Science Vs. Psychology

Obviously by now many of you have been aware of my arguments towards Esoteric studies and their comparison to Science. I have recently come to the conclusion that before that we can even address these concepts any further, we need to first establish Psychology's relation to Science, as it is Psychology that would be the field of study that would be the doorway to the Esoteric studies such as Alchemy, Astrology, and yes, even Magick (not to mention other paranormal activity such as NDE's). If anyone wants to dispute this last statement of mine, I would like to reference you to Carl Jung, who I find to be the greatest 20th century Psychologist. He has a very thorough background into relating Psychology to the previously mentioned Esoteric studies (especially Alchemy).

But as far as I am concerned, it seems that even Psychology isn't referred to as a real Science by most mainstream Scientists (including Writer). Before we can get back to the Esoteric discussion, I would like to analyze and dissect the difference between Science and Psychology, and why Psychology can't be referred to as a real Scientific study.

I also feel that this discussion will have more relevance for people and give off less "hokum" vibes than my Esoteric concepts for now. I'm not in any way dismissing any of what i have said about that stuff, but I am guessing that people may be able to connect better first to the concept of Psychology.

So...how is Psychology different than Science and why can't it be respected as its own legitimate field of Science?

 

This is a very interesting post. At the top of my head, I would say that psychology isn't a science as there are no universal truths involved....if something bad happened to two different people in early childhood.....there might be two different developments and reactions to it.....in later adulthood, for example.

 

So anything not repeatable is considered not Science? How about the Weather? Weather is hardly repeated exactly, if ever. No day is precisely the same conditions as the last, and if this does happen, it's very rare.

 

So all of Psychology is simply flawed? When it comes to the Scientific study of the brain, Science just can't tap in to making it a hard Science? Why can't Science take the ropes in a similar way that they did with Chemistry as it pushed aside Alchemy? Why is Psychology an un-explorable area in Science? Just because of the ethics alone?

This all just seems a little too generalized. I get that a lot towards my responses, so i have no problem pointing it out to someone else. Pseudo-Science, Soft Science, Hard Science. I thought something was either just Scientific or not. Not all of these gray areas. Doesn't Science pride itself in drawing the lines to remove these gray areas? If so, then why call Weather and Psychology a "soft science"? It should either be considered Scientific, or not Scientific.

 

Psychology is a multi-faceted discipline, some of it is considered real science like Biological Psychology and Physiological Psychology, which are essentially subdivisions of neuroscience.

Other aspects of Psychology lay down foundations which come across as more philosophical such as Maslow's Hierarchy of needs, so the theories are generally not as controlled as they are for hooking someone up to an fMRI and measuring brain activity or some of the conditioning types of studies. A lot of these Second tier type Psychology theories are probably on par with disciplines like sociology or anthropology.

Psychoanalysis which was popularized by Freud and Jung draws from a lot of ideas that cannot really be substantiated by strict scientific means, however that's not to say some of their concepts did not lead to either refinement or an impact in science. For instance, Freud developed or popularized the notion that the mind had multiple subconscious layers, he had it (in the simplified form) as ID, Ego, Super Ego. While we cannot locate any place in the brain that these locations actually exist, which might prevent any scientists that's a physicalist from calling this true science, it's clear that our minds our influenced by subconscious motives, actions, behaviors, etc.

 

Yes. Whether on a Psychological or Spiritual level, I would argue that the Ego can't be found because it's not so much a 'thing' as it is a verb. It is a movement of habituation and identification. And like you said, the Subconscious can't be found as a physical 'thing' either but to say that the Subconscious doesn't exist because of this is rather silly.

 

Have you ever read any of the writings of Stanislav Grof? If not you should, as he deals with just this kind of stuff.

 

these questions of yours have already been dealt with in the other threads you have created along this vein.
thedope answered you rather succinctly about a lot of this, but it went over your head.

Chemistry didn't "push aside" alchemy, alchemy became chemistry.
same holds true for most other similar esoteric schools of thought. You want to be an alchemist, then go study chemistry.

what you are failing to see is that Jung tapped into the rudimentary archetypes common to human psyche for whatever reason and showed the correlation between them and ancient esoteric practices.
It isn't that Jung is saying that this mystical bullshit and magik is real and true, but rather he examined the emotional and psychological needs fulfilled by such practices, beliefs and "shamans".

so are you going to keep on creating these threads until the laws of the universe change to accommodate your idea of "Magik" or will you eventually understand this shit?

