Sociology

Gina is a counselor, Mikey is a sociologist.  Together they blend the two skills sets into a unique brand of psycho-sociology, or is that socio-psychology that moves way beyond the limitations and failures of traditional psychology and towards the development of a socially, politically, and economically sophisticated platform that honours the individual over The System and that looks to develop the whole individual without sacrificing that individual to the demands and requirements of the industrial machine.

Strong words we know, but you don’t have to look very far to see something is wrong. You just have a look at the skyrocketing mental health problems in our society to know that traditional psychology is a failure. They can’t even get marriage counseling right. In fact, in 1999 a fellow by the name of John M. Gottman (apparently the guru of marital counseling) said that you are more likely to get divorced after marriage counseling than before and concluded that “marital therapy appears to be a reliable vehicle toward divorce!” (Gottman, 1999). Not a very glowing assessment of the effectiveness of traditional psychological interventions and while the psychologists out there may not like to hear it, a fact is a fact. Psychology as it is currently practiced just isn’t that effective.

The solution isn’t that hard though. Psychologists have to wake up to the fact that their clients move in a social, political, and economic context and that that context, with it’s overemphasis on gender, competition, productivity, career advancement, and climbing the proverbial hill, just isn’t healthy. It’s a violation of what Karl Marx would have called “species being,” prevents what Abraham Maslow would have called Self Actualization, and violates what we see as the fundamental nature of our identity as incarnated spiritual beings. From our perspective the world as it exists right now is a corruption. It is a twisted and deformed caricature of what we, as incarnated sparks of consciousness, are like. It is a violation, even a rape, of our fundamental inner being and until we understand that, until that violation and rape stops, psychology will be nothing more than a desperate attempt to fix up the failing physical unit as it continues to collapse and even fail under the weight of this global pathology.

In any case, in this little space we want to introduce you to sociology and some of the insights it provides into the nature of our social and political reality.  I’m going to include some of the course work that I’ve done for Athabasca University, snippets on sociology and sociological topics, and even actual course modules from the classes we teach. The goal here will be to provide you with a solid overview of what it means to be a sociologist. We won’t get into the psychology of it all here (or the deep spirituality either). If you are interested in how we blend sociology and psychology, check out our Institute web page. There we will provide (over the next couple of years) articles and information designed to provide you the tools you need to begin the process of reclaiming your mental (and even physical) health, and helping others do the same.

I should say up front that there is also a spiritual component to this work. Although we feel this aspect of the work is critical because it provides the orientation you need to properly understand your “inner nature” (which is not, it should be said, what either the scientists or priests say), it’s not absolutely necessary. Although informed by some key cosmological and theological assumptions, the psychology and sociology presented on our various web pages can stand independently so if you are not interested in learning more about the spiritual side of this, that’s fine.  We won’t push that, but we will leave a trial, just in case.

g & m (or is that m & g)

References

Gottman, John M (1999). The Marriage Clinic: A Scientifically-Based Marital Therapy. New York: Norton and Company.