I don't know Adrienne either. Obviously I am not as well read in trading psych as you are. I read Elder's Trading for a Living over 15 years ago on a recommendation and had to sit through a video of his at the office I traded from. I don't remember much from the book and I don't see it on the shelves in my office so I must have tossed it out or given it away. I'd like to think I sold it to some chump to get a bit of money back, but I would remember that. Regarding the video, all I remember is that he told his audience to repeat "I am a loser" over and over. It was funny shit. I read one book by Brett Steenbarger. Can't recall any impression it made on me. I see it on the shelves behind me, though - Psychology of Trading. I guess I had no takers for that one. Mark Douglas I've read and I remember being impressed by TITZ. At least at first. Then I got to thinking about his "thinking like a trader" list of things and I saw some holes in it. Let's just say I don't hold him in any higher regard than Steenbarger or Elder. I'm sure they're all fine people. I still don't know what you mean by "pop" psych. No, I'm not going to pick up Adrienne's book to find out.
I think of pop psych trading advice as being in the same class as pop psych. Maybe that term is not in the current vernacular, I am an old fossil stuck educationally and culturally in the '60's. But to me it means uttering platitudes with great gravitas like "get in touch with your emotions" and "calm your fears" and "know your strengths and weaknesses" and "maintain focus" and "become one with the market." Pshrinkologically I am a total basket case, so I don't fight it and go for hard numerical analyses to tell me when to enter and exit. When you create visualizations of the tape all becomes clear. I loved Elder, and he is still on my shelf, because the first third of the book is about drunks. I don't read trading psych any more, but when I did the first thing that turned me off was the supposed expert not trading. I must add that my favorite ET trading psych poster is the eminent Dr. Arthur Deco, who no longer casts swearls before pine here.
Okay, so you don't like platitudes uttered by psych experts who do not trade. Are platitudes any different if uttered by psych experts who say they do trade? If an expert trader trained a parrot to squawk platitudes, would it be possible for a noob to learn trading psych from the parrot? Since you trade using hard numerical analysis, I think we can both see that you don't need trading psych to punch the market for a few nickels.
I think I may have had too much tonic water and lime juice, surely it is not the Everclear. But I tend to think that shrinks who verifiably trade tend to be less platitudinous. They tend to speak more of why price patterns are jiggered to induce fear and geld-lust so as to seduce you to trade poorly. And to speak more frankly about how and why we as traders delude ourselves into thinking that we are good or can become good. And of the constitutional differences between discretionary and systematic traders. I myself am a systematically discretionary trader (or is that discretionarily systematic? I forget.) But I ramble. Need some bracing blood orange in the G&T. BTW, I would not speak derogatorily about parrots. They just may be smarter than the average ETer. And I speak approvingly of Denise because she has a solid verifiable grounding in psychoanalytics and equally verifiable experience as a successful trader.
A word of warning to Denise about Jack. "Never mudwrestle with a pig. The pig likes it too much." He is a droll literary creation, a conjoined personality of three or four confederates (in the non-Southern sense) who share a single log-in and get their jollies messing with peoples' heads.
Jack, Impressive job on NLP in relation to trading. I agree that "wrong" beliefs cannot be erased, in my experience the only way to cope with them is substitute them with experience of success.
Just wondering, is the psychologist PhD considered among the easiest to obtain, just like a teaching PhD? surf