Session 1: Biblical Anthropology in a Psychologized Culture

When we're talking about counseling, we're going to do it a little bit different way. We're going to talk about what it means to counsel in the psychologized world.

! And the reason I think this is important is because we live in a culture in the United States that is, though we're Christians and we actually have a culture.

It is counter to something. Everywhere where the gospel brings life, it creates a counterculture. It creates a culture within another culture.

And so for us to be able to minister in this culture, both to one another and ultimately to other people, we need to understand how our culture, how we as enculturated Christians, interact with a larger culture.

And so this is going to be a chance to kind of talk through what does it mean to counsel and minister to folks in a culture that is psychologized.

There's going to be critique here. And so if you have a psychology background, there will be critique.

My goal here, though, is not to just simply come in and critique psychology. I want to do something more.

I want to talk about the world we live in and what the worldview is and how we're embedded in it and then how both ourselves and others are shaped by that world and how we think, how we process, how we understand ourselves.

And where if we're trying to counsel people from God's word, how we need to engage.

And so this is going to be a lot of material about understanding the psychologized world.

But also, I want you to help me to know how it would apply to your circumstances, how the people you relate to in the church, outside the church, how you might share the gospel, how you might relate to family, friends.

And so the goal is to just kind of give you a way of thinking about this so that when you counsel, you're counseling thoughtfully into the world you're speaking.

My concern is when we talk about biblical counseling, a lot of times what we end up with is people taking Bible verses and just kind of throwing them into somebody's life, decontextualized.

Or if they're not doing that, they're unaware of how much they're affected by the culture and they screen out biblical truth and replace it with quasi-Christian thinking that is as much about psychology as it is about the Bible.

But neither of those is helpful for the purpose of ministry because the one, the just dropping Bible verses and Bible concepts into people's lives, decontextualized, leads people to understand, well, how does this really apply to my life?

What does it really mean?

And to do the other means we're giving people a false sense of what Jesus came in to do and how he changed his lives.

And so this is going to be a lecture kind of process, but I'm going to pause and interact with you over things that you're thinking about as you're ministering to people.

So what I want you to do is as we're talking to just simply think through situations you're ministering in.

Again, it might be people, friends in the church.

If you want to talk about situations you're in that involve people in the church, just be discreet.

You know, we don't want to be like, oh, that guy over there.

This is a problem I have with him.

Be discreet.

But there may be, again, family members.

A lot of times I'll find that people are trying to know how to relate what God is doing in their lives, how to minister to family members or friends, coworkers, different ways where you're trying to just interact and relate.

And so I hope what this does is gives you a better framework for understanding your mission in a psychologized culture.

In his book, we're going to do three things.

The first section is going to be on biblical anthropology.

How do we understand ourselves and how anthropology functions in a psychologized world?

So that's going to be our first session.

The second session is going to be actually dealing with how do we understand the mental health world?

And by mental health world, I mean the entire set of systems that are set up to diagnose and care for people who are struggling with problems that are often called mental health problems.

And so we're going to look at that.

And the goal of that is to help understand what's actually being done when you're talking about a diagnosis.

What exactly is, what is going on with medication?

We're not going to go deep into it, but I want to give you a framework to understand what's happening when we hear all these diagnostic terms and words and labels and what they mean and what they don't mean.

Where they're beneficial, where they might be deficient.

And then the third session is going to be how do you minister to somebody who's kind of just lived and grown up in and imbibe a therapeutic view of themselves?

And I don't mean therapeutic negatively.

I simply mean somebody where they just don't question some of the assumptions that we have in this culture about the way we understand ourselves and our problems.

That's what we're getting at.

We all know there are problems.

We all have problems.

We all struggle in various ways.

How do we understand those struggles?

How do we know how to relate to those struggles?

How does the Bible speak to us about those struggles?

How does the world tell us how to deal with those struggles?

And where do we need to find a way to interject biblical truth into a world that doesn't think biblically?

