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Epigenetic Theory

I found this article in stub condition with thin assertions of notability and the science stub template. I added the psych-stub template and put it in this project. Maybe someone here will take a look and improve or decide to delete. --Steven J. Anderson (talk) 15:27, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

It shouldn't be deleted -- epigenetic theory is an important sister-project to contemporary evo-devo -- but it definitely needs to be improved. (For example, the line about Gilbert Gottlieb is wrong: he only developed an offshoot of the theory, which he called probabilistic epigenesis.) Within psychology, the most important epigeneticist is Jean Piaget, whose later works built on earlier ideas developed in biology by Conrad Waddington. But it has a long and fertile history, going back at least to James Mark Baldwin in psychology and Karl von Baer and Ernst Haeckel in embryology. --JTBurman (talk) 00:15, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Peer review notice

Getting It: The psychology of est is on Peer Review. Your comments would be appreciated, at Wikipedia:Peer review/Getting It: The psychology of est. Cirt (talk) 02:44, 2 January 2008 (UTC).

RfC on Talk:Biopsychiatry controversy

An RfC has been created on Talk:Biopsychiatry controversy on the subject: "Is the majority viewpoint of the psychiatric profession, and particularly of the psychiatric research community, that the biopsychiatric model of psychiatry is, by and large, accepted or rejected?" Comments from editors involved in this article/project may prove useful. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk 06:49, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Primal therapy

There's a discussion on WP:BLPN about Primal Therapy, Janov, etc. Much of the article looks like COI and WP:fringe to me. But folks who know something about psychology as a science might be able to help here. Is the article just Janov or a fan pushing a fringe theory, or is there something to it? Any help appreciated. Smallbones (talk) 22:52, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Anti-psychiatry

The article Anti-psychiatry is currently tagged for {{POV}}. Since this is within the scope of this project, I was wondering if some editors here would like to improve the article to cover more viewpoints -- in particular, the conventional view that psychiatry is ethical and efficacious. At the moment there are problems in the article of WP:UNDUE weight to minority viewpoints, as well as the common problem of insufficient citations. One citation I'd like to see added is "A response to the anti-psychiatry movement" [1], but I can't get ahold of a copy -- my university library doesn't carry Psychosomatics.

Of course, psychiatry skeptics are more than welcome to edit the article as well -- I consider myself a skeptic of psychiatry, if not an anti-psychiatrist -- but the article is already skewed that way, IMO.

Also, for those neutral observers -- if you read the article over and don't see any bias, feel free to remove the tag.

CRGreathouse (t | c) 14:23, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Megalomania

I'm trying to recruit a couple of editors for megalomania. It's been on the WP:WPMED open task list for several months, and while the worst material has since been removed, no one seems to know what to do with it beyond a definition. For example, is this term ever used in modern practice? Is there any difference between megalomania and narcissistic personality disorder? When was it first described? I'd really love to have some help. Thanks, WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:37, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

I would not consider that a psychological term or condition and would suggest not including it at all. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ratinabox (talk • contribs) 17:17, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

The term Narcissistic personality disorder is a diagnostic classification in DSM and ICD-10. Megalomania is not used in the diagnosis. Mattisse 17:59, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your responses. There are about 200 articles that link to that page (including redirects like 'megalomaniac' and 'megalomaniacal'), so I don't think that deleting the article entirely is going to be successful. Moving the Megalomania (disambiguation) page there is a possibility, but there's very little support for it -- and certainly if the linking page is using the term loosely (to describe foreign policy, for example), then hitting a dab page isn't exactly explanatory. Do you happen to know who invented the term or first described it? A paragraph that says something like "Megalomania was described by Freud like this, and it's now considered hopelessly out of date" could be sufficient. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:16, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Maybe the wikionary is enough. It is really just a word definition. It needs to be removed from the disambig page as a "psychological condition", unless there can be found reliable sources for calling it that (besides a dictionary). Even if there are, as far as I know, there is nothing else to say about it. No scientific studies or treatments. No body of data. Mattisse 23:26, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Concerns about article

Would watchers of this page look at Psychohistory and Early infanticidal childrearing, two articles which seem to relate to psychology. I wonder if they are pushing a fringe POV, or if they are accurate, and do not have the expertise to judge. Slrubenstein | Talk 14:53, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

These articles appear to me to be primarily Original Research based primarily on the writings of a non mainstream writers such as Lloyd deMause and written mainly by one or few people. I think the articles need more "eyes" to determine if they are purely OR. Mattisse 16:11, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Please, see my response in talk:Early infanticidal childrearing about your OR tag.

BYW, I cleaned a lot these articles by dozens of step-by-step, minor edits. That's why my name appears a lot in the history pages. However, the majority of the sentences are not mine.

—Cesar Tort 16:43, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Please see my response from the talk page:

Because regurgitation of one obscure writer's hypothesis (or whatever it is) and attempting to make it seem mainstream by adding unsourced material and additionally throwing in the names of a few other writers in a way that misleadingly indicates they are all referring to the same hypothetical construct is OR. Besides, using deMause as a source for deMause in not following WP:V but is rather using primary sources. You are using deMause to objectively support the accuracy and relevance of what deMause is saying.

Mattisse 17:08, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Discussion about "doing history" in psychology

In response to the spate of recent edits of the history of psychology article, which incorporated anachronistic presentations of Islamic "psychology" into the general description of the discipline, Chris Green started a discussion at his blog. Having evolved over several days, this examines the clashing historiographic sensibilities evinced between expert and naive contributions to Wikipedia, as well as suggestions from both communities about what to do about it. Although further comments are of course welcome, the discussion itself may serve as a useful touchstone for future edits with historical implications. (In short, the argument is that historical movements should be examined in their own contexts, rather than in ours.) --JTBurman (talk) 03:22, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

I think a distinction should be made between "psychology" as a general term, at times almost synonymous with Philosophy, under which almost anything may fall on wikipedia, and Psychology as a science and discipline that originated, we could perhaps agree, in the 1800s with experimental psychology (e.g. Pavlov) and writer/clinicians such as Freud, Kraepelin (really psychiatrists) and others continuing on to Alfred Binet, William James etc. through John Watson and its formation as a recognized profession with standards and credentials in the 1940s, in the United States at least. In short, I agree with the above statement. by JTBurman. Mattisse 14:46, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Similar issues can be found at the following pages:

• Islamic psychology (tagged, noted, and explained on talk page)
• Timeline of historic inventions (not tagged)

Please feel free to add to this list. -JTBurman (talk) 01:34, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Reactive attachment disorder

This article has achieved GA and been peer reviewed and I am proposing to take it to FAC shortly. I would be obliged if someone expert or knowledgeable in the subject could pass an eye over it. Thanks. Fainites ^barley 07:52, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Its now nominated. Fainites ^barley 22:09, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Satanic ritual abuse

The above referenced page is getting a great deal of attention from individuals who are seeking to add content supporting the allegations of abuse, generally doing so with sourced material, probably giving that minority opinion on the allegations undue weight. If anyone here has any sourced information which they would be able to add to the article one way or another, please feel free to do so. It should be noted however that the article as it is currently structured seems to be giving undue weight to the minority opinion supporting the allegations, so sources regarding the majority consensus which doesn't give these claims particularly credence would be most welcome. John Carter (talk) 14:08, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Major cleanup request

Hello. I just stumbled on Teaching Students with Tourette Syndrome through the uncategorized projects. The content seems to be taken from another wiki (with a compatible license) but it's a bizarre article. At the very least it needs to be wikified but, currently, it does not read like an encyclopedia article. Nevertheless, there's a lot of salvageable content and I think a cleanup would be well worth the effort. I myself have no background in psychology so I'm hoping to find some competent, motivated editor(s) here. Thank you. Pichpich (talk) 03:03, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

AfD nom Implicit cognition

Opportunity to comment here: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Implicit cognition. Coffee4me (talk) 01:07, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Test of automated article selection for WP:1.0

Hi, we're testing a system for automated article selection for offline releases, based on the assessment tags you have on article talk pages. We have some test data on a few psychology articles, and we'd really appreciate your feedback. We realise that the list is far from complete, but the important thing is that the ordering of the articles should be right, in terms of importance/quality (with more emphasis on importance). There are three sets of results, ranked using different formulae. Have the articles been ranked in a reasonable order? Please take a look here and leave comments either here or there. Thanks a lot! Walkerma (talk) 17:13, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Request for help sourcing further information

I'm trying to flesh out an article on Maressa Orzack, a psychologist who achieved notability through her work on computer, internet and game addiction. Trouble is, I don't have much information on her work before she set up the Computer Addiction Centre at Harvard. Not having a background in this area myself probably handicaps me a little, as I'm not sure where to start searching for further background information. If anyone fancies helping out on researching her pre-Harvard days or location any notable journals or books she has been published in, that would be a huge help.

