A LITERARY INTERLUDE: The Grand Inquisitor in the Twenty-First Century- The Dramatic Conclusion

The landscape changed little from a year ago.  A rising full moon silhouetted the trees that remained twisting in odd angles by the driving wind. 

In a year, Osterreich had never once thought of himself as having done evil.  He never dwelled on his having committed violence or having kept a hostage.  The only thing that troubled him throughout his ordeal was that, in all this time, he never once felt at ease to open the door to release his guest because he had never felt ready to conduct the interview that he had planned from the beginning, the last step that would draw his experiment to a close.

Having visited him several times a day for what was now a year, he could see Jesus’ handsome face everywhere without having to look at him.  Osterreich saw in that face a serenity that he hadn’t anticipated.  But the placidity, the endless curiosity, the constant request for more and more books served to accuse more than console him.  His imperturbable calm pointed out the flaws that existed in his own nature.  Jesus’ large, liquid blue eyes never accused, but always felt accusing.  Still worse, after the first weeks, he never asked to leave. 

Despite any trepidation, Osterreich knew he would finally have to let the young man go.  Calming his aching heart, he made his way back down the stairs to call an end to what had been a grand adventure.  Osterreich bit his lip, then threw open the door.

Jesus, who had been standing in the middle of the room reading Shakespeare, held one arm extended, his face filled with anguish.

“‘Alas, poor Yorick,’ you’re supposed to say,” the doctor said glibly, the trace of a tear in his eye.

“I wasn’t reading aloud.  I was blocking the play as I might present it.  Why?  Is it finally time for the interview we were going to have?”

Dr. Osterreich was speechless.

“How did I know?”  Jesus raised an eyebrow.  After a moment, he continued solicitously.  “But, wouldn’t it be better if we could do this upstairs?  It would be much more comfortable and, besides, I haven’t seen the common area for…one year, isn’t it?  Don’t worry.  I won’t leave, not until you are satisfied that your research is complete.”

Upstairs, Jesus slowly examined the room.  “Where’s the dining room set that was here?”

“In the dining room where it belongs, now that all the file boxes are in storage.  I replaced it with the set of divans and I decided to put in a tea table as you see,” Osterreich replied.

Jesus paced the room musing aloud.  “Which one shall I sit in?  The one that is facing the door or the one that is nearest it?” 

“Whichever one you like,” Osterreich replied with forced indifference.  “I’m letting you go.”

Jesus settled himself on one of the couches, then folded his hands in his lap.  “Where would you like to start?”

Osterreich lowered himself into a seat, mum.

“Well, perhaps I should begin without you.  If I miss anything, you may ask me questions.”  Jesus paused for a breath.  “It is rude to treat people the way you treated me.  When you first locked me up, I was pounding on the door because I wanted to get out.  Yours was a violent act, an act that must anticipate a violent response.  You would want to know if I would be capable of violence now, after the treatment.  Yes, I could kill you now. But I was never one to hold grudges, even before the treatment.  You might also wish to know why I didn’t free myself?  In truth, I really didn’t want to.  I am not sure that it was your intention, but at a certain point you stopped treating me like an animal.  Perhaps it was a mistake on your part, but you actually started treating me well.  I like a good cut of meat from time to time and you supplied it without me having to ask.  You started to talk to me civilly and that was nice, but certainly not necessary.  Then, you were supplying me with a warm bed and at least passably comfortable quarters.  And finally you began giving me the books of my choosing.  The television, by the way, was a bit of humor.  I am sure you don’t recall me ever having watched the noxious thing. 

“And when you found out that I liked to read and discovered that I read the same books you did, your ability to relate to me as a person only increased and my situation improved, so that finally I didn’t want to leave.  That’s why it’s unnecessary for you to guard the door now… And then there is the question of me feeling that I had been here before.  But, I’ll get to that later… In sum, I would say that your precious remedy had more use for you than for me.  It permitted you to treat me better and I responded by treating you better.

“Do I enjoy being able to think and feel more clearly?  Yes, it’s useful to understand my motives before I commit an action.  With this knowledge, I am more likely to reach my intended goal rather than do something that is destructive and irrational.  That’s probably the only thing that keeps me from killing you now.”

Osterreich pulled on his collar uncomfortably.

“But getting back to my point, having this awareness has done little to change my life’s circumstance.  I am still homeless, still without a job, and otherwise useless… I no longer have manic episodes.  Yes, I was manic-depressive.  I knew it when you found me.  But I didn’t give a shit.”  Jesus sat silent for a moment.  “Please pardon my use of language.  I didn’t mean to be so out of control… 

“I will now inform you of my identity.  I was born Jerry Waller, but believe I am Jesus Christ.  My parents threw me out of the house when I was a young man because they thought me spoiled, a description that might have applied equally to them.  But I won’t begrudge them that.  It does not fit in with my idea of who I am, after all I do believe I am Jesus, and, unless I am off the mark, your intention when developing your medication was to create a being that is Christ-like.  Eh?”

Osterreich reluctantly nodded.

“I thought so.  So, you should be happy.  Your medication works!  You accomplished your end and I mine.  Thank you!”  Jesus paused again.  “Have you gotten all this down?  I don’t see you writing?”

“I am listening,” Osterreich said.

“Finally, let me discuss my nature and the nature of, well, people, all people.  I also will address that nagging feeling that I have been here before.  You see, we have been here before, having this same conversation, both of us, you and I.

“As a youth, I was quite impressionable.”  He paused for a long moment.  “Anyway,” he continued distractedly, having some difficulty regaining the thread of his thought.  “As a youth,” he repeated, “I read Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor.  I reread it several times since I’ve been here…  Anyway, when I read it for the first time, I could not help thinking that the story somehow was about me.  I have always felt adored, but misunderstood…”  There was a long pause as he began studying Osterreich’s face.  “And you look just the way I had always imagined.  The Grand Inquisitor!  Without the beard, of course.  Why don’t your grow your beard back and cover that twisted face?”  Jesus squinted at Osterreich, trying to imagine him with a beard.

“Anyway… whether you were the source of Dostoevsky’s story or not… we discussed man’s nature– people-nature– during the past year just as we did before.  Last time we met you said that people cannot live with freewill, but can only survive in packs, following a charismatic leader who dispenses bread.  Having crossed paths again, your new goal was to repair people chemically.  If only you could!  When you last forced your ideas down my throat, we were in a time when people were starving.  When food is scarce, when death is in the air, people rally around a leader.  But, circumstances have changed since we last met.  Now you don’t want to fix people’s bellies, but fix their minds, but always with the goal of leading them.” 