 

Yah makes sense, I will note that the ego Freud mentions is different than the ego generally characterized in spiritual use. Freud's ego is basically synonymous with the conscious part of mind. The aspect of mind which receives input and synthesizes information from the subconscious animalistic ( overwhelmingly sexual in Freud's work) part of the mind as well as the subconscious moral, conscience part of the mind.


Freud was writing and practicing at a time before the benefit of knowledge of neurotransmitters and modern brain imagining devices, so his understanding of how a mind develops neurosis was likely significantly different than what we understand today. However even with that said, it seems there is a significant portion of people who do not respond well to medications which supposedly target specific receptors for their ailments, so I think with this century psychology/neuroscience will either need to develop compound understanding of neurosis and disorders, where we see how primary neurotransmitter dysfunction influences and is influenced by other parts of the brain or perhaps a holistic treatment utilizing both the pharmacological treatments as well as the behavioral/psychoanalytic treatment. I see the aforementioned ethical issues MeAgain touched upon as a significant roadblock to developing the former style, which is really unfortunate if ultimately it advances our knowledge in helping people. The latter style is what we are seeing in psychedelic psychotherapy to promising results in efficacy.

 

If you've ever heard of the "Sceptical Chymist" you would know that it was more like pushed aside. Not only did Scientists push it aside, so did the religious ones. It came to a point where you would basically be hung or stoned to death if you were discovered to be an alchemist "heretic". This is why I believe that had the Philosopher's Stone and the discovery of true exoteric transmutation been actually discovered, it would have been kept tightly sealed, as creating your own Gold would literally destroy any past or present economy. The government may have used both Science and Religion to attack exoteric Alchemy for this very reason. And all the way to the present day, it's viewed as "fantasy" all the while that everyone overlooks that it may have been purposefully intended for us to view it that way.

And I disagree with your statement about Jung. Showing the correlation between them and esoteric practices isn't dismissing the esoteric practices, it's showing how they can be looked at from a psychological 20th century perspective, as they are both talking about the exact same thing, just using slightly different language (which is expected, since it's different centuries). You can't argue that one perspective is true and the other isn't. Besides, Alchemy (the esoteric/internal form) became a huge aspect of his dream interpretation. He basically stumbled upon it and it showed him to realize that Alchemy was dealing with the exact same things that he himself was dealing with. He didn't write a HUGE book called "Psychology and Alchemy" just to show that there's no legimitacy to Alchemy. Sorry.

 

Yes, perhaps the latest return of therapeutic Psychedelics could be a key bridge.

 

because, well....human beings

 

I can agree with this. I wonder if like guerillabedlam said, if the willing participants in therapeutic psychedelic experiments could somehow be set up with the scientific method?

 

Yes but in no way did Jung say "Magik" is real, that alchemy is real and base metals can be changed into gold, or any of the other mystical crap you go on about.

All he did was apply modern psychological terms to the archetypes and what they represented, but that does not mean he lent legitimacy to magik or alchemy.

it's ok though, by now you have so firmly entrenched yourself in these beliefs that I doubt any type of discussion on these forums will make one iota of difference to you.


maybe they need to change your meds

 

So, basically he projected his internal self onto the archetypes and came up with his own language of interpretation of the timeless archetypes, which is EXACTLY what he argues that the alchemists were also doing.

Just because he's changing the language doesn't mean that the alchemists and him weren't talking about the exact same thing. Therefore, if one of them is legitimate, then so is the other one. Just because it goes by a different name changes nothing.

Why is this so difficult for you to understand? It's only your predisposed bias against a "hocus pocus" term like "Magik" or Alchemy that is stopping you from understanding.

 

No, it's education, intelligence, a solid understanding of science and the scientific method and many hours of considering this type of stuff in the light of that education that leads me to the conclusions I have arrived at.

Actually I practice the opposite of bias or predisposition because I, unlike you, looked into these things with the awareness that it may be BS or it may be real.
You seem to be only able to consider these topics as absolutely real and there is no other alternative.

That approach is much, much more biased and predisposed then anything I have typed around here.

 

Yes, they were talking about the same things, but magic doesn't have anything whatsoever to do with it, at all, nothing, zilch, zip, nada, naught, zero, absolutely nothing at all "magikal" about Jung's archetypes, nor does his connecting to ancient archetypes in any way, shape or form confirm "magik" or alchemy.

Why is that so hard for you to understand??????????????????????????????????????????????