Bottom-up v. Top-down

I discovered Carl Gustav Jung just after I had passed my nineteenth year—and Frederic W.H. Myers as I’m approaching my seventy-ninth. Clearly Jung captured the attention of elements of my generation much more effectively than Myers. Jung was the worthy adversary (to use a phrase from Castaneda) of Sigmund Freud. Myers was associated chiefly with parapsychology as a founder of the Society for Psychical Research, an activity in shadows. Yet now I realize that the younger Jung (born 1875 versus Myers’ birth-year of 1843) owed an enormous debt to Myers. One doesn’t have to look hard or very long to discover the grounding ideas in Jung’s psychology fully developed in Myers and already published when Jung was just a little boy. Myers had the subconscious, which he called the subliminal mind; he also maintained the idea that the subliminal mind’s powers were greater and much wider than that of the conscious mind; finally, like Jung later, he also imagined the conscious mind as a subset of total consciousness or, to use Jung’s phrasing, as a small island floating in a sea of superior consciousness.

Myers had formulated this idea to explain anomalous phenomena in human behavior and experience—all those experiences we now label as paranormal. His views were in part shaped by the rise in evolutionary thought. Darwin was 34 years older than Myers and Myers 32 years older than Jung. Myers reached out to evolution in attempts to explain paranormal powers in humans; it seemed sensible to view them, in his time, as emerging by means of an evolutionary process. Evolution was in the air, you might say. Thus Myers’ explanation made use of a bottom-up model. To be sure, Myers was something of a genius; as his knowledge advanced he also came to see that what was bubbling up from beneath the threshold (subliminally) also at times seemed to come down from above the waking consciousness. But, in effect, he set the stage for a not-quite materialistic psychology which had a bottom-up framing. Start of the twentieth century.

At the start of the twenty-first, Myers is once more rising into prominence but, curiously, as a champion of a top-down theory of psychology. That theory is that the mind is irreducible to matter and must therefore in some sense either transcend matter or belong to another radically different order. (See this post on Irreducible Mind here.) Myers’ work supports that thesis because his exhaustive review of the empirical evidence for the veridical character of paranormal phenomena had already effectively undermined materialist monism back at the tail of the nineteenth century. But nobody paid it any mind. Materialism was rising like a gusher based on technological success. By the twenty-first century, despite being ignored, evidence for the paranormal had greatly increased.

It occurs to me that cycles in civilization also tend to be either bottom-up or top-down in orientation. Modernity is bottom up—whether it is in explaining reality by studying matter or ruling collective by democratic means. The age that came before was top-down in looking up towards an invisible Creator. I’ve slowly come to feel that beginning roughly in the 1820s a transition back from bottom-up to top-down began with the decay of Western civilization. Myers occupies a kind of midway point in this transition. It is not surprising, therefore, that his labors are equally useful in the support both modes of thought. He saw the one nearing its end and foresaw the other rising. These processes, needless to say, do not take place on a human time scale. Reading the papers I see a total conviction that we’re only beginning to build the Tower of Siloam. The sky’s really the limit. Poets see only cracks (link).

Psychology Reexamined

A new book appeared in 2007 and then reissued in 2010 in paperback intended to nudge modern-day understanding of psychology forward—or perhaps back. What goes around comes around. The book is Irreducible Mind by Edward F. Kelley, Emily Williams Kelly, Adam Crabtree, Alan Gauld, Michael Grosse, and Bruce Greyson, Rowman & Littlefield.

I came across it just last month while doing some background lookups on Wilder Penfield for posts here (link, link, and link). It struck me as interesting that Amazon could not deliver the book (ordered in mid-December) until January 11—suggesting that it was in reprinting mode. The book, subtitled “Toward a Psychology for the 21st Century,” should become a widely used reference in psychology and parapsychology.