Osterreich was terrified.  He could not fathom that anyone, especially someone as evolved as this man, could perceive his efforts in any way similar to that of the Grand Inquisitor.

“Now, here it is the Twenty-First Century… You locked me up in the Land of Freedom, while you in the spirit of scientific inquiry roamed free.  I don’t begrudge you that.  Your medicine was to set me free.  It did and I thank you.  Now, this is what I have learned in order to be able to respond to your learned arguments of a hundred years ago.  Today, people don’t roam in packs.  They wander aimlessly alone, as individuals.  They don’t benefit from each other’s experience, but, like you, see themselves as the source of all knowledge.  They are complete unto themselves without any awareness that there is anything to be learned outside themselves!  What little insight they have, they get from machines that are made with the purpose of catering to them, holding up a mirror for their amusement. 

“Not even God would be capable of guiding their steps. How can you expect to?  The result, my friend, is that at this moment you would be incapable of leading anyone as you have in the past.  How can you lead people who cannot see past their noses, past the mechanism that made and nurtures them?  These are people who would destroy anyone as quickly as they would discard a food they don’t like the taste of or a computer game that fails to catch their interest, but they will not destroy the factory that produces the toys.

“Which leads me to my final point, we are both antiquated.  Without culture or hardship, we have nothing to bring to the people.  You cannot bring them to survival from your point of view and I cannot bring them to redemption from mine.  That is the real reason that I didn’t escape.  I woke up one morning in the little room that you set aside for me and I realized that I had nothing to do and nowhere to go.  The only thing left was to develop and redeem myself.”

The two men sat facing each other for a long time and, for once, neither thought that there was anymore to be said.  Jesus accepted a small glass of cognac for all his talking and, when he had finished it, he asked to go back to his room.

Osterreich thanked Jesus for sharing His thoughts and gave Him a smart, military slap on the back.

As He headed toward the stairs unescorted, Jesus paused. “The only thing I ask besides this sanctuary is the opportunity to leave and come back.  I would like to get some air from time to time.”

 

 

A LITERARY INTERLUDE: The Grand Inquisitor in the Twenty-First Century- Part 2

Following is a summary of Dr. Osterreich’s research notes.  A sample entry explains the doctor’s difficulty at that moment.

“If I hear him say even one more time the word ‘motherfucker’ or ask after Mary Magdalene, ‘How has Mary been doing?’ or ‘What does she look like?’ I am sure that I will vomit.”

     But it was only by answering Jesus’ questions that Osterreich was finally able to lure him into the house.  “Yes, she is doing very well.  She is in good spirits and she wants very much to see you.”

It was even more difficult to convince Jesus to enter the Human Subjects Laboratory in his basement.  First, he offered him some dessert wine and, when he was drunk, Dr. Osterreich described Mary for him.  “Yes, she is very beautiful.  She is large on top, very well endowed.  She has a petite waist and long, shapely legs.  But, why ask me about her?  Go and see her for yourself!  She is right downstairs waiting for you.”

     The doctor notes that Jesus was particularly interested in the color and texture of Mary’s hair and the size of her nose.  “He is obsessed with her nose, evidently out of fear that it might be too large and her face Semitic as her genetic heritage would dictate rather than Aryan like his.”  For this reason, the doctor thought that Jesus might be racist.

     Drunk on wine and filled with anticipation, Jesus flew to the basement.  Osterreich digresses at this point in his writings to describe the room that Jesus would occupy, with a detailed explanation of the purpose for every item therein.  He writes at length of his foresight at having left the door ajar so that the room might be ready for “speedy occupation by the subject.”  Then, he writes:

…Jesus accompanied me down the stairs.  As we descended, he appeared to be sniffing like a dog.  When we got to the landing, he said the most curious thing, “I feel as if I have been here before.”  I pretended to laugh it off, but he surprised me so!  Moreover, I was challenged to find a way to get him into a room where there was no female.  Then I realized there was no slot in the door for his food. I could well imagine that he would take every opportunity to escape, especially when he was being fed.  Despite my concerns, I opened the door as he watched me from a distance. Then, sticking my head inside, I spoke as if to a woman.  When I turned back to Jesus, he was reluctant to even approach the door, until I resorted to describing the imagined creature this time in greater detail.  If not for the wine, I scarcely believe that I should have prevailed in my efforts.  I described not only the ample size of her breasts, but also the color and shape of her nipples, until he at last charged the door, not with lust, but with anger, shouting, “You whore, slut, bitch”.  He appeared to recognize his predicament, when, having stopped in the doorway, he saw no one.  And I shoved him inside, quickly securing the bolt behind him.

     Dr. Osterreich tells of the banging and yelling “like a banshee” that ensued during the first few hours of Jesus’ confinement.  He describes the loud snoring that filled the room, nay, the whole house, which served as a signal that his subject could safely be fed without fear of him escaping but that produced such a din as to keep the doctor awake throughout that night and the following day.

“I kept thinking as I lay overwhelmed with stress and fatigue that I would do well to kill Jesus myself,” the doctor remarks, “but chose not to.  Not that anyone would find him, but I was anxious for the experiment.  Besides, what if, after the treatment, he should prove to be the real Jesus?  Look what I would have lost by killing him!”

     The next entries describe his efforts to get Jesus to take his medicine.  “I started out by cajoling him again,” the doctor writes.  “Then, I begged and pleaded, despite knowing this would not be effective.  I promised him an extra helping of gruel.  Then, I promised him a steak.  I offered to bring him Mary Magdalene, planning instead to bring him a prostitute. He rejected all my offers, calling me a liar!”

The doctor describes how he braved opening the door to show Jesus what to do with the pill, pretending to take it himself, while secreting it in his palm, then in his cheek after Jesus managed to catch him at the first subterfuge.  He notes his concern about having accidentally ingested some of the medicine and violating the protocol.

     After several days of pounding, shouted entreaties, along with threats and promises of a reward for freeing him, Jesus took to feigning illness.  After a week, with no response from the doctor, his efforts were reduced to a periodic scratching on the door.  Finally, after a month, Jesus uttered his first words without deprecation or hostility.  He said, “May I at least be allowed to have a television?”

     The doctor repaired at once to the basement and, unmindful of caution, swung the door open wide.  Jesus greeted him by driving his head into the doctor’s solar plexus, a greeting which the doctor received with alacrity, according to his notes.  After a brief scuffle, Jesus was subdued with neither antagonist injured.  The doctor then describes Jesus’ physical appearance, the first such notation since the initial entry.

