Beware of the psychologist who naively reveals his profession during an evening with friends. He’s not out of the woods yet. Here’s a selection:  » I’d better stop talking or you’ll analyze me! » No, I’ve never been to a shrink, I’m not crazy.Ah well, I had a very strange dream last night, can I tell you about it so you can decipher it for me? » You know, psychology is like the paranormal, I don’t really believe in it« … Every psychologist regularly has the bitter experience of this proliferation of preconceived ideas about his or her profession. They are sometimes referred to as psychoanalysts, psychiatrists or psychotherapists. And sometimes, psychologist. Phew!

These false beliefs shape the profession of psychology as it is anchored in the collective unconscious. As Annick Ohayon and Régine Plas observe in La psychologie en questions (1), « Psychology is offered to everyone in books, magazines and the media, and consequently gives rise to representations that oscillate between fascination and repulsion, something it shares with other psychology disciplines ».

« People feel that shrinks know what they don’t know about themselves, and feel somewhat « dispossessed » of their thoughts and affects. It’s as if psychologists had supernatural powers. There’s an irrational dimension to the general perception of our profession. « Nicole Voisembert, a clinical psychologist working both in private practice and in day-care centers.

 

The inextirpable Freudian legacy

However, while every received idea is a myth or a pattern of thought, it is often supported by a foundation of truth. One of the most persistent misconceptions facing the psychology profession is the almost constant reduction of the field of psychology to the Freudian heritage. Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, represented in the collective imagination as a 60-year-old with a white beard, a receding hairline and a piercing, impenetrable gaze, has, in the space of a few decades, become the symbol of an entire discipline: psychology.

In the eyes of the general public, the very mention of the word « psychologist » often brings to mind an analyst, more or less mute, sitting beside his patient, himself lying on a couch. Not to mention the famous psychoanalytical notions that everyone prides themselves on knowing: the unconscious, desire, narcissism, the Oedipus complex, repression, the missed act and so on. Just type the word « psychologist » into an Internet search engine and you’ll find hundreds of humorous images relating to psychoanalysis. And the « psychology » sections of many French magazines always refer to the same single trend: psychoanalysis, again. « What’seven more astonishing is that psychoanalysts all over the world, led by the United States, have relegated Freud to the status of an almost banal author, whose influence is waning, » points out Alain Lieury, Professor Emeritus of Cognitive Psychology at the University of Rennes 2 and a French specialist in memory.

What about the cognitive, behavioral, humanistic, developmental, neuropsychological, educational, health and occupational psychologists who are quietly but surely lurking in our country’s institutions and practices? Just as, according to Freud, the unconscious represents the submerged part of the iceberg of the psychic apparatus, we can affirm, without sounding too adventurous, that psychoanalysis represents the submerged part of the iceberg of psychology. A dissonance that Alain Lieury has quantified: « A census of the largest international documentation bank, PsycInfo, shows around 100,000 publications per year in psychology and related subjects; of these, only 1.7% concern psychoanalysis, the same proportion as in American psychology textbooks, just a few pages out of 400 or 600 pages! »

 

Freud at school

If the French media cultivate this misleading amalgam between psychology and psychoanalysis, it would seem that the origin of this confusion lies a little further upstream, on the high school benches. At present, psychology, a subject on the philosophy syllabus for the final year of high school, can be summed up as the study of the unconscious, the conscious and desires, all under the aegis of a single author: the pope of psychoanalysis, Freud, once again.

« There can even be unbelievable drifts, as in a Terminale textbook in the Science and Technology sections, where there are 22 texts by Freud and Lacan, but nothing on scientific psychology, » remarks Alain Lieury.

Surprising as it may seem to new generations, there was a time when psychology was taught, as it should be. Flashback to1941, when the « psychology » section of the final-year philosophy syllabus included perception, memory, intelligence and personality. In short, a series of key themes in the discipline.  » With the restriction of psychology subjects to psychoanalysis, it’s as if in other subjects, Freud having died in 1939, we were still talking about the steam engine instead of nuclear power, bloodletting in medicine, and as if we stopped before the discovery of the structure of DNA in the biology curriculum. No wonder, then, that every year, 600,000 high-school students, future journalists, doctors and politicians, have Freud and psychoanalysis as their only references in French psychology. « exclaims Alain Lieury. When will psychology teaching be reinstated? For this to happen, psychology associations would need to work towards the introduction of a contemporary, scientific psychology curriculum at high school, as taught internationally. The ideal would be to create a Capes and an agrégation in psychology, according to Alain Lieury.

 

Is studying psychology a « dead end »?

