Reality can be divided into two broad states or categories:
Objective and Subjective.
Some might debate if the outside world we see, hear, and experience and the inner world as it is felt or comprehended (by our emotions and intellect) can be boiled down into two explicit awareness states, but, assume the statement is True.
The two states are also referred to as: “The Subjective” and “The Objective.”
What is? “The Objective”.
From the dictionary:
(adjective) 1. (of a person or their judgment) not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts.
(noun) 2. …a thing aimed at or sought, a goal.
Interpretation:
Something “objective.” This is something concrete, real, accessible by our senses (hearing, seeing, smelling, feeling). A focus “objective” is something concrete that we go after. Getting fit is “a focus objective.” “I am alive.” is an objective statement.
What is: “The Subjective”.
From the dictionary:
(adjective) 1. based on or influenced by personal feelings, tastes, or opinions.
(noun) 2. …the subjective case
Interpretation:
Something “subjective” is characteristic of (or belonging to) reality as perceived rather than as independent of mental perception. Something subjective is NOT real. It is imagined.
Flowers are seen because of color, smelled because of chemical reactions, dancing is what you “believe” dancing is. The words, best, most, pleasant all connote subjective state. Your view or opinion.
Another characteristic of “objective” and “subjective” is how these terms define our language. Language is the medium of how we think, feel, and reason. Language bears directly on how we feel, what we experience, and how we act.
Subject and Object connotes special usages for grammar.
1. An object is: the thing or person performing the action of the verb.
2. A subject is: the person or the thing that is doing or being something.
Example: You throw a ball. (You are the subject, the “ball” is the object). You are the thing that throws. The ball is the thing being thrown.
Simple enough!
REVIEW: (1) Objective is concrete, (2) Subjective is imagined. (3) Object is the thing performing the action, (4) Subject is the thing doing the action.
Objective is different than object AND Subjective is different than subject.
BUT, then, there is also a “relatedness” between Objective and Subjective AND this is where “meaning” resides .
Let’s test your knowledge so far:
What is a Chair? Is it an object or a subject? Is a chair objective or subjective.
Is “sadness” subjective or objective? Sadness is subjective
A person tosses a paper airplane.
Which of the two is: a. subject or b. object
Which of the remaining of the two is: a. subject or b. object
If I win $10,000.00 in a gambling game, will this make my life better?
The $10,000 is: a. objective or b. subjective. $10,000 is objective. (a better life is subjective).
Does the word “better” connote an: a: objective state or b. subjective state? Answer: subjective state.
We now enter: Point-of-View.
You must understand the terms subject, object, subjective, objective, The Subjective and The Objective before you can appreciate, Point-of-View.
What is a Point-of-View?
From the dictionary:
(noun)… a particular attitude or way of considering a matter.
The American Psychological Association defines Point-of-View as:
the ability to view objects, events, and ideas in realistic proportions and relationships.
For example:
Point-of-View (I now use the abbreviation: POV) is the ability to interpret relative position, size, and distance of objects in a plane surface as if they were three-dimensional.
POV allows you to time travel. How? Just think back to your 16th Birthday.
Do you remember who was there? Was there a cake? Was there presents? Where were you?
As you answer these questions, you have just traveled back in time, using POV and memory, to your 16th Birthday. Memory allows us to time travel, POV makes that travel seem real.
POV is powerful. Really Powerful!
How many windows existed in the home where you lived when you were 20 years old.
1. Go back to your home.
Walk through the front door, walk through the floors, the first floor, the second floor (if you have a second floor).
Count the windows. It helps to close your eyes (this allows your psyche to see better because it is not competing with your physical vision).
Soon, you will find yourself walking through your home and counting windows.
How many windows are there in this home from the past? a: 5, b: 10, c: 20: Say the number here aloud____.
In this house walk, you will not only see windows, but you will see other features of your home as well, stairs, hallways, etc. But, you are searching for windows, so you don’t pay much attention to the furniture, floor rugs, beds, lamps, etc. unless these are deemed useful for gauging your POV (searching for windows in an imagined home). Focused memory and internal attention is useful in this exercise, but it is NOT POV.
An essential point: Most people, as they engage this exercise, look for windows (in their “mind’s eye” - Minds Eye = POV). The windows are inanimate (imaginary). You’ve set your POV in this exercise for a specific inanimate object. You don’t see people, the house is usually empty. Why? Because POV doesn’t want people in the house to find windows. So, POV excludes a lot of things unconsciously to focus (your mind) on what YOU want. This brings up the fact that POV is both “implicit” (understood though not directly expressed) and “explicit.” (fully revealed or expressed without vagueness). I will return to this POV feature because you must understand it if you want to recruit POV to help you.
