Psychology as a discipline rests on a presupposition so fundamental that it is almost never stated: Soul phenomena have the intrinsic property of consciousness. This does not mean that the person is aware of them (often they are not). It means that the phenomena themselves, in their structure, have the quality of being conscious—of being expressive, meaningful, self-referential.
A dream that the dreamer never remembers is still conscious as a phenomenon. A symptom that the sufferer cannot explain is still conscious as a phenomenon. A sacrifice performed by an archaic people is conscious as a phenomenon, regardless of what the modern observer understands or judges about it.
Without this presupposition, psychology cannot exist. If psychological phenomena were merely blind facts (like a blood clot or a fever), then psychology would be impossible. Psychology is possible only if phenomena have intrinsic consciousness—if they are, in themselves, meaningful.
This presupposition is what separates psychology from natural science. Natural science presupposes natural laws. Psychology presupposes that phenomena are, in themselves, conscious expressions. Just as natural science does not need to prove that nature follows laws (this is the presupposition that makes natural science possible), psychology does not need to prove that soul phenomena are meaningful (this is the presupposition that makes psychology possible).
To say that soul phenomena are "events of meaning" requires careful unpacking. This does not mean they are meaningful to us or meaningful for our purposes. It means they are meaning.
Consider language. The sounds "cat" are physically just vibrations in air. But they are also—simultaneously and primarily—meaning. The physical aspect does not exhaust what language is. Language is fundamentally linguistic; the sounds are created in the meaning-structure of language.
Similarly, a soul phenomenon is fundamentally conscious. The fact that it occurred is the fact that consciousness manifested itself. A dream is not a random neural firing that, incidentally, happens to make sense. A dream is a conscious event that shows itself through psychological imagery. The consciousness is intrinsic, not incidental.
This is why Gigerenzer insists: psychology is possible only if phenomena are recognized as having this intrinsic quality. If dreams were merely random neural noise, psychology would be impossible—we could have neuroscience, but not psychology. If symptoms were merely organic malfunction, we could have medicine, but not psychology. If sacrifice were merely social behavior, we could have anthropology, but not psychology.
The clearest proof that phenomena can be intrinsic events of meaning is poetry and art. A great poem is not meaningful because it points to something else (though it may do that secondarily). The poem is meaningful. The poem's consciousness is intrinsic to the poem.
When you read a poem in immanent reflection, you do not ask "what is this poem about?" You allow the poem to show you what it is saying about itself through itself. The poem is self-expression. The consciousness is in the poem, not in your interpretation of the poem.
Now apply this to soul phenomena. A dream is like a poem—an expression of the soul speaking to itself about itself. A symptom is like a poem—a concrete manifestation of the soul's situation expressed through the body. A narrative the patient tells is like a poem—the patient's consciousness expressing itself.
But here is where contemporary psychology goes wrong: It treats phenomena as if they need external interpretation to become meaningful. It reads the dream as if the dream were a text in a foreign language requiring translation. The dream itself is not conscious; only the psychologist's interpretation of the dream becomes conscious.
Gigerenzer reverses this: The dream itself is conscious. The dream is the consciousness. The psychologist's task is not to translate the dream into meaning but to dwell within the dream's own meaning—to recognize what the dream already is.
This distinction reveals the fundamental difference between psychology and natural science.
A natural phenomenon—a chemical reaction, a star exploding, a disease process—can be completely understood as mechanical, causal, blind process. Its nature does not require consciousness. The phenomenon simply happens.
A psychological phenomenon—a dream, a symptom, a ritual killing—is different. It is not merely something that happens to consciousness. It is something that consciousness does to itself. The phenomenon shows itself; it expresses something; it means.
This is why Jung could claim that "the psyche makes such a statement" and that "a descriptive science will therefore say: it is of the nature of the psyche to make such statements." The psyche is not a mechanism that produces behaviors. The psyche is consciousness itself—in its various expressions, its multiple forms, its historical manifestations.
A dream is consciousness expressing something about itself. A symptom is consciousness manifesting something about its own situation. A patient's narrative is consciousness telling itself about itself. The consciousness is not hidden behind the phenomenon, waiting to be extracted. The consciousness is the phenomenon.
What happens when psychology abandons the presupposition that soul phenomena are intrinsic events of meaning?
