2 0 S p i r i t ua l i t y S t u d i e s 7 - 1 S p r i n g 2 0 2 1 of the human psyche: “I am actually not at all a man of science, not an observer, not an experimenter, not a thinker. I am by temperament nothing but a conquistador.” (Freud 1985, 398). The field of mental health can no longer turn a blind eye to the inescapable fact that “modern Western psychology – is a secular and largely culture-bound discipline” (Badri 2018, 1). It avows that modern science alone holds the key to knowing truth and reality, but this dogmatic arrogance prevents it from noticing its own blind spot. It must be made crystal-clear that “[m]odern science is not – and never has been – the ‘disinterested quest of truth’.” (Smith 2019, 61). Many practitioners today readily acknowledge these serious limitations: “[Note: Modern] Western psychology and medicine are incomplete both in their understanding of human nature and in their ability to promote health and well-being.” (Welwood 1985, vii). Although the situation is more dismal than this statement suggests, it nonetheless distils the inherent errors of the discipline as practiced today. We need to completely re-envisage modern Western psychology and psychiatry in the context of addressing mental health issues. At the root of the problem is “the inherent limitation of the original epistemological premises of modern science” (Nasr 1989, 206) and the only way to overcome this is to expose the “epistemological fallacies of Occidental civilization” (Bateson 2000, 491). The impasse that faces modern Western psychology and its destructive consequences are clearly laid out by Gill Edwards (1998, 194–99): [Note: Modern] science has claimed a monopoly on truth, seeing the scientific method as the only valid path towards knowledge … as recent products of their culture, modern psychology and psychotherapy were built upon the shifting sands of Cartesian-Newtonian assumptions – with devastating consequences … [note: and] many therapists are still clinging to the scientific tradition … and refusing to open their eyes … the old paradigm gave birth to a positivist, materialist psychology which values objectivity, rationality and empiricism …The mechanistic, reductionist, determinist assumptions of the Cartesian-Newtonian world view are endemic in psychology and psychotherapy. Without considering the historical antecedents and their connection to the development of modern science, this plight will continue unabated. Compelling mental health professionals to work in a theoretical and clinical vacuum will only perpetuate this crisis. Modern psychology is simply not prepared to accept valuable insights that differ from its own worldview, but which are sorely needed if we are to offer more integrated and holistic treatment options for individuals. It is time, therefore, to challenge the ideological tyranny of psychology as practiced today and to consider how its pernicious influence can be curtailed. The tendency of modern science to assert itself as the sole arbiter of what we can know about the human mind negates the crucial dimension that makes it conform to a true metaphysical order as found in many of the world’s sapiential traditions. This reductionism of modern psychology has rendered null and void any fuller understanding of what is still understood by many as the soul: “[P]sychology, having first bargained away its soul and then gone out of its mind, seems now, as it faces an untimely end, to have lost all consciousness.” (Burt 1962, 229). That spirituality and metaphysics are deemed irrelevant by modern science is the reason for the disarray in which contemporary psychology finds itself. This claim will strike many as ludicrous because it suggests that we need to turn back the clock to the dark ages of knowledge. Yet it must be understood that the exclusion of metaphysics from science goes to the heart of modernism’s deviations. As Titus Burckhardt (1908–1984) presciently observed, psychology can only be authentic when it relies on metaphysics: The “[note: perennial] psychology does not separate the soul either from the metaphysical or from the cosmic order. The connection with the metaphysical order provides spiritual psychology with qualitative criteria such as are wholly lacking in profane [note: modern Western] psychology, which studies only the dynamic character of phenomena of the psyche and their proximate causes.” (Burckhardt 2008, 26–27). The belief that only the scientific method gives access to valid forms of knowledge is not only flawed but totalitarian, having its roots in the European Enlightenment or the so-called Age of Reason. Without question, as Boaventura de Sousa Santos (2018, 181) rightly points out, the “understanding of the world far exceeds the Western understanding of the world.” This dogmatic outlook is not science, but an ideology known as scientism, which has nothing to do with the proper exercise of the scientific method. Renowned scholar of Islam and Sufism, William Chittick (2009, 48), underscores how dominant scientism is within modern intellectual discourse, even though many may be oblivious to its overreach: “It is very difficult to characterize the modern worldview with a single label. One word that has often been suggested is ‘scientism,’ the belief that the scientific method and scientific findings are the sole criterion for truth.” As the American psychiatrist M. Scott Peck (1936–2005) astutely noted (1985, 257–58), contemporary
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