Causation in Psychology

3 Key excerpts on "Causation in Psychology"

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  eBook - ePub

  Historiography and Causation in Psychoanalysis

  • Edwin R. Wallace, IV(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  The vignette of the previously encountered Ms. X illustrates the purposive, meaningful, and antecedent aspects of causation in human behavior.

  Ms. X, a first year law student, presented with an inability to study. Frantically, she had been turning to all of her professors for advice, tutorials, and study sessions. Her past history revealed parents who were physically present, but emotionally absent, who never bothered themselves about her school work or early career interests, and who stifled her expressions of affection and other feelings. Consequently, the patient developed a low opinion of herself and a conviction that others would be no more receptive to her needs than were her parents. After a dozen sessions it came to her while jogging, in a flash, that she was actually sabotaging her academic success—and as a surreptitious way of getting attention from the professors and me (whom she also begged for advice). In other words, her study problems were caused by her unconscious desire for attention and her equally unconscious assumption (based on childhood experience) that she must seek this attention indirectly lest she be rejected.

  The principle of psychic causality asserts that behaviors which follow immediately upon certain events in the environment, and actions or statements which occur in temporal contiguity with one another, are meaningfully and causally connected (often via an unconscious linch pin) to one another. This is the theoretical ground upon which the analyst attends to the sequence of his patient's associations and to the analy-sand's responses to the therapist's interventions. For example:

  During the early evaluation and therapeutic sessions with Mrs. F, I noticed that every time I broached anything having to do with sexuality she shifted in her chair, averted her eyes, and coughed nervously. She did so, for example, when I questioned her about menarche, masturbation, sexual fantasies, early relations with boys, and her current sexual relationship with her husband. From this I hypothesized that there was a cause-effect relationship between my questions and her agitation. When I knew her better, it became clear that my questions had impinged upon anxiety-laden unconscious conflicts over sexuality, stemming from her origin in a family that was preoccupied, negatively, with sex.

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  eBook - ePub

  Causation in Educational Research

  • Keith Morrison(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)
• ‘Where different objects produce the same effect, it must be by means of some quality, which we discover to be common among them’ (ibid.: 1.3.15: 7).
• ‘The difference in the effects of two resembling objects must proceed from that particular, in which they differ’ (ibid.: 1.3.15: 8).
• Causes are known only by inference, conjecture and refutation.
• Causation is often probabilistic rather than absolute and deterministic.
• Some effects may be simultaneous with causes.
• Investigating causation involves identifying necessary and sufficient conditions.
• In studying causation it is useful to identify INUS conditions.
• Causes may vary in their relative strengths.
• The direction of causes may be clear, unclear or hypothesized.
• • There is frequently an asymmetry in the direction of causation.
• It is more fitting to consider a chain of causation rather than a specific nexus of a single cause with a single event.
• There is a danger in isolating and focusing on singular causes separately from other contributing causes, contexts and conditions.
• It is fitting to regard causes as events or processes over time.
• Causal nets, conditions and interactions may provide better accounts of causation than linear determinism.
• It is sometimes unclear what actually constitutes a cause and what constitutes an effect.
• The context and conditions of an event are as important as the trigger of an effect.
• There is need to separate a reason from a cause.
• Some causes may be supervenient on other base factors.
• It is important to decide, in terms of temporality, what are relevant causes and what to include and exclude from studies of causation, e.g. how far back in time one needs to go in establishing causes, how far forward in time to go in establishing effects.
• It is important to decide, in spatial or environmental terms (however defined), how widely, narrowly and deeply to trawl in looking for causes and which to include and exclude, e.g. from the psychological to the social, from the micro to the macro, and to decide the direction and combination of such causes.