Alternative Psychology

                         Steve Edgell Ph.D.                                                           

Note to Visitors:

Steve Edgell passed away on March 8, 2005.  He had a heart attack on the 18th tee box of the Maryvale Golf course.

We will all miss his love, his humanity and his knowledge.

If you would like to post a comment on Steve's comment section

of this web site, send your email to - edgell@cox.net. In the subject

line, please insert SEDGELL COMMENT.

Click here to view Comments: Comments Page.htm

The purpose of this page is to present some of my views on everyday issues in the American culture. My thirty-year experience as a Counseling/Consulting Psychologist working for a state agency in Phoenix, Arizona, has offered me a unique, in-depth, view into lives of a wide variety of people and groups. If interested, you can read more about my experience base in My bio. Most of the essays presented will focus on 'clinical tendencies,' or patterns of behavior I have noticed in various individuals of normal, neurotic and character disordered personalities, but I will also be discussing some broader cultural, economic and political issues. I call this page Alternative Psychology because my views on psychological matters differ significantly from most post-modern American Psychologists - the differences center mainly on the offerings of depth psychology. Over the past few decades there has been an erosion of depth theories in the thinking not only of the leaders and the broad population of our culture, but also in that of our working psychologists. Some of this erosion is due to the complexity and disagreeableness of this kind of thinking about ourselves, but most of it can be attributed to a concerted effort on the part of those espousing a ‘Medical model’ to shift our focus to a more superficial model of the human psyche, with only one level of consciousness. Learned Association models have been crowded out by biogenetic models of human emotions and character; not because those models have any real value, but because that is where the profit and money flows.   

A particular negative effect of this shift of focus has been the abandonment of the wonderful offerings of Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung and their multitude of followers, and an entrapment of their ideas in the now archaic languages of their times. The psychological community has failed to bring these gifts along and weave them into our current vernacular. The main negative effect has been a serious failure to come to understand the deeper values and motives of ourselves as individuals and as a culture, leaving us piling up a huge debt to our unconscious motivations. It will be my ongoing thesis that the overall result of this abandonment of psychoanalytic ideas and treatment methods leaves us unprotected from the ravages of our unconscious processes. Individuals within our culture, and our culture itself, are becoming more and more mentally disturbed. Mind and mood altering 'medications' trap our personhood in their dysfunctional forms, do not 'cure' anything, and rob us of a chance to grow into our true and functional selves. 

To access my notes and essays, and your opportunity to comment on them, click on FREUD'S DOOR IN THE ABOVE PICTURE. This picture was taken in July, 1995, during a visit to his office museum. 

I will be posting new essays on a fairly frequent basis. If you find them of interest, please check back often.