The Philosophical Advantage of the Christian Approach

Posted on August 15, 2010

[C. Eric Jones, Ph.D. is our guest blogger for the month of August, and this is his third post. Eric is the Director of Undergraduate Psychology and Associate Professor of Psychology at the Regent University School of Psychology and Counseling]

My first post proposed Christian psychology should move toward research of social behavior because our social nature is so central to the image of God from which we have been created. I also suggested the research should be empirical in nature as that is the epistemological form that currently holds the strongest voice within the academic field of psychology. Last, I proposed we should begin our studies using integration methods and Christian psychology methods as together they will produce complementary benefits over time. Last week I discussed the advantage a Christian approach has when explaining positive social behavior. In this post I want to discuss the philosophical advantage Christian approaches have over current approaches in defining the very nature of social behavior.

In 1972, Elliott Aronson released the landmark book entitled The Social Animal. Still popular and in use today in its tenth edition, this text offers a more entertaining introduction to social psychology than a typical textbook. This book is so engaging that it is easy to miss some of its implicit messages. The title alone draws a parallel between the nature of humans and the nature of animals. Surely we cannot deny dogs and certain other animals are social. And if they are social, can we be so different than they are? This is a not the place for a full theologically-based discussion of the differences between animals and humans, but based on the creation account it seems we are different. In fact, being created to commune with God and others defines who we are and all we do. We do not see this same communal purpose assigned to other creatures. So many animals are social, but social in a different way than humans are social.

In 2005, Roy Baumeister contributed The Cultural Animal to the social side of the human nature conversation. The message of this book goes beyond a more simplistic social nature of humans and proposes we are cultural which, among other things, means we are “designed” to be interdependent. This concept of interdependence is a good jump ahead in the discussion, but interdependence is restricted to such arenas as division of labor.

Using an evolutionary psychology perspective as Baumeister does, can we realistically expect to reach a description of human nature consistent with Christianity’s view? I think not because of the word “designed”. In evolutionary psychology the word is used because it is assumed evolutionary processes guided the way in which we process social information for instance. Of course evolutionary processes are also assumed to be blind in respect to meaning, purpose and intent, but clearly focused on survival. So from an evolutionary psychology perspective we are not “designed” in the fullest sense. Not being truly designed makes reaching beyond, or even to, interdependence quite a task. Why should we all try to get along all the time? Why should we not take advantage of weaker others or others who are unaware of our less than virtuous intentions? Isn’t the best way to survive to act like we’re a good part of an interdependent community, but in reality we are the only ones not contributing or cheating the community? As long as evolutionary psychology is the philosophical foundation for human nature explanations, those explanations will fall short of reflecting our true communal nature and show instead how instrumentally focused the social nature of humans is.

I suppose we should be happy secular psychology is showing signs of gradually getting closer to a Christian view of human nature and purpose, but can we not do better? Can Christians in the field of psychology not define our social nature in a way that is both consistent with mainstream Christian theology and advances research on social thought and behavior? Perhaps a more fundamental question first, do we understand the benefits of Christians helping to steer the direction and meaning of human nature in social research?

As always questions, answers to questions, and comments are welcome. Don’t let diffusion of responsibility nip a great discussion in the bud.

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)

Mary & Joseph: The Overcoming of Psychodynamic fears, Part 1: The Annunciation

Posted on January 19, 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 third post].

This article presents a psychoanalytic and at some points a more general psychological interpretation of some of the motivations of Joseph, Mary and Jesus at two central moments described in the Gospels. The purpose of this interpretation is to demonstrate how a well known psychological framework can contribute to an interpretation of important Christian events in a way that supports and enlarges the traditional theological understanding of them.

The issue of applying psychology to Mary

 The Virgin Mary within Roman Catholicism is understood as conceived without sin and was in her life sinless. And Jesus was not only without sin but also Divine. These unique characteristics raise the issue of whether human psychology of any kind can be applied to either of these two persons.

Although the Virgin was without sin, she nevertheless is assumed to have had normal human emotions – that is, she presumably felt love, fear, anxiety etc. To experience normal emotions even anger is not in itself to sin. To cultivate anger and fear is sinful, but such, it is understood, was not the case for Mary.  If she didn’t have these normal emotions she would be scarcely human. It can be assumed, for example, that the Annunciation by St. Gabriel caused her some fear. To be afraid of death by stoning or of social exclusion is certainly not sinful. Furthermore we assume she had freewill to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to the Angel’s request.  Mary’s “Yes” is an example of faith and courage only if it was made in the face of natural human tendencies pushing in the opposite direction. So it is reasonable to believe that the psychological aspects of fear were experienced by the Virgin at the time of the Annunciation.

The Annunciation

Mary

The first event of interest here is the Annunciation and important psychological meanings that were presumably part of the response of both Mary and Joseph as given in the Gospels. As is well known in the Christian tradition, the Annunciation by the Angel Gabriel informed the Virgin Mary that, if she agreed, she was to conceive and bear a son. The Virgin was astonished by this announcement. She answered “how can this be since I have no relations with a man” (Lk 1:34). She was told not to be afraid and the child would be of the Holy Spirit. She is famous for her response, ‘Behold the Handmaid of the Lord; may it be done to me according to your word’ (Lk 1:38). The Virgin had every reason to be seriously afraid for she knew that if she were found with child that she might be subject to stoning as was the custom at the time. She also knew that if this did not happen, she was still likely to be set aside or rejected by Joseph. This would mean she would be an unmarried mother, socially ostracized and her child would not be considered as a member of the Jewish community. (For a legalistic discussion of this kind of situation in the Jewish world of the time see Jeremias, 1969. p.337-344.)

