For our resident psychologists

[Sleeping in EQ]

My brother is a licensed counselor and is working on a Navajo Reservation to pay off his student loans. As you might imagine, he does lots of substance abuse counseling.

Anyway, he and I have some fun conversations from time to time. I'm not a psychologist by any stretch, but my humanities training has exposed me to some basics, and I have some depth at the fringes (psychoanalysis, behaviorism, Freudo-Marxism, Jungian analysis, Lacan and post-Lacanian thought, various branches of philosophy). The other night on the phone he said something like:

"You have a penchant for many of the thinkers and branches of thought that most psychologists won't really go near. Oh sure, we may not think all of that stuff is garbage, but it's hard to know when and where it's valuable. Psychoanalysis helps some people in ways that are probably measurable, but it's more like religion than science. Get me some experiments that can be replicated and I'll give it more creedance."

I accept what he's saying. Psychoanalysis isn't scientific. Check. I'm also aware that I like to think with (which is not to say "agree with" or "mistake their thinking for science") Western thinkers with Eastern tendencies: Emerson, William James, John Dewey, even Carl Jung sometimes. In the humanities my habit is perfectly acceptable (well within the mainstream and a common approach for scholars who value religion or spirituality in some form), and has been advanced by some as a philosophically-valid way of using reason and faith to inform each other (a difficulty initiated by Kant, who valued both but seperated them, and subsequent scholars have problematically turned their seperation into antagonism.)

So my questions are:

Is there room in mainstream psychology for putting Western and Eastern perspectives in dialectic?

Is there room for this kind of thing in a theoretical sense, but practical realities keep it from happening?

Do you interact with professionals from Eastern psychological traditions?

Do you see the possibility for more of this kind of thing with the growing populations of Eastern and Western diaspora?

Are you guys satisfied with "psychology as science" or are you willing to bring in the unquantifiable?
__________________

[danimal]

Eastern traditions have actually become fairly popular in mainstream psychotherapy in the past 10 years or so. The two most popular therapies to adopt them are called "dialectical behavior therapy" and "acceptance and committment therapy." They mainly borrow from budhist mindfullness and acceptance practices -- you know, accepting your suffering, observing your thoughts, etc. Some humanists are pissed off because they believe the mainstream folks ripped off some of their practices without giving them credit. Some of this work has actually garnered quite a bit of empirical support for its effectiveness.

Many believe that psychodynamic theory has scientifically verifiable aspects and some of it holds up well to scientific rigor -- for example transference and countertransference and attachment theory. Also, some psychodynamic treatments have been shown to be as effective as other more mainstream approaches.

As for integrating the unquantifiable, qualitative research has grown in interest and popularity in psychotherapy research. Instead of looking for statistical significance between treatments or disordered populations, it primarily uses interpretation of interviews or written accounts to look for patterns of meaning. These approaches are often used prior to quantitative stuff as it helps to bring to light the factors to which you should be paying attention. Division 24 of the american psychological association -- the society for theoretical and philosophical psychology -- focuses on bridging philosophy and psychology and has a lot of eastern influences. Interestingly, the group has several prominent byu faculty members or graduates.

Most psychologists have little knowledge of philosophy and rarely understand the assumptions and implications of their theories. The discipline is all the worse for it.

[OhioBlue]

Originally Posted by Sleeping in EQ

So my questions are:

Is there room in mainstream psychology for putting Western and Eastern perspectives in dialectic?

Is there room for this kind of thing in a theoretical sense, but practical realities keep it from happening?

Do you interact with professionals from Eastern psychological traditions?

Do you see the possibility for more of this kind of thing with the growing populations of Eastern and Western diaspora?

Are you guys satisfied with "psychology as science" or are you willing to bring in the unquantifiable?
__________________

I think Danimal did a fine job answering your question in a way that I would agree with. But I'll add my answers as well, because I'm bored and out of my office while it's being painted, and the fumes are already getting to my head.

1. Is there room? Yes, depending on who you ask. Psychology, generally speaking, suffers from a science--practice divide. Or an art--science divide. Bringing Eastern thought to the table often means letting a lot of philosophy and 'art' into the conversation, and there are some hard-core empirical folks who get uncomfortable with this at best, or scoff at it and completely blow it off at worst. This phenomenon is hardly limited to eastern vs western clashes, by the way. The general trend in our very young discipline has been to eschew our roots in philosophy and religion, swing over to a heavily positivistic bent, and play the game the way the natural sciences do. The problem with this should be quite evident to a thinker such as yourself. What's interesting to me, though, is that despite the current zeitgeist toward empirical support for everything, and scientific 'evidence' for what we think/do in psychology, the art/philosophy of the discipline still won't go away. I'm quite pleased with that, and expect that eventually psychology will pull its collective head out and stop trying to ride the coattails of medicine. We'll see, maybe I'm idealistic.

So that got a little off topic, but you know what I mean.

