Christianity-- Society for Christian Psychology

Jesus and Mary: Overcoming Psychodynamic Fears, Part 2: The Crucifixion

Posted on January 24, 2010

[Paul C. Vitz is Professor of Psychology/Senior Scholar at the Institute for the Psychological Sciences and Professor of Psychology Emeritus at New York University. He is our guest blogger for the month of January, and this is his fourth post].

The Issue of applying psychology to Jesus

Like the Virgin Mary we can also attribute basic human emotions to Jesus. The scriptures present Jesus showing love and friendship, fear and anger (for instance in the temple with the money changers). If he did not have normal human emotions he would not represent an adequate model and sacrifice for humanity. So for Jesus when facing the Cross for him to be afraid of death, pain and disfigurement is hardly surprising: he showed what can be interpreted as signs of his fear through his anguish. Jesus was, of course, sinless so his emotions were not contaminated by sin.

However, there is the traditional Catholic theological dogma that Jesus is two natures but only one person thus there can be serious doubt as to whether the psychology of Jesus can be understood by analogy to human psychology. But, even if we rightly accept that the psychology of Jesus is intrinsically mysterious we can assume that Jesus did fully understand human psychology and sinfulness and that his words and actions spoke directly to them.

Mary

There is good reason to believe that the greatest fear that most women have is the loss of a person or persons they deeply love, especially the loss of a child through death. In some respects even their own death is less feared by women than the death of a child or another deeply loved one. In part, the ferocious defense that mothers put up for their children testifies to this. In psychology the attachment literature identifies the strength of this connection. In the scriptures Mary’s painful loss of Jesus is commonly understood to be predicted by Simeon: “And your self a sword will pierce”. (Lk 2:35) Certainly anything as painful as a sword piercing you is an excruciating notion and one capable of setting up great fear. At the Crucifixion Mary had to go through that fear just as she had gone through the earlier fear of stoning by accepting it as part of God’s will in spite of the obvious and unredeemable loss her son’s death apparently would mean. Mary has represented for countless women not only courage but the necessity for women to let go of their deepest loves in order to accept God’s will. Michelangelo’s Pieta is a world renowned symbol of this sorrow and fear. It is as though the Crucifixion means that all women must give up their strongest attachments in the form of their children in order for their own resurrection to take place. In ways this is what nuns and other consecrated women do from the start. This particular fear of losing someone you love dearly is not normally considered as a psychodynamic issue. Thus, Mary’s response here is not part of any psychoanalytic conceptual framework.

Certainly it is not just women who have this great fear of losing people they love but many men also. Nevertheless this fear seems to be more fundamental or basic in the case of women.

Jesus

At the Crucifixion Jesus is representing all humanity, but in some respects he also specifically represents the human male. Probably the greatest male fear is the fear of total public humiliation, in its most extreme form a kind of public castration. Freud’s “castration anxiety” is a familiar example of the psychodynamic interpretation of this primal male fear. The castration theme is very much in the atmosphere of the Crucifixion. We forget that Jesus on the cross was very likely naked and that the loin cloth that he wears in his many portrayals is a respectful convention. The Romans “definitely stripped their victims of all garments” (Fernandez, 1959 p. 729). One of the very distinctive characteristics of the Jews was circumcision and the fact that Jesus was circumcised would have been noted. Almost certainly mocking comments were made about his circumcision by Roman soldiers and other non-Jewish bystanders[1]. At the time Crucifixion was in a sense a kind of entertainment or spectacle commonly held near or even on a public thoroughfare. Recall also that the public trials of Jesus before Annas, Caiphas, Herod and Pilot twice, further underline his extensive public humiliating disgrace.

Jesus is quoted as reciting the start of Psalm 22 on the cross, a psalm well known by devout Jews. Jesus likely uttered the whole extraordinarily appropriate Psalm. At the least its humiliating words were fully in his mind. The following verses are relevant here: “I am a worm, hardly human, scorned by everyone, despised by the people. All who see me mock me; they curl their lips and jeer; they shake their heads at me.” (vs 7-8)[2] Symbolically, and almost literally, Jesus embodied the human male’s need to overcome castration fear by in fact giving up his body and his maleness to God, by being willing to let all that die. For example pride, arrogance and contempt are commonly found in humans and especially in men, often with respect to their maleness as a form of power and superiority. This kind of sinful castration anxiety was certainly not part of the psychology of Jesus. But, He no doubt was familiar with the “oedipal” characteristics found in human males and although not at all part of his nature the Crucifixion can be interpreted as aimed at this expression of male sinfulness. (Freud himself referred to oedipal motivation as “original sin”.)