QUESTIONS: (Sorry for the questions, I will always be a professor at heart - my POV).
Is POV? A. Objective or B. Subjective. Answer: POV is ALWAYS subjective.
Why? Because Point of View can change.
Look at the picture below. What is it?
I keep this image hanging in my therapy office because it underscores the core of the human psyche. That core is POV.
Is THIS PICTURE a “Duck” or a “Rabbit”?
Glancing at the image you will see immediately either a “duck” or a “rabbit”. There may be ways to predict which image a person will see first, but, if so, I’ve never figured it out. Note, if I say, before you see this picture, “Look for a Rabbit.” Most people will see a rabbit first, then a duck. Why? Because I influenced POV.
In fact, sometimes the same person will see a “Rabbit” first or a “Duck”, then a day later the person will see the order in reverse.
For me, the duck seems always to stand out. I don’t know why.
IMPORTANT POINT: I never see the duck and the rabbit at the same time. This image makes you choose a POV.
EXTREMELY important point. The “Duck-Rabbit” image “does” influence (controls) your free will through the power of POV. Why? Because the image contains two equally competing or overlapping sources of objective meaning. It is either “a duck” or “a rabbit.” As soon as you choose, everything changes, the image doesn’t change, YOU conform your POV to the image YOU decide you want to see. You never see 1/2 duck and 1/2 rabbit. It is ALL Duck or ALL rabbit. That’s why this image, to some, can be maddening. No fence-sitters when viewing this image. It’s either one way or the other (Duck or Rabbit).
I can influence your POV through suggestion (look for a Rabbit.). If I put you in an hypnotic induction (and you trust me enough to allow me to do this) I say, “In this deep state of hypnotic relaxation, I will show you a picture.” “You will only see a Duck.” Or “This picture is simply a picture of a Duck and nothing else.)” A person who is truly hypnotized, will only see the “Duck.” Nothing else. After the hypnotic induction, I will show the person another picture, not the duck/rabbit, but with two hidden images and ask, what do you see (“I see an old man and a young woman.”). Then, I show the person the Duck-Rabbit picture. The person will always (post-hypnosis), say, “I see a Duck” first, then immediately, “Oh, and I also see a Rabbit,” (unless I provide a post-hypnotic suggestion never to see the Rabbit afterwards). I use this method to test whether a person is deeper in the hypnotic state. Under hypnosis, the subject (client) allows me, the hypnotist, to control POV.
Imagine, now, the power of this hypnotic tool for altering global POV: Anxiety, Fear, Depression, and to challenge certain kinds of subjective states (Compulsions, Obsessions). Or, simply to boost subjective self-perceptions (self-esteem, sense of confidence, self-affirmation). This is one tool I’ve honed after many, many years of studying and working with it to intervene with client issues. I don’t use hypnosis often, but when I do, I’ve seen dramatic shifts (and sustained change) in POV.
Dr. I’m depressed. Dr. I’m so anxious I can’t exist in my skin. Dr. I feel like life is not worth living. Dr. I’m overwhelmed by a loss. Dr. Please, please, please, help me shake off this unbearable heavy weight I’m carrying. If you say something profound then, just maybe, I will feel better.
These are statements of emotional distress. No one wants to be in this state, although we all get there from time to time. The statements above are POINTS OF VIEW (POV).
“Dr. I’ve got plenty of money, I’ve got family who love me, I’ve got an enviable career with all kinds of free time and I’m doing something almost anyone would enjoy. I just bought a brand-new car. BUT, I can’t generate the motivation to go out and drive it. Why? Because I feel awful, downcast, despondent, worthless, helpless, and most of all hopeless. What’s happening to me?”
This person is imprisoned in a depressed POV. I’m not saying that the person chose this POV. There many things, physiological or environmental factors, for example, that influence a feeling state which then impacts POV or the reverse.
POV is ALWAYS a willful act or an “ability” even though there are times when a person is not entirely aware that he or she is engaging in a specific POV. (example: stereotyping)
When a baby is born, it is born with a primal POV. If born without sight or vision, the baby will acquire a different primal POV than a sighted baby.
