Socrates

SOCRATES (469-399 BC)

Socrates was the first person I chose for my “committee”. The things about Socrates that have always drawn me to his work was his belief in “know thyself” and that “the unexamined life is not worth living”. His drive and interest in questioning appeals to me most, probably because I question everything. I want to know why things are the way they are, how they got that way and why am I perceiving something in the manner I am. Through the act of questioning we learn and grow, we discern what is right or wrong for us as individuals and find truths about ourselves.

Socrates’ work shows me that it’s possible for social conventions, labels, and habits to conceal what may be real or what may lie beneath and having decided to live a life based on truth (mine of course) his contributions in this area are very beneficial in devising an authentic human existence. I don’t need the veils of others imposed upon me; I have enough of my own to work through and the work of Socrates’ speaks directly to this issue.

If Socrates’ view of knowledge and truth were more widely held by current society I think we would have less people in therapy! Socrates had it right when he said, “the knower must account for the truth of what he holds to be true”. If we could throw blind faith out the window and figure out why we believe what we do and how we came to believe it we would then make choices truer to our inherent nature and be a society of happier, more well balanced people.

ARISTOTLE (384-322 BC)

I also chose Aristotle to be on my “committee” because of his ideas relating to the body and mind as pieces of the same being and how they work to form a unity between the psychological and physiological processes. I believe the body and mind work together as well as against each other and our desire to keep them in balance is what makes us different from nonhuman animals.

Aristotle’s work also supports my interest in the thinking process. In that, it begins in an abstract form and continues until we have compiled evidence through inductive reasoning to support or deny our thought. His work also supports my interest in thinking as a creative active process. How the process begins with intuition, an idea or an image and experiences no movement until the inductive reasoning has completed itself.

I’m also interested in how people think through their problems and bring them to resolution. Aristotle would have been a great advisor for me in this area because he was a very logical, rational thinker. Like me, he liked to keep things simple. “All men are mortal; Socrates is a man; therefore, Socrates is mortal”. He asked many of the same questions I do when confronted with a problem. How have problems like this been handled in the past? What is the general opinion of others on the subject? Are there other parts to the problems that I may not be seeing? I would have enjoyed talking through and solving a problem with Aristotle.

Another aspect of Aristotle’s work that would benefit me as a psychologist is his work in discovering and analyzing the rational laws that guide human behavior. I believe there are aspects of human behavior that remain constant and acquiring a better understanding of those aspects would be necessary when working in the field of psychology. Aristotle made important contributions in many areas but overall his insight into logic and rational were of greatest importance to my psychological interests.

RENE DESCARTES (1596-1650)

I chose Descartes because of his work with perception and his theory that as thinking beings our comprehension is not through seeing, touching or imagining but by way of reason or perception through the mind alone. His theory supports my feelings that we must perceive and reason before there is an emotion or behavioral action, this action is then supported by sensation.

Descartes would challenge me to use introspection and this introspection would help me to better assess what is true for me both emotionally and intellectually. He would help me to recognize that what I perceive may be true, but remind me that there is always a connection to the material world. He would also be an amazing teacher in the area of critical thinking because his goal was to produce knowledge that was beyond doubt. In order to process information and derive such knowledge critical thinking would be a vital component. This type of deductive reasoning would be important in reading and assessing psychological research my career.

I see the basis of Descartes philosophy as self-exploration and much can be learned from such a process, it’s an important step in the perception of “wholeness”. I think the