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perplexed...my neuropsychologist testing
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<blockquote data-quote="Marguerite" data-source="post: 262898" data-attributes="member: 1991"><p>Janet, I've had to deal with psychologists and psychiatrists from a health professional point of view, as well as occasionally from a client point of view. And I share with you my findings...</p><p></p><p>1) With very few exceptions, psychologists are nuts. Paranoid, extremely. If they feel you're questioning them or challenging them, you get a reaction of, "What do you mean by that?" and you get slapped down. husband has actually studied psychology and commented that the lecturers were even more nuts, sort of along the lines of, "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach."</p><p>I realise there are psychologisgts who are NOT nuts, please don't flame me for saying this. My observations are that increasingly, clinical psychologists (especially the younger ones) are much saner, much more compassionate and much more balanced. Especially this last. But older psychologists, especially those who are removing themselves from face-to-face treatment, are often the most paranoid.</p><p>Think of it in terms of medical practice - the doctors who have the worst bedside manner and the worst arrogance but who want to become specialists, become the sort of specialist who doens't have to ever TALK to patients. Either they are orthopedic surgeons, or anaesthetists (although generally, anaesthetists are in the business of trying to remove pain, which often means they really care about their patients) or the ultimate - they specialise in pathology. And from what I can work out, neuropsychology is as close as a psychologist can come, to being a pathologist.</p><p></p><p>2) A psychologist might start out sane and sensible, but over time and practice become more strange. Again, I've seen this in friends (mostly former friends these days) who I diverged from at uni when I studied more of the pure sciences while they went down the psychology path. It's as if the profession has, at least in the recent past, had a deleterious effect on the practitioners. They start out sane and slowly go nuts from the pressure of the job. All except the most balanced ones.</p><p></p><p>3) You then come to the group who studied psychology in order to better understand themselves. They are comparable to those who become priests because they want to strengthen their faith - and often end up with more questions about God than they ever thought existed. Studying psychology in personal self-awareness search is asking for trouble, because of all professions this one (as husband has observed) risks teaching paranoia, to people who may not have been so stable to begin with (ie the group who are aware they're not as balanced as they want people to think, and who are wanting to study psychology so they can learn how to fool more people, more of the time).</p><p></p><p>4) Older psychologists I have known, whose paranoia has been most obvious to me, have tended to react the most when they feel under personal attack. The sort of questions that would make them feel personally attacked:</p><p></p><p>"What do you do for a living?"</p><p>"Tell me more about yourself."</p><p>"I want you to explain this facet of your work, in detail, because I want to copy all your ideas and make money for myself from them."</p><p>This last is what I beelive they are terrified they will one day hear, and as a result they hear this often, even when it is not uttered.</p><p></p><p>One final really important point - the more you apply psychometric testing, the more suspect and unreliable are the results. Someone whose job it is to do these tests - they make their money from doing the tests but always have to guard against over-testing. This is a contradictory position, which of itself can send a sane person nuts and make them paranoid. But I digress - those who do the tests really do worry at the effect caused by too much knowledge in the test subject. If they suspect you have acquired that knowledge through being over-tested, then it means their efforts are a waste of time. And even if you yourself weren't being tested, if you were sitting in on your child being tested then you will have been exposed to the test, which makes you think about the test questions so when YOU get tested, you've been pre-warned, so to speak. You've had time for the answers to be found by your brain, either because you remembered to look a word up in a dictionary, or when you next came across a word you took extra note of it and so found an answer which otherwise you wouldn't have found.</p><p></p><p>Psychometric testing is NOT exact. I do strongly feel that often there is far too much made of it. However, it IS very much of value, if applied correctly.</p><p></p><p>You need to stop and consider how these tests were developed, underwhat conditions, using what subjects, and for what purpose. The uses these tests are put to these days often stretch these boundaries to beyond breaking point. This leads to conclusions being drawn which can be leading you down the wrong garden path.</p><p></p><p>Example - people describe certain conditions such as Downs Syndrome, as being characterised by having an IQ in the mild to moderate mental retardation range - IQ 30 to 60, according to one website I just found. Now, my recollections have mild mental retardation (ancient and now outdated term) as being about IQ 80 (upper range). Average IQ is supposed to be 100. It's called Intelligence Quotient because it represents mental age divided by calender age, multiplied by 100. Purely by definition, average will be 100 (mental age = chronological age). Knowing this, a series of questions was devised and then applied, to a large number of children. But which children? Which people were tested? Since these tests were developed at a very different time socially (a time when children with even high-functioning autism would not have been in the tet group, certainly not in the numbers we have now; and at a time when most children with various disabilities, including Downs, would have been in institutions) then how valid are the tests applied to them?