10 POPULAR MODELS OF PSYCHOLOGICAL HEALTH
(THAT DON'T TOTALLY WORK)
Article by the LiveReal Agents | The Team
There are several popular models of “psychological health.”
And they don’t totally work.
They claim to point the way to inner strength, “mental health,” “positive well-being,” “thriving,” good old-fashioned “sanity,” etc.
They try to explain, directly or not, why we suffer or are happy, why we’re sane or something less than sane, why we’re flourishing or deteriorating, and how we get from one state to the other.
To name just a few:
1) The Catharsis Model
2) The Biomedical Model
3) The Self-Esteem Model
4) The Trauma Model
5) The "Flow" Model
6: The "Positivity" Model
7) The "Manifest" Model
8) The "Just Have Faith" Model
9) The Neo-Paganistic Model
10) The Cognitive-Behavioral Model
But do they deliver?
Imagine suddenly finding yourself in a faraway, unfamiliar land, navigating through strange terrains in search of priceless treasure.
You’d want good maps.
Bad maps could mislead us into ravines, sheer cliffs, quicksand, etc.
Treasure “maps” that claim to lead the way to psychological health are potentially more hazardous than physical maps. (After all, it only takes one guy to fall into physical quicksand, and it becomes pretty clear what’s happening. But masses of people can disappear into “quicksand of the mind” for decades with no one suspecting a thing.)
But there’s a twist here.
The maps aren’t simply “wrong.”
Most maps are at least partially accurate.
As the saying goes, 90% of rat poison is healthy food.
The trouble usually isn’t that maps are always, completely and thoroughly, 100% false or deliberately malicious. It’s that they’re generally correct but distorted, incomplete, or lacking context.
Even accurate maps can be misread. A map might accurately represent a small patch of ground, but someone might mistakenly read it and imagine it covers an entire landscape.
Explorers can live or die by the accuracy of their maps. That applies especially when the territory we’re exploring is the human psyche.
Here are ten.
1) The Catharsis Model
The “catharsis model” of psychological health claims essentially that the way to psychological health happens through letting what’s “inside us” “out.”
It’s the opposite of being “repressed,” “inhibited,” or “stifled.” The claim is that psychological health lies in the direction of free and open self-expression, and the lack of it is due to people, conditions, or forces that inhibit us from “being ourselves.”
The word “catharsis” depicts a kind of emotional release or purification that leads to relief and renewed strength. It originated from tragedies in ancient Greece through which the audience experienced an emotional purification or cleansing (as described by Aristotle in his Poetics).
But the idea later morphed into a full-scale model of psychological health. Freud claimed that neuroses were due to instinctive but repressed or pent-up unconscious emotions, desires, or instincts that were often in conflict.
If being “pent up” led to neurosis, then psychological health must, therefore, lie in the opposite direction – that is, of “letting it all out.” The idea, then, was catharsis not as a single event, but as a lifestyle. “All pent-up emotions are bad, and all expression of emotions is good.”
This parallels the ethic of “follow your heart,” “follow your bliss,” or the self-esteem model (see below).
But there are ways this model is incomplete.
Here are four.
One, sometimes expressing anger doesn’t actually “purge” anger. It leads to more anger. (Hence the term “rageaholic.”) Instead of “letting it out,” it can sometimes add fuel to the fire.
Two, the catharsis model can lead to self-absorption. “Letting is all out” can lead to focusing solely on the person doing the “letting” to the exclusion of other individuals on the receiving end. The legal category “crimes of passion” suggests there’s more to the story.
Third, we don’t live in a repressive Victorian society anymore.
Some folks today seem to imagine themselves as Rose aboard the Titanic, forced to wear corsets that are too tight and pressured into loveless marriages by overbearing parents. They might imagine themselves as having to struggle against strict and oppressive societal norms out of fear of breaking traditions and being cast out of polite society.
But sometimes today, it’s precisely the opposite.
Some aspects of American culture-at-large today are more nihilistic than Victorian. Any vestiges of the repressive elder statesmen from Dead Poet’s Society or Footloose (if they still exist) are nearly extinct. When the norm is to disregard norms, and when the rule is to rebel against the rules, something has collapsed, and “those going their own way” aren’t what they seem to be. Real rebels require something to rebel against. In The Wild Ones, Marlon Brando was asked, “Hey Johnny, what are you rebelling against?” His response: “Whaddaya got?” Today, “what we got” is increasingly “nothing,” or imaginary rebellions against imagined rules.
But when nihilism, anarchy, or lack of structure is the dominant structure, repression isn’t the problem and catharsis isn’t the cure.
Fourth, the catharsis model is also based on a basic assumption that everything inside us is inherently good, and everything that inhibits us is inherently bad. Again, the “follow your heart” ethic and the self-esteem movement (See #5 below) – would echo this sentiment.
That said, the catharsis model is slightly more nuanced. It assumes there’s something bad in me – some form of physical or emotional toxin – and the task is to “get it out.”