Thank you all for your time! --Gazimoff (talk) 12:57, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Child development & Child development in behavior analytic theory articles

New material had been added to Child development leading to problems of WP:Weight, I split the new material to Child development in behavior analytic theory - both articles need attention. Paul foord (talk) 18:16, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

On that point - can anybody explain why this new article Child development in behavior analytic theory has been rated high importance and who by? 82.69.73.181 (talk) 16:48, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

missnamed pages

I have proposed multiple mergers of inproperly titled pages dealing with family therapy and systemic therapy. If you have thoughts, please contribute to the talk page here: Talk:Family therapy#Merge proposal --Sharktacos (talk) 18:32, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Maybe?

If anyone here is interested in this, please take a look at medical model and medical model of disability. I think that they're supposed to be the same thing (and thus candidates for a merge), but (reading between the lines) one focuses on schizophrenia-like illnesses, and the other on autism-spectrum-disorder-like conditions. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:24, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

CfD nomination of Category:Psychology societies

Category:Psychology societies has been nominated for merging or renaming. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the Categories for discussion page. Thank you. – Cgingold (talk) 19:53, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

RfC on article on Intelligence

For anyone interested in intelligence, you're invited to comment on the worthiness of a source on this request for comment. Ward3001 (talk) 21:10, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

John Bowlby and Michael Rutter

Are there any interested editors at this project that would be willing to help resolve some editing difficulties on this page? Fainites ^barley 22:00, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

I'd also like to bring Michael Rutter to attention. Both pages need a set of fresh eyes. — HelloAnnyong ^{(say whaaat?!)} 19:52, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Systems psychology

I started the Systems psychology article a week ago after that discussion on the Talk:Systemic psychology page. I wonder if one of you could take a look at that article and give some feed back on the articles talkpage. Thanks -- 15:19, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Hi, I would like to repeate this request. Could someone take a look at it and give me some feed back. If not. Could somebody explain why? Thank you.-- Mdd (talk) 14:37, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Pain

Hi - Pain is, according to the Wikiproject Medicine page, the current Medicine Collaboration of the Week. Psychology has a long history of research into pain. The involvement of editors from this project would be much appreciated. Anyone here just great with language?

1. How about a easy quick definition of "physical pain"? (Unfortunately it needs to agree with the IASP definition too)
2. Or the history of the term "physiological pain"? (Nociception we have already but there is another one I remember, another "??? pain", that was nearly equivalent to "physiological pain" but didnt include the (?)CNS - any takers?)
3. Or how to, in one, (hopefully accurate and non-misleading sentence that in no way violates IASP definition), disambiguate Pain and Suffering?
4. Or a source for taxonomy of pain in the 20th centuary covering physiology, psychology, neurology and general medicine?

Editing Pain ain't easy - the language is just a little convoluted, with multiple discipline specific non-intuitive definitions. SmithBlue (talk) 03:23, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Nootropics

The article on Nootropics (aka "smart drugs", "smart nutrients", "cognitive enhancers", or "brain enhancers") needs some very serious attention. -- Writtenonsand (talk) 11:12, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Getting It: The psychology of est is up at WP:FAC

Getting It: The psychology of est is up at WP:FAC, comments would be appreciated. FAC discussion page is here: Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Getting It: The psychology of est. Cirt (talk) 09:52, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

The FAC nom for this was restarted. Comments would be appreciated at the FAC discussion page. Cirt (talk) 18:27, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Intuition

There is a discussion on Talk:Intuition about converting the current dab page into a primary topic and moving the dab to Intuition (disambiguation). Since this concerns Intuition (knowledge), a psychology-related article, your thoughts on the talk page linked above are welcome. Thank you. Viriditas (talk) 22:53, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

"Using Wikipedia to recruit participants"

Yannimalliaris (talk) 01:14, 16 April 2008 (UTC)Dear friends. I am a new user to this community and I recently used wikipedia to make any entry that discussed the process of participating in psychology studies and following that I listed a link to one of my web-studies. I found my entry being deleted many times without realising why? I took the time to read the different policies and to discuss the matter with one of your editors who was kind enough to explain things to me. Initially he did not consider my act violating wikipedia's COI - but I did and I first asked him whether that was the case? He later told me that this would be indeed the case. As I said to him I can see why this would be the case. It appears that by applying this policy strictly to all kinds of material would make any researcher who would try to use wikipedia to recruit participants illegal. I wonder whether we are missing an important opportunity here taking advantage of the great gift of knowledge and traffic that wikipedia brings to us? I can see the COI of interest when money is involved but the majority of these projects are academic and non-commercial. I do not wish to name people here but one can find entries of "notable" and wealthy personalities blatantly using wikipedia to advertise themselves and their commercial research projects. They had the money in first place to pay for good advertising to make themselves and products known, which somehow makes their entries in wikipedia more acceptable... What I simply proposed was to have a page with a list of different psychology studies that would give an opportunity to wikipedia readers learn more about these and participate if they wish. This would also engage researchers to contribute more to different articles here. Not sure how and if this can happen really. Anyway, I was encouraged to post my question in public here by your editor. Thanks for listening. Yanni.

You may wish to make a similar template to Template:Canadian quick links or Template:Saskatchewan quick links which users can individually post to their user pages, however using psychology studies. SriMesh | talk 02:44, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Thomas Grossmann

Tagged it with your project. AgnosticPreachersKid (talk) 09:26, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Opportunity for Inter-project Collaboration

WikiProject Medicine and WikiProject Pharmacology have proposed a collaboration to improve Placebo, an article that is supported by this WikiProject. If this topic interests you, and you would like to help (in large ways or small) improve this article through collaborative editing, please go to the WPMED project's collaboration page and sign your name (~~~~) to show your support. The next collaboration will be chosen in about five days, and the article with the most votes from potential collaborators is chosen. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:36, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

AfD nomination: Ephebiphobia

This is a notice that the article about Ephebiphobia is being considered for deletion. Your input regarding the decision is requested. • Freechild'sup? 19:49, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Result of AfD was Keep. Nk.sheridan   Talk 22:55, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Vital articles

Any editor with a broad knowledge of psychology is invited to take a look at Wikipedia:Vital articles and offer suggestions on how to improve the list of 1000 vital Wikipedia articles, as well as on the process of choosing them. It suffers from a severe lack of attention and POV editing. — goethean ॐ 02:09, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Crying in humans

I noticed this rather notable subject had not been addressed besides a brief paragraph in the Tears article and was a requested article. I've created it and done a fair bit of work. Would appreciate any input to the article. Cheers, Nk.sheridan   Talk 22:50, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

..and if anyone is particularly bored they could fix my references with the proper citation templates! Nk.sheridan   Talk 22:52, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

name change for clinical depression discussion

Please add 2c here Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 19:14, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Article on Eyewitness memory

I've just created this today. If anyone would like to help?! Nk.sheridan   Talk 23:12, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Eric Bellman

Anyone from California know this guy and care to reference or expand the article? Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 10:53, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't think Eric Bellman is a notable psychologist. Masterpiece2000 (talk) 12:47, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Dysthymia needs your help

I noticed that the article Dysthymia repeats the symptoms or diagnostic criteria several times. I see on the Talk page that someone else has also complained of this. Anyone care to fix? -- Writtenonsand (talk) 23:52, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Done, most of the repetitions are gone, the remainder seem to be necessary for the structural integrity of the article. --Formerly the IP-Address 24.22.227.53 (talk) 03:47, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Request: Personality theory

I'd like to request a Personality Theory (List of) and/or a Personality Theory focused Navbox. I may get around to doing this on my own (I have made Navboxes and the like, and know a bit about Personality theory), but work is always desired from others.

