28 Jan De Vos
enjoying having had such an impact. Perhaps only afterwards, after
finishing your study, you might be able to think that those freshman
students who thought they had absolutely no reason to leave were most
likely the worst cases truly in need of help. At least, those who stayed
knowing they should or could have left, have had the chance to learn
something on psychology. They might have come to understand
something, despite themselves, despite having lacked the courage to stand
up and challenge the self-complacent dean, or for that matter, any
professor at the front row.
A caricature? Of course, but perhaps very recognizable for some of
you. At least the words of the dean are based on a true story, as they were
exactly the ones I was addressed with, now some time ago. But although
they were uttered in a very typical psychologizing way, they might serve to
make you think: why would you want to study psychology? If it is not that
there is something wrong with you, why then? You want to understand?
But what? Yourself, the Human being, the World? You want to help, if not
yourself, then what? Those in need of your help? You want to change? But
what? If not yourself, the World? The least what one can hope is that at the
psychology department you find yourself in, there might be one lecturer (as
I had the chance to have) who makes you think beyond the typical
psychology textbooks, who puts this splinter in your mind: is psychology
not most suited as a way not to know yourself, as a way not to understand
the world, nor to help it or to change it?
In this respect – and here I want to come to the core theme of this
chapter— the recent neuroturn in psychology might be very significant.
Let me approach this with yet another anecdote: a while ago I was
attending a meeting with a big gathering of PhD-students in the
psychology department. As the doctoral candidates explained their
“research subject” I couldn’t ward off the impression that I was in a
medical faculty as each of them –literally without any exceptions—
referred to brain scans, brain chemistry or brain regions. Which made me
imagine a contemporary Diogenes, not running around in the city with a
torch in broad daylight proclaiming desperately, I’m looking for a human,
but running around the psychology department proclaiming, equally