My dearest colleagues and psychology students across the globe, I ask you today to commit yourselves to the development of theories that synthesize research and thought from all psychological disciplines, and that are useful to the average person, not just the academic.  I must admit that I am quite sick of the split between the clinicians and academics.  I am shocked by the lack of respect towards researchers with different world-views.  Reading academic journals, there is a conspicuous absence of clinical citations.  Likewise, reading clinical journals, there is an equally conspicuous absence of academic citations.  Researchers usually brush off this ignorance as an existence of two different fields of knowledge. But I call this intellectual discrimination.  Therefore, I call to all readers of Proprium Journal of Psychology to take a stand against such discrimination, and move toward synthesis of all perspectives.

Recently I have been working on my own synthesis of research on the self.  I have read with great interest the work of researchers across the globe.  I have also read with equal and perhaps more interest the work of clinical psychologists and psychiatrists.  Karen Horney, for instance provided me with incredible insight into the nature of anxiety, and how individuals can find relief by losing the self in sorrow and pain.  Carl G. Jung taught me about a kinder unconscious filled with primordial images programmed to lead humans toward greater adaptation.  Sigmund Freud taught me how sublimation of aggression and sexuality helped build societies.  Erik Erikson and Jane Loevinger taught me about the process of ego development.  Carl Rogers taught me about the importance of conditions of worth in shaping self-concept.  The list is exhaustive.

From the academic point of view, I learned about the structure of self-concept by reading the mountain of research articles written by Herbert W. Marsh.  I learned about the development of self-concept and the real self from the well thought out work of Susan Harter.  I learned about the functions of self-concept from Seymour Epstein.  I learned my favorite definition of self-concept from John A. Hattie.  I learned the creative concepts of the "working self-concept" and "possible selves" from Hazel Markus and her colleagues.  These two concepts have inspired my imagination greatly.  I found the most parsimonious model in psychology in the work of Albert Bandura, and his reciprocal determinism.  Similar to my conclusion in the preceding paragraph, this list can go on and on as well.

The point of this exercise is to show my frustration with those writers who ignore segments of knowledge because they fail to assimilate contrary opinions into their current world-views.  Well, I say, no one theory can account for all possibilities.  As speculation and clinical insight surely can be wrong and is highly unreliable, so is scientifically derived knowledge when it is the product of human beings studying other human beings.  How can we claim to be objective under such circumstances?  Therefore, the best solution is to learn from all perspectives.  Because we can empathize with the subjects of our study, insight is a valuable source of information.  However, because we can observe behavior and manipulate statistical procedures to assess the reliability and validity of a variety of measures, the scientific approach is clearly beneficial too.

I write this opinion article with hope that someone is reading it out there, preferably the young student looking to make his or her mark on the field of psychology.  It is time for a large-scale paradigm shift.  When Jung and Freud were in the prime of their careers, they shaped psychotherapy with their writing.  When Pavlov, Watson, and Skinner were in the prime of their careers, they led a revolution that changed psychology from philosophy and speculation to a science.  Others have followed, shifting the field toward a dominant cognitive perspective, exemplified by Bandura's concept of self-efficacy beliefs.  However, past accomplishments are not enough.  Today we have earned enough knowledge from psychophysiology, cognitive psychology, behaviorism, psychoanalysis, analytic psychology, clinical psychology, humanism, and other theoretical perspectives to construct a profound synthesis that transcends mere academic exercise and provides useful information to help soothe the pain of living.  Life is hard, and people want solutions that make living a bit less painful.  It is up to you the young minds of psychology to lead this revolution.  Won't you join me?