Recall `the prisoner in the cave` parable (Platos Allegory of the cave). How is the fundamental concept in that parable applicable to contemporary psychology (cognitive, developmental, psychiatry, neuroscience etc) and psychology in the future?

Psychology and the Prisoner of the Cave

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Psychology and the Prisoner of the Cave

In Plato 's allegory of the cave , prisoners inside a cave from were tied in such a way that

they are unable to move their limbs and heads . This was the situation of the prisoners since childhood . The heads of all the prisoners were also tied in such a way that their gaze is permanently fixed in only one direction . That direction is the direction facing the cave wall . Several puppet objects would be held up by others from an elevated walkway every once in a while . The objects will cast shadows on the wall that the prisoners are facing . The shadows appear when the puppets are placed between the prisoners and the light coming from the fire from behind the prisoners . In effect , the images of the shadows formed on the wall in front of the prisoners and the sounds they hear whenever the images appear are thought of by the prisoners as the real objects

Indeed , the prisoners believed that the images they saw on the wall were the real objects . Since they were unable to turn their backs as they were tied , they were unable to see the `real ' objects from behind them . Every image and sound they hear would be retained in their memory as something real and is not a product of something else . Their thinking will be conditioned in such a way that the only real knowledge they know of are the ones that they have been seeing on the wall since their childhood

Assume now that a prisoner is released from all those years of being tied down , giving him the freedom to move and look at all directions Plato tells us that the freed prisoner will be blinded by the light coming from the sun outside the entrance of the cave . It will be a painful visual experience at first because the prisoner will have to adjust with the light from the sun after a while . The prisoner will realize that the images that he saw on the walls were not the real objects . He will learn that they were merely shadows of the `real objects that were causing those images . On the other hand , returning to the cave will only bring back the prisoner to the state of not knowing what is real . This is because his vision has already adjusted with the light from the sun . By returning to the cave , his vision will not be able to immediately cope with the cave 's darkness (Kanazawa , 160

The parable basically teaches the lesson that not everything that we immediately see and...