Tony Booth: Growing Up in Society

˝Psychology books present a bewildering variety of points of view carefully substantiated by reference to a myriad of studies. Often the same study is used to support the proponents of different views. At the same time, we are expected to think of psychology as a science that, from its inception some hundred years ago, slowly but inexorably moves towards the true explanation of human and animal thought and action. However, I have a sometimes overpowering feeling that psychological insight is not confined to the small group of individuals who get paid for increasing the volume of psychological literature. Perhaps anyone who is not paid to be a psychologist might find that easy to say too, though in the age of the 'expert some may not have the confidence to challenge their precinct. I have been astounded at the complex analysis of human problems in literature and occasionally in the cinema. I am certainly undecided whether the psychological novel or psychological journal have more to tell us about people; whether a film like Bergman's Crys and Whispers offers more fertile suggestions about what it means to know that one is alive and will die than an article reporting on a questionnaire study of the attitudes of old people.˝