Heavenly Psychology

Tales of College Days : V

 

 

 

 

A student's difficulty with a class assignment brought to me a classic confrontation between the faiths and science. He had claimed that he can't subscribe to Freud's theory of self actualization of an individual in society. Instead he claimed that only god can enable us to do that.

 

So I told him to write a critique of Freud in relation to the beliefs of his faith.

 

In a class discussion on ' Branding ' as an effective approach to sales, we encountered the traditional Asian problem with branding .... that one should not draw attention to one's name or form as a means of commercial profit making. It was viewed as an act of flaunting the self that Asian traditions try to moderate in their practice of business.

 

These factors added up to the student's understanding of the world and eventually presented itself in two options. One was for the student to reject completely all American influences. The second was to create an understanding of the rationality of thought as represented by American attitudes.

 

In essence, American influence meant ' check it out yourself ' and much of this was in a physical experience of the world. The world, according to Asian practices, is experienced by several faculties of the individual and not simply the physical. It comprises stories and legends, dreams, the teachings of the ancients and the many ways in which faith is experienced.

 

Perhaps what an American education did was to persuade the Asian student to test what he knows and not carry a lot of baggage which has no purpose. I gave the student a 'B' grade on his assigment on Freud. He had refused to take the test.

 

 

 

Reviews

[Cole Hayley]

Its ironic how we just stop talking about freud in my recent psychology lecture. Mainly we focused on the psychoanalysis theory of his. His theory of self actualization however is a very interesting theory.