So that's the goal.

I'm going to pray and then we're going to jump right in.

Heavenly Father, I do pray this morning for those who are here, Lord, that this investment of their time would be meaningful and helpful.

It would serve them both in their thinking and also practically in ministry situations that they find themselves in right now.

Lord, guide us, God, as we talk.

Help us to turn this into a collaborative effort, O Lord Jesus.

And Spirit of God, just come and speak.

We're not going to be in the scriptures heavily today.

But I do pray that you would speak through what we're doing.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

In his book, The Rise of the Modern Self, Carl Truman is the author.

He channels concepts of philosopher Charles Taylor described contemporary Western self-identity.

Taylor talks about culture as a social imaginary.

A collective sense of identity that each culture accepts and lives comfortably within.

Social imaginary is simply the embedded assumptions about life that are found in each culture.

And every culture and subculture has those, just givens.

The social imaginary is the givens.

We just all know this.

We all assume this.

And Carl Truman summarizes that the social imaginary is the way people think about the world, how they imagine it to be, how they act intuitively in relation to it.

That is emphatically not to make the social imaginary simply into a set of identifiable ideas.

It is the totality of the way we look at our world to make sense of it and to make sense of our behavior within it.

That's what we're talking about.

How we understand the world.

I was just talking to, what's your name again?

Elena.

Elena.

So Elena, who grew up down in Atlanta, like I did.

And the differences in culture between the deep south and up here in New England, they're subtle in terms of a global perspective.

But growing up in the south, the first thing I noticed when I came up north was nobody talked about the Civil War.

Like down south, the Civil War was still a big thing because the war shaped everything about the culture.

I came up here and the Civil War was irrelevant.

And so there was a social imaginary in the deep south about being a defeated, we were the only people in this country who had a sense of defeat in our identity.

Also differences racially, ethnically.

In the deep south, at least when I was growing up, it was primarily black and white.

There had been no immigration.

There was no Jewish or Italian immigrants or Polish or Irish.

You're just black and white.

Now, obviously that's changed now with immigration from Mexico and South America.

But the idea was that down there, it was very simple.

Ralph D'Aberdathy was talking about racial differences in the north and south.

And he was one of the kings of the lieutenants.

And he said, referencing blacks as they interact with whites, he said, down in the south, people, any white people, don't care how close you are as long as you don't get too high.

Up north, people don't care how high you are as long as you don't get too close.

And that was his understanding.

That was a social imaginary, the difference that people just assumed.

So that's what we're talking about.

Cultures had these imaginaries.

Taylor coined the term expressive individualism to attempt to capture the Western, particularly American, social imaginary.

Expressive individualism.

This is not a novel concept.

Christopher Lash's controversial 1979 assessment of 20 cents a year in America, the culture of narcissism coined the phrase the therapeutic self.

1979.

1996, Ronald Warkin critiqued American culture in his book as the rise of the imperial self,

which he identified as a culture dominated by individuality, self-expression, autonomy, and self-esteem.

So this idea of what we orient to in American culture, Western culture in general, but American culture particularly,

is a highly individualistic, self-oriented understanding of life.

One of our pastors this past week was just, you know, in his sermon, was just kind of talking through some things.

And he said, he was talking about, he's a young man, he's in his mid-20s.

And he said, he said, ground zero in my life is what I think about myself.

And that's a great way to capture this idea of expression of individualism.

What I think about myself is how I orient to the world.

That's the world we live in.

I think I'm not telling you something you don't know and don't experience.

And maybe see in hyperdrive in a world of higher education around here.

Where this idea of my own self-identity.

And what's been added to it in the last few years is not simply I need to express myself,

but you need to authenticate however I want to express myself.

My personhood not only requires my right and ability to express myself,

but it requires those around me to affirm and authenticate and celebrate how I think about myself.

That's what we're talking about.

This is not a seminar in American culture.

This cultural understanding is important for you and me as Christians in this culture.

