Modern Psychology is a Soft Magic System (Sounds Crazy, But Hear Me Out)

Photo by Dollar Gill on Unsplash

In story, magic systems are the rules that govern how supernatural phenomenon occur and how they can be controlled. Detailed by American novelist Brandon Sanderson, magic systems are ubiquitous literary devices in sci-fi and high fantasy genres.

In this case, we are defining magic as any supernatural phenomenon that supersedes cause and effect.

The supernatural is literally the ability to override the natural, and those who practice magic attempt to impose their will on reality. Magic is, strictly speaking, fictional. However, magic practices are a near universal part of human cultures and religions the world over.

In this article, I will detail why psychology as a scientific field and as a practice, is basically a magic system.

Magic systems are typically classified as soft or hard.

• Hard magic systems define in explicit detail what is possible through a clear and consistent syntax and defined rules. By understanding all of the rules, you can understand more or less everything that is possible to accomplish with the magic. Like a science, anything you don’t understand can conceivably be understood through study, practice or research.
• Soft magic system, on the other hand, are more flexible, with rules that feel more like guidelines and causes and effects which are far less consistent. Soft magic is more of an art than a science, and there are just as many exceptions to the rule as their are rules.

Common examples of soft magic include things like Dr. Strange, Harry Potter and The Lord of The Rings. In these worlds we know that magic exists, often see individuals interacting with or actively using magic, but we don’t ever get a concise understanding as to “how” it works.

In Harry Potter they literally go to a magic school, giving the impression that it is a “Hard magic” world, but as the reader, there is never a fully fleshed out set of rules that give us an idea of what the wizards are capable of. In this case, the magic is a kind of plot device — the wizards can do whatever the plot needs them to be able to do.

This can create it’s fair share of plot holes if uses of magic are introduced to solve a problem that are conveniently forgotten or neglected to solve a different problem, or if magic is used in ways that are inconsistent. But for as long as a narrative avoids too many conflicts, we are encouraged to suspend disbelief.

By accepting that magic is real, we can enjoy the story.

Meanwhile… In the “Real World”

As a psychologist, I have been trained both in the science and the art of psychology and psychotherapy. I’ve done all the statistics, ran all kinds of studies, read countless peer reviewed articles and worked one-on-one with people for years in the pursuit of fortifying their mental health.

In applied psychology, there are dozens of theories and frameworks.

They each explain “how therapy works”, including what the cause of mental health disorders are, what healthy looks like, and what methods a therapy might use to help a client to heal. These theories are then watered down and repackaged for use in self-help or DIY personal growth content.

Of course, there is a psychology for just about anything. From sports psychology to behavioral economics, we have studied the human psyche and devised all kinds of insights that we then reverse engineer into techniques and how-to’s.

We know that all forms of psychology “work”. Because we’ve tested them in randomized control trials and later compared them with meta-analysis.

But what’s strange is that despite all forms of psychotherapy or applied psychology being more-or-less effective, they all have different explanations for “how” psychology works, different stories as to what causes disorder and different jargon and techniques!

Different paths can all lead to effective results.

That’s a good thing!

But the question as to WHY, is a hard one to pin down…

Oh, and by the way, it doesn’t work perfectly all of the time. In any trial, up to a third of individuals are non-responders. Meaning they don’t see any benefit from a specific treatment.

Applied psychology has all the trimmings of a soft magic system.

It has explanations, but none that are 100% consistent or effective. We can absolutely have transformational effects, but sometimes also catastrophic failures. Though it is a bonafide science, the application focuses on the “art”. When researchers look into why the inconsistency, the answer is largely contextual.

In Soft magic systems, context is King.

Two things are necessary for a soft magic system to work.

• First is Belief.
• The second is the Suspension of Disbelief.

What’s the difference you ask? Well, when I believe something, I may or may not be open to counter-evidence. If confronted with evidence that suggests that my belief is wrong, I may be willing to change my belief.

However, suspension of disbelief requires that I actively set aside my skepticism — putting faith in the belief such that it is resilient to scrutiny. If faced with some evidence to the contrary of my beliefs, I may be unwilling to change my mind.

Beliefs are psychological phenomenon.

Likewise, beliefs do not need to be objective. After all, the vast majority of the people on the planet are either religious or spiritual in a way that is explicitly beyond objective scrutiny.

Belief is not about what is true, it’s about what is subjectively useful to the individual. We may not actually know what happens when you die, but having some answer to that question may be psychologically useful.

Again, this is not a flaw, but a feature.

Our ancestors were no doubt confronted with MANY things that they did not understand. But they still needed a mechanism to interface with the world around them. When confronted with the unknown, belief served as a bridge in the gap of understanding.

