This section is devoted to re-defining psychic phenomena and the science of psychology, consciousness, and psychotherapy. We present the root principles of psychology and the paradigm that subtends psychologically based thinking and narratives. We contrast this paradigm with that of other fields of science such as physics and biology.
One fact that often passes unnoticed is that before anything else, the scientific act is a psychic phenomenon.
It has therefore all the properties of a psychic phenomenon: it is motivated by unconscious purposes, it has an unconscious finality, the subject draws self-interest from it, and it is subject to all distortions of reality due to inhibition, insensitivity, acceptability limits, distortion and delusion of perception, defence and autoprotection, unconscious selection and restriction of the perceived, emotional interference, and the automatic interpretation in terms of anthropomorphic and infantile patterns. The `object' of science one chooses is also motivated by self-protective, defensive and archaic need patterns.
Even the fundamental principles of what we call `science' in the occidental society are subject to this gross distortion without any possibility of noticing it since it is completely unconscious. The task of making it more conscious is a lengthy and awkward process accessible to only a very few of our proximates and it is but extremely astonishing that at least a part of that 'science' is at all a reasonably accurate model of our surroundings and sufficiently efficient for prediction purposes.
As it is impossible to achieve 'objectivity' and even though it may be ultimately possible it may not be desirable at all, and as it is impossible to perceive the world as it is (both from system theory and from the experience of deep psychotherapy) [see Perception >], we are therefore reduced to re-think science as an intense subjective phenomenon producing in the very best of cases a set of bound concepts having a certain correspondence with actuality, with little hope of gaining 'truth' or 'reality'. As we shall see, 'truth' is but a name for a personal hidden fact, and 'reality' is a psychic experience which has to do with precise sensations and feelings and has various levels and not absolute.
One ordinarily thinks that science is a piece of truth gained by repetitive observation, analysis, reproduction of experiments in definite conditions, and discretisation of complex phenomena into little bits of more accessible elementary phenomena. That is to say that we are conditioned to think in aristotelian, cartesian and bernardian terms without even knowing if these paradigms apply to the investigation at hand. It is readily shown from various pieces of evidence that none of these principles can be applied to living beings to gain insight of 'what is the case'. It can also be shown that the patterns of cartesian thinking are identical to the patterns of definite psychic disorders.
Most people in the occidental societies would think without discussing it that 'science' means: experimentally reproducible events, repeatability of the experiences, deductibility of one fact from another more general or more simple, and that causes entrain specific and non avoidable effects. One thinks without discussion that the reproduction of experiments in definite conditions, and the discretisation of complex phenomena into little units of more accessible elementary phenomena are a valid way of investigation. And also that objectivity is gained by repetitivity, that rational analysis is adequate for conclusions, and that the phenomenon under study may be made independent of its observer. Ordinary thinking takes for granted the exclusion of two different facts in space and time, and the exclusion of contrary propositions. Another assumption that is equally not discussed is that "what we see is what happens", that observation is a general way to know outer events, that seeing (perhaps with the aid of instruments) is the only mean of investigation, and that it is objective.
That is to say that we are conditioned to think in aristotelian, cartesian and bernardian terms without even knowing if these paradigms apply to the investigation at hand (from the essays of Aristotle, René Descartes and Claude Bernard). And worse, we are quite unable to think in other terms, since our language is itself structured along these lines. And also to perceive with other senses since we are from our birth canalised into 'seeing' instead of 'feeling'. Conditioning is itself also a psychic process characteristic of a known set of disorders.
The structure of our languages (of latin and anglo-saxon roots) is based on paradigms which are seldom taken into account as thought limiting devices. Jean Piaget has gone a long way to show that we perceive things or events only if they have a wording ready. Language structures the world of what we are interested in and makes the rest invisible (Whorff, Bertalanffy). There is no naive perception.
The world of events for which we have no words simply does not exist.
This fact is very crucial since 'thinking', then, circles inside the prison of language. This is why scientific people create new descriptive languages such as mathematics, logic, formal languages and artificial organisatory languages. So do the creators of healing systems and religions, languages usually referred to as 'esoteric', alchemical or mythic.
