LIFE
Psychology is the science that's easy to love. Unlike chemistry or physics, it helps people make sense of their lives and loves.
But as in any other science, the relentless march of research continually advances new theories and discards others--theories to which poe. pin may be personally attached.
Carole Wade, Ph.D., styles herself as a professional debunker of psychology mths. author of a widely-used introductory psychology textbook, she also teaches at Domi Collegs of San Rafael.
"It's my job to evaluate what should be in and what should be out," says Wade. In goes the most up-to-date Information; out goes anything that's Inaccurate or outdated.
Wade includes in the latter category such beloved ideas as Erik Erikson's theory of life stages and Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of motives. These concepts may appeal to us because they are orderly and coherent or because they confirm our sense of how things are, but, Wade says, the evidence simply doesn't support them.
Some of the ideas Wade sets out to deflate are indisputably incorrect: Sheldon's constitutional theory of personality, for example, which drew a connection between temperament and body type. That hypothesis was discredited in the early 1960s but was included in major textbooks as recently as ten years ago.
