The Genius of Psychology
Want to know something of motivating people, of observing how individuals react to stimuli? Ask a mother. Women with children, women in whose care children develop personalities and values and interests do know something about how to tweak interest, what works and what doesn't.They are, after all, involved in a day-by-day living laboratory of the evolution of human potential. Women know all about stimulating interest, coaxing reluctance into acceptance, guiding latent potential into reality. Women gain an intimate knowledge, through the raising of children, of learned-by-observation behaviour.
Women are imbued with intuition, with an inborn, genetic and gender-specific proclivity to raise the young, encourage them, expose them to life practises, offer unending emotional support, and by their every actions pattern children to emulate and to become what they invariably result in.
For better or for ill. Women learn, through experience, and daily observation, through the tedious, never-ending tasks society imposes upon them, and their gender and nature form them for, to be eminently practical. Makes good sense, does it not? That's it! Common sense.
That being so, it is the rare woman who would proclaim herself to be an expert in anything in particular - with the sole exception of becoming expert in endurance and in hope. Women are capable of predicting outcomes because of their experience on a micro-scale.
Out in the great wide world there is nothing in human relations and human constructs that would come as a great surprise to women who have raised children and managed the complexities of well-run households.
But for these simple yet multifarious and difficult tasks there is scarce recognition from society at large. It is what is expected of women. With varying degrees of success. But again, scant recognition for performing a task that remains unquantifiable, particularly with regard to the kind of recognition our world knows and most respects: monetary compensation.
There are some elemental tasks involved in our very existence on which no commercial value can be placed. No hard commercial value, no recognition. A tacit recognition, yes, a commercially-profitable public "recognition" in the scant value of a one-day-a-year tip of the hat.
But should an academic, a professional sociologist, a renowned psychologist stumble against the obvious in human nature and he (invariably a he) is hailed as a genius in understanding what shapes human behaviour. A scholar in psychology's social learning movement writes papers in scholarly journals and he receives acclaim and awards.
Pointing out that social strategies are learned. From mentors and other models. Who might have guessed?
Labels: That's Life
posted by Pieface @ Thursday, December 06, 2007
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