Popular psychology
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The term popular psychology, frequently called pop psychology, refers to concepts and theories about human mental life and behaviour that come from outside the technical study of psychology, but which purport to go beyond everyday knowledge. Like any cultural fad, pop psychology movements (the driving force behind these theories) tend not to last long; their relevance varies. Over time their popularity fades, or a new popular theory replaces an older one.
One can distinguish popular psychology from naïve psychology, the technical term for the intuitive, non-technical understanding of our own and others' psychological processes that all people develop within a society. Like the parallel areas of naïve physics and naïve biology, naïve psychology may often technically make mistakes, but it often functions adequately, in the sense that it gives an accurate description of the situations that individual people face, and specifies reasonable courses of action to take.
Popular psychology, on the other hand, usually purports to offer a technical insight (its practitioners often use technical jargon) but does so in a way that systematic analysis or knowledge do not support. Many popular psychology concepts come from pseudoscience, but they may also refer to academic or clinical psychology. The literature of popular psychology tends to seize on ideas out of context or without the conditions and cautions that a professional psychologist would attach to them.[citation needed]
One can also distinguish popular psychology from various schools of psychological thinking that lie outside the current mainstream, for example: the approaches to understanding psychology that flow from most religious systems or from astrology. Professional psychologists mistrust these as much as they mistrust what they see as popular psychology, as quackery and as pseudoscience; but these systems do generally represent, at least, some relatively systematic attempt to understand human thought, emotions, behavior, and the psyche.
Some figures/movements characterized at varying times as exponents of pop psychology (or as promoting a variety of unsupported and out-of-context psychological claims) include:
- Brandon Bays
- Melody Beattie
- John Bradshaw
- Tony Buzan
- Edward De Bono
- Wayne Dyer
- Werner Erhard (Robitscher 1980:455)
- L Ron Hubbard / Scientology (Linn 2005)
- David Icke
- Phil McGraw ("Dr Phil") (Dembling and Gutierrez 1993)
- Anthony Robbins
- James Vikery
One example of an enduring, yet not entirely factual, statement associated with popular psychology involves the claim that humans use only ten percent of their brains. Many people accept this urban legend as true science, and pseudoscientific and new age practitioners often propagate it.
Many writers and musical artists, such as Rush, have used popular psychology in their work (see for example Cygnus X-1 Part II: Hemispheres).
[edit] Popular psychology concept names
Popular psychology often uses non-technical folk terms for psychological and philosophical concepts. Such terms include:
- Cat-and-mouse games
- Fishing for compliments
- Head games
- Inner child
- Jumping on the bandwagon
- Left brain / Right brain
- Nice guy syndrome
- Sour grapes
- Team spirit
- Walking on eggshells
- Win-win
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- Dembling, Sophia and Lisa Gutierrez: The Making of Dr. Phil. John Wiley, 2003. ISBN 047146726X
- Linn, Virginia. "L. Ron Hubbard, founder" Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 24 July 2005. Retrieved on 2006-08-26.
- Robitscher, Jonas B.: The powers of psychiatry. Boston: Houghton Mifflen. 1980, page 455. ISBN 0395282225
