| Clinical psychologists are guided in their work by their comprehensive worldview, including beliefs about the nature and authority of knowledge claims, about the nature and constitution of human persons, and about ethical and moral claims. They will invariably apply their philosophies to clinical work with clients, though not always with consistency. Some hold certain views of reality yet practice as if these views are untrue.;There are currently 3 reductionist viewpoints, both dominant in Western academia and universities, and dehumanizing in their implications. They are: strict empiricism in epistemology, reductive materialism (or physicalism) in metaphysics, and relativism in ethics. Though these are theoretical concepts, the practical application of them (conscious or unconscious) has deep and profound consequences for clinical psychology, daily life, and human destiny (individual or corporate).;Each of these 3 views contains an implicit rejection of holistic and teleological conceptions of human life (Russell, 1971, p. 31). Empiricism, physicalism, and relativism all contribute to a piecemeal, fragmented, disintegrated, and abridged overall view of knowledge and the nature of reality, of human persons, and of ethics.;Many thinkers maintain that a realistic, rational, critically based, evidentially sound, and frankly more accurate view of the nature of the world and of human beings, will make psychotherapy more effective, and that ignoring these views could make psychotherapy ineffective, or even harmful.;First, knowledge is available apart from narrow empiricism. Second, we live in a world of immaterial essences joined to physical bodies, not merely material bodies. Third, important core elements of morality and ethics are indeed true for everyone, not merely subject to arbitrary, constructivist, social, or individual hermeneutic whims. There is good evidence for these 3 claims and therefore good reason to believe them.;Many clinical implications follow from the acceptance or rejection of these views, including whether human beings can know and act upon knowledge apart from science, whether we have merely instrumental or deeply intrinsic value, whether we have libertarian free will or are wholly determined by the laws of physics and chemistry, and whether the concept of moral (or other) improvement is possible or rendered incoherent by relativism. |
