2015 Personality Lecture 12: Existentialism: Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard

Main ideas, concepts, and lessons

1) Why this course is partly philosophical (and why assumptions matter)

• The instructor argues that “personality” (especially clinical personality growth, mental health, meaning) may not be fully captured by strict scientific methods alone.
• Scientific studies provide only “narrow slices” of the domain; interpreting them requires:
  • prior psychological/scientific frameworks, and
  • the deeper philosophical assumptions underneath those frameworks.
• Without understanding fundamentals and assumptions, students risk only memorizing procedures rather than building real knowledge.

2) Existentialism as a key 20th-century lens for understanding modern crises

• Existentialism is presented as tightly aligned with phenomenology and as emerging psychologically after WWII.
• WWII and its aftermath created urgency about:
  • ideological “possession” (how individuals get captured by ideologies),
  • individual responsibility vs. the state’s actions,
  • whether individuals are culpable when masses commit atrocities.
• The instructor emphasizes that blaming mass evil solely on top-down coercion is insufficient.

3) The “mass insanity” problem: responsibility of followers and leaders

• Evidence (e.g., conformity/obedience experiments such as the Stanford Prison Experiment) suggests how quickly ordinary people respond to situational cues.
• However, situational explanations don’t fully answer:
  • how to interpret leaders’ culpability,
  • whether the “leaders are gods” framing (e.g., “Hitler as sole cause”) is psychologically/institutionally misleading.
• The instructor reframes culpability as distributed:
  • followers aren’t only passive victims,
  • cruelty can involve active self-engagement, not just conformity.

4) Nietzsche and Dostoevsky as predictive “psychologists” of the 20th century

• The instructor claims Nietzsche and Dostoevsky “summed up” the 19th century and predicted 20th-century developments accurately.
• They are portrayed as diagnosing a core modern problem: nihilism (loss of ultimate values/meaning).
• Their work is said to influence later thinkers (Freud, Jung, Rogers), shaping the course’s psychological direction.

5) Nihilism: how it logically emerges from the collapse of inherited value-systems

Key claims attributed to Nietzsche (as described in the lecture):

• Nihilism is not merely an alternative to Christianity; it is the logical extension of the great values/ideals that previously sustained European culture.
• Christianity historically disciplined European thought into “one schema” for interpreting events.
• When science undermined religious grounding, the “spirit of theorizing truth” remained, but the dogma’s basis collapsed—leading to nihilism.

6) Nihilism as a foundation for severe mental illness and suicide risk

• A central existential view is offered:
  • depression often expresses a meaning collapse (“there is no point in life”),
  • sometimes rooted in suffering that becomes unbearable,
  • raising the suicide question (referenced via Camus’ framing).
• The instructor advises that meaningful discussion with the depressed should not ignore the philosophical layer.

7) Existential suffering, care, and the drive for justice

The lecture argues that:

• humans are fundamentally oriented by care (Heidegger’s claim),
• losing the ability to care spells trouble even if suffering continues.
• When people experience extreme suffering (e.g., a child with cancer), they ask:
  • how reality permits such suffering,
  • why the “good” are punished and the “evil” go unpunished,
  • which implies a built-in drive for justice.
• These become “conditions of existence”—questions people can’t easily avoid.

8) Dostoevsky’s criticism: “If there is no God, everything is permitted”

• Nihilism and atheism are discussed as closely linked (not identical, but tightly connected).
• Dostoevsky’s novels are described as exploring what “everything is permitted” means:
  • Crime and Punishment: individual moral collapse and consequences
  • The Devils / The Possessed: what happens when nihilism grips alongside social/political ambition
• The lecture claims Dostoevsky predicted the rise of communism/totalitarian dynamics; Nietzsche is said to have predicted similar outcomes.

9) Distinguishing nihilism from mental illness is difficult

• The instructor argues that depressed/nihilistic experiences may look similar across:
  • existential crisis,
  • clinical disorders,
  • and ordinary development of doubt.
• This makes diagnosis and conceptual clarity difficult.

10) Jung’s account of why science emerged (a psychological counter-movement)

Jung is used to explain:

• Christianity’s “beyond” salvation created a lack of sufficient redemption in the material world.
• A compensatory unconscious movement revalued matter.
• This underlies “proto-scientific” quests (e.g., alchemical dreams like the philosopher’s stone) and later the scientific discipline.
• Science is framed as psychologically motivated by a wish to find redemption/benefit “here and now.”

11) Kierkegaard and the problem of destabilized faith: “meta-doubting”

The lecture stresses a two-step harm when a belief system collapses:

1. You lose what was stable and can’t easily rebuild meaning.
2. You become difficult to believe anything afterward—becoming a doubter of all belief systems. - This is linked to nihilism as a possible endpoint of critical rationality that “saws off the branch it sits on.”