I've started a subpage for this WikiProject, it doesn't have many wikilinks in it yet, or even a halfway complete listing (though most of the main personality theories are listed there), but it's a start. I'll be watching the page, please help or add constructive commentary if possible. Thanks.

From the subpage: I would like to create a relatively "complete" list of well known and/or "frequently" used personality theories. I'm making this list as a project subpage as it doesn't belong in wikipedia main at this point in its development (and will go unnoticed to this WikiProject community as a personal subpage).

Formerly the IP-Address 24.22.227.53 (talk) 03:31, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Subpersonality

Subpersonality is listed at Wikipedia:Articles requested for more than a year. Unlike psychotic multiple personalities who have no integrating ego, (

• wp
• g
• b

) are able to organize their personalities, meet their needs, and ultimately utilize their personalities to the advantage of the total self. If you think it is worth at least a stub, please create the article. If not, perhaps create a redirect to where it would be best directed. Thanks. Bebestbe (talk) 15:59, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

WP:GAR for article Dianetics

I have listed the article Dianetics for Good article reassessment. Input would be appreciated at Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/Dianetics/1. Cirt (talk) 22:52, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Stalking

The stalking article has become a mess, with the addition of tendentious material such as "gang stalking" (see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Gang stalking for some history), general cruft including a huge "popular culture" section, and at least one example of deliberate misinformation, where material was edited to say something completely opposite to the statements in the cited references.

I've hacked away at it, and tried to get some semblance of a decent article out of it. Two sections of the article are still mere lists, once completely unreferenced. I've also semiprotected it, since it seems to be a kook magnet. Could someone please review this article? -- The Anome (talk) 13:12, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Upon seeing this post, I polished the article a little bit, and have made one overall observation that may be worth mentioning: While the "types of stalkers" subsection and the "laws on stalking" sections seem to be sourced quite well, the rest of the article is very much wanting in that regard. Cosmic Latte (talk) 14:49, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Hofling hospital experiment

The Hofling hospital experiment just came out of the biography project, since it wasn't really a biography. I'm not active in the psychology project, but I wanted to suggest that someone from here check it out, maybe rate it or link it are whatever. Cretog8 (talk) 03:48, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Importance of a biography

I'm not sure how important Richard Lynn is; I'm guessing low importance? If you agree please assess the article accordingly. Richard001 (talk) 02:16, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Articles flagged for cleanup

Currently, 546 of the articles assigned to this project, or 50.7%, are flagged for cleanup of some sort. (Data as of 18 June 2008.) Are you interested in finding out more? I am offering to generate cleanup to-do lists on a project or work group level. See User:B. Wolterding/Cleanup listings for details. Subsribing is easy - just add a template to your project page. If you want to respond to this canned message, please do so at my user talk page. --B. Wolterding (talk) 17:59, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Rename proposal for the lists of basic topics

This project's subject has a page in the set of Lists of basic topics.

See the proposal at the Village pump to change the names of all those pages.

The Transhumanist 10:15, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Changes to the WP:1.0 assessment scheme

As you may have heard, we at the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial Team recently made some changes to the assessment scale, including the addition of a new level. The new description is available at WP:ASSESS.

• The new C-Class represents articles that are beyond the basic Start-Class, but which need additional references or cleanup to meet the standards for B-Class.
• The criteria for B-Class have been tightened up with the addition of a rubric, and are now more in line with the stricter standards already used at some projects.
• A-Class article reviews will now need more than one person, as described here.

Each WikiProject should already have a new C-Class category at Category:C-Class_articles. If your project elects not to use the new level, you can simply delete your WikiProject's C-Class category and clarify any amendments on your project's assessment/discussion pages. The bot is already finding and listing C-Class articles.

Please leave a message with us if you have any queries regarding the introduction of the revised scheme. This scheme should allow the team to start producing offline selections for your project and the wider community within the next year. Thanks for using the Wikipedia 1.0 scheme! For the 1.0 Editorial Team, §hepBot (Disable) 21:17, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Anthony Pratkanis

The article about social psychology professor Anthony Pratkanis has been started, please be bold and add more information to it, or categories. It was started as a request more than one year old c2006) listed on requested anthpology biographies, there are more psychologist requests here. SriMesh | talk 02:20, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Don't stress

Stress (biological) is the main article on stress (+ there's the article on its separate use in physics) but it's not tagged by this wikiproject. There's an issue with the article name at the moment. EverSince (talk) 22:58, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

BDD

Can someone re-review the Body dysmorphic disorder article, I suspect it has improved since it was rated... indeed its rating "C" appears to no longer exist. Jasonfward (talk) 17:34, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Who carries out these reviews and gives ratings? Jasonfward (talk) 14:27, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Does anyone ever respond to comments and requests here? Jasonfward (talk) 01:50, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Students editing related article seeking advice and input

A course I am teaching will have some students contribute to Wikipedia (see Wikipedia:School and university projects/User:Piotrus/Summer 2008 for more info). One of the groups will be editing an article related to economics - technophobia. We would all appreciate if members of WikiProject Psychology , in the wiki spirit, would offer advice to the students, and review the progress of their work. The assignment will last till the July 30.--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 17:40, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

DSM-IV

Would anyone here be interested in taking a look at our updated User:Mindsite/DSM-IV_Proposal? I was hoping to get some input or feedback from the Psychology project. Mindsite (talk) 18:51, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Bumping Importance rating

Recently, many users have been promoting "high" importance articles to "top" importance in the Psychology WikiProject. Examples are here, here, here, here, here, etc.

The diffs aren't necessarily all the bumping up to "top" (one user bumps up and down), but they are a large scale change. Ottava Rima (talk) 01:39, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Here is another. Ottava Rima (talk) 01:39, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Intensive care... and dying

I direct the project's attention to two articles ranked as "High Importance" that are frankly, in the one case, worse than poor. (I just did something about that... below. Apparently the second, but older article wasn't tagged by your project at all.) There is also a merge proposal for the two, which makes sense to me, but alas, I haven't been up to deciding between fine distinctions outside familiar subjects for quite a few hours now:

See Human behavior (edit talk links history) and Behavior (edit talk links history)

The latter had some meat and seemed to show some promise, despite anyone attending their editing to purge old stale tags. The first starts better than the second, then immediately swerves into general behavior in the animal world. The second had IN-YOUR-FACE-TAGS blasting you off the page. I've just gotten back from a insane urge to fix the latter up some, but I'm overtired and overdue in bed. See comments/edit trail left in: Talk:Behavior/Archives/2013#The_lead_in_on_this_was_just_too_much, and figure out whether those two should be merged and where to go from here. I did my duty if not my best. (Yawn) <g> // FrankB 07:21, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Proposed rename of Refractory depression to Treatment-resistant depression

I am proposing the move as this is what I always called it in my profession (psychiatry), and what I have seen it called and defined as in the literature. Please input vote opinion on the talk page of the article. All input welcome. :) Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 02:30, 31 July 2008 (UTC)  DoneCheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 17:50, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Merge Repressed memory with Psychological repression?