The most important paradigms implied in the occidental languages are:
None of these points is obvious in itself. Although there is much evidence that the implications of these language structural constraints are false they are used as correct without discussion.
It is good to highlight the major structural assumptions of our language. Occidental languages imply: the absolute separation of subject and object; the irreducible separation between body and self; the confusion between reality and mental production (thoughts and dreams); the unquestionable objectivity of seeing.
In psychology, we are aware of much evidence contrary to these paradigms which have to be abandoned some way or the other. This may imply the creation of a language adapted to psychology, or the use of our mother language in a special way to alleviate this problem.
Science is actually not defined by 'seeing', nor by 'turning beings into objects', nor by 'repetitive events', nor by 'discretisation of objects of study', nor by 'logical deduction' nor even 'thinking', very far from it. All these procedure are readily seen in psychology as defensive ways of the psyche, and therefore pertain not to 'science' but to anxiety reducing schemes and disorders.
A more humble recent attitude among scientists has reduced science to what it actually is, i.e. a symbolic model system of the actuality.
A scientific theory is a model of reality. This model is a symbolic system, which by means of a uniform projection rule corresponds to the actual system under study.
Figure Science_1
This model may be characterised by its properties:
that is to say elements in the theory space are figures (abstract entities) of the actuality space
which means that elements of the theory space are bound or linked with one another
To be valid, the model has to be of extended range, it has to be consistent and encompass all known phenomenon in its range of application.
Science is got from 'consistency in the widest range of phenomena'.
all known phenomenon is a critical point here, since in psychology, one of the fundamental functions of the subject is to avoid knowing what is the case in itself, for safety and/or beneficial reasons. Avoidance carries automatically the selection of experiences (both personal and external) which are the only acceptable ones. Therefore, a theory based on only acceptable experiences cannot be of sufficient range to be valid since it seeks no contradiction with its own unconscious assumptions. Science should be based on the contrary on all experiences possible and especially here on non-acceptable experiences so as to have a range of sufficient extent. In this view, out-of-the-ordinary experiences and confrontation with people of widely different systems of society are paramount to psychic science.
The tendency of selecting only acceptable experiences should not be taken lightly, even in physics or biology, since when one uses a paradigm, such as the cartesian for instance, one is unaware of its assumptions, and tend to produce observations [see Perception >], experiments, deductions, and interpretations only in accordance with this paradigm, unconsciously for one has no other way of perceiving and thinking. It therefore produces material only to confirm the paradigm instead of confronting it. This is called the automatic satisfaction of unconscious assumptions. This is why cartesian thinking is a reflection of our collective (ethnic) psychic structure before being a method.
Science begins with what overrides the unconscious assumptions.
range of application is also a critical point. Complexologists demonstrate that one field of investigation has its own laws which cannot be reduced to the laws of another field, and that they are not analogous to those of another field. Thus defining irreducible fields of investigation, such as [physics] _ [biology] _ [psychology] for instance. There are some bridges between fields but one has to make sure before any research that one does not use the methods of investigation and the methods of theorising of one field into another, a basic error called incongruity.
A model has validity only if its range of application is very wide, since a 'law' which has a too narrow range of validity is not of general extent and contradicts the second principle.
The model has to be of simpler constitution than the actual. It has to reduce the number of terms with which it expresses the actual by at least one order of infinitude.
Science has to do with extracting from the infinite number of situations at hand the very few constant and important patterns. One constant pertaining to a class of events reduces all these events to one constraint, thus reducing an infinite class to a single figure, motif, or pattern. This is the main purpose of science.
This principle is called the principle of parsimony, or principle of simplicity: science is the reduction of the complex to the simple.
One may condense already condensed model systems into more condensed systems.
One principle (= one constant) reduces an infinite set of laws to only one single pattern.
One law (= one constant) reduces an infinite set of formulae to only one single pattern.
One formula (= one constant) reduces an infinite set of events to only one single pattern.
Therefore, we may se that there are embedded planes of increasing degree of generality, each upper one being an order of infinitude less complicated than the lower one.
In principle, there is always the possibility of gaining an order of infinitude, i.e. making a jump in the generality of the theory. However, although this is the main point of science, such jumps are rare and more or less define an epoch at the same time it sums up its effort.
