Psychology: The Biggest Con-Job of Our Time

Straight out of graduate school, I encountered a strange phenomenon. I’d be engaged in social conversation with a group of people I’d just met and someone would ask, “What do you do, John?” I’d would answer, “I’m a psychologist” and a palpable tension would vibrate around the group. Almost invariably, someone would laugh anxiously and say, “Oh! You’ve probably been analyzing me for the last ten minutes!”

Needless to say, I had not been analyzing him or anyone else, whatever that means. Sizing him up, taking his measure, yes, but everyone else, regardless of occupation, had been doing the same thing. The ubiquity of the “analyzing” comment led me to conclude that the profession of psychology has successfully mystified itself such that the average Joe or Jolene believes its practitioners possess supernatural mental powers. The further problem, however, if my experience is reliable, is that a fair number of psychologists – two or three out of ten, by my experienced estimate – believe their own press. They believe, in other words, that they do actually possess the ability to peer into another person’s mind, conscious and subconscious, and see what the person himself cannot see or will not admit to. Speaking personally, the only classes I flunked in graduate school were mind-reading and fortune-telling.