Author's Note: Next chapter. I'd like to thank Buttercups3 again for her beta work. :)
I do not own Bones or any of its characters.
Thank you to everyone who is reading/following/reviewing this. It is always appreciated. :D
TimeWitch93: This actually takes place before The Boy with the Answer which is when everyone found out that not only were Angela and Hodgins back together, but they had gotten married. As far as Brennan knows by this point, Angela broke up with Wendell, but she had made no overt move back to Hodgins...But yes, considering how closely anthropology and psychology are related, I've been curious myself as to why Brennan is so dismissive of psychology. I've often suspected that there is more than one reason...
ObsesseeofHP: Well I don't know if this was fast, but here's an update. :) I try to make sure that I finish all the fics I start...even if it takes me a long time to do it...I hope you enjoy this chapter.
Weirdsquint: I'll admit that I found the idea daunting when I was first planning out this fic: Brennan's dislike for psychology has many possible sources. But I eventually worked out some theories which I hope will make sense. Hopefully you will enjoy the ride. :)
D: Haha. Well I will admit that psych 101 can be a rather staid course if approached the wrong way. I was fortunate to have had a great professor when I took it recently in college. Although, I'm finding some of the higher psych courses even more interesting. Thanks as always for your review.
Blazing Rubellite: Thank you. :D I hope you find my explanations plausible enough to feel true to canon. I have to confess that it's always my goal to have it feel as close to the show as possible.
Peanutmeg: Again congrats on getting your internet back. And thank you for the PM you sent me. Last month's fanfic challenge was a lot of fun even if it meant a lot of work. :) I hope you enjoy the rest of this as well.
The Root of the Problem—part 2
At sixteen years old, Temperance Brennan was already knowledgeable about many things.
Her studies in chemistry, math, and biology had gone above and beyond what was required at the high school level and thus, she was an expert among the students. Mr. Buxley, the high school janitor, had helped her along recently by providing her with numerous "subjects" for her to use in her exploratory dissections. Her mind had now become obsessed with the states of life and the possible meaning of death. All of their mysteries were a source of endless contemplation.
In her junior year, she found herself sitting in a general psychology class, a requirement for graduation at her school. The teacher was bespectacled man with salt-and-pepper hair and an overall rumpled appearance.
"In this class we will be exploring the mind and all its confounding and exciting nuances," the teacher said as he paced in front of the students. "You will have a chance to discover not only the source of your own neurosis, but the key to understanding the thought processes and perhaps the very psyche that is common to man."
Many of the students yawned, rolled their eyes, or just plain ignored what the teacher was saying. But a few of them were listening closely, and Temperance was one of those students. The possibility that she could unlock the mechanisms of the human brain was of great interest to her.
'Science and mathematics show how every function of the world has come to pass and how it continues on,' she had thought to herself. 'It examines every process to discover cause and effect. It makes sense that human behavior can be similarly studied.'
Temperance always relished finding these kinds of fundamental truths. It made no difference to the sun if humans understood the physics behind the reason the earth stayed in its orbit or if they knew about the concepts of electron transports which was an essential part of photosynthesis. The sun would continue to rise and set, and plants would continue to be green. But knowing all of these things gave the world a sense of order, and these days order was something that Temperance craved.
Almost a year previous, her parents had disappeared, leaving her alone with her brother, Russ. The two of them had tried to hold their little household together, but raising his sister proved to be too much for the nineteen year old, so he left as well. With nowhere else to go at the time, Temperance ended up as a ward of the state and was subsequently placed into the foster system.
Shuffled from house to house, forced to carry her belongings around in a garbage bag, Temperance was desperate to find out what sort of mental process would lead a pair of loving parents to leave their children in the middle of the night. She wanted to know about the theories that could explain why Russ had given up and run away when she needed him more than ever. Temperance was searching for the answers as to why some foster parents tried to be kind, why most were indifferent, and why too many of them would do things like lock her up in a car trunk for minor infractions like breaking a dish.
Her studies had recently gone beyond the mere pursuit of knowledge into a way to find answers for the never-ending questions in her world. And applying every fiber of her being toward the quest for these answers had become her way of dealing with a world that had shown her so much about rejection and abandonment of late.