Again, there’s some truth in this. The problem that “there’s something bad in me” and the effort to “get it out” has been around for thousands of years. In religious terms, this problem was described by the word “sin” in Christianity, Judaism, and Islam – problems solved by confession, repentance, grace, and absolution – although these terms often become unfashionable (before they later reappear in slightly different forms).
Herman Hesse explored this “let it all out” idea in the novel Steppenwolf. He described his discovery that that “letting the wolf out” doesn’t get rid of the wolf – it only lets it loose.
The idea that the way to simply “get it out” is by way of uninhibited self-expression is incomplete. Venting feelings don’t eliminate feelings. Mere self-expression of a problem doesn’t cure a problem. It often only expresses the problem. The solution to the problem lies in deeper waters.
2) The Biomedical Model
The “biomedical model” of psychological health claims that a lack of psychological health ultimately traces back to the physical.
Those reasons might involve “brain chemistry,” for example, genes, hormones, vitamin excesses or deficiencies, diet, exercise or lack thereof, the presence or absence of certain chemicals, various medical conditions such as diseases, viruses, auto-immune conditions, inflammation, and so on.
Sometimes this approach is accurate. A Vitamin D deficiency, for example, can cause problems. A lack of exercise can affect an individual’s state of mind and emotional life significantly, etc.
The question is whether this model covers everything or even plays a central role.
What’s often unspoken in this conversation is the battery of assumptions this perspective is based on.
Does the body rule the mind?
Are our thoughts, emotions, and intuitions caused and governed entirely by the physical brain?
Are mental, emotional, and spiritual domains ultimately determined by the physical?
These are philosophical questions. And there is no broad, universal, “expert” consensus that the assumptions above are completely settled and correct. (And even experts agreeing doesn’t mean they’re correct, as history attests.)
It boils down to your life philosophy or worldview.
According to the life philosophy of materialism, for example, the body does determine the mind. But according to pantheism, everything is “Spirit,” which means the mind, soul, or Spirit, governs the physical. In theism, the physical and mental/spiritual are separate but interconnected. And so on.
When used as a sole and exclusive approach to psychological health, the biomedical model assumes a philosophy of materialism.
That is a metaphysical or philosophical assumption, not a scientific conclusion.
It’s unwarranted. Those who assume a materialistic worldview also rarely discuss it directly or openly. They typically assume it and start with the details.
They also take the next step and assume that the sole solution to psychological problems are pharmaceutical. Treatment for our emotional health, under this model, often takes the form of a pill.
Many folks testify that medications have been beneficial. And what works, works.
But alternative variables are sometimes ignored. Relationships, for example, are profoundly important in someone’s emotional life. Daily habits play a huge role. Social roles or lack thereof. The ideas or belief system one has adopted. One’s ethics or lack thereof. One’s approach to the Big Questions or spirituality. One’s relationship with oneself and the universe. And so on. All of these play roles in everything we think, feel, and do.
To reduce all of this down to mere “brain chemistry,” for example, is to declare that one piece of the puzzle is the entire puzzle. It reduces the universe down to one easily manageable element and decides that single element governs everything else.
It has a role to play. But it doesn’t totally work.
3) The Self-Esteem Model
The “self-esteem” model of psychological health claims that lack of psychological health is generally due to a lack of self-esteem.
The solution, therefore, is the opposite: higher self-esteem.
There are clearly positive aspects to this approach. “Lack of self-esteem” often points to feelings of inferiority, self-doubt, excessive fears, a general sense of shame, and so on. Left ungoverned, sentiments along these lines can mutate into forms of toxic self-denial, self-negation, or even self-hatred, none of which are good. In this sense, an inaccurately low opinion of oneself is clearly harmful, and a healthy self-esteem in the sense of confidence is clearly good.
But it’s worth treading lightly here. While lack of self-esteem can become problematic, that doesn’t mean the solution simply lies in the opposite direction.
Even more, trouble can brew when self-esteem becomes the entire model of psychological health.
Excessive self-esteem or ego-inflation can be a problem. For thousands of years, humans have been warning each other about “pride,” “hubris,” “vanity,” and so on. “Pride” has even been enthroned as the king of all flaws, in the sense of an individual taking the place of God. While low self-esteem might create problems, that doesn’t mean an inaccurately high opinion of oneself is better, or will necessarily be problem-free.
(We’ve explored the self-esteem model in more depth here and here.)
A hidden assumption baked into the self-esteem model is the idea that everything “in us” is necessarily and universally “good.”
Again, there’s some truth in this. We often sense a great deal of love, kindness, compassion, wisdom, courage, justice, kindness and so on inside of us.
But what about anger, greed, selfishness, pettiness, the tendency to use and dehumanize others, narcissism, corruption, and so on? Those are often “inside” of us as well.
While the catharsis model (above) tends to see some negative things inside us that need to be purged, a runaway self-esteem model tends to see everything inside us as unreservedly good and worth affirming. By definition, if it’s us, it’s good, and if it’s against us, it’s bad.
In this sense, it can lead to an entire ethical system built on the axiom of an assumed goodness of one’s self.