Therefore although His own psychology was not of this type, Jesus can be understood as addressing his actions in the Gospels and, in particular, in the Crucifixion to all human fears, and among those would be, for men, castration anxiety. So, His Crucifixion was a message that men would have to bring their masculinity to the foot of the Cross. This is one of the reasons why Christianity is in many respects especially disturbing to men. Jesus warns his disciples in advance that they will be scandalized by the coming terrible events. (Mk.14:27)

At the Crucifixion, one sign of this symbolic meaning for men is that in the Scriptures it is only other men, not women, who are identified as judging, condemning, jeering and brutalizing Jesus. It is as though his courageous passiveness increased the men’s anger by touching this distinctive sinfulness of males.

The passiveness of Jesus is nevertheless a tough and hard passiveness that required great self control and attention to God’s will. Jesus was carrying out his commander’s orders in spite of painful distractions and temptations to the contrary. The natural way for men to sacrifice their lives is to die in battle for their people. In the days preceding his death Jesus speaks often of battle and destruction. He throws the money changers out of the Temple (Lk 19:45), there is one whole chapter in Matthew (Mt 23) consisting almost entirely of fierce denunciations of the Jewish authorities, and he predicts the coming destruction of Jerusalem (Mt 24:2) He also informs the Sanhedrin “I tell you, you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of the Power and coming on the clouds of heaven” (Mt 26:64). With his words and actions Jesus has clearly drawn the battle lines.

Much of the imagery surrounding the Crucifixion has a military connotation and all of this can speak to male psychology in a positive and direct way; it shows the major transformation of war that Jesus is demonstrating. At the Last Supper he declares his intention of shedding his blood; in his trial he is taken inside the Praetorium where he is dressed in a scarlet “military cloak” (Mt 27:23) and surrounded by a cohort of Roman soldiers, which commonly numbered at six hundred. (Mt 27:27) Jesus explicitly states in the Garden of Gethsemane “Do you think that I can not call upon my Father and he will not provide me at this moment with more than twelve legions of angels?” (Mt 26:53) Twelve legions at this time would have been equivalent to about half or more of the total Roman military force in the empire.

Ultimately, the death of Jesus is a warrior’s sacrifice as represented by the final spear thrust of the Roman soldier (Jn 19:34) and the centurion (a Roman officer) who made the respectful and admiring comment “Truly this was the Son of God” (Mt 28:54). Curiously, Jesus after his death even had an armed military guard stationed at his tomb (Mt 28:66). For Jesus, his death was to be for all humanity, all humans were his people, and so obviously he could not die killing others, including his enemies for whom he commanded us to pray. He had to renounce the usual method of killing others in war but he did die a brave soldier’s death. Therefore, Jesus does not renounce manhood which is after all a gift from God but as a soldier obeying His Father’s orders Jesus displays manhood at its best.

The preceding psychological interpretation nevertheless argues that men must bring their manhood to the foot of the Cross, just as women bring their womanhood there in the acceptance of the loss of those they love. Both of these very natural fears - one for men and one for women - can be seen as part of the Adam and Eve in humanity and these common basic attachments have to be given to God. If these gifts have been made, resurrection then means a new nature for both men and women.

Women also can be afraid of a public humiliation and physical destruction but again this fear seems in its most fundamental sense to be more characteristic of men.

Behind all of the above particular male and female fears lies the fear of death, of nothingness itself where all being, all power and all love are lost. No doubt, this is the single greatest human fear to which much literature and history attest. This fear, Jesus directly confronts and by accepting it on the Cross, as God’s will he passes through death and transcends it or triumphs over it by his resurrection. By facing this common and truly primal fear of all men and women Jesus confronts even a greater fear than the Virgin faced at the Crucifixion.

References(For Part 1 and 2)

Fernandez, A. (P. Barrett, Trans.1959) Life of Christ. Westminster, MD: Newman Press.

Jeremias, J. (1969) Jerusalem in the time of Jesus. Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press. (First published in German, Jerusalem zur Zeit Jesu, 1962)

New American Bible, The. (1991). Trans. Catholic Bible Association of America. Iowa: World Bible Publishers.

Trilling, W., (1969). The Gospel According to St Matthew, Vol. 1. In New Testament for Spiritual Reading. Ed. J. McKenzie S.J. New York: Herder & Herder.

[1] The sign nailed at the top of the Cross which announced Jesus was King of the Jews was written in Latin, Greek and Hebrew. It implies a certain mocking of the Jewish ness of Jesus. And no doubt there was plenty of anti-Jewish feeling among Romans and other groups at the time. After all in forty years Rome was going to completely destroy Jerusalem.

[2] Psalm 22 begins with “My God, My God, why have you abandoned me?” (See Mat 27:46)

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