On the “Too Human”
Dan’s reflections on being “too human” seem to me very much on the mark. I am struck by the many parallels between the ideas he explores and themes, analyses and arguments put forth by writers in my little corner of the world, namely the world of theoretical and philosophical psychology. Maybe some of our reflections could contribute to advancing Dan’s and many of our search for a way of thinking and talking about mental illness and health that avoids both (1) medicalizing and depersonalizing human beings and (2) building them up, or trying to, with a language of strength, resilience, rights, and the like, which he suggests obscures (his words) our inescapable vulnerability, dependence, suffering, and helplessness. At the same time, his journalistic skill and human touch might help bring our reflections closer in closer contact with everyday human struggles, bring our abstractions down to earth, so to speak. Dan suggests that we know how to pathologize people or make them into victims in order to somehow empower them, and we know how to indoctrinate them with a giddy, impossible, and ultimately self-defeating individualism. This essay seems to inaugurate the search for a badly needed credible third alternative.
I am not sure what the sources are for the idea of “lived experience” that figures prominently in this essay. But they are probably related to the 20th century philosophical school of phenomenology, with its many offshoots in philosophy and the human sciences. This approach stresses the importance of meaningful lived experiences over scientific abstractions in understanding human existence. I am particularly drawn to the widely influential school of thought that sometimes goes by the name of hermeneutic phenomenology (“hermeneutic” simply means “interpretation’). In this view, we do simply describe meaningful human experiences and social practices but interpret them in a dynamic way in which both we and the meaning of the thing we interpret are modified in the process. If this sounds obscure or arcane, its not. It is quite commonplace. This is exactly what happens in nearly every serious or meaningful conversation or human interaction. One hermeneutic term for this process is “coming-to-understanding,” something done very much together with an “other.” Another often overlooked feature of this dynamic process is that even though we have to engage it in an honest and sometimes quite painfully honest and responsible manner, this does not mean we are in direct control of what transpires. The process is full of surprises, unexpected turns in the road, initially unwelcome but undeniable new insights. Sound familiar, as in everyday lived experience? Why wouldn’t such mutual influence and surprise also happen in the interaction between a social scientist and the object of her study? How else could we learn anything new and important? Too much social science, many critic say, knows in advance what it is going to find and, guess what, finds it!
The core idea is simple enough. The natural sciences abstract away from the dense, meaningful, purposeful, ever-changing and evolving, often ambiguous realities of everyday life, both inward experiences and outward social practices. They “objectify” their subject matter. This is done in order to identify general laws and patterns in nature that do not vary across time and place and so allow ever more precise prediction and control over events. The myriad successes of modern science, technology, and medicine testify to the power and utility of this way of knowing. However, it is a deep but narrow way of grasping the world. For entirely valid purposes, it leaves much of “lived experience” entirely out of the picture. Thus it risks something like mistaking a map of the city for the booming, buzzing life of the city itself. There are other ways of knowing. The watch word of phenomenology has been “returning to the things themselves.” In everyday life, we might even call it the “real” world, we can’t abstract away from things that are meaningful but messy. Instead, we have to engage and come to terms with them in all sorts of moral and existential ways.
In this world, our social life, politics, cultural activities, and personal lives are not made up of separate individuals doing more or less their own thing, cooperating or competing with one another. They are basically relationships. Present and past, persons and their society, self and other shape one another in ongoing relationships in which, as we say, they co-constitute one another. The meanings and purposes that shape our feelings and guide our action are forever being tested and refined in ongoing processes of mutual influence and dialogue that often touch us at the heart. Very important ideals of being one’s own person or thinking for oneself take on a different meaning in this context from conventional notions of being coolly independent or simply resisting any violation of one’s individual rights or personal boundaries. They require considerable vulnerability and at times large amounts of courage, empathy, love, and humility. We don’t talk nearly enough in psychology about the necessity for such qualities of character in fostering durable well-being.
In psychology and the social disciplines, should we follow the path of abstraction and objectification and seek general laws and principles of human behavior, what has been called a kind of “social physics,” in order to be able to reliably re-engineer personal or social life in various ways? Or should we concur with the theoretical psychologist Kenneth Gergen’s claim that “a fundamental difference exists between the bulk of the phenomena of concern to the natural as opposed to the sociobehavioral scientist. He contends that “there appears to be little justification for the immense effort devoted to the empirical substantiation of fundamental laws of human conduct. There would be seem to be few patterns of human action, regardless of their durability to date, that are not subject to significant alteration?” Some of us, like Gergen, observe that mainstream empirical psychology has achieved almost nothing in the way of high-powered, predictive theory of the sort that is the bread and butter of successful natural sciences and their technological applications. Instead, we should seek to describe and interpret intentional, meaningful human phenomenon in ways that bring to light the purposes and ideals that guide them, which puts us in a better position to reflect on whether or not they serve our developing sense of the good life and/or a decent society. The many correlations we have found between aspects of human behavior or between persons and their environments will take different meanings depending on the context of purposes and values in which they occur. A strong correlation between high grades and eventual high income levels might make such grades seem like the best thing since sliced bread. Or, the whole pattern of competitive striving identified by this research might look like a celebration of a one-sided technocratic way of life that is badly confused about what life is really all about, for both more and less “successful” persons. It is a matter of interpretation in light of one’s best ideals.
