Review of Beyond Politics, an outline of systematic ideology. From SELF AND SOCIETY, European Journal of Humanistic Psychology, Vol. XVIII No.6, Nov / Dec 1990, by John Rowan. This is a book about ideologies. An ideology is a way of seeing the world, a more or less coherent philosophy of the way things seem to… read more »
A recent book by John Rowan describes the late Harold Walsby, creator of systematic ideology, as a Hegelian. The title is not one to be ashamed of and Rowan doubtless intended no derogation, but by presenting Walsby as a mere follower of Hegel it does suggest an unduly low estimate of his achievement. More may… read more »
It does seem to me that the “old” series of terms for the major ideologies – “protostatic,” “parastatic” and so on – has one big advantage: just because they are so outlandish they force people to stop and think. This is something I noticed also in the context of what Ron Hubbard’s critics used to… read more »
In IC24 appeared an article, by John Rowan and George Walford, entitled COUNSELLING RESEARCH; AN IDEOLOGICAL STUDY. It related the principal trends in psychotherapy to the major ideologies, saying, among other things, that what s.i. would call protodynamic psychotherapy: “entails the conception of society being reformed to comply with the developing individual; successful counselling produces reformers.”… read more »
The paper which was delivered to the Fourth Annual Conference of the Counselling Psychology Section of the British Psychological Society, held at Regent’s College, London, 18-19 September 1986. Does counselling work? This question matters to everybody who might spend time or money on counselling, and it seems at first sight to be a matter of… read more »
(If sung, it goes to the tune of On Top of Old Smoky) Now come all you workers And gather around; For here is a theory. To keep your feet on the ground. The theory is simple: It gives us the key To the actions of people Throughout history. All metaphysical notions of Society Based… read more »
Harold Walsby (1947) was a proponent of the idea that we all live on some level of consciousness, which he called an ideology. This idea of levels already existed, of course, in the ideas of Piaget (1977), Maslow (1987) and others. Walsby’s main contribution was to see these levels as essentially political. His other great… read more »
To the revisions of the basic statement of Systematic Ideology there is no end. Here is another suggestion. It seems to me that in the current version of the basic statement the description of the second of the eidodynamic levels as “Revolution” needs a little adjustment. At the moment it is phrased exclusively in terms… read more »
I was registered for seven years at the London School of Economics to write a PhD thesis on Walsby’s theory. However, in the end I withdrew without having done it. There were many reasons for this, but one was paramount: it can’t be done. The reason is this: the definition of the lowest level of… read more »
Last night I had a dream. I had discovered some people who had all the original papers from the beginning of Walsby’s work. And everything was there – all the ideas that Walsby came up with, all the ideas that Walford added, all the ideas about forming a group of people who would research the… read more »