Fundamental faculties are activated perhaps even prior to the point of birth. The baby without sight isn’t aware that it does not have sight, it simply activates its faculties (it is not aware that the sight faculty is not activating). The baby then develops a POV from activated faculties. The non-sighted baby will not see the mother, but it will hear the mother and hearing is sufficient for POV. The unsighted baby will eventually learn that it does not have sight and this will further influence POV.
POV has a long history of research and study. POV began with the primitives or earliest of the human species. POV evolved along with the embellishment of civilization up to our current first-world language and technologically intensive civilization. In ancient days, superstition, myth, and eventually religion, shaped POV. These early features, I believe, are still present in our contemporary world. “God did things.” (This is a POV) “God made the rains come, God made the sun shine.”
Who or What is God? Who knows? But, God did it, certainly I didn’t do it. That’s your POV. Today, science has moved itself into the centerpiece of understanding and awareness. Science is at its most elemental level a POV that replaces God. “The sun actually shines due to specific chemical and physical processes (Nature) that combine to create the sun and its power.” POV: God is replaced by Nature.
Contemporary (Scientific) civilization makes a strong demarcation between life and death. To us, when a person dies, they are gone (dead body deteriorates back to it’s basic elements, Nature). This, then, creates a POV of permanence around death (we fear death because it is personal annihilation). Primitives (or early societies) had limited expressive Science language to create such a demarcation, so when a person died, to a primitive, the person remained alive. How, you say. Through memory and fantasy, just like walking through your home and finding the windows. Think about it:
How can a person die if you can still remember and imagine the person?
Death is still basically beyond language-based description, but imagine a POV where death was part of everyday experience. Today, we have residual features of this phenomenon. Think about “religion” “spirituality” “eternal life”. Think about the words we have for life after death. There are oodles and oodles of words, pictures and fantasies about this. Early and later prophets even say they have seen life after death. Did they really see this? Who knows because all you have is their words and in the world of science, words may not be accurate.
Contrast this to atheism.
“When you are dead you are gone, that’s it.” We don’t have many words for this. Annihilation, total destruction, obliteration, and so on, but these words are not very descriptive or expansive. When you die, that’s it. You are gone. Next question. There is no wiggle room here, so death is the end. This is the basis of humanistic psychology.
It’s very difficult to create a POV based on something or someone being “gone.” Saying “Dad is gone (or now traveling) to Heaven” creates a more comforting image.
Dr. I fear death because it is the end. What happens after death? Really! “I’m not a true believer, so I’m anxious about my own death.”
This makes sense because the unknown is always anxiety-provoking especially when the starting point into the unknown is a painful experience.
Death and dying, more than anything else, are simply Points Of View (POV). We have more tools to imagine eternal life than we have to imagine nothing. So, religion continues to have a strong and central pull on our life-death POV (at least right now).
Carl Jung, in his Text, VOL 6, Psychological Types. Describes Science as follow:
Science…is assuredly a high ideal, but its accomplishment brings about as many “ends in themselves” as there are sciences... Naturally this leads to a high differentiation and specialization…but it also leads to …aloofness from the world and from life…
For when we approach the province of actual living with the intellect and its science, we realize at once we are in a confined space that shuts us out from other, equally real provinces of life. We are, therefore, compelled to acknowledge the universality of our ideal (or science) as a limitation, and to look around us for a spiritus rector (guidepost) which from the standpoint and claims [POV] of a complete life, can offer us a greater guarantee of psychological universality…
SCIENCE IS AN EXAMPLE OF “THE OBJECTIVE.” BUT IT IS STILL A POV, SO IT IS ALSO SUBJECTIVE.
Science is a POV: (stated in “object” “subject” terms)
An anti-depressant (object) performs an action on the person (subject) and the person feels less depressed.
I’m not saying that psychopharmacology is not useful (or helpful) because I believe it can be helpful at times, but psychopharmacology tries to stay comfortably in the objective, scientific, domain, and in doing so, it holds a powerful, limiting-scientific POV. What is that POV? Cause-and-Effect. “If you drop a ball (you, subject, drops a ball (object) it will fall to the ground. Why? Gravity. Gravity has always been around, so, it is a law of “Cause-and-Effect”. Early Scientists, Issac Newton (1655-1666) wrote that “Cause-and-Effect” is a predictable force of nature, articulated as a scientific law. Scientists say, “I can now step through how this force works because Science has reduced this force to its elemental parts.” This reduction is called “logical-positivism.”
