ABSTRACT
In which we encounter psychology for the first time, and discover how attached this strange discipline is to an experimental method which reduces personal experience to the link between cause and effect. We also make connections between the separation of the individual from context, and the isolation of people from each other outside in the real world. I know this is a strange way to begin a psychology book, and in a textbook for students it is unthinkable to directly reference the author at the outset in the first person. Even though it is the case that as we go up the hierarchal structure of the discipline it becomes permissible for venerable professors to say ‘I think’ this or that, the message conveyed to students is that they must blot out what they think or feel in order to be more objective, more scientific. I learnt this from my first false start as a student of psychology, something I describe in this chapter.