This can lead to equating self-esteem with moral purity. And that can have a toxic side effect: the idea that anyone not agreeing with our high opinions of ourselves is, by definition, morally wrong. Someone grants a blanket pardon for themselves and a blanket condemnation for anyone who disagrees. Here lies a recipe for inevitable and widespread friction between people.
But there are further questionable assumptions baked into the self-esteem model.
For example, the self-esteem model not only assumes that we should esteem ourselves, but that we already know ourselves. It assumes we know which “self” to esteem, or that we know ourselves well enough to have one obvious, clear, and distinct self to esteem.
Advice to “follow our heart” not only assumes that our heart is pure and beyond question, but that we know our real heart. This often proves to be trickier than we think. (Hence, “I followed my heart and wound up pregnant.”)
These are just a few trails that lead to shaky ground in the self-esteem model.
But is there a “remedy” for this? Is there a Goldilocks formula for self-esteem, where it’s “not too little, not too much, but just right?”
One helpful metaphor along these lines is that of a garden.
We could imagine planting a garden with the aim of growing roses, vegetables, other herbs and flowers, etc. If we just “let it go,” refuse to interfere, and let raw nature “be natural” in a way that’s completely unrestricted and uninhibited – then garden will “go to weed.” It will be overrun by the most aggressive weeds, ivies, grasses, and so on.
But if we “garden” —consciously and deliberately cultivating, overseeing, and managing it all responsibly— then suddenly, roses, tulips, and much more becomes possible.
The “garden” in this metaphor is our own energies (instincts, drives, passions, etc). A “let it all out” ethos could lead to us “going to weed.” That would take the form of us being ruled by passions, appetites, or individual instinctive desires. Each desire would advocate for itself – a part of the whole – but not the overall system itself. “Passions” in this sense could be things like anger, greed, selfishness, and so on – the kinds of things that lead to “crimes of passion.”
Along these lines, we aren’t simply affirming everything in us as a de facto good (leading to “too much), but we also aren’t simply rejecting everything in us as bad by definition (leading to “too little.”) It means searching for the sweet spot in mental health.
Self-esteem is a piece of the puzzle. But as a model for the entire array of psychological health, it doesn’t totally work.
4) The Trauma Model
The “trauma” model of psychological health begins with the premise that lack of psychological health is due to past trauma, and positive psychological health is defined as either a complete lack of trauma or healed trauma. For better or worse, trauma lies at the center.
Clearly, this model has genuine merit. Genuine trauma exists, and healing from trauma can be a profound process for individuals.
But does it explain all psychological health, or lack thereof?
Question: if someone somehow had zero trauma in life (if it was even possible), would that individual be perfectly psychologically healthy?
Answer: no.
Efforts to explain the worst mass murderers in history using the trauma model – Stalin, Lenin, Mao, Pol Pot, Hitler, etc – have failed. None of them suffered exceptional childhood abuse, for example. Several (Mao, Lenin, Pol Pot) came from lives of wealth and privilege. Many others who suffered similar abuses or worse didn’t later embark on genocides or commit atrocities. Trauma theory as an explain-all proves conclusively inadequate.
A great deal depends on how someone defines “trauma.”
The concept of “trauma” originally designated unique, profoundly horrific experiences. There’s no mathematical precision in these areas. But almost everyone would agree, for example, that prolonged child abuse, extreme battlefield combat, rape or violent crime, living through famine, natural disasters, genocide, and so on would count as genuine trauma.
But some areas are less clear.
Things can get murky when someone views everything solely through a trauma-centered lens. (“Lens” here means a trauma-centered set of core ideas as part of a life philosophy or worldview.)
The word “trauma” can also become watered down and overgeneralized. What some describe as trauma, others might describe as “normal life.” (Is an insult “traumatic”?)
For someone who sees everything solely through the lens of the trauma model, normal life can be interpreted as “trauma.”
Some define life itself as "traumatic."
Today, especially for those living in relative ease, wealth, and luxury, the word “trauma” can be stretched to the point of referring to mundane occurrences of everyday life. It might refer to hurt feelings, for example, slights or insults, bruised egos, minor embarrassments, encountering anyone with different opinions, social interactions that are less-than-flattering, etc.
The implication is that we should be able to go through life without ever having our feelings hurt, without ever being slighted or insulted, and with everyone affirming us at all times.
When trauma is adopted as the sole reason for unhappiness, it can lead to an overarching (and often expensive) quest for some undefined and elusive trauma in the personal past that’s the cause of all present problems. This leads to an initial effort to hunt down that past trauma and discover its source and origin, and a subsequent effort to heal from it.
But the efforts can become circular. Someone is less-than-perfectly happy; the cause of suffering is assumed to lie somewhere in the past; this leads to someone using their current time to dig up and sort through the past; that isn’t necessarily a fulfilling, joy-inducing, or even healing way to spend time; this leads to a certain amount of additional dissatisfaction or unhappiness; the unhappiness is again assumed to originate in some trauma in the past; this affirms the search even more strongly. The stage is now set for a circular, self-affirming loop of infinite searching and sifting through an increasingly foggy past. It can lead to trauma becoming the center and all-consuming focus of one’s life. And it’s all based on a mistaken premise as “trauma as the reason for current suffering.”
