Anton G. Hardy — author & psychologist Home  ·  About the Author  ·  Books & Purchase  ·  Blog  ·  Web Links  ·  Contact the Author Excerpts        “Psychology has had a trouble-plagued history.  Embarking upon its enterprise with all the hopes that invest the phrase 'a science of man,' it brought the full force of modern methods to bear on this most challenging of scientific subjects.  It would penetrate into man's infancy and childhood, his fantasy and dreams, his madness, passion, humor, and despair.  It would unlock the mysteries of his thought, perception, imagination and memory.  It would plumb the depths, even, of his remarkable creativity.  Taking for its province the entire range of human life and action, it would illumine that far-flung testimony to his inspiration and energy, the very wonder itself of civilization.      “As the years went by, however, these goals remained frustratingly elusive...  The final and greatest humiliation of all is that people still turn to literature, drama, art, and poetry when they want essential insight into the human.  After a full century of scientific effort, the age-old sphinx still casts its spell, shrouding man's innermost being from the penetration of exact knowledge.”  (p. 1)        “My thesis will be that psychology has been held in the grip of a philosophy that is detrimental to its endeavor.  Known as 'realism,' this philosophy agrees well with our natural view of things.”  (p. 2)        “Psychologists' initial efforts were firmly rebuffed.  Turn where they would — to the external specifics of precisely measured reaction times or to the internal probings of introspection — they could find no sure avenue of knowledge into man.  As time went on and their sense of frustration deepened, they began giving thought to changing their disciplinary object.  Man, they reasoned — so elusive with his phantasmagoria of a 'mind' — could be exchanged for behavior, a more concrete and tractable subject matter.  Behavior was observable; it could be dealt with in a way that unearthly 'man' could not.  Most important of all, it was measurable; it would enable them to move psychology into that tradition that had seemed so beneficial to other sciences, the school within realism known as positivism.      “And indeed, the years that followed seemed to confirm the wisdom of this move...  As time went on and the dimensions of the new renaissance became clearer, however, skepticism began to arise as well.  The new subject matter, behavior, seemed endlessly protean: It submitted to virtually every approach that came along.  Optical and acoustic physics, brain anatomy and physiology, neural chemistry, information theory and various mathematical models — all tried to take possession of psychology and lead it into its reduction.  As a result, the discipline began to disintegrate into different areas, approaches, directions, and models.  All this healthy-seeming activity had a reverse side, apparently, in a fundamental directionlessness: It was a sign of a stagnation at the core of the discipline as a whole.”  (p. 5)        “'Facts' were indeed being found; mounds of data were accumulating.  But these facts and these data were devoid of ultimate meaning.  They lacked that alignment within a general theoretical framework that would endow them with significance.  And in their need to find this meaning somewhere — in their desperation to discover the key that would unlock the door into significance — psychologists reversed the procedure that was scientifically correct: Instead of advancing from theoretical formulation to empirical test, they abandoned themselves to feverish research in the hope that, through mindless data-gathering, significance would somehow emerge.”  (p. 7)        “A deep-going split developed.  On the one side stood those who were committed to scientific standards of reliability and validity; they failed, however, to lead their data into significant knowledge.  On the other side stood those who insisted that psychology's reach exceed its easy methodological grasp; they lacked the power, in turn, to attain a dependable knowledge.  Pulled in two directions, the discipline could be either a tough science that labored mightily to bring forth mice or a tender humanism that could not advance beyond the perpetual proclamation of its ideals.  Both directions were one-sided and unsatisfactory.  Neither attained the goal of a knowledge that would be at once dependable and significant.      “Slowly, then, this split became the great 'fact' that took possession of psychology.”  (p. 8)        “We see in traditional psychology an unparalleled demonstration of the influence on a discipline that realism's objectivism can have.  This objectivism shows itself in psychology's content by forcing the discipline to veer from its human subject matter into a nonhuman reduction of it, 'behavior.'  It shows itself in psychology's method by so impelling the discipline into advanced analytic techniques that it makes it lose touch with its substantive problems.  And it shows itself in psychology's 'place' by presenting it with such a stark choice between being 'tender' and being 'tough' — between being a philosophy that is merely speculative or a hard science that is modeled on the ideal of physics — that it leaves the discipline with virtually no room to carve a path of its own.”  (p. 78)        “[In the doctrine of behaviorism] a number of elements came together as if drawn by an inner logic.  The elusiveness of mental life was abandoned for what could be 'directly observed.'  Realism's copy assumption was reflected into the discipline in a central stimulus-response paradigm.  A mechanism of 'conditioning' translated into empirical terms realism's associationism.  