This is the world in which we live and move and have our being, as Paul said.

Did we use another Pauline phrase?

This is the manner of life to which our old self is very much attached.

If you read Ephesians 4, Paul's talking,

calling the believers out of a former manner of life that you learned

and that is attached to the old way,

and he's calling people into a new manner of life that is in Christ.

What I want to help us do is understand the world better,

to understand the ways it relates to human problems and suffering,

and to learn how to do better fellowship and ministry.

One of my concerns in my own church is that if we live with this sense of cultural individual expressionism,

it actually comes into the church in the way we care for one another.

When someone is dealing with a problem, how we relate to one another,

how we understand one another, what's the nature of our problems.

And so we can be in the church really feeding this worldview to one another.

Without even knowing it, because we're like fish in the ocean.

It's what we breathe.

It's all we know.

And so we have to think outside of what we know to do effective ministry.

I have a few baseline points out of which we'll be operating.

One is we live in a psychologized culture

that we all, and we're all inherently shaped by that culture.

That includes Christians.

So you and I are not exempt.

Coming to Christ is a radical change in our hearts,

but it's a call to change our thinking about who we are and how we live in this world.

That doesn't come overnight.

That's a lifelong process because we're in a battle against the world.

The world entices us to conforming to the way it thinks.

The world sets up its values and then calls us to love those values and to pursue those values.

So we are psychologized people.

I am a psychologized person.

The psychologized culture is distinctly shaped by Western, first world, affluent values

that do not translate coherently to other cultural settings.

To take American, particularly American values,

Europe has its own sort of set of values based on the histories of the different countries,

but in America, our values don't translate well into other cultures

without simply overtaking those cultures.

I teach biblical counseling in Adi Sabo, Ethiopia,

and it's amazing how hard it is to teach counseling in a culture that is pre-psychologized.

Now, a lot of the folks I teach are at university school,

and so they're familiar with things.

They certainly know Netflix and by their phones understand culture.

They know the music.

All that's this expressive individualism coming into the culture,

but they don't have concepts to understand basic things that we find interesting.

I was doing a course back in May there on complex problems,

and I was trying to find some way to give them something to work with,

and I found there was a show produced in Kenya

that is kind of like, it's kind of like TED Talks for Kenya, essentially.

Very well done, usually done.

But they had a guy on there who's Kenyan,

and he was talking about dealing with depression,

and he shared how his depression was not understood by his culture,

that he needed to find Western counseling to be able to help him deal with it.

But he was a musician.

He was a performance artist, musician.

And so he did this song, and it was in Swahili.

And he sang this beautiful song in Swahili,

but it's interesting because every word was in Swahili,

except he had to insert the word depression into the song

because there's no concept in Swahili

to define depression as it's defined here.

That's common.

Our way of thinking requires affluence.

It requires a certain way of understanding

who we are in relationship to family,

who we are in relationship to community,

how laws are set up,

what rights we have as individuals,

our collective history.

All those things come into play

that shape who we are,

that when we sort of think we can walk into another culture

and drop that in,

it doesn't work.

And so as a result,

we have to see what we're dealing with

is what seems to be

very common and self-understood

in our culture.

It is very distinct in other cultures.

It's very different.

I'm not telling you anything you don't know.

A third point,

the psychological worldview

is built on an anthropology

that's inherently opposed

to biblical anthropology.

That's where we're going to spend most of the time

in the next few minutes,

so I'll just let you know.

Psychology is,

as an anthropology,

is inherently opposed

to biblical anthropology.

There's not any real place

within to connect.

A fourth point,

effective biblical ministry

and fellowship

requires we understand

the culture

and values

and assumptions

carried by the people

to whom we minister

without imbibing

those values

in the way

we bring ministry.

So in a sense,

we are going to be

counterculture

in our ministry.

And what makes it hard

is that we're not

counterculture

in our own thinking.

So we have to be

self-evaluative

before we can evaluate

how to help other people.

