Depth Psychology, Phenomenology & Kabbalah: Epistemological Models

Beyond Positivism:

Epistemological Models for the Study of Depth Psychology

Depth psychologists have resisted the prevailing positivistic paradigm of research and practice in psychology. That does not mean, however, that their studies lack grounding in a well-formed epistemological model. In this paper, I begin by describing a positivistic approach to psychology. I present a few key ideas from Jung’s depth psychology, showing how they bypass positivism. Next, I offer two examples of epistemological approaches that can be used to legitimate the study of depth psychology: Husserl’s phenomenology and Steinsaltz’s Kabbalistic theology. Finally, I will conclude with a few reflections on my method of drawing analogies between ideas from different disciplines.

Positive (ist) Psychology Dominates

Herbert Marcuse offered a still-relevant social critique of mid-twentieth century philosophy. Philosophers, he said, are too deeply engaged in “positive” philosophy. Positive philosophy plays by the rules of a particular narrow theoretical paradigm, borrowed from the positivistic sciences. Marcuse understood positivism as encompassing “(1) the validation of cognitive thought by experience of facts; (2) the orientation of cognitive thought to the physical sciences as a model of certainty and exactness; (3) the belief that progress in knowledge depends on this orientation” (Marcuse, 1986/1964, p. 170). In contrast, Marcuse called for philosophers to practice “negative” philosophy: philosophy that challenges prevailing theoretical, political, and social paradigms (Marcuse, 1986/1962).

Contemporary mainstream psychology understands itself on a positivist model as well. Morton Hunt’s description of contemporary research psychology captures the discipline’s self-understanding. Psychology, on his view, collects and validates facts; follows conventions of natural science; and progresses by these means. Hunt writes:

psychology has become: a massive accretion of facts, observations and laboratory research findings, not raw but digested by sophisticated statistical analysis; much gossip and wrangle, but mostly about testable interpretations of theories, not mere opinions; a wealth of classifications and generalizations at the theoretical level; and a profusion of laws and propositions about our states of mind and their relationship to brain events whose consequences can be, and regularly are, causally deduced and put to the proof (Hunt, 2007, loc 15027).

Contemporary clinical psychology also follows a positivistic model. Treatment is driven by diagnosis. Diagnosis is made by interviewing a patient and then comparing observations with a list of criteria set out in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). After  diagnosis, the treatment of choice is often pharmaceutical (Corbett, 2012). Assumptions reflecting Marcuse’s definition of positivism drive this process. For diagnostic purposes, impressions of the patient are listed and organized as descriptive facts. In keeping with subject matter of the natural sciences, the psyche is understood as fundamentally physical. Disorders of the psyche are addressed by treating the body.

Given the reality of academic specialization, researchers and practitioners trained in a positivistic model of psychology rarely recognize that it offers only a narrow, partial lens for viewing psychological phenomena. Lacking a background in philosophy, they may not recognize, for example, that a view of reality as fundamentally material is only one metaphysical position among many (Corbett, 2012). Lacking training in the humanities, they may not know about critical theorists’ classification of multiple approaches to knowledge as “technical,” “hermeneutic” and “emancipatory” rationalities (Giroux, 1983); or feminist critiques of the historicity of the modern ideal of “the man of reason” (Lloyd, 1984); or even Kuhn’s research into the history of paradigm shifts in scientific communities (Kuhn, 1996/1962).

Depth Psychology Resists the Positivist Trend

Against this background, depth psychology, as developed by C.G. Jung and his followers, appears as a kind of “negative” psychology in Marcuse’s sense of the word, challenging the mainstream positivistic paradigm. Depth psychologists have postulated that the psyche includes deep levels of unconscious function that are not always available to the conscious mind, though the conscious mind is enriched by these functions. Unusual word associations, dreams, archetypal images, and synchronistic events hint at them. For depth psychologists, the psyche cannot be fully known using the methods of empirical science. Thus they reject the narrow disciplinary specialization of research psychology, based as it is on a positivistic materialism, and expand the toolkit needed to study the psyche. Regularly, they draw on anthropology, literary criticism, religious studies, and philosophy. In clinical practice, they argue for a broader understanding of the life context that informs a patient’s psyche, and thus for a less reductive model of diagnosis and treatment (Corbett, 2012).

Examples of Jung’s understanding of the unconscious can be found in his concepts of archetypes, synchronicity, and the psychoid realm. In Jung’s mature thought, archetypes are understood as the basic structures of the human psyche. They are, in a sense, part of the genetic inheritance of our species; they are part of our collective unconscious. In different cultures, the archetypes find expression through a variety of myths, images, and ideas. Individuals may also represent cultural ideas via dream or artistic images drawn from their own personal lives. While archetypes themselves cannot be seen, their existence is inferred from the ways that individual experiences echo cultural themes, which in turn echo human themes. Related to the concept of archetypes is Jung’s notion of a psychoid realm. This realm is not directly perceived, but is hypothesized as a source of phenomena that manifest in the psyche (Jacobi, 1959/1957; Whitmont, 1991/1969).