</p><p></p><p>It was AFTER the tests had been allpied to so-called "normal" kids, that it was then taken into the institutions and applied to kids living there. But think about life in an institution in the 30s, 40s and 50s - what sort of access to education has there been? WHat about mentla stimulation? WHat about traumatisation? Institutionalisation? How valid is it to say, "Children with this or that condition are generally in the moderate mental retardation range"?</p><p>Children with cerebral palsy were also often placed in institutions. These children may have been severely physically handicapped, unable to speak and in the past were not given access to education. How, then, can you apply tests to these children? Once people began waking up to themselves, they went in and changed the way things were done, and found that contrary to previous opinion children with cerebral palsy were NOT automatically "mentally retarded" but were often, in fact, perfectly capable intellectually. At least, as capable as the next person.</p><p></p><p>Psychology as a profession is still dragging itself out of these dark ages. There is a sense of collective guilt adding to the paranoia, at least in some older representatives of the profession who still have their influence on the game because many of them now teach the courses.</p><p></p><p>This is going to sound like I'm bagging psychology as a profession - I don't mean to, I'm only reporting what I have observed. Until I worked out what was going on, it was really bizarre at times, some of the people I had to deal with and work with. So often I would be coping with a work colleague behaving very strangely towwrds me, being paranoid if I offered to help with anything (including making acup of tea) and once I realised the person was a trained psychologist, it all made sense. </p><p></p><p>As I said, maybe this is changing now because younger psychologists I've had dealings with, have certainly seemed much more 'normal' and I've not noticed any paranoia lately, except in the occasional older psychologist.</p><p></p><p>But I'm an older person myself - people I know socially include qualified psychologists. And of those my age - only one or two aren't a bit 'odd' in their reactions to people, and when it comes to reliability - downright bizarre.</p><p></p><p>So my advice - if you have questions about the test process along the lines of, "Can we take a break so I can get acup of coffee?" then there should be no problem. But if you ask, "How do you spell the name of this test so I can go buy myself an illicit copy so I can study it in detail and fudge all future results and thereby get into the record books as having an IQ of 7000" then expect a VERY explosive paranoid reaction.</p><p></p><p>Marg</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Marguerite, post: 262898, member: 1991"] Janet, I've had to deal with psychologists and psychiatrists from a health professional point of view, as well as occasionally from a client point of view. And I share with you my findings... 1) With very few exceptions, psychologists are nuts. Paranoid, extremely. If they feel you're questioning them or challenging them, you get a reaction of, "What do you mean by that?" and you get slapped down. husband has actually studied psychology and commented that the lecturers were even more nuts, sort of along the lines of, "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach." I realise there are psychologisgts who are NOT nuts, please don't flame me for saying this. My observations are that increasingly, clinical psychologists (especially the younger ones) are much saner, much more compassionate and much more balanced. Especially this last. But older psychologists, especially those who are removing themselves from face-to-face treatment, are often the most paranoid. Think of it in terms of medical practice - the doctors who have the worst bedside manner and the worst arrogance but who want to become specialists, become the sort of specialist who doens't have to ever TALK to patients. Either they are orthopedic surgeons, or anaesthetists (although generally, anaesthetists are in the business of trying to remove pain, which often means they really care about their patients) or the ultimate - they specialise in pathology. And from what I can work out, neuropsychology is as close as a psychologist can come, to being a pathologist. 2) A psychologist might start out sane and sensible, but over time and practice become more strange. Again, I've seen this in friends (mostly former friends these days) who I diverged from at uni when I studied more of the pure sciences while they went down the psychology path. It's as if the profession has, at least in the recent past, had a deleterious effect on the practitioners. They start out sane and slowly go nuts from the pressure of the job. All except the most balanced ones. 3) You then come to the group who studied psychology in order to better understand themselves. They are comparable to those who become priests because they want to strengthen their faith - and often end up with more questions about God than they ever thought existed. Studying psychology in personal self-awareness search is asking for trouble, because of all professions this one (as husband has observed) risks teaching paranoia, to people who may not have been so stable to begin with (ie the group who are aware they're not as balanced as they want people to think, and who are wanting to study psychology so they can learn how to fool more people, more of the time). 