Chapter II: Modern Psychology

[In progress: notes]

The departments in the universities cultivate certain kinds of characters and studies to the exclusion of others. This became apparent when, studying at Grand Valley, we became acquainted with a study of Wittgenstein that had become a part of academic philosophy. Wittgenstein has to do with the narrowing of philosophy to the purpose of developing a clear and precise language for science, which is assumed to be the true pursuit of knowledge. Here philosophy is again a handmaid, and now fully an instrument! But then it occurred to us that these fields cultivate certain characters: a different sort of person takes up philosophy to question the hypotheses, pursue the mysteries of righteousness, or indeed to pursue wisdom. Different types of characters are attracted and thrive in the studies. Plato and Aristotle too, notoriously, attract different sorts of characters, as depicted in da Vince’s painting School of Athens, where Plato is pointing up and Aristotle down. The departments, though, fail to cultivate the pursuit of wisdom. If wisdom should turn out to be the health of the soul, this means that our psychology and our psychiatry have failed, first in cultivating the psychologists and psychiatrists.

In psychology, the very type of character that is capable of pursuing the knowledge of man and the ability to heal may be excluded from the departments from the beginning. These are rather pursuing behaviorism and statistical studies, and even giving over their practice to neurology and pharmacology and what is called “social work.” Those who seek to pursue the knowledge of the soul in the modern university might better major in literature, law or criminology. It may be possible to pursue an entire graduate course of psychology without ever studying the human aspect of humans at all, and promptly take that six figure seat perhaps dealing with troublesome teens or suburban married couples, or working in the criminal justice system. Without saying much, one might do listening and little more than having a medical doctor dispense pills after fifteen minute interviews. All the while, the consumer assumes that they are responsibly taking their patient to the authority regarding these matters, and even imagines for them the esoteria that would come with a genuine knower and healer of the soul. They may have never studied human beings at all. We always found it amusing that behaviorists would study rats in college and then attempt to mediate in marriages, etc.

  The true scientific study of the soul is a very rare plant that grows at the pinnacle of inquiry. It is supported by an “innate” knowledge of man and perhaps a natural ability, rather than an art alone. The souls that are capable of even being drawn toward this study are rare. They are awake to the human questions in a way that does not allow much time for the trivialities that are the subjects of the funded studies or attempts to measure people. Strauss writes: “The proper starting point for studying the perfection of human nature is what is said about these subjects or the opinions about them” (NRH, p.146). As with archaeology, we do sometimes gain insight from the conclusions and even enjoy the marvel of the scientific studies, but cannot ourselves spend all day digging, except on a leisured occasion.

The human study of man, excluded from the universities, is present in our age in two areas: Popular psychology and humanistic psychology. The better among the pop psychology writers have at least made acquaintance with the humanistic psychologists. These are Maslow, Carl Rogers, Rollo May and Victor Frankl, and Jung is sometimes included. Rogers has a critique of psychology similar to ours on many points, and again Maslow attempts a hierarchical understanding of the purposes. These generally emphasize consciousness rather than the unconscious. Frankl sets meaning and purpose at the top of what matters for the health of the soul, and may have coined the term psychohygienic. One radical historian of Freud back at Grand Valley had a class called “Mental Hygiene.” The attempt to placate the measure of scientific psychology is clear, though the allusion by analogy to the health of the soul provides access to this question in a scientific manner. Again, modern psychology does not theoretically consider the health of the soul- what that might be.

   The psychology textbooks sometimes conclude their opening chapters with “eclecticism” This means that rather than adhere to any particular school of psychology, they take pieces from various approaches. It is this “eclecticism” that we seek to replace with the truly comprehensive science of the human things. We will argue that this is possible on the Socratic basis, though not possible on the basis of humanistic psychology. But the reason that eclecticism is better than any one school of psychology is that each is getting only part of a truly vast study which is not likely to be completed in a lifetime. We say the least the clinical psychiatrists might do is to undertake the study.

One must consider in addition Lacan, Farenczi, Foucault, Fromm and Erikson. We will do so with an eye to how the philosophic basis limits the genuine knowledge of the soul, and look for what can be salvaged out of the thought based on German philosophy. We will watch as only Carl Jung even comes close to turning to the ancient wise to understand the human soul.

II.2 Our Replacement for Experimental Psychology

Our Replacement for Experimental Psychology

January 20, 2016

The human things are spread out before us, and our involvement in the world presents us with an encounter with a certain slice, a part of the human things that we know first hand. To understand the soul and the health of the soul, we begin not from the “scientific” understanding of political and psychological things, but “from their ‘natural’ understanding, i.e., from the way in which they present themselves in political life,” and indeed in psychological life (NRH, p. 81).

