Etikett: Paul Vitz

När glöden falnar

När glöden falnar

Och vad är skillnaden på en hoppfull, alternativtänkande person, med solsken i blick, och en grumpy, småparanoid misantrop, då?

Ungefär tretti, fyrtio år 😉

Här ska ni få ett exempel på riktigt svajig, dålig vetenskap. Ett citat jag stoppade i fickan för många år sen. Och har plockat fram många ggr sen dess. Av (håll i er!) en anonym skribent på en blogg som refererade personlig kommunikation med en icke namngiven forskare… Men vad spelar det för roll! När själva spaningen är som guld. På området där psykologi o (ny)andlighet överlappar…

“I suspect that what’s going on is that New Age, now entering its third generation, has developed a theodicy. Now, this is a theological term, but it essentially means an explanation of the existence of evil – why bad things happen to good people.

For some of those in the New Age milieu – Foster Gamble, David Icke, Whitley Strieber, Duncan Rhodes and others, all incidentally in middle age and with a long term involvement in the New Age milieu – an explanation is needed as to why, if we’ve entered the Age of Aquarius, is the world less peaceful, equal and progressive than ever? Conspiracy theories offer such a theodicy – the New Age hasn’t happened because evil people prevented it from happening.”

Muertos, 2012

Ett citat på samma tema. Här handlar det om sådan psykologi som pratar om “upphöjda” tillstånd att eftersträva & uppnå… Paul Vitz, ur boken “Psychology as Religion”, 1977:

“Second, as people aged, they realized that many of the things thought necessary for self-actualization would not be attainable in their lives. Besides interpersonal disasters, there were career failures, serious health problems, and many other disappointments. The discrepancy between the promised ‘high’ of the Maslovian self-actualization or Jungian individuation and the reality of their lives created a vast disappointment and ‘credibility gap.’ The belief that psychology could make you happy, that it was the answer, began to fade.”

The spiritual version of AIDS

The spiritual version of AIDS

Kritiken av new age-andligheten kommer från olika håll. Den kan handla om att denna typ av andlighet är alltför kommersiell, okristlig, historielös, fördummande, smaklös, etc. Den kritik som är mest relevant för den här hemsidan är ju sådan som görs ur ett psykologiskt perspektiv. Tre av de skarpaste kritikerna av det senare slaget, som jag stött på, är Carl Raschke, Mel D. Faber och Paul C. Vitz:
MD Faber, i sin bok “New Age Thinking – A Psychoanalytic Critique”, skriver: ”From the psychoanalytic angle, three items stand out clearly; first, we have an overarching presence of infantile omnipotence, the egocentric, unconscious belief in one’s unlimited powers […]; second, we have the urge to fuse regressively with the environment, to attach oneself to the surrounding world (universe) in a way that denies, erases, cancels out the ever-present sense of separation which the cronologically mature individual must cope with during the course of his days on the planet; third, we have a longing for narcissistic inflation, the longing to go about in the belief that one is somehow magical, wonderful […] as opposed to being simply another regular person in the world.
[…]
”I regard New Age thinking as essentially regressive or infantile in nature. It is absorbed, I contend, in matters of symbiotic merger, omnipotence, narcissistic inflation, and in magical thinking and wishing generally. New Age thinking makes war on reality; it denigrates reason; it denies and distorts what I consider to be the existential facts of our human experience; it seeks to restore the past, specifically, the before-separation-world, in an idealized, wish-fulfilling form that has little or no connection to the adult estate.” (Faber, 1996, sid 14-15)
Vitz (1977) skriver bl a om den nya andligheten att den ”knows no laws at all, since laws imply a law-giver”.
Raschke, skriver (ref?): ”I would call it [New Age] the spiritual version of AIDS – that is, it destroys the defences, the immune system, the abilty to cope and function.” (Raschke, 1987, citat ur någon usa-dagstidning, ska hitta ref!)

Vitz om gränslösheten

Vitz om gränslösheten

Vitz (1977) skriver om en gudsbild som beskriver denne som ”energi” och som söker upphäva alla motsatser: ”New Age mentality attempts to break down distinctions between things and their opposites, and to claim that there are no seriously important boundaries” (Kindle location 2024). Gud är allt och överallt, men den nyandlige kanske kan sakna honom ändå?

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