One goes from the actual, elaborates its constant and important patterns, then elaborates the constants hidden behind the former constants, etc. up to the more general principle possible. Then, from the topmost principle, one can produce detailed consequences, which has to coincide with the actual phenomena: this last process is called verification. Therefore, by a constant double process of induction and deduction, one may validate the principles, postulates or assumptions by their prediction value.
Figure Science_2
However, one has to be aware of the self-predicting capacity of the unconscious process: inner theorisation works as a mechanism of 'defence' (or autoprotection) and produce 'projections' (interpretations), that is an automatic filtering of the field of actuality, and the automatic attribution of what one bears to the outer world.
Any theory serves inner (unconscious) purposes to his promoter, either self-protective or beneficial or both. Therefore, there is no theory devoid of self-interests.
One may argue that by multiplying the number of investigators, the defences being at random, we would come to some objectivity. The converse is in fact true: one major procedure of 'defence' (called generalisation or normalisation) is to collectivise and hide in social attitudes recognised as 'normal'. 'Defences' tend to cluster and socialise in groups. Therefore, accepted theories, principles or paradigms, may only indicate the trend of certain social patterns, and furthermore of collectivised disorder patterns (socialised disorders and their self-protective camouflage) and not 'truth' nor 'reality'.
Any theory serves inner (unconscious) purposes to his college of advocates, either self-protective, beneficial or both. There is no theory devoid of social interests.
This is the point where one has to use the range principle: a theory has to 'explain' the range of experiences of other social groups, so as to minimise the operative and automatic fulfilling effects of the defences socialisation process.
applicability thus depends of the degree of generality of the theory.
The model being a system, although symbolic, it is characterised by the link between elements. It has to reflect the actual linkage mechanism in the actuality. Elements may be Beings or Events. Links (between open subsystems) may be material exchange or information exchange. Material exchange obeys the material laws of physics in ordinary space-time. They are the laws of motion of material bodies. Information exchanged by means of matter and/or energy follows the same laws with some adaptation with respect to information theory. However, it may be acknowledged that information need not be of material support. This is the essence of psychic phenomena, direct interchange of information out of any material support. It is highlighted mainly by the phenomena of transference, dreams and trance.
Our psyche seem to be able to analyse events along only two processes: the rational process and the sentiment process.
It should be recalled here that the only events which are present to us are the inner events, the outer events not being readily accessible.
There seems to be the only two aspects of the world that we can uncover and use for our lives. The rational is an inner projection of the elementary laws of matter; the sentiment is the inner projection of the laws of living beings. Whether those process are an 'introjection' (taken inside) of the actual world laws, or on the contrary are an interpretation of the outer by inner built in mechanisms is at debate. The probable is that as in all systems there is a double way adequation between our inner tools and the outer world. However, the extent of this adequation is not known nor knowable.
Material events run in causal chains. Complex material events function as intricate network of influences, but may be ultimately reduced to simple causal chains. They are reflected by the laws of motion in space-time. They are analysable by rational procedures.
Living events function in contiguity networks. Complex living events follow the laws of intrication which may not be reducible to causal chains. They are reflected by the laws of evocation. They are analysable by sentiment procedures.
Our psyche seems to be limited to the investigation, integration and theorisation of events in the material range, following the laws of causality (of the rational), and events in the living range following the laws of evocation (of the sentiment).
Most scientific discoverers when interviewed tell that their experience of discovery is one of intense concentration, bringing very specific states where the outer world vanishes from their awareness, new planes of awareness open, and ultimate clarity happens where 'things' wide apart for us tend to link to each other in a special way. They are in a state of very active psychic activity, a state of vacuum with respect to the ordinary world, but of intense perception with respect to the symbolic world of invisible bonds between 'things' or 'events' or 'facts'.
Most would agree that discovery is not a process of deduction by reason, and analysis, but of sudden change of perception of the world due to some personal inner modification, usually freeing the thinking process of its ordinary bonds and putting self in a widely different position with respect to the problem at hand. Analysis is used before the discovery to try and put things in a certain order and collect a wide field of substance, and after the discovery to put some sort of 'logic' into an otherwise intuitive process in order to be able to talk about it and put it into the maze of already known phenomena.
