It has been my experience that, while Freudians aren't quite as rare as behaviorists, there really aren't many Freudians around these days. There are certainly a number of terms and concepts in the discipline that more or less originated with Freud and his students. But then again, the term "atom" has been around since the Greeks and we don't really think it refers to the same things anymore. Similarly, one may use Freudian interpretation as a style, particularly in therapeutic settings. But that's not really a field of research in the way that I'm talking about cognitive psychology.
So, for example, when researching decision-making processes (another area of fascination for me) a psychologist might make reference to someone's "ego" getting involved, while not at all subscribing to notions of id/ego/superego.
What neuropsych does is study _brain_ processes, particularly at the electrochemical level (though there has been a smidgen of work at the quantum physics level, which might prove interesting if it pans out). Then there is this massive leaping handwave and on the other side the neuropsychologist purports to be able to tell you something about the human cognitive process. Analogously one might observe the flow of electrons on a PC's circuit board and based on that make pronouncements about the World Wide Web.
Modern neuropsych is completely incapable of dealing with environmental problems in part because their equipment doesn't work in the natural environment and in part because they have no model of what they're studying, based on which they could point to a difference and say "see, that's an environmental effect." And, if you really like the notion of embodied cognition then you can stand back and say that neuropsych will _never_ be able to say anything about this stuff because all the interesting stuff happens _outside_ of the cranium.
I'm biased, in part because he's a professional colleague and some of his early papers inspired part of my PhD, but I still recommend that if you're interested in this stuff, you read Ed Hutchins' Cognition in the Wild. It's almost 10 years old now, so somewhat dated but he pretty strongly argues the case that cognition does not happen inside the head, in much the way that Wittgenstein argued that there can't be a private language.
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wispfox
no subject
Date: 2005-09-20 07:28 pm (UTC)So, for example, when researching decision-making processes (another area of fascination for me) a psychologist might make reference to someone's "ego" getting involved, while not at all subscribing to notions of id/ego/superego.
What neuropsych does is study _brain_ processes, particularly at the electrochemical level (though there has been a smidgen of work at the quantum physics level, which might prove interesting if it pans out). Then there is this massive leaping handwave and on the other side the neuropsychologist purports to be able to tell you something about the human cognitive process. Analogously one might observe the flow of electrons on a PC's circuit board and based on that make pronouncements about the World Wide Web.
Modern neuropsych is completely incapable of dealing with environmental problems in part because their equipment doesn't work in the natural environment and in part because they have no model of what they're studying, based on which they could point to a difference and say "see, that's an environmental effect." And, if you really like the notion of embodied cognition then you can stand back and say that neuropsych will _never_ be able to say anything about this stuff because all the interesting stuff happens _outside_ of the cranium.
I'm biased, in part because he's a professional colleague and some of his early papers inspired part of my PhD, but I still recommend that if you're interested in this stuff, you read Ed Hutchins' Cognition in the Wild. It's almost 10 years old now, so somewhat dated but he pretty strongly argues the case that cognition does not happen inside the head, in much the way that Wittgenstein argued that there can't be a private language.