Yet, dismal reality is that psychological theories of mind are metaphors of mind. They are fables and myths, narratives, stories, hypotheses, conjunctures. They play (exceedingly) important roles in psychotherapeutic setting – but not in laboratory. Their form is artistic, not rigorous, not testable, less structured than theories in natural sciences. The language used is polyvalent, rich, effusive, and fuzzy – in short, metaphorical. They are suffused with value judgements, preferences, fears, post facto and ad hoc constructions. None of this has methodological, systematic, analytic and predictive merits.

Still, theories in psychology are powerful instruments, admirable constructs of mind. As such, they probably satisfy some needs. Their very existence proves it.

The attainment of peace of mind, for instance, is a need, which was neglected by Maslow in his famous model. People often sacrifice material wealth and welfare, forgo temptations, ignore opportunities and put their lives in danger – just to reach this bliss of tranquility. There is, in other words, a preference of inner equilibrium over homeostasis. It is fulfilment of this overriding need that psychological treatment modalities cater to. In this, they are no different to other collective narratives (myths, for instance).

But, psychology is desperately trying to link up to reality and to scientific discipline by employing observation and measurement and by organizing results and presenting them using language of mathematics (rather, statistics). This does not atone for its primordial "sin": that its subject matter (humans) is ever-changing and its internal states are inaccessible and incommunicable. Still, it lends an air of credibility and rigorousness to it.

(continued)

Sam Vaknin is the author of Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited and After the Rain - How the West Lost the East. He is a columnist for Central Europe Review, United Press International (UPI) and eBookWeb and the editor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory, Suite101 and searcheurope.com.

Visit Sam's Web site at http://samvak.tripod.com

Communism should be well distinguished from Marxism. Still, it is ironic that even Marx's "scientific materialism" has an equivalent in twilight times of feudalism. The eleventh and twelfth centuries witnessed a concerted effort by medieval scholars to apply "scientific" principles and human knowledge to solution of social problems. The historian R. W. Southern called this period "scientific humanism" (in "Flesh and Stone" by Richard Sennett, London, Faber and Faber, 1994). We mentioned John of Salisbury's "Policraticus". It was an effort to map political functions and interactions into their human physiological equivalents. The king, for instance, was brain of body politic. Merchants and bankers were insatiable stomach. But this apparently simplistic analogy masked a schismatic debate. Should a person's position in life be determined by his political affiliation and "natural" place in order of things - or should it be result of his capacities and their exercise (merit)? Do ever changing contents of economic "stomach", its kaleidoscopic innovativeness, its "permanent revolution" and its propensity to assume "irrational" risks - adversely affect this natural order which, after all, is based on tradition and routine? In short: is there an inherent incompatibility between order of world (read: church doctrine) and meritocratic (democratic) capitalism? Could Thomas Aquinas' "Summa Theologica" (the world as body of Christ) be reconciled with "Stadt Luft Macht Frei" ("city air liberates" - sign above gates of cities of Hanseatic League)?

This is eternal tension between individual and group. Individualism and communism are not new to history and they have always been in conflict. To compare communist party to church is a well-worn cliché. Both religions - secular and divine - were threatened by spirit of freedom and initiative embodied in urban culture, commerce and finance. The order they sought to establish, propagate and perpetuate conflicted with basic human drives and desires. Communism was a throwback to days before ascent of urbane, capitalistic, sophisticated, incredulous, individualistic and risqué West. it sought to substitute one kind of "scientific" determinism (the body politic of Christ) by another (the body politic of "the Proletariat"). It failed and when it unravelled, it revealed a landscape of toxic devastation, frozen in time, an ossified natural order bereft of content and adherents. The post-communist countries have to pick up where it left them, centuries ago. It is not so much a problem of lacking infrastructure as it is an issue of pathologized minds, not so much a matter of body as a dysfunction of psyche.

The historian Walter Ullman says that John of Salisbury thought (850 years ago) that "the individual's standing within society... (should be) based upon his office or his official function ... (the greater this function was) more scope it had, weightier it was, more rights individual had." (Walter Ullman, "The Individual and Society in Middle Ages", Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1966). I cannot conceive of a member of communist nomenklatura who would not have adopted this formula wholeheartedly. If modern capitalism can be described as "back to future", communism was surely "forward to past'.

Sam Vaknin is the author of Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited and After the Rain - How the West Lost the East. He is a columnist for Central Europe Review, United Press International (UPI) and eBookWeb and the editor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory, Suite101 and searcheurope.com.

Visit Sam's Web site at http://samvak.tripod.com