Personality Zone

Heuristic Psychology

You'll have to bear with me on this one, because it isn't as directly related to temperament theory.


I've been studying psychology for some time. (Not in classes, but I have psychologist friends, lots of books, and I'm good at internet research.) When I first got to looking at the field, I had something specific in mind -- but I didn't know exactly what it was that I was looking for. At the same time, I knew that I'd be certain what it was if I ran across it.

I still haven't found it anywhere in psychology as it exists today. I'm starting to doubt that it's been discovered yet. Though it hasn't been fully articulated -- my search would be over if it was -- I can play hot-and-cold with some of the existing materials to see how close the various fields are to what I have in mind.

Behavioral psychology and so on are useful for their own reasons, but have very little to do with this particular application area. Jungian psychology, temperament theory, metacognition, and cognitive neuroscience seem to be related, particularly the discussions of the precise nature of cognitive processes. The phenomenology of Edmund Husserl, and the transcendental logic of Immanuel Kant seem to fit in somewhere as well.

The basic idea is this: scientific method can't cover the whole range of ways of thinking. Scientific method is a historical phenomenon, developed over centuries and eventually systematized by the likes of Sir Francis Bacon. But the scientists who formalized scientific method couldn't have used scientific method to do the work of formalizing, because scientific method as such didn't yet exist.

So, what happens when you crawl around inside the head of Sir Francis? What exactly was he doing when he formalized scientific method? If we find out what he was doing with his mind, can we do the same thing with our own minds to generate new methods to use for other purposes? What form would those methods take, and is there a way of telling what a given method would be good for before we construct it? How do we know if a method is viable, and by what mechanisms of thought can we hold ourselves to a standard of mental rigor sufficient to the task of following the steps that the model proscribes?

An example of such a process at work was the phenomenology of religion espoused by Husserl -- it struck me a while ago that it's possible to reformulate his method as the systematic application of Jungian cognitive processes in a certain sequence, regarding self and object. At this stage in my inquiries, the prospect of unifying those branches of philosophy and psychology is quite promising. If it's possible to pull that off, my programme (called "Heuristic Psychology" for want of a better term at the moment) would take on roughly the following shape:

(1) To develop a toolset for quickly and conveniently mapping out a way of thinking, analytically and phenomenologically;
(2) To develop a set of study techniques to develop core competency in all four cognitive functions;
(3) To develop a set of study techniques for increasing conscious physiological and metacognitive awareness and control;
(4) To unite these into a single, mutually-reinforcing mental discipline.

I don't know if this has been done. I've never found anyone who claimed to have pulled it off, but I'd like to know who they are if they have. The Buddhist concept of Samadhi, and the practice of Zazen to achieve that sort of enlightenment, seems to fit the model very well. Western logicians fill in more of the picture, since they're much more concerned with developing the Thinking function. Confucius' method of following the Way looks to be equally concerned with Feeling function and the process of Introverted Sensing. The problem is that each tradition stakes out its own place and introduces the material from radically different perspectives and cultural backgrounds, so that one must become a philologist and an anthropologist as well as a philosopher, logician, and psychologist to comprehend it all. There's got to be a simpler way to pull off that effect, especially since the particular lessons of each culture are adapted to the way of thinking which is most suited to people who were raised in that culture.

I haven't got a handle on everything, and I don't know where it's going. I've always felt like there's some kind of huge untapped potential in psychology, and it seems almost like I've just succeeded in scratching the surface, but darned if there isn't a lot underneath. What do y'all think? Any ideas as to how to go about the task at hand?