So let's begin.

Definition of psychology,

the study of the soul.

Psychology,

often these days,

it's being portrayed

as a science.

It's a social science.

But it really is,

and it says,

it's the study of the soul.

The study of humanness

as individually perceived

and understood.

And it's a system

of understanding.

And to talk about this,

I want to use,

as a biblical counselor,

David Powelson.

You guys familiar

with David Powelson?

Okay,

so David Powelson,

you really want to,

if you know Tim Keller,

and you're a fan

of Tim Keller,

what Keller did

for generally understanding

the gospel

into the culture

as believers,

Powelson was good at

in dealing with counseling.

He knew how to engage

this psychologized world

in a winsome way,

in a thoughtful way.

And so,

Powelson uses

what we call

an upstream,

downstream metaphor.

So we're going to kind of

use that as a basis

for understanding.

The world of psychology,

you might want to see,

is a river

that flows from upstream

to downstream.

And I sort of have it

in a very crude

sort of a graphic there.

At the top end

of this,

at the fountainhead

of the world of psychology,

is the area

of theology

and philosophy.

There are philosophical

worldviews

that shape

psychology.

Those produce,

a little farther

downstream,

theories.

So based on this,

these philosophical

understandings,

here are theories

that make sense

of what that means.

And out of those theories

then come models

and methodologies

of application.

And then out of

those methodologies

become practices.

Now we have these models.

What are the practices

that flow

from those models

and methodologies?

And then,

what is the cultural

effect

of these kinds

of practices?

So that's a good way

to understand

this idea

of psychology

as a worldview.

It starts

in the world

of philosophy

and it works its way

through theories,

which we'll be looking

at mostly today

in the first session,

and then models

and methodologies

and then therapeutic

practices,

how these get put

into play,

and then how do

they affect people

and culture

and social trends.

So as we go

through this material,

we'll process it through,

I want you to process

through your personal

orientation.

I think you will find

that each of these models

and theories

that we talk about

are going to have

in some sense

relevance to how

you've thought about life

or something you're

familiar with.

So we're going to

navigate the upstream

and downstream dynamic.

In the area of theology

and philosophy,

we're talking about

the area of

psychological anthropology.

This is the fountainhead

of any theory

of the soul.

Whether you're looking

at secular

or religious worldviews,

there are four basic

anthropological questions

that must be addressed.

Who are we?

Who am I?

What's wrong with me?

Because one of the things

every human being

has an awareness of

is things aren't right.

Nobody lives in this world

in the delusion

that everything's right

and will end up right.

What we know

is that we enter

into the world,

there is suffering,

and then there is death.

And how do you explain that?

And how do you

navigate life

because of that?

So what's wrong with us?

The third question

coming out of that

is what should be

right with us.

There's a sense

we all have

that it should not

be this way.

Why is it this way?

Why is life hard?

Why is life unjust?

Why do I suffer

in the way I do?

Why is there

unexplainable suffering

in this world?

What should be right?

If this weren't the case,

what would it be right?

What's the way

it should be?

And then the fourth question

is what would it take

to fix the problem?

Every anthropology

is dealing in some sense

with those questions.

So how does a biblical Christian

answer those questions?

I'm going to take

you guys through it.

You help me

as well-taught

church members.

Who are we?

Who are we?

What do you know

from the bottom?

Sinners?

Yeah,

but more fundamentally

than that.

Image of God.

Yeah,

we're

persons

created

in the image

of God.

That's what the Bible

tells us.

What else do we know?

That's a loaded statement

right there,

isn't it?

God created

man,

male,

and female.

so there is

gender distinction

in creation.

We're creating

the image

of God

one.

Worship.

To serve.

Yeah.

Is that what you mean?

What's your

mission statement

for the church?

To glorify God

by making

disciples of Jesus

Christ

in the power

of the Holy Spirit.

Yeah,

so

that's what we're

called to be.

That's one way

of expressing it,

right?

