General Psychology, Cosmology, Anthropogenesis

 My reading pushes me deeper into the idea that 'general psychology' is not possible without an account of the cosmos, the origin of life, and the origin of human beings.

General psychology simply means the study of the 'psyche' in general. Every discipline has general and specific elements. Physicians study of general medicine before they begin specializing.Niels Engelsted's book Catching up with Aristotle helped me understand this question of general psychology more than any other recently.

Psychology, at least in America, lacks any coherent center, any coherent form of 'general psychology'. This means we have no accepted answer to the question 'What is the psyche?' Instead, we have a chaotic and often contradictory collection of sub-types of psychology: behavioral, cognitive, existential, humanistic, just to name the few closest to my concerns. 

The question of what the psyche is cannot be answered apart from more general questions about the world: what is the universe, how did it come to be, what does life have to do with cosmic process as a whole, and what is human life.

The various ways we answer the meaning of psyche, or psychology, contain implicit answers to cosmic and anthropogenic questions. Behaviorism and cognitive psychology, for example, imply a basically materialist view of the cosmos, and assume that life processes are generally reducible to physical processes. As Engelsted would say, they are basically forms of 'reactivity theory' in which the world is assumed to be basically predictable physical process. Existential psychology tends to bypass cosmic and anthropogenic questions and tacitly assent to materialist views of the cosmos. Human freedom arises not from nature, but from history. History is treated as a metaphysically unique realm in which choice and freedom are triumphant over deterministic physical process.

Humanistic psychology contains an alternative cosmology, and implies a different account of anthropogenesis. Carl Rogers believed the universe was not made of fundamentally non-living, predictable matter. He claimed that the whole thing shows a directionality, a movement towards order, complexity, and interrelatedness. Rogers called this the 'formative tendency' and he regarded it as the theoretical foundation for humanistic psychology. Rogers does not offer an anthrogenic account, but one is implied in his conception of the formative tendency.

I am currently reading Terrence Deacon's book Incomplete Nature. It takes up these questions at great depth, breadth, and length. 

I am hoping it will compliment my reading of Engelsted, as well as my growing interest in Soviet psychology, namely Alexi Leontiev's 'activity theory' (which I've only recently begun to study and reflect on). 

The most pressing clinical and political questions ultimately rely on the cosmological and anthrogenic ideas. The roots are deep, the links real. I worry that the clinical and political questions are hard to see in light of these deeper metaphysical questions. But the questions go all the way down.

What is the psyche? Is it the soul? Is it the mind? Is it behavior? Each of these answers implies comprehensive views of the world.

Living Therapeutically as the Reduction of Domination

Psychotherapy is something that a client may attend for 1, maybe 2 hours a week. But the goal of being in therapy is not to be in therapy. The goal of going to therapy is living therapeutically, living in a way that is healing, or, as I'll explore here, living in a way that reduces the domination of ourselves and others.

Human life is intensely bound up with domination. Our lives necessarily take place within society, and society is invariably organized around rules and roles: generic dictates that say do this, don't do that. Rules and roles are almost always hierarchical. Roles are generally co-ordinate, sub-ordinate, or super-ordinate. Two coworkers at a cafe or construction job work together, doing different tasks that are fundamentally on 'the same level'. There supervisor, however, stands 'above' them in the hierarchical organization of that situation. Their bosses role is super-ordinate (supervisor), while their role is sub-ordinate. 

This way of organizing—co-, sub-, and super-ordinate—gets replicated in our own psyches. We make certain 'parts' of us subservient to other parts. In some people anger, or their protector, has the most commanding role. In others shame may predominate. We all have a uniquely distorted community of emotions (forms) with a various hierarchical relationship. I have often avoided pain by giving my intellect a super-ordinate role: I have tried to rationalize and compartmentalize emotions, often not giving them due credit. Thanks to good therapy and other experiences I now have a more balanced hierarchy of emotions. Each part of me has a seat at the table. 

I used to dominate myself with my intellect, chastising my shame, inflaming my anger, and cursing the parts of me that feel small, afraid, and alienated.

I no longer dominate myself so badly. I, of course, still keep certain feelings in check. "I can't cry right now... I have to get to meeting my friend..." And so I 'tamp' down a part of me, I force it into a subordinate position.

 

Even our physical bodies seem to be organized hierarchically. When we are afraid our bodies stop digesting, stop exerting energy to socialize, and focus on the 'core processes' of surviving. Even our guts, our organs, are a community of forms that have their own relations with one another. One of the reasons breathing is such a common coping technique is that our breath is the only part of our autonomic nervous system we can control. In taking control of our breath, then, we place our lungs in a super-ordinate position over the rest of our organs, signalling we are safe to our kidneys, hearts, and brains in the only way we can.

We also have the opportunity to dominate others in big and small ways. Being rude to servers, commanding those who are economically obligated to help us, is one very common form of domination. But we also dominate others by tacitly reinforcing gender roles, racial stereotypes, or other social-political labels and hierarchies. These systems of domination are generally invisible, as they exist in a sort of symbolic-institutional matrix.

Learning to not dominate ourselves and others, learning to live therapeutically, means being able to make the invisible visible. We make the invisible visible through language, through phenomenology in the deep and genuine sense: by producing a logos that allows a phenomenon to be seen.

Learn to live therapeutically means articulating the invisible forms that govern the processes of our lives. In naming these invisible forms we reveal their hierarchical organization. In revealing the hierarchy of invisible forms we initiate the process of reorganizing them. If we reveal them in a kind and loving way (likely the only way), we invite them to reorganize themselves in a kinder and more loving way. The community of forms follows our lead, whatever this implicit 'I' is that is capable of love.