Inkleberry - an addendum to my above post. When I was in my final stages of my doctorate, I was often told I did not appear to be taking my study seriously. Why? Because I was the only heteroclite in my department. I acted casual when others thought I should be taking something more seriously, I was the youngest, I dressed as I pleased and not to please. I was a bartender - it was the only work outside my grant work that paid the bills and allowed for gargantuan amounts of study/research time. I was acused all the time, however, I endured. My question to you is this: How do you portray yourself outwardly, in your opinion, on any given Monday?
Of course, when Phlosphr started using words like ‘heteroclite’ he started fitting right in quite well. 
: runs of for dictionary :
Sure he could’ve used “oddball” but that would ruin the joke. 
[hijack]phlosphr I get the Lee Valley catalog, saw this and thought of your sundial project.[/hijack]
I think people in many professions have to deal with this sort of thing. My husband did a doctorate in English Renaissance Literature, which most people seem to interpret as a doctorate in Ruthlessly Pouncing on Your Grammatical Errors. “Oh, I’ll have to be careful what I say around you!”
I have a Ph.D. in Social Psychology and no amount of explanation would convince some people that I wasn’t any kind of a therapist. No, really, I’m only an expert on normal levels of weirdness.
Hell, at least you’re not a developer.
Actuall, recurring interaction
Female: So, Bruce_Daddy, what do you do?
Me: I’m a software developer.
Female: Cool. :eyes glaze over and slobber rolls out of side of mouth in pure boredom:
Grey - Now that is a very interesting ring! Gives me more ideas than I know what to do with…so I sent the link home Thank you
“Psychologists” who get on Oprah claim to know more about you than you do. We’d all do well to stay away from them. If this is what people think a psychologist is, no wonder people avoid them.
Real psychologists (at least the ones that I know) are inquisitive people who will gladly admit that they know less about people than most people claim to know. Unfortunately, this is not the public perception.
Therapists may have a knack for hearing a subtext that underscores what people say. This isn’t mind-reading, although knowing that somebody has a talent in this area can be a little unsettling.
But much better a therapist, who always questions their observations, than somebody else who “knows” things about me that are “true” after five minutes.
Ha! You meet ungeeky girls who clearly are not worthy. My response would be, “ooooh, what language? What platform?”
You must feel right at home on the SDMB, then.
Vlad/Igor
I would not be intimidated but leary if I found out the attractive gent I was chatting up was a psychologist or had some other career in the mental health sector.
Warning: gross overgeneraliztion ahead.
In my experience, the guys I’ve known interested in psychology/psychiatricity (surely that’s not spelled right), tend to be a far bit screwed up themselves. Makes sense, the motiviation for studying the mind might be to discover how their own wacky mind works. So I tend to avoid them…
Inkleberry
So these two psychologist were having dinner. The one says to the other, “How was lunch with your mother the other day?”
“Really awful”, he says. “I made a terrible Freudian slip. I meant to say ‘Please pass the salt.’, but what came out was ‘You bitch. You ruined my life.’”
A psychologist told me that joke. It’s still one of my faves.
Me, too!
I know exactly what inkleberry is complaining about, but it really adds an extra layer of annoyingness when people treat you that way and you’re not even a clinical psychologist.
A friend of a friend had buttons made up for the members of their social psych program that said “Not THAT kind of psychologist.”
Near the end of grad school, I finally realized that I could deflect some of this crap by describing myself as a “social scientist.”
With my job now, I have an answer that works even better: I say I’m a researcher, and if they ask for more detail, I say I study how people balance their work and family lives. This doesn’t seem to freak people out nearly as much as when I told them I was working on a doctorate in social psychology! It also really cuts down on the lame jokes I have to endure.
Good luck, inkleberry, in finding a way to deal with this that works for you!
I initially thought the “over dinner” comment was a Hannibal Lecter reference. (Yes, I know he’s a psychiatrist, not a psychologist.)
Maybe I shouldn’t say that in front of all these psychologists.
Even on the BA level you get intimidation. In school, whenever I told incoming freshman or family members I was a psych major, they’d make comments like, “Whoa… so you can, like, analyze my dreams/solve my relationship problems/cure my Duran Duran obsession/read my mind and stuff.” and suddenly become apprehensive at the prospect of further conversation with me.
It amused and confused me. In the end I decided that if people want to think I possess these powers, who was I to correct them?
Can’t say how that would affect the dating scene, but from my detached point of view, I’d be appreciative of anything that separated the people who are genuinely fascinated with my work from those who are intimidated by it or only want me to reassure them of their sanity and normalness.
I’ve heard or read members of a lot of professions complaining about this.
Doctors get asked about medical problems, English teachers get one of about three stale jokes about the speaker’s bad grammar, and lord help you if you’re a lawyer or a politician.
I think meeting a psychologist is kinda like meeting a cop. At first you’re like, “oh, that’s cool.” Then you’re like, “uh-oh, I have unpaid parking tickets.”