Previously, we blogged about an experiment cited in the abnormal Psychology text, a study in which a dog was shocked to see if learned helplessness was a cause of depression. How much must such a study assume, beginning with the categories, how to identify examples that fit in each category, the kinds and their exemplars, of learned helplessness, cause and depression. It also assumes that studies on dogs can be applied to humans, without much study of how these are alike and how different, say, regarding depression. We have already criticized the idea that such a study is ethical and worthwhile. We think our psychology has a better method, with the added benefit that one need not make so scientific an assumption as that one can torture and get away with it, or that the harm one does oneself in this is worth the supposed knowledge added by a single study. Those pursuing wisdom, again, do not take much time for setting up experiments.

The human things are spread out before us. Consider for example how much more can be learned from considering the American prison system, the whole very strange scene. The gangs are divided by races, and the reasons for this can be pursued. We can also consider an hypothesis such as the prisons are the universities of the underworld, what the causes are of this and what the political implications. A science of this sort can be very useful in cultivating foresight. But one could not gain much from experimental studies, even the sorts that are ethical or observe rights. One experiment which we indeed admit was beneficial found that average people could easily be seduced into shocking their fellows quite painfully, and another that groups can be broken into factions based on almost any accidental difference, such as the blue eyed and the brown eyed children in a class where a teacher conducted a very famous, if slightly questionable experiment.

In one study, a good example of the sort that do receive press and funding, the experimenter set out like a myth-buster to test the hypothesis that women are attracted by the smell of male sweat due to a hormone. We have long joked about this, as in the locker room, but the complex comedy assumes that there is a repulsion, while some people wonder if there is not an unconscious chemical attraction. It is known that pheromes are involved in love. What the researchers seemed to learn is that indeed no, women are not attracted by the smell of male sweat, but what really gets them is the smell of other women! Now, womanizers may gain some knowledge from this that is useful to their purposes, but as for the question of whether it is good to be a womanizer- a perennial question among men on the street- we will not conduct experiments, say chopping stats on domestic violence or considering the fortunes and fates of these, but rather, will inquire with Shakespeare regarding his Athenian Duke Theseus. It is the logoi, rather than these silly experiments, that are central to genuine scientific psychology. In Plato’s allegory, in Book Seven of his Republic, outside the cave, what appears are not only the beings reflected in water, but the natural beings themselves, though in the cave, what appears of these is but a “copy and a shadow.” This is an allegory of true psychology, and we suggest that the whole assumption that we have known what a scientific psychology would be has been mistaken.

How much more can be learned about love from a study of music than from any of these modern pseudoscientific studies! Present to us the entire corpus of knowledge drawn from data about love for the past century. We challenge this with our study of common music lyrics, if not the common sense of every middle school student in America. Let the reader decide which has profited us more in the pursuit of the knowledge of the soul and man. Let a panel of experts decide! And if we win this challenge, join us in this new pursuit of philosophic psychology. The study of Love is shockingly absent from modern psychology, and even from Aristotle, leaving the highest writings of the ancient world at Plato’s Phaedrus and Symposium, and perhaps the Biblical Song of Songs. Not until Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream do we find an account of natural or “heterosexual” love to rival the Greeks. Does psychology know what love is? How then can it claim authority over these most common forms of depression? What is more likely is that we do not believe that it is possible to achieve such a study. For most, this may be true, and most cannot even see the surface to be attracted. Often the pained lover will take a genuine theoretical interest in the science or study of love, but for others the study will not even begin, while psychology will claim for itself authority over these matters, as the authority to drug patients.

Let us then replace this experimental research with genuine studies leading toward a genuine knowledge. Experiments are indeed a part, but as you might agree that we have demonstrated, a very small part in the comprehensive science of the human soul.

II.ii: Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau

The background of modern psychology is modern political philosophy, whether or not we are “conscious” of this. Hobbes considers the fear of death to be the primary motive of men, and modern thought on rights depends upon his thought regarding self preservation and the right of self preservation- though these rights are transferred to a sovereign without what Locke adds- ongoing consent. Later, we will consider the importance of the recognition of rights in mental health care, and the importance to persons, for example, of the right to think and speak as one likes despite judgements or accusations, so long as he does not violate the rights of another. Here, we should consider the “state of nature,” and the turn of modern thought toward the origins to understand the natures of things. Freud, of course, looks to the child to understand the man, and this assumption is derivative, have come from Hobbes with modifications in Rousseau that set this emphasis on the origins and childhood in modern psychology.