Herewith the first paragraph from the Preface:

This book originated from a seminar directed to theoretical foundations of scientific psychology, initiated in 1998 by Michael Murphy under the auspices of the Center for Theory and Research of Esalen Institute. By the year 2000 our discussions had advanced to the point where we believed we could demonstrate, empirically, that the materialistic consensus which undergirds practically all of current mainstream psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy of mind is fundamentally flawed. We therefore committed ourselves to developing a book-length [800 page] presentation which would systematically articulate and defend this point of view.

Michael Murphy was a co-founder of the Esalen Institute and is perhaps best described as a New Age author. The authors of the book are associated with neuroscience (Edward F. Kelly), near-death experience and paranormal research and authorship (Emily Williams Kelly), psychotherapy (Alan Crabtree, Bruce Greyson), psychology and parapsychology (Alan Gauld, Emily W. Kelly), and philosophy (Michae Grosso).

The authors all have at least one foot—if not both—off the orthodox reservation of materialism. Emily W. Kelly, presumably Edward Kelly’s wife, worked closely as a research assistant with Ian Stevenson, famed for his reincarnation studies at University of Virginia. Edward Kelly had spent a decade at the J.B. Rhine’s Institute of Parapsychology. Gaunt had been President of the Society for Psychical Research (1989-1992), some of Greyson’s work has been on Near Death Experiences (NDEs), Crabtree’s work has focused on borderline matters like hypnotism, and one of Grosso’s books is titled The Millennium Myths: Experiencing the Next World Now.

The combined profile will make it easy for Orthodoxy to dismiss their collective effort in Irreducible Mind, but the claim made in that prefatory quote to “demonstrate, empirically” that Orthodoxy is flawed is quite obviously accurate so far as I’ve gotten in the book.

The book’s subtitle—and the general tone of the text—show that its authors intend seriously to nudge along a paradigm shift in the study of the human mind. They seem to be right on course.

Irreducible Mind is dedicated to F.W.H. Myers, dubbed “a neglected genius of scientific psychology,” and to Ian Stevenson and Michael Murphy. Now I’m not surprised that, when buying that book, Amazon helpfully tried to sell me Myers’ Human Personality. Since that book came out posthumously in 1903, Irreducible Mind is looking back as it looks forward, anchoring itself in the work of Myers (1843-1901) and William James (1842-1910).

Paradigm Shifts

Back around about 1966 I stumbled on Thomas Kuhn’s famous book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, thus shortly after it appeared (Chicago University Press, 1962). It was on the shelf of Midwest Research Institute’s Economics Library. All work stopped as soon as I opened the book. For someone who had been brought up on the cyclic nature of culture, the book was confirmation, first of all. By “scientific revolutions” Kuhn meant “paradigm shifts,” defined as major changes not only in methods but also in the world-views of various domains of science. By then I had already absorbed the notion (by way of Carl Jung’s book, Psychology and Alchemy) that practical, physical sciences—however defective in their methods—could over time transform themselves into mystical practices, indeed also going back to the physical side centuries later. Here was a book that looked at this phenomenon in some searching detail.

The book surfaced again recently while I was re-reading Carl B. Becker’s Paranormal Experience and Survival of Death (State University of New York Press, 1993), one of the best surveys of this subject I’ve ever encountered. In Chapter 5 Becker discusses “A Model of Resistance and Change in the Sciences.” He notes what no doubt people of my bent have long noted with interest—namely that a paradigm shift in physics has produced a world-view that might be named, after Werner Heisenberg’s, Uncertainty. There is no there there—only waves of probability. We’re at least one Astronomical Unit beyond classical mechanics, Einstein having changed Newton’s certainties, and Quantum Mechanics having dissolved even Relativity. Quantum physics generated String Theory—in an effort to produce a theory to unify them all. But—judging by a paper Brigitte had come across titled “Is String Theory About to Unravel” by Brian Greene, in the Smithsonian (link)—string theory has produced so many endless (billions) of shapes Reality might actually have, with no hint at all which might be legitimate, that we seemed to have entered a genuine Cloud of Unknowing in physics. Thus Physics, as a science, is altogether compatible with Parapsychology.

