Western Psychology as the Reinforcer of Mental Dysfunction: A Critical Ontological (Gurmat) Analysis
, Pathology, Ego Reinforcement, and the Absence of Ontology**
A Critical Inquiry Through Contemporary Academic Literature
Abstract
Western psychology has become the dominant framework through which emotional life, mental distress, and human experience are interpreted. Yet it is grounded in a reductionist epistemology that equates the self with the ego, emotions with truth, and suffering with disorder. This paper argues that mainstream Western psychology has evolved into a narcissistic system that reinforces emotional identity, pathologises normal human variation, and relies on diagnostic expansion and medicalisation to sustain its clinical and commercial frameworks. Through an examination of foundational theorists, critical psychiatry, the DSM project, and contemporary therapeutic culture, the paper demonstrates how Western psychology’s failure to incorporate ontology or consciousness results in therapeutic practices that stabilise ego rather than transform it. Drawing on literature from transpersonal studies and emerging consciousness research, the paper finally contrasts Western models with ontologically oriented approaches capable of addressing suffering as developmental and meaning-bearing. This analysis aims to expose the philosophical and clinical limitations of modern mental health systems and to open the pathway toward more integrative, consciousness-informed paradigms.
Keywords
Ego, narcissism, emotion, pathology, DSM, medicalisation, psychotherapy, ontology, consciousness studies, critical psychiatry, diagnostic expansion.
- Introduction
Western psychology and psychiatry exert immense influence over how individuals conceptualise mental health, emotional states, and personal identity. Yet the dominant frameworks of the 20th and 21st centuries remain rooted in a narrow, reductionist worldview shaped by Enlightenment materialism, individualism, and biomedical categorisation. These foundations have produced a psychological system that is internally coherent but philosophically limited, clinically inconsistent, and—many argue—ontologically blind (Foucault, 1973; Szasz, 1961; Rose, 1999).
A growing number of scholars contend that Western psychology functions less as a science of the mind and more as a cultural apparatus that reinforces specific assumptions about identity, emotion, and suffering (Cushman, 1990; Gergen, 2001). In this view, therapy becomes a mechanism through which individuals learn to interpret experience according to the norms of the psychologically constructed self. These norms position:
- emotions as facts,
- suffering as pathology,
- egoic narratives as identity,
- diagnosis as truth, and
- medication as the endpoint of treatment.
This paper argues that these tendencies create a form of structural narcissism within Western psychology. By centring the ego as the primary locus of reality and validating emotional narratives as expressions of truth, therapy often reinforces the very patterns that produce distress.
Concurrently, Western psychiatry’s dependence on diagnostic categorisation produces extensive pathologisation of normal human emotion and behaviour, a critique demonstrated extensively by critical psychiatry literature (Szasz, 2007; Frances, 2013; Moncrieff, 2008). As diagnostic categories expand, so too does the reliance on pharmacological intervention, shaping mental health into a medicalised enterprise intertwined with economic incentives.
This paper proceeds in four stages:
- Historical and philosophical foundations of Western psychology’s ego-centric worldview
- Structural narcissism: emotions-as-facts, identity reinforcement, and the therapeutic self
- Pathologisation and medicalisation: the DSM project, diagnostic inflation, and pharmaceutical influence
- Contrast with consciousness-oriented ontological models, highlighting their capacity to treat suffering as meaningful rather than dysfunctional
Part I introduces the historical foundations necessary to understand why Western psychology cannot escape its narcissistic orientation without abandoning its reductionist premises.
- Historical Foundations of Ego-Centric Psychology
To understand why Western psychology reinforces egoic identity structures, it is necessary to trace its intellectual lineage. The foundational schools—psychoanalysis, behaviourism, humanistic psychology, and cognitive-behavioural therapy—may appear distinct, yet they share core assumptions embedded in Western philosophical traditions.
2.1 Psychoanalysis: Ego as the Central Organising Construct
Freud’s model of mind placed the ego at the centre of psychological functioning, describing it as “the coherent organisation of mental processes” (Freud, 1923/1961). Although Freud recognised unconscious processes, he maintained a fundamentally individualistic conception of the human subject. Subsequent theoretical developments—ego psychology, object relations theory, and self psychology—expanded the ego’s role rather than diminishing it (Kernberg, 1975; Kohut, 1977).