To worship God.

Is worship

simply

growling at the

foot of a deity?

Is that what we do?

We just,

we sacrifice

to a God

to appease him

or her

or it

so that we can

experience

a good life?

Is that what it is?

What's the purpose?

What's our,

why are we here?

Going back to Genesis

to have dominion.

Yeah,

to express dominion,

we've been given

a responsibility

by God

which means

we're distinct

from other

creatures

God has created,

right?

We are distinct

because of

this,

of what things?

First of all,

one of the things

is this idea

that we've been given

a job.

More,

more fundamental

even than that

is what?

We're created

for relationship

with God,

to walk

with God,

to enjoy

him.

As Augustine

said,

to glorify God

and enjoy him

forever.

That's one way

to understand

who we are.

That's what,

that's what

we are.

In other words,

our life

is lived

in relationship

to have been

created

for a purpose

and given

identity

in relationship

to God

who we

are seeing,

are meant

to see

as both

Lord over

us

but also

the one

who cares

for us.

That's the

distinctly

Christian view

of who we

are.

We can expound

on that

but that's

good enough

for right now.

So what's wrong

with us?

We're sinners.

We're sinners,

right?

Whatever that

is that we

were supposed

to enjoy

has been

marred.

What is

sin?

Disobedience.

Yet it

starts as

disobedience.

It's a

rejection

of God's

rightful

lordship

and his

loving,

gracious

provision

for us.

It's both.

You can't

just sort of

we reject

his lordship.

We're also

rejecting

his provision

for us

saying

we can

do it

on our

own.

We don't

need God.

So part of

the fundamental

problem is

a rejection

of who

we are

meant to

be and

how we're

meant to

live

in the

favor

and rather

to be

live for

ourselves

according to

our own

ways.

Romans 1 and 2

talk about that.

What does that

produce?

What does

God say to

Adam?

In a

nutshell.

Death?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Now you'll die.

Not just a

physical death.

Separation

from God.

Futility.

Ignorance.

Blindness.

Self-destruction.

Idolatry.

That's what's

wrong with us

according to

the Bible.

What should

be right

with us?

I'll answer

that one

quickly.

What should

be right

with us

is that

we have

a restored

relationship

with God.

That

whatever's

been made

wrong

gets made

right.

Cornelius

Plantinga

talks about

this in

terms of

shalom.

The right

standing in

the right

place is

peace.

Shalom.

Plantinga

defines it

as living

the way

things ought

to be.

God

created and

set something

up so that

we would

flourish.

And because

of sin we

no longer

flourish.

We live

in futility.

and so

we are

not living

in the

way things

ought to

be.

And so

the

restoration

that should

come to

us is

that we

return to

a place

of shalom.

A place

of peace

with God,

a peace

in our

soul,

and a peace

in our

world.

That's why I

wrote the

book

Peace.

Because I

wanted to

explore this

idea of what

does it mean

to be

reconciled to

God and

one another

and to

have peace

in a world

full of

strife.

What does

it mean to

have peace?

So that's

what should

be right

with us

and what

does it

take to

fix the

problem?

From a

biblical

perspective,

what fixes

the problem?

Jesus.

What about

Jesus?

Jesus

dying for

us.

Yes.

And what

is the

death?

Is it just

simply a

random

death?

The

death that

covers our

sins.

Yes.

It's an

atonement.

Our sins

need to be

dealt with.

They need to

be purged.

They need to

have them be

removed from

us so that

God can

relate to

us as if

we were not

sinners.

And he

sent the

Son as a

propitiation

for our

sins so

that we

might no

longer live

in

judgment

but live

not only

in

righteousness

but in

restored

relationship

and even

adoption

and new

relationship.

And so

in a sense

the

remedy of

the Bible

is the

latter will

be better

than the

former.

Because

ultimately

what we're

meant to

do is

in

eternity

have an

unbroken

relationship

with God.

and this

is crucial.