When do searches like these eventually end?
Endpoints are often left vague and undefined. “Healing” can be described as an “endless process,” and “health” can be defined as something endlessly elusive. At what point are we done with “healing” and finally “healed”? When success is finally achieved, is the search declared over? At what point can we simply enjoy the present? At what point is there a vision for the future? If one were to be genuinely healed, would someone then know what to do with themselves?
The trauma model can be very useful in certain specific situations.
But as a model for the entire array of psychological health, it doesn’t totally work.
5) The “Flow” Model
The “flow” model of psychological health begins with a premise of the existence of a state of “flow” where we’re naturally happy.
It’s something we’ve likely all experienced. Enjoying a sport, art, music, a conversation – nearly any activity – can be described as “flow.”
But it has become a topic of scientific study.
Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi described it as “the psychology of optimal experience,” and describes a state many artists, athletes, and others know as being “in the zone,” where one is highly immersed in an activity and a state of selflessness that can be incredibly pleasurable and fulfilling.
The state of flow is real, visceral, and a rewarding experience. In context, it’s legitimate, and is very much worth studying.
But it’s also incomplete.
There’s a dark side of flow.
Some technology companies exploit flow in order to deliberately get people addicted to their app, event, product, experience, or whatever they’re selling.
They “gamify” their experiences in order to make it more addictive. Casinos, video game makers, and Silicon Valley social media oligarchs exploit the flow state for profit-making enterprises. The result is one of engineering a version of mechanized flow that keeps a user ever-hungry and ever-seeking more, amounting to a state of deliberate addiction.
The search for flow can work for us or against us. As it strives to be a “values-neutral” enterprise, the study of flow could be used for benefit or harm. Was Pol Pot striving for a state of flow when he planned and executed the Cambodian genocide? Would Stalin have benefitted from structuring his life to be more full of flow? Etc.
Clearly, few of us are Pol Pots or Stalins. Most of us simply want a good vibe while doing good things like what flow seems to offer.
Flow is a piece of the puzzle. But as a model for the entire array of psychological health, it doesn’t totally work.
6) The “Positivity” Model
The “positivity” model of psychological health can be summed up in a few words: “Be positive. Don’t be negative.”
The 1952 book The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale launched a popular nationwide movement that persuaded a lot of people to "think positively" and to look down on "thinking negatively." It overlaps some with the "Just Have Faith" (#7) and "Self-Esteem" (#3) models.
Clearly, there are some benefits to positive thinking. Life serves up plenty of glass-half-full/glass-half-empty ambiguous situations where confidence and bold action can turn the tide in someone’s favor.
That said, this approach can also turn sour.
As a blanket approach to life, positive thinking can morph into habits of denial. It can lead to a refusal to admit or accept certain necessary but unflattering or less-than-pleasant realities. A parent’s advice to a teenager to avoid heroin, for example, might be brushed off as “negative.” Warnings against spending entire days or weeks doomscrolling, playing video games, watching television, etc., might be brushed off as “negative.” Relentless pressure to always be positive can lead to a denial of genuine communication or a suppression of legitimate feelings or grievances. It can even lead to victim-blaming, a kind of “negativity-shaming,” or coercive pressure to always be positive under all circumstances.
A can-do attitude and sunny disposition can be great things. But it can be taken too far. Life can be hell. It’s no failure, weakness, or negativity to acknowledge that. Positivity won’t substitute for reality. A healthy positive attitude assumes a prior grounding in reality. Without that, it becomes Pollyanna.
What yardstick should we use to measure our thinking? There are several options. But using positivity and negativity as sole measures can throw a lot of things out of whack.
Aside from a few very specific circumstances, it seems that the real trick lies not in being either positive nor negative, but in being real. The trick, it seems, lies not in being oriented to mere positivity, but to reality.
Positivity is a piece of the puzzle. But as a model for the entire array of psychological health, it doesn’t totally work.
7) The “Manifest” Model
The “manifest” model of psychological health is based on the premise that “we create our own reality.”
Books like The Secret (plus the film and documentaries (if it’s a secret, it isn’t a very well-kept secret)), scores of Oprah guests, and plenty of others have helped popularize the approach. It lies at the heart of movements with books in the “New Age” or “New Thought” sections in bookstores.
It’s also widespread in American culture. “Have a great day” often becomes “Make it a great day” because – according to this approach – great days aren’t experiences we just have, get, or bump into through luck or chance, but things we make. The universe isn’t something that just is; it’s something we create.
These approaches ultimately rest on an existentialist life philosophy or worldview. It depicts humans as essentially authors of both themselves and the universe, which – when combined with strains of positive thinking (#6) and self-empowerment – can essentially build an entire religion from this basis. (Or, strictly speaking, it's a substitute religion.)
There are positive aspects to this approach.
