Introduction to Psychology - Yale

Traditionally, psychology is often broken up into the following — into five sub-areas: Neuroscience, which is the study of the mind by looking at the brain; developmental, which is the area which I focus mostly on, which is trying to learn about how people develop and grow and learn; cognitive, which is the one term of the five that might be unfamiliar to some of you, but it refers to a sort of computational approach to studying the mind, often viewing the mind on analogy with a computer and looking at how people do things like understand language, recognize objects, play games, and so on. There is social, which is the study of how people act in groups, how people act with other people. And there is clinical, which is maybe the aspect of psychology that people think of immediately when they hear psychology, which is the study of mental health and mental illness.

I am convinced that you cannot study the mind solely by looking at the discipline of psychology. The discipline of psychology spills over to issues of how the mind has evolved. Economics and game theory are now essential tools for understanding human thought and human behavior — those issues connecting to philosophy, computer science, anthropology, literature, theology, and many, many other domains.

Neuroscience: The physical basis for everything that we normally hold dear, like free will, consciousness, morality and emotions...how a physical thing can give rise to mental life.

Developmental: the question that preoccupies developmental psychologists is how do we come to have our knowledge, and in particular, how much of it is hard-wired, built-in, innate. And how much of it is the product of culture, of language, of schooling? What are the basic components of human nature?

Multiple personality cases force us to address the question of what is a self. To what extent are all of us composed of multiple people, and to what extent are we a single unified person over time? Cases like Capgras are important because they tell us about how we see the world. They tell us for instance that there is a difference between recognizing something in the sense that you could name it, and knowing what it is.

http://oyc.yale.edu/transcript/305/psyc-110 

Unity of consciousness

…The so-called unity of consciousness is an illusion. It is really a wish-dream. We like to think we are one; but we are not, most decidedly not. We are not really masters in our house. We like to believe in our will-power and in our energy and in what we can do; but when it comes to a real show-down  we find that we can do it only to a certain extent, because we are hampered by those little devils, complexes.

Complexes are autonomous groups of associations that have a tendency to move by themselves, to live their own life apart from our intentions. I hold that our personal unconscious, as well as collective unconscious, consists of an indefinite, because unknown,  number of complexes or fragmentary personalities… (p.81)

The closer you approach the centre (unconscious), the more you experience what Janet calls abaissement du niveau mental: your conscious autonomy begins to disappear, and you get more and more under the fascination of unconscious contents. Conscious autonomy loses its tension and its energy that reappears in the increased activity of unconscious contents.

C.G. Jung, Analyticl Psychology, its theory and practice. Ark, Routledge, London, 1986. P.82

We are less and less in control starting from the diffentiated function (sensation / intuition, thinking / feeling), on to memory (only partially controlled by the ego), shadow (trickster), affects-emotions, down to the complete invasion of the consciousness by the unconscious contents. This is true for perfectly healthy "normal" individuals, and insanity is only a question of degree; a pathology is actually the impossibility for an individual to function as a coherent whole acting out of the center of his personality.

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Leaving the results to God

What I aim at is to live within a situation and to be totally engrossed in it, and yet free from involvement. The basic thing is that I never ask myself what the result of any action will be -- that is God's concern. The only question I keep asking myself in life is: what should I do at this particular moment? What should I say? All you can do is to be at every single moment as true as you can with all the power of your being -- and then leave God to use you, even despite yourself.

Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh, School for Prayer. Daybreak, London, 1989, p xvii

Acceptance of otherness

So often when we say "I love you" we say it with a huge "I" and a small "you". We use love as a conjunction instead of it being a verb implying action. It's no good just gazing out into the open space hoping to see the Lord; instead we have to look closely at our neighbour, someone whom God has willed into existence, someone whom God has died for. Everyone we meet has right to exist, because he has value in himself, and we are not used to this. The acceptance of otherness is a danger to us, it threatens us. To recognise the other's right to be himself might mean recognising his right to kill me. But if we set a limit to his right to exist, it's no right at all. Love is difficult. Christ was crucified because he taught the kind of love which is a terror for men, a love which demands total surrender: it spells death.

Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh, School for Prayer. Daybreak, London, 1989, p xvi.

The legacy of the Reformations

If the melody [of the Reformation] is still to ring out loudly, its key-signature is to be sought not so much in the inherent qualities of Protestantism (or Tridentine Catholicism) as in the dynamic interplay of forces conjured up by the Reformation era, and in the law of unintended consequences.

The most significant outcomes of the Reformation can in fact be expressed as the succession of paradoxes. The Reformations, Protestant and Catholic, someday the creation of social and religious uniformity, and ended up producing forms of pluralism... They promised to intensify the political and spiritual power of the state and yet they generated the grammar and vocabulary by which its authority can be challenged. They sought to eradicate heresy and false belief, but falteringly permitted the toleration of error to a previously undreamt-of degree. They set up to sacralize the whole of society, and ended up creating the long term conditions for its secularization.

Peter Marshall, The Reformation, A Very Short Introduction, p. 133

Chicken-and-Egg

Which came first, the Church or the Bible? Catholics pointed out that Jesus had founded a community, not written a book. Protestants countered that Christ himself was "The Word" whose presence was experienced through the reading, preaching and hearing of scripture.

Peter Marshall, The Reformation,(A Very Short Introduction), p.48

Compared to the bold and honest thinking of these people, the modern ecumenism feels so shallow and fearful... Contention? Disagreement? Ah God forbid! We are all brothers, let's not discuss la chose qui fâche!

Sore displeased vs Became angry

And when the chief priests and scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying in the temple, and saying, Hosanna to the Son of David; they were sore displeased.  Matthew 21:15

Yes - NRSV reads "became angry"; as usual, the least expressive and makes it all sound very primitive... just like for E. any kind of displeasure equals anger. ESV says "were indignant". I actually begin to like ESV.