What should be our approach to studying human life? Hard-nosed social science or efforts to understand and better appreciate human phenomenon in all their richness and ethical significance? It should be noted that the latter approach means that understanding human life will always have a deeply “practical” aspect. It is itself part and parcel of our ongoing search for meaning, which we hope contributes something to that search. The reflections in “Too Human” about suffering and dependence seem to me to reflect this kind of inquiry. I admire the way the essay elucidates some of the reality of inescapable human suffering without denying it, subjecting it to frantic, impossible attempts to eliminate it, or in any way wallowing in it. It helps bring our common humanity and struggle into a better, gentle focus.
The controversy about human science inquiry rages interminably. The hard-science side of the debate sees heaps of diverse findings as signs of progress no matter what anyone says. The phenomenological side, to which I am inclined, many trivial findings that overlook much of human experience and only contribute to depersonalizing, medicalizing trends in psychology and the wider society. I have just one suggestion. I would contend that what path one chooses does not depend on any sort of independent hard evidence. After all, what counts as evidence depends upon what path one chooses! Rather, the two quite different approaches seem to stem from two different underlying views of what human life is all about, including different conceptions of human dignity and the good life. (I think, if true, this is a point in favor of the phenomenological, interpretive approach, which does not deny or obscure that it is shot through with meanings and values, or claim to be conducting its inquires from some kind of Mt. Olympus, high above the human fray.)
The empirical science approach usually presupposes that human action and our best purposes are essentially instrumental in nature. In this view, the quintessentially human thing about us is our penchant and ability to instrumentally re-engineer or redirect ourselves or our world toward outcomes, results, or payoffs we happen to desire, be they greater food production, victory in a just war, medical advances, or peace of mind. Means and ends are separate on this account. If wealth is the goal, it doesn’t matter whether we gain it by arms trafficking, selling hula hoops, or writing a great novel, so long as we get the desired result.
The phenomenological, interpretive approach incorporates a quite different view of human action and its purposes, one that goes back to Aristotle and is getting more and more attention in recent decades in moral philosophy and social theory generally. (I apologize for this brief, nerdy philosophical interlude. There is no way to avoid it.) In this view, the most basic kind of human activity is not instrumental. It is practices in which means are not separate from their ends but an organic part of them. Thus, if we want to be a courageous or compassionate person, we have to do courageous or compassionate things. Cowardly or insensitive behavior will never help reach the goal. In contemporary Aristotelian lingo, not instrumental means-end but rather constituent-end practices are central to human life. Life is full of pursuits, like creativity, friendship, constructive politics, or spiritual practices that we undertake because they incorporate qualities we deem good in themselves, not because they are means to any other sort of payoff or result like worldly success, comfort, or pleasure. Instrumental activities play an important role in human life. But their goals or purposes are set by our best understanding at them moment of qualities of character, excellence, and a good society we feel we should cultivate for their own sake. Of course, our ideas about such things develop and are refined over time. It’s a never-ending process. In the hermeneutic philosophical view, we can neither escape serious convictions about such matters nor gain final or certain truth about them. That is the mark of human finitude, being permanently stuck midway between the animals and the gods, as the Greeks famously put it.
A great many thinkers and critics over the years have identified instrumentalism and a never-ending pursuit of control over ourselves and the world as a major source of personal and societal ills in our kind of society. It goes hand in glove with the individualism that “Too Human” finds problematic in thinking about mental illness and health. Here are a few quick thoughts about why it is so problematic. Recall that instrumentalism means giving direct control over events primacy over cultivating qualities of life thought to be excellent, good, virtuous, beautiful, or spiritually meaningful in their own right. In the world of instrumentalism, everything is divided into being “in” or “out of control” In the world of hermeneutic phenomenology, there are many deeper and different ways of knowing and living that entirely escape that coarse dichotomy. (Half the advertisements on television these days seem to bluntly state or assume that crude dichotomy, with being in control, master of the situation, or practically invulnerable being provided the lucky customer by some “product.” )
The instrumentalist credo puts the cart before the horse. It leads us to seek ever more power and control for their own sake, which makes it harder and harder to reflect about any other or deeper values in living, including what would be worthwhile purposes the technology or control we do posses might best serve. It depersonalizes and coarsens both our social and personal life. Certainly, it is a major source of the ways we degrade or destroy the environment that sustains us.