The psychoanalytic movement thus institutionalised the assumption that:
The self is fundamentally the ego, and psychological health requires strengthening it.
This remains a defining feature of Western therapeutic culture.
2.2 Behaviourism: The Erasure of Consciousness
By the early 20th century, behaviourism rejected introspection altogether. Watson (1913) and Skinner (1953) redefined psychology as the study of measurable behaviour, rendering consciousness irrelevant. Behaviourism replaced the inner world with stimulus-response conditioning, thereby reducing the human to a programmable organism.
Although behaviourism is no longer dominant, its mechanistic assumptions influenced modern therapies such as CBT, which retains the view of the mind as a system of correctable errors rather than a dynamic field of consciousness (Beck, 1976).
2.3 Humanistic Psychology: The Idealised Personal Self
Humanistic psychology attempted to restore meaning and subjective experience, yet it remained committed to the primacy of the personal self. Rogers (1951, 1961) and Maslow (1968) defined health in terms of self-actualisation and authentic personal expression. While more compassionate than earlier schools, humanistic psychology continued to equate identity with egoic structures.
This shift, while well-intentioned, helped to birth today’s therapeutic culture in which:
- emotional narratives are privileged,
- self-expression is valorised, and
- subjective feelings become moral and epistemic authorities.
2.4 Cognitive and Cognitive-Behavioural Models: The Mind as Machine
The cognitive revolution reframed the mind as an information-processing system. Thoughts were conceptualised as distortions to be corrected (Beck, 1976; Ellis, 1962). CBT, therefore, operates not on consciousness but on cognitive products.
This model reinforces the assumption that:
- internal experience is primarily cognitive,
- distress arises from misinterpretation,
- change requires cognitive restructuring.
All of these frameworks focus on repairing the ego, not transcending it.
2.5 A Shared Epistemology: Reductionism, Individualism, Ego-Centrism
Across all these diverse schools, three shared assumptions emerge:
- The self = the ego (Freud, Rogers, Beck)
- Suffering = dysfunction (DSM framework)
- Meaning = generated by the individual, not discovered through ontology
As Cushman (1990) famously argued, the empty self of Western psychology is “historically constituted, continually expanding, and fundamentally inward-facing.” Therapy becomes the process of filling, strengthening, or stabilising this self.
Consequently, Western psychology’s foundational architecture is narcissistic, not because therapists promote selfishness, but because the conceptual structure orients the individual toward their own egoic identity as the centre of reality.
- Structural Narcissism in Western Psychology
The term “narcissism” here is not used in its clinical sense but in its philosophical sense: a worldview in which the ego becomes the centre of experience, identity, interpretation, and meaning. Western psychology’s fundamental constructs—self-esteem, self-actualisation, self-expression, emotional authenticity—are built around this orientation (Lasch, 1979; Cushman, 1995).
While clinical discourse may critique narcissistic traits, therapy simultaneously amplifies the cultural production of narcissism by:
- centring emotional experience as authoritative,
- validating personal narratives as truth,
- reinforcing the ego’s interpretative primacy, and
- pathologising any suffering that disrupts egoic stability.
This mirrors what Lasch (1979) described as the “culture of narcissism,” where therapeutic discourse teaches individuals to examine, curate, and defend the personal self constantly.
3.1 The Emotions-as-Facts Assumption
One of the defining features of contemporary counselling and psychotherapy is the privileging of emotion. Therapists are trained to affirm statements such as:
- “Your feelings are valid.”
- “Your emotions are your truth.”
- “What you feel is real for you.”
- “Your lived experience cannot be disputed.”
This practice originates from Rogers’ (1951, 1961) client-centred therapy, which emphasised unconditional positive regard and empathic validation. While these principles were intended to promote safety and openness, their application in modern therapeutic culture has drifted toward epistemic validation of subjective emotional states.