Beliefs Can Have Real Consequences

We already know that belief plays a spooky role in the outcomes of reality as evidence of the “placebo effect” — where the mere belief that one has received a treatment is sufficient to cause genuine relief of symptoms. These and other expectancy effects are good evidence that belief has an influence on both our mind and our body.

But since what’s useful for you and what is useful for me can be different, we can both believe different things but both get our own benefit. You can take a pill , and I can go to therapy and we both get relief in our depression symptoms.

In a frustrating betrayal of objectivity, it’s even possible for the same person to believe two fundamentally incompatible things. You can have different and opposing values, and even support irrational arguments. People do it all the time — not because they are dumb, but because belief is quintessentially pragmatic.

And the more we understand about the brain through neuroscience, the more obvious this becomes. The brain serves largely as a predictive meaning-maker; constructing every part of our reality from sensory and somatic information that it cross references with our past experiences. Our beliefs literally play a role in creating our experience in real time.

While reality represent the “natural” world, we interface with it only through this “supernatural” predictive construction of the brain.

This is why context is king — the context determines what is useful or helpful and when. People change their beliefs not because of what is true or false, but because a different set of beliefs were deemed to be more useful in a given situation.

Sounds suspiciously like magic to me…

For a psychologist, their theory is their spell book and the various techniques and interventions are their spells.

And what is the “effect” that the magic of psychology “causes”?

This kind of magic doesn’t let you shoot fireballs, stop time, teleport or any of the other neato abilities we see on display in fiction. This magic is a bit more subtle, but perhaps far more powerful. The magic system of psychology is poised to change, amplify or otherwise transform how you feel.

The effect is emotional.

Has someone or something afflicted you with the curse of trauma? Does it make you feel bad? Would you like to feel better..?

• Will recounting the story while your eyes move back and forth following a glowing light help? That's EMDR’s magic.
• What about appraising the various “parts” of you that was fragmented to help you and developing a better relationship with yourself by naming and conversing with them? That’s IFS’s magic.
• Or maybe it’s just that your thoughts are skewed by distortions and you must realign them with repeated challenges and re-frames? That’s CBT magic.
• Or perhaps you intuited from childhood that certain parts of you weren’t acceptable by your loved one’s or your society and reflexively banished them to your subconscious where they fester as disintegrated saboteurs! Perhaps a foray into your unconscious mind in pursuit of integration is the key! That’s psychoanalytic magic.
• Or maybe, just maybe, you need to sit there. Just sit there. Quietly. Focus on one thing. Or try to focus on nothing at all. Or maybe just focus on your breathing. Or perhaps just let your mind wander for a bit? Meditation Magic!

Each theory has it’s special ingredient, it’s blind spots and it’s valid criticisms. Each framework requires that we suspend some level of disbelief and be willing to trust that it can work for it to work.

The better relationship you have with the therapist, the easier trust is to come by.

And the real magic is… it works! Despite them all being quite different, they are all similarly effective. We might not always clearly understand why it works, but decades of randomized control trials verify the effects are real.

Oh, and don’t think that because I use the term “magic” that I mean “pseudo-science”.

Even in fictional worlds, science and magic can exist side-by-side, and often do integrate. When we do research and science on psychology, we are using science to study the magic. We then use our scientific insights to improve the magic’s potency.

Of course, this is only the “healing” magic, meant to help break curses, empower individuals and rid them of their afflictions.

You can also use the magic for malicious or selfish purposes. You can use it to manipulate others, to seduce or coerce them; to get them to do what you want even if it isn’t in their best interest, and of course to harm and curse them. Emotional wounds and scars are just as real as physical ones — all by transforming how you feel for the worse, not better.

But most people just try to use magic to… try to get people to buy stuff and give them money (which is it’s own modern magic system, but that’s for a story for another day).

In summary,

As Arthur C. Clarke is often quoted, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” This is true in the case of a hard magic system where what we perceive as magic is merely the outcome of some yet articulated scientific progress.

But in a world where belief, subjectivity and narrative seem to play a powerful role in real outcomes in people’s lives, we perhaps are looking at the most magical thing about the human experience.

While I’m oversimplifying at times for brevity, the reality is that we don’t know why some things work, we don’t know precisely why despite different theories having different “secret ingredients” that they are all effective, and we don’t know why it’s effective for some people and not others. It’s more of an art than a science, an art that paints it’s prose and brush strokes in changes in feeling and emotion.

The devil is in the details and context is King — a soft magic system that quietly makes our world-go-round.

Are you ready to suspend disbelief?