'Psychoanalysing' Problem

(Photo by thom♥)

It's quite serious

So when I told my parents that I was going to switch one of my majors from Computer Science to Psychology, their immediate response was "You want to work in HR?" which was kind of weird and interesting at the same time. The actual reason was because I wanted to be a psychologist (more than being a computer scientist that's for sure – if that's still a thing) and I thought that would have been obvious.

But you see, the thing about graduating with a Bachelor's Degree in Psychology is that you don't really qualify for anything close to 'hands-on' psychology, at least not here in New Zealand. Not until you successfully do post-graduate study. Then maybe after a few years or so, assuming the odds are in your favour – here we go again with the references, you can hope to officially call yourself a psychologist. Or maybe just a psycho for investing all that time and money. Props to being in the Academia forever. I'm sorry, I'm not here to judge anyone. Psychology is actually a very interesting field, from the little I've studied of it so far.

Personally, I haven't given it much thought. I mean, being a psychologist would be nice. Being able to help people – like saving lives but in a more abstract way, if that makes sense. I was thinking that if I do decide to go down that pathway I would want to be a Clinical Psychologist. Although Social Psychology is also very interesting, and even Forensic Psychology. At the same time, I'm not sure that I'm willing to dedicate such a large chunk of my life to study and research. (FOR SCIENCE!) Besides, being a psychologist means empirical studies and statistics, and statistics means death. That's actually one of the biggest things that are holding me back, other than the very limited number of places available (11 for Clinical Psychology I believe, and I'm not about to get myself all pumped up or whatever). But what I really wanted to talk about is how I've been experiencing things in my life since I started studying psychology.

Now I know a lot of people have a basic idea of what we do in psychology, which is reading minds and psychoanalysing everyone. It's a harmless judgement and kind of funny, except not really. Anyway, I am currently in the second stage of my psychology study and the paper that I am taking this semester focuses on Social Psychology. Basically the study of how we are affected by others in almost every way possible, whether it is through social contact/interaction, observation, etc. But of course you shouldn't take my word for it so it's probably better to just approach Google (or Bing if you swing that way) if you're interested, even though I should be confident that I know it. If I turn out to be completely wrong, then I will cry in a corner and hide from the world forever – just natural signs of embarrassment, one of the things we covered in the paper.

So okay, I'm not sure if it's just me – honestly I wouldn't be too surprised if it is – but I've been finding myself a lot in situations where it seems like I'm just constantly 'psychoanalysing'. Obviously it's not actual psychoanalysis because I'm not Freud, or a qualified psychologist (or even sure if it's still being practiced clinically). But I mean more in the basic sense of the term, or rather like I've pointed out earlier, the 'pop. psychology' meaning of the term. That is, everything I encounter or that people tell me, I immediately link to what I've learned and therefore think of possible explanations for why they happened. I started noticing it when a friend and I were chatting about some concerns regarding personal matters, and I found myself responding to them in my head: "Oh, that could be because X and Y. Z could be playing a role in it too. We talked about it in Psych." If that doesn't make me sound like a douche, then at least I have that going for me.

Sigmund Freud, 1856 - 1939

What I'm trying to say is that, since studying psychology, or more specifically since the start of my temporary focus on the field of Social Psychology, I've noticed that my interactions with people have never been quite the same. I guess that makes sense, but I wouldn't go as far as to say that it's a good thing. I mean, it's nice to understand why things happen or why people behave the way they do, but once it reaches my closer circles like my friends, significant other or my family, I would at least want to talk to them with utmost sincerity (not to say that I haven't been sincere with them). It's really difficult to cheer someone up without bringing psychology into it as well. That probably says more about me than anything else, but regardless it can be a real struggle. I even do it to myself.

I 'psychoanalyse' myself. Is that a thing? I would look inward and attempt to understand why I am the way I am. Or why I think about things in specific ways. Why I'm even writing a blog post about something (probably) insignificant. Why I just criticized myself for writing about something I'm greatly interested in. Did Freud psychoanalyse himself? [Edit: Yes he did.] In theory, is it even possible to do a proper psychoanalysis of yourself? Subjective psychoanalysis?

I don't know where I'm going with this anymore. I'm just over-thinking things. I tend to do that. Maybe I should just think about it like wanting to help people so much that it encourages me to think deeper and more into the theoretical side of things. Yeah, I could get on board with that.

Take care of yourself.