The question raised by this OP is whether psychology can delineate and define, and solve, philosophical dilemmas.
The given is,that philosophy included psychology starting very early on in history. Psychology did not come into existence until very late, and it differentiated from it along many similar lines. The thought’s underlying such concepts as happiness, wisdom, equilibrium, source from classical ideas of what these should be.
We look at these classical ideas, as forms, which we can be somehow molded into, as in the birth of tragedy, actors wore masks into which their characters were formed.
These masks implied a hidden ness of character, who was the actor, the wearer. The actor’s part, his role,then by extension, became the focus , or attention of the audience.
These formal ways of expression in the art of the theatre, nowadays,have been reduced, or changed into what has become known as absurd theatre, in a postmodern world. Actors do not wear masks any more, their faces blatantly, nakedly express the intended role. There is no form into which their actions through their roles can aspire into. It is, an aspiration in the classical sense, a sublime aspiration, to formalize an act, an action, and a reaction by the audience. Such a process, in a transcendental interpretation is no longer considered of an objective content, except by such retro grades, as perhaps the few followers of Immanual kant who are left. Kant sublime concept, very much indicates this need to understand the ideal concepts of perception into categorical schema into a imminent presence, irrespective of casual considerations, because of basic intuition of perceptions which transcend space and time.
The psychological basis of the formal idea, having become relative and perspective related change the whole content of feeling, knowledge, and realization, because they change impressions of the sublime into subtle and ridiculous postures. These postures have been accepted, Lyotard and others point to this process.
The biochemical reactions to this change are obvious, reliance on pharmacological products are at an all time high, and the neurosis of yesteryear has turned into the psychosis of today. There is no doubt that Shakespeare was right and all the world has turned into a stage.
The birth of tragedy itself is based on a paradox, and it is this paradox which underlies the very nature of how reality is perceived.
Psychology now relates to virtual representations of relative reality, and the causes are indistinct from the effects. Recreational use of drugs cannot be clearly differentiated from its psychologically defined use.
So patterns are obvious, psychology ha become a drug dispensary, therapy has become non consequential, and the base line are not ideas such as the attainment of happiness, or the attainment of wisdom. The objectives are stability of affect, effect, and cognition. These aims are anything but within the bounds of happiness, they are affective albeit trendy ways to impose a behavioristic model upon seekers of happiness, while trying to minimize the biochemical changes which will occur, such as in drug related reactions.
This is why, I think Laing was so right in his last ditch attempt to salvage psychiatry, from the clutches of those, who reduced the idea of Man, into a controlled behavioristic machine. It isn’t working, and the growth of such pseudo occult entities. As scientology growing into humongous institutions is one example of a displaced and yet unsubtle entity.
