbalances within the brain, as you mentioned, but I wouldn't classify those under psychology in the "strict sense"—that’s more biological. When I read descriptions of various personality disorders, it strikes me that they could actually serve as a decent psychological profile test: seeing what percentage of each disorder a person recognizes in themselves.😬 Based on those percentages, I think you could build a fairly accurate map of someone's psychological makeup.

Psychology can be exact enough that if we truly understand someone's early childhood conditions and their social interactions, we could probably predict with decent certainty what kind of personality structure issues they'll develop later on...

And then, well, how to treat them too...

Also, that whole idea of using percentages to map out a profile is just way too naive... that's not how any of this works.

There are all sorts of combinations of personality disorders, you know? Like, one might be the primary issue while others are just secondary symptoms, and so on...

Man, I really love it when people talk down about things they don't actually understand...

And then they go ahead and try to tell us how to fix science, too... 😍

Chloe Barnes8 said:I mean!

I honestly don't know if it'll be misused, but when you consider that so many mental health struggles involve such massive amounts of suffering, why wouldn't this be a good thing?

And besides... this whole obsession with psychology and its supposed "all-knowingness" has turned into such cheap, watered-down pop psychology lately... like, the whole "you can control everything, you can change anything, the power is within you" vibe (as if! 😁 )...

Anyway, you can see from my earlier posts that I haven't exactly been a cheerleader for that mindset, where people think they can just think their way through every single problem... ha! 😍

But, I guess you still can do a lot! 🙂

There is definitely massive power inside you.
The way you think changes a huge amount of things.
You can't do everything, but you can do plenty.

It’s nothing to laugh at.

Either way, it's better than writing letters to that World... what a joke. 😁

Sandra Parker3 said:There is definitely massive power inside you.
The way you think changes a huge amount of things.
You can't do everything, but you can do plenty.

It’s nothing to laugh at.

Either way, it's better than writing letters to that World... what a joke. 😁

A little too much Modern literature, dear Sandra Parker3, just a bit too much...😍

lonegardener said:I think we need to be a bit more precise when we define what "exact" actually means.😬

Electrical energy is "exact" because if I run 120 volts through a 100-ohm wire, I can calculate precisely how much that wire will heat up in one minute. It will happen that way every single time, with minimal deviation—and even when deviations occur, we know exactly how and why they happen.

Nothing in the study of behavioral pathology comes anywhere close to being that "exact." To be fair, there are certain chemical imbalances within the brain, as you mentioned, but I wouldn't classify those under psychology in the "strict sense"—that’s more biological. When I read descriptions of various personality disorders, it strikes me that they could actually serve as a decent psychological profile test: seeing what percentage of each disorder a person recognizes in themselves.😬 Based on those percentages, I think you could build a fairly accurate map of someone's psychological makeup.

Or maybe just a solid gauge of who's just a massive hypochondriac. 🙄