Psychology and Spirituality

[BundleflowerPower]

Lately I've been studying psychology. For the last year or so, I've been studying various spiritual and religious concepts of the self, in an effort to understand my own self. While reading about psychology, and various conditions people can have, I read a book about dissociative indentity disorder. It resonated so deeply that I have to acknowledge that I could be described as having this condition (although I don't know that I'd call it a disorder).
But DID, and people having "alter" personalities sounds a lot like certain spiritual conceptions of the self. And the methods that are used to treat DID sound a lot like methods used by spiritual healers to heal.

It seems like the same thing, psychology and spirituality, psychology being much easier to understand in modern language.

 

[dreamer042]

In the Jungian daze of yore, Psych-ology was truly the study of the Psyche. Alas, with a compounding of factors (not the least of which was the prohibition of psyche-delics) Behaviorism came to rule the roost and the field of "Behavioral Health/Behavioral Sciences" has placed the mind into a black box and labeled it as off limits. The quickest way to kill a promising career is to announce your intentions to investigate the black box of the mind.

The tide however, is turning. As we begin integrating the mind medicines back into the field of mental health, I suspect we'll see a renewed interest in the unknowable, unmeasurable, purely irrational processes of mind and consciousness.

Any self respecting psychologist will define themselves as a scientist. They work with evidence based methodologies, you have to be able to measure, invalidate, and demonstrate statistical relevance for the efficacy of your healing practice. It's a numbers game.

Though there is still something of the shaman in the therapist, working with techniques that have been demonstrated both throughout the ages and in the modern clinical context to promote and facilitate states of well-being in the patient. This, I feel is the really compelling part of the field, where we can validate things like mindfulness practice and wilderness immersion as clinically beneficial. This is really an exciting time for the discipline and it's going to be worth keeping an eye on how it progresses into the future.

 

[nen888]

..when i was a young psychology student, it was lucky to even get to write an essay on Jung, it was all about cognitive flow charts..and the DSM (III back then) kind of categorisations and diagnosis..
but i discovered in the library the pioneering work of Stan Grof, who was a bridge between between paradigms..a pity most psychiatrists don't go there, in terms of trying to understand or map these states of experience ..he of course went on to found the Spiritual Emergency network..but yes the time is ripe for a reformation of psychology's palettes and tools, as born out by more recent research being allowed in the institutions..

i'd add that one of the things that got me interested in the more intellectual philosophies of ancient Indian Vedanta, was it's effort to observe the mind, and more importantly the 'self'..it was a kind of psychology 2000 years ago, which in no way separated itself from the spiritual or the logical..