I'd like to request your input at Talk:Psychological_repression#Proposal_to_merge_with_Repressed_memory, in light of the new merger rationale that I have proposed in an effort to reinvigorate the discussion and, hopefully, to achieve the suggested merger. Thanks. Cosmic Latte (talk) 13:12, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Neurodevelopmental disorders

I put this article into Category:Psychology. Would it be worthwhile to include in your WikiProject?Trilobitealive (talk) 18:23, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Major headache at major depressive disorder - please reply at WT:MED to keep all in one place

Folks, I bring this up now as I want to get this sorted here and now rather than at FAC. In psychiatry here in Oz we all use DSM IV, like the US, and as far as I can tell, there is a lot more written and researched using DSM IV criteria than ICD 10. Thus, we have major depressive disorder aka major depression, which has loads of epidemiological/treatment effectiveness etc. research, and MDD sorta fits somewhere between 'moderate' and 'severe' depression on ICD 10. Unfortunately, we have a naming convention using ICD 10...

• Thus, options are:

leave as is and (a) ignore all rules or (b) look at addressing naming conventions by at least noting DSM IV-TR is internationally recognised.

change to depressive disorder, with a confusingly close title to depression which serves as a sort of disambiguation page which needs embellishing, and have an article with a huge chunk of details on epidemiology/treatment response etc. referring to MDD all through it and try to explain it.

Also, the situation is even more of an issue when we get to borderline personality disorder (DSM IVTR) vs the stubby ICD 10 article Emotionally unstable personality disorder - the former has a much higher profile and common usage. Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 13:57, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Cognitive ... therapy

Dear psychology-interested people: I wish some of you would look at, and hopefully merge some of, the many articles on Cognitive behavior modification, Cognitive therapy, Cognitive behavioral therapy, Rational emotive behavior therapy, and possibly related Behavior modification, Multimodal Therapy, Professional practice of behavior analysis etc. Perhaps a relatively short overview article explaining, simply, the gist of these and their relationships to one another and when each one started; a list-type article?? (If one exists, I haven't found it.) As they stand, it's very confusing for a lay person. Thank you. --Hordaland (talk) 20:09, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Neuro-linguistic programming AFD

An AFD has been started on a sub-topic: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/NLP Modeling. Please provide useful arguments and assist in the improvement of the article using scholarly references if you believe it is a topic worthy of note.

I apologise if this isnt on topic for this project, however I would like to ensure participation from as many knowledgeable people as possible, and from as many viewpoints as possible. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 06:29, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Developmental stage theories

I added a few references to this stub. Any other suggestions welcome Loz kearney (talk) 03:49, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Major concern over categorisation page

I have noticed that there is almost no information on exemplar theories of categorisation on the categorisation page except as a sort of subsection of conceptual clustering- this seems pretty weird to me given the importance of exemplar theories (e.g. Medin and Schaffer, 1978; Nosofosky, 1986)- As a researcher in this field I would suggest that there should be more attention given to exemplar theories- especially as there is a page dedicated to prototype theories. What does anyone else think? Loz kearney (talk) 04:12, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Suicide methods must be deleted!

Hi, I would like to request that the "Suicide Methods" article be deleted, even though this is about the 5th time that this has been requested. Although international law is mixed, we need to look at whether this article is assisting suicide. Recently, a banned editor has placed material on the talk page, which certainly is. If anything, this article is potentially dangerous and shouldn't be here, since there is already enough in the Suicide article. --HandGrenadePins (talk) 10:40, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia is WP:NOTCENSORED, and an article like this can be useful for research purposes. And I'm not aware of any evidence that an awareness of various suicide methods actually increases the risk. Are you? Cosmic Latte (talk) 15:58, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Request for article on Hjalmar Sunden

If any one here has a knowledge of the psychology of religion and knows about Sunden's role theory, I shall be grateful if she or he could start an article in the English Wikipedia on Hjalmar Sunden. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 23:14, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

Perceived taste relating to expectation

There is no information on Wikipedia that I can find on, what I like to call, the thinking-something-tastes-better-because-it-should-taste-better effect (a friend calls it the "Private school effect"):

• http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/02/24/grape_expectations/
• http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/07/dining/07pour.html?_r=1&em&ex=1210478400&en=eaa4f6dd12aa403a&ei=5087%0A&oref=slogin
• http://news.cnet.com/8301-13580_3-9849949-39.html
• http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/food_and_drink/article3177658.ece

I do not know the real name for this effect.

Maybe it should be mentioned in Wine tasting, but it should definately be on Wikipedia somewhere. Have I missed it?

Lanma726 (talk) 00:43, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Relational aggression

Who loves a challenge? I just stubbed relational aggression after a read-through indicated it was a coatrack for domestic violence, dump of scholarly texts in the further reading section and an unsourced mess in general. Anyone want to expand? It looks like there's a fair amount of scholarly literature out there, but someone with the urge needs to expand it based on them. WLU (talk) 20:09, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

California Graduate Institute

Now I am not familiar with psychologists' registration in California, and at first glance I saw a sinlge purpose account removing material from the California Graduate Institute article, hwoever it does seem to be more of an update rather than a remove. It would be good for someone more famiular with registration etc. to have a look if any are around. Am reading it over myself but undecided. Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 02:01, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Merge articles on overconfidence?

We have a number of articles on overconfidence: Overconfidence effect, Dunning-Kruger effect, Downing effect, and possibly Lake Wobegon effect.

We should probably merge these.

IMHO Overconfidence effect is the most neutral title, but this article has been tagged "Written like a personal reflection or essay and may require cleanup" since Dec 2007. Talk page of Dunning-Kruger effect says "Naming this effect the 'Dunning-Kruger effect' constitutes Original Research: I haven't seen it called that in the literature." Talk page of Downing effect also questions whether this term is actually used.

Quite a bit of fix-up needed. -- 201.17.36.246 (talk) 03:03, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Undue Weight in schizophrenia article

the difference between these two versions is, I feel, giving undue weight to the latter version. More eyes would be nice. Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 06:06, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Article AFGNCAAP

I thought I would bring this article to your attention as it is being proposed for deletion. The title is an acronym for "Ageless, Faceless, Gender-Neutral, Culturally-Ambiguous Adventure Person", which is something of an early video-gaming meme. In looking for an alternative home for the content of this article, I noted that there was little in Wikipedia (albeit after only a shallow search) linking video gaming and psychology except for Video game effects and Video game controversy. I think that the concept behind AFGNCAAP might fit into one of these two articles as a matter of how the rendering of identity has changed in video gaming as technology has changed and what differential is seen in video game effects between the two formats (anonymous vs. role playing; internally driven identity vs. external driven identity). Not being a psychologist myself, I leave it to those who are to consider how this might be addressed in an appropriately sourced and NPOV manner. Regards, User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 00:51, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia 0.7 articles have been selected for Psychology

Wikipedia 0.7 is a collection of English Wikipedia articles due to be released on DVD, and available for free download, later this year. The Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team has made an automated selection of articles for Version 0.7.

We would like to ask you to review the articles selected from this project. These were chosen from the articles with this project's talk page tag, based on the rated importance and quality. If there are any specific articles that should be removed, please let us know at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.7. You can also nominate additional articles for release, following the procedure at Wikipedia:Release Version Nominations.

A list of selected articles with cleanup tags, sorted by project, is available. The list is automatically updated each hour when it is loaded. Please try to fix any urgent problems in the selected articles. A team of copyeditors has agreed to help with copyediting requests, although you should try to fix simple issues on your own if possible.

