Letters
Derailing the statutory regulation train
If I were a different kind of person, I would work out exactly what
to do to derail statutory regulation instead of writing a letter.
Nevertheless, I have heard few voices raised against the process in
recent years, so I am resorting to writing in the hope that someone
else will take the actions needed to derail the train. I do not think
that statutory regulation will do much to protect the public, for three
reasons.
1. Most abuses of psychology are by mainstream psychologists. For
example, they apply psychometric models that deny most people
recognition for their talents; they work for clients – like the army or
government educational systems or toy companies or drugs companies or
branded goods companies – in which they deploy their psychological
knowledge and techniques of research or manipulation in the service of
their clients (i.e. those who pay them). Such practices are very much
to the disadvantage of many people: the citizens of Iraq; most of the
children who pass through the educational system; families who are led
to buy junk foods, junk toys and ‘fashionable’ clothes as a result of
children having been deliberately induced to nag their parents (itself
an unpleasant experience) to do so; people persuaded to take drugs (or
undergo psychotherapy) whose claims to effectiveness stem from
researchers’ deployment of invalid procedures to demonstrate change.
2. As American experience testifies, there are endless ways in which
those who wish to evade registration can continue to practise, for
example by renaming themselves as ‘psychodiagnosticians’ or
‘psychocounsellors’ or something similar.
3. The prescribed arrangements for asserting competence, while
enormously expensive, time consuming, and complicated are grounded in a
technico-rational model of competence which entirely misses the kinds
of competence that are required to make good discretionary judgements
or act in ways which, while from time to time mistaken, are likely,
overall, to lead to innovation and action in the long-term public
interest. The proposed procedures mandate years of mostly irrelevant
and rarely useful ‘training’, the inspection of certificates,
compulsory CPD, the development of codes of conduct and the instigation
of related disciplinary procedures, endless discussion of every
potential action with supervisors and committees, and mandatory
financial contributions to the BPS and HPC. Yet what we learned at the
last annual conference was that very few members of the Society are
caught by the net. Most of those caught by it had no case to answer –
the offences of most of those who had done something wrong were trivial
– and the serious ones could have been dealt with through standard
legal procedures.
So, if the proposed procedures do
not protect the public and amount to an enormous drain on energy, time and
money, focusing participants on valuing presentation rather than real
progress, what is their function? In the course of one of the sessions
I attended at the conference it was suggested, and I am inclined to
agree, that these procedures are to be understood as a marketing ploy
designed to present ourselves as clean and ethical. But they are more
than that. They allow those that are in fact engaging in highly
unethical procedures (largely through sins of omission) to hide behind
the claim that whatever they are doing has been approved by some
authority. They drive out the risky, adventurous, critical activity
that is required to improve our contributions to individuals and
society. They are concerned with protecting individual psychologists
from the accusation of incompetence or having made a mistake.
Personally, I would prefer the same time and effort to be devoted to the extremely risky task of advancing psychology.
John Raven
30 Great King Street
Edinburgh
Reading the article in the April
issue (‘Statutory regulation – Some questions answered’) raised a
number of questions again for me about the whole business of
registration and why the Society is pursuing this route.
I’m sure I’m not the only psychologist who has been puzzled by the
Society’s inability to protect the title ‘psychologist’. Now we are
told that it is because; ‘academics would need to register and the
Society has always resisted this as unnecessary’. First, why is this
unnecessary, and, secondly, would that be the academics in the Society
who have resisted this or the membership as a whole?
I’m not sure what proportion of the membership class themselves as
academics, but isn’t there an issue here about the greater good for
both psychologists and the public in having the title protected?
The article goes on to say, within the context of a question about
academic psychologists, that only those applied psychologists ‘who have
direct contact with the public’ will need to be on the statutory
register. Then, in the next paragraph, it states that academics who
carry out consultancy but don’t have adjectival titles will be able to
carry on as before, i.e. without registration, provided they don’t
claim
or appear to claim that they have the competencies which require registration.
So it seems academics will be allowed to work as applied psychologists
without being registered. Isn’t the purpose of registration to cover
all applied psychologists? How will they describe themselves to secure
this consultancy work? Why are exemptions being made for academic
psychologists in this way which affects the Society as a whole?