This kind of fear derived from placing her life and her future in the hands of the male power structure or patriarchy of her world, is a major fear for many women.  In some ways this fear, which is often unconscious, is also related to what Freud called ‘penis envy’ – that is hostility towards men because they have power, fear that this power will be used against them, and envy of or desire for it. Contemporary feminism would say that in some respects this is still the major fear of women. The remarkable and impressive quality of the Virgin’s ‘Yes’ is in large part that she trusted in God in spite of what looked like a coming life of sorrow or even death as a consequence of patriarchal power.   However, Mary had no envy of male power or special hostility toward patriarchy as this would imply the presence of sin, but to fear such power would have been a realistic response. Hence no claim is made here that Mary did experience envy or resentment, motivations characteristic of the Old Eve. Although not found in the Virgin, these responses in most women are nevertheless addressed by her life and example, as the New Eve. Many women who have envy and resentment of male power find an answer to them in the courageous response of the Virgin Mary. It is also quite possible this is one reason why many radical feminists strongly reject Mary as a model appropriate for women.

There are many other reasons to admire the Virgin but certainly her courage and trust in God in this matter is one of them. An example of her trust is that she never presented her case or her religious experience to Joseph to justify herself to him or convince him to accept her. Instead she kept all of this in her heart.  For the Virgin, her “Yes”, was her way of going through the fear of patriarchal power by trusting God to overcome it and thus she was able to transcend this fear and leave it behind. And she serves as a distinctive example for all women in this respect.

            Now, Mary’s proposed psychological fear of patriarchal power and related psychodynamic interpretations does not have to be interpreted as a necessary part of her situation. A conscious realistic fear of death by stoning or of social ostracism certainly is adequate to make her response a courageous and humble negation of Eve’s original “yes” to Satan’s temptation to power, i.e. “You will be like Gods.” (Gen.3:5)

Of course Mary’s general fear is not one just restricted in its primary sense to only women. It may be more characteristic of them, but men also have fear of getting caught up in a legal system and, of course, fear of death. Men also fear saying ‘yes’ to any ambiguous, perplexing open ended serious request, God’s or anyone else’s.

 Joseph

            The other part of the Annunciation event of interest here is the psychology of Joseph, her husband who learns “before they lived together she was found with child” (Mat1:18). Being found with child strongly suggests that one or more adults discovered or learned of her condition, presumably her mother and maybe other family members including members of his family. Thus, Mary’s condition is semi-public at least from Joseph’s perspective.

           Joseph’s first response as a devout Jew was one of justice, namely to consider an official divorce according to Mosaic Law but his next response of a more charitable kind was to avoid public condemnation and likely stoning by putting her aside privately. This second response, unlike the first “justice” response, placed Mary’s and the child’s physical good before any desire he might have for public self-justification and protection of his reputation. That they were betrothed meant in Jewish law that they were essentially married. Even so, for Joseph to set aside his new wife whose condition would soon become apparent might imply cruelty on his part and adultery on her part.

       However, in a dream, he received a message from the “Angel of the Lord” that the child was conceived through the Holy Spirit and that Joseph should take Mary into his home (Mt 1:20-21), which he did. Joseph was not only just but also holy and thus he accepted the message in this dream. Assuming his earlier decision to divorce was not publicly known, his taking her into his home would have avoided that scandal. However, this would not have prevented his personal awareness of the scandalous situation as well as the awareness of those in the family who knew of Mary’s condition. It is also likely that such a “secret” might have been leaked into the community. In any case, most men after they woke up from such a dream would soon begin to doubt it! The Virgin Mary’s “yes” set up for Joseph a very distinctive male fear, namely that he was a cuckold— that he had been sexually betrayed, and he would be raising another man’s child. A related example of the mental cost to Joseph of accepting Mary was his losing the right to name his son. The name “Jesus” was chosen by God and given to Joseph in his dream. It was also given earlier to Mary in the Annunciation. The Jews of the time placed real importance on the naming privilege by a child’s father as being part of his “rightful dignity.” Naming a child was seen as “a creative act since for the ancients the name signified the essence and the calling” of the child (See W. Trilling, 1969 p.10). . But Joseph put all his male fears or “castration anxiety” aside and by trusting in God he overcame and transcended his fear. There is no evidence that his earlier concern in any way affected his commitment to Mary or his fathering role in respect to Jesus.

            Women do not have exactly the same kind of fear that Joseph did of being a cuckold but they can understand Joseph’s fear as the fear of being sexually betrayed by a spouse and of losing status in the community. Such betrayal and loss of social respect is hard to accept by both sexes.

We see here in the preceding two fears a kind of complimentary male and female psychological anxiety, both brought on by the same event, namely the Virginal conception and birth.  However, we assume Joseph’s fear was less strong or deep than that of the Virgin. Granted he is afraid of being a cuckold and all that would mean, but this does not present him with death or social exclusion. In contrast Mary had to overcome both the fear of the possibility of death by stoning and if not that, then a life of public disgrace. Her fiat then was in the face of a greater fear than that faced by Joseph.

It is claimed here that the distinctive fears of Mary and Joseph were overcome or transcended by each one’s trust in God. That is, God is not only showing others that we can trust him when faced with primal fears, but that in trusting God we let go of such fears and through receiving grace we leave them behind.  Perfect love shown through trusting behavior drives out fear. That “Fear is useless” (Mk 5:36; Lk 8:30) is something the Scriptures show us many times.

 

References

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.

 

Correspondence for Dr. Vitz should be sent to: I.P.S., Suite 511, 2001 Jefferson Davis Highway, Arlington, VA 22202

A Proposal for Female Archetypes for Christian Women

Posted on January 12, 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 second post].