     “He has become quite emaciated,” the doctor writes, “but, despite this, he appears well rested and in good spirits.  Food litters the floors and the walls… but there is neither smearing of fecal matter nor a smell of urine.  Perhaps, this fellow is more civilized than I at first thought.”

     With the doctor guarding the doorway, they converse.  The doctor records the subject saying something unexpected.

“I feel as if I’ve been here before,” he said and I became uneasy.  “I have the feeling that I was confined to this very room more than a hundred years ago and you,” he pointed at me, “were trying to convince me that it was the 1500s.”  The subject gazed at me, then held up his open hand, covering my chin, while I reflexively raised my fist to defend myself.  “You had a long, scraggily-looking beard.  Yes, you look exactly the same.  Boy, were you ugly!”  If he had only shut his mouth then, if he could only refrain from using the word, “Motherfucker!”  Then, I almost did strike him. I was about to slam the door, when he said, “I don’t like these Readers Digests.  Get me some real books or get me a television…”  I was aghast.  “And then I’ll take your damned pills.”  I almost fell down to kiss his feet.  I was so excited.  I started to thank him, but I caught myself.  “Take the pill first and I’ll get you books and a television.  What kind of books would you like?”  “Dostoevsky,” he replied, “Mishima, Jane’s Military Histories… and a Garfield calendar.”  His choice of reading made me wonder whether he was really mentally ill at all.  “What is the Garfield calendar for?” I asked despite myself.  “I need to know the date,” he yelled, “Don’t I, motherfucker?”  I was about to strike him, when he winked at me. Then, he snatched the pill right out of my hand and swallowed it.  I wanted to kiss his lips.  “Thank you!  Thank you!” I said.  “Don’t forget the television and the books,” he chided.  I could still hear him calling his instructions as I retreated down the hall, “I’ll need cable for the TV.  Reception is poor otherwise.”

     The doctor notes that he no longer had any trouble with Jesus after that.  Jesus took his bright blue pill happily three times per day.  Except for his wild shrieks about once a fortnight, Jesus seemed unusually well occupied and did not offer the appearance of wanting to leave.  As a reward for his much desired silence, willingly taking his medications, and undergoing psychological tests, the doctor spent increasing amounts of time with Jesus.

     After taking the last dose of the medication that would rid Jesus of every mental disease and of the least flaw in his thinking, Dr. Osterreich’s notes abruptly end.

 NEXT: The Grand Inquisitor in the Twenty-First Century- Conclusion

 

A LITERARY INTERLUDE: The Grand Inquisitor in the Twenty-First Century- Part 1

It was a miracle by any standard.  Having analyzed the brain on every level– chemical, electrochemical, structural– and its products– the organ’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors– there was a breakthrough, a way to make the machine work properly, efficiently, and consistently.  This discovery would streamline human thought, making it elegant, even spiritual, permitting a leap forward in human evolution. 

“It is time for us all to ascend,” Dr. Osterreich declaimed, his voice tense with excitement.

Biting his lip, he regarded a pile of blue powder on a bit of wax paper before him, then took it all in his hairy hand. The particles seemed to glow!  He felt an urge to press the powder to him, to feel it on his skin.  But he dared not do this.  Such an act would violate the protocol!

Osterreich wanted to swallow the drug himself.  He yearned to eliminate all the contradictions in his life, to quell his inconsistent and raging impulses.  But his own protocol forbad it!  He needed a subject, someone whom he could question and analyze objectively to assess the drug’s effects.

Osterreich’s hand was damp.  Beads of sweat gathered on his brow.  He carefully slid the specimen back onto the stainless steel table.

“First, there was Thorazine, then Haldol.  They only treated Schizophrenia.  There were the Tricyclic antidepressants and the mood stabilizers like Lithium.  They each gave way to more modern drugs, the Prozacs and Zolofts, the Clozarils, then the Zyprexas, that targeted specific neuro-receptors.”  Osterreich laughed.  “Science was moving in the wrong direction.  You don’t target increasingly minute and specific parts of the brain.  No!  You look at the more global.  You have to look at the whole brain and change it.”

This cure was for all humanity.  Having cured mental illness, the same drug would move people along their evolutionary way.  But, first, he needed to test it on someone who had undergone such a change, who had reached this pinnacle of development. 

In his excitement, Osterreich continued his oration to the empty lab that doubled as his kitchen.  “The entire goal has been to bring the irrational under the direct control of the rational, to render the unconscious impulses conscious, to find the common link between our thoughts and urges and enlist them in the pursuit of higher, loftier aims.

“Why do people have a need for violence or even sex?” he demanded, jabbing his finger aloft.  “For ascendancy?  History shows that all dictators are miserable.  For procreation?  Almost anyone can tell you that orgasm provides more relief than pleasure…And then there are the offspring!  Children!”  His lips curled.  “The goal should be to have the animal impulses work in concert with our rational goals rather than overrun and dominate them.  Happiness can only result from that.  Put the two levels of thought together, the cerebral cortex and the reptilian brain, and you can have an end to disorders of thought, an end to irascible mood, an end to discomfort, dysphoria, and dissatisfaction.”

Looking up, Osterreich saw a full moon smiling at him through his laboratory window.  Looking down, he saw a sink full of dirty dishes, the counter filled with stained coffee cups.  He knew he would be unable to sleep.  He could no longer control himself.  He had to find his first subject!

Thrusting his furry arms into his coat, Osterreich caught a hair on the inner seam.  He winced, then, wrapped the coat around his short, twisted frame.  With his coat fastened, only a shock of straight, brown-gray hair, narrow eyes, and his bent nose were visible above the collar.

It would not be long until daybreak.  He had to hurry!  He had to find a suitable subject — a victim of society, someone bent by civilization, whom was unable to solve the problems of living.  This man (and his subject had to be a man) must be pure.  Moreover, to insure that this would be a real challenge for the medication’s efficacy, Osterreich wanted someone able-bodied with a mental illness, but it must be a pure mental illness, someone with delusions and an occasional hallucination, but without deep-rooted anger or resentments.

“And then, after the treatment, the subject will be cured of mental illness, but will still be pure.  My subject will become like Jesus.  He will see things in their essences.  Then, we will have our little talk.”

When Osterreich opened the door to leave, it blew in on him.  He had to pull with all his weight to get it closed.  The tails of his coat flapped wildly, his eyes watering as he turned into the wind.  Holding his collar in his fist and with head down, he proceeded toward the highway, where the homeless took shelter under the bridge.

