In what ways are societies just resonations of the average individual’s personality? Could societies be treated as though they were individuals? Do they have a sort of “psychology”? If a psychotherapist were to treat an individual successfully, could that same approach be used on an entire society suffering from the same afflictions? Do societies display the same symptoms of PTSD as individuals? What about longterm symptoms of longterm abuse such as drug addiction? Could our fixation on material pleasures be interpretation as a sort of “drug addiction” that was brought on by a traumatic past - say the dark ages or the unjust persecutions of anyone who spoke out against the church only a few centuries ago?
Whole societies can be thought of as agents, yes. As long as we know we are using metaphors, your analysis holds, yes. These are vast generalisations, of course, but if they’re useful, use them.
Thinking of whole societies as agents is more harmful then it is helpful, it has lead to a lot of nonsensical psychology/sociology beliefs, about a culture being some kind of super-organism, its beyond absurd and impossible to apply.
Society is the interaction of agents with minds/personality, and as such societies will reflect the human nature that carves them, but talking about them as organisms or individuals is beyond pointless, its actually harmful because it clouds real elucidation on the issue.
No, absolutely not, because a society is the result of an interaction it doesn’t have a mind of its own.
No, because societies aren’t organisms in that sense, our fixation on material pleasures might have somthing to do with culture/history, but not in the sense on an individual experiencing a traumatic past.
It leads where you take it, Cyrene.
Your imagined omniscience notwithstanding.
Explain yourself at length; like I said, talking about a culture as an agent is more harmful then helpful because of the history of science which preceded it. What are you saying about it, exactly?
- The Adapted Mind.
The problem with talking about cultures as if amplifications of an individual are many. Most importantly:
The Standard psychology of the last century has mainly been supported/twisted by various ideas about group-level processes giving us the rich structure of our minds, and not our minds, interacting/producing that culture in turn.
theres many more scientific problems though.
most importantly:
[u]
[b]
- The Adapted mind
That covers the issue significantly, I think.
Yes. America is an amplification of Dick Cheney.
I’m not in disagreement with this at all. This is actually where my point stems from. Faust was right that we need to take this as a metaphore, but it’s a damn good one IMHO. A great deal of how a culture/society expresses itself and acts on the global scene is a reflection of the sentiments and intents of the individuals composing it - but it does comes from these individuals, and that is key.
I’ll contend with this part a little. It doesn’t require having an actual mind for psychotherapeutic approaches to have an effect. If a psychotherapist finds that a lot more clients are coming in complaining of depression, he might infer that society as a whole is becoming more depressed. Therefore, the approach he takes to his clients individually can be addressed to society as well (maybe in a television interview or a book). He might phrase it as “We are a depressed people. We need to do such-and-such.” (i.e. ‘we’ addresses the individuals of society but en masse).
I do honestly find it raises more problems then what it helps, even as a metaphor. You’d have to go out of your way to distinguish what kind of metaphor it was and exactly in what sense you meant it (which kinds of eliminates the point of using a metaphor) but in certain context/ways it can be used and even well, at least i’d suspect.
Well the problem with psychotherapy is that it all works generally the same (all therapies) and as discussed above (or maybe I didn’t quote it) even talking about cultures like they are in any way fixed or even definable in any kind of reasonably scientific way, we couldn’t really treat a ‘culture’ we could adopt language more suited to treating people or groups within the culture though.
Find a confused psychotherapist who is willing to try it out.
Hell, find a “society” to accept the treatment.
What could be more stupid than to treat a “society” as an individual? Sheeesh.
Metaphor, my ass. It is a called duplicity or hiding responsibility.
Treating “society” as an individual is a great way to hide or misrepresent individual responsibility.
What “responsibility” are you talking about?
Uh… the type of responsibility that may need psychotherapy, for one.
So let me get this straight. If one society declares war on another, rather than treat that society as having something like ODD, we hold them responsible and reciprocate accordingly. Is that what you mean?
Agreed.
I certainly think they can be, yes.
How about you work on figuring out how to get a “society” to lay down on a black leather couch to receive your hypothetical psychotherapy?
Let me know when you find a client.
No.
