"The Psychologist in the Community"
By
(Prof.) Gayle Gilchrist James, MSW, RSW (AB)
Faculty of Social Welfare
Vice-President,
Association of Social Workers
Luncheon Speech
Psychology Association of
Palliser Hotel
Sat., Oct. 30, 1976
"The
Psychologist in the Community"
Bill Thompson states:
"All the computers in the world won’t help you if your unexamined and unconscious assumptions on the nature of reality are simply wrong in their basic conception. All the computers can do is help you to be stupid in an expensive fashion".
At the Edge of History, pp. 165
Ivan Illich describes
that moment of understanding when we abandon our "solutions", as we
let go of the illusions that made them necessary. (Ibid, pp. 168)
The more time you
spend in your profession, and I in mine, the more we find ourselves abandoning
solutions, giving up illusions, and discovering unconscious assumptions.
You are psychologists;
you are familiar with the concepts of figure-and-ground. Thus far in this Conference and Annual
Meeting, we have been looking at "the psychologist" as the
predominant figure in the gestalt, and at "the community" as the
background. When figure and ground
are reversed, all the old facts fall into "new and often alien forms of
consciousness... in the old modern era, science was 'objective' and art was
'subjective' ; but now the attraction of opposites has brought them together
and neither science nor art is 'where it used to be" (Passages About
Earth, pp. 5). So we can adjust
our angle of vision to attempt to meet the theme of this Conference, and we can
focus for awhile on "the community". But, in this Age of Aquarius, it is not
at all clear with whom we share "joint ownership... identity of character;
(and) fellowship..." (Oxford
Dictionary), for that is what the word "community" symbolizes in
our culture.
Until 1972, most of us
who comprised the university - educated (one form of the ruling elite),
worshipped the rational mind, dismissing religion as a "prerequisite for
cultural advance" (Dust of Death, pp. 3). We were the sum of the
advances of the tribal community of the agricultural society (where we moved
from individuals to institutions... of the industrial civilization (Where we
evolved from institutions to corporate systems)... and of the scientific
planetary civilization, or post-industrial state (when individuals themselves
became institutions - (Ralph Nader is an example of this phenomenon).
We had surrounded
ourselves with machines, which the intellectuals among us claimed were
dehumanizing, and, out of love for our "afflictions, (we sought) to make
psychotherapy into a way of life...”
(Passages About Earth, pp. 7). Until the '70's, our
"community" was, for most of us, those who shared joint ownership of
the products of an urban technological culture (which includes our degrees from
big educational businesses like universities)... our identity came from looking
into the eyes of our colleagues for reaffirmation of our existence... and our
communion was achieved, at least temporarily, through alcohol or
hallucinogens... and in our unconscious awareness of our lack of real
communion, we made communication itself a subject of study. To understand our culture, you must
focus not only on what it recognizes, but on what it ignores or fails to
recognize: its linked
opposites. Our technology has been
our unique excellence... but alas, most of us are not Greek tragedians, and we
failed to see that the "linked opposite" of our unique excellence has
been a tragic flaw: the denial of
our cosmic consciousness.
But God... or the
One... or Buddha... or Limitless Love and Truth... or the Essence...
whoever/whatever is out there and in us has a sense of humor. So, in 1972,
Apollo 17 shot into the sky from the technological foundation of Earth,
shattering the web around this planet, setting "all the hot air out and
the heavenly vibrations in". (Passages
About_Earth, p. 3). Little
wonder, really, that many of the astronauts found their journey into space a
conversion experience. We entered a
New Age, and in the "new stage in human culture we have reached a
planetary society containing more bits of information than the mind can stand,
but holding enough space for the spirit too soar". (Passages About Earth, pp. 3)
If Apollo 17 was a consummation, then its opposite movement was about to begin. This has lead to doom-and-gloom reports from some quarters:
"Nature has let us down. God seems to have left the receiver off the hook, and time is running out".
Arthur Koestler, quoted by Guinness; in The Dust of Death.
"Western culture is marked at the present moment by a distinct slowing of momentum, or perhaps, more accurately, by a decline in purposefulness and an increase in cultural introspection. This temporary lull, this vacuum in thought and effective action, has been created by the convergence of three cultural trends, each emphasizing a loss of direction. The first is the erosion of the Christian basis of Western culture... the second is the failure of optimistic humanism to provide an effective alternative... and the third is the failure of our generation's counter culture to demonstrate a credible alternative to Western Christianity and humanism".
Guinness, The Dust of Death.
The question is: are we experiencing the death or the
rebirth of mankind? Teilhard de Chardin recognized that these phenomena are
"perhaps outwardly akin to death; but in reality a simple metamorphosis
and arrival at supreme synthesis".
(Passage About Earth, p. 144). Thompson comments (Ibid, pp. 145) that
"some death or rebirth of man is not as far off as Teilhard imagined. Because human culture is coming to a
point, the distance between the edges of good and evil seems to be narrowing. The multinational corporations are
devoted to profits and the exploitation of resources; nevertheless, they are
creating structures for planetization.
They are also accelerating the ecological death of the planet, and this
in turn is accelerating the mystical transformation of mankind... under the
threat of species annihilation, Homo Sapiens is trying to accomplish its
transformation into a new species".