4) Older psychologists I have known, whose paranoia has been most obvious to me, have tended to react the most when they feel under personal attack. The sort of questions that would make them feel personally attacked: "What do you do for a living?" "Tell me more about yourself." "I want you to explain this facet of your work, in detail, because I want to copy all your ideas and make money for myself from them." This last is what I beelive they are terrified they will one day hear, and as a result they hear this often, even when it is not uttered. One final really important point - the more you apply psychometric testing, the more suspect and unreliable are the results. Someone whose job it is to do these tests - they make their money from doing the tests but always have to guard against over-testing. This is a contradictory position, which of itself can send a sane person nuts and make them paranoid. But I digress - those who do the tests really do worry at the effect caused by too much knowledge in the test subject. If they suspect you have acquired that knowledge through being over-tested, then it means their efforts are a waste of time. And even if you yourself weren't being tested, if you were sitting in on your child being tested then you will have been exposed to the test, which makes you think about the test questions so when YOU get tested, you've been pre-warned, so to speak. You've had time for the answers to be found by your brain, either because you remembered to look a word up in a dictionary, or when you next came across a word you took extra note of it and so found an answer which otherwise you wouldn't have found. Psychometric testing is NOT exact. I do strongly feel that often there is far too much made of it. However, it IS very much of value, if applied correctly. You need to stop and consider how these tests were developed, underwhat conditions, using what subjects, and for what purpose. The uses these tests are put to these days often stretch these boundaries to beyond breaking point. This leads to conclusions being drawn which can be leading you down the wrong garden path. Example - people describe certain conditions such as Downs Syndrome, as being characterised by having an IQ in the mild to moderate mental retardation range - IQ 30 to 60, according to one website I just found. Now, my recollections have mild mental retardation (ancient and now outdated term) as being about IQ 80 (upper range). Average IQ is supposed to be 100. It's called Intelligence Quotient because it represents mental age divided by calender age, multiplied by 100. Purely by definition, average will be 100 (mental age = chronological age). Knowing this, a series of questions was devised and then applied, to a large number of children. But which children? Which people were tested? Since these tests were developed at a very different time socially (a time when children with even high-functioning autism would not have been in the tet group, certainly not in the numbers we have now; and at a time when most children with various disabilities, including Downs, would have been in institutions) then how valid are the tests applied to them? It was AFTER the tests had been allpied to so-called "normal" kids, that it was then taken into the institutions and applied to kids living there. But think about life in an institution in the 30s, 40s and 50s - what sort of access to education has there been? WHat about mentla stimulation? WHat about traumatisation? Institutionalisation? How valid is it to say, "Children with this or that condition are generally in the moderate mental retardation range"? Children with cerebral palsy were also often placed in institutions. These children may have been severely physically handicapped, unable to speak and in the past were not given access to education. How, then, can you apply tests to these children? Once people began waking up to themselves, they went in and changed the way things were done, and found that contrary to previous opinion children with cerebral palsy were NOT automatically "mentally retarded" but were often, in fact, perfectly capable intellectually. At least, as capable as the next person. Psychology as a profession is still dragging itself out of these dark ages. There is a sense of collective guilt adding to the paranoia, at least in some older representatives of the profession who still have their influence on the game because many of them now teach the courses. This is going to sound like I'm bagging psychology as a profession - I don't mean to, I'm only reporting what I have observed. Until I worked out what was going on, it was really bizarre at times, some of the people I had to deal with and work with. So often I would be coping with a work colleague behaving very strangely towwrds me, being paranoid if I offered to help with anything (including making acup of tea) and once I realised the person was a trained psychologist, it all made sense. As I said, maybe this is changing now because younger psychologists I've had dealings with, have certainly seemed much more 'normal' and I've not noticed any paranoia lately, except in the occasional older psychologist. But I'm an older person myself - people I know socially include qualified psychologists. And of those my age - only one or two aren't a bit 'odd' in their reactions to people, and when it comes to reliability - downright bizarre. So my advice - if you have questions about the test process along the lines of, "Can we take a break so I can get acup of coffee?" then there should be no problem. But if you ask, "How do you spell the name of this test so I can go buy myself an illicit copy so I can study it in detail and fudge all future results and thereby get into the record books as having an IQ of 7000" then expect a VERY explosive paranoid reaction. Marg [/QUOTE]
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