He walked past houses, past vacant lots filled with weeds and refuse made visible by the full, grimacing moon.  As he approached a bridge, the wind died down, leaving the sounds of garbage trucks and semis rumbling on the highway overhead.

“I’m looking for… I’m looking for Jesus.” Osterreich was pleased with his choice of words.  “I am looking for Jesus, after all,” he thought.  He shouted his demand toward a dead scrub tree where a triumvirate of grizzled men was huddled.  One thrust out a flaccid arm, as if to usher Osterreich on his way.

Under the bridge, he found a gray-haired couple, the woman’s head sagging into her husband’s neck whose head flopped back onto hers.  A child, who apparently belonged to them, had his fist wrapped tightly in his mother’s shabby jacket.

“I’m looking for Jesus,” Osterreich said as he was hurrying past. 

To his surprise, the young boy’s eyes popped open.  He was fully awake.  “Jesus?  He’s over there!” the boy answered, stretching out his small arm.  “He’s in the park.  He lives on that bench.”

Osterreich peered in the direction indicated, but could see nothing in the darkness.  He walked down the street for several blocks before finding the park.  Mounting a hill, he saw the outline of a shaggy head near a bench.

He stopped and saw a thin male figure with long, light-brown hair, his face patched with bits of downy beard. Osterreich guessed him to be in his early twenties.  He watched the man sit, then place a little bundle next to him.  The man licked his fingers and gently unfolded one flap, then another of the metallic paper, pressing each corner flat against the wood bench.  Having exposed a hamburger, the man set it all back on his lap.  Osterreich discerned him licking his large, feminine lips as he tenderly lifted the bun.

“Are you Jesus?” Osterreich’s words were harsh amid the rustle of leaves and twitter of sparrows.

Poised to eat, Jesus responded.  “Yes.  What of it?” he did not want to be disturbed.

“I was looking to talk to Jesus,” Osterreich said.

The young man stood.

“I was wondering how you managed to obtain food at a time like this since I believe that most eating establishments are closed at this hour.”  Osterreich looked for the young man’s reaction.

The young man smiled affably.  “Well,” he said, “That’s why they call me Jesus.  Because I am able to get a hot meal even at such a late hour.  Now, if you’ll leave me in peace, I would like to enjoy it before it gets cold.”  He took a hearty bite of the sandwich.  His chewing slowed as he noticed Osterreich studying him.

“Where did you get a hot dinner in the coldest part of the night?” Osterreich persisted.

The young man scowled.

Osterreich abruptly reached up to touch the man’s sandwich.

“Your food isn’t hot at all,” Osterreich informed him.

“What’s it your damned business if my sandwich is hot, cold, or indifferent, motherfucker?  It’s my goddamned sandwich, isn’t it?”  Furious, the young man took another large bite under the watchful eye of Osterreich.

“So, you’re Jesus?  How do you know you’re Jesus?” Osterreich pestered, waiting eagerly for his reply.

“My parents were Mary and Joseph, right?  I trod the path of the innocent, right?  I preach sweet gentleness and freedom.  I’m anti-abortion and pro-life.  I’m against uncontrolled, frivolous spending and I hate taxes, particularly unfair ones.  And I’m against the stupid things that our taxes pay for, like the CIA and the FBI and the police and the militia…”

Osterreich listened to every word, smiling.  He had found a viable subject.

Jesus saw him smile and began to yell louder.  “And I’m against motherfuckers that I don’t know prying into my life, asking stupid questions, and interrupting my peace.”  He raised what remained of his sandwich over his head and looked like he was about to hurl it at Osterreich, who stood fast. 

“What?  Are you spying on me?”  Jesus said, his eyes smoldering.  “I’ll throw you out of the temple, you money lending, spying son of a bitch.”  Then, he raised his fists.

The doctor raised his arms above his head to surrender.  “I’m sorry if I offended you,” Osterreich said evenly, “but I had to be sure it was you.”

Surprised, Jesus arched an eyebrow, then slowly lowered his fists.

“I am a humble doctor on a quest.  I seek Jesus.”

With these words the moonlight shone on Jesus’ face.

Osterreich found himself staring into the young man’s large, blue eyes.  “He is beautiful, beautiful in an Aryan way,” Osterreich thought, “And how strange!  This might be the real Jesus come back to earth.”

“And now that you have found Jesus, what do you want of me?” the young man asked, more relaxed.

Osterreich struggled to find a suitable answer.  “I have…” he stammered, “…I have Mary Magdalene…and she begged me to find you.  I had to be sure it was you, that you weren’t an impostor.”

“I understand,” Jesus said with an eager smile.  “Now I understand why you needed to be careful.  How has Mary been doing?”

Osterreich watched as the young man wolfed down the rest of his sandwich, then waited expectantly for his answer.

“Well,” Osterreich said, “well.”

“Well?” Jesus inquired earnestly.

“Well, let me take you to her, then.”

     Without further delay the two men left for Osterreich’s laboratory just as the sun started rising.

NEXT: The Grand Inquisitor in the Twenty-First Century- Part 2

A LITERARY INTERLUDE: Psychology and Fiction

Long, long ago… before there was an Internet or movies, television or radio, Frodo and Gandalf (movie version), Star Wars or Star Trek… before there was ANYTHING… people read stories and poems, people went to plays and concerts.  People met in the streets and had conversations. 

 

During this time, which surely must seem to be a time of boredom to some, the purpose of these forms of communication was not only to entertain, but to inform each other, not only about things happening in the world, but also about ourselves.  It was a way to explore our phenomenal world by imagining the reality of it.  A good story, a good piece of music or art could be tested out by seeing how it conformed to what we knew about the world and about ourselves.  Likewise, what we knew about the world could be used to enrich our creativity and appreciation of the art we joined with. This was not life imitating art or art life, but art extending what we knew about life and, for the artist and audience, about the intuitive understanding of life extending what is known about art.  The creation and the marriage of the two was a union between our inner and outer worlds.

 

Strange as it may seem, before there were research and statistics, before we split the atom and flew to the moon, knowledge about phenomena was passed through art that came from what people learned about the world through observation, inquiry, and imagination. Sometime in the past 50 years or so, electronics and computers took creative knowledge away. Knowledge became what you read after you pushed the button.  It was at the end of the ticker tape, after all the bells and whistles went off.  At this point, it ceased to be what you put into the machine to make it clank and belch at the appropriate time and how it got to the answer you were looking for.  The art stopped being what was in the machine so much as it was what came out of it.  Art was what people hurtled against stationary objects.  Music was what thumped out of the can next to you, rattling your bones, when you were stopped at a light.  Literature was drowned in a sea of entertainment that took far less effort.  Fiction was the stuff left to airports, the stuff that offered us an opportunity not to think, but that took up residence in our heads.  It told us the answer to a detective mystery, but not to the biggest mystery of all, the mystery of our selves and our lives. So much mind numbing, so little to wake us up.  Even less to think about!