Prior to Apollo 17,
Thompson forecast this moment when the meaning of "nature, self, and
civilization" (At the Edge of History, pp. 230) would be
revisioned:
"Birth is a cry of joy and a scream of pain: the environment that has sustained us for a time is now crushing down and pushing us out. But death, too, is a scream of pain and a cry of joy and so we cannot be certain that we are headed for one and not the other...at the edge of history, history itself can no longer help us, and only myth remains equal to reality...the future is beyond knowing, but the present is beyond belief. We make so much noise with technology that we cannot discover that the stargate is in our foreheads. But the time has come; the revelation has already occurred, and the guardian seers have seen the lightning strike the darkness we call reality. And now we sleep in the brief interval between the lightning and the thunder."
We are moving into the
New Age, and many have their own vision of what that is and will be:
But, as Thompson has
indicated, "only myth remains equal to reality", and only our
religious myths have been and are of a scale large enough to deal with what is
happening in the New Age. Ironically, we as social scientists have clung to
that which physics has long since abandoned: the assertion that "culture
operates only through social interactions, (for us) space separates, and what
does not touch physically or symbolically can have no effect... (but) even in
non relativistic frames of reference, physicists assert that all is energy and
vibration and that the polar wind reaches to the limits of the solar
system". (Passages About
Earth, pp. 125).
Each of us and all of
us here have to work out our own essential vision of mankind on this planet
Earth, to live in and with the gestalt, whether it be myth/reality, or
form/essence or subject/object, or any other apparent dichotomy of linked
opposites.
In closing, I want to come full circle, and to share one man's view of that
Essential Vision. The man is David
Spangler, an American who, while living in the "planetary village" of
Findhorn at
"...the infinity (within man) is still there and it seeks its
release, and throughout history, man had always sought this release... not
every man, necessarily, but those individuals who embody, for the race, the
growing tip. They may not be the
elite of the race... they're just another part of it. Those that are not the pioneers, and who
are content with maintaining old forms, and the things that are treasured from
the past, have as important a part to play as the tissues that maintain the body
of a plant, so that growth has something to rest upon. But, nevertheless, within humanity,
there is this growing tip of people, hundreds of thousands of them, in every
culture... and out of the efforts of these people, and those who support them,
humanity has grown... and in recent years, it has grown very swiftly.
"In every level of life, man is learning how to go beyond form...
to find meaning, what is its inner essence? What's behind it? What is it trying to
communicate into life? Because
there, we find our communion, our oneness:
on a form level, we only find our differences. To penetrate to this essential vision,
while living in form, becomes man's challenge, then...
"...after centuries of working...man stands at the threshold of
having developed enough awareness that there is an abstract world that,
perhaps, he can learn how to build a society, and live a life, attuned to the
Essence... if a man could do that, he would initiate an entire new world, a new
heaven and a new earth. And to me, that is the essence of the New Age, that for
the first time in planetary history, enough people, enough places of the world,
possessed with enough influence... to communicate beyond form, and not to get
hung-up by the particular means that our dream may use to express itself, and
to recognize that within me, and within you... the dream is essentially the
same: that a world is created where that which is potential within us each, the
finite seed that has taken root in that soil of our infiniteness, can have the opportunity,
and the freedom, and the nourishment to unfold. And anyone who tries to create such a
world is, to me, a New Age person. And for many people throughout the world,
this kind of awareness that the awful separation between earth and heaven, form
and spirit, matter and energy... can come to an end, and we can begin to
perceive unity, oneness, and the ever-present determination of the essence
of our being, and the beingness of all life, to emerge through whatever
channels are provided for it."
The essential vision behind form is "...the dream of the humanity that
will reach the stars, not in space-ships, but in life, and in
consciousness, because the stars are our brothers...
"...these people form a community upon the earth even though they are not physically
together. A family that is
widespread through its love is still a community if they have shared
communion. And though, today, we
may split and go our separate ways... if we have shared something... we shall
never be as separate as we were when we came in and sat down. And it’s not the condition of
being together physically that counts, it is the condition of being together in
essence, recognizing the togetherness, the oneness, that we always have.
"In the New Age... it's not for some to create and others to watch -
everyone must participate. There
are no such things as spectators in a nuclear war. And there's no such thing as a spectator
upon the planet now...
"Communication, communion, community:
three ways in which the essential vision of humanity is emerging and
will create a New Age for all of us."
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. Thompson, Wm Irwin
(1974). At the Edge of
History: Speculations on the
Transformation of Culture.
Harper
2. Ibid (1973-1974). Passages About Earth: An Exploration of the New Planetary
Culture. Harper & Raw.
3. Guinness, OS (1973). The Dust
of Death, a Critique of the Counter Culture. InterVarsity Press, 1973.
4. Spangler, David (1973).
"The Essential Vision", from lectures (taped) to the Findhorn Community.
5. Ibid (1971). Revelation: The Birth of a New Age. The Findhorn Foundation.
6. Pirsig, Robert M (1974). Zen
and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance:
An Inquiry Into Values.
Bantam Books.