/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.13320844]

I'll tell you why psychology is bullshit.

Psychology's approach is flawed from the very beginning: in trying to categorize the mind, it is completely blind to the soul. It tries to typify the human mind into a series of neat categories, when in reality the mind, as a product of the soul, is in constant motion. The existence of the mind assumes the pre-existence of the soul. To attempt to arrange the mind into mechanical categories is in itself soulless. The universe is forever changing. In the words of Goethe, "nature knows no gaps". The soul is ever-becoming, but psychology sees itself as a science that deals only with the become.

To truly understand a person one must be the judge of their soul, as a trainer might be a judge of an athlete. One must use feeling and intuition to reach out and immerse themselves in the other person's soul, not analyze and categorize their mind like psychology tries to do.

The various "mental illnesses" of psychology are falsehoods, inane categories. Depression, personality disorders, personality types, these are all attempts by psychology to categorize the mind and tell a person "this is who you are". It may need not be said the detrimental affect this might have on someone's well-being. Instead of being told how they can make themselves better, they are told that they belong to a psychological category and that they are basically fucked. Cue the pills, and further spiraling into despair.

The judge of the soul must feel themself as the other person. He must judge their values, needs, desires, and even accomplishments in life. All these are microcosmic entities that make up a person's soul, and in seeing the history of a person's life in its entirety, the judge can intuitively see where a person has come from, where that person is going, and how best to help that person on their spiritual path through life. Not everyone will be born with the ability to do this. It is deliberately unscientific and it cannot be a learned profession. But the whole point of psychology is to be a "profession". The teaching and learning of psychology takes precedence over what psychology claims to want to do. It is pure lecture philosophy, inorganic and mechanical, not lived, or felt.

[Anonymous No.13320863]

>>13320844
>"let me tell you why psychology is bullshit"
>very first line of argument talks about the soul
fucking dropped

[Anonymous No.13320903]

Good stuff, op. Thanks

[Anonymous No.13321138]

>>13320863
>I DON'T (inherently) EXIST (In and of myself) LOOK AT ME I AM SO COOL

[Anonymous No.13321179]

>mental illness doesn't exist

When will this meme end. Sure maybe some of the classifications are wrong but there are crazy people out there and that is an issue needs to be addressed. You have to find some way of articulating these things if we're going to make progress on this front.

[Anonymous No.13321225]

>>13321138
What a dumb post. My issue was that his justification for calling psychology bullshit was its denial of an equally (if not more so) unreliable, impractical and unfalsifiable concept like "the soul". You don't improve an allegedly scientific field of enquiry by plugging in your ill-informed opinions on new-age spiritualism into it.

[Anonymous No.13321242]

>>13321179
So there is a sickness, not related to the body, (soul is not existing amirite?)
The psychotards are in agreement that the "mental" comes from what? The brain? So a mental disease is a disease of the brain and therefore it is not "mental" it is "physical"
You either have a soul and mental disease, or you deny the soul and then it is a bodily disease.
psychologists are redundant

>>13321225
Psychology was never a science.

[Anonymous No.13321260]

>>13321179
>crazy
You mean not socially useful?

[Anonymous No.13321270]

>>13321242
>Psychology was never a science
It may not be a particularly "effective" one given the issue of reproducible results, but as someone who clearly has no experience in the field I hardly think you're positioned to discredit it, especially if you're relying on a concept as flakey and indeterminate as "the soul" to support your claim. If you want to discredit something that is widely accepted as a science, don't rely on unfalsifiable metaphysical entities to make an argument, its retarded as fuck

[Anonymous No.13321282]

The "chemical imbalance" theory isn't just a straight up lie that psychiatrists tell their patients, it's wishful thinking. It's an assumption they need to be true because they built their entire discipline around it. When they give you drugs they don't know what the fuck they're doing which is they're always trying to experiment with peoples doses.

[Anonymous No.13321283]

>>13320844
>let me refute science with religion, that’ll show them!

[Anonymous No.13321297]

>>13321225
>>13321270
It is deliberately unscientific. Deliberately unfalsifiable. Psychology larps as a science. Looking for falsifiability in the metaphysical soul is looking at it from the perspective of a scientist. It can't be categorized or written down, it simply "is". Which is why feeling the soul is an inherent ability and not something you can learn in a classroom.

