Psychology Blues...
One problem I've found with learning Social Psychology is the tendency to overestimate the similarities of the cognitive functions people have and how they work in relationships. If you've ever had a psychology class, one emphasis is evolution and biology. Biology and love. Men want to spread their seeds and women want to have a nurturing husband. Men want younger fertile women with such features as average weight, low waist-to-hip ratio, shiny hair, large eyes and small nose. Women want higher waist-to-hip ratio, medium nose, large jaw, masculine.
The authors of this text do a quite thorough job of explaining the majority of relationships in the United States. However, not even one single paragraph was devoted to any deviations - such as homosexuality and altruistic love. Those cannot be explained as easy, I suppose. Yet it is frustrating after reading all this extremely simplified explanations of the human relationship. Is it really just biologically based? Oh, maybe a bit culturally based? Is that it? Are we not any different than mere animals?
I guess peaking into pandora's box is not always the most pleasant of experiences. However, as with learning factual information as well as psychological tendencies, I have learned that not all of what they teach you is 'right' or 'wrong'. This Social Psychology textbook has been one of the most judgemental and non-objective text I've come across yet in higher education. I guess in order to write an entire textbook about "How people get along" involves maybe a slight bit of bullshitting and use of buzz-words to make it seem more objective... but I constantly find myself disagreeing with the authors' indirect opinions. Buzz words, now there is something that I despise... take for example -
erotomania - disorder involving the fixed (but incorrect) belief that one is loved by another, which persists in the face of strong evidence to the contrary.
(The authors of this text can't simply say a 'stalker' or 'crazy-ass clingy bitch', but yet you are tested not over the concept itself but your ability to match the WORD - that noone I know would ever use - with the MEANING)
Maybe I've been studying too much....
or maybe taking that Sexual Psychology class two years ago has forever strengthened tolerance towards just about anything unconventional... unlike this bible-study type class.
The authors of this text do a quite thorough job of explaining the majority of relationships in the United States. However, not even one single paragraph was devoted to any deviations - such as homosexuality and altruistic love. Those cannot be explained as easy, I suppose. Yet it is frustrating after reading all this extremely simplified explanations of the human relationship. Is it really just biologically based? Oh, maybe a bit culturally based? Is that it? Are we not any different than mere animals?
I guess peaking into pandora's box is not always the most pleasant of experiences. However, as with learning factual information as well as psychological tendencies, I have learned that not all of what they teach you is 'right' or 'wrong'. This Social Psychology textbook has been one of the most judgemental and non-objective text I've come across yet in higher education. I guess in order to write an entire textbook about "How people get along" involves maybe a slight bit of bullshitting and use of buzz-words to make it seem more objective... but I constantly find myself disagreeing with the authors' indirect opinions. Buzz words, now there is something that I despise... take for example -
erotomania - disorder involving the fixed (but incorrect) belief that one is loved by another, which persists in the face of strong evidence to the contrary.
(The authors of this text can't simply say a 'stalker' or 'crazy-ass clingy bitch', but yet you are tested not over the concept itself but your ability to match the WORD - that noone I know would ever use - with the MEANING)
Maybe I've been studying too much....
or maybe taking that Sexual Psychology class two years ago has forever strengthened tolerance towards just about anything unconventional... unlike this bible-study type class.