Why doesn’t the Society insist that all psychologists, including
academics, be registered and then, according to the article, we can
protect the title of ‘psychologist’?
Finally, as an occupational psychologist I have severe reservations
about being linked with a health professions council in any event – we
have enough problems being confused with occupational therapists as it
is!
Mike S. Guttridge
5 Mount Pleasant
Nangreaves
Bury
Small, but perfectly informed
Being part of a small audience attending an inspiring event is often
a source of pleasure for me. However, when it is an award lecture at
the Annual Conference it is a source of shame. Professor Chris McManus
gave the most engaging, scientifically rigorous and intellectually
stimulating lecture of the conference, and all but a handful of you
missed it.
I hope that the ‘new style’ conference next year will include more
stimulating presentations such as the McManus one, and a schedule that
would ensure many more attend and are inspired.
Paul Redford
University College Winchester
Editor’s note: For those of you who missed the McManus talk, at least
keep an eye out for his article based on it later in the year.
Thoughts and felines
Why do we look up when thinking? In the April issue, Stéphane
Duckett posited an alternative account to explain the Previk et al.
finding (reported in ‘Research in brief’, March 2005) that people tend
to look upward when they are thinking.
Previk’s view, as reported in The Psychologist, is that eye movementand
working memory are both under the control of lateral prefrontal
areas, suggesting an evolutionary account of the phenomenon: ‘the
origins of many cognitive operations in humans may be linked to more
primitive systems involved in the exploration of distant 3-D space’.
Duckett’s view is that looking skyward is simply a way of
‘strengthening concentration by excluding redundant visual stimuli’.
I have recently trained my cat to stand at the kitchen door whilst I
put his food in his bowl. The signal for him to enter the kitchen is my
tapping my fingertips on the floor.
I tried to fool him a few times by placing my fingers close to the
floor, then scolding him when he took that as a cue to enter the
kitchen. He has got wise to me: he now stands at the kitchen door but
averts his gaze, so he has indeed excluded ‘redundant visual stimuli’
and now affords himself only auditory stimuli. My cat asked me to write
in, in order to lend his support to Duckett’s account.
John Higgon
Earlston
Scottish Borders
An unfair charge?
I have recently applied to pay my subscription fees by quarterly
direct debit. I have wanted to spread this cost for some time but have
been put off by having to pay an extra £8 for the ‘privilege’. This is
not because I do not have £8, but more because I could not think of an
adequate justification for the charge, and I don’t like paying out any
sum of money without good reason. However, as my financial situation
became more restricted I felt I had no choice. And this is my problem
with this charge.
It strikes me that the people who are most likely to take up this offer
are those who least likely to have a spare £80 knocking around in their
pay every month. Therefore, not only is the charge unjustifiable on
loss of interest or administration grounds (it’s direct debit and,
therefore, involves less administration), but it is also something of a
poverty tax: neatly capturing those with the least means of paying it,
and the least choice in the matter.
Neil Smith
71 Landells Road
London SE22
Bernard Marriott, Acting Operations Directorate Manager, replies: The
facility to pay quarterly by direct debit was introduced in 1995. At
that time it was felt that the cost of setting up the scheme,
administering it, and making allowance for the loss of interest, should
be borne by the users, and that this would be recovered by a charge of
£8. After 10 years, the scheme is under review. The Trustees are
considering a proposal by which most members paying annually by direct
debit would have a reduction of £5 compared with cheque-payers, and
those paying quarterly by direct debit would pay the same amount as
cheque-payers. If the Trustees approve this proposal, the matter will
be put to a vote of members.
A role for qualitative methods
As authors of the proposal for the recently inaugurated Qualitative
Methods in Psychology Section, we would like to respond to Mark
Shevlin’s letter (May 2005). Despite the adversarial tone of the
letter, he does draw our attention to aspects of our proposal which the
new Section may wish to develop.
