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Sleeping in EQ · 10-26-2006, 08:55 PM

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?
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10-26-2006, 08:55 PM	#1
Sleeping in EQ Senior Member Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: The People's Republic of Monsanto Posts: 3,085	For our resident psychologists 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? __________________ __________________ "Do not despise the words of prophets, but test everything; hold fast to what is good; " 1 Thess. 5:21 (NRSV) We all trust our own unorthodoxies. Last edited by Sleeping in EQ; 10-26-2006 at 09:07 PM.