And consciousness, having no place now except awkwardly 'between' stimulus and response, was demoted to the status of 'assumption': It would have to prove its existence in an organism that was predominantly 'empty.'”  (p. 79)        “More and more, then, attention was forced onto the question of behaviorism's direction.  Moving with stern determination towards the 'objective,' this doctrine had been compelled to swallow larger and larger does of the 'subjective.'  Rigorously stamping out the 'inner,' it had seen 'central organizers' spring up in its very midst.  It thus came into the classic realistic predicament: Subjective and objective would have to be mixed; the inner would have to be integrated, somehow, with pure stimulus-response circuitry.  Over the years, psychologists struggled desperately to break through this impasse.  Whatever their proposals, however, they all seemed reminiscent of old solutions: Like the conceptual hybrid 'cognitive behaviorism,' they proved once again that the only way to bridge this gulf was to paper it over with linguistic invention.”  (p. 83)        “And now, these changes enable us to define the place that 'behavior' holds within the compass of psychology's endeavor.  This feature of the human scene becomes, not object of the discipline, but sign and indicator of this object.  It becomes observed, not for what it is, but for what it tells about something else.  At every turn, the psychologist finds behavior pointing back to these central meaning-forms; he sees the overt actions, gestures, habit patterns, facial expressions that the individual displays 'indicating,' 'signifying,' and 'expressing' what he is centrally concerned with.  Within this general symbol-frame, then, behavior takes the role of vehicle: It serves to 'convey' other elements within this frame that are deemed to be more essential.  Vehicles such as this are frequently drawn from the realm of the physical: Like the paint, wood, or stone in which the artist expresses his meanings, the sensible characters out of which a language forms its alphabet, the concrete icon that enshrines a religious significance, they consist in material 'things.'  They are not being regarded now in respect to their physical 'being,' however, but in respect to their expressive value: They are not looked at for what they are, but through to what they indicate and express.”  (p. 89)        “A trend [in present-day psychology] often ignored because it so flagrantly contradicts the established values of the discipline, is the disinterest of the practicing clinician in the entire research literature.  This literature's findings, evidently, have little bearing on his concerns.  However statistically significant, they contribute little to his concrete endeavor to understand the human being.  He is chastised repeatedly by his experimental colleagues for his uninvolvement in the 'scientific' aspect of his discipline; yet without any attempt to defend himself, he nevertheless persists in his 'professional' course.  A distinct schizophrenia, in fact, invades this individual: Beholden himself to these scientific values, he 'votes with his feet' in this quite other, pre-exact direction.”  (p. 129)        “In different ways, then, the psychologist's field itself reflects back to him the inappropriateness of his more exact, parametric undertaking.  He persists, however, in stubbornly ignoring this evidence.  Driven as if by some inexorable fate, he continues to set up fresh research projects, devise new scales for measurement, and swell a literature already burdened with findings that contribute little to any overall understanding.  This 'fate,' however, is none other than his received realism.  Hypostasizing the categories 'objective' and 'subjective' he is impelled to 'be objective,' to 'find and test the facts.'  And to come by these facts, he wrenches his concepts from their natural contexts and hardens them into inviolate 'things.'  'Depression,' 'schizophrenia,' 'intelligence' and the like, transformed now into instant variables and deprived of their mutual interrelationships with one another, lose all sense of the modulations they have in their actual functioning.  Phenomena of meaning are uniformly transposed into phenomena of being.  And in the process, the psychologist increasingly distances himself from the very subject matter he is trying to understand.”  (p. 130)        “And he crowns this entire movement by identifying with physical science.  Looking outside in this way for his guidance and direction, however — locking onto this external source for his sense of adequacy and accomplishment — he loses the energy and vision that are indigenous to him.  He forgoes the struggle to carve a path that is truly his own; and his discipline, lacking in an inner thread of concern and intent, succumbs to the forces that take over when there is no longer a facing of the 'harsh realities' that accompany this path, no longer a will deeply to 'understand.'  For behind this image of high scientific endeavor, we detect the unmistakable face of myth.  We see the psychologist marking off a sphere of the 'sacred' and, drawing around it the necessary curtain of proscription, coercing his colleagues through constraints on their training, publication, and professional advance.  Enthralled with the seeming-magical power of number, with the ability of these little ciphers to bring forth ever-fresh revelation and insight, he revives the ancient mysticism of Pythagoras: Number, he believes, holds key to the innermost mysteries of Being.  It leads, if he can but enter its realm, to the very Truth itself.  Is not mathematics the source of all real understanding, the arcane art in which one must become schooled if he is to enter the sanctum of knowledge?”  (p. 131) Synopsis Reviews Ordering © 2010 James Publications.  All rights reserved. James Publications   ·   Post Office Box 545   ·   Guilderland ,  New York    12084