            As described earlier in my previous blog for this month what is sometimes called “The Men’s Movement” has used Jung’s psychology to develop an understanding of male archetypes. Here I propose that there are analogous female archetypes which are very clearly exemplified in Christian and especially Catholic and Eastern Orthodox theology and history. To the best of my knowledge these female archetypes have not previously been suggested.

            These four proposed parallel archetypes are: the Queen, the Wise-woman/Magician, the Defender, and the Lover. Some might find it surprising that women have archetypes so clearly analogous to those of men, but I believe they do, although they take a strong feminine gendered form.

            Let’s start with the Wise-woman/Magician and look at the great female saints. Many of them were famous in their time, and still are today, for extraordinary wisdom and prophet­ic gifts. Many of these saints were also miracle-workers. And all saints, male and female, are believed to have performed miracles after their death; this is, indeed, an important ele­ment of the Catholic canonization procedure. Three of the great female saints are honored as “Doctors of the Church”: Catherine of Siena, Teresa of Avila and Therese of Lisieux.

But the female saints understood them­selves to be pale exemplars of the extraordi­nary wisdom of the Virgin Mary, honored in the Litany by such titles as “Seat of Wisdom,” “Mother of Good Counsel,” “Virgin Most Prudent” and “Mirror of Justice.” In any case, the archetype of the Wise-woman is honored and found abundantly in the Catholic and Orthodox tra­dition and more recently in Protestant understanding as well.

(My references to the Eastern Orthodox understanding of Mary and female saints is quite weak and I welcome examples from that tradition. Recent Protestant examples are also most welcome.)

            As to the Defender (not Warrior), we need to reflect on what is meant by this female power as distinct from those exercised and practiced by men. Women have historically been defenders of their children, their family and sometimes their people, rather than attackers of the enemy or warriors against evil. But they have fought mightily in their capacity as defenders of those they love. As most people know, don’t ever mess with a bear cub. Why? Your might run into momma bear!

            Let’s look again at the saints and the Virgin.  Perhaps the best known female saint­ly warrior is Joan of Arc, who took up the sword to defend her people against foreign oppression. She carried a sword but never used it against an enemy although she led the French forces. Another very early French saint is Gene­vieve, Patroness of Paris, who is said to have defended Paris when it was besieged by the pagan Franks under Childeric in the fifth cen­tury; Genevieve made a personal sortie with an armed band to obtain provisions for the Parisians. Later she won Childeric’s respect, as well as that of Clovis. She is also credited with having kept Attila the Hun from attack­ing the city, through prayer and fasting.

But again the Virgin Mary is the very prototype of the archetype. The Battle of Lepanto, a major turning point in the defense of Europe against Islam-against the Ottoman Turks-in 1571, was put under the protection of Our Lady; the memory of that victory is still celebrated in part by honoring her. One of Mary’s titles is “Our Lady of Victory” which commemorates mili­tary victories achieved in various places under her patronage. But in her litany she has other similar titles, which emphasize both her power and her strong defense of her devotees: “Virgin Most Powerful,” “Tower of David” and “Tower of Ivory.” Catholic tradition affirms that Jesus refuses his mother nothing.

            As for the Queen, Mary has from early cen­turies been understood as the Queen of Hea­ven. Her litany confirms her queenly nature many times. Let us recall those magnificent titles that Catholics know: “Queen of angels, Queen of patriarchs, Queen of prophets, Queen of apostles, Queen of martyrs, Queen of con­fessors, Queen of virgins, Queen of saints, Queen conceived without original sin, Queen assumed into heaven, Queen of the most holy Rosary, Queen of peace.”

            The Lover is left. This is an easy one for this archetype fits women extraordinarily well. We all know about women’s capacity for love and devotion to others. We know the great number of Christian women whose love of God and of other people has deeply impressed the world. Love often takes different forms in men and women, but the basic archetype is the same. The last two archetypes of Lover and Queen are very powerfully summarized in the fifth Glorious Mystery-the Coronation. Here in heaven Mary is met in love by the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and crowned a queen. And Mary, with her love and trust in God and her love for her Son, is the only human so honored; and she is the model of the soul’s journey for all Christians- women and men.

            Finally, these four great archetypes are, I believe, best summarized and integrated in the term and role of “Mother”-just as “Father” had the same function for men. A Mother is an archetype of the wise, the queen, defender of her fam­ily and lover of husband and children. And all women are called to be mothers, although like Mother Teresa of Calcutta they might have no natural children.

The Church as the Mother and Female Archetype

            In Christian imagery the Church is represented as feminine and the Church was also often pictured as Queen. Some of the early Church Fathers explicitly call Ecclesia- the Church and the Virgin as one-an immortal universal Queen. (See White, 1961) This claim then suggests that the four archetypes of Mary are also appropriate for the Church as well.

  In the writings of the fourth Gospel by St. John the Church is the Bride of Christ. St. Paul goes further declaring marriage not merely a metaphor for the relationship of Christ to the Church but an actual instance of what marriage is, the existence of “two in one flesh”(Ephesians 5:27). The well known hymn at Vespers for the Feast of the Dedication of the Church exemplifies this feminine character of the Church. “She is his new creation, by water and the word; from heaven he came and sought her, to be his holy Bride; with his own blood he brought her, and for her life he died.” Here in these images we see the complimentary nature of male and female grouped as to make a new unity.

It is relevant to note here that according to Victor White (1961), a Jungian analyst and colleague of Jung, the “virtual elimination of any feminine figure from religion(had), in Jung’s view, bought grievous impoverishment to the Protestant world, and set it serious psychological and social problems” (p 134).