Christianity

the Bible

understands

that life

does not

end here.

That this

is a

continuation.

Death

moves us

in a

continuation

into another

state of

life which

is eternal

either

punishment

or eternal

blessing.

So that's

the way

the Bible

understands

anthropology.

anthropology.

So

you've got

that and

what I want

you to do

is we're

going to

look at

three different

ways to

understand

anthropology

and how

they differ

from the

Bible and

how these

make up

the

psychological

worldview.

So we're

going to

do a

little bit

of history

trying to

go through

this pretty

quickly.

The rise

of modern

psychological

theories of

human behavior

occurred in

the mid to

late 19th

century.

Prior to

the 19th

century most

work was

done through

a spiritual

lens or

understood through

a spiritual

lens or

through a

rudimentary

medical lens.

But changes

brought about

by the

enlightenment

and the

scientific

revolution

created an

environment

out of which

the psychological

culture developed.

Humanistic

philosophy and

culture,

cultural

modernism

create an

alternative

understanding

of the soul.

So what

is the

primal

goo

of

psychology?

Well,

several factors.

Religious

liberalism and

higher

criticism was

an attack on

the veracity

of the

Bible and

the

orthodox

Christianity

in the

academy.

So at the

upper end of

philosophy and

theology, the

Bible was set

aside in favor

of rationalism.

That results in

sort of a

rationalistic

scientific

empiricism.

Truth is not

transcendent.

it must be

reasoned out.

A lot of

what I'm doing

in studying

religious liberty

is how that

played out in

the colonial

revolutionary

periods in

this country

and what

were the

what was the

thinking about

God that

was going on?

What was

changing?

We know

that up here

in New

England,

what would

have been

orthodox

Puritan

Calvinistic

Christianity

was giving

way to

all manner

of deistic

and unitarian

tendencies

which prevail

to this day.

Truth is not

transcendent.

It must be

reasoned out.

Romanticism

in a response

to really

what happened

in the French

Revolution

when the

Enlightenment

kind of

project blew

up,

the reaction

was romanticism.

Rather than

going from

we have

an academy

of pure

reason

that we

appeal to,

now we

go the

opposite

direction

saying no,

what you

feel is

what happened.

So romanticism

as a period

is what

feels.

It has to

do with

what the

human

experience

and impulse

is

where

romanticism

comes.

So you

get this

idea that

what's

inside of

me

is what

really

matters.

You have

Darwinian

anthropology.

Every human

experience

can be

understood

in purely

rationalistic

terms.

Darwin

says,

man with

all his

noble qualities,

with sympathy

which feels

for the most

debased,

with benevolence

which extends

not only to

other men

but to

the humblest

living creature,

with his

godlike

intellect

which has

penetrated

into the

movements

and

constitution

of the

solar

system,

kind of

overstatement

there at

that time,

with all

these exalted

powers,

man still

bears in

his bodily

frame the

indelible

stamp of

his lowly

origin.

That is

Darwin's

anthropology.

Karl Marx,

Marxian

materialism,

when I was

in college,

that was my

field of

study,

I was a

Marxist,

and I

studied

Marxism

as my,

that was my,

that was my,

essentially

studying my

degree.

Human

problems are

not internal,

they're entirely

external,

and they

come from

alienated

social

existence.

And so

Marx is

well known

for saying

religion is

the sigh

of the

oppressed

creature,

the heart

of a

heartless

world,

and the

soul of

the soulless

conditions

is the

opium

of the

people.

And then

humanist

spirituality,

William

James,

not very

familiar these

days as a

name,

but actually

is very

prominent in

terms of

conceptual

ideas these

days.

Belief,

see if this

doesn't resonate

with anybody

you know,

belief is a

valid human

experience that

has no

quantifiable

relationship to

the existence

of God.

So it's

important for

you to have

belief in

something,

but it

doesn't have

to be God.