Contemporary psychology has done exactly this. By adopting the external reflection stance (treating phenomena as objects to be analyzed from outside), psychology has made the intrinsic consciousness of phenomena invisible. Phenomena become signs, symptoms, behaviors—things that point beyond themselves.
A patient's story becomes a "narrative defense." What the patient is expressing (the intrinsic consciousness of the narrative) becomes secondary to what the narrative "means" (its function in defending against anxiety). The phenomenon itself disappears beneath the interpretation.
A dream becomes a "symbolic expression of unconscious wishes." What the dream is doing (showing the soul something about itself) becomes secondary to what the dream "means for" (its utility in expressing repressed desires). The phenomenon's own consciousness is eclipsed by the analyst's interpretation.
A symptom becomes a "somatic expression of psychological conflict." What the symptom is (a soul-expression in bodily form) becomes secondary to what the symptom "means for" (its role in expressing unconscious conflict). The phenomenon's own wisdom is replaced by the clinician's analysis.
Psychology has become a science of what phenomena mean for something else, not a discipline of what phenomena are in themselves. This is why therapy often fails to touch the soul—because the therapeutic method systematically avoids the soul's own intrinsic expressions in favor of external meanings.
If soul phenomena are intrinsic events of meaning, then psychology's proper method must be immanent reflection—entering the phenomenon's own logic, allowing the phenomenon to show what it is.
This is not romantic or sentimental. It is rigorous. To understand what a phenomenon is requires disciplined attention to its own structure, logic, and self-expression. Just as understanding a poem requires careful attention to its language, rhythm, and imagery, understanding a soul phenomenon requires attention to its own intrinsic meaning.
The dream does not need interpretation to become meaningful. The dream needs recognition as meaningful. The psychologist's task is not to impose meaning on the dream but to articulate what the dream already expresses.
The symptom does not need analysis to reveal its purpose. The symptom reveals itself—what it is doing, what it is expressing, what the soul is saying through the symptom. The psychologist's task is not to decode the symptom but to dwell within it long enough to hear what it is saying.
A patient's narrative does not need deconstruction to reveal its hidden meanings. The narrative speaks itself. The task is to listen—not to what the narrative "is really about" but to what the narrative itself is saying about the patient's own consciousness.
Philosophy: Consciousness and Ontology — The claim that phenomena have intrinsic consciousness is an ontological claim, not merely an epistemological one. It states what phenomena are, not just how we know them. This connects to phenomenological philosophy's insistence that consciousness is not a content of mind but the structure of appearing itself. Gigerenzer's soul phenomena are intrinsically conscious just as phenomenological phenomena are intrinsically structured for consciousness.
Creative-Practice: Artistic Expression and Consciousness — Poetry, painting, music are paradigmatic cases of intrinsic consciousness. An artwork is not meaningful because it expresses something about the artist's unconscious. The artwork is consciousness expressing itself. This is why art can move us in ways that clinical analysis cannot. Art dwells in the phenomenon's own consciousness. Psychology would become equally powerful if it learned to do with soul phenomena what artists do with their media.
If psychological phenomena are intrinsically conscious, then psychopathology is not a breakdown of mechanism (which is how medicine thinks of disease). Psychopathology is a deformation of consciousness itself. A symptom is not a malfunction requiring repair; it is consciousness in a particular configuration, expressing something about the soul's situation.
This means that "healing" cannot mean returning the psyche to normal functioning. It must mean allowing consciousness to see itself, to recognize what it is expressing, and from that recognition to transform itself. The healer's task is not to fix the mechanism but to establish the conditions for consciousness to encounter itself.
This reverses therapeutic ideology entirely. Therapy that treats symptoms as malfunctions to be eliminated will systematically miss what the symptom is expressing. The symptom may disappear (through medication, behavior change, or forced adaptation), but the consciousness that generated it remains untouched. The soul speaks again—through a different symptom.
How would psychological practice change if every phenomenon were approached as already conscious, already meaningful, already expressing something? What would happen if the psychologist's role was to recognize and articulate the phenomenon's intrinsic meaning rather than imposing external interpretation?
Are there phenomena that lack intrinsic consciousness? Or is consciousness itself a quality of all psychic phenomena? If some phenomena are "just mechanism," how would we recognize that?
Can consciousness be deformed, fragmented, or inverted? If phenomena are intrinsically conscious, then psychological suffering is not the absence of consciousness but consciousness in particular configurations. How does this understanding of pathology differ from the medical model?