The principle of the fear of death is an interesting point of contrast between Socratic and modern philosophy, as it is said that the conquest of the fear of death is the beginning of philosophy- or enigmatically, that “to philosophize is to learn how to die.” (Phaedo; Montaigne, Essays, ). To some, like Hobbes, it appears that all men by nature in a crisis choose according to self interest. Others think the crisis shows the man. The former are not capable of the study of the soul, because it will appear as a servant of the body and the animal things in man.

Rousseau- famously, considered the earlier modern thinkers to not have returned far enough to a state of nature, since the man they considered in a state of war was already corrupted by civilization. Compassion is rather natural man and he is less of a vicious best (Second discourse). Freedom is natural to man and is considered the very nature of man. Rousseau is very important as a bridge to German philosophy, as his General will” is the fundamental basis of all right. All the specifically human things are artificial additions to an essentially animal nature. From here, Kant will consider man as having no nature, radically free in contrast with a physis that is radically determined, still attempting to base right on some universal agreement or maxim, as did Rousseau. The importance of German philosophy as the basis of modern humanistic psychology is underestimated and understudied. The words “self” and “person” seem to enter discourse only following Hegel and Kant. Finally, we say, the conclusion of German though in Nietzsche makes evident the impossibility of a psychology based upon German philosophy. Nietzsche rather than Freud may be responsible for the study of the unconscious. Here we rather follow Socrates in turning to consider the nature of the soul and man and what account might be given of these things.

The state of nature thinkers and the bearings by the origins is decisive in Freud, as he famously discovered the Oedipus complex ” supposedly at the root of human belief in God. Prior to 1895, Freud, we say, was on the right track of a certain kind of dissociation or disturbance caused by incestuous molestations, called then the seduction theory- restored to some extent by Ferenczi and others. Freud focused then rather on the appetites of the subject that are repressed, and indeed found out a great deal about this. Again, we refer to Paul on Law and sin, and Jung on Persona and shadow. We have to try to figure out why these molestations effect the human soul in general in this way. For all the modern political thinkers the family- believe it or not- is not by nature. That is because they wish to deny the natural sociability of man, in order to emphasize natural equality and liberty. There is the state of war in Hobbes, and a state of simplicity in Rousseau. In Nietzsche, and one suspects, Machiavelli, men in the beginning are considered to have been “more whole beasts,” that is, vicious. Since these thinkers, The Darwinian Revolution has introduced for us the evolutionary theory and the discovery that man has come to be, along a branch of the tree of life. But the family is older than man. It is by nature, and not by convention- and the modern thinkers are in this refuted. Aristotle is correct- man is by nature social.

Some mystery occurs in natural history as man becomes human and political. The clue is given when Aristotle cites Homer regarding the Cyclopes: Each gives law to his own family. Formerly, it was the myth that these things were entirely imaginary. Archaeology has since discovered Neanderthal and Dinovesian man, and we realize that everything rare in natural history tends to disappear. Our kind of man is Crow-Magnon, or Sapiens Sapiens, political by nature. While animals do not observe the incest prohibition, this may well be what separates our species. It is older than the law forbidding murder. Humans could not bear to address the question scientifically before Freud, though it is present iof course in Sophocles tragedy, and Plato, in Book IX of the Republic. Legislators as studied in Political theory do not legislate these fundamental laws, but assume them. These have now become second nature over what may be more than 100,000 years. but assume them. It would immediately cause a new and apparently superior kind of genetic mixing, demarcating our species. The change seems to coincide with domestication, which we are also the only ones to do, for the most part. Domestication implies a human part ruling an animal part. Human families then will open out into the village and the polis, as the prohibition becomes more extensive, gradually adding the fraternal and consanguinity prohibitions- this even while the races have an obvious, if slight, preference for their own. Consanguinity is extended by custom to step siblings, but what is by nature is relations between members of the same nest. Human romantic love- in our bodies, the continuous rather than cyclical human estrus- is thought to aim at solidifying the family in order to raise the children, but seems much more complex than this, and unfulfilled longing or romantic eros notoriously leads restless souls into adultery, breaking up families. One mystery of human intercourse is that it sets an attachment at the root of all community, aiming at the fundamental association of the household. These attachments are produced somewhat like the imprinting studied by Konrad Lorenze in ducks, here imprinting the human soul. One suspicion is that some child molestation perpetrators are compulsorily attracted to persons at the age at which they themselves were molested. Hence, much fuss is and ought be made surrounding human marriages. But the confusions or havoc caused to souls by transgessions of the prohibitions is significant in a certain kind of disturbance related to the inability of the victim to admit or sometimes even remember what has occurred. Non incestuous rape or seduction would cause a different kind of disturbance, while adultery causes faction in the soul and family. One can pay attention to the laws of love, present anew in each generation’s middle schools the forms of justice- trust and cheating, fidelity, etc, arising as though by nature. Marriage customs have a basis that is older than writing, and so their legislation is mostly unrecorded, but again assumed by the legislators. Consent may first appear in the Bible. The disturbance caused by the molestations of priests is different, yet related, having something to do with shame and the very structure of the personality. Meanwhile the perpetrators deny the extreme harm being done, which turns out to be decisive in social life in various ways. We do not know the reasons for these things, but it is at the heart of the human mystery. The question to which Oedipus is the answer is “What is man.”

