Hello,
So I've been battling for awhile on whether or not PPL, primarily Psychology and Philosophy , would be right for me.
The course structure given is quite vague in detail but I've been gaining information from past/current students here/elsewhere and found more out, and found that psychology is heavily scientific (which was stated in the course structure , but I got some more clarity on the ratio and type of neuroscientific vs behaviour/cognitive/social/developmental lectures there are, ranging from looking into Henry Molaison in detail and the influences of the hippocampi regions and temporal medial lobe, to looking into the development of autism in children) , and philosophy is based is primarily based in Analytic Philosophy.
Although I do think I enjoy these topics , with me reading the Lucifer Effect by Zimbardo , the Introduction to Formal Logic by forallx (from a Cambridge Pelican programme that I'm doing), and I am planning on reading Kant after I finish Dawkins , the primary book that I have had enjoyed the most has most likely been Existential Psychotherapy, in which Yalom talks about existentialism in a psychological way and how it affects people both neurotypically and psychopathologically and how to aid clients in understanding their existential awareness and give action to it.
I enjoy reading Yalom's book because it feeds into my integrative psychotherapy passion, where I can look into different ideologies and interpretations of how we behave and how I can use these interpretations to understand and help people better.
My worry is that Yalom's book is too far away from the type of course structure in Oxford, with existentialism being Continental, and the psychotherapy being mostly interpretative based.
Would a passion for this type of reading (amongst other topics ) be a detriment and opposite to the structure of PPL at Oxford? If I talked about existential psychotherapy on my Personal Statement, would I be less likely to get in to the course?
Any advice, especially from PPL students/Oxford Faculty, would be greatly appreciated . Thank you!