Why Psyche Matters: Psychological Implications of Santayana's Ontology

one would be hard-pressed to find anything like psyche being studied. Specialization within the field has produced an amalgamation of sub-disciplines, each with its specific subject matter. We have developmental, social, behavioral, and bio-psychology, but nowhere are these themes united to provide an overarching theory of an organizing principle of life. Furthermore, methods of therapeutic psychology vary widely in their foundational principles, not all explicitly utilize the prevailing scientific accounts of mind, and some deliberately ignore them.1 Contemporary psychology has certainly diverged from the more holistic goal of a systematic and comprehensive accounting of the vital processes of living beings.2 While there are, arguably, reasons to be concerned about this direction that psychology has taken as an experimental enterprise, I prefer here to inquire whether this apparent degeneration into narrow specializations is masking an important philosophical truism. Perhaps an understanding of psyche as a holistic life process is not something that can be completely or best accounted for scientifically. While we would do well to include empirical evidence as an aspect of the total picture, and without going so far as to argue that psyche is some sort of supernatural phenomenon, it is possible to see the benefit in augmenting scientific understanding with concepts of a more philosophical—specifically, ontological—nature. One of the major concerns psychology has been forced to elide in its efforts to secure for itself regular and measurable objects is the nature of the connection between subjective awareness and the physical being that generates it. One can address organismic behavior at the micro or macro level (that is, by measuring Why Psyche Matters