But, as Becker points out, in Biology and Psychology, the old paradigm of materialism is still hanging in there fairly hard even if resistance is weakening, see for instance earlier posts this month of Wilder Penfield.

Now if a once practical chemistry—strictly this-worldly and trying to make gold out of silver, etc.—managed to transform itself in the Middle Ages into a occult mystical practice, I have the notion that Becker’s view, namely that the paranormal sciences will eventually establish their own legitimacy in due time, is probably correct. But the shift in paradigms, especially very big one, thus from material to psychic orientations—or back again—is rather slow, slow. It comes about one generation at a time. Therefore I won’t see the day arriving. But it’s moving at the rate of a large tectonic plate. And then we may know just a little more….

Mysterious Attention

William James devotes fifty pages to the subject of attention in his two-volume Principles of Psychology. In my version of this 1890 work, published by Henry Holt and Company in 1923, the chapter begins on page 402 of Volume I. James calls attention an act of the mind. The mind concentrates on one of many objects—lifts it out from the undifferentiated flux of experience. He names attention’s opposite distraction or, citing the German word, Zerstreutheit, a word that literally means “state of scatter.” James continues to hew to this theme throughout the chapter. His focus is the act of bestowing attention. But the mystery of attention, for me, arises when I think about the object of attention, especially when that object is a human being. Why people pay attention is clear enough; why they seek attention is a little more fuzzy.

I notice, however, that once I frame the question, the answer begins to crystallize. The need to get attention appears to be the exact mirror of the need to pay attention. The agent who looks at something makes it more real—for him or for herself. The person noticed by the agent, similarly, becomes more real for being noticed. When I look at you, you become more real in your own subjective perception of yourself; when you respond by acknowledging my attention, I become more real in my perception of me.

Curious, in a way. We benefit from the confirmation of our own being by the attention of another. Merely to know that we are—as we surely do know, after all we are self-conscious—doesn’t seem to be enough. Arguably this has a practical grounding. If I want someone to act on my behalf, I have to draw his or her attention. Therefore babies cry. But experience teaches that attention has value in and of itself, yes, even when no practical pay-offs are present. People need attention in order to have psychic health. That’s why we must pay attention even to those who can’t repay the attention we bestow in practical coin. The lonely teen, the aging person, the single mother: they all need attention. When it is given, they come alive; when denied, they wither. Attention is a kind of sunlight.

Yet another aspect of attention supports the structure of our public communications. In order for me to influence you, I have to have your attention first. Therefore, in the project of having my own way, I must be sharply visible (not submerged in the flux), I must be noticed, my aim must be understood, and it must seduce you, in some way, to act along the pathways I suggests—rather than as my opponent does.

Serious journalism—let’s call it “beyond pamphleteering”—was based on the notion that unusual events, objectively reported, would draw the public’s attention and in turn result in reasonable actions as called for by the facts. Reporting on events was the foundation of this profession, “events” here defined as things that had actually happened, not merely things said. Journalism has drifted from that model for three reasons. Reporting on real events is costly. Genuinely newsworthy events are actually rare; it is therefore difficult to fill a daily paper, and never mind a 24/7 television cycle, with real news. Finally, the public has learned to feed the media with an alternative content which is sufficient for ordinary purposes, more or less: self-promotion. Thus the news, so-called, consist of seven parts fluff and three parts reported happenings. The fluff consists of commentaries by high-profile people on probabilities that may never be realized; we hear about intentions; we hear about possible future alliances or breakups; we are presented endless so-called analysis, not of events but of vague trends, pronouncements, and outcomes in the foggy future.

The payoff in all this is a little vague. But those in the news certainly feel that they’re more real than those who never get their ten-seconds of glory in the limelight. And some of those who do—as for instance ordinary people embroiled in some news event—become addicted to this radiance and make valiant attempts to stay in it by forming public action committees, associations, pressure and interest groups. This suggests to me that while attention is certainly a basic human need, the modest minimum we need is best obtained through friends and family. In its mechanized forms it is dangerous to our psychic health.