For example, it can serve as an antidote to and rebellion against other bad ideas. For example, some individuals today (such as Sam Harris) advocate determinism – the idea that human beings ultimately have no real control over anything, including themselves, and are subject to greater mechanical forces, whether it be genes, hormones, brain chemistry, the unconscious, societal pressures, the universe-at-large, etc. We’re mere puppets in the universe – but puppets who live under the illusion that we’re more than puppets.
But “manifesting” offers clear advantages over that style of thinking. It declares that we aren’t puppets, thank you very much – in fact, instead of victims of the universe, we’re creators of the universe. It’s no surprise that people respond to this message (amid a flood of deterministic victim messages from scientists, doctors, politicians, and so on) because it doesn’t lend itself to passive resignation, dehumanization, mere victimhood, or soft nihilism.
It also promotes a generally spiritual view of the universe. Here, the universe isn’t a closed system – one that’s mechanical, routine, and, therefore, boring – and is also gradually winding down along the lines of the second law of thermodynamics (where some energy becomes unusable in any sort of interaction). Instead, manifesting allows creation. Truly interesting and surprising things can happen. It’s a clear and stark alternative to a closed, disenchanted, relatively mundane view of hard materialism. It upholds a sense of human dignity and freedom. Human beings, according to this model, are responsible and active agents in the universe, and not mere cogs or puppets of other forces.
In this sense, the manifesting approach can be positive, invigorating, empowering, and even inspiring. When life gives us lemons, we can make nine-course meals. If we want a great life, we don’t have to just wait and hope for it – we can get out there and make it happen.
But “manifesting” also falls short in ways, especially when it’s adopted as a wholesale model of psychological health.
As one comic describes, if we create our own world, why did we create mosquitos? And can we get rid of them?
More seriously, if all we need to do is “manifest” health, wealth, and happiness, why is there so much disease, poverty, and misery? Especially after The Secret is out, and has sold millions of copies (and is no longer much of a secret)?
No doubt, believers would have answers here. Extended and fruitful conversations discussing these points have happened, and are necessary. But thorough, fully developed answers along these lines and all the clarifications entailed often draw a much more nuanced picture of reality than the one that has become so popular.
“Manifesting,” as popularly understood, is a combination of magic and willpower. The idea is that we’re able to “manifest” because – in so many words, to put it bluntly – we’re magic.
But apparently, that doesn’t automatically make us good magicians. If we aren’t manifesting the end of all misery, suffering, and mosquitos, are we not manifesting hard enough, or well enough, or with enough inside knowledge or skill?
Here it lays fertile ground for guilt.
But it gets even trickier.
There’s also risk in what we create.
Classic fairy tales involve a “lucky” individual being granted three wishes. The person makes a wish, and it leads to disaster. The second wish makes it even worse. They spend the third wish getting back to the way things were.
Midas, for example, in the classic Greek myth, wished for everything he touched to turn to gold. His wish was granted. Soon, everything soon turned to gold. But then he realized he couldn’t eat, or drink, because even food and drink would become gold. When he touched his daughter, even she turned to gold.
Be careful what you wish for. Or, we should be cautious with what we manifest.
If we can create our own world, there’s a genuine risk of weaving a comfortable cocoon that’s always flattering, never challenging, and ultimately serves primarily us – or, more specifically, our own egos.
While the real world – (like great teachers and coaches) surprises us, challenges us, befuddles us, disagrees with us, embarrasses us, even undermines us – sometimes making us better in the process – worlds of our own making often tend to become self-affirming, self-validating, self-reinforcing extensions of our egos. (Dante and many others portrayed this vividly.) We risk baking our own blind spots into our conceptions of the world and winding up in a feathery bed of illusion and self-delusion – a bed that, sooner or later, the real world will wreak havoc on. Some beds prove to be resting on shifting sand instead of rock.
This dynamic can be amplified when it comes to spirituality. Manifesting allows us to anoint ourselves not only as the creators of reality, but as judges and juries, leading us to essentially creating our own religions.
This can mean (unknowingly) following the path of Homer Simpson (in Episode 3, Season 4, “Homer the Heretic”) – a religion that makes no challenges or demands, asking instead for things like sleeping in on Sunday mornings, eating butter with waffles, and watching television as part of the self-made road to heaven. It’s fun at first, but it isn’t exactly what some might call “orthodox,” or a path that has been tried-and-tested over time.
DIY theology carries risks. It can be easy to take one small piece of religion and leave out the rest. Important pieces can be excluded, such as, for example, sacrifice, discipline, repentance, temptation, meditation, prayer, contemplation, rigorous thinking, humility, stakes, and so on. The messages of Jesus, Buddha, Abraham, Confucius, Lao-Tzu, the Hindu sages, and others don’t boil down to “you create your own reality.” There’ s more to it. But if we’re fully occupied with manifesting, we can easily ignore that “more.”
If the universe we experience is often a reflection of us, and the universe has a great deal of misery and suffering, maybe we’re also creating our own misery and suffering.
