Christopher C.H. Cook, The Philokalia and The Inner Life: On Passions and Prayer. James Clarke & Co, 2011. $52.50

Empirical and quantitative disciplines are only one way we express our desire to know but they are not “our first way of knowing.” As do all human beings, scientists “learn about reality first of all by means of everyday experience.  Our first knowledge is prescientific, it is lived rather than thought.” While often—though not unquestionably so—of great value, “Scientific knowledge is secondary.  It emerges from [our] first way of knowing. Without an everyday perception of stars, astronomy would not have been born. …Scientific knowledge does not mean the end of prescientific cognition.”  Contemporary science cannot exist  “[w]ithout prescientific knowledge.”  While this is more or less “true for all science, it is most obvious” when the object of our study is humanity itself.  “How could we fully understand, for instance, theories about love and anger if we had never experienced these emotions?”  (van Kaam 1987, p. 2) If this is the touchstone of science, or rather its foundation, what are we to make of psychology, the science of human experience?   Given the human foundation of scientific knowledge, can psychology understand either itself as a discipline or its object—the human person—if it precludes the insights of other, qualitative disciplines?

Not only explicitly political critics of psychology such as R. D. Laing (1960, 1961) and T. Szasz (1961/1967/1974/1977, 1970/1997, 1975/1984, 1976) but also more sympathetic critics such as van Kaam, (1966, 1969) White (1953) and A. Giorgi  (1970), argue that not only can psychologists turn to these other sources, they must do so in order to remain true to the object of their study.   To be faithful to the human person “theoretical and practical psychology, the one as much as the other, should bear in mind that they cannot lose sight of the truths established by reason and by faith, nor of the obligatory precepts of ethics” (Pius XII,1953). These norms are not extrinsic to psychology as an empirical science because they are intrinsic to its object of study, the human person.  Rightly understanding human thought and behavior, much less any attempt at correcting  it—the fundamental work of psychotherapy—are profoundly ethical undertakings (London, 1964/1986). Unfortunately, psychologists and psychotherapists are often guided by ethical norms—visions of what it means to lead a good life—that they have uncritically adopted and which they apply in an idiosyncratic manner (compare Erikson, 1976).  Even though life in its fullness will always transcend our understanding of it, doing justice to the complexity of human life requires that psychology be more than merely an empirical or clinical discipline.  This is why The Philokalia and the Inner Life: On Passion and Prayer by Christopher C.H. Cook (2011) is important for both contemporary psychology and Christian pastoral care. Continue reading →