Dangers with Archetypes

            One of the problems with archetypes is that as mental representations of natural concepts even instincts they can easily be projected, that is, to be understood as existing separate from the person and given a kind of external existence. One consequence of this tendency is to revive a pagan religious consciousness. Kelsey (1983) explicitly notes that the images and motifs of archetypes have a powerful appeal to the imagination and that they “act like spiritual beings with a life of their own” (p.76). Critics such as Satinover (1996) have also noted the tendency for archetypes to turn into projected deities.  In this process a polytheistic neo-paganism often gets revived. (This can be a danger sometimes even with Mary and the saints as Protestants have noted.)

The origin of the religious and gnostic foundation in Jung’s writings is well documented by Richard Noll in The Aryan Christ: The secret life of Carl Jung (1997). This issue with respect to Jung’s archetypes has become explicit. One prominent French Jungian analyst Ginette Paris in her book The Sacrament of Abortion (1992) has stated that she is a pagan and worships Artemis (Diana for the Romans). For Ms. Paris the ancient Greek goddess Artemis “chooses only to belong to herself” and to reject “fusion with another” in particular to reject “the connection between a mother and her young children.” She advocates extreme autonomy and as a consequence concludes that since a child inhibits this, that the child should be aborted. It is no accident that Artemis (Diana) is often shown as a huntress with a dead stag. No doubt part of the autonomy created by an abortion is freedom from the man responsible for the pregnancy. For such a worshipper the very idea of becoming “one flesh” would be a horror. Again we see the absence of any worked out much less convincing moral system for Jungian psychology.

In summary of both blogs, I propose that a deep understanding of Jung’s archetypes provides a good rationale for the basic or primal archetypes of father and mother for men and women, respectively. Father combines king, warrior, lover, and wise man magician.  Mother combines queen, defender, lover and wise woman. Furthermore, these archetypes are best morally and psychologically represented by Jesus (you have seen the Father) and by the Virgin Mary( Mother of the Church and all Christians).

References (for both “Jungian” blogs)

Arnold, P. (1991). Wildmen, warriors, and kings: Masculine spirituality and the Bible. NY: Crossroad

Bly, R. (1990). Iron john: A book about men. Reading MA: Addison-Wesley

Kelsey, M. (1983). Companions on the inner way: The art of spiritual guidance. NY: Crossroad

Moore, R and Gillette, D. (1990). King warrior magician lover: Rediscovering the archetypes of the mature masculine. San Francisco: Harper.

Noll, R. (1997). The Aryan Christ: The secret life of Carl Jung. New York: Random House.

Paris, G. (1992) (Trans.J. Mott). The sacrament of abortion. Dallas,TX: Spring.(Original French edition 1990).

Payne, L. (1995). The healing presence: Curing the soul through union with Christ. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker

Rohr, R. (2004). Adam’s return: The five promises of male initiation.

Satinover, J. (1996). The empty self: C.G. Jung and the gnostic transformation of modern identity. Westport, CT: Hamewith Books

White, V. (1960). Soul and psyche. London: Collins & Harvill.

Jungian Archetypes for Men: Jesus

Posted on January 4, 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 first post].

            After Sigmund Freud certainly the most influential psychological theorist has been the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung. The two major concepts in his writings about personality are archetypes and the psychotherapeutic goal of individuation or self realization. Self realization proposed as the goal of Jungian therapy and indeed of life in general is certainly not for Christians where the goal instead is Christ realization. After all, the Gospels focus on “not my will but God’s be done.” Instead, the original temptation found in Genesis is for each of us to “become as God”. Thus, to propose self realization as the goal of life or psychotherapy is a foundational error for any Christian. Jung’s proposal is a modern form of salvation through special esoteric psychological knowledge and hence a Gnostic answer to the purpose of life. This critical understanding of Jung from different perspectives has been made by various authors. Some of the most interesting for Christians are “The Aryan Christ: The Secret life of Carl Jung” (1997) by the psychologist and historian of science Richard Noll; “The Empty Self: C.G. Jung & the Gnostic Transformation of Modern Identity” (1996) by Jeffrey Satinover a psychiatrist and former president of the American C.G. Jung Foundation; “The Healing Presence”, especially chapter 14, (1995) by a leader in Christian healing Leanne Payne. In my own writing I have also identified the serious conflict between Christianity and major assumptions of Jung in Vitz, 1994.          

The essential dilemma in Jungian psychology is to use the self to realize or individuate the self. This circular logic leaves the person trapped in subjectivity and narcissism and incapable of responding to the nature of external reality, to an objective moral system and much less to a transcendent God outside of the self. The Jungian purpose of life, self realization, in any case is not part of science but is an ideological, philosophical and even theological addition to his presumably more objectively based psychology.

Basic Jungian Archetypes    

As noted, besides self realization the other major concept of Jungian psychology is the “archetype”. Archetypes are proposed as actual psychological realities capable of being known and a great deal of the popularity of Jung’s work derives from the many people who accept the reality of archetypes. Briefly, an archetype is an inherited mental structure with a latent content which is brought to a specific content by the person’s actual experience in his or her family and culture. Most of the archetypes are characters such as the “hero”, the “earth mother”, the “wise old man”, etc. The primary four Jungian archetypes, however, are more abstract but even they are typically experienced as characters. For example, the persona archetype which represents the public mask or face of a person may be symbolized in a man’s dream as a shallow salesman. The archetype of the self might be symbolized in a woman’s dream as a car driving recklessly out of control. A person’s shadow, the archetype of one’s unknown and in part dark or evil nature might be symbolized by dreaming about a waitng spider or raging bear attacking others; the archetype of a person’s animus or anima likewise would commonly be represented as a character. The animus archetype represents a woman’s unconscious male personality and symbolic representations of men and likewise the anima is a man’s unconscious female personality. Jungians often simply assume that each sex should get in touch with their animus/anima and integrate it into their personality. This proposal involves the assumption that such an inward looking often narcissistic preoccupation is a positive thing.  For a man to get in touch with his female archetype is to encourage androgyny at a time when men are commonly interpreted as not masculine enough. It seems far more reasonable that a man should start relating to a real woman outside of himself in order to appreciate women and femininity rather than cultivate some internal “female”. After all, just because men have nipples does not mean that they should take breast enhancement medicines.

