The Necessity to Look In

            You’ve got to go in.  You’ve got to find out what’s actually there.  And how do you do this?  There’s only one way.  A person has to look.  Somebody has to look in.  This has been labelled as “introspection” and “subjective”, but that’s all there is.  Like Indiana Jones, he has to go in, he has to find what he’s looking for, and he has to get back out to tell the tale.

            Following on from this, there are two modes of introspection:  (1) self-directed, and (2) other-directed.  The former has some usefulness, but it has definite limitations.   Sometimes it even has dangers.  For example, no philosopher was more relentlessly introspective than Friedrich Nietzche.  In case you weren’t aware of it, Nietzche spent his last days in an insane asylum.

The far safer and surer approach is to be guided by another.

            Let’s say a person has a fear of snakes.  The person is only aware of the fear.  He doesn’t know what’s causing it.  He doesn’t know where it’s coming from.  He doesn’t know its name. 

            It’s safe to say that the source, if it’s there, is somehow blocked from the person’s awareness.  In this context, Freud’s explanation makes sense:  The person himself is blocking the awareness.  The person is repressing it.

            Further, it’s safe to say that if this repression were a light thing, the person would be able to get to it.  He would be able to overcome or push through the barrier he has thrown up for himself and see what’s behind it.

            So we must assume that these repressions that have not resolved in the course of normal living are quite resistent.  They have defenses thrown up around them that deflect the person whenever he tries to go near them.  What these repressions consist of and how thay are laid down and under what circumstances are a separate question, a legitimate one.  But for the moment, I want only to insist that they must be rather elusive or potent, at least to the person himself, else they would have resolved themselves.  To expect then that the person will be able to unlock their secrets without assistance is unduly optimistic.

            To take a metaphor, the person leaves Los Angeles in the direction of Las Vegas, but somehow ends up driving toward San Francisco.  If he then catches himself and turns back toward Las Vegas, he will very soon find himself heading toward Reno instead.   And so on.  Somehow he never gets to Las Vegas.

            This is the primary role of the second person.  It is his job not to tell the person what he’ll find in Las Vegas, but to make sure he stays on the right road.  And to make sure he doesn’t wind up stuck in some out-of-the-way place heading for nowhere.

            Introspection has been criticised and largely abandoned by psychology, because it is not objective.  But this is a misdefinition of the word “objective.”   In the field of physics, the proper object of study is physical objects.   For this, he uses observational techniques and tools suited to the observation of physical objects.  In the field of biology, the proper object of study is living things, whether plants or animals.  For this, the biologist uses techniques and tools suited to the observation of plants and animals.  Note that those techniques and tools are different, with some overlap, than the techniques and tools used in physics. 

The proper objects of study in the science of psychology are not the same as in the sciences of physics or biology, though again there is some overlap.  The primary objects of study in psychology should be percisely those internal, experiential objects that are logically and traditionally grouped under the word “mind.”   Those are its proper objects.  Rather than shying away from those objects because they are also subjective, rather than shunting away from them toward objects like brains and behavior that are proper objects of other sciences, such as neurobiology and sociology, the true psychologist needs to bite the bullet and study the mind.

In a way, the challenge facing psychology as a subject is the same challenge that faces the individual when he attempts to solve the mysteries of his own mind.  It has to keep its attention forward, it has to doggedly keep on the road to Las Vegas and not be content to drive to San Francisco instead – and not fool itself that San Francisco is really Las Vegas or that it really wanted to go to San Francisco in the first place.

This presents a unique challenge, of course.  How do you study an object which cannot be photographed, which cannot itself be measured?  Well, psychology needs to find appropriate methods to study those objects.  Freud was groping toward such methods.  Every therapist who attempts to solve a patient’s problems through conversation is, if he only took responsibility for what he is doing, groping toward such methods. 

Yes, the proper objects of psychology can rightfully be labeled “subjective”, but that doesn’t make them any less appropriate as objects.  Like any science, psychology must develop tools and techniques to study those objects that peculiarly belong to it, even if those objects are subjective.  What are the laws that govern the mind?  What is the anatomy of that inner, subjective world?  These are the kinds of questions that psychology should be seeking to answer.  These are the understandings it requires if it ever is going to make any headway toward helping people.   

I assure you, the gateway to the mind is the aware individual, the subject looking in, finding out what’s there, and describing it as well as he can.