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Alan Smithers (Letters, September 3) has a fuzzy view of psychology. I too am a chartered psychologist who first earned his living as a research scientist. When I moved to research on human life, I didn't forget the limitations of empirical methods - nor the factionalism and nuttiness with which they were applied to the physical world and to human disease. Why shouldn't some psychologists fight for study of the brain, while others squabble over the meaning of a person's conversation? The A level in psychology seems to display the diversity of its discipline more effectively than those he mentions in the physical sciences or in languages.

David Booth
Birmingham University