Errors Of Intuition

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

The underestimated intuition in our modern Western rational mind takes the other extreme. People begin to extol intuition as a premonition, insight and foresight, "wisdom of the heart," "the voice of God," "a quiet whisper that will never deceive," etc.

Things are not always what they appear to be. Intuition taken in isolation from thinking, feeling and feeling can lie like a gypsy in the market. With intuition, caution is needed.

The doctor's intuition, if he trusts her immensely, can lead to the death of the patient, the intuition of the trader - to the loss of money, the intuition of the judge - to blaming the innocent, the reckless trust of intuition in private life - to the loss of contact with reality and the rupture of relations.

There are both anecdotal and dramatic examples on this topic:

A cowboy gallops on the prairie and sees that a group of Indians, led by the leader, is approaching him. He is frightened, but intuition tells him: "Keep calm, go straight to them and stop in front of the leader." The cowboy drives up to the leader himself and waits for the voice of intuition. Intuition tells him to spit in the leader's face. The cowboy does everything as said and again hears the voice of intuition: "What will happen now, what will happen now!"

And this is already from life: “No one can dictate to me how to behave,” Princess Diana said in an interview shortly before the fatal trip. "I am guided by instinct, and instinct is my best advisor." The only thing Diana was right about here was that intuition and instinct are actually closely related. But if we are not in the forest, then we hardly need to unconditionally trust instincts.

An example of how to rely on intuition in the hot topic of eating disorders. The latest trend in this area is intuitive eating. It is great for correcting dietary thinking and orthorexia and as a useful supplement to a balanced diet. But when intuitive nutrition is presented as the most authentic type of nutrition, as the main progressive vector of the psychological development of overweight people, it turns into another fiction and a business idea for taking money away from violence.

It is not at all necessary that if we add the adjective "intuitive" to this or that noun, then we will be on the verge of a wonderful discovery. We can become not pioneers, but just a victim of one of the mistakes of our subjective perception.

It is important to remember that, as K. G. Jung, intuition is an unconscious perception and there is nothing romantic, aristocratic, or super-spiritual about it. The unconscious perception, like the conscious, has its own mistakes - illusions and hallucinations.

Intuitive parenting, healing, clothing, reading, learning, drawing, reading, pedagogy, etc. is not a new milestone in mastering reality, but only one of the possible aspects of the manifestation of mental activity. Its applied aspect. Often this is something that has existed since cave times and is now forgotten - intuitive gathering, hunting, agriculture, natural magic, ancient medicine, etc.

Intuition has given way today to rational knowledge and science, not because people have become more ignorant than their ancestors, but because science and rational thinking have shown their practical benefits in the study of the world and in self-knowledge.

Today science and scientific methods easily refute what seemed to be true in intuitive knowledge of the past, starting with the fact that the sun revolves around the earth or, as Galileo showed, the earth revolves around the sun. Science develops and while the intuitively obvious remains the same, scientific ideas continue to change, and correct our perception. Type in "Spiral Model of the Solar System" on Youtube and hold onto the handrails to keep from falling.

Intuitively obvious data from the world of folk psychology also do not always find scientific confirmation. The liar's intuition tells him that by manipulating others, he improves his life. The child thinks about the same, but scientific psychology proves that this is not the best way to adapt. The liar deceives himself and only then others. Just like the cunning of the child seems cunning only to him, and not to the adults. This is how experience conflicts with intuition.

The “intuitively correct” assumption that high self-esteem paves the way for success is scientifically wrong (report by the California Self-Esteem Group). Yes, people with high self-esteem are less prone to depression, but an inflated ego does not lead to success, but only compensates for past traumas by creating new ones.

Or the well-known question of what happens if a sheet of paper is folded 100 times. How thick it will become. In this case, our limited life experience and intuition will prompt us that this thickness can be shown with the fingers of the hand. Everyone saw a ream of paper in both 100 and 500 sheets. But thinking with a ruler and a calculating machine will make its own adjustments. The thickness of the sheet is 0.1 mm, and the sheet folded twice is respectively twice as large. If the sheet is folded 100, each time increasing its thickness by half, then according to the rules of geometric progression, we will get a "thickness" of 800 trillion times greater than the distance from the Earth to the sun. Such a task is beyond the power of intuition and it will give an error.

The famous story of how Mendeleev saw the periodic system of chemical elements in a dream. That would seem to be the intuition of a scientist! But no, this is how subliminal thinking works and still years of hard work on this topic. Many watched the series about the intuitive and brilliant diagnostician Dr. House. The only thing that is not shown in this film is how he studied and developed his clinical thinking over the years, studied anatomy, biochemistry, pathophysiology and other medical disciplines.

Reynold Niebuhr's prayer teaches us to distinguish intuition from thinking, sensory assessments and life experience in search of the true:

Lord, grant me mercy

Accept things that are true

The courage to face the things

That are not true

And the wisdom to distinguish one from the other.

Intuition is certainly essential to being a good psychologist and psychotherapist. But it is equally important to have an idea of the existing theories of personality, about the mechanisms of work of the psyche and have a lot of practical experience.

On an intuitive level, this or that direction may seem effective for a psychologist who has studied in this direction, having spent a significant amount of time and money. Satisfied clients confirm this effectiveness, while dissatisfied clients simply leave in search of other help, to another specialist, or to illness. The question of whether this or that direction, method, or specific therapeutic intervention is really effective can only be answered by experiment and scientific research. Without them, we simply believe, try to justify something to ourselves, or rely on our intuition. Sounds beautiful, but not convincing.

Therefore, the old extrasensory treatment or new desensitization and treatment of eye movement injuries (OMA), audio programs for subthreshold exposure and treatment, audio-visual or light therapy, etc. innovations can be called a hobby of some specialists rather than real psychological help and therapy.

A psychiatrist acquaintance earned a PhD studying the effects of audiovisual stimulation in the treatment of depression. The effect was zero, no different from the control group, but the thesis was defended and the method was recognized as scientific. Although this is a different topic about the fact that scientifically consecrated methods are also different. If someone needs to prove the effectiveness of hand passes over a diseased organ or the healing effect of holy water, then there will be scientists for this.

There are cases when something that seems terrible and for this reason rejected by intuition, in reality turns out to be mega-effective. For example, outwardly completely barbaric method of electroconvulsive therapy, with which many are familiar through the book by Ken Kesey and the film of the same name "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." And meanwhile, today it has been proven that this is the most effective method for treating severe depression, in which psychotherapy and drug treatment do not help. Things are not what they seem, including in intuitive perception. Errors of unconscious perception or otherwise errors of intuition are what we regularly deal with.

And yet the question remains, do we need to develop intuition, trust intuition, and rely on intuition?

The answer is yes, yes. But this is not a complete answer. We also need to develop theoretical and practical thinking, introverted and extraverted feelings, the sphere of sensations. Exactly to the same extent as intuition.

At the same time, the typology of the functions of consciousness by K. G. Jung, in which all four mental functions are presented as leading, additional or auxiliary. This will determine how successful the development of this or that function will be.

The function of intuition is easiest to develop for people of an intuitive mind, in whom it is the leading one. Intuition must be brought up like a wild animal if it is in a depressed subordinate position and be able to interact with it if it is in the position of auxiliary functions.

Intuition has both strengths and dangers associated with errors in intuitive perception. Depending on the typology of personality (the typology of C. G. Jung), work with intuition in people of different types is built in different ways. Despite the errors of intuition, we do not write it off, but we also do not exalt it to heaven as a function of divine revelation.

It is necessary to work with intuition and better in practical terms.