The core error is conflation:
Emotion = truth
Subjective experience = objective reality
Feeling = fact
This shift converts therapy from a process of examining experience into a process of affirming the ego’s interpretation of experience. As sociologist Eva Illouz argues, contemporary emotional culture reframes feelings as “authoritative carriers of truth” (Illouz, 2007).
3.2 The Reinforcement of Egoic Narratives
When emotions become unquestionable, narratives become fortified. If a client states:
- “I feel betrayed,”
- “I feel abandoned,”
- “I feel unsafe,”
- “I feel worthless,”
many therapeutic frameworks treat these statements as truths to be validated, not perceptions to be examined.
This is not therapeutic neutrality—it is the reinforcement of identity structures.
As Gergen (2001) notes, therapy often teaches individuals to anchor identity in emotional narratives, generating a self that is “increasingly centred on the management and expression of feeling.”
The clinical consequences are clear:
- emotional reactivity becomes identity,
- personal narratives become unquestionable,
- clients become dependent on validation,
- the ego becomes psychologically privileged,
- introspection becomes self-referential rather than transformative.
Thus, Western therapy inadvertently creates a self-absorbed, hyper-reflexive subject, exactly the phenomenon critiqued in Lasch (1979).
- The Meaninglessness of Suffering in Western Models
Because Western psychology is not grounded in ontology, it lacks a conceptual framework that can hold suffering as meaningful, developmental, or transformative.
Instead, suffering is framed as:
- a symptom,
- a dysfunction,
- a maladaptive response,
- a disorder of thought or emotion.
This diagnostic stance is not neutral; it reflects a deep philosophical assumption that suffering has no purpose except to be eliminated (Foucault, 1973; Szasz, 1961).
4.1 Suffering as Symptomatology
In the DSM, suffering is never interpreted as:
- a developmental transition,
- an existential awakening,
- a restructuring of identity,
- a surfacing of unconscious material,
- a psycho-spiritual transformation.
Instead, suffering maps onto symptom clusters. If a person experiences sleeplessness, rumination, existential anxiety, or intense emotional states, these are quickly categorised within diagnostic frameworks such as:
- Major Depressive Disorder,
- Generalised Anxiety Disorder,
- Prolonged Grief Disorder,
- Adjustment Disorder,
- Bipolar Spectrum Disorders.
These categories do not inquire into the meaning, context, or ontological dimension of suffering; they simply classify distress for clinical utility.
4.2 The Clinical Consequences of Meaning-Erasure
Because suffering is conceptualised as dysfunction:
- therapists seek to reduce symptoms rather than explore their significance,
- clients are taught to fear or avoid discomfort,
- meaning-making is displaced by symptom management,
- pharmacological intervention becomes the primary solution.
As psychiatrist Joanna Moncrieff (2008) argues, the biomedical model has “colonised” emotional life by reducing suffering to neurological malfunction, thereby justifying medication without addressing underlying existential or social factors.
Similarly, Thomas Szasz (1961) warned that equating suffering with disease pathologises the human condition itself.
4.3 The Loss of Transformative Understandings of Suffering
Historically, many philosophical and spiritual traditions understood suffering as:
- a doorway to self-knowledge,
- a catalyst for existential growth,
- a confrontation with conditioned identity,
- a process of psychological transformation.
Contemporary psychology, however, replaces these views with:
- crisis intervention,
- emotional validation,
- cognitive restructuring,
- behavioural modification.
In doing so, psychotherapy strips suffering of its depth, rendering it an adversary to be conquered rather than a process to be understood.
As Yalom (1980) notes, modern psychiatry’s eradication of suffering has resulted in a loss of existential depth within clinical practice.
- Epistemological Limitations of Western Psychology
The limitations of Western psychology arise not merely from clinical practice but from its philosophical foundations.
5.1 The Assumption of the Autonomous Individual
Western psychology is built on the Enlightenment conception of the individual as:
- separate,
- self-contained,
- rational,
- autonomous.
This framework inherently centres the personal ego as the locus of identity and experience, leaving no conceptual space for relational, systemic, or consciousness-based interpretations of selfhood (Taylor, 1989).