And if that’s the case, we aren’t going to manifest our way out of that. The manifesting, after all, is the problem. The manifester is us. The challenge, then, isn’t just to manifest ourselves, but to know ourselves.
Manifesting is a piece of the puzzle. But as a model for the entire array of psychological health, it doesn’t totally work.
8) The “Just Have Faith” Model
The “just have faith model” of psychological health essentially claims that the way to psychological health involves insisting that, despite appearances to the contrary, “things will always work out in the end.”
There’s some truth in this.
We all have “faith” in something. It might be in God, “the universe,” a person we know, science, logic, a cult leader, our own intellect, heroin, etc. We often have faith that the floor we’re standing on will hold our weight or that a chair we sit in won’t suddenly collapse. We can’t avoid having faith in something.
When it comes to facing undefined, ambiguous situations with unknown variables, assuming an positive attitude of optimism and resilience can get better results than one of pessimism and hopelessness.
There’s also the obvious note that “faith” is a cornerstone of several major religions, understood in part as trust or confidence in God through grounding one’s sense of security in a greater reality beyond merely what we can see, hear, or touch.
And clearly, if there is a God, then God is in charge of the universe – and there’s reason for optimism in that.
That said, the “just have faith” model can be misused.
It has the possibility of becoming a combination of the Positivity model (#6) and the Manifest model (#7) with a religious spin.
It can become “I believe whatever I want to believe. And (whatever that might be), I’m going to have faith in it.”
This approach can turn toxic when it becomes denial, or wishful thinking that’s unanchored from reality. At its worst extreme, it can mean becoming willfully naïve. “This is fine. Everything is fine.”
Some Christian perspectives are more theologically informed than others. Some versions of the “just have faith” model can nudge us toward believing everything is going to be great here, and very soon, and in the very specific ways we hope or expect.
Like Positivity (#6), this also ignores or denies the reality that life is often hell. After all, Christianity describes how the best human who ever existed endured a horrific death, as did most of his apostles. That wasn’t the end of the story, of course. But the idea that we should just have faith that we’re going to just inevitably keep getting happier, richer, awesomer, famouser, better-looking, and more loved by increasingly more people from here on out, in this world, during this life – well, that isn’t what orthodox traditions of any of the major religions describe.
Real “faith,” whatever that might be, isn’t wishful thinking backed by stubborn closed-mindedness. It’s something closer to a humble intuition about ultimate reality – things we can’t necessarily touch or prove – and that doesn’t necessarily protect us from our own stupidity.
Faith also isn’t necessarily the end goal in itself, as if the goal of religion was simply to persuade us to adopt a certain belief system. If I “had faith” that Disney really is “the happiest place on Earth,” I wouldn’t be satisfied with simply believing that. I’d want to go there. I’d be dissatisfied being anywhere but there, and I’d start making plans – however difficult the journey might be – to get there. I wouldn’t simply adopt a belief system that “Disney is the happiest place on Earth” as a goal in itself, and never try to visit or even move there.
It’s the same with God. Mere believing isn’t enough. If it’s real, we want more.
“Having faith” is a piece of the puzzle. But as a model for the entire array of psychological health, it doesn’t totally work.
9) The Neo-Paganistic Model
The “Neo-Paganistic” model focuses on experiencing “the divinity within.”
The basic notion is that “we are all gods and goddesses” – sometimes metaphorically, but also possibly literally. A core premise is that there is a “divinity within,” and the aim is to access that divinity and integrate it into life.
It often draws loosely from perspectives of Carl Jung, who described the psyche in terms of the “collective unconscious” and a panoply of archetypes or patterns with mythological themes and significance.
But this model also pulls from practically anywhere and everywhere – shamanism, Hinduism, yoga, various schools of New Age thought, and others.
Psychedelics sometimes play a central role. Tripping, “microdosing” (tripping on smaller scales) or shamanic-type rituals which can lead to dramatic and bizarre experiences and highly entertaining stories.
Some aspects of this approach are legitimate.
Every major religion sees human beings as connected to the sacred in some ways. There are disagreements on names and labels (God, the Universe, The Absolute, Spirit, the Godhead, etc.), and there are serious disagreements about whether we’re connected to God or are God on some level. But there’s clear and broad agreement on the point that we are connected to God in some capacity. (If there was no connection whatsoever, prayer would be impossible, or just a form of self-consolation.)
This model also encourages experiential spirituality - a spirituality based not just on theory but on firsthand and direct experience. There are benefits to this approach. In contrast to organized religion, participants are often fully committed, actively engaged, and are there by their own free choice. Since there are elements of experimentation and risk, they have skin in the game. A vision quest is much more engaging than an average Sunday morning service. This leads to a level of alertness and commitment that can be missing in safer ventures.
Yet this model is also incomplete.
Psychedelics can be risky. There’s a risk of frying circuits. They can lead to insights, but, the convenience and ease of pills can have hidden costs.
