[Yaowen]

The various "schools" of psychological thinking can, I think, be distinguished in many different ways, but one helpful way to distinguish them, I think, is whether they believe in the basic goodness or badness of human beings or something in between those two positions.

If a psychologist as a man or woman thinks that human beings are basically evil, this will, I think, color how they see the theory and practice of psychology.

But the question of whether human beings are basically good or evil is often not always given over to sufficient reflection and deliberation.

Various religions and philosophies take it as axiomatic that people are basically good or basically bad or something else. So this can become a basic attitude conditioned into a person by upbringing, kind of like a preconscious bias in my fallible opinion.

If a person thinks, for example, that people are basically bad, that person will tend to gravitate towards malevolent explanations of human behavior.

They will tend to be drawn towards data which confirms their belief and repelled by data which seems to contradict it.

As a human being, a psychologist can try to access the things they take as axiomatic. This requires philosophical reflection.

What do I take to be open to criticism? What do I take to be self-evident or certain? What do I take to be merely probable or possible?

I wonder whether patients of psychologists are drawn to therapists who share their views about the inherent goodness or badness of human beings or some view that falls into the grey area in between?

I am not casting aspersions on psychologists. Far from it! I doubt whether anyone sets out to make a mistake about something very basic to their theories.

One of my parents tended to think of people as basically good while the other of my parents tended to think the opposite. Perhaps that sort of "explains" me in a way.

What do you think about all this?

PS:I am quite conscious of my falliblity so I am not trying to force my "opinions" on anyone. Would be sincerely interesting in knowing what others think about these subjects.

[ScarletPimpernel]

L is both/and. Dialectic. She believes we are all angel AND all devil. Not an either/or or some percentage. And as a note, her belief is more philosophical than religious.

[Lostislost]

I'm not sure what my T thinks about it all. I tend to think that people aren't good or bad, but people do good or bad things for various reasons. I guess if someone does enough good or bad things then they are seen as being one or the other?

[*Beth*]

I believe that almost all people (maybe all) are inherently "good" - if they appear not to be, it's because of pain they experienced as children and have never worked out.

If one believes in reincarnation, perhaps souls can carry unworked pain throughout lifetimes.

My therapist? She's an eternal optimist who believes that all people, no exceptions, have a divine spark of goodness in them.

[ScarletPimpernel]

Originally Posted by Lostislost

I'm not sure what my T thinks about it all. I tend to think that people aren't good or bad, but people do good or bad things for various reasons. I guess if someone does enough good or bad things then they are seen as being one or the other?

L has taught me that there's a difference between your core-self and actions/decisions we make. Even thoughts and feelings are not our core-self. Just because someone does, thinks, or feels something bad, doesn't mean that our core-self is bad.

We all make bad decisions in our lives. Everyone! We would all be "bad" people if we based who we are off of those things.

It's comforting to me because I do believe I'm a good person. AND I've made a lot of mistakes. I try not to regret many things because they were all lessons and helped shape me. Yet there are some things I do regret.

[ArtleyWilkins]

My therapists never really talked about good or bad in people. Seems rather black or white thinking. They did talk about people who are unhealthy to be around or who are unlikely to change. They didn’t attribute that to any intrinsic reason, nor did they try to explain that tendency as being the result of their history. The bottom line was that where certain individuals are as adults, with particular tendencies, they are unlikely to go through some kind of transformation regardless of intervention. (They did express they weren’t particularly fond of trying to work with those kinds of individuals in therapy; it was generally fruitless.)

[Salmon77]

My impression is that psychology views personality as a product of innate traits and environmental influences. Not so much good vs. evil.

It's sort of like with dogs. If you get a German Shepherd dog, it's probably going to have certain traits (smart, high energy, etc.). You can teach them to attack, you can teach them to be nice family dogs, or you can neglect them and probably end up with a lot of problem behaviors. Either way, the dog's not inherently good or bad, it's just a being responding to its environment. Humans are more complicated but not that different.