Humanism and Human Extensions

Psychoanalysis is predicated on the ancient dictum that we need to know ourselves, while humanism emerged to counterbalance behavioristic and psychoanalytic reductionism. Psychoanalysis gave birth to depth psychology and humanism, moving beyond seeing a patient as an objectification of symptoms, created methods through which we could understand the phenomenal world of the experiencing person, as Carl Rogers has said. Both orientations, however disparate in some respects, do, nonetheless, converge in important ways. Both admonish that an unexamined life is, indeed, an empty life and, as the philosopher said, not worth living. Valuable living is conscious living, that is, living in the light of awareness.