2. Yes, practical realities often keep it from happening. See above. A good case study in what practical realities can do to a field is psychiatry. Today's psychology is what psychiatry once endeavored to include, but it has virtually wholly abandoned everything save a reductionistic medical model of human functioning, and that is now its specialty. Psychiatrists like Szasz or heck even Yalom--philosophers, practitioners of therapy, and medical professionals altogether--have gone the way of the dinosaur. I can count on one hand the number of psychiatrists who do more than a 15 minute med-check once a person has been added to their caseload and gone through the intake procedure.

That's not to say that's a bad thing, it's just evidence to me of what happens when a discipline throws aside theory and philosophy in favor of "what works" (if there is a more ambiguous phrase in our field, I don't know it) and narrows its focus in accordance with the realities and pushes of the economy, culture, and so on. Right now, psychologists in many states are pushing for prescription privilege--a complicated discussion if ever there was one. Suffice it to say I think it's generally a bad idea, philosophically without foundation, and based more than most would like to admit on economics and a heavily medicalized Western culture. These "practical realities" are often followed at the expense of critical thought and with complete disregard for the philosophies upon which our field was founded.

3. Yes. Most practicing psychologists these days, whether they admit it or not, are technically eclectic. As a clarification, I'm realizing at this point in my response that you and I may not be thinking the same thing when we use the word 'Eastern.' I include Freud, Jung, and their contemporaries in Europe among Western thinkers. Eastern to me would include more of what Danimal mentioned--Buddhist philosophy, far Eastern thinkers, different cultural norms and ideas about health and wellness, etc. I have studied and enjoy the Morita and Naikan traditions out of Japan, Buddhist philosophy, and I have training in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy which Danimal mentioned. I see a lot of underlying philosophical agreement between these and many of the Existential-Humanist tradition. Especially Kierkegaard, Rollo May, Tillich, and others who have informed the psychological discipline in particular. Interestingly enough, in today's psychological culture of empirical support and scientific rigor, these kinds of contributions are either ignored or kept in a separate category far away from the discussion (not always, but often). Why? Because by their very nature, these philosophical matters do not lend themselves to empirical study. So instead, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) gets all the rave reviews because it can be structured, manualized, and operationalized at a concrete and observable level, while the philosophies that informed our field get too often disregarded. Incidentally I see this happening far more in the ivory towers of academia than I see it in actual clinical practice. Many practitioners have enough experience with the actual complexity of human-ness, and a healthy respect for the same, that they refuse to foreclose on the discussion by wholeheartedly adopting a bunch of cute little technique-y things without critical thought. Wow now I'm really rambling.

4. Possibilities, yes. Likelihood? Not for a while. The pendulum, as I've said, is well over on the scientific, medical, reductionistic side. Find the pain/problem, label it (because somehow that helps), construct a metaphysical coding system to assuage both clients' and clnicians' anxiousness about the ambiguity of many aspects of human existence, then get down to the business of identifying the cause and removing it. IE find the problem and remove it. Works real well with cars and computers, not so well with human beings.

Psychology I believe will probably unfortunately go even further in this direction than it already is before it's fully ready to give up on a completely flawed philosophy and go back to what people were saying at the beginning of the last century. William James et al would be appalled, IMO.

5. Satisfied with psychology as a science? My answer should be abundantly clear by now, if you've made it this far through my discombobulated thought process. Don't get me wrong--science and empirical observation are important and have their place. I'm not so foolish as to suggest we throw the baby out with the...well you know. But that's just it--they have A place. It offers useful contributions, if balanced against a larger underlying philosophy and tempered by a healthy respect for complexity and uncertainty. But empiricism in no way (in my not so humble opinion) belongs at the ontological level or core. A lot of people in my field and others related to it would have a hard time with that last statement.

Anyway, I'll stop there. I could go on for hours. My dissertation delved into much of the same underlying issues that are core to our discussion here, at least in some associated manner. I think though that what Danimal said is true--right now there is a notable absence of critical thought, philosophical examination of what we do in psychology and why. Studies of theory are discarded in favor of studies of technique, or of structured approaches. Levinas' call to honor the "infinite alterity of the other" and the moral obligations that go with that is pushed aside in favor of a manual or book that tells us what the label is for person A's problems, and how to 'fix' or remove a reified list of 'symptoms.' Entiire defenses of psychology are constructed on the basis of showing 'symptom reduction' using Likert-scale assessments that are treated statistically like Interval data when truly they are Ordinal. And it goes on and on. It'll be interesting for me to see where psychology ends up in all this in the next 30 years. Will the divide between art/philosophy and science continue to widen? Or will the pendulum swing the other way? Or will we, as per usual, just wait to see what medicine does?

Fun discussion. Pardon the lengthiness, it was fun to ramble for a bit even though I know that at times I was going far beyond the intent of your questions.

Now back to those paint fumes.

