PsychologyAmateurized
ThoughtStorms Wiki
When I say psychology is being amateurized, I really mean a new wave of folk-classification of types of people. (NB : I can't use the term "folk-psychology" for that is usually taken to mean the common understanding of people's mental world in terms of PropositionalAttitudes)
Folk taxonomy of personality ranges from Eneagrams through to the four dimensional ENTJ-style models derived from CarlJung.
Here are some more :
- NinjasAndPirates
- ChieftainsAndDruids
- ShapeRotatorAndWordcel
- TypesOfProgrammer
- TheGodsOfManagement
- GeneralistsVsSpecialists
What I think will really open up the amateurization of psychology will be the explosion of PollsAndCompasses. Everyone will be able to design online questionairres which can be used to gather information about their audience. And this information will be used heuristically. For example, to decide how to filter potential job candidates or partners or readers or to identify one's own strengths and weaknesses.
There'll be a lot of foolishness, of course, but like Wikipedia, FolkSonomies, TheFreeSoftwarePhenomenon, SampleBasedMusic and most things touched by InternetCulture, mass-amateurization will prove to have benefits of flexibility, adaptibility and accessability that compensate for its weaknesses of rigour and expertise.
Maybe there's also a new wave of applied amateur psychology.
Of course, SelfHelp is has always been this. Plus :