So Temperance threw herself into the study of psychology, diligently absorbing everything that her teacher and her textbook had to offer. She spend hours memorizing Freud's theory of the psyche and Jung's counterarguments. She analyzed Erikson's stages of life conflicts and Maslow's hierarchy of needs. But all of this seemed too vague for her to grasp. There was too much flexibility in the theories, too many exceptions to the rules.
There simply were no certainties or absolutes to be found.
The most telling flaw in all of this became clear to Temperance when she tried to apply these theories and ideas to her own family and to her current life which produced no solution. None of it brought her any closer to the answers she was seeking.
By the end of the semester, Temperance was frustrated. Her hard work had made it so that she excelled at all of her homework and exams for her psychology class, but her interest in the subject had been nearly snuffed out. She was actually pleased when the class was over since it meant an end to her fruitless endeavors which had taken time away from other pursuits. Pursuits that could actually lead to quantifiable answers and results.
As Brennan finished her story, Sweets nodded his head sagely. He had had some teachers like that himself when he was just starting in his studies in psychology: instructors who spent more time pontificating than sharing any real insights. Professors who had lost touch with the true heart of their field: the human experience in its myriad of variations.
But Sweets had been fortunate enough to also learn from some of the best minds in his field. These mentors had been wise enough to guide him through his studies while giving him a chance to blaze his own path.
Unfortunately it was starting to look like Brennan had had no such experiences.
"So that intro psychology class," Sweets said, sitting back up. "What you took from it was…."
"Disappointment," Brennan finished for him. "It was far from any kind of real study about brain processes and human behavior. There were far too many exceptions and unaddressed variables for it to have any scientific value."
"And later in life, did it occur to you that a high school psychology course might not have the most comprehensive curriculum?" he asked.
"While I think you're being very rude in your phrasing of the question, I will concede that you have a valid point," the anthropologist answered. "It's true that high schools can be more than adequate in some instances, often they are lacking curricula that are sufficiently rigorous. However, upon attending college, I had more exposure to psychology classes since they were required for my anthropology studies."
"Not surprising since both disciplines deal with the comprehensive study of humans and their behavior," Sweets interjected. Brennan wrinkled her nose at him, and the psychologist couldn't resist smirking a little.
"I recognize that relying on only one experience to determine the validity of an entire academic discipline is an unscientific approach," she said, ignoring his comment. "And as you mentioned earlier, many anthropologists have attempted to integrate psychology in their work. So it would be irrational for me to dismiss its worth without further examining its impact. I tried to approach these classes in a systemic manner with no preconceived notions. But I found that it did not change the reality of psychology's pointless pursuits."
"Uh-huh," Sweets nodded, unfazed by her comments. While he had seen other psychologists and psychiatrists become annoyed and even angry at Brennan's hostility at his profession, the therapist had learned to allow most of her comments to roll off him like water on a duck's back.
"Can you tell me when this realization came to you?" Sweets persisted. "Was there a specific moment or line of study that stood out as particularly problematic to you?"
Brennan paused, pursing her lips a little. While he waited for her answer, Sweets continued to be grateful that she was putting a lot of thought into this conversation instead of acting dismissively toward it.
"I think my initial conclusions about psychology started to form while studying the field of so-called 'abnormal psychology'," she answered. "It was there that I found the fundamental flaws that mark this discipline…."
Temperance Brennan, now in her twenties, found that she enjoyed college far more than high school.
While it was true that there were still people, students and faculty alike, who did not take the world of academia seriously, there were many more who seemed to understand and appreciate the reason they were all there: the quest for knowledge.
She continued to take numerous science courses and had recently discovered anthropology as a field of study. It was during that time that she decided that she wanted to explore the area of biological anthropology further. Other areas, such as archeology, linguistics and ethnology which all fell under cultural anthropology held some value to her as ways to examine societies past and present. But applied biological anthropology seemed to hold the best prospects for the correct balance of humanistic theory and scientific discipline that Brennan felt was necessary to gain any useful insights into the world. One particular concentration in this area, forensic anthropology, had become especially intriguing to her.