The university training of psychologists is no exception to the rule of false beliefs. For many, it’s a predominantly literary training program, an all-purpose « back door » for baccalaureate holders lacking inspiration for their professional future. But the reality is quite different. In the packed lecture halls of psychology faculties, many students are disillusioned, right from the first year. « There are few professions where the gap between the image of the profession and the reality of professional practice is so wide« , explains Annick Ohayon.

It has to be said that we’re a long way from the psychology taught in Terminale, a long way from the « psychology » articles that line women’s magazines. And with good reason: the university psychology curriculum includes statistics, biology, physiology and neuroscience… all scientific subjects for which literary baccalaureates are not prepared, and which put more than one student against the wall.

Is psychology a literary discipline? Not so much (see article p. 34). The figures speak for themselves: according to statistics from Paris Descartes University, in 2009-2010, of all students with a general baccalaureate who successfully completed their first year in psychology, only 28% came from a literary stream, 39.5% from an economics stream and 65.8% from a science stream. The result? A high drop-out and failure rate in the first year.

On the etupsy.free.fr website, dedicated to future psychology students, some of the statistics listed are a warning: « As an indication, on average, out of fifteen students who enroll in the first year of psychology, only five reach the bachelor’s degree level, and only one is allowed to enroll in the fifth year« .

And let’s not forget that many Master 1 students who fail to pass the Master 2 selection process after a minimum of four years of study – if they haven’t repeated a year – have to think about a new direction (see article p. 46). Is psychology an easy path? Not so sure.

« Let’s add that French psychology students account for a quarter of all European psychology students, and that France trains far more psychologists every year than any other European country – three times more than Germany, Great Britain or the Netherlands, for example, » add Annick Ohayon and Régine Plas. These figures speak for themselves. They reflect a real malaise, and can only encourage us to… look for the error.

 

False beliefs, real consequences

While the image of the profession is often a myth, the fallout is very real. Psychologists are sometimes associated with psychoanalysts and the couch, sometimes with psychiatrists and madness. An image that can rightly discourage some people from consulting a psychologist. So much so, in fact, that a number of psychologists are doing their utmost to point out and dismantle, on the Internet, the preconceived ideas their profession is confronted with. But that’s not all. As a result, companies are failing to recruit psychologists (outside the healthcare field), in favor of professionals from other backgrounds, such as managers or human resources graduates. What interest would they have in hiring professionals seen as mysterious, adept at mental illness, keen on analytical cures, who interpret dreams and indulge in mutism? After all, corporate doors are not impervious to false beliefs.

« One of the main repercussions of these preconceived ideas is the self-deprecating vision and victim posture adopted by many French psychologists, which is detrimental to their personal success and social image, »laments Annick Ohayon. Didier Anzieu was already pointing this out in the 1950s. « He said something like this: psychologists would do well to apply to themselves the science they promote, because often, the primacy of individualism, the absence of dynamism and feelings of inferiority lead them to develop a veritable underclass mentality« , explains the historian of psychology.

 

Confusion fuelled by shrinks?

Are psychologists themselves perpetuating this identity confusion?  » We urgently need to make the profession of psychologist easier to understand. To begin with, psychologists themselves need to stop playing the multi-card salesman. It’s not uncommon to see the following titles on business cards: clinical psychologist, psychoanalyst, psychotherapist. By knowingly creating confusion between an identity, a field, a status, a function and a method, we are contributing to the great psychology magma that we also denounce. « As Patrick Cohen, occupational psychologist and communications manager at the French Federation of Psychologists and Psychology (FFPP), points out in the collective work Clinical psychology and the profession of psychologist: (De)qualification and (De)training? (2).

The end of the story: it’s up to the decision-makers at the French Ministry of Education to put psychology back on the syllabus for the final year of secondary school, to journalists to disseminate more accurate psychology, and to psychologists themselves to better unite and communicate about their profession… Suffice it to say that we’re not about to put an end to these persistent preconceived ideas. ∞

 

(1) Annick Oyahon, Régine Plas, La psychologie en questions, Cavalier Bleu, 2011. Annick Oyahon is a historian of psychology, honorary lecturer at the University of Paris 8, and a member of the Alexandre Koyré Centre, a research center in the history of science and technology (CNRS, EHESS, MNHN). Régine Plas is emeritus professor of the history of psychology at Paris Descartes University (Paris 5), and a member of the Cermes3 research center for medicine, science, health, mental health and society (laboratory associated with Paris 5 University, CNRS, EHSS and Inserm).
(2) Patrick Ange Raoult (ed.), Clinical psychology and the profession of psychologist: (De)qualification and (De)training? L’Harmattan, 2005