[OhioBlue]

One last follow-up to my reply. The exercise I just went through makes a lot of people in the psychiatric/psychological fields quite uncomfortable. And very predictably, the arguments to my assertions are made based wholly on a foundation of empirical science. It's an argument that goes nowhere, because we're arguing in different languages. If you ever want to see a super hard-core human "scientist" (sorry, I just have to put that in quotes) get real dogmatic and quite uncomfortable, press them on the underyling theoretical underpinnings of their positions and ask them to provide philosophically elegant bases for their views about people and the world.

Okay, I'm not being completely fair--there are plenty who adeptly combine science and philosophy/theory. I admire these. But there are just as many, if not more, who worship solely at the altar of logical positivism and hold empirical observation out as big T Truth, if you get my meaning.

[Sleeping in EQ]

Originally Posted by OhioBlue

One last follow-up to my reply. The exercise I just went through makes a lot of people in the psychiatric/psychological fields quite uncomfortable. And very predictably, the arguments to my assertions are made based wholly on a foundation of empirical science. It's an argument that goes nowhere, because we're arguing in different languages. If you ever want to see a super hard-core human "scientist" (sorry, I just have to put that in quotes) get real dogmatic and quite uncomfortable, press them on the underyling theoretical underpinnings of their positions and ask them to provide philosophically elegant bases for their views about people and the world.

Okay, I'm not being completely fair--there are plenty who adeptly combine science and philosophy/theory. I admire these. But there are just as many, if not more, who worship solely at the altar of logical positivism and hold empirical observation out as big T Truth, if you get my meaning.

You and Danimal are both making perfect sense. And our notion of Eastern and Western is pretty consistent. I'm not saying that Jung, for example, is Eastern per se, but many Jungian themes--such as balance, the archetypal, and attention to states of consciousness--have resonance in Eastern contexts and in contexts where empirical science is not privileged (non-scientific approaches like those deployed by Alcoholics Anonymous come to mind).

I chuckled when you mentioned the disciplinary difficulties. Humanities types like to gripe about how their ideas are minimized in other fields, but then when someone from one of those fields starts to take up a humanities idea, they turn around and treat that person like a thief. It's both amusing and frustrating.

[tooblue]

Originally Posted by Sleeping in EQ

You and Danimal are both making perfect sense. And our notion of Eastern and Western is pretty consistent. I'm not saying that Jung, for example, is Eastern per se, but many Jungian themes--such as balance, the archetypal, and attention to states of consciousness--have resonance in Eastern contexts and in contexts where empirical science is not privileged (non-scientific approaches like those deployed by Alcoholics Anonymous come to mind).

I chuckled when you mentioned the disciplinary difficulties. Humanities types like to gripe about how their ideas are minimized in other fields, but then when someone from one of those fields starts to take up a humanities idea, they turn around and treat that person like a thief. It's both amusing and frustrating.

Obviously I can't truly contribute to this discussion unless you wish to discuss academic orientalism; hegemonic ideas on the cultural distinctions between European and non European symbols and imagery in art

All I want to know is why are there so darned many of ‘you’ here on this particular message board and each time you read one of my posts do you, even subconsciously, analyze the my virtual psyche?

Considering who founded this community is this CougarGuard merely an experiment?

[OhioBlue]

Originally Posted by tooblue

Obviously I can't truly contribute to this discussion unless you wish to discuss academic orientalism; hegemonic ideas on the cultural distinctions between European and non European symbols and imagery in art

All I want to know is why are there so darned many of ‘you’ here on this particular message board and each time you read one of my posts do you, even subconsciously, analyze the my virtual psyche?

Considering who founded this community is this CougarGuard merely an experiment?

I didn't analyze your virtual psyche until you posted something about you being aggressive and needing a break. Then I wondered what the hell was wrong with you.

[RockyBalboa]

So for you psychologists out there explain this mystery to me:


Women.

[il Padrino Ute]

Originally Posted by RockyBalboa

So for you psychologists out there explain this mystery to me:


Women.

Norm Peterson summed it up best:

"Women. You can't live with 'em. Pass the peanuts."

[Archaea]

After reading these displays, I feel cheated in my education. Even though I spent seven glorious years in college, and have often studied other matters thereafter, much of my day is spent reading over a mundane deed of trust, advising on a joint revocable trust and informing a client that "no, I don't believe you should give all your assets to your stripper daughter so she can hold them for you."

It would have been intellecutally enjoyable to have been a Renaissance man around the turn of the Twentieth Century. The breadth of knowledge of some here is quite simply aweinspiring, from Lebowski's clarity on engineering issues to SIEQ's philosophical understanding, to Jay's and Indy's statistical abilities, it amazes me how people can be aware of so much, that my education barely even touched upon. All we need are som chemists, physicists, a few more computer studs, and we'd be complete. Well not really, but I enjoy the topics discussed.