In addition to destabilizing effects on the psyche, it can get very mixed results. Some psychedelic experiences are profound; others, mundane. Some are blissful, others terrifying. Some can make us wiser, some can seem to make us dumber. Some might lead to profound transformations while others are quickly forgotten. This approach is often many things, but it isn’t an exact science.
There’s also a challenge of integrating these experiences into the rest of life. Even profound experiences can be abandoned and forgotten when they aren’t woven into our intellectual, emotional, and social networks. Without fertile ground that offers a sturdy framework for insights to flourish, they can wither.
When rituals – such as vision quests – are extracted from their cultural contexts and planted in a soft-nihilistic modern society, they risk becoming jarring and disorienting in ways that aren’t conducive to real and long-term sanity.
This all touches on some of the hazards of going “none” or “spiritual but not religious.”
This approach puts less emphasis on formal ritual, abstract theory, secondhand revelation, or moral obligations, opting instead for self-focused direct experience. Like a nimble startup contrasted with an established and bureaucratic corporation, it offers both advantages and challenges. There’s often a lack of community, structure, and even a shared language to make sense of and integrate profound experiences. Weekend retreats soon end, and the results can be isolating.
The Neo-Paganistic model can offer some valuable insights, and can benefit some. But in other ways, it doesn’t totally work.
10) The Cognitive Behavioral model
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is a type of therapy that aims to help individuals identify and change thoughts, emotions, and behaviors.
This approach has some good things going for it.
It has roots in Behaviorism.
Behaviorism is a school of thought that once dominated psychology. It specialized in stimulus-response conditioning – teaching Pavlov’s dogs to salivate at bell-ringing and rats to navigate mazes, etc.
That might not seem like much, but at least it was scientific – and rigorous – which was a stark contrast to the sole alternative in psychology at the time, Freudian psychoanalysis.
The basic idea in Behaviorism was that humans are just less hairy and more confused versions of Pavlov’s dogs. We respond to rewards and punishments via stimuli and responses – and that’s the key to human nature. We don’t need any mysterious Freudian subconscious, we don’t need religion, we don’t even need “minds” at all – just rewards and punishments, and we’re done. It’s that simple.
Clearly, not everyone agreed with this kind of thinking.
The idea that the study of human nature can be reduced to the study (and manipulation) of human behavior seemed to strip away something essential. And some folks noticed that Behaviorists also didn’t seem to think of themselves as mere stimulus-response-puppets. They somehow always seemed to place themselves outside of their system. Apparently, they had decided to see themselves as somehow having graduated into being puppet masters.
Behaviorism eventually crashed into the rocks of reality. Its narrow view of humanity, the rigid, purely materialistic philosophical worldview it presumed, and its reductionistic approach to the whole business eventually grew tiresome and exhausting and went bankrupt.
But instead of closing up shop, they adapted. They gave in and decided to acknowledge that we actually do have minds. And so, Behaviorism evolved into Cognitive-Behaviorism.
CBT has had successes. It focuses on measurable outcomes, and in ways that appear objective and philosophically neutral, which makes it favorable to science, and so, attractive to broad, general-public-at-large institutions. Via this route, it’s been employed to treat (with some success) such conditions as phobias, depression, anxiety, anorexia, bulimia, and many others. Unlike many others in this area, it’s been scientifically tested (and with good science, not pseudo-science) and has, in some cases, proven effective. It’s also scalable and systematic in that it doesn’t depend on the insights of a uniquely brilliant therapist.
In this sense, it can be seen as a highly accurate map.
But it’s a map of a small neighborhood.
CBT hasn’t strayed too far from its roots in Behaviorism. It’s still ultimately based on a basic model of reward/punishment. It’s clearly an upgrade – instead of merely rewarding or punishing behaviors, it now “rewards” or “punishes” thoughts. The stimuli aren’t always bells or snacks, but there’s always some element of carrot or stick. It still takes the form of seeing some thoughts (or habits, ideas, feelings, etc) as “negative” or undesirable and some as “positive” or desirable. The basic idea is to reward the positive and punish the negative, even if the treatments are as mild as gentle encouragement or discouragement.
The core model still treats humans as essentially trainable animals. This isn’t entirely unfounded. Some aspects of us are animalistic, and sometimes we do respond to rewards and punishments.
But is that all we are? Those who insist we are – that there’s really no difference between humans, dogs, and rats – typically have an allegiance to and faith in materialism. Materialism is a metaphysical life philosophy or worldview. And that isn’t science. It’s metaphysics. (Everyone is a philosopher, after all, whether we're open about it or not.)
This definition limits the approach of CBT to areas that are relatively mundane. Finding good things and encouraging them and finding bad things and discouraging them can be fruitful.
But human experience is much vaster.
Spiritual experiences, great art, moments of inspiration and insight, the revelations of depth psychologists, mystics, and great artists all attest to realms of human nature that aren’t touched by mere stimulus-response. We crave meaning and significance, and we ask Big Questions about the universe and ourselves. We’re often willing and even eager to endure tremendous suffering – even death – for seemingly intangible reasons. (Some of us freely choose to climb Mount Everest, for example.) We’re self-aware (sometimes, at least), and we experience things like angst – something rats in mazes don’t seem all that vulnerable to.
