28th International Congress of Psychology in Peking

Ontopsychology: The Ontological Nexus of Psychology

On the 7th of August 2004, Prof. Meneghetti lands at the airport of the Chinese capital. The reason for his visit is the 28th International Congress of Psychology being held in Peking from the 8th to the 13th of August 2004. This is the first international congress of psychology to take place here and also the greatest congress that has ever been organised in China. It was such an important occasion that the State Post office issued a commemoration stamp.
The First International Congress of Psychology took place in Paris, France, in 1898. From the Second World War onwards, it has been held every four years, for which reason it is considered the psychological Olympic Games. Eight years ago, after great effort, China succeeded in obtaining the right to host this congress. Regarding this success Kan Zhang, Congress Secretary-General, noted that, “Hosting such a great congress means that Chinese psychologists have achieved international results”.
Prof. Meneghetti has not taken part in an International Congress of Psychology for many years, however on learning that this one would take place in Peking, he decided to accept China’s invitation to participate in an Invited Symposium. It is important to underline that Prof. Meneghetti, Ontopsychology representative, was the only Italian scientist invited to present a symposium in this congress.
Prof. Antonio Meneghetti maintains that China will play a leading role in the 21st century. This Country has a millenary civilization and a population of over one billion people of 56 different ethnic groups. Since the 1980s, China has realized a policy of economic reforms and opening up to the external world. This has led to very fast economic development. GDP keeps on increasing at a growth rate of 10%. The foreign exchange reserve already amounts to over 70 billion U.S. dollars. The average income of people living in cities and in the country is up by 7,7% and 4,5% respectively.
This has occurred thanks to an old Chinese politician who planned the reform and advocated China opening her doors to the rest of the world. His name is Deng, the former Chinese President. Prof. Meneghetti claims that, Deng was the greatest Chinese leader since the time of Mao. He knew how to love his people and loved them deeply. In the New Ontopsychology journal, no. 2/1991, I saw a photograph taken in Lizori, which portrayed Prof. Meneghetti with some Chinese people. They all had beautiful smiles. There was a very sweet young woman among them. I was told that she was Deng’s favourite grandchild. On that occasion, she told Prof. Meneghetti that he was exactly the man her grandfather was looking for.
Prof. Meneghetti often tells me about little things that happened to him during his previous journey and the unforgettable people he met. He speaks with deep love and the look in his eyes seems to go beyond time and space and return to a far off place.
The Congress was organized by the Chinese Psychology Society, under the auspices of the International Union of Psychological Science (IUPsyS), member of the International Council for Science (ICSU).
About 6,000 psychologists, scholars and government servants, coming from 85 different countries and regions, were present. The congress called the most famous psychologists, like Prof. D. Kahneman, who won the Nobel Prize in Economics, Prof. L. G. Niksson, academician of the Swedish Academy of Sciences and member of the Nobel Committee for Economics and around twenty academicians from many Countries who took part in the keynote. There were 162 special topic categories for 25 different research fields, such as memory studies or behavioural genetics, rather than intelligence and creativity, etc.
More than 6,000 copies of the congress program were published, which also included Psicologica Editrice’s advertisement. Jiang, organization representative, reported that this advertisement had been chosen among the eight best advertisements, due to its correctness and moderate commercial nature.
The congress opening ceremony began in the late afternoon of the 8th of August. Yongxiang Lu, President of the Chinese Academy of Science and Vice-Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, maintained that, in taking advantage of this opportunity, he hopes for stronger collaboration between psychologists coming from all over the world, in order to contribute to the progress of human civilization and to the development of enduring peace in the world. Michel Denis, President of IUPsyS, underlined China’s special role in fostering collaboration between Asian areas and the rest of the world over the last twenty years.
Prof. Antonio Meneghetti’s Invited Symposium took place on the 11th of August, from 12.00 noon to 2.00 p.m. In his presentation, called Ontopsychology: the ontological nexus of psychology, he maintained that, though psychology has established its own right to be an autonomous science and claimed its own independence from philosophy and physiology, it has still not acquired the identity of a demonstrated science.
Contemporary psychology is justified through use and legal consensus. It lacks scientific universal principles. Instead, if psychology progresses through the three ontopsychological discoveries – ontic In Sé, semantic field and monitor of deflection – then it too possesses its own ontological nexus.
The other presentation of the Invited Symposium were: The human being’s psychology: development of the ontopsychological approach; Application of Ontopsychology to the leader as a source of solutions for society, Ontopsychology and memetics.
During the evening, in the Hotel Crowne Plaza Continental conference room, Prof. Meneghetti held a cinelogy on the film “Hero” (“Ying Xiong” in Chinese), which charged into first place at the American box office the first week it was released. It has also been nominated for an Oscar for best foreign language film. This film was directed by Yimou Zhang, an internationally renowned director who has shot several famous films, such as Raise the Red Lantern and The Road Home. Among those attending the cinelogy were: Mr Dehe Ma, director general of the China Film Group Company and the producer of this film; Leilei Jia, vice director and scholar of the Film & Television Institute of the Chinese Academy of Arts; Youfu Xia, director of the Research Centre for the Economic Collaboration between China and EU, professor at The International Business and Economics University, Chairman of the Committee for Expert Counselling of the Minister of Trade Negotiation of WTO on Trade and Environment, councillor of the China Green Food Development Centre; Fuyuan Liu, vice director of the China Mental Health Association; Fengchi Yang, psychology professor at the Medicine University of Capital University, etc. Furthermore, among those who took part in the cinelogy, there were many young psychology students and students from the Theatre Academy. Many of them, who participated in the cinelogy for the first time, considered it a very interesting experience.
The following day , Prof. Meneghetti saw journalists from many newspapers, like Guang Ming, China Youth, Hua Xia Network, etc. Prof. Meneghetti gave clear and simple answers to their questions concerning the meaning of Ontopsychology, the leader’s psychology, wealth, OntoArte, etc. When he was asked about his impressions on China and the development of psychology in this Country, he answered that compared to seven years ago China has made great economic and political progress: he perceives that the quality of life in China is improving and the current government seems to be a good one that is interested in the well-being of its people. As regards Chinese psychology, demand is increasing a great deal, nevertheless, its slow development is due to its connection with American psychology. This does not allow for proper investigation and knowledge of the deep European psychology. Moreover, he added that Ontopsychology is the science of the future and he hopes that many more young people will learn about it and many people will benefit from it.
In the evening, everyone watched the marvellous “Beijing Night Show”.
After the Congress, Kan Zhang, secretary general, psychology professor at the Science Academy, maintained that he wishes to establish a collaboration with Ontopsychology in the future.