 Jung did not provide a clear definition of an archetype so that one could reliably identify a new proposed archetype nor did he provide a standard list of archetypes, however, the concept has in a general way been accepted by many as valid. In proposing archetypes Jung was saying that in an important sense humans are born with  specific predispositions toward a limited set of human ideas normally symbolized and experienced as characters in dreams, myths, art and in stories found in all the worlds cultures.

            Although, the existence of Jung’s archetypes has been questioned, it will be assumed for present purposes that archetypes do have some validity in that they exist as important innate properties of the mind  and that the major archetypes identified by Jung and his followers can  be given credence. There are, of course, dangers associated with this assumption some of which will be discussed later. Keep in mind that should archetypes be rejected by subsequent research and reflection then the proposed Christian interpretation of archetypes would become irrelevant. That is, Christianity itself is in no way affected by the truth or falseness of the archetypes.

Four Archetypes and Male Psychology

 Certain contemporary Jungians, active in what some call the “Men’s movement” such as Robert Bly (1990), and especially Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette (1990), and Patrick Arnold (1992) have proposed four pri­mary archetypes as underlying male psychol­ogy. These are referred to as the archetype of the King, the Warrior, the Lover, and the Wiseman/ Magician. These archetypes are proposed as psychological representations of male personality that need to be experienced and reinforced in a  contemporary culture that no longer adequately recognizes and supports male psychological needs. Men have become confused about male identity in our androgynous or unisex society and need to get back in touch with these four innate masculine psychological structures.

            The first is the King archetype. By this Moore and Gillette mean a basic energy in men, focused on ordering-on the content of creating Right Order through wise ruling. The King archetype is also concerned with providing fertility and blessing. The King must have children and he must bless his Kingdom’s children. The King symbolizes the life force and balance; he is also a mentor.

            The Warrior archetype stands for male energy and aggressiveness, clear thinking in the presence of death, plus training to develop aggressiveness in a disciplined way. The Warrior shows loyalty to a transpersonal ideal -his God, or leader, or nation or another cause.

            The Magician archetype is the knower and master of technology. He is usually an initiate-that is, part of a secret religious world. He is an archetype of awareness, insight, thought­fulness and introspective reflection.

            The Lover archetype stands for passion and love. The Lover is very aware of the physical world, of sensations, sensuality and feeling. The Lover’s energies are close to those of the mystics. Artists and psychics represent com­mon professions of the Lover.

As described, any of these four archetypes can be distorted in a macho manner, or in a weak, wimp-like fashion. Moore and Gillette very clearly acknowledge that each of these basic male archetypes can be used for evil. They explicitly note that the King can be a tyrant or a weakling (macho or wimpo, if you will). They also admit that the Warrior can be cor­rupted into a sadist or masochist; the Magician can be a prideful manipulator or an envious weakling; the Lover can degenerate into an addicted, promiscuous Don Juan; or he can be impotent, depressed and uncommitted.

            The problem with this Jungian understand­ing of male archetypes is that however much these theorists decry the serious, harmful dis­tortions of these male archetypes, they offer no convincing method or model for avoiding the ways in which men have distorted these male tendencies to exploit or harm others-often women. These writers do attempt to give rationales in which the moral failures of men realizing their archetypes can be controlled but these moral positions do not naturally flow from Jungian theory and as noted above they are not convincing. A writer quite sympathetic to Jung, Morton Kelsey (1983) identifies the basic problem as follows “The archetype must be honored for what it is, an image outside of the self that calls us to growth, change and awareness. In its negative form it can equally call us to evil and destruction” (p. 8).

What is important and relevant here is that Jesus, who is our model of God the Father, is the perfect integra­tion of these four archetypes within a frame­work of servant leadership. This model also provides a clear answer to the moral issues raised by men expressing their archetypes. The moral framework is demonstrated in both his many actions and in his words about loving God and others, even one’s enemies.

 Specifically with respect to the archetypes themselves, that Jesus was a King is acknowledged in the liturgy at the last feast of the Christian year: Christ the King. At his birth, the Magi, and at his crucifixion he was identified as King. Jesus also is commonly referred to as our Lord. As a Warrior Jesus said that he had come to bring the sword; recall his attack on the money-changers in the Temple, his fierce crit­icisms of the Pharisees-all Warrior behaviors. Of course the primary battle that Jesus led was a spiritual battle. St. Paul frequently refers to our life as one of spiritual warfare, and so do many of the saints. That Jesus represents the archetype of Lover is essentially a “no brainer” as the expression goes. For Jesus the core of his message is one of love. In the Gospels that “God is love” is given prominence. He showed kindness and concern for the suffering of oth­ers so strong that it is no wonder that one of the great spiritual classics is titled “This Tremendous Lover” and a famous Protestant hymn is “Jesus Lover of My Soul.” He showed explicit love toward children-implicitly all children.

As for the archetype of Wiseman or Magician, Jesus was known as a rabbi or teacher who brought new teachings and who spoke with authority and great wisdom. He was also a frequent and great miracle worker.