[Anonymous No.13321315]

Is there any good books about the Japanese psychoanalytic or psychological tradition?

[Anonymous No.13321325]

>>13321283
No religion here. The soul is metaphysical.

[Anonymous No.13321329]

>>13320844
>it is completely blind to the soul
Stopped reading there.

[Anonymous No.13321399]

>>13321297
>It is deliberately unscientific. Deliberately unfalsifiable.
Then don't use it, seriously. It's not that hard. there's plenty of other ways you could discredit the field of psychology instead of relying on a concept that many people will find intellectually untenable. If you want people to agree with you, argue a position that all people can accept regardless of their spiritual beliefs. What you've done is made an argument that is accessible only exclusively to those who don't need to be convinced of the soul's existence. For everyone else, everything you said in the OP is pure mumbo-jumbo. If your truth genuinely has some bearing on the reality of human psychology, then you should be able to communicate it in REAL TERMS, not baseless metaphysical speculation.

[Anonymous No.13321419]

So this is a bullshit book

[Anonymous No.13321421]

>>13321399
Then the problem lies with those people. They are materialists and can only see the world in front of them. If one believes metaphysics are true then they will have no problem accepting the existence of a soul.

[Anonymous No.13321498]

Should materialists and scientific positivists be classified as mentally ill? Mesdames et messieurs, Let's have a conference and officially declare these incorrect beliefs a mental illness.

[Anonymous No.13321504]

>>13321421
>If one believes metaphysics are true then they will have no problem accepting the existence of a soul
the truth-validity of metaphysics has no bearing whatsoever on the existence of the soul. And which metaphysics should I believe? It's not like there is one unified theory, I can accept a particular metaphysical belief and still deny the existence of the soul, depending on which one I choose. What you're ultimately saying is that your truth isn't universal. If it was, everyone would be able to hear it regardless of their beliefs. It would speak to the universal experience of being human, not relying on spooky ideas like "the soul". There is not a single point you've made throughout this thread that is implicitly, universally true, and I'm not going to take you on pure faith alone that what you're saying is right. Blaming others for your inability to put forward a watertight argument is nothing but lazy rhetoric that boils down to "if you don't accept my terms of debate, you're wrong and that's that".

[Anonymous No.13321516]

>>13321504
I could type up a long explanation of what the soul is but that's not the point of the thread. You either accept the existence of the soul or you don't.

[Anonymous No.13321526]

>>13320844
>the mind is in constant motion
absolutely every 'thing' is in constant motion, anon. Though tabs for [our own] convenience, there are no 'nouns' in nature, only a verb tabbed nominally 'extension' if Spinoza is to be believed, whom I mention because the Goethe quote is one of Goethe's many Spinoza-isms (Goethe never concealed the fact that he was a Spinozist btw). What effects this mental noun-tabbing? The constantly in-motion mind..
I really sense your will to be correct but 'soul' like it or not (and I believe one should like it) is what your argument is going to have to work toward and prove before drawing any conclusion that relies on it necessarily as a concept or otherwise. Begin with Spinoza's Ethics; youll find it both friendly and unfriendly so far as the direction wherein it seems (you) wish to travel is concerned but who knows? Youll perhaps change directions many times before concluding an honest inquiry.
My own problem with psychology concerns what it generally considers a grounds for health- what constitutes a healthy person? The answer turns out to be socio-political, that is not 'psychological' at all. Etc.

[Anonymous No.13321529]

>>13321504
I'm afried you are suffering from paranoid delusions, this is why your knowledge is limited to the senses.

>>13321498
Regards, Dr. Apu Apustaja

[Anonymous No.13321546]

>all the brain-dead materialists itt

[Anonymous No.13321628]

>>13321526
By 'soul' I mean a physiognomic Goethean/Spenglerian soul. By giving a person's soul a symbol like Goethe describes the leaf as the symbol of the soul of the plant or Spengler describes the souls of entire civilizations through intuitive physiognomy, you can understand everything about a thing. But this is highly personal. To give a symbol for my own soul it would be a lone man forever walking towards the sunset. I won't explain it but I think it gives a good summary of all my wants and needs in life, and I am perfectly content with who I am but also knowing who I am.

