Psychology: Art or Science?

It's my contention that psychology is very much akin to art interpretation (or crude form of psuedo-science) than what it purports to be. Science. The etiology of ailments are either physiogenic or psychogenic. For instance, depression is an example of psychogenic disorder. After a person is strongly believed to be suffering from depression, he/she is sent to a professional psychologist for further help (usually at least). The psychologist will do examinations afterwards prescribing psychoactive drugs to ameliorate the baleful affects of the symptoms. One of the options open to the psychologist as part of treatment regime is psychotherapy, where the patient tells early childhood memories, among other things. The psychologist listens and based on what the patient tells him comes up with an educated assessment of what he thinks is the cause of patients symptoms and how to treat them. But this runs into the problem of how do we know the psychologist got it right?. What tests can be performed to verify the psychologists diagnosis? More importantly, if a dozen other psychologists see the same patient all coming to disparate opinions and this is very real possibility... how do we decide the correct one among the multitude of varying diagnosis? We simply can't. Contrast that with a real follower of science like a doctor and you'll the see the pragmatic difference between the two. A doctor upon initial examination may have an idea of what the patients problems are but what will ultimately bear him out and give him the confirmation he is doing right is the result of the medical tests. Suppose a doc suspects a patient has Hep B, neither the patient nor anyone else has to take the doc at his word alone. We can all verify the veracity of his initial hunch by asking for blood tests. With psychologist, we only got his/her word.

Furthermore, consider this real life case. A man has been suffering from severe, debilitating depression for more than a decade. He sought help from several psychologists. Been on many anti-depressants. Spent countless hours in psychotherapy sessions. All to no avail. Then one day a medical doc asks him to take Vitamin B12 deficiency test. True to the docs suspicion he was indeed deficient in vit B12. Improvements after taking vit B12 supplements cemented the arguement that vit B12 deficiency was the cause of his symptoms. Now, that is the practical difference between psuedo-science masquerading as science, psychology. And real science like medicine.

P.S. this is modified piece I posted on SOL...