First, defining qualitative methods as the absence of statistical
analysis allows us to capture this diverse field concisely, and we did
want to encapsulate the variety of qualitative methods with their
different approaches to data collection, analysis and epistemological
positions. However, it may be useful to develop a more positive
definition, perhaps building on the statement included in our proposal
that in qualitative analysis results are expressed in words rather than
numbers.
Second, it would be a mistake to downplay what statistical analysis can
achieve. We hope that the new Section will work to develop mutual
respect between psychologists specialising in different methodologies.
Third, our proposal could have been clearer in explaining the
usefulness of qualitative methods in the hypothesis-development stage
of psychological enquiry. Clarity in such matters is essential if the
new Section is to work towards greater understanding of qualitative
research.
Overwhelmingly, we have found our colleagues specialising in
quantitative methods to have been open-minded and generous in their
attitude towards the new Section, and many have supported its
inauguration. We are therefore optimistic that there is a general
tolerance for diverse methods within British psychology and a
motivation for genuine dialogue.
Anna Madill
Zazie Todd
University of Leeds
John D. Handyside 1923–2005
John Handyside, who died on 20 February, was a quiet, kind genius.
Cyril Burt awarded him a first class honours degree in psychology, and
after a period in naval selection he joined the National Institute of
Industrial Psychology to research the selection, training and
motivation of supervisors in industry, sponsored by the Medical
Research Council.
For five years we shared an office on the top floor of 14 Welbeck
Street, regularly disturbing our neighbours with recapitulations of The
Goon Show. I owe him a deep debt of gratitude, for transforming
psychometric statistics from mere hamburger-grinding into exciting
tools of discovery. He was awe-inspiring in other ways. Whereas I never
quite knew what I was going to say until I said it, and anything I
wrote needed several changes to be right, John’s writings were right
from the start, and every sentence he spoke seemed to have been thought
out beforehand. The case studies which he produced for NIIP assessment
centres were memorable. He was a worthy director of research at NIIP.
Frustrated by Bartlett in his researches into motivation, he left NIIP
in 1961 to join Standard Telephones and Cables, where he became
Vice-President Personnel, and built up a formidable team of experts in
assessment.
Another form of expertise eventually took over. He had a prodigious knowledge of
the stock market, and at NIIP I shared his celebration of success in
stag issues. By the age of 50 the dividends on his investments were
such that his entire salary at STC was taxed at the top rate, making
salaried employment no longer worth while. So at the Occupational
Psychology Conference of 1976 he announced himself as a ‘Gentleman of
Leisure’.
In his ‘retirement’ he continued his enthusiasm for the latest
developments in programmable calculators and personal computers. His
friends in occupational psychology then discovered that he enjoyed the
challenge of being presented with substantial amounts of raw data for
multivariate analysis, the results of which were always impeccably
presented. Cattell’s l6PF measure was one of his favourites, and
‘Analysis of l6PF’ contains a number of his occupational profiles, his
photograph and his l6PF profile – which was bold, for it was accurate!
For these, he will be missed, and for his hand-crafted Christmas cards
analysing the statistical uniqueness of the year in question.
David C. Duncan
74 Park Avenue
Ruislip
Middlesex
Iraq – We have things worth saying
Perhaps the dispute over whether or not the BPS should make a
statement about controversial issues such as the Iraq war could be
resolved by the Society in future publishing a statement simply
commenting on the psychological processes germane to the issue in
question. There is, for example, a substantial literature relating to
decision making which could usefully have been brought to the public’s
attention during the Hutton Inquiry. This strategy would raise the
profile of the BPS, inform public debate and make available a source of
information for non-psychologists who might otherwise be unaware of it.
It would avoid the obvious problems involved in either keeping silent
on issues about which psychology has a lot to say, or committing the
Society to a position which is not representative of the views of its
members.
Sue Gerrard
8 Croft Way
Market Drayton
Shropshire
Drawing comparisons
Cartoons of comedy fat people lounging on sofas and eating junk
food, and a big juicy ‘builder’s bum’ on the cover! What next? Cartoons
of black people boiling missionaries in cooking pots? Cartoon gays in
pink frilly shirts and makeup? Asians saying ‘Goodness gracious me’? Or
maybe we could have a page three girl. The Psychologist is the in-house
magazine of an internationally respected learned society. Would it not
be possible for us to avoid poking fun at groups whom others are trying
to support and understand?
