Coming together or moving apart?

Here is another installment in my research of the 'dimensions of the captivity of alienation':
From:

  Daniel Kopala-Sibley, Doctoral Candidate, McGill University

Source: Kopala-Sibley, D. (2010). Coming together or moving apart? Separation and fragmentation within psychology. Psynopsis: Canada’s Psychology Newspaper, 32(1), 33.

Many of us entering academic psychology did so with broad, if not lofty, goals. We wanted to understand the human “mind” as comprehensively as possible. But hasn’t that been the ideal of psychology since Plato, to comprehend the human psyche as a whole? In the past century, however, it seems to me that our discipline has become divided, some might say fragmented, even, into increasingly narrow specializations, and the ideal of comprehending the ‘whole’ seems both lost and impossible. Indeed, philosopher Gilbert Ryle argued for the “abandonment of the notion that ‘psychology’ is the name of a unitary inquiry or tree of inquiries” (Ryle, p.305, 1949).

 This is potentially dangerous. Psychology may become so fragmented that researchers risk no longer being able or willing to see the discipline in a comprehensive, purposeful manner. This arguably places our field at a critical time in its development: at what point do we attempt to tie various sub-fields together? Equally important, especially for graduate students, is the question of whether a successful career requires ultra-specialization.

New graduate students aiming for a research career quickly learn that success requires finding some minute, understudied problem, and becoming the go-to person on that subject. Perhaps this contention is accurate; the days of the grand theorists, who sought to understand human nature, really are over and graduate students are condemned to pursue a hyper-focused sub-discipline of psychology.

To say this is not to fall into a “renaissance-man syndrome” in which we foolishly believe we can know or understand all that psychological research has to offer. Attempting to synthesize the many ideas within psychology requires collaboration between a variety of disciplines; it does not require knowledge of the entire field on the part of one researcher.

Some researchers, however, are looking to big theories to tie together a wide range of empirical evidence. For instance, Tooby and Cosmides’ evolutionary psychology has been praised for its ability to explain a wide range of human behaviours. Indeed, it attempts to “assemble out of the disjointed, fragmentary, and mutually contradictory human disciplines a single, logically integrated research framework” (Tooby & Cosmides, 2005, p.5)…

Another View:

The recent article and buzz about the decreasing use of psychotherapy by psychiatrists (http://www.healthexperiment.com) is further evidence of a social shift away from relating to others as people. Our use of torture as a nation, the "axis of evil" language from our government, and the increasing psychiatric view of symptoms as reflections of neurons and chemicals suggests that we may be in a social withdrawal from being able to face and bear the pain of human experience. The Austen Riggs Center' s Eric Plakun speaks for the tension in psychiatry between two models of treatment: biological and psychological(http://wkim83.wordpress.com ) . He argues that they must be integrated for a full picture of our patients. Shifting away from the area that psychoanalysis has so carefully developed of listening to others with disciplined empathy runs the risk of losing the embedded set of values about the significance of the individual life.

Posted by Edward R. Shapiro, MD on his blog, Lost in Familiar Places....2008

***We are created in the 'image of God' with body, mind, soul, heart and so much more. Scripture says "the heart and mind of man are very deep"....who can know it?  As Sister said to me, "Remember who you are."
Scripture noted that 'a crushed spirit who can bear?'
Treating the body is complex, true, and it is important.  Everyone can 'see' and respond to a nail through a palm but a sword through a spirit seems to make everyone ignorant all of a sudden.  The spiritual gifts of healing include dealing with the 'whole' person which requires that other gift to be sought for in prayer: wisdom.  Compassion is of the highest order from the Mercy of God.