Medical Psychotherapy Faculty Newsletter Spring/Summer 2014
Francis Bacon (1561-1626) was crucial in the development of the modern mind and the break from the Middle Ages and Aristotelian thought, opening the way to the scientific revolution. Here, I would like to reflect on his ideas, the cultural changes that he triggered and the situation of Psychotherapy in relation to this change.
Bacon rejected preconceived ideas and subordinated knowledge to its empirical evidence. This led away from the authority principle and enabled individuals to search the truth by themselves through experience. It is this break that allows us today to discuss the validity of different epistemological or psychotherapeutic models rather than accept blindly our cultural inheritance. It can be argued that Freud’s authority is still held above experience in some quarters, but for the most part, psychotherapists are more than ready to contrast their views with the clinical reality.
Furthermore, Bion’s entering the session “without memory nor desire” is an extreme position of this empiricist approach.
He also considered that “knowledge is power” that should be directed towards a direct application, relieving suffering in people. He rejected theory without practical application and compared philosophers with spiders weaving useless webs. On the other hand, he also rejected practical workers, whom he compared with ants, considering that they do concrete activities, without space for creativity or thinking about the purpose of their actions. Instead, he advocated for scientists who, like honeybees produce something useful.
The work of Bacon led to the dissociation of Theology and spirituality from material science. This entailed the loss of meaning and purpose from mainstream culture. Although Jung and others have retained spirituality and teleology within their scope, these are mostly medieval remnants in today´s psychotherapy which is dancing in a difficult marriage with modern science.
Bacon also promoted the approach to discreet problems in a reductionist, mechanistic approach to the world. Here psychotherapy is more divided in its adoption of the modern mindset, with CBT following the model while psychoanalysis mostly embraces an organismic model of mind in which the whole can´t be reduced to the sum of its parts.
I consider that strict compliance to protocols and guidelines as advocated in most medical specialties and some psychotherapy schools follows Bacon´s “ants model”, leaving little room for creativity. On the contrary, the most “Medieval”/New age approaches where the therapist´s self is at play, the patient is considered as a whole and the purpose of life can be discussed can be likened to the honeybees. I understand that today, in the “postbaconian” era, these approaches are regarded as unfounded, ethereal and sterile by many, and probably some of these new age schools are building unproductive cobwebs with theoretical considerations detached from experience and clinical application. However, I disagree with these popular considerations.
Bacon and those who followed after him took us away from the middle age and superstition, from centuries of paralysis in many areas of culture and made it possible for us to develop what can be considered a new civilization, with modernism and eventually postmodernism, technical and industrial revolutions, the abolition of slavery, liberation of women and many social advances. Still, we may have gone too far in this approach and lost the core of what makes us humans special. This is what I call the indigestion of Bacon.
I understand these ideas can be controversial and I would like to invite the readers to challenge these views responding through this newsletter. We can use this newsletter as a field for discussing these issues. They are ideological, I admit it, but I consider that our reviewing the basic foundations of our thought can be productive and lead to further enriching the honey we produce. Alternatively, I can be lost in the cobwebs in my head, with delusions of producing honey…
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