Self-knowledge serves as an important instrument of emotional navigation.
The marine chronometer invented in the 18th Century made ocean navigation much more precise. The chronometer determined longitude, and it enabled sailors to avoid ramming their ships into unexpected reefs and shorelines.
Emotionally, many millions of us still crash upon life’s hard rocks. Often we’re not sure why or how it happens, just that we somehow drifted badly off course. Each of us, metaphorically, is captain of a ship that can start to sink when unruly emotions surge against our hull and waves of negativity crash upon our deck.
We have instruments of emotional navigation to keep us afloat and on course. These include the methods, techniques, and knowledge of applied psychology. Unfortunately, experts can’t agree on what constitutes the basic axioms, principles, or truth of human nature. Psychological schools of thought clash like factions in a religious war. Scientific studies in psychology and brain research are failing to unlock the mystery of human suffering. Psychologists not only can’t discern what’s true, they don’t even speak the same language. Psychiatrists, as well, have been attacking each other within the profession over what constitutes mental illness.
A growing number of scientists believe that psychiatry needs an entirely new paradigm for understanding mental and emotional health, though they can’t say what that new knowledge and system would look like.
We absolutely need a new paradigm. Yet when essential knowledge about our dark side is presented, we refuse to accept it. Even our best scientists avoid cold truth about human nature because, like most everyone else, they refuse unconsciously to acknowledge it in themselves. What’s really going on in our psyche? [Read more…]
