Relational Psychology, Real or a Lot of Nonsensical Babble?

Recently I watched an advert, a short video advert, with an attractive young lady, speaking to a large audience about how she evaluated a man she was dating.

She seemed confident enough and I listened as she told everyone in the audience that she plays a three questions game. She learned these three questions from a man she was friendly with, who apparently was studying ‘relational psychology.’

According to her male friend at the time who was studying ‘relational psychology,’ there are some questions we can ask people no matter their cultural background that will reveal certain ‘motivations or truths’ about them.

Apparently, people relate certain concepts with other concepts in their lives. I found this rather interesting the term ‘relational psychology’. I have looked it up and there is more about relational psychotherapy than the subject ‘relational psychology.’

I found little evidence that relational psychology has anything to do with how people relate to animals, colours, or objects, it was more about how people relate to one another.

Anyway, I decided to continue to see what this was all about.

She makes the claim that three questions linked to three deeper reasons can reveal quite a lot about a person. Not only that, when you observe respondents while they search for deeper reasons for their initial responses to the first three rather simple questions, you can learn even more and make deductions about whether you should date the person.

The three questions underpinned by three deep reasons, form a trinity of trinities.

Their favorite colour and three deep reasons why they chose that colour.

Their favorite animal and three deep reasons why that is their favourite animal.

Their favorite state of water or body of water and three deep reasons why. A state of water is the state in which the water is, so we know water can be solid, as in ice, liquid, as in water, or gas, as in steam. A body of water is an ocean, a pool, a fish pond, a lake, you get the idea.

Now this is where it gets interesting, apparently, this ‘relational psychology’ which I could not confirm exists as a legitimate subject, proposes that the way people answer these questions can tell you a lot about them, not only the answers they give.

If the person struggles to answer and is irritated thinking about the question, you can probably surmise that this person is impatient and indecisive.

If the person answers quickly, they have played the game before or they are very decisive and understand their own motivations, and thus understand themselves.

If their reasons are not deep enough, you should challenge them to go deeper, and seek deeper more thoughtful reasons from them.

What are the three questions meant to reveal about us?

She contends, the first question about colour and three deeper reasons are meant to represent how we see ourselves.

She proposes the second question about animals and three deeper reasons that are meant to represent what type of person is best suited to us as a life partner.

She states that the third question about the form and body of water and three deeper reasons are meant to represent our view of our own sexuality and our attitude towards sex and life itself.

So, for example, if someone battles to choose a colour, they really do not know themselves that well, and then they still need to have three deep reasons for that colour. Something like ‘I just like it’ is not good enough. They need to expound what that colour means to them and why they chose it.

My problem with all of this:

I do not profess to be a psychological guru, but then again I don’t think the young lady does either.

The young lady ended a date because her date answered the animal question as follows and I am paraphrasing.

His favourite animal was a butterfly because they are always beautiful, and they show up when you want them to, and they are quiet. She dumped him straight away, inferring that he wanted her to show up only when he wanted her, that she always had to look beautiful and that she should remain quiet.

Did she judge this guy and his character on one inane question?

I am sorry but if someone asked me what my favourite animal was, I would correctly answer a honey badger, because I like the fact that it is small and tough and fearless, and that courage and bravery and its ‘take no crap’ attitude, while protecting its family makes me admire it.

That does not mean that I would want a life partner to act the same way as a honey badger, or that I want a life partner to be small and tough.

In fact, call me old-fashioned. I prefer a life partner to be feminine and graceful, characteristics that are definitely not inherent in honey badgers. They are anything but graceful.

Then, for a body of water, I would like a cool rock pool surrounded by trees, in a forest, with a little calm waterfall, something one would envision in a Japanese Garden.

Why would I like that, because it is peaceful and calming, deep and cool, and washes away the stress of the day and the rat race that is life. A place of reflection and tranquility. What interpretation could possibly be drawn from this regarding my sexuality? That I am comfortable and calm in my own sexuality, which I am by the way. That I think deeply and meditate on the meaning of my sexuality, not at all. I don’t give it a second thought.

You see, this is the problem with this kind of ‘pop psychology’ it leaves everything open to interpretation and does not take the person’s state of mind at the time into consideration.

I say it’s at best, a weak indicator of character, and at worst, complete nonsense.

But this lady has millions of followers and probably earns huge amounts of cash and good on her if she does. What I find more intriguing is that people fall for this kind of teaching. I think doing a study on the people that believe this stuff would be more interesting, to dig deeper and find out why they believe this kind of stuff. Perhaps it’s their inner child coming to the fore.

I remember years ago we played games like these as children for entertainment, not for deep psychological inference.

We would ask someone their favourite colour, their favourite number and their favourite animal.

If they replied for instance with ‘Yellow, 7 and dog’ we would laugh and combine their three choices and say.

‘You want to own a yellow 7 legged dog.’

Being very immature we used to find that kind of cheesiness funny. We would never infer anything from the choices people played, but nowadays be careful how you answer inane questions you may just be analyzed and typecast as something you probably aren’t.

Let me know your thoughts.