This discussion outlines three concepts underlying Living System Psychology, the emerging science of the Human Psyche System. They differ from concepts commonly used by psychologists. They are part of psychological base that leading-edge persons naturally use in their lives and work.
The First Concept –
Human Psyche Evolution Is the Story of Man and History
The First Concept goes like this: Our human psyche system is the base for everything in our life. The history of man is the eternal psychological process of the evolution of the human psyche, whether it is the individual’s story through a lifetime or mankind's collective story through history.
Therefore, everything that manifests in life and work is a result of an individual’s or a collective’s psyche stage profile, especially its dominant stage, for those who exist at a given time and location. This is a remarkable concept at the core of Living System Psychology.
It means that the Human Psyche System is the World’s most fundamental living system. Human psyche stage patterns are the underlying “Morphic Fields” for all human life and affairs – Individual and collective. Thus, all that happens in human actions are psyche stage results. They are the real cause of events in our lives and work.
It is important to emphasize that the Human Psyche System is not the brain. The brain is the biophysical instrument through which the psyche operates in our life on Earth. The human psyche is a non-physical energy field system that is the totality of all conscious and unconscious processes. The psyche is not only what is thought of as the conscious mind. It also includes the vast human unconscious. We believe the most advanced scientific understanding of the psyche should be based upon the emerging science of Living Systems that organize as open nodal networks. The Human Psyche System organizes this way.
There is much evidence consistent with this concept. I limit myself here ourselves here to only one one outstanding reference. Gerald Heard used the following words to introduce his book The Five Ages of Man:
"This (book) is also an interpretation of history in psychological terms…Man’s story is specifically the winning of an increasing awareness, purpose, intention, and objective. In short, man's history is the record of how he gained in the intensification of consciousness, of self-understanding. It is a psychological story. For the spiral of the evolution of the psyche is the theme of the human venture."
I turn to a second quotation from Heard’s book. He refers to the common failure of scholars to see history as a grand process or the story of human psyche evolution. I believe Heard was writing from the viewpoint of an early Stage A’ psyche pattern person and those of whom he writes were not yet evolved to that point. He wrote:
"This continued refusal to look at the huge design now exposed to our view is so unreasonable to suspect an unconscious prejudice."
He is right, but it goes beyond what he says. The refusal he mentions is both conscious and unconscious. What he sees as a prejudice is the prevailing dominant Stage E human psyche pattern in action – The linear, machine-like, conscious, objective, physical world focus of many historians, particularly in the West. Their psyche function is strongly in the Stage E – Linear 1st Renaissance paradigm.
Going on, Heard wrote:
"An unfriendly reception was given by most professional historians to Arnold Toynbee’s attractive and inspiring study of history."
Toynbee broke away from the prevailing scholarship of his time to see history as a vast, integrated process from which the specific patterns can be derived and related. His seminal work, A Study of History, is for me another example of early Stage A’ human psyche pattern in action. Yet, even Toynbee did not start his work from the viewpoint of evolution in human history. Gerald Heard wrote about Toynbee in the following words:
"Also that compendious historian (Toynbee) refused to start his interpretation with the basic platform of human history. He traced only (the results of that platform). He (Toynbee) started at the archeological level of history, not at its palentological base."
That is, Toynbee did not start with the human being's inner psychological evolution as the primary formative force of history, but started in the conventional pattern with the external world’s physical record of man. Possibly because he felt he was on firmer "scientific" ground. Certainly no structural stage human psyche evolution model like Living System Psychology was then available for him to use.
Further, Heard wrote:
"These two facts seem to me to be evidence of a deep unwillingness to face the possibility of a psychological interpretation of history in which the clue to man's historia is the evolution of his consciousness."
Again we believe Heard is right, as far as he goes. The appropriate clue to man's history is for me the story of the sequential evolution of man's psyche according to the process of Living System Psychology. Although man's conscious awareness is very important, it is only part of the human psyche’s story and probably not the most important part. I believe the human unconscious is even more important.
Finally Heard wrote:
"...though the historian as a rule seems anxiously desirous of denying any process in the history of this unique creature that strives toward goals (Mankind), the anthropologist is certain now that sequence can be detected ...and though it is still described in economic terms…this sequence… can hardly fail to be recognized by any open mind as being symptomatic of an alteration and evolution of ideas."
I highly recommend Gerald Heard's book, The Five Ages of Man. His work is consistent with Living System Psychology, but it does not include all of its psyche stages and seems not aware of its living system science foundation. Therefore, Heard’s book is incomplete for our purposes.
His treatment begins with what is the second stage of the Human Psyche system’s evolution process – the Stage B – Mystical Tribal human. His detailed discussion of the ages of man ends at what is the fifth stage of the human evolution process – the Stage E - Linear System – 1st Renaissance human. He only partly recognizes as the sixth stage – the Stage F – Relativistic Collectivist human. He does not recognize or discuss the emerging seventh human psyche stage – the Stage A' – Living System 2nd Renaissance human. However, his treatment of the middle stages of human psychological evolution (Stages B, C, D and E) is excellent.
In summary, the First Concept says that all human history, including what is happening today and what lies ahead of us, is the story of mankind's psychological evolution through a sequence of Human Psyche System stages. Psyche stage evolution is an eternal, universal process in creation, along which all individuals and collectives are distributed.
I wish to mention one development in recent years that may seem to be progress toward understanding human nature in psychological terms but, in my judgment, leads into a blind alley. That blind alley approach is called Psychohistory. It is the attempt to merge Freudian psychology and its psychiatry with the historical interpretation of persons and events. This field of study does recognize that history is psychologically based. But there, I believe, its validity ends for two reasons.
- First, it is based upon Freudian psychology, and thus has its inherent limitations of being strongly correlated with Stage E human psyche patterns. These limitations make it of doubtful use for persons evolved beyond the Stage E – Linear System 1st Renaissance human.
- Second, it is not consistent with the properties of living systems. Therefore it does not have the capacity to deal with the essential transcendent pole of the evolutionary process underlying human nature that is the cornerstone of Living System Psychology.
Jung’s work is the foundation I use for Living System Psychology and its Human Psyche System evolution process. His work can be extended to solve the two problems with Freudian based Psychohistory. I mention these things about Psychohistory because it is possible you may read or hear some direct or indirect reference to it. Without being aware of its inconsistency with Living System Psychology you could be misled to believe they are directly related and consistent. They are Not.
I discuss the Second Concept and the Third Concept next. They are extensions of the First Concept. They state the central roles played in human psyche evolution by what are called Recapitulation and Transcendence, respectively.
John Clayton Caris
Links to other Posts of this series:
Three Concepts Underlying Living System Psychology - Part 2
Three Concepts Underlying Living System Psychology - Part 3
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