Agreement, to an Extent

• A Different Slant on CMT, Part I by Vic Comello, 11/14/98
  • An Impossible Profession by Donald Smith, 11/18/98
    
    

We actually agree more than we disagree; we merely have reacted differently to the same set of circumstances. The basic problem, as I see it, is that therapists care not one wit about psychological theory as such. The bottom line with them is helping people. So once they have found a rubric of some sort that enables them to help people in a personally congenial way, they are satisfied. It bothers them not at all that the "theory" they profess to follow does not hang together logically or that it is not manifestly based on "some real understanding of how the brain works--how it thinks, how it feels, how it remembers, how it 'has' consciousness, how 'it' establishes 'I-ness'" and the like. What passes for "research" is then largely a tautological exercise from a theoretical point of view, but who cares? The "research" may help like-minded therapists to help their patients better, and that's its real point.

I find it to be utterly inexcusable scientifically that I have a host of psychological disciplines to choose from when accessing BOL. There is only one human nature; there is, therefore, only one correct theory that explains it. That theory doesn't exist, and because the people who are privy to the intimate details of human nature in action have no interest in developing that theory, it possibly will never come into being. What we need is another Freud, someone with an interest in such a theory who became a therapist as a victim of circumstance.

The reason I speak of therapists in the third person plural is that I am not a therapist. I was trained as a theoretical physicist. You can't really prove anything in physics, either. The difference is that we physicists don't generally admit that.

Our knowledge about how the brain works is incredibly rudimentary, and most of what is known has nothing directly to do with psychology. Nevertheless, there are a few general principles that seem to apply to brain function as a whole. There are also a few psychological insights that transcend the boundaries therapists establish in distinguishing their disciplines from each other. By cobbling together a foundation from these two sources, it just may be possible to get a foothold on that theory no one but we two cares anything about. That, in any case, is the object of this exercise. I refer you to my previous posts, particularly to those having to do with the nature and purpose of sleep.

• Friendly rapport and conflict... by Jim Duffy, 11/20/98