 

The same stultifying of the creative beast can be seen in the evolution from the psychological novels of Dostoevsky, to the allegedly more scientific practice of psychoanalysis, to the scientific studying of observable behavior, to the “true” science of reducing behavior to numbers and crunching them in a computer to determine what, if anything, moved.  Somewhere in this progression and modernization from literature to science, I would argue that a deeper base of knowledge was sacrificed for a more empirical, but shallower one.  We lost a dimension.  Instead of discovering something about ourselves by exploring hypotheticals imaginatively, we rushed headlong through established scientific procedures, gathering data to enter in a computer so that we can hurriedly push a button to get our answer, then move on to the next research.

In contemplation of all this, some years ago, I gave myself an exercise, something to test my imagination.  I wondered what it would be like to rewrite Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor (not Zork).  For those who don’t know, the Grand Inquisitor is a story within the novel, The Brothers Karamazov (accent on the third syllable). The temptation is to introduce the story by describing it, but, in this age of computers and Internet, it is best introduced by presenting it directly.  You may find it at the following link:

 

http://www.tameri.com/csw/exist/dostgi.html

 

For those who are unfamiliar with the work, it would be wise for you to have a block of uninterrupted time before you venture into this “little work”.  It is not easy reading!  But, if you can scratch beneath the surface, you will likely find that it has rewards.  It shouldn’t be hard to see that this work, which was written about 150 years ago, makes even more sense today.

 

NEXT: What I did with it.  “The Grand Inquisitor in the Twenty-First Century”, a short story about the perfect psychotropic medication.

 

Lecture 4 Part 3: In which we answer some age old questions– What does a psychologist do? What does a psychiatrist do? Why should I choose one over the other? What about a social worker? How do they differ from a (mental health, drug and alcohol, pastoral, sex, school or other) counselor?

At this point, I would like to interject a thought from the wonderful world of Survival Psych that may help clarify one aspect of this issue for those of you who are in a quandary or are otherwise confused about how to make the decision of the best treatment for you to pursue.  And I will caution, this is a theme that I will explore more fully later in this discussion.

Occasionally, the news tells of a whole new class of antipsychotic medications that is to be introduced.  For those of you who follow this sort of thing (and I don’t, really), you may realize that, every time a new medication is introduced to treat anything, the drug companies try to expand its use in order to increase income, therefore Thorazine as a treatment for hiccups.  The fact that they do this should inform us of one thing, at least.  When they are developing a drug, they may have a general idea of what the drug may be used for, but they have no specific idea of its uses until they experiment with it.  This is one reason why there are no silver bullets for any disorder because, if there were, the biochemists would have accurately identified the targeted disease at the primary step so that their medications would work on only that disease and no other.  This is somewhat like removing a ruptured spleen.  You go in, do the deed, and leave, hopefully cleaning up afterward.  The surgery targets a very specific, identifiable area and leaves everything else alone.  You don’t stumble upon a perfect cure by accident!

Further and much closer to my true topic, Survival Psych, if a perfect psychotropic medication were to be developed, what would be its likely effects?  Now, first please realize that once a drug for psychosis is developed everyone has a party, mostly to tout its benefits before they see how it will act on symptoms for a large number of people over time.  And the party will continue until the first real side effects appear accompanied by lawsuits.  I would suggest and have suggested in some of my discussions with patients and their families that no antipsychotic medication can ever eliminate all symptoms of mental illness, despite claims to the contrary.

This is true for some important reasons.  The first is that we don’t know exactly where we are trying to get to and we will not know where we have gotten to until we first get there.  What is the point, you might ask?  If such a perfect drug were to exist and we were to give it to a psychotic patient, by definition, we would be making that patient normal.  At this point I would encourage you to scan your environment to consider other people around you.  Now, I ask, “What is normal exactly?”  The answer, of course, is that nobody knows, not even your physician, not even the biochemist developing the drug.  I personally would argue that no drug should be considered successful until it has rendered a person fully functional and with no psychiatric symptoms.

Okay now, if we are looking for functionality and an elimination of symptoms, why would a medication not work?  Well, in the real world, at least, anyone with a major mental disorder, such as psychosis, has had years of life experience that tells him/her that there is something wrong with them.  For someone who has had psychotic symptoms for most of his/her life, what is the likelihood that the person will take this silver bullet of a drug and simply snap out of it?  What do you say to your family, your neighbors, and your friends, “It’s okay.  I’m better now.  We can start all over.  You can treat me just the way you treat everybody else.”  How do you make up for a lifetime of being treated like a leper? 

Conversely, how are other people supposed to treat you if they never have had any experience treating you in any other way, but nuts?  Which from the point of view of Survival Psych is the second point– you can’t erase memory.  The person restored to a state of mental health beyond all expectations will still respond in ways that are based on experience and years of history.  Some of these responses will be hardwired in the brain despite the wondrous medications used to treat people.

More than that, the brain is complex.  It has been said that there are more neural connections in the brain than there are stars in the sky.  While I can’t attest to the accuracy of this statement, it does dramatize how complex we are as human beings (although whales and dolphins may rival us for complexity).  More than that, brain functions are known to be diffuse, including crazy functions.  Only certain functions of the brain have any specificity in their location, while most are spread out and are located in different areas of the brain in different people.  Go target that!  In short, my schizophrenia may be different from yours, for its location in the brain, if for no other reason.  My paranoia will have different neural pathways because we each have different experiences coming out of different histories.

In summary, where psychiatric treatment meets Survival Psych 101, I say, if you want to try a drug to treat certain symptoms, go ahead!  Give it a fair trial and if it doesn’t work or if there are side effects, consult your physician.  Another medication may give you the results you are looking for, hopefully without side effects.  If medicine does not seem to work, you may want to talk to some sort of therapist, hopefully someone who understands your particular problem and who has some history of success in treating it.  But before you write off either medications or psychotherapy in favor of the other, be aware that these domains are not exclusive.  Psychiatrists and psychologists have been known to work well together, often with better results than either treatment on its own, as long as each treatment provider understands the limitations and strengths of the respective disciplines.  For the psychologist, it involves recognizing that certain illnesses require certain medications in order to create mental stability.  For the psychiatrist, it involves recognizing that mental stability cannot be maintained without solving real world problems that can de-stabilize a patient who has previously been stabilized and without the patient learning to recognize environmental stressors when they appear and how to manage them.  In my experience, medications alone are seldom sufficient to stabilize and maintain stability in a patient, but the patient needs to gain understanding about all the factors that contribute to illness.  This understanding is best achieved through instruction and reinforcement, by teaching a patient what is most needed to insure Survival when life stress is high and thinking is distorted by mental illness.