A REVIEW OF THE THEORIES OF KNOWLEDGE IN HISTORY

This historic overview of the various positions of philosophical criticism was expanded to serve as a seminar given in preparation for the lessons in gnoseological philosophy given during the Summer Session of Ontopsychology, on the topic of “Ontological knowledge and consciousness”, held in Italy from 10 to 19 August 2007.
The purpose of the collection is to provide a general review of the philosophy which, both directly and indirectly, has featured a logical process characterised by a lack of security. All the authors examined are considered solely with regard to the question of consciousness.
This work of profiling is meant to an awareness and memory for use in comparisons, so as to be able to approach, with heightened acumen, the original critical expositions and solutions of the founder of the school of Ontopsychology.

SOCIAL PHENOMENOLOGY AND ONTOPSYCHOLOGICAL RATIONALITY

Sociology is the study of man when organized as a group for a common goal. However, it also studies also the group as a fact. The sociologist’s objects are behaviour and rules, processes and references, be them stable, provisory, natural, rational or spontaneous. Each group has its own identity which is supplied by the goal, means, place and time. Who is, what produces, why, in which way, where and when. O.I.F. (outline of identity and function). Micro and macroprocesses – quantitative and qualitative, structural and functional, normogenic and pathogenic – are always connected to the thematic outline of identity and function. The first type of society to be studied was the ecclesiology, which began and took place in Christian revelations since the first century after Christ. Still active, ecclesiology defines itself as the community of believers in Christ on earth. One ideological criterion is revealed, whereas instead there are several applications. Scientific sociology does not recognise the exactness of criterion, but includes “in Christ”, in Muhammad, in Buddha etc., as one of the ways of social structure in action. From Auguste Comte on, the comparative method has always been used among the various types of society’s behaviour. This is due to the fact that, still today, sociology lacks a criterion of real value, due to the fact that since sociology does not know man himself, it is not able to know the associative and complex behaviour of his relations. Consequently, it uses the comparative method, having as a constant background the systems which are validated as more democratic by the best known and imposing societies (UN, EU, USA, etc.). From societies to institutions, and from industries to provisory communities, sociology presents descriptive documents of behaviour, but never definitive and evident configurations. That is why we have so many sociologies rationalized as structure, function, dialectics, action, interaction, ideology, demand, information, and parental, symbolic, economic systems etc. And from here, the various approaches of sociology to the individual’s behaviour as a group take place. They are all “specializations” which reveal more the attempts of configuration by the researchers than the analysis of reality. Therefore: sociology of communication, immigration, medicine, rural, technological, of education etc.