5.2 Reductionism and Mechanistic Thinking
Most therapeutic models rely on either:
- biological reductionism (the brain generates suffering),
- cognitive reductionism (thoughts generate suffering), or
- behavioural reductionism (reinforcement histories generate suffering).
In each case:
- emotion is a product of pathology,
- meaning is secondary,
- consciousness is irrelevant,
- subjective experience is reduced to mechanisms.
As psychiatrist Allan Frances (2013) observes, reductions in complexity create diagnostic illusions rather than genuine understanding.
5.3 The Absence of Ontology
Perhaps the most limiting feature of Western psychology is its lack of an ontological foundation.
The field does not attempt to answer:
- what consciousness is,
- what the self is,
- the purpose of suffering,
- the nature of reality,
- the origin of emotional patterns,
- the relationship between mind and awareness.
As philosopher Evan Thompson (2015) notes, psychology has “no coherent theory of the self because it has no coherent theory of consciousness.”
In contrast, ontologically oriented systems—such as phenomenology, existential analysis, and transpersonal psychology—recognise that subjective experience must be understood within a broader metaphysical framework.
Yet Western mainstream psychology marginalises or excludes these approaches.
- The Pathologisation of Human Emotion
One of the most significant criticisms emerging from social science, critical psychiatry, and medical humanities is that Western psychology and psychiatry systematically pathologise normal human experience (Horwitz & Wakefield, 2007; Frances, 2013). The progressive expansion of diagnostic categories has transformed everyday emotions—sadness, worry, restlessness, grief—into clinical symptoms requiring treatment.
This process reflects what Conrad (2007) terms “the medicalisation of human life”, whereby social and existential problems become interpreted through biomedical frameworks. In this shift, emotions are no longer contextually meaningful responses but “signs” of underlying disorders.
6.1 Diagnostic Categories as Cultural Artefacts
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) presents itself as an objective classification system, yet its categories are fundamentally shaped by cultural, historical, and political forces (Kirk & Kutchins, 1992; Cooper, 2014). Diagnostic boundaries shift between editions based on committee decisions, professional lobbying, and shifting socio-cultural norms.
Several examples illustrate the plasticity of psychiatric diagnosis:
- Homosexuality: classified as a mental disorder until 1973 (Drescher, 2015).
- Grief: now defined as “Prolonged Grief Disorder” if it persists beyond an arbitrary timeframe (Wakefield, 2013).
- Childhood restlessness: reframed as ADHD, with rates increasing dramatically after DSM-IV (Singh, 2008).
These shifts demonstrate that psychiatric diagnosis is not merely descriptive but constitutive—it actively shapes public perception of what counts as illness.
Horwitz and Wakefield (2007) famously argued that modern psychiatry has confused “normal sadness” with depressive disorder, resulting in widespread overdiagnosis.
6.2 Emotions Misclassified as Symptoms
Diagnostic manuals treat emotions as pathological when they become:
- frequent,
- intense,
- prolonged,
- situationally inappropriate,
- or disruptive to functioning.
Yet such criteria fail to acknowledge:
- cultural variation in emotional expression,
- the role of personality and temperament,
- situational meaning-making,
- developmental processes,
- existential or spiritual transitions.
For example, anxiety and sadness—common human responses to uncertainty, loss, or meaning crisis—are often quickly diagnosed and medicated. The assumption is that emotional discomfort indicates disorder, a perspective increasingly challenged in contemporary research (Barlow, 2002; Cramer et al., 2010).
This clinical stance supports the argument that mainstream psychology reduces emotions not to experiences to be understood, but to anomalies to be corrected.
- Diagnostic Inflation: The Expanding Boundaries of Pathology
The DSM has grown from 106 disorders in 1952 to over 450 today. This dramatic expansion has triggered extensive criticism.
7.1 The Politics of Diagnosis
Kirk and Kutchins (1992) argue that DSM categories are shaped less by empirical evidence than by negotiations within psychiatric committees. These committees often face pressures from:
- professional groups seeking recognition for new disorders,
- pharmaceutical companies seeking expanded markets,
- advocacy groups seeking legitimacy,
- insurance companies requiring diagnostic clarity for billing.
