The Loose Screw Awards

Projective tests, recovered memories, correctional boot camps -- psychology's top 10 misguided ideas.

By Robert Epstein, published on January 01, 2005 - last reviewed on September 07, 2005

Hall's theory has probably set a vicious cycle in motion: Society responds to teen problems (drinking, drug use, pregnancy and so on) with restrictive laws and treatments, which in turn cause more teens to act out and rebel. The tumultuous stage of life we call "adolescence" is, without doubt, a creation of modern culture, not an inevitable stage of human development, and our own culture has produced far more of it than has any other culture in the world -- in part, perhaps, because of a faulty idea from psychology.

10. The Sound and the Fury Award

Catharsis

The idea behind catharsis is that current psychological pain is the result of pent-up energy left over from unresolved trauma. Like a fluid trapped under high pressure, energy is vented when someone relives an old experience while expressing intense emotion. In the 1960s, when extreme self-expression was all the rage, therapies in which people screamed (primal-scream therapy) or were goaded into states of near-panic (implosive therapy) became mainstream. Most people still believe that anger is some sort of force that can be "bottled up," and that it's healthy to "vent" or "let go."

But in the 1970s and '80s, prominent psychologists like Elliot Aronson suggested that expressing your pent-up anger could make you even more angry, and recent studies by Iowa State University's Brad Bushman and others seem to bolster this viewpoint.

The catharsis idea is highly suspect, but the case against it is not airtight. No one is entirely sure just when venting frustration or rage is helpful and when it's not, but for some clients, expressing anger during therapy can help them learn about and control their negative emotions. Similarly, some studies show that expressing anger through athletic activities helps people stay calm.

This is just the short list, of course. The mental-health fields have generated a dizzying number of bad ideas, many of which still affect us. Even when an idea is discredited, it's rarely abandoned; it just moves to the fringes of the field, where needy people are only too happy to adopt it. And that's the heart of the problem: We want solutions now, and we'll take what we can get. When therapists or behavioral scientists offer us even the most preliminary ideas for improving our lives, we grab them and hope for the best. PT

Dr. Robert Epstein is West Coast Editor and former Editor in Chief of Psychology Today. He is currently working on a book called The Case Against Adolescence: Rediscovering the Adult in Every Teen.