Certainly, 20th-Century Western Psychology…

Certainly, 20th-century Western psychology made progress in diagnosing and describing cases of madness. It also advanced in understanding characteristic behavioral reactions in certain conditions. It also greatly expanded the descriptive repertoire used to understand and characterize personalities. All of this is valuable. However, it seems clear that, at this point, the dream of a unified theory has proven impossible. It also seems clear that psychologists, in stark disagreement about what the psyche is, can only grasp it partially, at best—if they can grasp anything at all. Thus, each psychologist ends up specializing in a type of psyche, or in certain aspects of the psyche. Here, the problem becomes evident. If the psychologist intends to be effective in treating certain types of patients, he should keep going; if, however, he seeks more than targeted therapy, he may have to take a very different path from that taken by Western psychology.