The insane don’t know they are insane. Is this a comfort or a torture? If a torture: to whom? If a comfort: such a very small one.
Musing on the (lack of) distinction between philosophy and psychology
Or, musings on philosophical diagnostics
Preface
Philosophy isn't what it used to be: but unlike history or natural physics it is not just "more", for in philosophy there cannot be an accumulative learning, or anything new under the sun, really; only a new perception. The multiple ways of interpreting the universals and principles falls into the field of psychology with its many varied perspectives according to the quirks of the mind uncalibrated by the art of philosophy. In fact, now that we have the science and diagnostic tools of psychology, has philosophy any place in determining what is right thinking at all? Or is it spending its numbered days applying the cognitive sciences into the kind of advice that replaces religion? Is it going to have a second life as the guardian of ethics and morality? In any case, its faculty seems to attract thinkers who love to think their own thoughts through. I don't know if that's what the Greeks did or Spinoza or Schopenhauer, however discrepant their philosophies were. Can philosophy be anything else but psychology now God has been crumpled up into a provisonary note-to-self?
Thanks to Steemit I am learning to become an ever more cautious revealer of my philosophy, while my psychology remains misunderstood. This gradually pushes me closer to the occult side of life. Where I might hide in the shadows.
Nah. Temporarily dodging the air-gun bullets of counter-attack opinion, that's all.
I started a post in response to a Steemian I had better not publish. I do not wish to dampen the celebration of this Steemian’s recent success, and I’ve had enough run-ins with her, already. She bugs me for never reading me carefully, and replying to something non-consequential instead, but I refuse to let it rest on a language issue or something unintentional like that. I have the feeling she is of a superior intelligence to me, and she might be the more sound and balanced thinker by far. I am just not seeing that right now.
I have no interest in being “right”. My hang-up is a sense of inferiority - so I start with the presumption you are going to be a heck of a lot smarter than I am if you own a university degree (let alone PhD). It doesn't matter how I credit such degrees in learning, they count for much regardless. However, there is also this obsession with responsibility: as a thinker who appoints themselves as inquirer into the meaning of our lives, I don't think you can afford to be an arrogant diagnostician and carry over old knowledge to serve your own sense of purpose.
Growing wise never takes place on thinking alone. But is it the delusion it does, that makes pscyhology appealing to philosophers? The mutual cross-over into eachother's fields is becoming an annoying trend. If blurring the lines is the goal, I can already hand you psychosophy (William R. Bento) - as long as I don't translate that into "soul wisdom", I suppose.
Maybe, it's the only way philosophy will be taken seriously again, if it meets up with the statistics and general characteristics of proscriptive systemic mental health analysis.
With regards to the bright sparks, it is simple and always the same, how can it be different: they are young. They are here to read themselves and if this means they have to skip over nuances in another voice, so be it. It makes them single-minded and all the more likely to enjoy a successful academic career. These are not the people born to modify their thinking or free up their creative juices. They are here to establish logical thinking. For now, they are still happy puppies with their new-found toys (ideas). Let them be the rambunctious young minds they need to be, I tell myself, as I droop off to do other things.
One can only pray such minds do not stultify and end up influential.
In writing up my critical draft (prompted by the theme of Autism as always. Oh, give it a rest, when will I!?) I reaffirmed once the moreover to myself, that being a (Rudolf not George) Steinerian, or maybe a a Simone Weilian, or at times a very poorly read Kierkegaardian, if I must align my philosophy with any greater thinker than myself, I don’t stand a chance in any philosophical debate. Thus peeved by my affiliations with the discredited ones I waywardly attempt to prefer Schiller to Goethe, but that is just in theory (again, too poorly read in either!); although I can say I love Herman Hesse best.
It doesn’t help that I call Heidegger an Autist and am most comfortable with theological or hermetic and neo-Platonic philosophers; and from there on peter out into Watts, Merton, Tolle, Aurobindo, Saswitha into the direction of soft-science, highly poetic license, and incoherent mumbling. Nothing that will accredit me as a consolidated thinker. This has been the bane of my life - surrounded by intelligensia of repute, who will not give me the time of day for being a foolhardy high-flown dreamer. But I will not change tacks now, I know this much after setting aside all my Anthroposophic reading for the past two years, to clean my pallet to no avail.