[Anonymous No.13321630]

Therapy is paying someone $60 an hour to convince you not to be such a shit head.

[Anonymous No.13321669]

>>13321516
Which means OP's entire argument hinges on whether or not the soul exists or not, and that's not helpful when you're trying to make a convincing case. It's leaving too many variables on the table. If you want to discredit psychology, just talk about the issue of reproducible results. Bringing in "the soul" is messy and plenty of people will reject your argument on that basis alone. Why do you want to impair your ability to reach and engage others with your ideas, anon?

>>13321529
Isn't it more paranoid to think that there's a ghost living in your head, telling you what to do and controlling all of your decisions? How is that any different to schizophrenia?

[Anonymous No.13321752]

>>13321242
>The line between mental and physical illness is blurry so nobody is mentally ill at all
God I hate people who try to argue from definitions like this, shut the fuck up

[Anonymous No.13321792]

The lack of variable control is what makes the observations so flawed in my book but science if it's truly a science should always leave room for correction and retraction and move towards the most objective of views possible

[Anonymous No.13321802]

>>13321628
I do think 'knowing' exceeds language; for instance one glance at a person's face (physiognomy) delivers more 'knowing' than perhaps one could express in a lifetime, and I mean this unironically. What (we) do with this knowledge is of course another matter: what's accepted, what's forgotten, what's dismissed (to one's probable detriment) entirely- and who knows why and by what means any of this is done! At any rate the leaf of the person is the face: some of the most attractive people (if one actually takes the time to look) become vacuous, some of the most unattractive extremely interesting if not lovable, etc. In other words, this is an acceptable application of the word 'soul'
I like your soul image (I don't think I have one despite being familiar with Spengler and very familiar with Goethe); I do have one for eternity but I think it's rather common (I developed it as an effort to understand the word when I was maybe six or seven years old, and it has kept with me since)- ocean water glittering to the horizon line at sunset.
If (you) want to be heard so as to affect change take care, anon. Youre more /lit/ than /psych/ or /phil/- which I think's a good thing, but then I'm in an all but nonexistent minority.

[Anonymous No.13321902]

>>13321802
It requires a certain poetic flair for this kind of thinking. I have read that Goethe's Metamorphosis of Plants could only have come from the mind of a poet and would be difficult to understand for others, which is why a lot of people are simply incapable of understanding the concept of a soul, religious or otherwise. I think it's a fascinating way of understanding something and can be applied to many things in life, as Spengler applied it to human culture. With enough time you would probably arrive at a suitable soul symbol of your own. The soul symbol /is/ who you are, not who you are supposed to be as psychological categories would have it.

[Anonymous No.13321953]

>>13321297
>It is deliberately unscientific. Deliberately unfalsifiable.
So is the concept of the soul.

[Anonymous No.13321993]

>>13321399
So everyone should be convinced by the means of Karl Popper to expose the pseudosciences?
That is not a world I see as producing much good and even more one I wouldn’t wanna live in.

[Anonymous No.13322002]

>>13321498
No one is a logical positivist anymore. That shit started dying even before Kuhn.
>materialist
why even bother

[Anonymous No.13322011]

>>13320844
don't even have to scroll down to know what OP's being hit with right now. hope there's at least a little variety to your hazing, man; i liked your post okay

[Anonymous No.13322038]

>>13321802
Holy Fuck, please read Kant you unenlightened romanticist.

[Anonymous No.13322046]

>>13320844
>in trying to categorize the mind, it is completely blind to the soul
stopped reading there, pseud nigger

[Anonymous No.13322056]

>>13321419
Would you recommend it (if only to be read in a detached, critical sort of way)? I just finished The Origin of Consciousness In the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, which was definitely top shelf theory-crafting and food for SF-thought. I enjoy reading books like these for entertainment rather than hard scientific inquiry.

[Anonymous No.13322092]

>>13321546
What should we read to bring our brains back to life?

>>13321630
Another poster here said something I liked: "Many forms of therapy are inherently middle class and just masturbation for everyone involved."

Does everything we've learned from ancient spiritual texts have a material core (what a Scooby Doo NPC character might call 'a perfectly logical explanation), or are all of our materialist theories hiding a spiritual core?

