To understand the most common psychological problems of our time we must venture back to Plato to whom we owe it all. Before Plato we had the circulating Hellenistic thought that was the breading ground for the Platonic dialogues. Why, you may ask, was human existence and metaphysics never pondered before Plato? Well it was. However, at the time philosophical inquiries were only tolerated to a point. When the politics of the time got aggressive or famine struck, people were quick to find scapegoats. Here is the reason why Pythagoras was thrown into prison and Socrates sentenced to death. Certain ideas were just not tolerated. Hence it was only much later that Plato's ideas took root. But where did they begin. It all took place after Athens lost a war to Sparta. The weary losers hung their heads and returned to Athens and took up some compelling questions in the wake of their defeat. They needed to figure out why they lost to ensure that it wouldn't happen again. Well it did happen again and the second time it was a lot worse. The Peloponnesain war basically desecrated Greek civilization and brought the “Golden Age” to a dramatic end. In its aftermath Socrates and his followers focused their attentions even more deliberately to metaphysics and governance. They became consumed by four major humanistic problems: the problem of the knowable, the problem of knowledge, the problem of conduct and the problem of governance. This my friends is where common psychological problems were conceptualized and dealt with as I will now explain. The first problem deals with all that truly exists. The second question approaches the senses, perceptions and memory facilities of a human being. The third deals with the development of human behavior and the interplay between rationality and emotions and the forth deals with the fundamental aspects of society, family and morality. This is where we hit the jackpot. This is where a wealth of psychological speculation brims to the surface of modern civilization. So which of these questions is psychology interested in? Well undoubtedly all four, however one can see a direct parallel between modern psychology and questions two and three. It is question two that encompasses the breadth of scientific research involving human perception and neuroscience. And it is question three that takes on the social realm of psychology. Problem three is indeed where the brunt of our focus will lie as it is here that the most common psychological problems arise. Humans are social creatures and we live our lives out through social interactions whether they are highly amicable or highly threatening. Of course we will turn our attention to question four when it comes to discussing our behavior in relation to the bigger constructs of family and society (the landscape that common psychological problems rest upon). At any rate it is sure to be an intense journey as I attempt to discover the very nature of psychological turmoil and unrest. Please learn with me as I try and open the doors that will hopefully reveal the most common psychological problems and their origins.
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Monday, September 6, 2010
Common Psychological Problems- A History
Before we tackle how to deal with the most common psychological problems we might as well figure out where this all began. Many people believe psychology to be a young science, however this is extremely wrong. As a matter of fact experimental science within university life is a recent pursuit across the board. So where did psychology as a science first appear? It first came about at the University of Lipzig in 1879. Yes, this was not so long ago, but bear in mind that this is not long after the onset of other university experimental sciences such as chemistry. But psychology really is very old. Of course it is. Psychology is the study of the mind and as humans we have been pondering our emotions and thoughts almost since the dawn of man. Officially, it goes way back to Hellenistic thought. This was the age of philosophy and the Platonic dialogues. This was when a bunch of clever guys had the time to sit around and talk things out. They also had the time to write about and ponder human behavior extensively and thus they are credited as the founders of modern thought, Indeed modern Psychology would be nothing without philosophy. Psychology owes it all to the big players of those times. They shaped the way we think and thus shaped the way we experience angst, turmoil and stress in the world. Very concretely they determined how we make decisions and deal with problems. One correction. Yes, they were the first philosophers but they were not the first men to ponder the human condition. They were only the first men to write about it. For example, can you realistically conceive that Thales was the first man to realize that "it is hard to be good?" This underlines a key aspect of why the study of history is so vital to the understanding current psychological practice. As the zeitgeist of a time slips away and morphs into something else so do the attitudes regarding human behavior. Perhaps psychology's greatest mistake was to ground itself as a natural science. It was thereby that some knob heads mistook the passing conditions of a current age for the permanent conditions of all human life. Currently ours is a society that regards psychology as a concrete science and more than that has fragmented psychology into a shattered outlay of sub-sciences, each unique in practice and methodology. We are thus left with a much greater experimental field than we could have possibly imagined. Hence we begin with history (and I promise I will drop the academic droll in blogs to come). But yes, history is the first lens that we will use to approach the most common psychological problems of our time.