APA

I learned last week that I have been accepted by the American Psychological Association (APA) as an Associate Member - I'm pretty happy about that! This is as a result of my completion of my MA degree in an applied psychology field in May. I was a Graduate Student Affiliate from 2006 - 2009 and I was a Student Affiliate way back during my undegrad days (hehe) 1993-1995.

I'm happy about reaching the Associate Member status, as this was something I targeted as a career goal for myself back during my undergraduate days. Though I thought it would have happened much sooner (hehe again), but these things have their own ways of working out I suppose.

Maybe now I can get an APA journal to publish one of my articles and stop rejecting them!!

The following is from a "debate" I had online with a psychometrician regarding the notion of IQ vs. MI theory:

I would instead argue that the reason why Gardner’s MI theory has not found any traction in the scientific community is that it in many ways argues against the foundations of the scientific community. Think of it as one big system (i.e. the Matrix, if you will) - the western scientific world has invented this notion of IQ and call it “g” for general intelligence. But it is not a general intelligence, it is measuring specific intelligences such as logical-mathematical and linguistic types of intelligences. Then we have devised standardized tests like those you are referring to: GRE, SAT, LSAT, etc. and what are these standardized tests expected to measure…the “g” which as previously stated is not really a general test of intelligence but rather a test of narrowly defined intelligence based on logical-mathematical and linguistic forms of intelligences.

And then what do we do? Proceed to set up university programs at prestigious universities like Harvard or Stanford and the like, and then recruit those students that have scored high on these standardized tests that are measuring logical-mathematical and linguistic types of intelligences. And then these students go on and perform “shockingly” well (meaning that they are getting good grades) in a system designed to produce these types of results. And now we have an entire scientific community made up of these individuals such as yourself. Knowing that, why WOULD the scientific community support a different notion of IQ that largely discredits them? It’s all a self-contained system, so of course one aspect of said system will correlate with another aspect of the system. But that is all it is, a closed system. As Gardner would say, so what if one paper and pencil test correlates to another paper and pencil test!

Systematic Desensitization as a treatment for phobias: Part II

Another factor to be considered before applying this treatment method is the overall emotionall wellness of the client. This is why it is necessary to first conduct a psychological or clinical evaluation of the client including any past medical or psychiatric history to determine if the subject is an ideal candidate for this treatment method. If the client has other psychological conditions, particularly those that would compound the symptoms of a simple phobia then this treatment method may not be the most effective. Ideally, the client will have no major psychological issues, particularly any serious clinical issues including personality disorders that might otherwise complicate the treatment methods for the simple phobia.