The Death of Psychology: Integral & Fifth Force Psychologies. Technical Paper No. 36

The purpose here is to translate the Fifth Force Psychologies movement through an integral (Wilberian) lens. One of the most significant impacts of doing this comes from the integral initiative, which has led to Ken Wilber arguing "Psychology is dead." Concomitantly, his view is that the "integral approach" is its replacement. This move characterizes Wilber's unique integral philosophy in a deconstructionist postmodern style of Nietzsche's "God is dead." Yet, Wilber, unlike Nietzsche, and more like Rank, reconstructs a post-postmodern vision of a new critical analysis and critical theory. In the author's view, the best of Wilberian thought and critique is his social politics of knowledge (re: his dealing with the Four Forces). It is what makes a foundational postmodern critical (conflict) theory of Integral (at least, in the Wilberian view, of which the author finds most compelling and useful to the problems of the 21st century overall--that is, ideological conflict, violence, fear, terror, wars, etc.). The very understanding of "psychology" and the field of Psychology is put into question by Wilber's challenge, just as God was more fully put into question by more and more people after Nietzsche. This technical paper puts Psychology into question, not for the first time, but in a way the author thinks is truly a first 21st century vision and profound in its potential as critique. The author offers nine reasons for naming and reclaiming "Integral-Transpersonal" as the Fourth Force of Psychology. (Contains 44 footnotes.) [This paper was published by the In Search of Fearlessness Research Institute.]