Belief and Knowledge

[A Monkey Shaved]

You may be familiar with the famous quote from Carl Jung when stated "I do not need to believe, I know there is a God"
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJ25Ai__ ... re=related[/youtube]

That IMO ranks of one of the most extraordinary claims as there is a huge leap from just believing without evidence to claiming actual knowledge of something. I may believe there are other earth like planets in the universe but I would not claim I actually know of it as if I have actual physical proof it just simply sounds plausible to me in light of the universe's immense size and the real possibility earthlike planets can just emerge out of random happenstance. I just believe (not know) if it is can happen naturally it can happen again. But no one can demonstrate to me that any supernatural spirit being even as humble as the tooth fairy, let alone one that is more powerful than then entire universe and rules over it.

[Trolldor]

Carl Jung was a silly man in a lot of ways.

[Comte de Saint-Germain]

Carl Jung was a silly man in a lot of ways.

Bit of an understatement. The entirety of psychoanalysis has included only the most unstable and deluded characters one may find in a movement.. I would say that Freud in the misrepresentation of his cases, and the fabrication of his ideas about psychoanalysis after the fact into those sessions (in other words, reading them into those sessions) shows how unstable he was.. I truly believe that this was a man driven by cocaine. Carl Jung, with his ideas about aliens should be deemed as worthy of derision and humorous speculation, not serious conversation.

To the thread title, I think belief emerges from speculation about reality, whereas knowledge emerges from intimation with that reality. One does not intimate God from reality, one invents him.

[Rum]

I know my Freud well, and Jung to a slightly lesser extent, having had to study both while doing my social work degree. Much to my surprise (and possibly for the first time evah!) I agree with Compte, that they were talking utter balderdash pretty much all the time.

Further - a phoney industry and a whole family of professional activities were built on the so called theories that Freud proposed.

It really was all woo and not remotely science based..even though they pretended or possibility honestly thought it was.

[Comte de Saint-Germain]

You mean to say that when it comes to topics that you know something about, that you have studied, you agree with me whereas on those topics on which you have not studied you disagree with me? Perhaps the two are related somehow? Just, food for thought!

It really was all woo and not remotely science based..even though they pretended or possibility honestly thought it was.

Freud interviewed his hysterical patients, speculated about sexual abuse in their youth, and later used the existence of sexual abuse in their youth as evidence for it being the cause of hysteria (thus originating the idea that childhood experiences are the father of adult personality (disorders).. This is incredibly circular, but it does not stretch the imagination to believe he was simply deluding himself. That is to say, he wanted there to be sexual abuse so much that he started believing in it, in order to explain the hysteria.

If it was this wishful thinking, it would certainly explain the later aversion with science.. He didn't want anything to do with something that might discredit his beliefs.

[Animavore]

Didn't Jung believe that books spontaneously leaped or exploded on his shelf or something?

I've heard a lot of people say that they know in their heart that God exists. I usually tell them that they can't know anything in their hearts because it's only a muscle.
They usually then tell me to Fuck off and quit trying to be so smart all the time.
And then I laugh and their little moment is ruined

That's the trouble with atheists. They constantly throw a spanner in the supernatural works when people just want to be left alone to believe what they want. Spoil-sports.

[A Monkey Shaved]

Carl Jung was a silly man in a lot of ways.

Bit of an understatement. The entirety of psychoanalysis has included only the most unstable and deluded characters one may find in a movement.. I would say that Freud in the misrepresentation of his cases, and the fabrication of his ideas about psychoanalysis after the fact into those sessions (in other words, reading them into those sessions) shows how unstable he was.. I truly believe that this was a man driven by cocaine. Carl Jung, with his ideas about aliens should be deemed as worthy of derision and humorous speculation, not serious conversation.

To the thread title, I think belief emerges from speculation about reality, whereas knowledge emerges from intimation with that reality. One does not intimate God from reality, one invents him.

Belief is only one's personal opinion of what they think if true or right whereas knowledge requires far more evidence. This is where I think Carl Jung well and truly overstepped the line. I just happen be an atheist because I find such a notion extremely implausible when so much is going wrong with the universe. I think if there were a God as described in the Bible or Koran, the universe would have be a far more perfect entity, like for instance there would be no entropy because that so called "all perfect being" would be sustaining it in a state of perfection. That is just my opinion and it is not as all some assertion that I know for absolutely sure God does not exist in the same vein Jung claims he know he does exist.

[hiyymer]

I know my Freud well, and Jung to a slightly lesser extent, having had to study both while doing my social work degree. Much to my surprise (and possibly for the first time evah!) I agree with Compte, that they were talking utter balderdash pretty much all the time.

Further - a phoney industry and a whole family of professional activities were built on the so called theories that Freud proposed.

It really was all woo and not remotely science based..even though they pretended or possibility honestly thought it was.

There was an article a few years ago in scientific american about Freud, or rather about his constructs of ego, superego, libido, etc. The conclusion was that many of these constructs as he described them could be accurately equated with regulatory loops in the brain which have since been identified by science. Not all, but more correct than incorrect. It's really rather amazing considering how speculative what he was doing had to be. He was not the only one positing a subconscious life of the brain, but like Darwin, he was probably the one that had the most to do with it appearing in the popular consciousness. There was a reaction, because people didn't want to be told that they were animals driven by subconscious compulsions. The article also agreed that he had taken the sexual thing way over the top.