Thus, diagnoses emerge from institutional processes, not objective discovery.
7.2 Overdiagnosis and Misdiagnosis
Diagnostic inflation results in:
- increased rates of mental health diagnoses in children and adults,
- rising use of psychotropic medications,
- expanded psychiatric intervention into everyday life.
Frances (2013), chair of the DSM-IV task force, warned that DSM-5 risked “turning normality into pathology.” He emphasised that new disorders (e.g., Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder, Binge Eating Disorder) would “exacerbate the already rampant overdiagnosis” in psychiatry.
Similarly, Moynihan et al. (2002) detail how disease categories expand under the influence of pharmaceutical marketing.
7.3 The Problem of Construct Validity
Psychiatric diagnoses lack biomarkers. There are no laboratory tests for depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, ADHD, PTSD, or most other DSM categories (Insel, 2013). Former NIMH director Thomas Insel famously admitted that psychiatric diagnoses possess “no objective validity.”
Thus, diagnoses rest on:
- subjective clinical judgments,
- behavioural observation,
- patient self-report,
- committee-defined thresholds.
This lack of biological grounding contributes to diagnostic fluidity and inflates the likelihood of misclassification.
- The Pharmaceutical–Psychiatric Complex
The expansion of diagnoses aligns closely with the rise of the pharmaceutical industry. Many scholars have documented how pharmaceutical companies shape psychiatric knowledge production (Healy, 2002; Moncrieff, 2008; Whitaker, 2010).
8.1 The Chemical Imbalance Myth
From the 1990s onward, pharmaceutical marketing promoted the idea that mental disorders result from chemical imbalances—primarily deficits in serotonin or dopamine. Yet research has repeatedly shown that:
- no such imbalances were ever empirically demonstrated (Lacasse & Leo, 2005),
- antidepressants do not correct any known chemical abnormality (Moncrieff, 2022),
- placebo effects account for much of their efficacy (Kirsch, 2009).
Despite this, the chemical imbalance narrative persists because it:
- legitimises diagnosis,
- simplifies complex experiences,
- expands pharmaceutical markets,
- reduces stigma by reframing suffering as biological.
However, it also strips suffering of meaning, reinforcing the idea that distress is a malfunction, not a message.
8.2 Medication as the End-Point of Diagnostic Pathways
Once a diagnosis is assigned, medication becomes the standard intervention. Data from the CDC and OECD show:
- antidepressant use has more than tripled in many Western countries since 1990,
- ADHD medication prescriptions have risen exponentially among children,
- antipsychotics are increasingly prescribed for non-psychotic conditions.
Moncrieff (2008) argues that psychotropic drugs produce altered states rather than correcting disorders—similar to alcohol or recreational drugs—yet they are marketed as targeted treatments.
Whitaker (2010) further documents how long-term outcomes for patients often worsen with prolonged medication use.
8.3 Economic Incentives in Diagnostic Expansion
The psychiatric-pharmaceutical alliance incentivises diagnostic growth by:
- funding research into new disorders,
- supporting DSM committee members,
- sponsoring training, conferences, and educational materials.
The result is what Frances (2013) describes as “diagnostic exuberance”—a system where the creation of new disorders drives profits.
- Therapy as Ego-Repair: The Clinical Consequences
With diagnosis pathologising normal emotion and medication reducing suffering to symptoms, psychotherapy increasingly takes on a role akin to ego maintenance.
9.1 The Therapeutic Self as Cultural Product
Therapy teaches individuals to conceptualise themselves through:
- emotional narratives,
- identity categories,
- cognitive models,
- trauma histories,
- internal schemas.
This “therapeutic self,” described by Illouz (2008), is characterised by:
- introspective self-focus,
- emotional centrality,
- ongoing self-evaluation,
- dependence on expert validation.
Such a self is vulnerable to structural narcissism.
9.2 Validation as Reinforcement of Egoic Identity
The practice of consistently validating a client’s emotions—an inheritance from Rogers—results clinically in:
- the consolidation of emotional narratives,
- the strengthening of self-referential patterns,
- difficulty tolerating emotional discomfort,
- heightened sensitivity to perceived invalidation.