 In short, Jesus represents, summa­rizes and integrates all these basic archetypes, most especially when he says “I and the Father are one.”  That is, the summarizing archetype for all men is that of “Father“. For a father is called to bring all four male archetypes together and live out all of them. He is the lover of his wife and children, a warrior for God and his family, a servant king within the household and at work, and a source of knowledge and wisdom about the world. So we see in these archetypes the model of Jesus as servant leader speaking to the needs and highest aspi­rations of male psychology. We also emphasize that Christian fatherhood is a genuine model for disciplining and controlling the strong tendency of men either to abuse oth­ers or to betray their masculine gifts through weakness and cowardice. Thus, the archetype of Father which combines the other four male archetypes and integrates them is the overarching male archetype to which all men are called. And, of course, in being called to the father archetype all men are not restricted to natural fatherhood with biological children. Instead, they are called to the role or archetype of fatherhood with its focus on strong, mentoring love expressed through the King, the Warrior, the Wiseman and the Lover. For example, Pope (which means papa) John Paul II was a father for millions but he had no natural children. 

Jesus and other male archetypes

            There are three other archetypes that are commonly mentioned in connection with male psychology: the Hero, Initiation Rites and the Wildman. The Hero sets out upon a quest going through three stages – separation, ordeal and return – all aimed at making a great contribution to society or his people through an extraordinary deed. Jesus clearly fits this model well. He begins his ministry with a forty day separation in the desert and then comes his ministry climaxing in the ordeal of the Crucifixion, followed by his resurrection and return in the Last Judgment.  And the enormous benefit for the whole world being Salvation. In short as a man he lives out the archetype of Hero to a kind of perfection. Finally, any serious Christian setting out on the journey toward sanctity or sainthood is also following the model of the Hero archetype.

            The archetype of Initiation is obviously found in the life of Jesus. (For this archetype see R. Rohr, 2004.) His first initiation was presumably at the age of twelve when his parents took him to the temple and later he was recognized as a rabbi or teacher by the Jewish community. His status as a rabbi was never challenged by the Jewish leaders. However, his specific Initiation Rite with respect to his ministry was his baptism by John the Baptist combined with his forty days of fasting in the desert. Representatives of these archetypical events also are present in the life of the ordinary Christian, for example baptism, confirmation, fasting and retreats.

            The last male archetype given some emphasis by the theorists noted earlier is that of the Wildman. This archetype represents a man’s basic animal energy and contact with the forces of his own body and of nature without feminizing restrictions. For example, in a fairy tale, a boy might discover a hairy, terrifying wild man who lives in the forest. The Wildman’s raw energy and closeness to animals and the natural world then entices the boy to leave his mother for exciting adventures in the wilderness.

            For all men the Wildman archetype may have appeal and it may be a good starting point but the other male archetypes and personality development require that the man learn how to control and move beyond the Wildman  although the Wildman’s basic energy and freedom should always be maintained. After all, the King, the Wiseman, Lover and even the Warrior all demand freely chosen discipline and restraint.

There is one clear way in which Jesus expressed the Wildman. Jesus was at home in the natural world.  He was in a sense a homeless man without a place to call his own and thus he was wilder than the foxes and the birds who had fixed places to go “home” to.  He traveled by walking great distances, climbing to mountain tops, praying in deserted places, fasting in the desert.  In short, much of his last three years was lived outdoors. Also in freely choosing God’s will he expressed an enormous amount of power but almost always in quiet and constructive ways, such as miracles.  In his words and actions he demonstrated a kind of power and freedom that created more revolutionary changes than any human Wildman ever did. For example, consider what he did to the money changers in the temple. However, the primitive often pre-human animal aspects of this archetype Jesus did not express. Hence Jesus is not a solid example of the Wildman.

(For female archetypes and the Christian faith see my next blog posting.)           

References

Arnold, P. (1991) Wildmen, Warriors, and Kings: Masculine Spirituality and the Bible. NY: Crossroad

Bailie, G. (199x)

Bly, R. (1990). Iron John: A Book about Men. Reading MA: Addison-Wesley

Kelsey, M. (1983). Companions on the inner way: The art of spiritual guidance. NY: Crossroad

Moore, R and Gillette, D

Paris, G. (1992) (Trans.J. Mott). The Sacrament of Abortion. Dallas,TX: Spring.(Original French edition 1990).

Payne, L. The Healing Presence.

Rohr, R. (2004) Adam’s Return: The Five Promises of Male Initiation.

Satinover, J. (1996) The Empty Self: C.G. Jung and the Gnostic Transformation of Modern Identity. Westport CT: Hamewith Books

White, V. (1960). Soul and Psyche. London: Collins & Harvill.

On the Psychologist’s Orientation to Human Suffering: A Call to Christian Psychologists

Posted on September 20, 2009

[by June L. Phelps, Ph.D. Dr. Phelps is a psychologist in community mental health at Trillium Family Solutions in Canton, Ohio. This is her first post for September as guest blogger.]

I see the Society for Christian Psychology blog, among other things, as an opportunity for practitioners to share their hearts and struggles as Christian psychologists and in doing so help establish a community of therapists/academics who together are seeking to root their psychological work in their Christian faith. I am a psychologist who has both practical and academic interests and views the Society for Christian Psychology as a possible home for those intersecting interests – a space where Christian faith, scholarly ideas, and psychological practice can cohere.

For the last several years I have thought about human suffering and wondered whether my Christian faith has affected how I view suffering as well as how I internally respond to and externally react to my clients’ suffering. Furthermore, I have wondered whether a clinician’s responses and reactions to client suffering, as informed by the clinician’s core beliefs about human suffering, ultimately influence therapy outcomes – perhaps through the making and maintaining of the therapeutic alliance. I have sensed that a psychologist’s willingness to be fully present in the midst of client suffering, to deeply hear, see, and take on human suffering, has an important part to play in both Christian and non-Christian clients’ ability to speak out of their agony and begin to heal, irrespective of the specific techniques utilized in therapy.

