Why I have no use for psychology

In which I propose a much simpler and more complex approach to being human

I admit: My title is click bait! It’s unabashedly provocative!

And it’s so arrogant! I mean, what do I know about psychology? Very little, mostly because I can’t stay with a study or a finding long enough to respect it. And how dare I? There are brilliant people designing clever studies to confirm — well, to confirm what most of us already know intuitively.

OK, so that’s one reason I have no use for psychology. It tends to confirm what we already know intuitively.

And the corollary: Psychology tends to downplay intuition. Instead, the field of psychology tries to legitimize itself by hoping beyond hope that human behavior and experience can be explained using the classic scientific method. You know: research question —> hypothesis —> experiment —> results —> discussion, which states conclusions and identifies where further study must be done.

Problem with the classic scientific method is it requires tangible evidence, measurable data. Which is where the clever experiments come in. And where intuition gets left behind. Because it is virtually impossible to measure and validate and replicate intuition.

To be fair, psychologists try! But their methods still rest on assumptions — like the brain is the center of all knowing, like the only evidence that matters is empirical and quantifiable, like knowing rests on experimentation that follows certain rules of scientific rigor (which reinforce biased opinions about what knowing even is), like reality is “out there” to be grasped and understood as distinct from ourselves.

Right about now you might be — even should be — saying, “But you’re a psychotherapist. How can you reject psychology so blithely?”

For me, psychology and psychotherapy — that is, psychoanalytic theory, which I love — are two very different things. Psychoanalytic theory developed at a time when introspection was considered a legitimate method of scientific discovery. I love that about psychoanalytic theory! And I love that about psychotherapy, at least the psychotherapy I practice, which depends on relationship, experience, introspection, reflection, and, of course, rich theory.

Even though psychology is, according to Google, “the scientific study of the human mind and its functions, especially those affecting behavior in a given context,” the field has abandoned introspection as a method. I get it: introspection is “soft,” subjective, unreplicable. But here’s the thing: human psychology, despite attempts to “harden” it through empirical study, is just that: “soft,” subjective, unreplicable. So how do we get at personal, constantly changing, unreliable, yet fascinatingly rich human experience?

My answer is to adhere to an entirely different paradigm with entirely different assumptions.

The paradigm is known as enactivism.

A totally different model

The assumptions that underlie enactivism diverge spectacularly from those underlying the field of psychology.

For example:

• Enactivism sees all cognition as fully embodied and enacted.

  That means the brain is not the Master of the Universe, as it is in psychology. Rather, living organisms interact with, even co-create, the world through full-body interactions, what some enactivists call structural coupling.

• Cognition is action.

  We know through the ways we fit with (couple with) our surroundings. Our biological and, I would add, psychic structures determine what we perceive and how we interpret those perceptions. Our actions on and in the world constitute our knowledge — which is, I propose, necessarily biased (even for psychologists!) and inescapably contextual, given that it’s based on structural coupling. This can explain why I can say one thing and do another. Is what I say what I know? Not if what I do utterly contradicts it, right?

• Reality is co-constructed.

  While there is stuff “out there” in the world, what that stuff actually is — really, how a particular organism can fit with it for what purposes — depends entirely on the organism, what it “selects” from the stuff of the world and how the world then works with the organism to effect the fit. Quick example: We all know that matter is made up of atoms, and atoms are mostly “air,” yet we do not perceive either atoms or the air within them. We perceive solid matter. That’s thanks to our peculiar perceptual mechanisms — our organisms — which collaborate in this limited but magnificent way with the stuff of the world to co-create what we call reality.

• Perception is direct, not indirect.

  Enactivism has no use for mental models or internal representations, as psychology does. Knowing is acting, which involves neurological firings and felt sense (or intuition) and repeated experiences of good and bad fits, meaning direct apprehension of stimuli, not translation of the outside into a picture or model that then gets scanned or processed by the brain. It’s much simpler — and more complex — than that.

OMG there is so much to say about enactivism and I’m betting you’ve already gotten bored and stopped reading. But if you’re still with me, I can tell you this paradigm has changed my life, my psycho-coaching practice, and the people I work with. I love it so much.

Want a starter book? Try The Tree of Knowledge by two of my heroes, Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela.

And leave a comment! You might think I’m crazy for having no use for psychology! You might find enactivism utterly incomprehensible! Or you might agree with me! Let me know!