Unlocking My Mental Wardroble: One Mind, Many Lenses
As a psychology student taking Sociology of Family and Marriage as an elective, I entered the course with the expectation of filling my empty cup of knowledge about ‘family and marriage’; should I one day become a clinical psychologist, I cannot run away from couples or family therapy. Psychology had already trained me to think through the biopsychosocial model, a framework that has followed me across almost every subject. The “bio” came from physiology and neuropsychology. The “psycho” came from abnormal, clinical, personality, developmental, and everything in between. The “social” was often viewed through the lens of social psychology, or through Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory: a model I understood in theory, respected academically, but quietly resented during exams. Bronfenbrenner’s model always appeared deceptively simple. At first glance, it looked easy and friendly, almost like a set of circles that only required memorisation. Yet when a case study appeared in an exam...