Furthermore, it appears that important discoveries and formulations usually take place at different locations in the world at about the same time, as if new patterns of science would come from the same source into the field of awareness of the most ready researchers. This is true also of new life patterns as shown by Rupert Sheldrake in its observation of the morphogenetic fields.
This phenomenon is very close to trance, which we discuss in another page. We recall here that trance is the state of transference by excellence, a state where contents fly from one being to another directly without boundaries.
This type of experience has led some psychologists, Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung in the first place, to the conclusion that deduction and induction are not the process of science in itself, but that of transmission and education. Science tend to come by sheer revelation for individuals who have developed a sufficiently acute sensitivity to some sort of phenomena extraneous to the field of ordinary experience. The conditions for the development of that sensitivity are discussed in another page.
This is very close to the gnostic theory of science, or philosophy as it was once called. According to this theory, all knowledge, or even better all 'knowing', science in modern terms, come to the prepared individual from outer sources under a state of trance. It is put into worldly form, art or science, or religion or philosophy, by its recipient who is aware that a great phenomenon, surpassing him takes place.
It will be acknowledged that this view overrides the problem of the observation-deduction paradigm which psychology demonstrates not to be able to lead to 'science'.
Psyche means breath, i.e. vitality, the mysterious property which gives life to animated beings and separates the world of the material from the world of the living.
Psyche also means soul, core, inner, i.e. the private mysterious part of our being which is neither attainable by others nor alienable, and both experiences and acts our body in the world of encounters with other beings.
Therefore, psychology, the discourse (logos) on psychic phenomena is a discourse on the soul, on the hidden core of our activity, or as we may say in modern terms, on the unconscious realm, and on the anima, the substance of our motivations or activation or vitality.
Psychology is the science of the inner processes and motivations of the living phenomenon of the human.
By extension and from experience, we may also say that all living beings are subject to psychic phenomena; this has an importance in the system theory of the psychic. Definitions following ideas such as 'theory of behaviour' or 'theory of the mind' are not proper since they already imply restrictive notions about what is to be studied. Psychology is apart from biology which is the science of the living reduced to material bodies. Physics is ultimately the science of what can be 'objectized'. Living beings cannot be objectized.
The root of all psychic phenomena seem to be double: vitality given to some beings on one hand and, order given to living phenomena which are at variance with the stochastic phenomena of physics. Note that both these properties are in some way opposed to the two first principles of thermodynamics (which apply to physical, inanimate objects) of conservation of energy for closed systems and the inevitable rise of entropy (compulsory return to chaos). This entrains that:
Naturally, this imply that psychic activity is not of the physical, or is beyond the physical, since if it was, it would also obey the first and second principles. This is a matter of high controversial impact in materialistic societies (which deny all but the physical), although there are a great number of experiences which advocate for this fact. We may also point that denying the non-physical when one is a living creature experiencing a psychic event is a psychic act worth studying since it is highly self-contradictory.
Our proposal is thus:
Life proceeds from two complementary properties, Vitality and Order.
Since these two properties do not obey the fundamental physical principles ruling all physical phenomena, one is led to the conclusion that those are psychic phenomena taking place out of the physical space. Therefore, Vitality and Order are of psychic nature, not of physical nature.
There is however a side of physics which do not obey these principles, that of the information. In principle, information do not convey or do not need energy to be 'produced' or 'move' and do not obey the first and second principles. In the physical world, information is conveyed by physical means, thus being part of the energy and entropy principles, but this does not need to be the rule if some other mean of conveying the information is at hand. Psychic phenomena may be of pure informational type, and may use non-physical procedures to manifest and act on matter.
There is another corner of physics where the materialistic law are at check: quantum mechanics. An atom is given a sort of rule to prevent the electrons to radiate and collapse into the nucleus as would produce ordinary physical laws. This means that a certain order is given to the atom which gives it a precise form (the place of the orbits of the electrons), and a possibility of being permanently active. Furthermore, this law giving stability to atoms is given everywhere at the same time, it does not 'propagate' in physical space, it is just a constraint or distortion of the ordinary physical laws given to all atoms everywhere at any time (ubiquity principle). This quantum law is not of the physical space, it is a law of say a metaspace giving form to the physical; it is as if a law in an adjoint space was giving 'orders' to atoms in the physical space. The quantum quantity (the Schrödinger constant) is not a physical property, it is a meta-physical property ruling our physical universe.