I know little about Jung, but I think he was much less of a scientist. I would say he is just identifying the archetypal nature of our experience, so he has a tendency to project things that are entirely in our experience as stuff floating around out there. I wonder what he would say if you asked him if the god he knows created everything in 6 days.

Personally I found my experience with therapy (at the time of my first divorce and into my second marriage) as quite positive. As humans we have a drive to rationally understand the nature of everything going on around us, and it doesn't stop at what's going on in our experience. The very act of distinguishing what is happening there, has an impact on our actions and way of being.

[Rum]

Freud did admittedly start with 'observation', a scientific practice. He drew conclusions from the hints and indications his patients proffered. And he did have a few insights, but there was already a lot of thinking around psychiatry and the nature of human emotion going on. The idea of the 'unconscious' for example was widely discussed and arose from the very simple observation that we are not 'conscious' of a great deal we do which actually appears to require brain/and/or emotional involvement.

Critically though Freud's starting point was 'pathology'. As a medic, he tried to draw universal conclusions about the human 'psyche' from mostly really quite disturbed people, a number of whom had experienced abuse as children.

I too had some 'therapy' with a Freudian talking therapist, when my last marriage was going down the tubes 15 years ago. She was very Freudian and we discussed the 'theory' as we talked oddly enough.

It didn't help me at all. A divorce did the trick though!

[hiyymer]

I too had some 'therapy' with a Freudian talking therapist, when my last marriage was going down the tubes 15 years ago. She was very Freudian and we discussed the 'theory' as we talked oddly enough.

It didn't help me at all. A divorce did the trick though!

I had a slightly different experience. We were in a joint therapy session before the divorce, and the therapist, who only had social worker credentials but was sharp as a tack, asked what I wanted and suggested that it might actually matter. That was somewhat of a revelation to me, since at the time I was one of those people who was burdened with having to have good reasons for everything. I barely knew that I wanted anything. My ex saw the light bulb go off, and subsequently blamed the therapist for our divorce, not entirely without reason. Since the ex wouldn't have anything to do with her after that, she became my therapist for a couple years until she fired me. I found it very helpful.

[hiyymer]

"The idea of God is an absolutely necessary psychological function of an irrational nature, which has nothing whatever to do with the question of God’s existence. The human intellect can never answer this question, still
less give any proof of God.

The idea of an all powerful divine Being is present everywhere, unconsciously, if not consciously, because it is an archetype."

http://www.psyking.net/id160.htm

Supposedly a summary of Jung's position on God. I don't think he means "know it" in the sense that you are interpreting his comment.

[Rum]

I too had some 'therapy' with a Freudian talking therapist, when my last marriage was going down the tubes 15 years ago. She was very Freudian and we discussed the 'theory' as we talked oddly enough.

It didn't help me at all. A divorce did the trick though!

I had a slightly different experience. We were in a joint therapy session before the divorce, and the therapist, who only had social worker credentials but was sharp as a tack, asked what I wanted and suggested that it might actually matter. That was somewhat of a revelation to me, since at the time I was one of those people who was burdened with having to have good reasons for everything. I barely knew that I wanted anything. My ex saw the light bulb go off, and subsequently blamed the therapist for our divorce, not entirely without reason. Since the ex wouldn't have anything to do with her after that, she became my therapist for a couple years until she fired me. I found it very helpful.

An interesting experience. 'Transference', one of Freud's ideas - and it was an original one I think, was about the patient identifying with the therapist and placing a lot of the emotion and sometimes responsibility and blame onto them. It was part of the argument for why the therapist should stay so aloof and apart. Clearly your ex had a transference issue!

In my experience the therapist latched onto the fact that I am an only child. This took over her attentions more than almost anything else I had to say. She appeared to be fixated on the idea that my difficulties were to do with my 'anger' at not getting my own way as some sort of spoilt domineering offspring who had its parents enslaved to it. Total woo of course.

As someone who is trained as a counsellor myself (and who has lost most of my belief in its efficacy..as well as long out of practice having moved on to the wonderful world of managing rather than doing) the only 'model' of professional advice providing I subscribe to any longer is something called 'solution focused' therapy. Analysis of a problem is mostly unhelpful and often is rubbish. Getting to where you want to be is what it is all about.

[Robert_S]

Analysis of a problem is mostly unhelpful and often is rubbish.

Interesting that you would say that... Did your parents ask you too many questions as a child?

Actually, I agree with your goal oriented approach. But like a mechanic, a therapist doesn't get the big wads of cash from providing relatively simple solutions to problems.

[hiyymer]

As someone who is trained as a counsellor myself (and who has lost most of my belief in its efficacy..as well as long out of practice having moved on to the wonderful world of managing rather than doing) the only 'model' of professional advice providing I subscribe to any longer is something called 'solution focused' therapy. Analysis of a problem is mostly unhelpful and often is rubbish. Getting to where you want to be is what it is all about.

Agreed. Analysis for it's own sake is futile.

[FBM]

The only thing I can see psychotherapy useful for is as a catalyst for self-discovery. Most of what I figured out about myself I figured out long after I gave up on psychotherapy.