Before I learned about psychology, I had "fantasies" about it. It seemed so amazing that human personality can be dissected, analyzed, and predicted. But after I start taking the Saturday course on Psychology, for some reason, I grow more and more disgusted by the whole idea, or purpose, of psychology, to say the least. Perhaps my disgust roots partly in the uninspiring teacher we have for the course; perhaps it is the very same idea that human personality can be dissected, analyzed, and predicted disturbed me. Almost every class, the teacher (ugh, I just can't bring myself to call her a professor for 1)she's probably just a graduate student; 2) she's too boring and dull to deserve such a title) would let us do one or two psychological "quizzes" and then, no matter what the turnout is, always conclude with "well, the majority tends to do this and not that because of this and that" as if she personally knows what we think. I mean, I know this is not her problem--if I were to teach the class I probably would have done the same, and that's why I said I am opposed to the idea of PSYCHOLOGY and psychology alone.
Psychology loves to give names to all these miscellaneous humanly processes as if humanly emotions can be categorized that easily. Psychology loves to group people and call them X if they exhibit A, B, C, D, and E. I can't stand that. When the teacher talked about superstitions and the like, she denounced them all so "scientifically" and unemotionally that she seemed like a soulless robot reading off of the textbook. I think studying psychology makes people think that they can analyze the composition of human mind; it's like taking apart a complicated gadget (brain) and lays all its individual parts (cerebrum, medulla, etc.) in front you. The mystery is gone.
I believe in two things: 1) everyone is special in their own ways; it's not possible to categorize a person under a label; 2) when a person believes wholly in science and rejects all the unexplainable mysteries of nature and human mind, then he or she is also rejecting human creativity and imagination. I think that makes him or her not "human".
Although I begin to hate psychology since the very class, I did not have the motive to write a blog entry until I read a comment for a Japanese novel that I just read. The English translation of the book's title is something like "losing the qualifications to live/no longer deserved to live." The main character is really weird young man who basically thinks very differently from "normal" people. His mind is incomprehensible by others just like others' minds are to him. As you can imagine, living on this world is very hard for a weird but very sensitive person like him.
One of the comments said that in modern terms, the main character is severely depressed and autistic. Well, the commenter is probably right but I just don't feel you can characterize all his peculiarities, idiosyncrasies into two words: depressed and autistic. I rather use the term "weird" (for the third time) than "depressed and autistic." Beneath the depressed and autistic external body, the main character is incredibly expressive and thoughtful. It's true that he perceives the world in a rather depressing and gloomy way (he considers "living" a tragic term whereas "death" a comedic one) but that's because he thinks differently. He was born thinking differently, perceiving the world differently.
Why do we always like to use simple terms to describe people? In this case scientific terms like depressed and autistic, in other cases statistic numbers like test scores. Men are not simple beings. Judgment of men is supposed to be subjective and descriptive (but, of course, not in the scientific sense of descriptive). Is it too hard of a task?
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