James says,

religion is

the feelings,

acts, and

experience of

individual men

or women

in their

solitude so

far as they

apprehend

themselves to

stand in

relation to

whatever they

may consider

the divine.

Does that

sound pretty

current?

Yeah.

So William

James kind

of fell out

into disfavor,

but now

essentially,

and that's

what really

broke me

away from

my final

moorings as

a Christian

or growing

up in the

church was

William James,

reading William

James and

realizing I

don't need,

I can just

have belief in

whatever.

I'm reading a

book right now

on hope and

it's actually a

secular book,

but the underlying

of the book is

hope is not,

it doesn't have

to be anything

in particular,

it's a set of

thinking about

yourself,

you can hope

in yourself,

and that's

true hope,

that's William

James.

Here's the key,

all these

philosophies have

as a starting

point the

denial of a

transcendent God,

all current

theories and

methodologies flow

out of some

combination of

these anthropologies,

so I gave you

those briefly

because that's

the primal

goo,

that's the

philosophical

underpinnings of

all psychological

thinking in the

Western culture.

So the three

basic theories

coming out of

those philosophies,

three basic

theories,

I'm using

three because

I'm trying to

kind of keep

it,

there's probably

650 different

psychological

theories currently

in operation

right now,

and they're

all contradictory,

but in one

way or the

other,

they fit into

one of these

three camps,

so in order to

break it down

to this level,

there's overlapping,

so I don't want

to oversimplify it,

but it's important

to recognize that

these three kind

of schools have

retained relevance

up to this day.

So the first

one I would call

the psychobiology

field,

these are kind

of in

historical order,

the psychobiology

field,

in that field

our problems

are physically

a part of us

and must be

alleviated by

externally

administered

treatment.

Modern psychology

began in the

field of medicine,

biological

connection of

character and

mental health

has a long

history,

theory.

My brain

theories,

even in the

1800s,

are popular.

The insane

asylum gives

way to the

psychiatric

hospital.

field is

developed in

sort of a

linear

progression.

As

different

medical advances

happen,

they're applied

in various

different ways

to

psychological

conditions,

diagnostic

technology,

medical research,

pharmacology.

In its

contemporary

expression,

the psychobiology

field is dominated

by pharmacology.

Psychobiology

field has

become

intertwined

with the

pharmaceutical

industry

and the

insurance

field.

They work

together in

our current

culture in

a way that's

created the

medical model

approach to

psychological

care.

We can talk

about that if

you want.

The reason

it's been

prominent is

because of

what medicine

can do,

what insurance

will pay for,

and what

pharmaceutical

companies are

willing to

produce,

able to

produce.

Those drive

the medical

model.

So what does

it say?

Who are we?

According to

the medical

model,

according to

the psychobiology

model,

who are we?

This is the

way I would

say it.

If you're

taking notes,

you don't

have to take

it.

I'm just

trying to

give you

the ideas.

We live

as biological

entities in

a materialistic

world with

no verifiable

transcendent

reality.

Humanness is

a biological

construct.

We are the

product of

our evolutionary

development,

that's obviously

Darwin,

as it shapes

and is shaped

by genetic

and chemical

factors common

to nature.

one of the

last 30

years.

The development

of what we

call the

evolutionary

psychology is

actually trying

to understand

human

personality

and at

its best

as an

adaptation

through

evolution.

So whenever

you read

articles,

particularly

popular articles

about some

psychological

condition or

whatever it is,

some behavior

tendency,

you'll always

see some

reference to

this comes

from this

adaptation in

evolution.

That's what

we're talking

about in the

psychological

field.

What's wrong

with us?

Our problems,

needs are us.

In other words,

everything is in

our physicality.

Our greatest

problems are the

limits of our

bodies to

function at a

capacity that

allows us to

experience pleasure

and minimize

pain during

our lifespan.

So if we

are just

simply evolved

creatures,

then the

goal is for

us to lead

with maximum

enjoyment and

minimal pain

as long as

possible.