Summer University

Summer University of Ontopsychology had many aspects that attracted our attention and gave rise to many considerations. – The participants: scientists, researchers, university professors, students and entrepreneurs came to stock up on epistemological science to be converted into daily practice within the individual’s existence. They came from every corner of the earth, personally paying for their own research, without any kind of financial support, let alone that deriving from State funds. – Observing the audience, one cannot help but notice that there are many young adults who identify themselves with the eternal precious qualities of humanism and who wish to be “responsible protagonists” of their own time and not diffusers of traditional culture stereotypes based on biological-racial repetitions and lacking the creative urge offered by the constant relation between being and existence. – A conference regarding the critical problem of knowledge. They seem like terms coming from the past, perhaps slightly out of place compared to the continuous “digital monitoring” we are all subjected to. A constant factor of contemporary life seems to be a kind of technological obsession that allows the individual to escape from his frustrated inner self: the obsessive digital-pressure on mobile telephones, on the mouse hooked up to one’s computer in order to set off a “click” that makes us “surf” over the most credited cultural sources, within the “non-place” of the commonplace, where everyone writes anything and no one replies in the first person (the Internet). – During this event the prudent man was able to grasp the holistic that, ranging from the environment to art, from science to the criteria of knowledge, is capable of regenerating him and qualifying him in the progress of all things that are humanistic civility. – One wonders: is man capable of knowledge? This poses a problem for philosophers, scientists and all those who rise from obscurity to lead, to guide others and for all those who want to understand. Do scientific formula, discoveries and conceptualizations by Nobel Prize winners, ideas elaborated and expressed correspond to the real structure of life? Is knowledge ontological? Does knowledge possess the same actuality as being? Is there reversibility between the representation made by the analyst, the scholar and the operator and the way nature reacts; what are the facts? This is the basic problem: reversibility. This is preliminary data for any type of science, for any kind of knowledge. – For nearly a century we have been conducting community research of the Anglo-Saxon and American Philosophy of Mind, where the authority of neurosciences rules supreme: to understand the person we must understand how he/she sews the clothes and buttons up… truly strange… Yet everyone knows that fashion changes according to the season and market demand. – Meneghetti is certainly a thinker who has not been trained within American universities, yet he seems to come from the ancient roots of the propitious European culture, being immune to all the variables connected to economic-political and ideological circumstances that fascinate or confuse most of us. He also has wide-ranging experience in psychotherapy, during which he demonstrated his capacity to cure. We may therefore state that he is an intellectual who carried out clinical verification in the wide arrays of neurotic variables and human schizophrenias. This Summer University has led us ahead on the path towards multiethnic, trans-historic and transversal culture: exactly as is the human being. Ontopsychology Ontopsicologia Editrice Antonio Meneghetti