Those in the field of psychology as well as in the related fields of medicine and social work have for the most part overlooked questions concerning client suffering (see Cassell, 1991 for a notable exception in the field of medicine). A commonly held view in the scientific community is that human suffering is best addressed by theologians and philosophers; clinical psychologists should stick within their purview and focus on the amelioration of mental health symptoms associated with specific disorders.  Mental health symptoms often overlap with but are not synonymous with the components of suffering: feelings of isolation, abandonment, despair, vulnerability/loss, and a sense of meaninglessness (Cassell, 1991; Reed, 2003). 

 Until recently questions regarding the influence of therapist characteristics in the healing process were similarly overlooked by research-minded psychologists. However, the development of an APA task force in 2002 to explore the degree to which participant variables (therapist and client) affect therapy outcomes independent of and in conjunction with technique and relationship variables demonstrates a growing interest in the “person of the therapist” in psychological change (Castonguay & Beutler, 2006). Perhaps now is the time for psychologists to take another look at variations in therapists’ core beliefs about human suffering and whether this practitioner variable has bearing on healing. Christian psychologists, who feel free to draw upon biblical wisdom and the vast body of theology and Christian philosophy that focuses on human suffering, might be best suited to be forerunners in such an exploration.

One question that might be fruitfully explored is whether Christian psychologists who have developed a nuanced understanding of human suffering viewed through the lens of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ are better equipped to provide the gifts of loving, non-judgmental presence in the midst of client affliction than Christian therapists who have developed more restricted orientations to human suffering (e.g., bypass Christ’s cross and focus solely on the hope of the resurrection , view suffering primarily as a result of the individual client’s sin) as well as than non-religious therapists who perceive human suffering as meaningless. 

  In my second blog (September 28, 2009) I will advocate that Christian psychologists are called to cultivate a coherent, Christian orientation to human suffering that is based on the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ yet considers the biblical narrative as a whole. I will describe aspects of my own journey as I seek to develop such a view and to live faithfully by it. I will also identify resources that have assisted me in this journey.  

 Cassell, E. J. (1991). The nature of suffering and the goals of medicine. New York: Oxford University Press.

 Castonguay, L. G. & Beutler, L. E. (Eds.). (2006). Principles of therapeutic change that work.New York: Oxford University Press.

 Reed, F.C. (2003). Suffering and illness: Insights for caregivers. Philadelphia: F.A Davis Company.

Excellence Without a Soul: A Response to the Problem of the Modern University

Posted on August 24, 2009

(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 August, and this is his fourth post).

 Cambridge/Amherst Seminar: This 15- minute talk was given on Oct. 30, 2006 at Harvard University to a group of about 60 faculty members from Boston area universities, mostly from Harvard. It was also given on Oct. 31 at Amherst College to about 45 faculty members from Amherst area colleges. In each case it was a dinner address and was preceded by a 15-minute talk by Prof. Harry Lewis the former Dean of Harvard College. His address summarized the thesis of his book, Excellence Without A Soul: How A Great University Forgot Education (2006) and focused on moral errors in the conduct of major publicly known representatives of Harvard University, errors that exemplified a serious loss of moral vision.

 Before taking up the topic of the soulless modern university, and the need for rediscovery of moral leadership, I want to place the topic in a general cultural context.

    I believe there is reasonable evidence and consensus that we are coming to an end of the so-called modern period.   It is a commonplace to describe our present situation as post-modern.  This term, post-modern, in spite of its ambiguities refers to a kind of late modern period in which many of the traditional underpinnings and assumptions of modernity have been very seriously criticized or deconstructed.  In recent decades I see three major modern ideals that now show clear signs of completion and exhaustion.  The first is secularism.  In my graduate student day’s secularism was riding high.  Religion was seen as a thing of the past, which would soon finish withering and disappear, to be replaced by the modern, rational humanistic secular world.  Many psychologists and other social scientists interpreted their disciplines as part of this emerging secular triumph.  For Christianity, Harvey Cox’s Secular City (1965) is a good representative of this confident assumption.  It is now roughly forty years later and much of that secular confidence has evaporated. This has happened in part because of the remarkable and unexpected growth of religion in America and in much of the world. Indeed in the United States Evangelical Protestantism was beginning to emerge at the very moment when Harvey Cox was writing his book.  Since then in the United States we have seen a resurgence of Orthodox and Hasidic Judaism to the extent that today the future of Judaism is generally understood to be the future of its orthodox expressions.  There are now clear signs of a broad based grass roots revival of traditional Catholicism in the United States, a revival largely unobserved by the media. And, of course, Islam has shown much growth in many places.  There are still other examples of this religious growth ranging from Hinduism to Mormonism to Buddhism to New Age spirituality but I think the point is clear, religion has revived very strongly. One sign of this is the extent to which religion for better and worse is part of the headlines dealing with current events. 

       Ironically, post-modern critics of modernity by attacking the very concept of an objective knowledge that aimed to provide a widely accepted humanistic ethics have undermined much of the previous secular confidence. And, of course, no new generally accepted rational humanistic ethics has arisen. Instead we have postmodern support for a personally relative morality of anything goes plus the claim that any proposed objective basis for a moral norm is simply the disguised expression of a desire for power.  Furthermore, a disappointment with and wide- ranging criticism of science among post-modern and other critics has also eroded the belief in the possibility of a stable, generally acceptable secular society. Some of these critiques have focused on technology with its negative environmental impact; others have identified the agendas or goals of science as being set by the government and corporate sponsors of science. For many of quite different political persuasions science is not seen as an independent and honest moral discipline but as a kind of hired man for those who fund it.