This does not mean that quantum properties are identical with psychic properties, but we may say that
Quantum rules are to the microphysical world as the psychic rules are to the biological world.
By definition, psychology cannot be objective, since its investigation is that of the self itself. It is demonstrated in system theory, and it is widely confirmed by therapy that one can perceive nothing but self. And paradoxically, that one cannot perceive self, but by exceptional procedures. Psychology stems from this constraint:
The only possible investigation is the inner events of the self.
We shall not try and produce here definitions of the 'self' and the 'I', since this is a difficult matter, we use it as a common fact of the individual which is self-defined.
Whatever our striving, all encounter with the outer world, which may exist independently of us, is but a reflection of ourselves. All interaction with the outer, whether material or living beings, produces a reaction in us, which is the only perceivable event. Our only reality is not the outer world, but what we make of the outer world. Furthermore, it is readily shown by basic experiences that perception is produced: we actively seek in the outer world, filter and organise our system of sensations, only to the purpose of seeking the release of our inner tensions, whether instinctual, acquired and/or memorised from early experiences. Perception is never passive, it is unconsciously driven, choiced and selected, and therefore a reflection of covert interests.
Therefore, the science of psychic phenomena has to obey the rules of scientific discourse (not the cartesian discourse which is not applicable to living beings) and define its field of interest as the 'subject' itself, or the psyche, or rather the psychic process itself. We thus propose a recentering of the purpose of psychology.
Psychology is the science of the psychic events in the psychic space and of self-observation.
The only accessible events to the I are the processes of the I itself and its subprocesses. What we call the outer world is not attainable, it is a construct of our psyche and but a reflection of ourselves.
This has specific consequences which makes psychology a unique system of thought.
As every science, psychology starts with observation, but in this case the only possible observation is that of self, that is we have to start with the experience of oneself. Observing the other is of no help here.
As most of our lives are guided by the avoidance of the painful resurgence of past recorded material, the basic experience of self is avoidance. It is the avoidance of our past reality which is to us the only reality until we reach a point where it is partly disactivated. This fact is called here the original archaic delusional process. It is the automatic delusion caused by the undissolved archaic events seeking release and checking release at the same time.
If we wish to experience anything other than our avoidance schemes, we have to enter a process of unfolding the archaic memories recorded in our bodies, re-living them, freeing them of their active (painful and fearful) content, and free at the same time a fraction of our perception (freedom from the past activated perception). This process is lengthy, the outcome is dubious, and takes confronting with experiences foreign from the ordinary, since ordinary settings are constructed by our avoidance schemes.
Freedom from the imprisonment of the archaic delusional process takes one into non-ordinary experiences, and the need for a special environment to be able to bear the process, and to discern old reality from present reality.
This adventure which in the end authorises a (partial if not total) dissolution of the archaic delusional process is common to all traditions in all ethnic groups; it may be called the philosopher's path, the healer's path, the man-of-science's path, or the initiate's path as one wishes. It has also been named in modern terms self-actualisation (Abraham Maslow) or individuation (Carl Jung). Here we call it simply transformation. Without this transformation, the individual is unable to have access to the reality (or at least to the fields of reality we are interested in, those of the unconscious) of the psychic processes. Therefore, we shall deem here that psychology is the discourse of those transformed persons.
Reality is always somewhat relative. It depends of the depth of feeling which can be reached by the individual, either in the present or in the mean, which we may describe as:
Transformed persons have a more or less permanent access to the 3rd to 4th degree. Initiates have temporary access to the 5th and 6th degree.
As talk is not always possible, due to the restraints of common language, one has also to provide for other means of expression. The basic unit of communication being the sign, we may use it to mean exchange of information.
Psychology is the result of self-investigation.
Ultimately, psychology is the symbolic display or signs (discourses and attitudes) of transformed persons, having undergone extreme conditions, the only ones to have access to the deeper psychic processes.
