Psychology & Buddhism.pdf

132 Polly Young-Eisendrath
practices and methods of Buddhism, such a science would challenge the ideology
of biological determinism.
As the Dalai Lama (1997) says, we need to use the complexity of human
intelligence in a constructive way.
of all the various species of animal on the planet, human beings are the biggest
troublemakers ... . It is therefore important that human intelligence be utilized in
a constructive way. That is the key. If we utilize its capacity properly, then not only
human beings would become less harmful to each other, and to the planet, but also
individual human beings would be happier in themselves. (p. 132)
The study of human intentions, motivations, desires and inner conflicts is the path
to understanding how human intelligence can be used for constructive purposes
in understanding its own powers and limitations. The methods of Buddhist practice
encourage us to pay attention to the effects of our desires on our contentment,
our intentions on our actions, and our fears and anxieties on our states of mind.
Similarly, psychodynamic therapies encourage sober self-reflection on our destructive
emotional habits and our repetitive omnipotent longings to have things under
our own control. Only the human sciences can provide the backbone for expanding
and studying these approaches.
The Human Sciences
When I first encountered the philosophy of science, through the study of The
Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Kuhn (1970), I was deeply impressed with
the idea of scientific “paradigms” or exemplary models that are used as if they
were reality.
Kuhn showed that the natural sciences, such as physics and chemistry, have
grown through revolutionary shifts in these paradigms, rather than through linear
accumulation of new knowledge or information. From time to time, some scientists
discover and investigate anomalies in the exemplary model, and these anomalies
eventually lead to a whole new worldview that topples the old paradigm and
allows scientists to see data in a new way. Kuhn’s theory appealed to psychological
clinicians like myself because we believed that we were helping our clients
shift their paradigms of reality by examining anomalies in their worldviews. But
Kuhn strongly objected to applying his structural theory of the natural sciences to
any understanding of the human sciences of psychology, anthropology, sociology,
linguistics, economics or history. He believed that his theory belonged in the
natural sciences, and was distorted in applications to the human sciences.
The original line drawn in the nineteenth century between the natural and the
human sciences was as follows: the natural sciences explain events mathematically
and organically in terms of the laws of nature, while the human sciences