One of my apparent friends has just told me that I know nothing about psychology because I'm not a psychology student. I am however in my second year of a BA Hons degree in art, a degree that is essentially psychology with a bit of practical work thrown in.

Apparently psychology and art aren't related.

I'm not sure whether to laugh, be incredibly angry or feel sorry for the guy.

[edit] So I guess the topic didn't pan out like intended, so the question I was wanting to (but failed at) raising was wanting to know everyone's opinions on art and philosophy and whether there are any particular debates on the subject you find interesting or just want to share with everyone!

Also edited the title from "That only succeeded in making yourself look like an idiot" to "Art and Philosophy - opinions?"

I'm assuming he isn't an art student? I mean, I'm not one myself, I've taken very little art in my degree and I can honestly say I wouldn't really connect the two either. I probably wouldn't really tell somebody they knew nothing about something so offhandedly, but maybe cut the guy a break? If you know you know something, then just correct him and let it be?

I wouldn't say anyone knows nothing about psychology, though I wouldn't necessarily trust someone that's not a major or minor over someone who is, for something. Ah, are you doing art psychology? That was my old focus; I'm a criminal justice minor now, instead of a fine arts minor.

what. while psychology is definitely a major aspect in art and its creation, an art degree is no where close to a psychology degree. they're not at all the same thing.

If you know nothing about something you aren't majoring in, you'd be a complete idiot about 99.984938437887832721887378943783(insert more random numbers here) percent of things.

psychology is involved in everything, but that doesn't automatically credit you as a 'trained' in psychology just because it's related to something.

Woah guys, I never claimed to know everything about psychology, neither did I claim he knows nothing on the subject.

I was hoping for a discussion on art and psychology, but I guess its not going in that direction here.

I don't know if there is Psychology in Art degrees, but I wouldn't doubt it. But maybe cut the guy a break, because I wouldn't have guessed it either. It's like saying there's a lot of electronics work in auto tech. You wouldn't think it until you actually take a real look.

I have to admit, i wouldn't really connect art and psychology either.. maybe you could give an example on what exactly you mean, ? Maybe i'm not firm with the degree you described, but i have the mental image of.. painting vs. pavlov theories. xD

to be fair, you didn't really orientate this thread towards a productive discussion, haha :c

I mean the sort of debate over whether self expression is actually self expression. If you're using Freud's basic theory of the Id, Ego and Superego there are questions over whether the Ego suppresses the Id to an extent that artistic expression isn't as romantic as previously thought. Freud is a little overused but his theories fit the purposes of the art world quite well.

I can see how the original post would seem like that, I will go back and tack a bit on the end to push any new posters towards more of the discussion I had in mind when creating it (but apparently failed at D:)

Ah, I see now that you've edited. Okay.

Certainly art and psychology do have overlap. There are even specific classes for this (geared toward art as therapy,) and there have been studies done over colour psychology with tones, hues, tints, etc.

As a psychology student myself however, while Freud's (just picking on this since you mentioned him :b) theories were interesting, they've been mostly disproven by this point, and modern psychology, while rooted in Freud, has changed his theories to being nigh unidentifiable, even in the psychoanalytic school of thought.

The theory of Id, Ego, and Superego is a lot of fun to play with, it isn't as good at explaining personality development as child development theories are, and is rather woefully inadequate.

On the career side, I would say art has an additional tie-in as far as any other field does; business geared mentalities are important to understand! There's a lot of psych classes out there geared toward consumer/business relations, and they're just as applicable with a small per commission setting. Outside of art therapy however, I wouldn't say that art is very heavily psychologically based. Self expression is a part, yes, and symbolism used in art can reveal a lot, but its not as widely used as more standardized tests; tests are easier to prove, and analyze, whereas symbolism beliefs tend to vary from individual to individual, and each person that tries analyzing them will interpret things differently.

I agree about Freud, his ideas are incredibly outdated, especially with women becoming more independent and powerful. His ideas about the mind being in more than one part are still, in my opinion, applicable still especially when talking in art terms.

Art therapy in itself is quite an interesting topic, have you heard of Insider Art? It's some scheme where they use art to help people who are in prison or something along those lines, I think a branch of it is from inside mental institutions as well.

I think psychology is used in art mostly to criticize and analyze other people's and your own work, a lot of art critics seem to using it quite heavily at the moment and Freud's work (to mention him again!) sparked huge art movements such as surrealism, minimalism and more recently feminism.

I wouldn't have assumed there's much uh, overlap, between the two. Certainly there is in terms of discussing creativity, the mental processes behind the creation of art etc. Lots of relevant philosophy.

But in regard to the scientific study, with hypothesis testing and the more neurobio side of things... I wouldn't think there'd be much of that in an art degree. From what I've seen, much of the psychological discussion in relation to art analysis uses outdated or unproven theories, or is more like just philosophising, rather than using 'actual psychology'. I imagine it's kind of hard to apply the scientific method to something so subjective like art.