Psychology & Buddhism.pdf

Suffering from Biobabble 131
Search for Meaning. Even when diagnosed with a terminal illness, a person is still
free to see it as a personal adventure, rather than a doomed biological process, as
writer Broyard (1992) shows us in Intoxicated by My Illness. These freedoms are
not a by-product of organic or biochemical reactions.
In the late 70’s, we psychodynamic types thought that cognitive-behaviorism
was the reductionism to oppose. We did not see what was coming around the biochemical
corner. A mere twenty years later, most popular and media accounts of
science would concur with English journalist Appleyard (1998), who in a study
of the ethical issues inherent in applying genetic methods to humans, states as
a fact that “Almost every aspect of human life has a large and frequently decisive
genetic component” (p. 15). Although Appleyard is a critic of genetic programs,
he like most other popularizers of biological science is a true believer in the
ideology.
All accounts of the biological basis of human action obscure the significance
and complexity of desire and agency that cannot be reduced to reactivity. Even
the human infant depends on intentional action rather than an adaptation to an
environment. The infant cannot think for itself and yet it cannot live without
thinking; so someone else must think for it. The infant cannot foresee its own
needs and provide for them; so someone else must use foresight. Human beings
develop in inherently personal relationships that include intention, meaning and
reflection from the very beginning. Although our biology may affect how sensitive
we are to certain interactions with others, our relationships and their meanings
also affect how relevant these biological factors may be.
Thus, there is a massive distortion in using organic theories to explain
human actions. Philosopher MacMurray (1961) says it like this:
We are not organisms, but persons. The nexus of relations, which unites us in a
human society, is not organic but personal. Human behavior cannot be understood,
but only caricatured, if it is represented as an adaptation to environment; and there
is no such process as social evolution but, instead, a history which reveals a
precarious development and possibilities both of progress and retrogression. (p. 46)
When the facts and methods of studying organic life are applied by analogy
to the human field, they deny us the possibility of understanding ourselves – in
terms of intentions and actions. We transform our actions into organic processes,
which automatically erase the freedom to change through self-reflection (whether
changing for better or worse). Biobabble makes unintelligible any explanation of
human behavior in terms of desire and intention, and transforms into gibberish
the goal of subjective freedom through increased awareness, as found in psychodynamic
and Buddhist practices.
For all of these reasons, I passionately believe that we must articulate
a multileveled scientific study of the intentional and relational character of
human subjectivity. Drawing on psychodynamic models and theories, and on the