We would also appreciate your help in identifying the version of each article that you think we should use, to help avoid vandalism or POV issues. These versions can be recorded at this project's subpage of User:SelectionBot/0.7. We are planning to release the selection for the holiday season, so we ask you to select the revisions before October 20. At that time, we will use an automatic process to identify which version of each article to release, if no version has been manually selected. Thanks! For the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial team, SelectionBot 22:37, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Mental health promotion

Could some expert take a look at that article? It's been nominated for deletion and has quite a few problems. VG ☎ 14:24, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

merging overeating and Compulsive_overeating

There is a discussion on merging overeating and Compulsive_overeating at Talk:Overeating#Merge_with_Compulsive_overeating - come join the fun. Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 11:57, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Extreme Abuse Survey and Ritual Abuse-Torture

Some expert attention would be helpful from the pscyh perspective on these two entries 1) Extreme Abuse Survey and 2) Ritual Abuse-Torture. Both are of relatively new creation and there are notability concerns. Someone has proposed deleting the former for that very reason. Thanks.PelleSmith (talk) 15:57, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Schizophrenia review

Schizophrenia has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. 05:28, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Lüscher_color_test

These seem to be serious problems with this article as evidenced on the talk page and on the NPOV notice board. Some expert may want to take a look. VG ☎ 16:57, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Looks suspicious. Cosmic Latte (talk) 16:09, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

I added this link to the article as a reference, summarizing the authors' conclusions. That said, I must admit that the test looks kinda funky. Cosmic Latte (talk) 17:47, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

"Max Lüscher recognized that the sensory perception of color is objective and universally shared by all." Apparently he never met someone who was colourblind? Cosmic Latte (talk) 16:28, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

The article is pretty much a one-sided sloppy mess, but at least it's well-tagged as such. Cosmic Latte (talk) 16:32, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Photo issue in schizophrenia article

OK, we have an interesting photo of a house with lots of writing of apparently delusional material which can be seen on an olde version of the page before being reverted.

It is being discussed about here at Talk:Schizophrenia#I_like_the_image_but.... - all input most welcome. Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 13:43, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

Two featured article candidates - Brain and Major depressive disorder

Both of these articles are at FAC currently. Many wikiprojects have a dashboard or area on the project page where this would be noted, but couldn't see one so noting it here. Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 01:58, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Emergenetics up for deletion

AfD. VG ☎ 19:37, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

The most eminent psychologist who does not have a Wikipedia article

I came across an article by Haggblom et al, 2002: "The 100 Most Eminent Psychologists of the 20th Century", which uses several measures to find a list of the most eminent psychologists of the 20th century, and I was curious to see what eminent psychologists there are that don't have a Wikipedia article. You can see the result here: User:Skagedal/Eminent psychologists. Apparently, the winner (using the composite measure) is Theodore Newcomb! Unless his name is spelled otherwise, I've tried a couple of variants. Other eminent "red links" include Benton Underwood, Eleanor Maccoby and Leonard Berkowitz. Using the measure of "most frequently cited in journals", a Benjamin J. Winer comes out at #4, and does not have an article. This mostly seems to illustrate the inappropriateness of this particular measure, since this fellow is not an "eminent psychologist", but author of a widely used statistics textbook. Using a survey measure, Eleanor Maccoby "wins". /skagedal^... 20:07, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Well spotted. Elliot Aronson was mispelled, so that one is ok. I put the other top names as requests on the Psychology WikiProject's list of tasks you can do. Hopefully people will jump in and add these articles. --Jcbutler (talk) 20:32, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Great, thanks! /skagedal^... 07:55, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Proposed merge

I'm proposing a merge of Chemical imbalance and Monoamine Hypothesis, because the former is basically the layman's term for the latter. Support? Oppose? Comments? Cosmic Latte (talk) 21:27, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Support. Based on article contents, you could make Monoamine Hypothesis a subsection of Chemical imbalance. The two articles already have some copy&paste sentences in common. VG ☎ 19:55, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

I went ahead and followed your suggestion. Are we okay then with converting Monoamine Hypothesis into a redirect to Chemical_imbalance#Monoamine_hypothesis? Cosmic Latte (talk) 04:26, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Seems appropriate. VG ☎ 16:35, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

• Have you consulted with Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine as Chemical imbalance is their article? The article history shows that it was originally split from and removed from Chemical imbalance and made into a separate article. —Mattisse (Talk) 16:55, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

• Done. Cosmic Latte (talk) 21:08, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Genetic psychiatry POV (without refences) at Bipolar disorder

An editor operating under a pseudonym indicating a well-known researcher (see Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#Is_this_WP:OUTING.3F) has done a large number of edits to Bipolar disorder to push the article towards the POV that bipolar disorder is mainly genetic. This would be all fine and dandy if he added references to support his/her point of view, but (s)he didn't. I also reported this at WP:OR/N. VG ☎ 18:53, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Looks like violations of WP:NPOV, WP:OWN, WP:RS, WP:OR...anything else? Cosmic Latte (talk) 19:01, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Major depressive disorder FAC - more eyes needed

OK folks, I need some help in getting consensus - Major depressive disorder is at FAC, with some intial supports but has some issues with prose in the causes section - can it be made less jargony without losing meaning, and double checking of references - concerns have been raised abotu the use of sources. I am doing what I can but some new eyes would be good. Finally one reviewer questions the use of the word "history" as in medical history or psychiatric history in its use to take information on a patient's current circumstances in the clinical assessment section. This article was a lot of work and I am feeling a little burnt out at the moment.Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 23:24, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Attachment Therapy

Can anybody tell me please whether an article about this therapy should be in the psychology category or not? This therapy claims to be based on various psychoanalytic and psychological ideas + attachment theory and is practised by LCSW's, some psychologists and various others. Does something that claims to be a mainstream psychological therapy, even though unvalidated and criticised as a pseudoscience(amongst other things), still come into the psychology category? Bodies like the APA have made pronouncements about it. APSAAC commissioned a taskforce on and it has been discussed (mostly unfavourably) in peer reviewed journals. I'm not sure whether the psychology project means mainstream only or whether it covers the odd or bad aswell as the good or inbetween. I note, for example, that "Parapsychology", "Astrology", Primal therapy, Satanic ritual abuse and "Large Group Awareness Training" are listed as part of this project. Fainites ^barley 23:49, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

I would not include it in the psychology category if it is rejected by the majority of psychologists and psychological associations. So my reasoning is the same as when I opposed including "socionics" in the psychology category some time ago. By that token, we should probably remove "Parapsychology", "Astrology", Primal therapy, Satanic ritual abuse and "Large Group Awareness Training" too. On the other hand... it is a good idea for members of the project to keep an eye on some of these articles to make sure they don't get out of hand. Maybe we need a "subproject." --Jcbutler (talk) 00:12, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Maybe we need some kind of policy on this then because at the moment, anything vaguely psychological is "in" the project. Can't think what to name the sub-project though. Loads of stuff is unvalidated or outdated but not necessarily pseudoscience. Also, not all pseido-psychology has had the benefit of peer reviewed criticism or the notice of psych. associations. Crypto-psychology? Fainites ^barley 00:28, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

I think we do need a subcategory so as to drain some of this stuff off. It is like the Category:Emotion which ended up doing that and was separated from Psychology, after a huge battle. The general public needs some kind of category that sounds like psychology but separates the formal psychology articles from those general "mental health" articles on pet theories, programs, etc. —Mattisse (Talk) 00:30, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Not "crypto". It needs some word that means "would-be" psychology. I suppose if it was called "fringe" people would spend all their time in category wars. There isn't really a term that means unvalidated and non-mainstream aprt from "alternative" but that doesn't quite fit the bill either. Fainites ^barley 00:34, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

There are alternative categories that are not psychology; maybe we need more of those. Like Category:Alternative therapies for developmental and learning disabilities and there is Category:Alternative medicine. And, of course Category:Pseudoscience. —Mattisse (Talk) 00:37, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

They need not be mutually exclusive. In fact its often not possible to be clear and frequently very difficult to find sources describing something as a pseudoscience even if it looks obviously a pseudoscience. For example, NLP, which I personally think is pseudoscience, is thought not to be by many, and it proved suprisingly difficult to find sources that stated in terms that it was. Once you can't find a source that says its a pseudoscience you're getting into the realms of OR. Each area of science could have its own category of pseudoscience. Fainites ^barley 18:54, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