John Morris
Department of Psychological Services
West Cumberland Hospital
Whitehaven
Jon Sutton, Editor of The Psychologist, replies: It was certainly never
our intention to poke fun. We chose illustration mostly because photos
of individuals can be problematic in sensitive areas such as this.
However, some of the feedback we have received since the April issue
suggests we may have misjudged the required tone. We apologise to
anyone who was offended.
Indigenous psychologies – Global or local?
In his response to February’s special issue ‘Bringing psychology to
all societies’ Gustav Jahoda disagrees with the contributors about the
status of the indigenous psychologies – mainly non-Western reactions to
mainstream Western psychology which aim to make psychology more
relevant to the local culture (‘What kind of psychology for all?’,
April 2005).
Jahoda asserts that ‘today most “indigenous psychology” is, by and
large, Western psychology extended and adapted more or less extensively
so as to be more suitable for use in local contexts’ which ‘may include
the introduction of culture-specific contexts’. Largely I agree;
however, there is a lot of heterogeneity in the indigenous psychologies
and indigenisation has been taken differently far in different
countries and by different researchers. Moreover, there have been many
announcements of general research programmes for indigenous
psychologies and the concrete implementations of these programmes in
the future may well prove to be more distant from Western psychology.
Jahoda also argues that no convincing ‘case’ was made by the
contributors to the special issue for the desirability of the
indigenous psychologies. Although my contribution did not aim to
discuss this issue, the indigenous psychologies,
in my opinion, are desirable because, generally speaking,
it is desirable to bring in more perspectives and empirical domains into psychology.
This will be an effect of the indigenous psychologies and is likely to
lead to the discovery of new phenomena and insights. Furthermore,
adapting one’s research questions and methodology to the local
conditions as is done in the indigenous psychologies will most probably
increase the applicability of the results to the same context.
The political aspect is important for understanding the indigenous
psychologies as it contributes to the conditions both for their
initiation and for their development. This is well illustrated by the
indigenous psychologies in India, the Philippines and in the Islamic
countries, for example Iran. The importance of this aspect is not, in
my opinion, sufficiently heeded by Jahoda when he writes about the
status and desirability of the indigenised psychologies.
Finally, Jahoda’s criticism of the idea of a universal psychology
mainly deals with the suggestion presented by Berry and Kim (in Kim
& Berry, 1993). I agree with most of Jahoda’s objections to the
Berry and Kim model and have previously expressed a similar critique
(Allwood, 1998). In my contribution to the special issue I suggested
that a ‘light’ version (or maybe more realistically: versions) of a
universal psychology is a more appropriate goal. The conclusions of
such a ‘light’ universal psychology would be moderated by the theories
and findings in the different indigenous psychologies but basically it
would remain on the, so to say, ‘indigenous level’.
Carl Martin Allwood
University of Lund
Sweden
References
Allwood, C.M. (1998). The creation and nature(s) of indigenised
psychologies from the perspective of the anthropology of knowledge. In
S. Gorenstein (Ed.) Knowledge and society, Vol. 11 (pp.153–172).
Greenwich, CN: Jai Press.
Kim, U, & Berry, J.W. (1993). Indigenous psychologies research and experience in cultural context. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
Editor’s note: Also see our discussion forum at www.thepsychologist.org.uk
for a reply from Kwang-Kuo Hwang.
Student destinations and the application of psychology
I AM writing in response to David Duncan’s letter (May
2005) in which he berates me for reportedly saying in a recent
presentation at the Wessex and Wight Branch’s Careers Day, that ‘many
psychology graduates move into non-psychology careers such as training,
management, health and retail work’; his point being that many
psychology graduates in these sectors are actually working as applied
psychologists, rather than ‘non-psychologists’.
I am accused of sheer academic arrogance, archaic academic attitudes
and leading many academic psychologists not to join the BPS, which is
‘all the more dangerous because it originates from those who train the
psychologists of the future’.