Depth psychologists have defined “synchronicity” as “a meaningful coincidence between psychic and physical events” (Klay, course lecture, June 2103). As an example, Dallet (1998) who is neither a meterologist nor a ritual dancer, describes an experience of spontaneously dancing for rain under a cloudless sky. Shortly after her dance, a surprise rain shower blew in. Synchronistic events like these are not necessarily connected causally. It would be imprecise to suggest they are, as causality is a specific scientific term that requires a physical connection in measurable time. Causality cannot be observed when an event occurs in a non-physical realm. Philosophically, neither idealists nor materialists have explained convincingly how causality works between psychic and physical events (Corbett, 2012; Hunt, 2007). However, no one can deny that, in ordinary experience, synchronicity sometimes occurs.

From the positivist perspective, it seems useless to hypothesize the existence of phenomena that cannot be perceived, such as archetypes or a psychoid realm. Because these phenomena are not physical, they must be metaphysical, and thus not available for empirical study. Knowledge does not progress by creative multiplication of untestable hypotheses. However, as Corbett says, “most human beings do not live in a laboratory” (Corbett, 2012, p. 10). Methods for studying the psyche in its real-life messiness are called for.

An Alternative Epistemological Approach: Husserl’s Phenomenology

One such epistemological paradigm comes out of the work of German philosopher Edmund Husserl (1859-1938). Husserl directly criticized the co-optation of philosophy and psychology by the scientific model, on the grounds that it constricted the ability of researchers to understand the psyche. He hoped instead to observe human consciousness – his word for the psyche — on multiple levels in order to identify its basic structures.

As he [Husserl] wrote in Crisis of the European Sciences (1936), he was frustrated with the prejudiced way philosophers and psychologists conduct their research. They start out, he complained, already ‘knowing’ what kinds of observations count as evidence for their conclusions. Yet they have no clear understanding of the relationship between observation, evidence and conclusions. Only a fresh, unprejudiced look at the workings of human consciousness can give them that clarity. (Kaplan, 2003)

In Husserl’s view, positivistic thinking is bound up in the “natural attitude” of perception. In the natural attitude, one thinks everything that happens in consciousness is a report on the external world. With this attitude, however, one cannot understand consciousness, because every attempt to look inside leads right back outside. So, Husserl created a tool of discernment he called “bracketing” or “reduction.” When he practiced it, he placed brackets around his experience of the external world, paying attention only to the relationships between items in his consciousness. By using this method, Husserl discovered that he perceived objects and ideas in multiple modes of consciousness. He experienced reality through sensation, emotion, memory, dreams, and more. He found that each mode of “intentionality” – consciousness reaching for its objects — had its own quality. Often multiple modes of experience were present simultaneously (Husserl, 1962/1913; 1997/1931).

One of Husserl’s most publicized insights can be used to explore and go beyond the limits of positivist psychology. Husserl

considers the great metaphysical question of the distinction between the mental and the material. What makes them so different that philosophers have often found them to be two irreducible categories? Under phenomenological reduction they appear in consciousness as two distinct types of objects. Material objects appear as a series of perspectives, that is, different views from different sides, all of which are referred to a single object of consciousness. Each mental object, however, appears to be given whole at once, and related in time to other mental objects. (Kaplan, 2003)

When studying objects that appear to consciousness as a series of perspectives, it may be appropriate to study them through a massive accretion of facts. Similarly, objects that appear located in space may be studied on the model of the physical sciences. But objects appearing differently may require a different approach. Some of Husserl’s students described such objects: Merleau-Ponty (1962) explored phantom limb pain, recognizing in it a nonlinear experience of time. Levinas (1985) wrote about ethical awareness, describing a nonreductive apprehension of persons through responsibility. Husserl himself, however, focused on a general method for studying consciousness that would lead to the development of appropriate approaches to philosophy and psychology. Through that method, he aimed to discover basic structures of human consciousness that researchers in the human sciences could use to refocus their work.

While specific descriptions of modes of consciousness developed by Husserl and his followers have not been well-integrated into depth psychology, the spirit of his method has. Jung’s methods of dream interpretation and active imagination follow the spirit of Husserl’s phenomenological reduction. Jungians explore dreams and fantasies using a phenomenological approach of paying “attention to exactly how the phenomenon reveals itself to us, in as much detail and specificity as possible” (Corbett, 2012, p. 343). In Jung’s style of dream interpretation, an analyst guides a patient through four steps in recounting a dream in great detail. Only afterwards does the analyst help the patient weave together the patient’s own associations to understand what the dream means to say (Jung, 1970/1969). With the technique of active imagination, “Jung encouraged his patients to enter a state of reverie in which judgments was suspended but consciousness preserved” (Storr, 1983, p, 21). Observing images, feelings, and fantasies during the reverie, Jung thought, would allow previously hidden dimensions of the psyche to come to light. These methods are excellent examples of what Marcuse might call negative psychology, methods that challenge positivistic approaches, grounded in a broader understanding of the human subject.