So here,

I'm at an

age where

everything I

get on my

news feed

seems to

speak to

getting older

and the

avoidance of

things and

turning back

age.

And there's

so many

different things

coming soon

where you can

actually turn

back age and

this craving

to put off

death.

What's

fascinating,

and this is

an aside,

it's produced

a culture,

and this is

the idea

of a lot

of it,

where medical

science can

extend bodily

life beyond

personal meaning.

And so what

you see now

among the

aging is they

can live

until 90 or

95.

they have

no meaning

of life

past 80.

The last

15 years

are just

waiting to

die.

And they

can be

kept.

One of the

great struggles

in gerontology

is this idea

that medicine

knows how to

keep people

alive.

It doesn't

know how to

make their

lives meaningful.

And that's

what's going

on in

psychomiology.

what should

be right

with us.

In this

model,

in the

psychobiology

model,

what should

be right

with us,

our potential

is a

reasonable

quality of

life as

long as

life can

be reasonably

lived.

The pursuit

of change

is only

inhibited by

the limits

of applied

science and

the moral

conventions of

society to

which we

live.

we can do

a whole lot

more if we

just cast

off the

moral issues

that come

with the

fact that

we can't

reinvent

people.

So,

what would

it take to

fix the

problem?

The solution

occurs as

identifiable

physical

abnormalities

are medically

treated.

The medical

profession with

specialized

training in

psychological

disorders,

using medical

treatments to

address

biological

abnormalities

is the

changing.

you're always

looking for

what's the

presumed

change

agent.

In this

case,

it's the

medical

profession.

And

psychologists

and psychiatrists

understood in

their medical

capacity.

So,

where,

take a pause

for a second

to this,

where would

you see

this in

your world?

Where do

you,

what are

your reference

points for

this?

This idea

of,

physical and

everything that

needs to

change about

who we are

and our

thinking and

feeling and

behavior and

condition is

physiology at

work.

The idea

that if you're

depressed,

just take

medication.

Yeah,

yeah,

yeah,

some medication

for depression

or anything

really.

Yeah,

yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah,

I mean,

I guess the

assumption,

even in the

medical field,

that the

highest goal

is to

alleviate

pain

and prolong

life.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's like a

Yeah.

Yeah.

Think about

this.

Where is the

mind?

Where is the

mind?

Where is the

mind?

The brain.

Is the mind

the same thing

as the brain?

Well,

in this view

maybe.

Is that?

In this view

maybe?

Yeah.

Well,

yeah,

yeah,

yeah.

It's interesting

because according

to this view,

there is no

soul,

there is no

personhood

separate from

brain function.

Your identity

is an extension

of neurons

fire.

Who you

are

as a person

is only

physiology.

Now,

and that

one of the

challenges

with this

approach

is that

we can

see how

yeah,

if you

can limit

it to

well,

there are

certain

medications

that are

targeted

and we're

going to

talk about

medications

later

to help

people

with certain

physiological

factors,

that's

good,

but

why

stop

there?

why

not

pharmacologically

reorienting

the brain

so that

it thinks

differently?

It can

be done.

the point

is,

when the

brain is

total

identity,

then

personhood

is lost.

Agency

is lost.

And so

that's why

we have to

be very

careful

when we

ascribe to

a medical

approach,

when we

ascribe to

a physiology,

biology,

the

underlying

philosophy

behind that

is that

you're no

different

than a

lower level

animal,

except for

brain capacity

is great.

And that's

profoundly

affecting

in the way

you think

about who

you are as

a person

and what

you need

as a

person.

So keep

that in

mind,

because it

should cause

us to

pause a

little bit

when we

think about,

well,

clearly there's

something wrong

in their

brain.

What are

we really

saying in

that?

We're

identifying

everything

with physiology.

And if we're

going to help

people, if we're

going to

understand

ourselves,

we have to

deal with

the philosophical

question,

am I more

than my

brain?

or am I

only my

brain?