Josh Marshall's Archive

This has really been the blog post and part of the year that I’ve been looking forward to all semester after first looking over the syllabus. Humanistic Psychology is the branch of psychology that I have been most interested in learning about. Carl Rogers’ Client Centered Therapy approach was completely unheard of at the time, and his approach even became its own school of thought. Maslow and Rogers work has greatly contributed to the Psychology field and their humanistic view of therapy puts more emphasis on the fact that the client knows themselves best, and they are capable of revealing their problems themselves if in the right environment. With the switched emphasis on the individual (self-actualization, creativity, individuality), third force psychology offers a more optimistic outlook regarding the client and their personal, mental and psychological growth throughout therapy. As for me, someone who has experienced being in therapy first hand, the client-therapist relationship is very important as well as the environment that is formed. When I first read about humanistic psychology I could relate to it because I felt as if that was the type of therapy that I experienced and received much help from. I am an advocate of this style of therapy, and I believe that it is directly on point with its style and direction throughout the course of therapy.

With the main premise behind psychoanalysis being to make the unconscious conscious, there are many techniques that therapist may use in hopes of achieving this goal. Ink blots, dream analysis, and free association are just a few of the techniques that may be used. What really intrigues me most is dream analysis. When I think of dream analysis, the first thing I think about is this clip from Space Jam that I always enjoyed growing up. In the movie, aliens from outer space have come down and stolen the talent from NBA players in order to play bugs bunny and the Looney Toons, but that’ a different story for a different post. Anyways, in this clip the basketball players are having all sorts of  medical tests run on them as well as seeing therapists to try and find out what is wrong with them. In the scene, the therapist is having them, individually, lie down on a couch and is having them talk about their lives as he analyzes them. He is working with dream analysis as well as free association in hopes of bringing something from the unconscious out into the open in order to better understand what is wrong with the basketball players psychologically. Although this is a more humorous clip and analogy, I still think that it is relevant in terms of what psychoanalysis looks like, and what the main objective of it is.

The study of behaviorism is a particular study that first caught my attention in my first psychology class here at ACU, Intro to Psychology. Before this time, I had never heard behaviorism or really put much thought into the idea of learned and reinforced behaviors as a study. I can vividly remember learning about Pavlov’s theory, classical conditioning, operant conditioning, and negative and positive reinforcement and punishment and just being vastly intrigued by this field of study. You can see the principles of behaviorism being used today in several places. For me, I love sports, and the first place I see this in sports is in football. In attempts to “make the game safer”, fines are being issued out for hits that were perfectly legal five years ago.  This is a perfect example of negative punishment. The league is taking money away from players in order to reduce the likelihood that they will repeat their behavior. There have been players like James Harrison who have had to completely alter their style of play, and there are players like Ed Reed who are simply taking the fines as they come as he continues to play hard knock football the way he always has. There are going to be two outcomes to this approach, either they fold under what they are “being taught”, or they will ignore the attempt at learned behavior.

As I have learned more about this field the more I have come to understand the power that comes with this style of therapy. Many people can be considered to be in a vulnerable state when they enter into therapy, and there is much power available to the therapist with behavior therapy. The powers to manipulate and control others who essentially need you more than you need them. The power to be able to teach someone or something to act a certain way if you know how to play your cards right. It takes a person of integrity and responsibility to make sure they are conducting their practice in a helpful manner and not one of manipulation.

This field continues to be greatly interesting to me and I plan to continue learning, understanding, and applying behaviorism to my own future experiments and experiences.

I’m going to have to follow the lead of many of my peers as I reiterate that the topic of evolution has the potential to cause a variety of emotions to surface based on what you believe, and where you are in your own personally understanding and development. For a both Christians and Evolutionists, anger can arise as this debate has been ongoing for centuries now between “Science v. Religion”. Growing up in the Church of Christ, I can’t help but feel as if the theory of evolution was presented to me with extreme bias against it, as it was supposed to serve as a theory with the sole purpose to disprove Christianity. From as early as I can remember, without even forming my own opinions on the topic, I believed that the theory of evolution meant that there was no God. In my ignorance I believed that for quite some time as I continued to hear sermons on disproving evolution and other people talk about the topic. It wasn’t until I began to look into the theory of evolution that I realized that God and the theory of evolution co-exist, and that I believe there to be truth from both perspectives.

Plato and Aristotle both did not believe in evolution. They believed that God’s creation was fixed, never to improve and never to degenerate. The only way for creation to ever vary would be by the act of God changing it. Charles Darwin, on the other hand, believed and endorsed human evolution. My thought is, “why can they not co-exist and both be correct”? As a believer, I truly believe that God created the world the way it is described in Genesis, but I also believe he created is with the capacity to change, to adapt, and to evolve as part of his creation. It is important to be aware of this truth when dealing with the idea of evolution. As a race we have evolved from a people who used to light up our houses by candles, to people who can flip a switch to provide an entire city electricity. As we continue to learn and explore and find new discoveries about our brains and our capabilities, we also continue to adapt as a result.

Although I do not agree with all that comes with the evolutionary theory, I still think that it is something that is important to look at and be aware of as it affects every human being in some form or fashion.

Growing up in the twentieth and now twenty-first century culture, it is easy to get lost in how advanced our society is and lose sight of where our advances originated from. Ancient Greece has influenced cultures all around the world for centuries now, and we are no exception. The Greeks have been cited for laying the foundation of many things that bring us joy in our western culture, and several of these influences have intrigued people enough to the point in which they chose to make a career out of it. Things such as art, architecture, math, science, medicine, literature, theater, engineering, philosophy, and warfare have all been a part of our culture almost all the way back to the forefront of our existence as a country. Today, we study their tactics, we learn from their theories, and we continue to be amazed by the brilliance of the work that they did with such limited resources.

When I think of ancient Greece, I think of the Persian War, I think of tales of heroics such as Troy, the Illiad, and the Odyssey. Great philosophers come to mind such as Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, and Hippocrates. I am not rich in my knowledge of Greek history, but even knowing what little I do know about these men and their contributions to society, I can see their influences on our culture through mathematics, medicine, and theory. Movies have been made, books have been written, and much what we have learned from the Greeks has become mainstream entertainment for all to enjoy. Much of what is taught in schools can be traced back to some form of Greek philosophy and that is a testament to how profoundly we have been impacted by this group of people.

American culture has truly reaped the benefits of the foundation that was laid by the Greeks. With roots from Christianity, democracy, and philosophy, Americans intelligence and ways of thinking have been greatly challenged and expanded due to the work and knowledge that was provided by the ancient Greece. It’s just a shame that we too often lose sight of where our influences came from.

When people ask the question what is the “good life”, one must first understand that there is not any clear coat answer to this question. The way that someone answers this question is totally dependent on that in which they place value and what they deem to be good. Because of this, it is almost inevitable that this will be answered differently, to some degree, by every person that responds.

As for me, I would describe the “good life” as a life where I am able to find joy in all that I do. In my job, in my relationships with other people,  in my personal life, and in my faith. If I am able to find joy in these areas of my life in which I place high value, then I am indeed living, by my terms, the “good life”. Happiness is the key to a satisfying and fulfilling life, and if you can achieve happiness, however it is that you define that,  then that’s how you live the “good life”. I think that is a complex question with a rather simple answer. However, this is simply my opinion on the matter.