[Anonymous No.13322095]

>>13321993
No, you don't have to "expose" anything, just make your case without relying on faulty, nebulous terms to do it. OP's anti-psychiatric point in the third paragraph is a legitimate criticism, but everything else is deepak chopra-tier sophistry that ignores the real, embodied experience of mental illness. Regardless of whether or not you think a spiritual guide is better suited to help with certain things, I highly doubt a guru would know how to treat someone with schizophrenia, because their life cannot be understood through the reductive journey metaphor of "where they've come from" and "where they're going", because the embodied experience of schizophrenia couldn't be any less linear. I don't want us to become a world of neurotics on anti-depressants with a number of disorders to our name, but we don't have to go the complete opposite direction and descend into mystical placebos either.

[Anonymous No.13322102]

>>13321902
I have a copy of it somewhere- it's a small text, 60 or so pp, worth checking out.
What he does is view the plant sub specie aeternitatis (under the aspect of eternity) which btw is perhaps the grandest Spinoza-ism Goethe uses, as Faust is also saved by means of its heavenly employ! What it does is view the plant as a whole (from seed to seed) i.e. as BOTH a limited and as an unlimited verb, meaning as in constant motion through all its processes *focusing* on the development of the plant at the expense of its taxonomy, or its dynamics over its statics, or its physiology over its biology. If youre into Goethe youll like how it's done. A great mergence of both observational and philisophical science with poetry!

[Anonymous No.13322114]

>>13322095
>sophistry
I have to agree. To be honest, it isn't even traditional "sophistry" really - it's essentially bold-faced lying, which I'm not even sure is a formal rhetorical fallacy. (you could call it argument from contingency or from mysticism i guess; sorry to be an overly semantic asshole)

I do have a soft spot for the Deepak Chopras of the world, though. I don't think I'm the only one.

[Anonymous No.13322124]

>>13322092
>"Many forms of therapy are inherently middle class and just masturbation for everyone involved."
What do you think about Lacan's practise of encouraging the analysand to pay what they thought the service deserved? Even though you can get the same experience through catholic confession, AA meetings or even just talking to an impartial friend, I think it's a pretty neat idea. Forces the patient to be brutally honest with both themselves and the analyst about how beneficial they thought the service to be. He'd also cut appointments short very suddenly, because once that "aha!" moment of self realisation happens, the rest of the session is presumably just killing time.

[Anonymous No.13322125]

>>13322038
This is just a phase of admittedly non-philosophic thinking, anon. I've read the 2-and-a-half Critiques. The half represents The Groundwork read as opposed to The Prax Reason fwiw. Geez.

[Anonymous No.13322136]

>>13322114
>I do have a soft spot for the Deepak Chopras of the world, though
Despite my insistent materialism I still sided completely with him out of principle when he debated Dawkins (though that's not to say I don't think Chopra is a crook). Those types certainly have their use, particularly in baffling old, dusty, dull types who simply can't understand the experience of the mystical, which I'm not going to deny here.

[Anonymous No.13322185]

You forgot to add that most of it is ripped off from philosophy.

[Anonymous No.13322195]

>>13322124
I didn't even know Lacan did this. I should read more about his practice. It sounds like an interesting approach; he may have been counting on the fact that most bourgeois people wouldn't stiff an analyst (especially a celebrity like him), though, which at least attests to his understanding of middle class behavior.

>>13322136
I understand completely. The Selfish Gene is a good book, but the rest of Dawkins (especially his debates and other public appearances) makes me want to punch a wall. Anyone who begins a sentence with "As an intellectual, I think..." is inviting the world's dislike.

[Anonymous No.13322203]

You are a psychoanalyst OP

[Anonymous No.13322212]

>>13321498
Of course. Marlon Brando said most of the psychiatrists he visited were more crazy than their patients.

[Anonymous No.13322219]

>>13322124
>>13322195
Also: I'm happy to see that you've brought up AA. Its methods are widely criticized, but the critics' understanding of them are often imperfect (and acquired secondhand). I am not an addict, but applying stuff from AA to my life has been incredibly helpful. It's vastly underrated among the 'normal' people of the world.