As Wachtel (2011) notes, therapy often becomes a site where individuals “rehearse maladaptive narratives” in ways that increase entrenchment rather than facilitate change.
9.3 Therapy’s Avoidance of Ontological Inquiry
Most therapeutic models avoid fundamental questions:
- What is the self?
- What is the nature of consciousness?
- What is the meaning of suffering?
- What lies beyond personal identity?
By avoiding these inquiries, therapy remains within the parameters of egoic logic.
Psychologist James Hillman (1992) argued that psychotherapy has become a “psychology without soul,” unable to engage the deeper dimensions of human experience.
9.4 The Consequence: Psychological Dependence
When therapy reinforces ego structures, clients may become:
- reliant on validation,
- dependent on therapeutic relationships,
- resistant to discomfort,
- less resilient,
- more self-focused.
Cushman (1995) calls this the “empty self,” continually needing to be fortified through therapeutic consumption
- The Need for Ontology in Psychology
Mainstream psychology is grounded in empiricism and methodological naturalism, which treat consciousness as secondary, derivative, or epiphenomenal (Searle, 1992; Dennett, 1991). While useful in constructing behavioural and cognitive models, this approach creates a profound conceptual limitation:
Western psychology lacks an ontology of mind, self, or suffering.
Because it offers no coherent understanding of consciousness—its nature, structure, or relationship to subjective experience—its interpretations of emotional life remain superficial. As Thompson (2015) argues, psychology’s failure to address consciousness leaves it unable to explain phenomena that lie outside mechanistic frameworks.
Without ontology, psychology resorts to:
- symptom classification,
- cognitive restructuring,
- behavioural conditioning,
- emotional validation,
- pharmacological modification.
None of these address the deeper existential, developmental, or transformational dimensions of human suffering.
- Consciousness-Oriented Alternatives: A Comparative Framework
Although marginalised in mainstream psychology, several academic disciplines offer richer ontological perspectives:
- Phenomenology
- Existential analysis
- Depth psychology
- Transpersonal psychology
- Contemplative neuroscience
- Process philosophy
- Consciousness studies
These fields recognise that subjective experience cannot be reduced to neurochemical activity or cognitive distortions.
11.1 Phenomenology: Experience as Intentional and Structured
Phenomenology, from Husserl (1970) to Merleau-Ponty (1962), emphasises:
- the primacy of lived experience,
- the intentional structure of consciousness,
- the inseparability of perceiver and world.
This view directly challenges reductionist models of emotion and selfhood. Phenomenology positions emotional states not as disorders but as ways of being-in-the-world. Scholars like Ratcliffe (2008) have shown how moods disclose existential meaning rather than merely signalling dysfunction.
11.2 Existential Psychology: Suffering as Developmental
Existential thinkers—Frankl (1959), Yalom (1980), Tillich (1952)—argue that suffering is inherent to human life and often necessary for transformation. Suffering reveals:
- the instability of identity,
- the search for meaning,
- the limitations of egoic control,
- the reality of existential freedom.
Within this framework, suffering is not an error but a teacher—a perspective absent in DSM-driven psychiatry.
11.3 Depth Psychology: The Ego as Surface Phenomenon
Depth psychology (Jung, Hillman) posits that:
- the ego is not the total personality,
- the unconscious is a vast field of archetypal processes,
- suffering emerges from misalignment with deeper psychic forces.
Jungian models view psychological crises as potential sites of individuation rather than pathology (Jung, 1960).
11.4 Transpersonal Psychology: Beyond the Ego
Transpersonal psychology (Maslow, 1971; Grof, 2000; Wilber, 2000) directly challenges the reductionist orientation of mainstream psychology by exploring:
- non-ordinary states of consciousness,
- spiritual emergence,
- ego dissolution,
- expanded identity,
- interconnectedness.
Grof (2000) documents how experiences labelled as psychosis within psychiatry can often be reinterpreted as transformative processes when contextualised in ontological or spiritual frameworks.
