When I read Everton Eastwood's letter of Wednesday, March 4, about gays and psychology I had to laugh at his 'cocoon' theory of homosexuality, homophobia and the Jamaican religious influence. Apparently, we're all a bunch of queer, prayerful little caterpillars, some unable and some others simply waiting to pupate. Imagine that!

Well, 40 years ago, I took an undergraduate degree in the field of psychological research and shunned the practical, applied psychology that dealt with human behaviours and our personal problems. Apparently, I had good reasons then, and even after 40 years of life experience it seems I still do, even today.

What few of us realise is that as the sciences go, psychology is a fairly recent arrival on the shore of human awareness and general academia. Unfortunately, all too much of its subject areas and the knowledge collected therein are more morasses of confusion than they are picturesque panoramas of understanding.

'In the bush-bush'

In any case, I have had the chance to use that specialised knowledge only rarely, and when I did, I found myself 'in the bush-bush', as they say, generally alone and unsupported in my meagre attempts to reorganise and redirect human endeavour in a more progressive and beneficial direction.

In fact, in those decades I have seen very little progress in the field itself, indeed, very little advancement in the area of humans understanding themselves at all. In some ways, even with all this new technology and new-found ability to communicate on a vast scale, we have even gone full speed in reverse.

Today's psychology and even Eastwood's quasi-scientific attempt, unfortunately, is a hodgepodge of poorly understood and used terms, theories and constructs, popular gobbledygook and conceptual garbage. There is very little in it that is scientifically trustworthy, very little that is certain, and very little that hasn't been corrupted by modern needs and ancient vices.

I am, etc.,

ED McCOY

mmhobo48@juno.com

Bokeelia

Florida