Back to Drugs
It is without question that psychoactive drugs act. If you take an anti-depressant (Prozac, Fluoxetine) you will almost certainly feel something. If you take an antipsychotic (Abilify or Aripiprazole) you will feel something else and it will be different, perhaps a stronger vague internal feeling. We know this because there are “side effects” or obvious feeling states (drowsiness, dry mouth, nausea). Main effects are more subtle (main effect = relieve depressive symptoms). The force is hypothesized as: Neurochemical Reaction. We believe that the “antidepressant” properties are working to make us less depressed. I CONTEND THAT THIS BELIEF IS A POV, NOTHING MORE AND NOTHING LESS. You know the drug is doing something, you believe it is helping your depression, so, a subjective POV is formed. “The drug is making me less depressed.” Whether this is objective is a big question. It is certainly subjective.
So, in a sense, a psychoactive drug has an objective and a subjective property. The objective property is the action of the drug (who knows for sure what it is doing). The subjective effect, as far as you are concerned, is your belief that the drug is helping.
The million dollar question is this?
Is the main action of the drug primarily: Objective or Subjective?
Again, Who knows, but enough people benefit from a positive, subjective POV that the drug proliferates as a treatment.
Can the Subjective really treat mental health concerns?
YES
But, and this is a big BUT. Is drug therapy, overall, helpful or harmful. I was reading last week in the New Yorker and I came across a fascinating article about psychoactive drug prescribing and its potential benefits or harms. In some people, the drugs really help, but they can be overprescribed. The complexity of this issue of overprescribing, we will take up in another entry.
THE CHALLENGE OF GOING OFF PSYCHIATRIC DRUGS, Rachel Aviv, April 1, 2019, New Yorker.
To recruit the Subjective for mental illness (or mental health concerns), we go back to Carl Jung:
… This higher third (the Subjective)…, can be understood either as a practical goal or as the phantasy (fantasy) which creates the goal. [For] This aim of totality…we need a bridge. This bridge is already given us in creative phantasy (fantasy or imagination)…If psychology remains only a science, we do not reach life — we merely serve the absolute aim of science… It leads us, certainly, to a knowledge of the actual [objective] state of affairs, but it always resists every other aim (subjective - fantasy, belief) but its own (objective view). The intellect remains imprisoned in itself (in the so-called objective)…But what great thing ever came into existence that was not first phantasy (or imagination)? …Thus, it was an historical necessity in the Christian process of culture that unfettered phantasy activity should be kept under; and, similarly… for different reasons, it was also a necessity that phantasy should be suppressed in our age of natural science.
NOTE: This last bolded phrase, a direct quote from Jung.
LEAVING JUNG
How Do I Find the Subjective When I’m Surrounded by the Objective?
We are now at the central POV issue. How do I cultivate a POV (which is always subjective)? Let’s go back again to understand better what Carl Jung is getting at:
What Jung is alluding to is that when we move only within the objective world, and we only believe what we see, know, quantify; we resist, or distance ourselves, even punish ourselves, and incriminate ourselves because we can’t get out of the box of reality.
The compulsions, the obsessions, irrational thoughts. These are understood as making way for our subjective nature to push through. But, we always run away from bad thoughts, awful memories, nightmare experiences. We hide in the objective, solid world where we are protected from our own natural selves. Unfortunately, it is that “natural self” which is capable of engaging both the subjective and objective POV. We choose to remain safe in our own objective POV. But, in doing so we cut ourselves off from an approach to life and living that can give us more freedom to feel like we want to feel, to see and hear like we want to see and hear. To experience what and how we want to experience.
Children easily live in fantasy. For many adults, mental illness is a world of ill-begotten fantasy, hearing voices, possession by demons, thoughts of harming or destroying the self. We learn as adults that Fantasy is simply entertainment. We watch a movie, see and feel a little fantasy, then we return to the real world. We sometimes think:
“It would be cool to live in a fantasy world with magicians, magic, and so forth”
But, we know this isn’t reality, so in our everyday world we avoid fantasy at all costs. To fall into fantasy means to fall into a bottomless pit of dis-reality and untruths. We cling back to “objective reality.”
I contend that we can “harness” fantasy (or the subjective) just like we “harness” objectivity. Both processes are simply a POV.
I am out of space for this Substack Entry, so I will discuss “How to Employ Fantasy to Treat Mental Illness.” In Part IIIa