Strangers to Ourselves:
Readings in Psychology, Psychoanalysis, amd Psychotherapy
(Created by Dr. Jürgen Braungardt)
(Created by Dr. Jürgen Braungardt)
Welcome to Somnus, an educational resource dedicated to psychology—the scientific study of the mind and behavior. Grounded in the brain's intricate biology, with roughly 100 billion neurons forming trillions of synaptic connections, psychology examines human cognition, emotion, and action through rigorous methods: introspection, observation, structured interviews, phenomenological analysis, and empirical research with statistical validation.
This discipline encompasses diverse paradigms, from experimental approaches modeling biological and evolutionary mechanisms (e.g., neurotransmitter functions and adaptive behaviors) to humanistic perspectives prioritizing personal agency, meaning, and subjective experience, and psychoanalytic frameworks uncovering unconscious drives, repressed desires, and early conflicts, as pioneered by Freud and reinterpreted linguistically by Lacan.
The site is organized as a central Overview page, detailing the mind-brain foundation, investigative techniques, historical tensions among visions, psychoanalytic depths, and psychology's interdisciplinary ties to biology, philosophy, AI, linguistics, and societal applications. Explore dedicated sections on key thinkers and topics, including Psychoanalysis, Humanistic Psychology, Gestalt Theory, Experimental Psychology, Learning and Development, and Other Projects.
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(Page updated on Jan 4, 2026)
Recent Entries and Updates:
Carl Rogers (Jan 2026)
Psychoanalytic Movemenent (July 2025)
Main Sections:
Psychology is the science of the mind, but it begins with the machinery of the brain. It is the most complex object in the known universe, a three-pound enigma that generates every thought, hope, and fear you have ever experienced.
The biology alone is staggering. You are carrying around roughly 100 billion neurons. The connections between them—the synapses—number in the hundreds of trillions. To put that in perspective, there are more potential connections in your cerebral cortex than there are stars in our galaxy.
How do we study something as elusive as the mind? We are effectively trying to study the engine while the car is running, without ever being able to open the hood. We cannot weigh a memory, place a dream under a microscope, or see a thought in transit.
Because we cannot observe the mind directly, psychology must rely on clues. We treat human behavior—speech, gestures, actions, and reactions—as the raw data. Just as a physicist infers the existence of a black hole by how it bends the light around it, we infer the workings of the psyche by observing how it bends human behavior.
To do this, the field utilizes a specific grid of methodologies ranging from the subjective to the statistical:
Introspection and Phenomenological Methods: Attempting to capture the texture of lived experience from the inside out.
Observation and Descriptive Categorization: Mapping behavior as it occurs naturally in the wild.
Structured Interviews: Gathering qualitative data through dialogue and speech.
Empirical Analysis: Using the rigorous tools of the natural sciences to subject our findings to statistical verification.
While humanity has puzzled over the soul for millennia, psychology as a distinct science is surprisingly young. It was only in 1879 that Wilhelm Wundt opened the first experimental lab in Leipzig, formally severing the discipline from its mother-ship, philosophy.
Since then, the field has fractured into vastly different approaches, often operating in tension with one another.
The Scientific Approach: Models itself after biology and physics. It seeks to explain human behavior through quantifiable mechanisms—neurotransmitters, cognitive processing speeds, and evolutionary adaptations.
The Humanistic and Existential Approach: Rejects the reduction of humans to biological machines. It focuses on agency, meaning-making, and the unique subjective experience of the individual.
The Psychoanalytic Approach: Perhaps the most distinct of all, this tradition argues that we are strangers to ourselves. It posits that our conscious life is merely the tip of an iceberg, driven by unconscious forces, repressed desires, and early developmental conflicts.
On this website, particular emphasis is placed on Psychoanalysis. Unlike experimental psychology, which often seeks to normalize and categorize, psychoanalysis listens to the exceptions—the slip of the tongue, the recurring dream, the unexplained symptom.
From the foundational work of Sigmund Freud to the linguistic and topological reconstruction of psychoanalysis through Jacques Lacan, the mind is viewed not just as a computer, but as a text to be read. The paradigm of science shifts to a dialogic method of establishing truth. Psyychoanalysis bridges the gap between medicine and philosophy, offering a new way to understand the "Shadow" aspects of the human subject.
Today, psychology sits at a busy intellectual intersection. It borders on one side to biology and medicine; on another to social theory, philosophy, and literature. It even shares a frontier with cognitive science, artificial intelligence and linguistics.
This diversity creates a colorful but fragmented discipline. On one axis, you have the rigorous methods of science; on the other, a vast range of applications—from the design of social institutions like schools and hospitals, to the study of political power, economics, and sexuality.
Psychology remains a unique hybrid. It uses the tools of science to answer the questions of philosophy, forever searching for a unity within itself.