The great advances in other sciences were made possible by the invention of new tools like telescopes, microscopes, and all types of electrical and electronic devices, that gave access to information otherwise beyond our grasp. On the other hand, the primary tools of the psychological professions - talking, listening, and observing - have always been around and used by people seeking to understand and improve the human condition. Thousands of years of observation by wise people have yielded many universal or near-universal principals that work to make life better. Sure, we've made big advances in neurological understanding thanks to the tools of the physical sciences. But our current general understanding of psychological health is not substantially different from that obtained by philosophers thousands of years ago. In fact, if we had to choose between ancient wisdom and modern psychological teachings, I suspect we would often do better betting on the ancient wisdom.

The psychological sciences, now in their second century, set out with a new approach - using the scientific method to learn about people. In a sense, they threw away previous knowledge and set out to reinvent the wheel. The problem is that the lens through which they have studied people is a limited one and has missed what the religions have taken for granted.

What is that limited lens? The lens of the individual. Psychology is essentially INDIVIDUAL psychology. We study individuals in depth in the psychotherapy office, we do psychological testing on individuals, we perform experiments on individuals, and we survey individuals.

But the study of the individual is inadequate to accurately understand human behavior. Why?