But as was the norm at most colleges, Brennan had to go through many prerequisites in order to receive the chance to really specialize in her field of interest, and that included courses in psychology. She managed to breeze through another introductory psychology course, and while she was pleased that this class had placed a greater focus on the biological workings of the brain and nervous system, Brennan saw no purpose to reviewing the theories of Freud, Piaget, or Adler along with the rest of their ilk.
Her next course, however, took a different approach and focused only on abnormal psychology with its various disorders. As she studied the symptoms, progressions and treatments of each psychological dysfunction, Brennan was disturbed to realize that there were many mental problems which had symptoms that she had not perceived as abnormal.
Even worse than that, however, was the frequency in which the causes for these disorders were unknown and how often they were considered incurable.
But after spending most of a semester lining up the habits she saw in herself and in others around her with the symptoms for these disorders, Brennan was beginning to question the accuracy of these findings.
'According to this, everyone who does not follow established norms is a candidate for being diagnosed with a psychological disorder,' she thought to herself. 'There has to be a better way of studying human behavior instead of focusing so much time on these variations…Like instead considering the overriding rules that govern societies.'
"So you don't believe that abnormal psychological disorders exist?" Sweets asked her.
"I don't deny that some people are insane and have a tenuous grip on reality while suffering from delusions and hallucinations," Brennan answered. "But instead of looking at just these kinds of instances, one should look to the way culture plays a role in the manner that anthropology does."
"Culture does not always explain pathology," Sweets replied. "I once met a set of identical twins: people who were raised in the same house, went to the same schools and had many of the same life experiences. And yet by their mid-thirties, one of them was a happily married bank manager with two boys of his own while his twin was living in a sanitarium because he believed himself to be the arch-angel Michael, who had come to punish the sins of the IRS."
"That is an interesting case, but far from unique when you look at societies throughout time," Brennan countered. "There have been many cases of supernatural delusions over the years and some societies actually embraced these people as divine messengers. This becomes apparent when you study how groups of people determine how they will perceive such events and what happens to those who fall outside accepted norms."
The anthropologist leaned back against the couch and rested her head on one of the corners.
"Besides, psychology contains too many biases to diagnosis many of these disorders accurately," she said.
"How so?" Sweets asked, tilting his head. "Could you give me examples?"
"Well…take for example the so-called schizoid personality disorder," Brennan replied. "Many of its symptoms: avoidance of social activity, solitary career pursuits, lack of friends, and subdued emotional responses match several of my colleagues whom I've gotten to know over the years. Is it not possible that instead of them having some kind of mental illness that they are instead living according to the norms that exist in certain academic circles?"
"It is entirely possible," the psychologist conceded. "But not everyone who meets the criteria for schizoid personality disorder is following a social norm or can even function within their own culture."
"Or take histrionic disorder," she said. "Many of its symptoms include behaviors which are considered desirable for woman in some societies: strong emotionality, great emphasis on sexual desirability and willingness to be influenced by others. How can individuals be considered abnormal when culture makes these kinds of demands on them?"
Sweets nodded while he reflected on her words. He could understand her skepticism; truthfully there was a lot of debate within the psychology community about the existence and correct pathology of many psychological disorders, particularly personality disorders. He could see where someone like Brennan could become stymied at how contradictory some of these theories were at times.
But something in the manner of her argument sparked new questions in Sweets' mind. A hunch quickly materialized, and he leaned toward her while putting his fingertips together.
"Doctor Brennan," Sweets said in a soft, cautious voice. "Have you ever been in any kind of therapy before? And I don't mean sessions for the purpose of evaluations related to work."
Brennan suddenly looked down into her lap, and the therapist knew that he struck a nerve. Sweets was aware though that he would have to proceed carefully.
"You don't have to tell me anything about the content of those sessions, nor will I press you to reveal anything that you are not comfortable with discussing," he said gently. "But if I may ask, what was the reason you were in therapy?"
Brennan finally looked up, her face set with resolve.
"No, it's fine," she said. "It was a long time ago and it ended up being pointless anyway, so I don't mind discussing it."
She stretched her legs out for a moment and then quickly re-crossed them before continuing.
"It was a few months before I started working with Booth on a regular basis," she said. "At that time I was in a relationship that was increasingly becoming ill-suited for the both of us. When things started to progress poorly, Peter, the man I was seeing, came to me one evening with a suggestion…."