I will be declaring the earth flat, next. No, don’t worry; but I am disappointed in psychology, something the multipotentialite me even briefly considered studying in between art-history and law (enroled but never made it to class).
I have ended up being at vehement odds with over 25 psychologists and pediatricians for the past 15 years owing to the stubborn erroneous judgments made regards Autism - mainly by pretty (blonde) girls with great teeth who studied psychology mainly because their daddies didn’t love them enough - or too much. There are some harridans (as frustrated with the System as I am, no doubt) and some extremely jaded dudes, always late for appointments, because of having to oversee a renovation or pick up a new Mercedes convertible (but these are generally psychiatrists, which is a different - entirely incomparable, if you ask them - kelttle of fish).
At this point, I feel like going quiet.
I won’t grumble to any of you. I am coming to the point that I accept all my grumbling is wasteful, not only of mine, but above all your energy. It is as pointless as the grumble of the passenger (around ten years old) in the back seat, at around 3 in the afternoon, somewhere in the middle of France, wondering if lunch will ever be served (not likely, that late, in France). It only agitated my father all the more. We had two gallons left, a hill to climb and nothing but a prayer that there might be the RIGHT BRAND of petrol station at the bottom of it.
My father notoriously would take us to the South of France in one straight go. Ferry included. A full day of tollways and steady motorway miles till we needed to look for a bed for the night and a meal (finally) around eight or nine. The pressures mounted, any futher grumble could tip him over the edge. I learned to become a very quiet girl.
When I arrived at age 17 I got worried that I might not have a tongue at all.
In school, maybe, in total, over the course of 12 years, four people ever knew my name. To the rest I was the girl who had always done her homework (if slap-dashly, for homework bored me, after having already attended seven hours of lessons). Few dared approach me to copy it: I must have had an aura of grave condemnation about me should you stoop to such dishonorable levels, but there were a few (stereotypical blondes) who couldn’t care less: their fame and fortune preceding them on stunning looks alone.(One of them, literally, became a super model, and the other opened a Yoga Studio for Depak Chopra after the life of a show girl. Blondes do have more fun.)
Most of my life IS one big grumble - and autistic as such! Philosophically speaking, albeit esoterically so, this autism is not autiformed by a robotic and particle-based society and conventional values of reason over feeling, but is a state of soul. Psychologically speaking, albeit pscyhosophically so, one might spend a life-time guarding against the psyche from moving this up to the level of her mind. Neither philosophy or psychology would be able to understand what that means. Perhaps, it is this, and only but always this, that upsets me. It may be similar to #erh-germany's lament that one can't mention religion anymore without sounding like a dogmatic freak.
I started the day, thinking how to extoll philosophy over psychology desperate to keep the twain apart. Does philosophy, with its predeliction for wisdom, mean to investigate what it is that will make us human, yet? While psychology is more of a shrimp scavenging for bits that fall out of the sense there is to be made? A partner in the puzzling process, piecing the bits of potential together into the billions of diverse pictures of all possible people.
Oh, come to think of it, why can’t they puzzle in peace together - on the obstacles and inconveniences to being human? Was I hoping to preserve philosophy for nobler man? To keep its ancient roots pristine as guidewires back into the truth? Ha!, philosophy doesn’t deal in truth. It is the science of science (scientia: knowing). Psychology is no longer the minion of pill-pushers either. It wants to grow up and think for itself. Tired of being blonde. Good job to anybody who makes an effort to let the one discipline work for the other.
To try and make anything else out of this arranged marriage of philosophy and psychology would be reactionary. Nothing original. Originality can only be found in the shadows. Hiding. In a secret garden. I slip my hand into my pocket and jingle the key.
If I wanted a Mercedes SLK I should have got extra maths lessons a long time ago: that’s where it all began to go wrong, and I slipped out of the higher echelons of sound reasoning, methodical discourse, and patient debate. If I open the door in the wall, however, and step into the other side, I shall only be able to speak with robins and lily pads, I feel certain - and insecure. Will I grow lonelier, still? Is there a lonelier than lonely, or is there, at that point - when nothing more can be said - a break-through into an utterly new community?
I jingle the key once more, and I know I shall only know, when I take out this key and put it in the lock; turn it and take that step. There is no philosophy or psychology in the garden. Just the shadows. And the solar-panels for books.
