We shall be assuming the passionate importance of psychological ideas. The soul requires its own ideas, in fact, soul-making takes place as much through ideation as in personal relationships or meditation . One aim of this book is the resuscitation of ideas at a time in psychology when they have fallen into decline and are being replaced by experimental designs, social programs, therapeutic techniques.
There seems to be nothing more astounding in the field of psychology than its scarcity of interesting ideas. Whole schools are built upon one book, and one book upon one idea, and that often a simplification or a borrowing. The ideational process in psychology is far behind its methodology, instruments, and applications-and far, far behind the psyche's indigenous richness. In this century since Freud and Jung and the wealth of ideas they introduced-from libido, projection, and repression to individuation, animaanimus, and archetype, to pick but a handful-how few have been the ideas generative of psychological reflection! Technical concepts proliferate in the jargon of a profession, but these are short-lived fruit flies feeding on the sound fruit.
Ideas decline for many reasons. They too grow old and hollow, become private and precious; or they may detach from life, no longer able to save its phenomena. Or they may become monomanic, one particular idea crediting itself with more value than all others, and in opposition to them. Today action is thought of within this polarity, which at its extreme would make action blind and ideas impotent. An old cliche, the bodiless head of academic psychology, is converting into a new cliche, the headless body of therapeutic psychology-a current demonstration of action against ideation.
I would remove discussion of ideas from the realm of thought to the realm of psyche. It is their appearance in the psyche, their significance as psychic events, their psychological effect and reality as experiences relevant for soul, that demand our attention as psychologists. For us ideas are ways of regarding things (modi res considerandi), perspectives. Ideas give us eyes, let us see. The word idea itself points to its intimacy with the visual metaphor of knowing, for it is related both to the Latin videre ("to see") and the German wissen ("to know"). Ideas are ways of seeing and knowing, or knowing by means of insighting. Ideas allow us to envision, and by means of vision we can know. Psychological ideas are ways of seeing and knowing soul, so that a change in psychological ideas means a change in regard to soul and regard for soul.
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Our word idea comes from the Greek eidos, which meant originally in early Greek thought, and as Plato used it, both that which one sees-an appearance or shape in a concrete sense-and that by means of which one sees. We see them, and by means of them . Ideas are both the shape of events, their constellation in this or that archetypal pattern, and the modes that make possible our ability to see through events into their pattern. By means of an idea we can see the idea cloaked in the passing parade. The implicit connection between having ideas to see with and seeing ideas themselves suggests that the more ideas we have, the more we sec, and the deeper the ideas we have, the deeper we see. It also suggests that ideas engender other ideas, breeding new perspectives for viewing ourselves and world.