I am not sure where you guys get your facts from, last time I checked attachment theory was one of the most studied theories in psychology and the therapy based on them still had more than enough credit to be discussed at most universities --The.Filsouf (talk) 20:14, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

No no! We're not talking about attachment theory or attachment theory based therapies. We're talking about a particular form of so-called Attachment Therapy that isn't based on attachment theory. Unfortunately "attachment therapy" is how its advertised (all over the web) and is its most common name. This can cause endless confusion. I started a page on Attachment-based therapy (children) for the theory based stuff but it is by no means complete. Fainites ^barley 21:05, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Have you guys decided on Attachment Therapy with a capital T? If so, is there a reason why you can not move the article to Attachment Therapy? (Although, going by the above, I wonder if the capital T will clarify anything as it is so easy for people to be confused over the wording.) —Mattisse (Talk) 22:29, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

I don't think the capital T will clarify anything, so I would recommend keeping a small t, consistent with standard wikipedia style. --Jcbutler (talk) 00:35, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

I don't think it will clarify anything either. But the problem is that there are attachment therapies that are legitimate. But the attachment theory discussed in this particular article is not. If you want some flavor of the opinions regarding it you can read Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/Attachment therapy/1. It is currently categorized as Category:Pseudoscience. No one seems to be able to settle on a name for it that is not misleading. —Mattisse (Talk) 01:02, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Have you considered a disambiguation link at the top of the articles? e.g. "This is article is about a specific form of therapy called "Attachment therapy", for (other) therapies based on Bowlby's attachment theory please see, "Attachment-based therapy (children)". On the NLP article there were a whole bunch of people worried that Neuro-linguistic programming might be confused with "Neurolinguistics". The disambiguation link resolved some concerns. ----Action potential ^{t c} 03:36, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

I don't know. They need to settle on a name for the article first. As you can see in the above thread, many people automatically think because of the name, Attachment therapy, that is a reputable therapy because Attachment theory is reputable, and because there are a variety of attachment-based therapies that are also, from what I understand. (I am not an expert in the attachment field.) But this particular Attachment therapy described in this article is a pseudoscience or something along those lines. In fact, apparently it has killed people, and its editor has said there are many "dead children" as a result of the use of this particular Attachment therapy. —Mattisse (Talk) 03:49, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

I know. But there is currently no disambiguation link at the top. This would help people find the reputable therapies. Maybe you could say at the top: "This is article is about a specific form of a (discredited/disputed/controversial/unsupported) form therapy called "Attachment therapy", for (reputable/accepted/scientific/approved) therapies based on Bowlby's attachment theory please see, "Attachment-based therapy (children)". Well, something like that. ----Action potential ^{t c} 04:41, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Maybe something like that would work. It would at least clarify, for those whose reached that page, what the situation is regarding all of this. —Mattisse (Talk) 04:55, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Maybe try this: "This article on specific form of therapy named "Attachment therapy". which has been discredited by (some authoritative source). For the group of attachment therapies derived from Bowlby's theories of attachment see, Attachment-based therapy (children)." I struck out the bit that might be POV which should be avoided in disambiguation. Maybe you can rename the article from Attachment therapy to "Foster Cline's Attachment therapy". I was thinking of the title of Baddeley's model of working memory article which clearly identifies it from variations of the model with the same name. ----Action potential ^{t c} 09:37, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Your idea of a disambiguation point at the top is a good one AP. The problem with this therapy is that in a way the name of Attachment therapy is almost deliberately misleading because its proponents claim it is based on attachment theory. Therefore one has to take the bull by the horns, I think, in the way you describe. "Attachment therapy" is its usual, common name but one can't escape the fact that for some people, the name "attachment therapy" could mean anything based on attachment theory. Calling it AT with capitals, as suggested by another editor, helps distinguish it in the body of the article. (The only reason I haven't changed the name of the article is that I don't know how to do that without losing all the takpages and archives and things.) I don't think calling it Foster Clines or Zaslows therapy really helps. These days attachment therapists themselves don't mention Foster Cline and his books have been removed from AT booklists in the time I've been editing this article. Fainites ^barley 11:37, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

I've given it a try.Attachment therapy. What do you think? The second paragraph now looks like overkill. I could combine the two. Fainites ^barley 11:49, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Psychotherapy task force

The therapy pages are in real bad shape. Check out Person-centered psychotherapy for an embarrassment. Maybe we need a "task force" of some sort to work on these? p.s. I am rewriting the existential one here. If anyone's up for this let me know.. --The.Filsouf (talk) 20:11, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Then there are lots of articles like Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy. Someone should round them all up. —Mattisse (Talk) 01:06, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps the task force could also include the topic of Coaching (life coaching, executive coaching, etc.). The coaching perspective is perhaps most closely aligned with principles of positive psychology or the motivational perspective. Should these coaching related articles be within the psychology wikiproject? Coaching psychology is an emerging subfield. ----Action potential ^{t c} 03:28, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Is it really an emerging subfield in professional psychology? That is, are licensed psychologists participating in this? Sports psychology is a version of this and is an acceptable field. Successful sports psychologists are usually very sophisticated in using a variety of effective psychotherapeutic techniques and the effect is greater than just "coaching". But "motivation speakers" are usually not professional psychologists. And "life coaches" seem to be a variety of people. So I would want to be clear what you mean. —Mattisse (Talk) 03:41, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Some researchers argue that coaching is distinct from psychotherapy. I was referring to the coaching industry which is informed by positive psychology (goal/motivational perspectives). The number of empirical studies and number of citations has been increasing in the psychological literature in the last 10 years. I know of coaching interest groups founded by Australian Psychological Society and British Psychological Society. The journals include: International Coaching Psychology Review, Australian Psychologist, Journal of Positive Psychology, Social Behavior & Personality, "Coaching: An International Journal of Research, Theory and Practice", International Journal of Evidence Based Coaching and Mentoring, International Journal of Coaching in Organisations. see here for list ----Action potential ^{t c} 04:36, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Lots of areas are "informed by positive psychology" or other aspects of psychology, but are the practitioners of coaching PhD level psychologists? I am not informed about this, as I have not known about coaching as a form of psychology practice until now. —Mattisse (Talk) 04:49, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

The APS accreditation for coaching psychologist is still being developed. Abstracts from the recent symposium are here. Tony Grant said that 60 PhDs dissertations have been published on coaching since the 1980s. Psychologists with or without PhDs make up only a small percentage of the market currently which has been dominated by coaches with a business background. The psychological associations clearly want to enter the market. Does this justify adding the article on Coaching to Wikiproject psychology and what is its level of importance? Would creating another article called Coaching psychology be a POV fork? ----Action potential ^{t c} 09:21, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Life coaching is relevant, but I think for this one man task force, the focus should be kept strictly on psychotherapy for now! unless you want to help..?! --The.Filsouf (talk) 10:11, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

I think we need to start by sorting out the categories and subcategories: Category:Therapy, "Category:Psychotherapy", and "Category:Counseling" are a mess. Can you suggest a taxonomy for therapies? e.g. UKCP's taxonomy of recognized therapies. ----Action potential ^{t c} 11:22, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

(unindent)Looking at their site, (as just a set of groupings, ignoring validity and their registration requirements), that would be Psychoanalysis and Jungian analysis, Behavioural and cognitive, Experiental constructivist, Family Couple Sexual and Systemic, Humanistic and Integrative, Hypno, and Counselling. Fainites ^barley 18:17, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

There is indeed a lot to be done in the psychotherapy articles. Here's a couple of topics in psychotherapy research that someone should write about:

• clinical significance;
• common factors theory;
• allegience effect;
• dismantling study/component analysis. /skagedal^... 14:54, 13 November 2008 (UTC) Added dismantling study/component analysis. /skagedal^... 14:42, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

• There is a great post exemplifying the confusion of terms that do have articles on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine. (copied)

