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WEB 4 - ARCHIVE
Commentary 13 - Page 2 |
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Ouspensky made the point that medical psychology was at one time known as 'abnormal psychology,' because it seeks to make human beings into people that are 'normal' in terms of their type and the community in which they live. As he and others have remarked, this may often be in direct contradiction to the aim of allowing them to reach their full potential. By defining its aim in this way, 20th Century psychology became unable to respond to the suppressed inner needs of individuals, and since these suppressed inner needs are part of our true potential, so that to restore people to 'normal' generally involves further suppression, the restoration of 'normality ' is often the reinstatement of the disease. This is why medical psychology is often known as abnormal psychology. In modern terms, it falls into the group known as 'developmental. psychology,' but modern forms of this division of psychology are largely concerned with the development of children, and often assume that human development ends with the end of childhood. This may be true, but it is not necessarily true, and the developmental psychology of the early church, as well as that of the other great faiths of the world, is intended for adults. Spirituality is the development of the spiritual nature of man In this view, a truly spiritual life is generally prevented by the unfinished state of the spiritual component of our psyche. Although we are spirit, as spirit we are weak and so the body rules us. We are weak not because development necessarily stops before adulthood, but because at this stage in life, before the age of 21, it generally ceases to occur automatically as a matter of course. From this point on, individual development continues only as a result of individual effort. Development can thus be continued into adulthood, but to do so requires certain individual efforts which we describe as conscious efforts. Their nature is such that these conscious efforts cannot be forced on the individual, although they can be encouraged by a gradual awareness that even in this life they lead to an opening-up of a whole new realm of experience.
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