I was very impressed by the level of ire I was able to excite, but
unfortunately I did not mention ‘non-psychology careers’ in my talk,
and would not have tried to belittle applied psychology – as I have
been an applied psychologist myself for going on 20 years and a BPS
member for even longer!
What I did say was: ‘Overall it would appear that only about 40% of
Psychology Graduates appear to take on jobs or training which might
lead to professional psychology occupations as their first
destinations’ (from the conference abstract). Thus the point I was
making was that 60 per cent of graduates are not on track to gain a
professional psychology qualification. In fact, in my talk I tried to
make the opposite point to that which I am charged, namely that in my
opinion psychology graduates make the best candidates for general
graduate jobs because of the wide mix of academic as well as applied
skills they are taught on their undergraduate courses. I am also sure
that graduates entering jobs which do not lead to qualifications as a
professional psychologist will not easily forget or lose their hard-won
skills and become ‘non-psychologists’, whether they go on to think of
themselves as applied psychologists or not.
As an applied psychologist working in an academic setting, I found
myself agreeing with many of David Duncan’s points (but not those which
were rude about me!), and I am very happy to have been a founder member
of the BPS’s Division for Teachers and Researchers in Psychology, which
has set out to recruit psychology teachers and researchers working in
other areas who otherwise would not have had a route
to becoming professionally qualified psychologists.
Darren Van Laar
Department of Psychology
University of Portsmouth
Information
I am a counselling psychologist, in training, with a background in
occupational psychology. I am undertaking research in the area of
‘mid-life career changes’ and would be very interested in talking to
psychologists, of any specialisation, who have come to the profession
from another discipline or profession.William Trebinski
E-mail: [email protected]; tel: 01753 853124
I recently graduated in psychology with a 2:1 and will be studying for
my MSc in occupational psychology from September. I am currently
looking for voluntary work experience with an occupational psychologist
in London, Hertfordshire and surrounding area.
Claire Fix
Tel: 07814 470469; e-mail: [email protected]
I am a second-year psychology student at the London Metropolitan
University, and am looking for information concerning the effects of
aspartame (Nutrasweet) on neurological function for a possible
dissertation topic. I am particularly interested in research on
epilepsy or on memory deficiency. Any information will be appreciated,
including personal accounts, though I am particularly searching for
psychological and neurological research on this or related topics.
Caroline Finn
E-mail: [email protected]
Charity conducting a nationally funded research project into pregnancy
resulting from an incestuous relationship and possible effects on
parenting, seeks input from agencies and survivors: strictly
confidential, and support available.
Rosslynne Selous-Hodges
Tel: 01925 246910; e-mail [email protected]
Are you a psychologist? Stressed? Overworked? Need an assistant to
reduce the load? Work in South Wales? I can offer you 40 hours each
week, on a voluntary basis for the next six months, if you can provide
just 60–90 minutes supervision time per week. I am a mature BSc student
graduating in July. I have two years’ experience in a multidisciplinary
team working with families, children and challenging adolescents. I
have wide experience with older adults with mental health problems,
ethnic minorities. Advanced police check and excellent references are
available.
Louise Pye
E-mail [email protected]; tel: 01656 74 44 55
I have completed an accredited MSc in forensic psychology. I have been
working in a forensic setting since October 2003 with Merseyside
Probation Service. I am applying for full DFP membership on the
pre-diploma route.Having completed the first stage of it, I would be
interested to hear from a Chartered Forensic Psychologist who is full
member of the DFP for a fortnightly supervision on a contractual basis
to meet the BPS criteria.
Sonia Gavotti
Tel: 0783 337 5499; e-mail: [email protected]
I am an undergraduate studying psychology. I had a double brain
haemorrhage 13 years ago, which left me with no speech and paralysis
down my right side for a year. I have now recovered but for my musical
memory. I cannot remember any music or words, which I find very
distressing as I used to be an accomplished musician and vocalist. Very
occasionally I remember a song from the 1970s when it comes on the
radio, I sing along, and then it’s gone again.
Is there any neuropsychologist out there who would like to do research on me to help me regain my musical memory?
Mary Waddoups
E-mail: [email protected]; tel: 0788 754 5742
(Please note that some pictures may have been removed for copyright reasons)
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