I heard that when people are in therapy, their self adapts to the school of psychotherapy. For example you start getting Freudian dreams if you are in Freudian therapy, but you start getting Jungian dreams instead if you are in Jungian therapy.
This seems to support the hypothesis that when we think we have discovered something deep inside us, often we have actually constructed it to fit our preconceptions.
(I suspect that Buddhism also mostly works this way. When Buddhists say that they can verify the truth of all Buddha’s words by introspection… on one hand, yes they can; on the other hand, if they instead believed in Jesus, they could verify that just as well. Asking yourself is like asking an LLM: whatever you believe is true, it will confirm.)
in my worldview this is very easily explained. if you do Jungian therapy your self model starts incorporating Jungian concepts for explaining your own brain. You didn’t change the way your brain works fundamentally, you just changed your own model of your brain. The same way that if you read a book on the biology of plants you’ll start viewing them in the lens of cells, and if you read a book on the ancient spirits associated with each plant you’ll start thinking of plants as being animated by the ghosts of our ancestors.
The big mistake happens when people think of their self model as actually genuinely introspection. Then, you might think that you’ve changed the shape of your mind instead of only changing your understanding of your mind.
Instead, I think the right way to figure out if your self model is correct is to make predictions about your future behavior and see if they come true; act based on your self model and see if you become more successful at life, or whether you mysteriously repeatedly fail in some way.
I heard that when people are in therapy, their self adapts to the school of psychotherapy. For example you start getting Freudian dreams if you are in Freudian therapy, but you start getting Jungian dreams instead if you are in Jungian therapy.
This seems to support the hypothesis that when we think we have discovered something deep inside us, often we have actually constructed it to fit our preconceptions.
(I suspect that Buddhism also mostly works this way. When Buddhists say that they can verify the truth of all Buddha’s words by introspection… on one hand, yes they can; on the other hand, if they instead believed in Jesus, they could verify that just as well. Asking yourself is like asking an LLM: whatever you believe is true, it will confirm.)
in my worldview this is very easily explained. if you do Jungian therapy your self model starts incorporating Jungian concepts for explaining your own brain. You didn’t change the way your brain works fundamentally, you just changed your own model of your brain. The same way that if you read a book on the biology of plants you’ll start viewing them in the lens of cells, and if you read a book on the ancient spirits associated with each plant you’ll start thinking of plants as being animated by the ghosts of our ancestors.
The big mistake happens when people think of their self model as actually genuinely introspection. Then, you might think that you’ve changed the shape of your mind instead of only changing your understanding of your mind.
Instead, I think the right way to figure out if your self model is correct is to make predictions about your future behavior and see if they come true; act based on your self model and see if you become more successful at life, or whether you mysteriously repeatedly fail in some way.