Exploring Synchronicity: Steinsaltz’s Kabbalistic Theology

A different intellectual tradition, the scholarly Jewish approach to Kabbalah, also offers concepts helpful in expressing a non-positivistic approach to the psyche. Adin Steinsaltz’s The Thirteen Petalled Rose is an original work of Kabbalah, influenced by Neoplatonic traditions. Steinsaltz has offered a model of human consciousness in order to explain various ways that a human being can find God through inner experience. At its deepest level, he has said, the cosmos consists of infinite Divine energy. This energy takes shape as it emanates through four different “worlds.” A human being encounterss these worlds through four categories of experience: being, intellect, feeling, and action. Key aspects of our inner experience, such as self, time, and space manifest differently in each world. (Steinsaltz, 2006/1980) From a depth psychological perspective, the worlds can be understood as a kind of archetype, a structure through which humans experience the psyche.

We spend most of our time in the natural attitude, concerned with material reality. Dwelling thus in the world of action, we are used to understanding causality based on a linear model of time. The phenomenon of repentance, however, shows that different kinds of causality are present in the different worlds. In the world of action, it may be impossible to undo the negative consequences of a poorly chosen action. In the worlds of intellect and emotion, however, we can achieve changed understandings of actions and motivations. Who we were in the past, including our potentialities and the direction of our development, can change. In the worlds of emotion and intellect, repentance can literally change past reality (Steinsaltz, 2006/1980).

Steinsaltz’s model offers a theoretical language to account for synchronicity. Using Steinsaltz’s language, one could say that all events take place in reality’s substratum, the infinite energy of the divine. These events can manifest simultaneously in more than one world of human consciousness. Synchronicity occurs when a person experiences an event on multiple levels. As with the psychoid realm, no human can perceive the divine substratum in itself. But because everyday experience shows itself to be filtered through the archetypal structure of the four worlds, Kabbalists like Steinsaltz hypothesize a source. Following guidance from authoritative ancient texts, they call that source Eyn Sof, (Infinity), which they equate with God. For Steinsaltz, infinity is not a useless hypothesis; it can be lived. By developing greater sensitivity to the workings of the filters of the four worlds, one can train oneself to experience the reality of infinity.

In this way, Steinsaltz both affirms and goes beyond negative theology. Negative theology claims that propositional knowledge is not adequate to describe God; in the positivistic mode of knowing, we can only say what God is not. However, if we habituate ourselves to awareness of dimensions of consciousness beyond the world of action, we may experience some of what was previously unknown to us. This change in experience is not the same as empirical verification of physical facts championed by positivists. It is more akin to what Husserl calls “fulfillment.”

Husserl is careful to explain that he is studying consciousness, not knowledge.  So when he tries to understand the way we think, he does not look for connections between the contents of consciousness and the external world.  He does not bring a preconceived notion of how logical connections between the various contents of consciousness must be structured.  Instead he studies the many different ways that our conscious experiences connect with one another.  He calls these connections “fulfillments.”  For example, a memory that pops up when one wonders about the past can seem to fulfill a vague notion; a sensation that evokes a dream can seem to fulfill the dream; an experience of the external world can seem to fulfill a theory. I understand the word “fulfillment” literally — making the contents of our consciousness fuller, filling experiences with other experiences (Kaplan, 2002).

 

Methodological Reflections: Analogical Reasoning

In the paper, I have made implicit analogical connections between depth psychology and these two epistemological models from philosophical and theological traditions. Reasoning by analogy is a well-respected method for growing knowledge (Aristotle, 1987). Here, however, I have not explored or justified it, though it is consistent with depth psychology. Depth psychologists often do not use precise definitions of technical terms (Corbett, 2012). In that way, those technical terms grow in meaning as new discoveries and new interdisciplinary connections inform them. As I drew the analogies, I have been aware that the concepts I bring together do not match one another perfectly. For example, Husserl’s concept of “consciousness” includes phenomena that bubble up from the unconscious, but does not explicitly include the unconscious. Steinsaltz’s concept of infinite divine energy is not identical to the psychoid realm, but superimposing the two ideas may help in understanding them both more deeply. As Aristotle has taught,

a successful metaphor is like a riddle, presumably because the listener must decipher the proportion; that “it is a sign of sound intuition in a philosopher to see similarities between things that are far apart” (Aristotle, 1987, p. 93); and that we have more obviously learned something from a metaphor if it tells us the opposite of what we expect, or if there is a great conceptual distance between the two terms (Duhan, 1991).

References

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