TFF: Some people are interested in the exploring new ideas and new ways of getting things done; some are not. Some fear new ideas; some do not. Some of us are curious; some are not. Some encourage the exploration of new ideas; some do not. Some are obscurants; some are not.
That is what makes exploring the nature and function of the human spirit (the pneuma) facinating for me.
BTW, my curiosity led me to do a google on "the new psychologies". Here is the first thing that came up:
http://www.socionics.com/main/welcome.htmlBut is it really all that new?
In 1884 John Dewey wrote about THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY:
http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Dewey/newpsych.htm*****
He began his essay by acknowledging the work of the early psychologists who took a subjective approach to the subject, but he then added:
What can be meant, then, by saying that the rise of this physiological psychology has produced a revolution in psychology? This: that it has given a new instrument, introduced a new method,-- that of experiment, which has supplemented and corrected the old method of introspection.
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Here is the concluding part of the essay:
...From this general characteristic result most of its features. It has already been noticed that it insists upon the unity and solidarity of psychical life against abstract theories which would break it up into atomic elements or independent powers.
It lays large stress upon the will; not as an abstract power of unmotivated choice, nor as an executive power to obey the behests of the understanding, the legislative branch of the psychical government, but as a living bond connecting and conditioning all mental activity. It emphasizes the teleological element, not in any mechanical or external sense, but regarding life as an organism in which immanent ideas or purposes are realizing themselves through the development of experience. Thus modern psychology is intensely ethical in its tendencies. As it refuses to hypostatize abstractions into self-subsistent individuals, and as it insists upon the automatic spontaneous elements in man's life, it is making possible for the first time an adequate psychology of man's religious nature and experience.
As it goes into the depths of man's nature it finds, as stone of its foundation, blood of its life, the instinctive tendencies of devotion, sacrifice, faith, and idealism which are the eternal substructure of all the struggles of the nations upon the altar stairs which slope up to God.
It finds no insuperable problems in the relations of faith and reason, for it can discover in its investigations no reason which is not based upon faith, and no faith which is not rational in its origin and tendency. But to attempt to give any detailed account of these features of the New Psychology would be to go over much of the recent discussions of ethics and theology. We can conclude only by saying that, following the logic of life, it attempts to comprehend life.