Lecture 4 Part 2: In which we continue to address some age old questions– What does a psychologist do? What does a psychiatrist do? Why should I choose one over the other? What about a social worker? How do they differ from a (mental health, drug and alcohol, pastoral, sex, school or other) counselor?

But what does work?  If you have a headache, you take an aspirin.  If it’s a particularly sharp headache, you see a doctor.  If you are suspected of having a brain tumor, your primary care physician will refer you to a neurologist.  And if a brain scan reveals that there is nothing visibly wrong with your brain, you will be sent to a psychiatrist.  If you get frustrated because the pills the psychiatrist gives you don’t do anything but make you sleep all the time, you just might break down and decide you might want to talk to somebody about your headache.  But, who?

Before I endeavor to answer this question, I would like to review what we just covered from a slightly different view in order to clarify some important issues.  You may notice that, when our hypothetical patient first gets the notion that he has a headache, he goes to a medical doctor, a physician, to relieve the pain in his head.  That doctor refers the patient to another medical doctor, a neurologist, who determines that there is nothing wrong with the brain.  That doctor refers our proposed patient to a psychiatrist (whose training incidentally is very similar to that of the neurologist who made the referral).  The psychiatrist then proceeds to assess symptoms and prescribe pills.  The first doctor, a general practitioner, looks at the headache from the point of view of the body as a whole.  The second doctor, a neurologist, focuses specifically on the brain and nervous system (when you see the word neurologist, read “nerves”) and the third doctor closely related to the second doctor by training works on readjusting the brain chemistry with medication.

Although most people take it for granted, the world of mental health treatment did not always work like this.  Before there were drugs, brain scans, and brain surgery, before there were psychologists and mental health professionals, there was one focus of study, the mind, with two different points of approach, philosophy and medicine.  The study of the mind goes back to the Ancient Greeks, probably before that, and was mostly philosophical.  It continued as a mostly philosophical pursuit until a Viennese physician and psychiatrist, Sigmund Freud, got hold of it and made it a focus of his investigations.  Due to his efforts, psychiatry became closely aligned with psychoanalysis, the first formal psychotherapy and, as such, it was more philosophical, although the outcomes of Freud’s therapy were described as medical breakthroughs.  This differs from Pavlov, a Russian physician whose medical research was the beginning of Classical Conditioning, which led eventually to the Behavior Modification practiced by parents, teachers, and mental health professionals and is, therefore, now the domain of psychological thought.  All of this was turned topsy-turvy around 1950 when the first psychotropic medication was developed to treat schizophrenia and, as Wikipedia tells us, was used to cure everything down to hiccups.  (Further complicating this picture is the fact that most of the researchers who develop medications are PhD’s not MD’s, which may lead one to think that psychologists develop drugs because they have PhD’s too.  In this case, the majority of researchers doing the developing have a doctor of philosophy [PhD] in biochemistry, whereas psychologists often have a doctor of philosophy in psychology.  The PhD refers to the method of academic training, not the subject being studied, which is the focus of their training.)

This mostly describes the Psychiatric/Psychological times in the 1950s because it was accompanied by the belief that medication could be used to cure EVERYTHING (or almost everything), a belief that can still be found by many in the medical profession and among patients today.  With this belief, most psychiatrists abandoned doing psychotherapy and went off with their colleagues in the medical profession to prescribe drugs to cure mental ills, leaving only a small handful of psychiatrists to continue to do talking therapy of whatever sort.  The gap in treatment that was created by psychiatrists moving away from therapy and toward drugs left an opening for those psychologists and homespun philosophers, studiers of the mind, to provide their form of treatment.  And it is from here that we get the inclusion of social workers and the panoply of counselors who continued to fill similar gaps, as they encountered people with a variety of psychological problems who needed some type of personal support.  This event was partly driven by necessity, partly by economics.  (Psychologists have become rather expensive, after all, especially for the insurance companies and other third party payers.  Besides, if you reduce the amount of training required to provide mental health services, you increase the number of people providing the service, thereby increasing competition and lowering cost.)

So where does all of this leave us today?  Well, if, as a patient, you think that your body is a machine made of muscle, bone, nerves, and chemicals, you will follow the yellow brick road of physicians for treating your brain because it is just another part of your body.  If you just want some advice, you can get it from anyone, your mother, father, neighbor, doctor or nurse, pastor or priest, counselor, social worker, or psychologist or you can just stuff it, which is what most people do.

More to follow…

 

Lecture 4: In which we answer some age old questions– What does a psychologist do? What does a psychiatrist do? Why should I choose one over the other? What about a social worker? How do they differ from a (mental health, drug and alcohol, pastoral, sex, school or other) counselor?

Readers with Internet should go to the following address from the American Psychological Association and use the chart that they find there as Figure 1:

http://www.apa.org/about/division.html

To understand the diversity of interest in the field of Psychology, one need only look to the left on the chart at the 55 Divisions within the APA. (Division 11 is now defunct, for some reason.)  To the right, the reader will see a list of some 85 Topics in which the 55 Divisions are interested and numerical reference made to which Topics are of interest to each Division.  (For those without Internet, imagine if you will, most of the Divisions have more than one Topic of interest, therefore the need for numerical references to link them.  The Division with the most Topics of interest, Social Policy Issues, has 10 Topics that concern them.)  With each Division having more than one interest, one can see that there is some complicated circuitry involved in making sure that people’s psychological needs are met. 

The list linking Divisions with Topics can be seen as a kind of flow chart.  It was my intention to present the chart with all the lines connected as a way to illustrate the complexity of the field of Psychology.  However, the material is copyrighted first of all. Secondly, upon further inspection, I realized that by showing the relationship between the Divisions and the Topics, by entering the lines connecting them, most readers would become confused.  Then, I realized I would become confused and finally it seemed likely that the screen would become so cluttered, even if my computer would allow me to enter the lines, that the presentation would look like a giant mass of lines more complicated than the Los Angeles freeway system.  It would probably look more like your brain (on or off drugs). 

