Psychology/Psychiatry: A Great Books Foundation to Remedy the Contemporary Study of the Soul

With a program adding the 10 or 15 greatest books on the soul to a curriculum of psychology and psychiatry, the science can be reset on a Socratic, rather than as now on a presocratic basis. An attempt to identify and read these would seem an obvious requirement for those supposed to have a knowledge of the soul that allows them to heal or to treat troubled persons authoritatively. But the very strange circumstance must be admitted: our psychiatry does not even attempt to study the soul.

The attempt to identify these will of course be difficult, but we will find certain works ancient and modern filling out the lists. The first is Plato’s Republic, read perhaps with the Apology as a preface. The second might be the De Anima and Ethics of Aristotle. A third, Genesis, a fourth, the Gospel of John, and fifth, the Revelation and sections on the cure of demoniacs. Sixth, we might place Jung’s Aion or Memories, and Seventh the most influential sections of works of Freud. Benjamin Rush gives a good survey of the kinds of maladies and the causes of these supposed prior to Freud. Plato’s Gorgias and Laws might come in ninth, while the psyics of causes from Aristotle and Plato’s Phaedo might fills out a tenth place.

We hold that this program is already superior to the best program in existence in our psychiatry. Knowledge of the nature of the soul and man is going to be the most important thing to study to prepare for the practices of treating humans, whether WE are capable of it or not, and such a study might easily retain the best of what is being known and done in our contemporary efforts. But it will also cultivate a different kind of student- those more capable of practicing the iatreias of a psyche they actually believe in and know something about.

In this way our psychology might begin to follow Socrates regarding the Socratic turn from pre-socratic natural philosophy- retaining the appeal to nature and the quest for universal causes common to all men, while restoring the ability to study and seek regarding causes pertaining to the human element.

A more detailed critique of our psychology is required, along with an attempt to draw out the theoretical pursuit of this, held to be a genuinely scientific psychology. For it is held by most that the theoretical virtue of wisdom is not helpful in actual case studies and treatments, or that it is not necessary to actually study the soul in psychology. This appearance is due to our incapacity- for the psychiatrist must assume a wisdom we do not actually pursue, let alone possess. Each category and judgement involved in practice is based not on science such as an “empirical” demonstration of what each psychosis or neurosis is, but on common sense, if refined by experience. Hence in contemporary psychiatry, the words for the maladies “Bi Polar,” “Schizophrenic,” etc, are used almost interchangeably.

Shakespeare too, we will show, is a psychologist and teacher of the things of man far superior to the greatest our age has produced, including Freud, Jung, Rogers and a thin list following. Our students will know who Ophelia is, what the questions involved in Lear and Hamlet are, and what occurs to the souls of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. Hamlet is about revenge, Othello Jealousy, Lear and Romeo and Juliet different senses of love- and much more, though, as the study of emotions by name is oddly abstract.

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In this way the crisis of contemporary psychiatry will be addressed by turning to the ancient wise. That this is not already done simply indicates that our psychiatry is not serious about the study and healing of the soul, nor much concerned about being worthy of the trust we say is by our contemporaries tragically misplaced.

An Attempted List of the Best Books On the Soul:

Plato: Apology, Republic, Phaedrus, Symposium, Selections Laws, Gorgias,…

Aristotle: Ethics; de Anima, Selections

Xenophon: Memorabilia

Jung: Aion, Memories Dreams and Reflections, Symbols of Transformation, Selections

Freud: Int of Dreams, Civilization And its discontents

Rousseau: Second Discourse, Emile

Bible: Genesis, Job, Daniel, Matthew, John

Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet/A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Lear, Hamlet, Othello, Tempest

Jefferson: Declaration; Selections

There are of course many books to be considered and in any particular program or university, and particular excellences to be cultivated. The list will try to be limited to those that might actually be a part of a core.

Sophocles Oedipus. Greek comedy and tragedy.

Paul Romans

Lao Tzu Tao Te Ching

The Lotus Sutra