In this book I try to convey an understanding of human psychology from the viewpoint of the individual who wishes to learn about the human being in the interests in self-inquiry. Self-inquiry implies getting practical knowledge of oneself especially as guided by scientific and humanistic knowledge of the make-up of the human being. It should not to be taken as 'spiritual' inquiry or in the pseudo-religious sense of speculative doctrines or attempts to attain liberation from 'worldly' concerns. However, self-inquiry may well involve us in the process of experimental self-improvement, including both the discovery and avoidance of personal psychic problems and the development of fresh methods and aims towards psychological and social fulfilment. These are questions approached in every genuine philosophy and spiritual tradition throughout human history and the many cultures or religions through which many human preconceptions arising from awe at - and ignorance of the workings of nature - from primitive supersitions to modern specualtive theories which do not stand up to rigorous tests or informed criticisms.

No psychology can have any deeper meaning to us or give adequate explanations of human behaviour if it is not sound in its fundaments. I also therefore examine, in as concise and popular language as a serious treatment of the subject allows, the basic assumptions that are unavoidable in any system of psychology, because these are also equally crucial to a person's own understanding of reality, of oneself and of others. There is a truth behind the aphorism 'as one thinks or believes, so one eventually experiences and becomes' in that it suggests the essential role of self-knowledge in all understanding whatever.

Psychology is used of many theories, doctrines, systems of investigation and evaluation of the person. These range from quite fundamental and frequently opposed perspectives on human life. Two poles of the sphere of approach or views on the human psyche are;
1) the moral view regards us as basically having a measure of freedom of action and responsibility for the and

2) the view that denies that human volition plays any significant role in life. This view is held by the extremes of scientific psychology (eg. behaviourism which holds that all our behaviour is caused independently of our will and is thus explainable (even though science has not yet succeeded in finding all the operative causes) and those of deterministic and fatalistic philosophies and theologies (which invarialy allow human beings little or no latitude in forming a destiny, invariably putting it all down to gods or a supreme creator etc..

An overall view of 'the human whole' proposed here requires that we recognise how all of us are partly the product of past events, partly the welders of our own destinies... though which part dominates can varies greatly with different persons and circumstances.

In the cluttered field of modern psychology, some theories like psycho-analysis and object relations theory have long assumed an importance and generality of application in professional work that is out of all due proportion to palpable achievements. Behaviourism has shown itself to be effective in understanding certain fundamentals of how behaviour is formed and changed, though it tended to counteract a more humanistic approach to human beings a persons. The variety of psychological science and psychotherapy is not excluded from consideration, though over-technical language and methodological complexity is avoided in viewing the psyche from the perspective of philosophical psychology - that is, an epistimologically higher level psychology (though no one involving metaphysical master ideas). The emphasis of the humanistic psychological vision is that the person can properly be understood only through experience informed by a wide understanding and through personal practice of certain precepts. This also involves me in some critical assessment of some concepts and methods in psychology and of various purposes they fulfil.

The present outline of the human psyche, its development and functions (or also dysfunctions) provides a very general and no doubt incomplete frame of reference for integrating the understanding of self and others. It also consists in practically testable ideas developed by observations which open for further development and experiment. (i.e. by empirical hypotheses or by active engagement in personal trial and error). However, because the aim is embracing, the reader's intuition and experience is always important in grasping to which circumstances general ideas may or may not apply, for no text with such an overall aim can specify so very concretely. Besides, all explanations must cease at some point. Ideally, a truly holistic conception would provide for the future unification and consistent interpretation of otherwise incommensurable types of study and therapeutic theories, as well as the integration and comparative evaluation of psychological insights - both facts and values - from the literature of all world cultures - but this is clearly yet a distant possibility.

The sources that have influenced my views here are very widely distributed in time and place, by hypotheses, theories, and insights first met in a wide literature and not least observations from my own experiences of human relations in varied capacities, such as different kinds of group work and of teaching at all levels. These have naturally become modified and even transformed in the same manner that our understanding develops in the mill of life with its fresh starts, re-clarifications, withdrawals from dead-ends, trial and error and reflections after the fact. So I am not here concerned so much to substantiate any given theory by detailed documentation or systematic demonstration, as clearly to outline some practical methods within a clear conceptual framework.

"However good the clinical observation of the great psychologists of our time may have been, their deductions therefrom have been whipped up into a great froth of words, by means of which they have progressively described the indescribable. A student of today who needs to know this field will find innumerable books in maddening variety and confusion, often using the same words but with different meanings, with masters and followers riven by disagreement with every other theory than their own. Confusion in any field of knowledge could hardly have become more confounded than is our case today.

To present the universe as a scientific system is to destroy it. To present an illness as a clinical entity is, in the long run, to destroy the patient. To present a psychological system supposedly derived from clinical observation by scientific method is monstrously presumptive and quite impossible. Every such system must produce the opportunity for the 'unconscious' emergence of the inadequacy of our own egoic view-point. Until all psychological experience and opinion can be checked against a more adequate philosophic and metaphysical system at the back of it, psychology will remain in the state of the disreputable confusion which it is at present." Dr. Graham E. Howe. "Cure or Heal" (London. 1965)

Go to Chapter 1: Introduction to 'Higher Psychology'