Herein lies part of the problem, the world inside our brains is complicated.  Like the outside world, it can be inhabited by aliens of all kinds– native, foreign, and space.  If you want an imprecise way of looking at the mind, look at the APA Division chart and see how they regard our mental needs.  Some of these Divisions clearly have nothing to do with the majority of folks, but have to do more with the APA machinery.  Others seem like they may have some application to people’s needs, although the connection may not be obvious.  This confusion is not necessarily a bad thing, especially if the system works, that is, if it accurately portrays the various Divisions of the APA in a way that the people who use it understand. 

There is little doubt that the APA would be quick to respond that this chart is to be used by its members and not the general public.  However, if one were to have a particular, indefinable, intangible, but sharp ache in one’s heart– let’s say you were suicidal– and were to enter a building where psychologists congregate, such as in the APA building in Washington, DC, were to grab toward your heart or your head, and were to scream, “I NEED TO SEE A PSYCHOLOGIST… NOW!!!” looking at the above list, what sort of psychologist do you think you would get?  You might get someone from Division 17, Society of Counseling Psychology, who might be able to help you, unless of course that person’s specialty is men and masculinity and you are a woman or you are a man and the psychologist specializes in women.  Heck, they might not even like you because of your gender assignment (read “sex”).  And if you get a Population and Environmental Psychologist from Division 34 (Hey, what is a Population and Environmental Psychologist anyway?), you might not get the therapy that you need in your particular crisis.  What if you were suicidal because you were just informed that your spouse was cheating on you or that you had cancer and only 24 hours to live?  If you get a psychologist from the wrong Division and a specialist in the wrong topic, you could have problems.  However, if you were suicidal because you were in the middle of a remodel on your house, you might get better therapy at the Carpenters or Plumbers Union.  In the proposed theory, Survival Psych, you will find that the guiding principle is utility, that is, whatever works.

To be continued…

Lecture 3: What does Psychology have to do with Survival and why should I care?-Part 2

So, what do psychologists do?  Take Dr. Phil for example.  Most people consult him not because they want to solve their own problems, but because they want to solve other people’s problems so that they won’t bug them so much.  This has nothing to do with either surviving or thriving, but how they can keep from wanting to kill somebody close to them.  Mars and Venus bug you?  See if you can learn some way to arrive at compromise without infidelity (a threat to Survival), to rekindle interest when life is too stressful or dull to allow for real intimacy. 

But, do most of us living in the real world find that any of this works for us personally or do we really pay attention to these experts to titillate ourselves by listening to other people’s problems?  Undoubtedly, there are those who have learned from following these experts that all a psychologist does is listen, peek into the most intimate details of people’s lives, find the pimple and either squeeze it or cover it up with ointment.  Just as with a pimple, we are left in no better position watching the experts apply their psychological nostrums to other people’s emotional wounds because, where wounds and blemishes are concerned, the mental equivalents are almost always unique and cannot apply equally well to everyone…certainly not to us!

The same limitations are seen in the teachings of our Psychiatric/Psychological forebears, the Gods of mental health theory and practice, the Freuds, Jungs, Pavlovs, Skinners, Rogers, and Ellises of the world.  You may not have heard of some of these people, perhaps not any of them– There are many more that are not named here and some that I have not heard of myself– but a mental health therapist of almost any level of licensure certainly has heard these names and have had to learn something of their theories.  More than that, almost all psychological training demands that students take a position, declaring, in essence, which theory best conforms to their own personal ideas about how people work and which they intend to follow in their practice.  Even in the academic world, certain theories go in and out of fashion.  You can tell this by the sentiments of professors, colleagues, classmates, and by the way questions are framed on Psych Department comprehensive examinations and on State Licensing Exams.

Freud is one excellent example of this.  During my master’s training, he was considered taboo mostly because of his theory of penis envy.  Penis envy was his proposition that women unconsciously envied men their penises, in one interpretation for their ability to unzip their pants and urinate over great distances while women could not similarly project themselves into the world.  (It may be helpful to note that, in certain cultures and even in our own past, it was not considered offensive for a man to relieve himself on the street [number one, not number two], while a woman was not permitted the same freedom because they would have to unfrock to relieve themselves.  Although almost forgotten, even in my earliest memories in Brooklyn, I recall the competitions we would have pissing into the street.)

Because of his hypothesis, whenever Freud was mentioned in the University classroom, there would be a tension and everyone would get uncomfortable, including the instructor.  On the other hand, we had a compulsory class in sex therapy in which we were given homework to take a sensual bath at home, to light candles and incense, put on soothing music, massage ourselves and masturbate.

However strange any of this sounds, the point, the important psychological point, does not have to do with the idiosyncrasies of mental health training.  It has to do with practicability, the use of mental health training in the real world.  In this day and age, with our current level of sophistication, it seems reasonably certain that Freud was envying his own penis and that otherwise some women may envy men in other cultures because they are given more freedoms, such as dress and walking unaccompanied in public, but that public urination, even over a distance, is of lesser importance.

Stranger still, the one theory that was likely the most useful was also regarded squeamishly by my professors, that is, eclecticism.  The problem with eclecticism was that it was not a theory at all, at least not a formal one.  (Indeed, one may comment appropriately that of the above theorists’ contributions, Albert Ellis’s Reality Therapy is more a technique than a theory.  Having attended one of his lectures, I observed that, after a failed demonstration to help a woman solve her problem by changing her thoughts and attitudes, he simply continued his discussion, in effect shrugging his shoulders when his technique didn’t work and the woman was left to fend for herself.)  What eclecticism means is that the practitioner will do whatever works.  The therapist is not tied down to a theory, but will draw from any theory or technique to assist the client or patient.  The problem, from an academic point of view, is that you cannot test for knowledge of eclecticism very well because it is undefined.  Further, because eclecticism is undefined, a student cannot be called on to defend it, allowing the student the opportunity to demonstrate knowledge of eclecticism as a theory and simultaneously to strengthen the basis of the theory by showing its logic and its sense.

Once again comparing Psychology to other areas of expertise, one may see that, if you are looking to put up a building, it may be helpful to have someone who understands theories of construction, but you will be far better served by finding someone who has previously put up a building that might meet your specific needs, a building that works and that has lasted.  To fix or install plumbing, you want someone who knows pipe and how to put it together, not someone who knows how to lie in a bathtub and play with himself.  (“I was just trying it out,” the plumber said.  “Was it as good for you as it was for me?” the therapist responded.) 

It follows logically then that, if you want to adapt more successfully in an adversarial environment where your spouse or the in-laws scream at you or even batter you, you better figure out how to insure your Survival first before you think about how to eliminate their flaws.  This is the basis of Survival Psych, a theory based on what I have learned from personal experience and in my clinical practice, what I have learned from observing and working with people, ways of understanding problems that are both understandable and that can be used to meet people’s needs.