Ontopsychology

In his Revolt of the Masses, Ortega y Gasset states that, when the writer “picks up the pen to write on a subject that he has studied for many years, he must keep in mind that the average reader, who has never dealt with the subject in question, is not reading in order to learn something, but to pass his judgment on the writer, whenever what was written fails to coincide with the vulgarities that populate the reader’s mind.” According to Ortega y Gasset, this would be an effect – in the intellectual field – of an attitude typical of the masses in the modern epoch: the common man, as such, feels entitled to pronounce judgments, be they aesthetic, moral, political, etc. The author explains that the “fundamental rights”, that intellectuals in the 18th Century ascribed to every citizen “by birth”, the rights that had been declared in order to protect the inalienable dignity of the human being, have become pretexts for unfounded claims. “What was initially a juridical idea or ideal – the sovereignty of the unqualified individual, of the generic human being as such – has become a constitutive element of the psychological state of the average man” (idem). Indeed, this readiness to pass judgment does exist: on occasion we are truly left astonished by the presumptuousness that the average man has developed in intellectual matters. Curiously enough, it seems to be more licit in some (arbitrarily defined) fields than others. For instance – based on my experience in Italy and France – in the field of architecture the power of judgment would seem universal, and anyone feels entitled to declare that this or that building is “beautiful”, “ugly”, “horrible”, etc. Quite often a person who is not ashamed to admit that he understands nothing about wine, that his palate is unable to tell a mediocre wine from an excellent one, will be completely uninhibited when it comes to judging the architectural qualities (or lack thereof) in an urban project. Logically, then, a sommelier’s education should take much longer than an architect’s. We could add that this attitude is not always limited to the average man, but extends to a good share of the minority that should detach itself from the mass, namely, intellectuals and professors. In fact, due to a curious psychological twist, we often find that a cultivated person has the most limited views precisely in the field he knows best. In this case, we are dealing with an essentially intelligent, enquiring person; his will to know and to better himself will light up any time he perceives a novelty, an interesting concept, perhaps in a field fairly unknown to him and hence all the more enticing. But step into his field – the field in which he has constructed his superiority, his role – and you are faced with a different person, much more dogmatic, and much less inclined to consider a hypothesis that conflicts with his views. This is particularly apparent in disciplines such as sociology or art criticism, which today seem to be incredibly hollow. This capacity to maintain a “child-like” curiosity throughout one’s career is what distinguishes a “true intellectual” from an “intellectual labourer”. “To marvel is to begin to understand. It is the sport and the luxury specific to the intellectual” (idem). So far, we have demonstrated that, as a matter of fact, the contemporary reader is largely unprepared and even more often ill disposed to receive most information that could be useful to him. But immediately the danger arises that the intellectual, who has come to this conclusion, retreats into an “ivory tower”: he can then solipsistically claim any assertion to be true, on the basis that the reader will in any case dispute it because of its paradoxicality. At this point the intellectual ceases to question himself, and falls into a dogmatism of his own thought. Here I am thinking in particular of those who teach, write or speak about Ontopsychology without the attitude of a “true intellectual”. Given the many areas in which Ontopsychology challenges both vulgar and scientific opinions widely accepted in our society, they can rightly expect a certain degree of suspicion, of distrust, at times even of condemnation on the part of the common man as well as the academician. But this attitude (“they are not prepared to understand”) easily degenerates (“this is how things are, end of story”). The fact is that, typically, an Ontopsychology teacher has discovered the validity of this School through a moment of evidence – most often by observing or experiencing its efficacy in the therapeutic setting. Having recognised the validity of this particular application, he has then embraced the whole of the theory, from the revision of classical psychoanalysis, to the integration of the memetic model, to the elaboration on Scholasticism, etc. At this point, he may feel invincible, given that he has made such a complete theory his own. But this hiatus between a profound and personal experience (a moment of revelation, of inner growth) and other, subsequently acquired concepts is precisely where the danger lies. We could say that the initial evidence – more of which becomes accessible gradually, through time – is the entry point and a constitutive point of the theory: the only point that the individual truly knows. This entry point is but a very small part, compared with the whole of the theory. I am using the term theory precisely because, at this point, this is precisely what it is – a rational technique for which the individual lacks a proven application, the map of a vast territory of which he has visited only one county. Studies, experience and inner growth will hopefully lead the individual to develop, to rediscover, to experience an increasingly wide part of the theory, so that it is no longer acquired or learned knowledge, but becomes part of the evidence, of the individual’s authentic and operative knowledge. When the individual finds himself in the position of teaching or simply describing Ontopsychology to others, to the extent that he teaches this part, he is true; when he teaches the other, he is dogmatic. This explains the paradox by which the youngest in this field are sometimes the most dogmatic. Gabriel Marcel’s writing on technique can help to clarify this – after all, we are dealing with a rational technique. Marcel points out that our life and consequently our worldview has increasingly come to depend on technical, mechanical processes that contribute to what we normally refer to as “progress” or “comfort”. As a consequence, the person increasingly relies on external reference points, so that “the more humanity as a whole manages to assert its dominion over nature, the more the individual is enslaved by this conquest”. So, while “a technique is good in itself, because it incarnates a certain authentic potency of reason”, we must question the effects that that technique will have “on those who, without having contributed to its invention, become its beneficiaries.” The same thinking can be extended to scientific concepts: “the gravest error or greatest shortfall of scientism is probably its failure to question what science, or rather a scientific truth becomes, how it degenerates once it has been inculcated in individuals who have in no way participated to the scientific ascesis or the scientific conquest” (Les hommes contre l’humain, ’51). We can therefore conclude that our knowledge of Ontopsychology (and here we should understand it in the broadest sense, as a current of thought going beyond a single School or a single thinker) is real to the extent that we have matured, lived and rediscovered its every concept. Conversely, when we express its concepts without having fully worked out their meaning, we lack credibility, because in this case – as explained with regard to techniques – we are proceeding “off centre”. Indeed, the image of Ontopsychology has been damaged mostly by those who have taken its conceptual framework “lightly”, without full mastery. Those who have taken the map for the territory. In fact, Ontopsychology cannot simply be studied; rather, it needs to be “crafted”. Studying only facilitates the occurrence of experiences that form our operative knowledge and its possible generalisations. The converse would be somewhat like expecting that an apprentice blacksmith, having studied the chemical properties of metal, and how they can be altered, would be able to seize the anvil and the hammer and forge a perfect artefact. The analogy is fitting, because humanity has had excellent blacksmiths for thousands of years, while the understanding of the intermolecular forces that confer metals different properties through beating and quenching is an extremely recent discovery. Likewise, humanity is still in the dark as to the exact functioning of neurons, infinitely more complex to gauge than the molecules in metals, yet it has always had masters, and their apprenticeship has resembled the blacksmith’s more than the academician’s. Many thinkers have admonished us that it is easy to abuse a thought. “Proudhon would say: ‘Intellectuals are light’, and it is, alas! terribly true, because of the profound reason that the intellectual does not deal with a resistant reality like the craftsman or the farmer, but works with words and paper suffers any offence” (Marcel, ibid.). And elsewhere: “the men of discourse, of the logos, have used it without respect or precaution, failing to realise that the word is a sacrament to be administered with great care” (Ortega y Gasset, ibid.). In summary, a true teacher of Ontopsychology should keep to the part of Ontopsychology that he has crafted through his personal development and experience, and that he can recognise as evidence. When we teach, we should limit ourselves to this part, that we have touched for ourselves. In reality, when we teach this part, it does not feel like teaching: it feels like saying something obvious. It is our listener’s wide-open eyes that tell us that we are introducing an element of novelty.