12) Utopianism and determinism: humans may sabotage “perfect” comfort

Dostoevsky’s critique (presented at length) includes:

• Even with prosperity/happiness/comfort, people may still “play a trick”:
  • pursue “fatal” nonsense,
  • choose perverse or chaotic outcomes,
  • even go mad—just to prove they are not mere machines.
• The lecture connects this to skepticism about utopian programs and deterministic views of humans as calculable instruments.

13) Kierkegaard’s existential “task”: create difficulties (against over-easy life)

• The lecture quotes/uses Kierkegaard-like reflections:
  • making life “easier and easier” risks a future where people will want difficulty.
• The idea is framed as: try to make something harder rather than easier.

14) Against simplistic “happiness” as a life goal

• The instructor critiques positive psychology by arguing happiness is too narrow and isn’t sufficient for meaning/mental health.
• Happiness is framed as often “extraversión minus neuroticism,” so chasing it shouldn’t be the university’s mission.
• Biological/behavioral examples are used to illustrate reward-seeking under boredom:
  • bored rats may overuse cocaine and ignore typical drives.
• The lecture references Brave New World to question whether constant happiness via chemical control is actually what humans want.

15) “Divine responsibility” / meaning via vulnerability and suffering

• The university is likened (via Atlas imagery) to bearing responsibility for the world.
• Existential claim:
  • you’re mortal, vulnerable, prone to suffering,
  • yet you might accept (even desire) the price if the work’s value is high enough.
• The lecture suggests:
  • abandoning responsibility leads either to nihilistic despair or to totalitarian cruelty.

16) Mental health as responsibility, not happiness

• The instructor argues “mental health” is not “being happy,” because major life events will produce unhappiness anyway.
• Proposed standard: be more useful than trouble during crises.
• Examples:
  • coping with a parent’s death (handling logistics, preventing family collapse into conflict),
  • parenting through chronic child illness.
• Happiness is described as insufficient as a guiding standard because suffering is unavoidable in human life.

17) Existential psychotherapy: whole-person authenticity, responsibility, truth

• The instructor emphasizes an existential therapy stance:
  • health requires speaking/acting as a whole person,
  • directed toward responsibility and truth.
• The alternative—instrumental/in-inauthentic speech—is described as:
  • speech used as a tool to extract outcomes (status, career, other externally supplied goals),
  • leading to fragmentation (“part of the person” acting, not the person as a whole).

18) Why people hide behind convention: laziness and fear of trouble

• Using Nietzsche, the lecture claims:
  • people hide behind customs/opinions due to fear and desire for comfort.
  • unconditional honesty would bring burdens/trouble people avoid.
• The “cure” is moral-psychological:
  • follow conscience,
  • “be yourself,”
  • stop treating socially reinforced desires as “really you.”

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Methodology / instructional content (structured bullet points)

No explicit step-by-step “method” is given as a formal procedure, but the lecture implies actionable principles typical of an existential-therapy stance:

• To understand research and personality theory

  • Learn the scientific and psychological framework used to interpret findings.
  • Identify the underlying philosophical assumptions that shape what counts as evidence.
  • Study fundamentals rather than memorizing methods.

• To address existential distress (e.g., depression/nihilism)

  • Treat “meaning collapse” as a core existential issue, not only surface symptoms.
  • Don’t discuss depression only as mood; address what suffering makes “point” feel impossible.

• For mental health / healthy responsibility (existential standard)

  • Replace “be happy” with “be more useful than trouble,” especially during inevitable crises.
  • Accept that happiness can’t be constant because suffering and loss occur.

• For authenticity in life and therapy

  • Speak and act as a whole person (not as a fragment using language as a tool).
  • Aim communication toward truth and responsibility, not extraction of external rewards (status/promotion/material gains).

• For resisting mass-ideological capture

  • Don’t rely on scapegoats (e.g., “only the leader is responsible”) to avoid personal and shared culpability.
  • Maintain responsibility even under strong social/situational pressures.

• For building meaning after belief collapse

  • Avoid “meta-doubting” that destroys the possibility of any values.
  • Recognize that disbelief can become nihilism, and that stability of meaning requires more than mere critique.

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Speakers / sources featured

• Professor/lecturer (speaker throughout; name not provided in the subtitles)
• Friedrich Nietzsche
• Fyodor Dostoevsky
• Søren Kierkegaard
• Carl Jung
• Sigmund Freud
• Martin Heidegger
• Albert Camus (suicide quote attributed)
• Aldous Huxley (Brave New World)
• St. Paul (quoted via “only one attains the goal” framing)
• Alexander Dugin (mentioned as advising Putin)
• Vladimir Putin (mentioned in political discussion)
• William James? (not present; none)
• Jean-Paul Sartre? (not explicitly present; “existentialists” referenced generally)

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Works referenced (sources by title)

• Crime and Punishment — Dostoevsky
• The Devils / The Possessed — Dostoevsky
• Notes from Underground — Dostoevsky
• Brave New World — Aldous Huxley
• Confessions — Tolstoy (mentioned)
• “Prison experiment” / Stanford Prison Experiment — Stanford (not authored)
• (Also mentions fictional/statue and philosophical passages attributed to the named authors above)