Paradigm Shift This is a shift, it’s a big shift. If there is no shame, then doing mental training becomes a part of the program. If there are no secrets, there is no shame. The conversations are private, but the discussion is open to the staff. The athletic trainer does not announce that an athlete has a weak hamstring to the world (injury reports aside). The public is not invited, but the team maybe. Just as the conversation between sport science staff and athlete are. Helping athletes and teams develop emotional intelligence is not the same as working with someone who is paranoid (no Jim Harbaugh jokes). We teach athletes to have confidence, to get over blocks, to cope with stress and to focus better. We are enamored with our pedigree. We talk about teaching skills, but will not allow that we are sport scientists, teachers and coaches. Because we still think of ourselves as psychologists. When sport psychology notices a flaw in a player’s arsenal, be it stress, confidence or focus, we can only talk with the player behind closed doors. Unless of course it’s Tebow, then nothing will help apparently. If a quarterback has a poor throwing motion a bio-mechanics expert might go to the staff and suggest ways to fix it. If the athlete has too much fat, a nutritionist tells the athlete and coaches the player needs to eat differently.
If a football player needs more strength, the exercise physiology team with strength and conditioning people tell the athlete and the coaching staff what the player needs to do to perform at the next level. If sport psychology was equal to other sport sciences, then a lot of our issues would go away. It is time we shift gears or paradigms, even if it means having to do so with a bit of humility (something I often discuss with athletes). Maybe the issue is not all a team issue, maybe it’s our issue too. My new friend’s statement got me thinking. Sport Psychology Consultant is there all of the time. My answer was always about integration of mental training into the team. I’ve talked and written about this for years. Trust on both sides has been an issue as long as I can remember. If they work for the athlete, how does the manager or coach trust that they are getting the correct information about the athlete’s state of mind. If they work for the team, then how does the athlete trust them? The athlete might reveal something which could get them benched, if the SPC told the staff. He felt the major issues revolved around who the Sport Psychology person worked for. In one of our first conversations he said he knew many sports psychologists both in his days in the USSR and now in Israel. He was born in the old Soviet Union and now resides in Israel. I’ve not really delved into what that means. For my part, I believe that there are good reasons to criticise the medical model, especially as it relates to mental health, but it is concerning that some of those seeking a paradigm shift are unwittingly replacing it with psychological neoliberalism.Working Conflict I have a new friend.
By abandoning the concept of ‘symptom’, and aiming instead at higher functioning (or ‘positivity’, or ‘wellbeing’), the possibilities for intervention are almost limitless. This is far more sophisticated than the medical model, but for that very reason, far more insidious, as it aims at a totalising (‘holistic’) auto-Taylorism. The idea is to locate the subject within these matrices irrespective of any positive symptom, and to intervene in the name of optimal functioning, productivity, and so forth.
Paradigm shift psychology series#
From this latter perspective, pathology is not so important, since it is dissolved into a series of continuums or spectrums for each subject, all assessed by a clinician who is more mobile than the steadfast medico. We can contrast this with the sort of paradigm implicit in neuroenhancement, as well as certain schools of psychotherapeutic intervention.
Paradigm shift psychology free#
Where the pathology in question is a positive symptom or syndrome, medical intervention is relatively free of controversy. The idea is to identify pathology or malfunction, and to remedy it. For all of its flaws, the medical model is relatively simple and static. ‘Neuroenhancement’ in its various forms, whether applied to cognitive tasks, or social functioning, looks initially like one more medical intervention.