I've found an interesting cluster of undersourced and poorly coordinated articles, and think it might be interesting to consider their proper disposition. They are:

• Sickness, a disambiguation page
• Illness, state of (perceived?) ill health (redirects include Ailment and Malady)
• Disease, abnormal functioning (redirects include Medical condition and Morbid)
• Disorder (medicine), abnormal functioning, with explanation of "politically correct" terminology
• Morbidity, five different definitions in this stub

—Mattisse (Talk) 15:30, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

• Ok, thoughts on this? Wikipedia:WikiProject Psychology/Psychotherapy /skagedal^... 15:34, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

• Good job! let's keep up the momentum --The.Filsouf (talk) 17:06, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Template problem

I noticed a problem with our project template—please see Template talk:WikiProject Psychology#.2FComments. /skagedal^... 22:56, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Inner child

Could the project take a stab at expanding this stub? Thanks! Шизомби (talk) 03:43, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Francis E. Dec

I've nominated this article for deletion (and this wikiproject doesn't have a delsort queue). Pcap ping 07:25, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for the notice. Do you think we should have one of those delsort pages? Should we ask on delsort talk page, or how does it work? /skagedal^... 19:25, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Major depressive disorder FAC restarted

Just so everyone is aware, the FAC for Major depressive disorder has been restarted at Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates/Major_depressive_disorder. Cosmic Latte (talk) 02:23, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Psychotherapy

Skagedal. The source is "Psychology of Mind and Behaviour" by Richard Gross, usually called "Gross". 5th edition. 2005. Its called a "must have" for starting a psychology degree, or psychology A'level. That sort of book. It starts off on page 809 distinguishing psychological treatments from biological or somatic treatments and psychotherapy from psychiatry. Then it says Psychotherapy, (or 'psychodynamic therapy'...) is also used to refer to those methods based, directly or indirectly on Freuds psychoanalysis........In the UK, the tradition has been to contrast psychotherapy with behaviour therapy, while in the USA psychotherapy is used more broadly to include behavioural psychotherapy as well as 'psychodynamic therapy'. However, the UK Councilfor Psychotherapy (UKCP) has a behavioural psychotherapy section..... as well as a psychoanalytic and psychodynamic psychotherapy section. As UKCP is the biggest umbrella organisation this would seem to indicate that the boundaries are fading.Fainites ^barley 19:58, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

I would have to disagree with the comment above. First, I have higher degrees in psychology and have never heard of the book, but in any case it sounds like an introductory or undergraduate book, so not a very estimable source from my view, as such books usually simplify to the point of misleading. The publisher, A Hodder Arnold Publication, is not a familiar publisher of academic psychology books.

Regarding terminology, I am using the US as a referent. The term "behavioural psychotherapy" has no particular meaning to me. In the US the term "psychodynamic therapy" is usually used to describe therapy that concentrates on a person's inner feelings, does not have clear criteria for improvement, other than the therapist's or client's decision to terminate, and may address such general issues as a traumatic childhood, etc. It may be loosely based on psychoanalysis and other variations of "talking" therapies popular in the last century that have loose theoretical bases and no outcome measures.

"Psychodynamic therapy"is is usually used in contrast to cognitive behavioral therapies, such as Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy that do not focus on psychodynamics, but focus on specific behavioral change through structured approaches and use external behavior as a criteria for change. That is, has the person's behavior changed by external measures? To use a simplistic example, if the problem is that the person is afraid of using an elevator, a goal is set regarding the modification of that behavior, eg the person will learn to use an elevator that goes to the 16th floor in 10 sessions. The person's internal psychodynamics are irrelevant, ie whether that person had a traumatic childhood or whatever. However, the person's cognitive beliefs are relevant. What are the person's thinking processes, what specifically goes through his head, what does he tell himself, when he approaches an elevator that results in avoidance behavior?

There are variations of these approaches, but in general "psychodynamic therapy" uses talking to effect internal change. Cognitive behavioral therapies use behavioral and cognitive techniques to address the person's faulty belief system and effect external change through practice, immersion, skills building and other behavioral techniques, with measurable, external results. —Mattisse (Talk) 20:53, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Excuse me. I was responding to a request for a source from Skagadal relating to possible regional variations in the use of the word 'psychotherapy'. I have clearly explained the nature of the source and provided a direct quote so I'm not sure what you are disagreeing with. The point is not whether it is "correct" or not but is part of a discussion to ensure readers from all parts of the world - not just the US - find and can understand the relevant articles. Given the readership that Wikipedia is aimed at, a low level source may well give a better guide to what "psychotherapy" brings to mind in, for example, the UK. I can't imagine this topic is discussed in academic psychological journals. Hope this clarifies things.Fainites ^barley 21:34, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Thank you, Fainites! Our textbook at that level was Passer & Smith, similarly called "Psychology: The Science of Mind and Behavior"... I added a note to the psychotherapy page: [2]. /skagedal^... 22:27, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Bear in mind that per WP:MEDRS, text books are discouraged as sources for articles in Psychology. —Mattisse (Talk) 05:46, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Oedipus complex

Someone who feels (s)he is well-suited to judge the degree to which Freudian theory is accepted or discredited within psychology, psychiatry, and psychoanalysis might want to have a look at the new section in the Oedipus complex article titled "Discredited"--Bhuck (talk) 13:05, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Insanity

There is a discussion here concerning the inclusion or otherwise of a quote from Albert Einstein (although its provenance is in doubt); currently consensus would appear that it is irrelevant (being only one person's interpretation), and such a section will become a magnet for all sort of trivia; the trend being that it should not be included. Further opinion would be welcome. --Rodhullandemu 17:20, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Featured articles

• Big congratulations to all who have worked hard on the major depressive disorder article for getting it to featured status!
• Did you all see that today's featured article was the article on the book Getting It: The psychology of est?

/skagedal^talk 20:23, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Capitalization for therapeutic systems and similar

Someone just changed "cognitive behavioral therapy" to "Cognitive Behavioral Therapy" in that article. I've earlier changed it to non-capitalized, but I can't find any guidelines as to what the correct spelling is... I don't see anything in MOS:CAPS that explicitly says it should be capitalized, so I suppose that it shouldn't? Or is it considered a proper noun? What about terms that refer to a more specific type of treatment, like dialectical behavior therapy? Non-capitalisation does seem to be the consensus... /skagedal^... 14:43, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

And what about something like Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing? /skagedal^... 14:55, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

(ec) Re: "cognitive behavioral therapy". It is not considered a proper noun if you are talking about the general approach. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy redirects to Cognitive behavioral therapy. That article says (correctly) that cognitive behavioral therapy is "an umbrella-term for goal-oriented psychotherapeutic systems". Likewise, psychoanalysis is not capitalized in general use. That article says of psychoanalysis: "[under] the broad umbrella of psychoanalysis there are at least 22 different theoretical orientations". However, if you are talking about a specific program that has a fixed agenda and use specifically developed material, such as Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT), it is capitalized in the literature reporting studies on this specific approach. On the other hand, Dialectical behavioral therapy is not capitalized, because in the literature it is considered a "method", that is, there is some flexibility in how it can be applied. Hope this helps. —Mattisse (Talk) 15:20, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Addendum. Re:Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) - again that article says it "uses a structured approach to address past, present, and future aspects of disturbing memories". That is, it is inflexible method, so it has a specific name that is capitalized. It is not a general "method". —Mattisse (Talk) 15:20, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Yes, that helped, thank you! Its difficult to draw the line, though. The examples of CBT (general) and EMDR (specific) are pretty clear by these guidelines, but I'd say that DBT is an example of a less clear-cut case. Marsha Linehan's Dialectical Behavior Therapy is a quite specific program for patients with borderline and parasuicidal behavior, there's a manual and an agenda (although of course there are liberties within this, but that probably applies to EMDR as well). However, it has been adapted to other patient groups by other researchers, so maybe somewhere it "becomes" "dialectical behavior therapy", without capitalization..? (Note: I started a discussion on another aspect of the naming of this article.)

