Who looks outside, dreams
Who looks inside, awakens— Carl Jung
As remarkable and complex a structure as a neuron is, it does not possess consciousness. Consciousness requires a complex nervous system comprised of many neurons and sense organs. The nervous system you were born with is among the most complex structures in the universe, but consciousness did not emerge until you populated that nervous system with experience as you matured through childhood.
Self-awareness and the ability think abstractly are not available to creatures that lack consciousness. These cognitive abilities enable smart folks like us to influence the course of events. As you may have discovered, these same powers also allow smart folks like us to self-sabotage. Whether these higher mental faculties enhances or diminishes the quality of your life depends upon how effectively you use them.
Know thyself!
The key to following Socrates’ famous imperative is to learn about yourself from the outside and the inside—that is, from both the first-person perspective and from the observer’s perspective.
Psychologists study behavior and experience from the observer’s perspective. As a psychologist myself, I collaborate with clients by offering the educated observer’s perspective of their reactions to the things that happen. The client, of course, has access to the more important data that is only available from the first-person perspective. Our task is to work together to understand what causes the client to react as [s]he does.
I have the easier part of the collaboration. While the client experiences the pains and satisfactions of events from the first-person perspective, I experience the client’s reports from the dispassionate perspective of the observer. Each perspective omits important information. To fully appreciate the problem and develop a solution that works, understandings that depend upon observations from each perspective is essential.
Phenomenology is the study of how things appear to us from the first-person perspective. Phenomena — such as seeing a candy bar, tasting it as you chew and swallow, regretting the empty calories — have a property that distinguishes them from other subject matter: we experience them first-hand. This kind of knowledge is qualitatively different than the abstract knowledge that results from other kinds of studies such as chemistry, history, or automotive repair. Being the researcher and the object of the research simultaneously presents unique challenges and opportunities.
It looks different than it feels
Self-sabotage is rarely intentional; we are fallible creatures and mistakes happen. However, if you make the same mistake again and again, there is likely to be a cause for the recurring pattern—hopefully one you will be able to identify. As Paul Wachtel noted: "It is often possible to discern a structure to people’s difficulties in which external events and internal states continually recreate the conditions for the recurrence of each other."
You may notice a recurring pattern to the foibles of your friends and family, while they seem to be unaware of it. Likewise, you may be oblivious to the self-destructive patterns that is obvious to them. What is invisible from the first-person perspective is often crystal clear from the observer’s perspective. This dispassionate observer’s perspective along with an understanding of the general cause-and-effect principles that pertain to subjective phenomena understandings are the bases of the psychologist’s contribution to the therapeutic collaboration.
To illustrate the first-person [phenomenological] perspective and the observer’s [psychological] perspective, consider my introductory session with Bernie:
Me: "What is your problem?"
Bernie: "I want to learn how to control my anger."
Bernie’s statement implies two entities: One I’ll call, Mr. Hyde whose anger is destroying his family; and the other I’ll call Dr. Jekyll who wants to control Hyde’s anger. Needless to say, it is Jekyll who shows up in my office and with whom I will be working during our sessions. The emotionally reactive Hyde only appears during the emotionally provocative crises that occur at home. In order for the insights and epiphanies of our sessions to influence Mr. Hyde, Bernie will have to rise above both Jekyll and Hyde. Just intellectualizing with me and my office is not sufficient to bring about the change that will save his family. He will have to understand and learn to work directly with his subjective experience—in this case, his emotional reactions to his wife.
Bernie is not the only person whose excessive emotional reactions produce outcomes that are counter their interests and principles. Irreversible errors are often made during states of mind we know will change!
Needles to say, just because you feel certain of something does not mean it is true. The feeling of certainty about our judgments, appraisals, and perceptions enables us to react quickly to the practical demands of an ever-changing environment. While this is generally helpful, the assumption that "I see the world as it really is" tends to magnify the suffering caused by our misinterpretations.
Bernie naturally assumes that he sees things as they really are, and he will always see things as he does now. From our perspective as observers, it is clear that his wife’s bitchiness is Bernie’s judgment of her—that is, it was created by Bernie and exists only in his mind. From Bernie’s perspective, he is blind to the fact that his appraisal is distorted by his anger. His current experience is that she really is a bitch—her bitchiness exists within her.
To summarize: Psychology is the study of experiential phenomena from the observer’s [therapist’s] perspective, and phenomenology is the study of experiential phenomena from the first-person [client’s] perspective.
Optical Illusions and other visual stimuli are presented on the next page that will elicit certain experiential phenomena. You can switch back and forth between the phenomenological perspective that is taken in by the illusion and the psychological perspective that understands how the illusion works and note how it can fool the perceptual system. That page and the The Soul Illusion page that follows it makes the case that your perception is a creation of your nervous system and not a valid and complete depiction of the objective world.