Introduction
The parable of the cave, the metaphor of the cave, terms describing the same topic commonly known as the Allegory of the cave. The allegory of the cave is a dialogue told and interpreted by Socrates and written by Plato in his famous work “The Republic”. The allegory describes a dark cave with chained people who are prisoners there since their childhood.
They only can see in one direction, in which they see shadows of puppets of various objects such as plants, animals, and people which are projected from a fire behind them which they cannot see as the fire is on a ledge. The sounds of these puppets are heard as an echo from the shadows they are watching. That is the only reality these people knew and they are competing in guessing and identifying the shadows.
When one of the prisoners manages to free himself from the chains as a supposition and climbs to the exit, he will be blinded by the light of the sun. By the time he gets acclimated to the light, he starts to realize the true nature of the objects and the world surrounding him.
When he returns to the cave as the people refuse to climb up after him he stops recognizing the shadows he used to see as his eyes no more adjusted to see in the dark.
Contemporary Psychology
The vision of this allegory is mostly interpreted as the need for knowledge (the sun) to understand the true nature of the world. However, this parable can be related to different modern fields such as developmental psychology. One of the studies of developmental psychology is Jean Piaget’s work “The theory of cognitive development”, and in this case, the allegory should be interpreted as the stages for acquiring intelligence through the human beings’ progressive changes that occur with age. In the allegory, the phases from the perception of the world as shadows on the wall to climbing to the sun and in cases returning back to the cave are divided into four stages. In analogy, in Piaget’s theory, the process of children’s understanding of the world can be divided into four periods. As in the Allegory, through the people in the cave were not age identified, the stages of Piaget are not specific in the timing, although they are in order. We can parallel the sensorimotor period in Piaget’s work to the first stage in the allegory as the perception of the world through reflexes. In the same way, we can apply the rest of the stages which in different interpretations could parallel the sequential move from reflexes to psychological functions and along to use of logic to the knowledge and the ability to think abstractly.
The future
Psychology is considered a relatively new science, although it has a long history. The future of psychology is going to be related to technological progress in science. The use of fMRI (Functional magnetic resonance imaging), to better understand the activity of our brain and the motives for different actions and possibly projecting them back into the brain can be used in psychiatry. Paralleling the Allegory when according to Plato the world is what we were projected into believing, as the brain is the seal of our intelligence, and imagining the whole picture can change the reality into what it preferred to be. These researches might help in finding the cure for many psychiatric phenomenons such as amnesia.
Works Cited
Plato. Translated by Benjamin Jowett. “The republic”. Web.
Flavell, John H. Developmental Psychology of Jean Piaget. Princeton, NJ: D. Van Nostrand, 1963.
“Unlocking the Secrets of the Memory.” Western Mail (Cardiff, Wales) 2006: 17. Questia. 2008.