This are the issues I specifically had with Integral Psychology the book. There may be better introductions to Integral Theory?

I’m used to reading philosophers like Kant, who introduce lots of their own terminology, and even sloppier philosophers who set their own definitions for commonly-used words. But Integral Psychology uses a number of terms without defining them. I can’t figure out whether these are terms Wilber made up (“centaur” is the most likely of these), or whether they’re from Eastern philosophy sources that he simply expects all his readers to be familiar with. It doesn’t help that when you Google them, all you get is Integral Theory articles that don’t define them either. Janette says that these terms are definied in Wilber’s more foundational works and he just made the unfortunate choice to cut the definitions when condensing his ideas into Integral Psychology.

I find the general tone of Integral Psychology to be preaching to the converted: “of course you’re attracted to Eastern philosophy and of course you find science and postmodernism unsatisfying”. In fact, in the past I found science’s explanations to be very comforting and I don’t find Eastern philosophy to be particularly appealing. I accept his use of postmodernism’s criticisms of modernism, but to me that says that I should believe postmodernism, not a premodern-modern synthesis.

Wilber sets postmodernism up as something of a straw man. Just because it may have excesses in literary theory doesn’t mean that we need to take only a few ideas from postmodernism and retreat to a modernist worldview. Granted, postmodernism is a critical theory and doesn’t generally present a positive belief system, but maybe somebody like Wilber could articulate one? I was particularly unimpressed by Wilber’s argument that postmodern and Buddhist nihilisms are obviously wrong – I can conceive of a world that is meaningless, can’t you?

Integral Psychology does essentially mesh with positive psychology: Western psychology until now has dealt with development to okay and the difficulties that a person can run into along the way. Eastern philosophy and religion is a good source of knowledge how to move past okay. And I do support the abstraction insofar as it finds links between ideas such as Buddhism and postmodern identity theory.

Integral Theory is a substantial philosophical system that Ken Wilber has gradually developed by analyzing huge amounts of Eastern and Western philosophy. Since Integral Theory itself is complex and Wilber likes to heavily cite, it’s difficult to know where to start. My friend Janette, who I consider an expert in Integral Theory, recommended Integral Psychology, as a reasonable introduction. I read the book a few months ago and discussed it with her, but I forgot to write it up as a blog post until now.

In a nutshell, Integral Theory is a systematic combination of reductionism, systems theory, critical theory (including postmodernism) and transpersonalism: the knowledge of the self taught by religious movements and Eastern philosophy. I was attracted to Integral Theory because, as readers of this blog have probably noted, I champion postmodernism while frequently falling back on modernist analysis.

I say Integral Theory is a “philosophical system”, but I’m actually not sure exactly what it is. Is it making a falsifiable claim about the way the world is? Or is it just a metaphor with greater explanatory potential than alternatives? “If you apply Integral Theory to this problem, you will understand it better than if you apply reductionism.” Without knowing what kind of claim Wilber is making, I don’t know how to evaluate the strength of his claim.

Integral Theory has the modernist concept of progress as a central belief. Specifically, progress of belief systems: Integral Theory is the next step after postmodernism. But postmodernists see progress as specifically modernist and ask “what makes you so sure it’s progress and not just change?” Integral Theory feels like a synthesis of modernism with some premodern and postmodern ideas but it doesn’t step past modernism.

Wilber’s technique is to analyze hundreds of philosophical systems and abstract them to their core structure. For example, he sees all Eastern religions as describing the same basic development of the self. This strikes me as incredibly reductionist and I suspect believers in those specific systems would say that he’s missing a lot of important details.