Before anyone is too quick to judge what follows, I would encourage you to consider how you might help someone solve basic Survival issues or quiet a screaming father- or mother-in-law by applying Freud’s psychoanalytic theory of ego-id-superego, Jung’s theory of dreams and the unconscious, Pavlov’s classical conditioning taken from training his dog to increase the production of digestive juices when a bell rings, Skinner’s operant conditioning which is still used today in behavior modification, Roger’s unconditional positive regard that leaves us to solve our own problems, or Ellis’s Reality Therapy in which negative thoughts are either reframed, denied, or obliterated.  If you cannot solve this conundrum, don’t be put off or give up, neither can your psychologist.  This is the reason that Psychology is so poor at selling itself in the first place, despite the fact that one important and lucrative application of Psychology is in advertising.  The problem appears to be that Psychology doesn’t know what it is until it is first applied to something else.  Given this starting point, I will be applying what I know about this chameleon of a discipline to the most basic of questions, that of Survival, in an effort to cast light on human thought and behavior as a whole.  I will be using mostly simple logic and concrete examples drawn from common experience.

 

If by some chance you want to see how Survival Psych works in application without reading these lectures, I encourage you to have a look at the primary level text, THE MEANING OF LIFE: A Child’s Book of Existential Psychology, which may be purchased through this website.  Dedicated students who have paid their tuition may earn credit (of some kind) by passing a final exam (which may or may not be given at the end of the term, a term which lasts for at least a lifetime.  Cheating on the final exam is not only acceptable, but is openly encouraged.  Do look to see what your neighbor is doing, but For God’s Sake learn from it!  Cheating is actively discouraged when applying this course material in life and, in certain instances, it may also be illegal.)

 

Lecture 3-Part 1: What does Psychology have to do with Survival and why should I care?

This lecture is for those who have been asking the burning question—what has Psychology done for me lately?

The question is best answered in the context of what all experts do for us, any expert.  What services do they provide?  What is our need for their services?  If you want to put up a building of any size, you hire an architect and a general contractor.  If you want to have your ruptured appendix removed, hire a surgeon.  Fix your car?  Get a mechanic.  Balance your books honestly?  Hire an accountant.  Build a rocket to the moon?  Hire a physicist and an engineer. 

You know what all these people do!  But do you have any idea what a psychologist is supposed to do?  I do because I am one, BUT I was not sure what I could do until I was mostly through my training or would do until I found myself out on the streets pounding the pavement, trying to figure out my own Survival—What was it that I had that people would want? 

I didn’t know exactly what I would be doing with my degree until I started doing it.  The answer to this question about my own career, as it turned out, was almost everything!  I have done some type of psychological work with kids, adults, families, neurotics, psychotics both in and out of the hospital, and convicted felons both in and out of jail.  With all of them, I have always focused on problem solving.  What problems do they all have in common, you might ask?  You can look at it however you like, but the one thing that is true for all these people is the need to survive.  Each is trying to solve problems that affect Survival.  Only after they have succeeded in solving the more basic problems will they seek ways to thrive.

It is unfortunate to say, but psychology has done a very poor job of marketing itself.  Hey, if I want underwear, I go to where underwear is available, at a department store.  Fix my pipes? I call a plumber.  Treat an infection?  I go to a doctor to get my antibiotics.  But, to fix my head?  There’s nothing wrong with my head that I haven’t been able to fix myself to this point.  F*** you!  I ain’t gonna let you mess with my head, godammit!

(Some folks will read this and focus on the curse words.  I focus on the instincts, the very things that make people want to think and talk that way.  Now, that’s psychology!)

Lecture 1: What Is Psychology?

It depends who you ask.  Psychology is supposed to be the study of the mind.  The problem is nobody is sure what the mind is or what all it does.
However, there is some consensus, at least in the advertising world.  The mind is what tells you that you want a beer that tastes great AND is less filling and that you want to enjoy the taste of a candy mint and have the power of a breath mint.  The mind informs us of what drugs we will take to manage our moods and what food we will eat for dinner to either lose weight or comfort ourselves.  It’s the first part of us that impels our bodies to raise a hand or rise from a chair.  It informs us that we are upset when a loved one dies or that we are secretly happy when someone we hate dies violently.  It tells us if we are going to go to college or try to get on Welfare.  It is the part of us that looks at the stars in wonder or that watches TV while thinking that we are doing something meaningful.  Surely there is some part of our anatomy that makes us do all these things.  For some unknown reason, we call those actions of the three pounds of ugly fat floating in our skulls, the part of us that makes us decide to do, then do these myriad things, ‘the mind’.  And everybody has one.
Yet there are some psychologists who see the mind as a black box, the contents of which cannot be directly known.  There are others who see it as a bunch of neuro-chemicals that can be adjusted to make us happier and, except for these chemicals, all is superfluous.  There are still others who see the mind as ineffable, a source of such incredible wonder that it can never be known.  Finally, there are those who, like good behavioral scientists, think that if you poke the mind with some treatment and measure how far and in which direction the person jumps, we can learn the mind’s processes.  We may recognize these diverse views as the domain of scientists or mystics, but, if we are to be accurate, we must acknowledge that these are all examples of the mind studying itself.  We should all be silent and reverent when there are minds at work.
The mind is natively narcissistic.  From the moment of our appearance in the world, people have a preferred point of view, their own.  They will interpret all their experiences as if there were no other way to understand things, but their own.  However, when the world intrudes on our experience, there is seldom any place for us to hide and we cannot forestall that encounter for very long. 
Because most studies of psychology look at the mind from within a laboratory or a test-tube, most of the information that the studies yield is practically useless.  It would be useful to figure out how to get a leg inside your pants if you are too depressed to move or what is the best action to take when someone is shooting at you.  These decisions are best made in context, not in a test-tube.  These decisions are enriched by experience, not by research.
Survival psych is an attempt to understand people by experience and, therefore, Survival Psych views all living things in context.  If one were to raise a child in a box, like B. F. Skinner’s, the child would have limited opportunity to freely explore and experience.  Raise the same child in a world that is restricted to computers and it will have to discover its environment by guessing what is out there through the messages that the child receives on the screen, a necessarily distorted view.  It will neither discover the richness of its actual environment nor learn about the tool that it was given to learn about the environment, the mind.  For this reason, Survival Psych is a study of life and death as well as everything in between.  It is a stepping into the cauldron that is our birthright to discover meanings in the world outside our all-encompassing heads.