So, one of things I’ve been doing these days (other than rehabbing my knee) is thinking about the field of Psychology. I started trying to figure myself out at an early age, was a Psych major in college, and later on grabbed a funky Master’s Degree in East/West Psychology. On top of that, I’ve been working in the field for fifteen years, yet I’ve never considered myself a “psychologist.” This is probably because, in the technical sense of the term, a psychologist is a licensed professional, one who has jumped through a series of hoops which I’ve avoided for various reasons.
Yet, in a broader sense, I am a psychologist, as I’ve dedicated a big chunk of my life to a fairly systematic inquiry into the nature of human experience. As an undergrad, I had a real love-hate relationship to the field. More than anything, I was looking for a method of self-discovery, and what I found was an academic discipline which appeared disinterested in the deeper realms of subjective experience. A “study of the soul” it was not, especially at Binghamton University, where they took a strictly experimental science perspective. The APA (American Psychological Association) seemed to me to be “The Man,” keeping down creative inquiry for the sake of some money-driven status quo.
When I later moved to San Francisco and was exposed to the perspective of Transpersonal Psychology, my mind was blown and I felt like I had finally found my place in the field. As a graduate student at the California Institute of Integral Studies, I felt completely at home and certain that I would be a famous Transpersonal Psychologist who would rock the world with my brilliant discoveries.
But then those fucking APA Nazis pulled the rug out from under me, as I was told the East/West Psychology program would have to be torn down (with only the POSSIBILITY of eventual restructuring) in order for CIIS to meet new accreditation criteria. With student loan debts already at critical levels, it seemed insane to invest tens of thousands more into a program which might soon cease to exist, so I stopped my PhD work in its tracks, wrote a master’s thesis, and got out of Dodge.
Love and Rock N’ Roll took center stage for the next decade, and my work in the mental health field, while engaging and meaningful in many ways, has been primarily a matter of paying the bills. Which brings us to today, as I contemplate the next stage of my journey, the one that will begin when my wife and I return from Mexico in May.
For a while now, I’ve wanted to try my hand at teaching Psychology. The trouble has been — aside from my funky master’s degree giving pause to potential employers — that nearly all academic institutions are locked into the same cookie-cutter, status quo, APA sanctioned curriculum that drove me nuts back when I was an undergrad. So, I’ve been re-examining the landscape, seeing if there isn’t a way for me to operate within the established field while still bringing in the transpersonal and integral perspectives.
I’m sure it can be done, and in the coming weeks I might use this blog to think out loud a bit on this topic.