Psychology

Psychology has been around as a formal science for over 100 years. But it hasn’t escaped its original focus. Born in the laboratories of medicine, it has always been defined as the science of psychopathology, meaning what’s wrong with us. Perceived in this way, psychology has never been a major contributor to a general definition of human nature; we think about ourselves psychologically only when something’s gone amiss.
Indeed we are the only creature on this planet who transcends its physical life beyond a primitive self-awareness, by being consciously aware of itself and so much more on many different levels; thus able to produce all of our electronic marvels. It’s that spiritual life of the mind, heart, imagination, intuition, etc., referring here to our real soul – the human psyche – with all of its marvelous parts that enable us to understand, and to make use of, so much of what is happening around us.
But there is a huge hurdle for us to circumvent before we achieve this goal. It is our passion for social experience founded upon our firm belief that two or more people together is better than one. When precisely the opposite is true. The genius of the human species is our individuality. All new original things come from one person at a time. Groups of any size only imitate that wisdom – but only after reducing it to its lowest common denominator. Groups dilute everything they touch. It’s both their virtue – giving us respite – and their principle vice – by reducing our genius to the dumb wisdom of a mob.
When there is nothing that happens in our collective experience that isn’t simply an imitation of what we already know as individuals. That group-celebration can be encouraging, supportive and fun. Though in our terror at being so separate and alone as spiritual individuals, we desperately treat the social group as something much more powerful – a parental entity capable of guiding us to better places – the “moral majority”. When this entity is really a headless monster. We pretend to give it a head by providing it leadership; but that’s mostly pretense no matter how clever that person may be. The problem is that groups don’t think; they act. And leaders don’t change that; yet we treat them as if they, by their thinking efforts, can make groups think and produce change.
The huge advantage of addressing human problems in the individual form is beyond comprehension. The most obvious boon of this altered way of coping with human suffering is the elimination of violence. It’s true even today that the extent to which people address their emotional experience internally, instead of inflicting it together, socially upon some issue or cause, measures the extent to which violence has already been partly defeated.
Eventually we will realize that studying the self as an ecosystem, which contains both beneficial as well as contradictory parts, is the most important kind of education we will ever undertake or accomplish. This self-learning will no longer have the sting that “illness” attaches to it; thus it will no longer be called “psychotherapy”. Instead it will become the core of all education, funding every other kind of exploration with the wisdom of self-knowledge.
So what will psychology become in the 21st century? It will attempt to define a new concept of human nature that is entirely secular.
For More information, book appointment with Dr. JNG Sreenivas at www.titikshaastropsychology.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com