Over half a century ago, Erich Fromm richly portrayed how our a hyper-instrumentalized, turbo-capitalist way of life also leads to moral and personal disorientation. Fromm actually thought it was a major source of emotional and interpersonal problems in living in our kind of society. He analyzed what he called the “ambiguity of freedom” in modern times. We have, he argues, a very well-developed sense of “freedom from” arbitrary authority, threatening dogmatism, or irrational impediments to freedom of action. . However, he felt, we sorely lack a corresponding sense of “freedom to” or “freedom for” that would give some context, direction, or deeper purpose to our increased freedom and opportunity. My experience as a teacher has been that if you just mention this idea to a class of students and ask them to brainstorm about ways the problem of a one-sided “freedom from” shows up in their lives or the world around them, they will fill up the rest of the hour with animated conversation and many good insights. The problem for much psychology and social science is that they warmly advocate greater “effectiveness” and “empowerment” while remaining oblivious to the issues Fromm brought to our attention. Thus, as it is sometimes said, they tend to perpetuate the problem in the cure that is offered for it.
This ambiguity of freedom, Fromm felt, means that endless competitive striving or perhaps just trying to fit in become the main goal in living. Convictions that would lead one to stand alone for a while or cut against the grain carry little weight. They are seen as little more than personal preferences that play no significant role in the business of the world that rushes ahead and carries us along. The result, he observes, is that we tend to become interchangeable cogs in the social machinery, to become directionless and empty, to be led by the nose by whatever “sells” in the marketplace. By the way, this includes what he terms a widespread “personality market” in which even personal qualities must be revised to accommodate the impulses or preferences of others. In the process, we treat others and ourselves as depersonalized objects. Hungry for substance but unable to find it, in Fromm’s view, we tend to sell out our freedom to fanaticism, the illusion of total fulfillment in romantic love, craving and seeking the approval of others at all costs, losing ourselves in work, a variety of drugs and other escapisms, or just going shopping.
Philip Cushman, in a famous article entitled “Why the Self is Empty,” picks up the ball from Fromm and argues that the lack of inner-directedness and emptiness of convictions or substance that Fromm identifies leads to many people becoming “empty selves,” whose characteristics of fragility, sense of emptiness, and proneness to fluctuation between feelings of worthlessness and grandiosity are often said to be the hallmarks of neurotic psychopathology in our day.
The theoretical psychologist John Schumaker wrote a book entitled The Age of Insanity: Modernity and Mental Health. I think his ideas set the stage nicely for an in-depth discussion of our way life and emotional problems in living, the direction in which I suggest a lot of psychology should be moving. We are generally not trained for that work, but It is time to learn some new tricks.
Schumaker argues persuasively that a number of “megatrends” in modern society cut against the grain of our deeply social nature. Modernity drastically
“detraditionalizes the world and sets in motion multiple out-of-control processes that require constant cultural, political, and institutional innovation,” he writes. Each individual, couple, and family has to make it up as they go along in meeting the considerable stresses and challenges of life, with few shared convictions other than a healthy sense of “freedom from” to at least serve as a starting point for reflection and dialogue. We tend to be a “disorganized dust of individuals who have been freed too much from all genuine social bonds” (p. 16). Thus we tend to become somewhat helpless and hapless pawns in large bureaucratic systems like the modern market and impersonal state apparatus, a situation that he feels tends to foster a variety of emotional and spiritual ills. You don’t have to agree with every detail of Schumaker’s analysis to think he is on to something important.
For example, in a chapter entitled “The Cultural Dynamics of Depression,” Schumaker points out that most cognitive therapists and many others “still persist in locating depression-generating cognitions within the individual, simultaneously overlooking culture as the source of most cognitions.” Even if the popular notion of “learned helplessness” illumines depression to some extent, Schumaker argues, there are a host of broader cultural patterns in the modern West that predispose people toward helplessness. Depression may indeed involve what many textbooks call the “internalization of negative emotions.” But many of our socialization practices and resulting way of life, Schumaker contends, enforce a great deal of such excessive internalization and offer few opportunities for expression or catharsis, even after possibly helpful psychotherapy. Wider historical and cultural perspectives on depression allow one to begin to make sense of a striking increase, as much as tenfold, of “clinical depression” in modern Western societies over the last half century.
Schumaker argues that neither evidence for a genetic component of depression nor the fact that antidepressant medications are sometimes effective in reducing the symptoms of depression imply an “automatic causal link between depression and biological characteristics.” Rather, there is considerable evidence to suggest that a culture’s shared meanings and more communitarian coping strategies can raise the threshold for depression very high for most people. Just to give one example that I found fascinating, there appears to be a notable absence of postnatal depression in the vast majority of non-Western cultures. Research indicates that at least 50 percent of women in our society experience “maternity blues” and approximately 20 percent go on to develop more serious postnatal depression. But among the Kipsigis people of Kenya, medical anthropologists can find no evidence whatsoever for postpartum depression. In that culture, Schumaker notes, a predictable pattern of practices, rituals, and gifts following childbirth mark out a “distinct culturally acknowledged postnatal period,” one that “confirm[s] symbolically the new mother’s elevated standing” in the community, affords her “pampered social seclusion and mandated rest,” and provides assistance with her new responsibilities for a time from community members.
Of course, for many reason, we can’t and wouldn’t want to join the Kipsigis culture But we could learn from them and others if we wanted to take on the challenge of rethinking the relationship of culture and psychopathology.