These discourses are obviously at variance, but they have many points in common which are the keys to human universal constants. Ethnological differences have to be taken into account since the archaic structuration is different in the major ethnologic clusters. One has to think in terms of ethnological unconscious processes rather than of a universal collective unconscious.
Every psychic event is a unique event. It is not reproducible. It is not repeatable nor by the I itself nor by any experiment.
Therefore, cartesian-bernardian methods of repeatability do not apply. Since all experiences are distinct and not reproducible, psychology does not express the common features of a group of individuals, nor the common contents of their unconscious, which is impossible since they are all different. Sociology does, however, express those common features using statistics and mean values. Psychology of the collective (or rather ethnic) unconscious expresses the common part of our unconscious due to social common practices concerning neonates, infants and children. The integration of the individual and the collective into one psychic unit is a fundamental motivation of our lives and is the result of transformation.
On the contrary, psychology fully acknowledges the unicity and validity of unique personal experience. What is common in our lives is not the facts or the contents of our psyches, but the immutable processes to which we are submitted. Thus, in accordance with complex systems theory, psychology can be only a discourse on the processes. Single events, therefore, may be evaluated only in terms of general processes, although displaying unicity of experience.
Psychology does not express the features of our individual lives, nor the contents of our psyches, for which there are no constants, but the regularity of a few global psychic processes we are submitted to.
Without interactions with the outer world, and mostly with the other beings, the experience of self would amount to almost zero. Encounters are the by-product of vitality, which activates the body through instincts of self-sustaining, curiosity, exploration, affection and reproduction.
The basic experience is the experience of the other as another individual concerned with self-interests at variance from ours. It challenges our psyche and pushes for progress. In fact, we are never separated from others psychically, whatever the distortions and troubles of our system of communication. We feel ourselves only if others interact with us. Our psychic processes are activated by encounters, which are actively sought, therefore becoming conscious (more or less). This has led a number of theoreticians to say that the psyche (or rather the experience we have of it) is only the product of interaction [see Harry Stack Sullivan]. It is in accordance with the process principle: we do not see the flower, we experience ourselves seeing the flower.
Psychology is embedded in system theory. And gains from it. Psyche is seen as a sub-system, a part of greater systems. It is an open informative system, receiving and emitting information both by the biological body in its encounters with the material world, and from other psychic systems through transference. It is activated by the principle of vitality and organised by the principle of order, both of which come from a greater system it is part of.
It obeys the laws of open systems, the most important of which are for us:
Consciousness stems from the organisation of the psychic system into levels, one having information on the other. These levels can be approximately be deduced from therapy where progressive consciousness is gained. There are however more difficult problems:
the simple problem of consciousness is why one part of our system may be aware of what is the case in another part
the difficult problem of consciousness is why are we conscious of all that at all, that is what makes us the centre of some sort of information, what are our interests in it, or why are we interested in its outcomes, to what purpose, and what is the non-I.
In psychology, the difficult problems may be stated as such:
And the somehow simpler problems are:
All physical and biological systems obey the principle of reaction. It seems up to now that psychic systems do equally so. It may be stated here as:
When one acts on a (psychic) system, it reacts in a way so as to oppose the action to which it is submitted.
This lead to the principle of 'defence' against another, and of 'revenge' or return of the act onto his author and seek a possible return to a sort of (dynamic) 'equilibrium'.
This is also the reason why when we want to influence a living being or a living system directly, the result is the opposite of what we want to produce. This is very apparent in medicine and in the ecology of modern societies. It is also true in psychology and is the root reason of the failure of cognitive and behavioural based therapies. One has to think of an individual or collective psyche as an ecological complex multivariable system (the number of variables being very great): if one acts directly on an unwanted feature, the whole systems displaces its point of functioning and reveals a host of new problems for which we have no clues.