A REVIEW OF THE THEORIES OF KNOWLEDGE IN HISTORY

A historic overview of the various positions of philosophical criticism was expanded to serve as a seminar given in preparation for the lessons in gnoseological philosophy given during the Summer Session of Ontopsychology, on the topic of “Ontological knowledge and consciousness”, held in Italy from 10 to 19 August 2007. The purpose of the collection is to provide a general review of the philosophy which, both directly and indirectly, has featured a logical process characterised by a lack of security. All the authors examined are considered solely with regard to the question of consciousness. This work of profiling is meant to an awareness and memory for use in comparisons, so as to be able to approach, with heightened acumen, the original critical expositions and solutions of the founder of the school of Ontopsychology

Key point according to Antonio Meneghetti

If the individual is not read precisely, we cannot understand his behaviour as a group or mass. Above all, we must know the archetypes of his associative and behavioural motivations. Until today, science has always been talked about in society; however, by now we see a society which questions and discusses everywhere, and makes political determinism for itself. Therefore, society is prevalent everywhere (the ecologists, the consumers, the users, agreed or moral principles, base community, votes). Nowadays the most deterministic fact is that society constitutes itself priority over whatever else is valued. In fact, society is to be understood in science, in economy etc. This means that conducts and thematics of research, service and verification will not be run and selected by experts, but by civic local delegates, who will discretionize universities and scientific commissions according to opinions however diverse in reality. A new dictatorship of the many is categorized “in prevarication of the best ones”: “you are good if I appreciate you, because by now I represent the people my way”. The group constitutes the system for the system. If A. Comte used to declare sociology as the most positive science, and neglected psychology only because it was still in its infancy, John Stuart Mill affirms that the fundament of the sciences is within psychology. Especially today, once psychological science, through the ontopsychological school, has found the ontological nexus able to authorize knowledge founded on reality, sociology must update itself of this ontological nexus, if it wants to read and foresee social man’s behaviour with predictable results.