There are areas CBT simply doesn’t reach.
While CBT thrives in relatively contained, tangible, measurable situations – phobias, for example, or even depression or self-esteem, real life is often messy, expansive, and complex. There are greater existential riddles – problems of suffering, meaning, or death, for example – where CBT is no help at all. Even some forms of depression and anxiety lie beyond its reach.
There are ways that CBT might be effective, but not in the ways it thinks. Some of its success might be through the process instead of the direct outcome. For example, in searching out thoughts that might be “positive” or “negative,” a person winds up watching, studying, and seeing through their own thoughts. They become more conscious of them instead of identified with them.
In this sense, individuals become more aware of their own inner life. Searching through and learning to observe one’s thoughts are an aspect of meditation or a contemplative practice. It can be a form of spiritual experiment. This process can produce unique effects of its own in that we can learn to know ourselves – and know ourselves on a deeper level – a level that has nothing to do with what is being stimulated or responded to. In fact, this kind of thing can make us more immune to stimuli, which can nullify the entire approach of CBT.
As a partial solution to limited problems, CBT can be great. But beyond those city walls, there’s a much wider, more mysterious, much stranger world.
So, where does that leave us?
The above outlines ten models of psychological health that don’t totally work.
Each of the above are potentially useful in specific circumstances, each is inadequate when they’re used as comprehensive models, and all can be harmful when they’re misused in the wrong context or adopted as the sole route to happiness and sanity.
They’re like pieces of a puzzle that don’t quite form the full picture.
But that raises a question.
What is the “full picture”?
What would the “full picture” even look like?
Do we have a “map of maps”?
A full picture would incorporate the best aspects of each model above (plus many others that weren’t mentioned above) and leave the rest.
It would also integrate the disparate elements together into a single coherent whole.
It would also fill in any pieces that aren’t mentioned or touched on above.
An early, rough effort in this direction (Self-promotion warning!) was the aim of the book The Perennial Psychology: A Timeless Approach to Understanding Human Nature – from a highly esteemed organization you might have heard of (published in the less-than-ideal moment of March of 2020).
While this effort didn’t exactly solve the problem comprehensively – or even dent a hair on a flea that was sitting on the problem (from what we can tell, depression and anxiety and so on are still around) – it is working on the problem.
And in these areas, working on the right problem can go a long way.
Something this ambitious won’t be “solved” anytime soon. Even the difficulties involved in figuring out the “right” problems to work on are immense.
Other laudable approaches along these lines have been made by Ken Wilber, Charles Tart, the entire field of transpersonal psychology, and others.
Then again, it might be that no single “map” will ever be accurate.
All maps, after all, share a significant trait: they’re all representative metaphors.
We typically perceive and understand maps in a linear way using our intellects. Maps can also be complex. The more complicated they are, the easier they’re misread or misunderstood. (Anyone familiar with the work of Ken Wilber understands the problem of this complexity.) And when the map is of something as complex as human nature, the maps necessarily need to seriously simplify.
And so, there’s always the dual risk of either 1) being too complex or 2) being too simplistic.
That’s a problem that can’t easily be solved – except, perhaps along these lines: instead of a metaphor on paper, we might need something more like a North Star – a single, visible, constant, transcendent presence we can orient ourselves by.
Is there a North Star to help us orient the maps of human nature?
But there’s another quality all maps share.
They’re external to us. They’re objects. They’re outside of us.
That’s fine, except that they’re things that are claiming to map “us.”
So, it’s something external that’s claiming to map the internal.
In this sense, maybe we need something more like a compass.
Maybe we need something within us that works roughly like a magnetic center – something always pointing (and pulling) in the right general direction, even if our intellects get scrambled or disoriented.
Maybe those would work better than regular maps.
Maybe more than a vast intellectual map, we need a simple North Star and a simple compass that’s built into us, and then, a simple guideline that can point out how we should relate these to each other.
Maybe, along these lines, there’s a simpler approach that doesn’t involve tons of sorting of maps-of-maps-of-maps. For example, there’s 1) the idea of God, and the idea that 2) in the deepest part of ourselves we have something like a “conscience,” 3) that’s unconscious but 4) still can be known – and the basic idea is that 5) we should orient these toward each other.
If we’d try to really boil it all down as simply as possible, this might be the basic idea behind the First Commandment, and the core message behind the sages and saints throughout history. If we can get that essential piece at the crux of it right, then the rest will generally fall into place.
It might be a map of psychological health that so advanced – and misunderstood – that we’ve hardly even grasped it yet.
Humanity’s efforts to map these territories have been admirable.
They’ve sometimes been disasters.
(And sometimes, they continue to be.)
But while we haven’t yet unquestionably succeeded at producing a fully-developed, well-tested, comprehensive, communicable map of this vast, uncharted realm, the opportunity to do so is waiting to be seized.
It’s open for business.
We, your trusty and loveable LiveReal Agents, are working on it.
Stay tuned.