The future of Psychology: Neuroscience, Psychoanalysis, and how things will soon come full circle.
Possibly the most controversial questions of all time are those posed by the (in)famous mind/body problem. This problem stems from our increasing library of knowledge regarding the mechanics of the body and its organs, including (most significantly) the brain, and how this knowledge seems to run contrary to our deepest intuitions about the nature of our own mind and conscious experience. We tend to see things in terms of raw semantics: a rose is red -- it just is. But in the meticulously defined and specific realm of science, such terms as "redness" become essentially meaningless. There are many alternative ways to describe phenomena, but none of them seem to cut to the core of our deepest personal experience. Red is simply red, and no matter how the pathways of the brain are mapped out and no matter how well this is documented. Any and all of such explanations will simply never get to the point: red is red.
As simple as this seems, this problem cuts deep into the core of our existence. We cannot bridge that gap between the objective and the purely subjective, and no one is really certain quite how we will.
This tangental explanation of the mind-body problem is merely a preface to the analogous subjects of this piece. Much more exhaustive and inclusive writings on this subject can be found elsewhere. The point that I am trying to get to is this: the solution to this problem, and the future of the Psychological field, must revolve around the convergence of the most disparate disciplines of (new-century) neuroscience and (century-old) psychoanalysis. The most obvious way to demonstrate this is to redefine these two subjects within the context of top-down vs. bottom-up methodologies. The reconciliation of the living mind with the mechanical brain lies at the crossroads between the psychological analysis of the mind and the neurological profile of the brain. Intertwining the two will tie the knot that allows for this thought-to-be uncrossable void to be bridged once and for all. Rather than the senseless jumble of perspectives that run rampant in the modern field, I propose that psychoanalysis had the right idea to begin with. There is no better perspective existing with which to fully and totally examine the depths of the human mind from the perspective of the human mind. The psychoanalytical method, at its core, begins with the mind and continually breaks down each individual aspect into its component parts and further causes. In this way, applied correctly, a complete "semantic profile" of the mind can theoretically be obtained. This is the red to our rose. It is for this reason -- that the psychoanalytical method begins with the entirety of the mind and proceeds to process it out into components -- that I ascribe to it the title of "top-down".
Of course, this is merely half of our picture. The other half is the pure, down-and-dirty, no-frills neurological approach to the mind. It is not imprudent to predict that within this century neuroscience will advance to the point where the whole of the mind can be mapped to precision. With such a map, we will, presumably, come to understand all the intricacies of thought, emotion, consciousness, and what it is to be human from the third-person context of the enlightened observer. However, thanks to that impenetrable boundary beween observer and observed, we will never with neurology alone be able to fully bridge that gap between the subjective and the objective. Unless, of course, we can find a point where the two converge.
My belief is that this convergence exists when the "meaningful" map of the mind provided by psychoanalysis is overlayed with the concrete map of the mind provided by neuroscience. Through the combination of these alone will we gain a true, comprehensive picture of consciousness, rather than a dry blueprint or simple flowery nonsense. Over time, the roughly-correlational map that will derive from these overlays will evolve into a complete and holistic portrait of the entirety of the human mind. It is then that Psychology will be complete -- after poetically tying its beginning and its conclusion into one coherent circle.
As simple as this seems, this problem cuts deep into the core of our existence. We cannot bridge that gap between the objective and the purely subjective, and no one is really certain quite how we will.
This tangental explanation of the mind-body problem is merely a preface to the analogous subjects of this piece. Much more exhaustive and inclusive writings on this subject can be found elsewhere. The point that I am trying to get to is this: the solution to this problem, and the future of the Psychological field, must revolve around the convergence of the most disparate disciplines of (new-century) neuroscience and (century-old) psychoanalysis. The most obvious way to demonstrate this is to redefine these two subjects within the context of top-down vs. bottom-up methodologies. The reconciliation of the living mind with the mechanical brain lies at the crossroads between the psychological analysis of the mind and the neurological profile of the brain. Intertwining the two will tie the knot that allows for this thought-to-be uncrossable void to be bridged once and for all. Rather than the senseless jumble of perspectives that run rampant in the modern field, I propose that psychoanalysis had the right idea to begin with. There is no better perspective existing with which to fully and totally examine the depths of the human mind from the perspective of the human mind. The psychoanalytical method, at its core, begins with the mind and continually breaks down each individual aspect into its component parts and further causes. In this way, applied correctly, a complete "semantic profile" of the mind can theoretically be obtained. This is the red to our rose. It is for this reason -- that the psychoanalytical method begins with the entirety of the mind and proceeds to process it out into components -- that I ascribe to it the title of "top-down".
Of course, this is merely half of our picture. The other half is the pure, down-and-dirty, no-frills neurological approach to the mind. It is not imprudent to predict that within this century neuroscience will advance to the point where the whole of the mind can be mapped to precision. With such a map, we will, presumably, come to understand all the intricacies of thought, emotion, consciousness, and what it is to be human from the third-person context of the enlightened observer. However, thanks to that impenetrable boundary beween observer and observed, we will never with neurology alone be able to fully bridge that gap between the subjective and the objective. Unless, of course, we can find a point where the two converge.
My belief is that this convergence exists when the "meaningful" map of the mind provided by psychoanalysis is overlayed with the concrete map of the mind provided by neuroscience. Through the combination of these alone will we gain a true, comprehensive picture of consciousness, rather than a dry blueprint or simple flowery nonsense. Over time, the roughly-correlational map that will derive from these overlays will evolve into a complete and holistic portrait of the entirety of the human mind. It is then that Psychology will be complete -- after poetically tying its beginning and its conclusion into one coherent circle.
posted by Mike at
4:59 AM
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