Only an individual can receive psychotherapy and only an individual person can be responsible. Otherwise, the concept of responsibility is meaningless – or fodder for deception.
You’re taking the metaphore way too literally.
Hello gib:
1- In what ways are societies just resonations of the average individual’s personality?
O- A society is a phenomenon of it’s parts. A society is made of individuals, but, at the same time, an individual is influenced by his society, if not all of it, then by a section of society. But we must be careful because a part of society will sometimes go against the wishes of an individual, so that the society, at some level, is disonant with the individual within even if it also influenced that disonance. A society is like an enviroment of competing individuals and in which a hierarchy develops- high society/low society, secular/religious etc. “Society” contains within different levels which jokey for dominance of the culture. And so society does represent, or resonates the personality of all individuals because “society” itself is, or can be, as diverse as the individuals.
2- Could societies be treated as though they were individuals?
O- Only schizophrenic individuals with multiple personalities.
3- Do they have a sort of “psychology”?
O- That is the assumption of social science which is basically groups psychology. Now, in psychology there are those that assert that we have a Self. Apply this to society and you will fail to understand it, in my opinion. Then there are those who assert that we have a “Saturated Self”, or in other words that the Self is loaded with smaller versions of a self (or seleves) that serve us ad hoc, depending on circumstances. As much as we would like to compartmentalize individuals into one predictable mold, the fact is that we are surprised by individuals, and they are surprised by themselves as well. This sort of psychology I think is more applicable to a society as a whole.
3- If a psychotherapist were to treat an individual successfully, could that same approach be used on an entire society suffering from the same afflictions?
O- Now you’re entering into the objectionable elements of psychotherapy. Let me list some:
a- Who measures “success”?
b- Who determines what counts as an affliction"?
c- If it is measured and determined by a psychotherapist, what does that psychotherapist base his results and diagnosis upon?
Success is a very subjective term and whether it is the psychotherapist or the patient that gauges the success of the therapy, we can never know whether the improvement is actual or a manufactured: The problem and the solution were introduced into the mental vocabulary of the patient. We have a pharmaceutical industry that is just loking for new “problems” for which they can seel you a drug to “manage”, not even cure and often with side effects that make you needful of other drugs on top of the drug that will help you manage your “problem”. Fifty years ago a child with ADD would just be considered a normal child. Who is to really say that a hyper child is suffering from something? Who draws that line that encircles “normal behaviour” for such and such human being? We are treating “anxiety” while anxiety in fact may have an evolutionary value of making us uncomfortable and spurring us on to improve our current condition which is giving us anxiety. Instead we medicate ourselves and live through with a dead stare, softened, half-asleep and no longer anxious to change our circumstances because we can live with them. We have multiplied the opium for the people. We have given them more options than just alcohol and “illegal” drugs.
Now, a psychoterapist may say: “You have this or that issue. Come to see me once a week at $300.00 per session and at the end of which, if ever, you should be less misarable…no, not truly “cured” or happy, but less miserable”. Now the potential patient has to accept on trust what could simply just be the mere opinion of this man, that he has a proble, but we have fear in us and so often that fear is pursued by psychologist and politicians alike with the same result: We elect them both.
4- Do societies display the same symptoms of PTSD as individuals?
O- Certain parts…there is no absolute correspondence. The aspect of multiplicity prevents us from applying to a mixed group strategists that will work only for some. Again, social science is possible because of it’s assumptions that as with the individual so with the group, but this is a value judgment that goes beyond what can be discovered by objective methodology or science-proper. Social sciences are similar to theoretical physics.
5- Could our fixation on material pleasures be interpretation as a sort of “drug addiction” that was brought on by a traumatic past - say the dark ages or the unjust persecutions of anyone who spoke out against the church only a few centuries ago?
O- Material vices as individual drug addiction? You can gain some insight from this interpretation…still, it remains just another of many possible interpretations. Material pleasures are the product of human need for pleasure. It need not be material nor should we figure it absent in the middle ages. Different, yes, but not absent. What we find is a replacement of pleasures. Kids that once may have been attracted by the pleasure of playing the violin are now engage in the pleasure of playing X-Box with the skill of a musical virtuoso.