There is a four part ascent of reasoning that is able to lift psychology out of the mud of the reduction to other studies, though the students have not been able to follow this up to a genuine psychology. We find ourselves having to argue that psychology must study the psyche, the soul. Regarding the difficulty of medical doctors to understand the unconscious, Jung writes, “…Psychology, however, is neither biology nor physiology, nor any other science than just this knowledge of the psyche.” (CW IX.1, p.30). As life cannot be explained in terms of physics, nor moving animals from botany, so psyche, and the human cannot be explained entirely in terms of the animal, nor even the human body, though it is always accompanied by these things and these sorts of causes. Purpose and final causes as well as the hierarchic design of cells within an organism enter with life- non living things do not have goods and purposes in this sense. Nor is an organelle an organism, though it is hard to say what a single being is. A rock is much less one thing than is a tree. Now, 1) consider the chair- it is made of wood. But of what is the shape of the chair made? It is intelligibility- a form due to a function, and a purpose had in mind and given to it by a human- it is an artifact, and more one thing than a rock, though it is not alive. The chair has some relation to the things of geometry and gravity, the perpendicular and stability- 4 legs, etc. 2) Life too has a relation to intelligibility, and a logos that is followed out in biology, botany, 3) zoology and microbiology and in a way different from, for example, the intelligibility shown in the periodic chart of the elements. These are shown in form and function, and part and whole. Self-motion too has an intelligible basis- much as does the chair, if it is more difficult to access. Simultaneous causation- where effect does not come after cause in time- enter nature with hierarchic beings, strangely enough- When I take up a tool, it moves at the same time that I move it, having become a part of a whole. These have a good, and can be cultivated. So it is for living things that survival and reproduction are ends or recognizable goals, common to all. 4) But we say the human is dimensionally a different kind of being from the animal, having purposes such as justice and science, music and astronomy- and an ability to follow out the logoi of nature, the natural articulation of things. Hence, we domesticate the animals, getting hold of these causes by superior causes superior to or higher than the animals these govern. When reading Genesis, explaining the principle of the ordering of the days. Leo Strauss discerns, things that change their places, on the fourth day, things that change their courses, and beings that change their ways. A dog is quite conscious, and moved by corresponding emotions of a sort, as animal, according to which he chooses a course- even how to get a sausage without being noticed. Just as the science of the dog is dimensionally more complex, and with terms that are sui generis and inexplicable from, though not in contradiction with physics- matter motion and math- so the human and psychological causes supervene upon biological nature without contradicting it exactly, but surely not explainable in terms of the biological dimension. What, by the way, is the intelligibility of life which corresponds to the intelligibility of objects found in geometry?

Notes for Chapter III

It is not so in one sense, to say that the only difference between the souls of the good and evil is how they regard their own vice: that Vice unrepented warps the soul into evil- as the attempt to NOT see our selves leaves us in faction and then anger and violence toward others. A priest said, "Lust is related to anger." That is because self knowledge is a fundamental aim of all souls, and simple sins cause faction in the soul, spacifically where sel-knowledge is inhibited.

One could begin a GENUINE psychology positing the two most fundamental aims of the soul as self knowledge and (Aristotle, Metaphysics 1.1), the desire to know the whole.

So I'd say de Anima leads into the Ethics, which is Aristole's truest consideration of the soul. How does ethical and intellectual virtue fit together? Philosopher and King? Kurios episteme.

The ten books of the Ethics can be read in light of the 10 books of Plato's Republic, with roughly corresponding sections in only some chapters. Like, books 2-4: vulgar virtue. Books V-VII- justice and intellectual virtue. Then friendship, though... Nous is "what each most is"