Would be nice to have this documented somewhere, possibly something like Wikipedia:WikiProject Psychology/Style issues. /skagedal^... 15:41, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:WikiProject Psychology/Psychotherapy#Style issues. /skagedal^... 19:36, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Looking at the article Dialectical behavioral therapy, I agree that is questionable. It apparently was developed by one person or group, has a lay following (just going by the post of the individual case involving a suicidal boy on the talk page) and none of the references, outside those written by the developers, address that therapy specifically. This might be an example of one of my complaints, that every individual specific program (there are a multitude of them) developed by specific people and often promoted to the lay public should not have its own specific article, in my opinion. Maybe a general article on the multitude of specific programs developed from cognitive behavioral therapy in general would do, for example. —Mattisse (Talk) 15:54, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

A Pubmed search on "dialectical behavior therapy" returns 108 articles on the subject, by many different authors, and there are lots of books on the subject. As far as I know, it has wide spread adaption, e.g. here in Sweden. So it is well worthy of its own article, IMHO. /skagedal^... 19:36, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

If the article were modified accordingly, that would be a case for using "Dialectal behavior therapy", especially if the term is not capitalized in the various articles and books you found, that is, they are referring to a general method. —Mattisse (Talk) 20:54, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Note: This discussion came up here (permalink) and I also posted a note here (permalink). I just looked in "Handbook of Cognitive–Behavioral Therapies", by Keith S. Dobson (ed.), and it seems to use lower-case consistently in running prose, including "rational emotive behavior therapy" in the chapter on it that is co-written by Ellis himself. /skagedal^talk 07:51, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Generally speaking it's better to defer to the capitalization style of recent reliable sources. Eubulides (talk) 09:09, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Ok, so you're saying it really has to be decided on a case-by-case basis? I have a feeling that could be difficult, it seems that sources use whatever is the "local style"... But I'm not sure. I updated to take sources into account. /skagedal^talk 11:18, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

• What about the capitalization on the page Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy including the heading? Snowman (talk) 10:20, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
  • As I mentioned above, "Handbook of Cognitive–Behavioral Therapies" (ISBN 157230863X), IMO a reliable source, writes "rational emotive behavior therapy" in running prose. It capitalizes in headers, but WP:MOS is clear on that: "Otherwise, capital letters are used only where implied by normal capitalization rules". So, if we write "rational emotive behavior therapy" in text, the article should be called "Rational emotive behavior therapy". Here's another example, from Journal of Cognitive Psychotherapy (look at the abstract). Here is an example from American Journal of Psychiatry, where lower case is consistently used for "rational–emotive therapy", "dialectical behavior therapy" etc. Here from Journal of Emotional and Behavioral Disorders. And here from the Journal of Rational-Emotive & Cognitive-Behavior Therapy. Ok, I'll stop now – this particular case seem to be quite consistently lower-cased in a variety of sources. /skagedal^talk 11:18, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
    • My question was more of a prompt for name of the page to be changed to the non-capitalised format, if this is the way it should be written. Snowman (talk) 11:44, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
      • Ah, sorry! Well I agree, I put a note on it's talk page about this discussion. I don't know if we should wait for input from any specific author, looking through the history this article seems to be put together by various users and IP:s over the years.
      • Regarding the general question I had a look in Bergin and Garfield's Handbook on Psychotherapy and Behavior Change, 5th ed (ISBN 978-0-471-37755-9), which is quite an authoritative work in the field, and it consistently uses all lower case for psychotherapies, including rational emotive therapy and eye movement desensitization and reprocessing. /skagedal^talk 12:51, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
        • Actually... Reading MOS:CAPS#Religions, deities, philosophies, doctrines and their adherents again, it is really quite clear: "Philosophies, theories, doctrines, and systems of thought do not begin with a capital letter, unless the name derives from a proper noun: lowercase republican refers to a system of political thought; uppercase Republican refers to a specific Republican Party." So unless we refer to some EMDR organization, it's all lowercase. I'll just start renaming things now. /skagedal^talk 14:03, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

It may not be a very scientific way of looking at things but it seems to me to do with 'marketing' in that capital letters are used when a particular person (or small group) develop a particular therapy which they name and with which they are - for a significant period of time, associated, and which they promote. This doesn't necessarily say anything about the quality of the proposed therapy. Take NLP which will be forever capitalised and forever associated with Bandler and Grinder. REBT remained capitalised for as long as it was somebody's baby but if it is taken up and accepted and developed by the mainstream it becomes uncapitalised in time. Fainites ^barleyscribs 20:39, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

I note that the article on neuro-linguistic programming does not write it in capitalized form – are you saying this is incorrect? /skagedal^talk 21:11, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Hmmm. I seem to recall that one of the founders tried to trademark the name and prevent anybody else using it - but lost the case! Maybe its been around for long enough. However - if you google it - its more often capitalised than not. Maybe its not such a good idea (and I should shut up and go to bed) but it seems like there was a time when, for example, EMDR was always capitalised but now - years down the line - it isn't necessarily. Or maybe its various in-house styles. What I'm trying to say is maybe there isn't any actually good rational reason for capitalisation or non-capitalisation so we may as well stick to the WP policy on the point. Fainites ^barleyscribs 22:08, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

• Requested moves related to this:
  • Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy
  • Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing
  • Body Psychotherapy
  • Reality Therapy
  • Sandplay Therapy

/skagedal^talk 14:31, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

• My 2¢ as a rather long-term WP:MOS and WP:NC participant: Use lower case. Most people capitalizing things like this are boosters of them, making it a WP:COI and WP:NPOV problem. What Google and medical databases turn up is not of much if any relevance here. WP needs to be consistent for its readers. We cannot go around capitalizing the sames of some systems in one field and then not doing it all other fields. This will confuse the crap out of the reader and lead to a lot of editwarring. Yes, there will be a few irritated psychiatrists or whatever, but we don't care. WP is not written to make specialists happy, it is written for the entire world's general public, many of whom are irritated in turn by all of the "oh, we're so special" jargonism and language-mangling of specialists of all stripes (nb: I say this as a jargon-using specialist, namely in computer science and anthropology). — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 22:54, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

I agree with you. I did wonder though about the ones that are a name rather than a description (whether legit. or not so legit.) eg "Circle of Security" which doesn't really mean anything other than being the name of a particular form of attachment-based therapy. Not that there's an article on it. Fainites ^barleyscribs 22:15, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Good work on this by the way Skagedal. Fainites ^barleyscribs 22:23, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Socionics

Since this article was just given a C rating, are there any suggestions for improving the page? Thehotelambush (talk) 03:52, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

More references-- preferably in English, preferably from peer reviewed journals-- might be a good place to start. --Jcbutler (talk) 04:35, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Plus it is unclear if it falls under Psychology or Sociology, or eye witness identification. I have never heard of the term. —Mattisse (Talk) 05:41, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

I've never heard of it either, but a quick glance suggests that it's some sort of Neo-Jungian psychology with a twist of microsociology. Cosmic Latte (talk) 05:46, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

I will get working on the references, although since socionics is not well-known enough in English to have a substantial English peer-reviewed literature, most or all of them will be websites. Socionics is primarily a psychological theory; its sociological component is limited to intertype relationships and a few peripheral areas of study. Thehotelambush (talk) 06:06, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

I would simply add that socionics is not an accepted area of theory or research within mainstream American psychology. If it is indeed a great new breakthrough in personality theory that is, for some reason, little known outside of Russia, I expect it will appear in the journals at some point. I'm rather skeptical, considering what we already know of Jungian type theories as compared to contemporary factor analytic research (e.g. Big Five personality traits). The critical issue is whether or not socionics can make effective predictions of human behavior that can be demonstrated with empirical research. --Jcbutler (talk) 19:33, 29 December 2008 (UTC)