Determinism, Freedom, and Psychology

Lately, I have learned a bit about how psychology seeks to empower people. I have made several realizations about freedom as I have studied this. The beginning philosophical point for many psychologists seems actually to be an idea quite anti-thetical to the notion of freedom: environmental determinism. Along with rationalists like Spinoza, psychologists in the tradition of Freud see human behavior as a result of visceral, natural reactions to stimuli. Our feelings are determined by what seems to be a programmed response to certain situations over which it seems that we have little choice. When I see a bear on a jog in the mountains, I immediately get the sensation of fear and my next action--flight--follows naturally from this sensation. The decision time between this emotion and this action is very little. The same goes for anger and love; I act in a certain way when I encounter specific sets of stimuli. So, in general, psychologists posit that all human behavior in a sense comes from natural laws. We react in a determined way when we are stimulated in such and such a way. So how can we make free decisions or better choices other than just our natural instincts? Psychology suggests that freedom is possible in this model. The first key is recognizing that we do react most of the time automatically to certain situations with little reflection. You can come to this realization by trying to become more conscious of your emotional state through activities such as meditation, breathing exercises, etc. When you are feeling at any time a particularly strong emotion, one should stop and try to pinpoint what the emotion is that you are feeling. Stress? Depression? Anger? More often than not, these are emotions that at any other time we would not choose to feel. By stopping and realizing what we are feeling, we, in a sense, remove ourselves from the situation that gave rise to the emotion and we give ourselves a small window to make a decision. There is a window between stimuli and reaction in which free will exists. While we cannot choose to feel the stimuli and the accompanying emotion per se, we do choose how to react. By getting better at recognizing what emotions we feel, we in essence increase that short moment where all decisions are made. Most people don't make decisions because their actions have become programmed by habit.