5: On Pop-Psychology

Full book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1791781527

I I have heard much psychology since my return to the crowd. Once one acquires ears for psychological talk, they hear almost nothing but that these days. Everyone is their own patient and everyone else is someone else’s. It has made its way into our concept of cause and effect, our language, our morality. In its popular use, what is psychology if not astrology decked out in reason, cloaked with logic? The uses of psychology are certainly more telling than what they claim to be. This modern spirituality has been adopted by even the most reasonable among us as a means to self-help. They grasp for this tool of self-explanation without seeing it as a tool at all, without asking why they grasp. They seek self-knowledge through knowledge in general�"external knowledge at that. Can self-knowledge originate from something which is not internal? The answer might leave many lost and unsteady. This scientific astrology is the newest mass producer of cheap personality traits. One seeks through it what one has not yet found in oneself: the searching stops there. Do not settle for cheap personality traits, go out and craft your own. Personality is a craft to be learned, you are its product. You woodcrafters of personality know that psychology is insufficient for the furniture of your soul. You woodcrafters of the self know that one must cut down one's own tree�"must saw, shape, sand and polish its wood�"to consider any furniture worthy. What is psychology if not a bunch of faux wood and an instructional booklet that makes a flimsy bookcase in thirty minutes? A woodcrafter of self makes the instructions themself, uses real wood, and takes months, not thirty minutes. Do not settle for a room full of cheap psychological furniture: it does its job, but its not built to last. And what happens always when something becomes cheap? It spreads, infests, everyone has it. This is the psychology of psychology. One thinks in its terms and talks with others who then adopt the same terms. How widespread this cheap identity is for all who can see! This identity is used not only for the self, but for others: one explains the behaviors of others psychologically and thus knows them psychologically. By knowing one psychologically, one treats them psychologically. Being treated psychologically leads one to think of themself psychologically. This is the spread of psychology. A self securing system that ends in a collective identity, a homogenized identity. You highest psychologists of today, my task to you is to think psychologically about psychology. Why do you need psychology? Forget the concerns of psychology, we have seen what comes of it. Go a step further and ask why. Perhaps its the newest faith? It does after all presume a ‘normal’ condition of life. Is it an attempt to affirm something in existence as normal and constant? But perhaps by asking such questions I’ve already set the psychologists to work! Not in answering my questions, no! Set them to work analyzing me! This much I will say about popular psychology: it produces finer furniture than past attempts at spirituality, so it will take longer before it collapses in on itself.