Mapping Psychic Reality

Introduction

This book is about how we can deepen our understanding of subjectivity through the use of the concept of triangulation. Fundamentally, this book seeks to address the question of how we can be objective about subjectivity.

Objective and Subjectivity

If psychology, as a scientific discipline, is concerned with the study of human experience, which is essentially subjective; then we are faced with the problem of how to apply the scientific method, as it is commonly understood.

Challenges in Studying Experience

If experience is essentially unique to the experiencer, then there seems to be a basic incompatibility with the scientific method. As currently practised, this method searches for psychic phenomena, which can be validly measured e.g. intelligence; showing a range of individual differences.

But this does not enable us to examine individual experience. An individual’s experience seems to become impenetrable because generalisation across different individuals’ experience entails the loss of individuality in the generalisation.