From the above summary, it will be apparent that psychology cannot be investigated using the old aristotelician-cartesian-bernardian paradigm. It is shown elsewhere that it is not appropriate either to biology and even to physics. Materialism brings cartesianism and reciprocally. But our society seems to begin to recognise that we are not material beings, whatever the obvious very strong reaction to cling to this old way of thinking. The antecedence of the psychic and the foremost importance of interaction process have yet to be fully acknowledged. The persistence of archaic recordings and its very strong filtering effect has to be fully taken into account in every field of science. The covert motives of scientists percolates everywhere and are very apparent to the psychologist. The political issues underlying research and its applications to medicine, industry and welfare in particular have roots in the archaic and collective psyche and presses for the production of 'theories' devoted to the immediate satisfaction of self-interests rather than real science. Another important point is that we automatically take the discourse of 'who feeds us', an unconscious procedure used to reduce the splitting of our self, and that what we call 'science' in the west is invisibly coloured by the discourse of industrialisation, or hyperproductivity.
These facts begin to peek out of the strong armour of orthodox thinking and has led seekers to discuss the invisible principles which led to such a society and its theorisation; it gives now a voice to a new paradigm in which the ways of our psyche is acknowledged and taken into account, and the illusions of 'truth', 'objectivity' and 'analysis' (discretisation) are put into perspective as simple defensive patterns. This puts modern thinking in a past era, and opens a new way of thinking and formulating our modelling of nature.
At the dawn of this new view of 'science', this post-modern paradigm is in its infancy and has to be used with prudence and respect. However, all the results of cartesian thinking have to be questioned and put under examination if one does not wants to reinforce the political bias of science and applications and produce ideas and procedures reflecting only known archaic disorders.
Psychology is not an isolated science: since the psyche is an open system exchanging information and energy with the biological and physical world at one boundary, with the world of other individuals and groups at another, and with the world of the mysterious forces and constraints which drive us at a third boundary, it has several bridges with the biological, with the social and with the religious although not reducible to any of those. Therefore, following the principle of extension, psychology exists as a science only with respect of its consistency with biology, ethology, anthropology, ethnology, social sciences, archaeology, mythology, religious and healing sciences. It has also to be acknowledged that several ethnic groups exist on the planet, having practices of conception, childbirth and raising children at variance, thus producing different collective psychic structurations. These of course are irreducible to one another, they produce different systems of living, of thinking and language, and different 'sciences'. They also produce disorders of different kinds, different defensive systems and different systems of cure and socialisation. One can gain from the examination of other groups but not by borrowing their practices blindly. One has to recognise at first that only the full experience in the long term of those practices lead to their comprehension, not external observation and analysis in our system of thinking.
We must stress again that psychology does not come from academic learning, thinking or observing others and analysing them. Those procedures come under the cartesian paradigm and do not lead to actuality nor correct modelling.
Nor does the evidence gained from self-examination under the conditions of ordinary living. This is not a valid base for psychology, since these procedures whether highly socialised or not are readily seen as defensive patterns of the psyche. Therefore, 'normal' thinking, behaviour, or motivation has to be re-thought as 'defensive', 'self-protective', or 'infantile' as psychoanalysis shows. Normal and widely accepted patterns of living are but the mise en scène (stage directing) necessary for the powerful inner motions to try and release while being deemed 'socially acceptable' at the same time.
All norms had to be re-thought in terms of the archaic disturbances before they can even be used at all in scientific thinking.
This compels the authentic investigator to pass through unusual experiences, and especially through those who lead to uncover of the archaic psyche, the collective psyche, and even in some cases the accessible part of the 'beyond'. This will most certainly take tremendous courage, effort, bring one or several crisis, and fight against self-preconceptions before insight into the matter of psychology be gained. This is why the experience of exceptional individuals who have undergone severe conditions and thorough re-framing is paramount in constructing psychology. One has to listen to them carefully before they are dismissed as mystics, schizophrenics, or charlatans in order to maintain a normative consensus of little psychological value.
Abraham Maslow was the first to point out the value of paroxystic experiences as insight gaining events. So does the postmodern thinking. And he showed how the most advanced individuals we know of have all undergone this adventure. At any rate, their experiences have to be explained by psychology and their words taken into account before one stabilises a theory of the living.
Only by passing through the terrific experience of reliving one's own archaic life can an idea of our psychic life be gained. There is no bypass for this. Then, a new view of the world of others emerges and psychology begins.
One sees but oneself. However, we are in contact with our own actuality only in our conscious part. The unconscious part of ourselves produces an active device distorting everything and creating a stage to the benefit of our unconscious purposes.
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