11.5 Contemplative Neuroscience: Consciousness as Trainable
Recent research (Davidson & Goleman, 2017; Lutz et al., 2008) has demonstrated that contemplative practices:
- alter neural patterns,
- increase emotional regulation,
- enhance metacognitive awareness,
- reduce reactivity,
- cultivate non-egoic states.
These findings show that consciousness can be intentionally modified, something mainstream psychology fails to incorporate.
- How Consciousness-Oriented Models Address the Failures of Western Psychology
These alternative fields reveal several key shortcomings in the mainstream psychological model.
12.1 Emotion Without Ontology Becomes Pathology
Reductionist psychology treats emotions as:
- biological reactions,
- cognitive distortions,
- behavioural outputs.
Consciousness-based approaches recognise emotions as:
- phenomenological disclosures,
- relational signals,
- expressions of unconscious or developmental processes,
- invitations to self-inquiry,
- transitions in identity structure.
Thus, what mainstream psychology calls symptom, ontological frameworks call process.
12.2 Suffering Without Meaning Becomes Disorder
When suffering is viewed as error:
- it becomes something to medicate,
- it becomes something to eliminate,
- it becomes something that has no value.
Existential and transpersonal frameworks, by contrast, show that suffering often:
- reveals egoic fragility,
- initiates identity transformation,
- opens possibilities for expanded awareness,
- signals misalignment with deeper values or realities.
Hence, suffering can be developmental, not dysfunctional.
12.3 Identity Without Ontology Becomes Narcissism
When the ego is conceptualised as the self:
- personal narratives become reality,
- emotional validation becomes epistemic authority,
- therapy reinforces self-referential identity structures.
Ontological models reveal:
- the ego is not the self,
- identity is a fluid process,
- awareness transcends narrative,
- emotional attachment is not truth.
Mainstream therapy cannot disrupt narcissistic identity because its models enshrine egoic logic.
12.4 Diagnosis Without Biomarkers Becomes Cultural Storytelling
The DSM lacks biomarkers for its categories (Insel, 2013). Diagnoses thus reflect:
- cultural norms,
- social expectations,
- political contexts,
- institutional incentives.
Ontological frameworks, however, do not begin with diagnosis but with:
- meaning,
- experience,
- consciousness,
- inner architecture,
- existential reality.
This approach provides deeper explanatory power than symptom lists.
- Toward an Ontological Psychology
To move beyond reductionism, psychology requires:
- An ontology of consciousness
– Recognising awareness as foundational, not derivative. - An ontology of self
– Differentiating ego from deeper identity structures. - An ontology of suffering
– Understanding distress as a process, not pathology. - An ontology of emotion
– Viewing emotions as movement in consciousness, not facts. - An ontology of transformation
– Integrating existential, developmental, and transpersonal growth.
Without these, psychology will continue to:
- misinterpret emotional phenomena,
- reinforce egoic identity,
- pathologise normal variation,
- overuse medical interventions,
- neglect human potential.
Ontology is not optional—it is essential for a complete science of mind.
- Conclusion
This paper has demonstrated that mainstream Western psychology:
- reinforces egoic identity structures,
- validates emotional narratives as truth,
- pathologises normal emotional experience,
- expands diagnostic categories beyond empirical justification,
- promotes pharmaceutical intervention through unproven biological models,
- neglects the meaning and developmental value of suffering,
- operates without a coherent ontology of self or consciousness.
Consequently, Western psychology often produces structural narcissism: a self-referential, emotionally centralised subject whose identity is anchored in narrative, pathology, and validation rather than transformation.
Consciousness-oriented, phenomenological, existential, and transpersonal frameworks offer richer ontologies that:
- contextualise emotion,
- illuminate suffering,
- differentiate ego from deeper identity,
- reconceptualise crisis as transformation,
- recognise the irreducible role of consciousness.
Only by incorporating ontological intelligence can psychology evolve into a discipline capable of addressing the full depth of human experience.
Such a transformation requires abandoning the pathologising, reductive models of the DSM era and embracing frameworks that treat suffering not as disorder, but as the beginning of wisdom.
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