    A second major modern ideal or emphasis of the modern period that is dying is socialism as broadly defined. By socialism I mean not only the growth of socialist programs within governments around the world, but also the general belief in the government’s capacity to assure the material and well-being of its citizens.  This modern assumption is losing much of its confidence and even its appeal. Throughout the world, socialist governments, which means for all practical purposes all of the modern states in the western world, and Japan, are aware of a looming crisis with respect to their social obligations.  People are no longer convinced that governments will have the money to pay for their huge social programs. Many governments, especially in Europe and Japan, recognize that there will not be an adequate work force to sustain their economy because of population declines that promise to become severe in the future.  In short, socialism is an idea that has largely been completed and generates very little idealistic enthusiasm among the young who today are often likely to see themselves as victims of their parent’s socialist systems. 

   The third major characteristic of modernism that is also beginning to show it’s age is what might be called “sexualism”. By this I mean the sexual revolution with its continued push toward more and more varied and extreme sexual expression.  This general attitude is familiar to all and is presently found in pressures for same sex marriage and now increasingly a return to polygamy or poly-amorous relationships as they are called in progressive circles. (The media seem to be using the term plural marriage.) Many kinds of high tech manipulation in the creation of children are another example of sexualism.  But this sexual revolution, as it is often called, is now rather old hat to many of our young people.  And the first serious criticisms of this way of life even in the university world have begun to appear even among former feminists.  The idea that your youthful days will be wonderful if you can hook up sexually with anyone you happen to feel attracted to after a few beers is far from convincing, especially for young women who often pay a heavier price for such pseudo-bonding.  One could interpret the whole preoccupation with date rape as an indirect expression of female college students’ despair over the present relation between the sexes.  Although sexual modernism and post-modernism seem firmly in place in our society, I would not be surprised to see emerge in future decades a counter-revolution expressed by intelligent and idealistic young people, a reaction tied to religious commitments.  In any case, sexualism as a new exciting personal and social idea has certainly lost its novelty and through the problems it causes has begun to create a serious re-evaluation. Thus, sexualism along with socialism and secularism is becoming a completed or exhausted movement.  One can say that all three of these modern ideals with their associated sources of meaning and values are, if you will, ” so last century.” And idealistic young people are especially uneasy with these tired modern ideas.

   A final important context for our seminar topic is the growth of Islam and the present conflict between Islam and the West.  One does not have to agree completely with Samuel Huntington’s (1996) thesis about a clash of civilizations, but it is probably safe to say that for many years in the future, and possibly for the rest of this century, a conflict between Islam and the West and in some respects explicitly between Islam and Christianity is going to be with us. If the challenge of Islam has a long-term future then I suggest that one of the effects of this challenge will be the increasing growth of religion in the West. Let me note my rationale for this hypothesis.  In the previous century the United States faced both internally and externally, the challenge of socialism and communism.  The most dramatic example obviously was the conflict with the Soviet Union, but the challenge existed long before communism took over in Russia.  One profound effect of our competition with socialism and communism was the extent to which we took on socialist characteristics ourselves. We developed many essentially “socialist” government programs.  In Europe Socialist political parties became commonplace. That is, one of the major consequences of this great struggle was that we became like our enemy because we had to respond to their legitimate criticisms of us. Likewise, the Islamic critique of the godless, commercialized and sexualized West has great validity and resonates with millions of Westerners; to the extent that Islamic criticism and pressure continue in the decades ahead, we will have to shore up our own religious and moral response, and a Western godless and self indulgent society will seem increasingly weak and indefensible.

     Now, one important consequence of this modern and even postmodern completion is what I believe is a widespread quietly developing interest in a new, positive approach to many previously neglected or rejected questions and topics. Indeed, the revival of religion is one major example of this new mentality. After all religion was reliably rejected by modern and postmodern thinkers.  For want of a better term I have referred to this possible new and emerging cultural period as “transmodern“. By transmodern I mean a transformation and transcendence of the modern and postmodern worldview. Thus, transmodern is not a rejection of modernism but a transforming of it in the service of transcendent ideas. By transcendent I include both religious and spiritual interpretations, as well as idealist and high ethical concerns.  I believe important early expressions of such a mentality are already present in many of the arts, in philosophy and in religion. (Some examples are the philosophy and theology of the previous and the present pope; the recent writings of the novelist Tom Wolfe such as his essay “I am sorry but your soul just died”; Harvard’s Prof. Harvey Mansfield and many, many others.). However, I wish to focus on a transmodern phenomenon that has recently emerged in psychology. The so-called “positive psychology” pioneered primarily by Prof. Martin Seligman at the University of Pennsylvania is an example of an idealistic new psychology that is based on the virtues. This psychology of the virtues proposed and developed by a prominent secular psychologist has quickly established itself as an important new field of both empirical and theoretical psychology. Its importance lies in its emphasis on ideals of the good or flourishing life and on its placing of purpose or teleology back at the center of psychology, especially of academic, research psychology. In addition the psychology of the virtues has begun to reestablish important connections between psychology and philosophy that had long been neglected.  This focus on the virtues is -one might say- psychology’s rediscovery of the wheel, of what had long been known. However, in view of psychology’s influential role in American society and because the empirical method is likely to find new ways in which the virtues can be learned and applied, I anticipate that this new virtues psychology will have serious cultural importance. Already, the psychology of forgiveness has received wide attention in the media and elsewhere. Psychologists focusing on the study of such virtues as love, gratitude, justice, honesty and courage are likely to have their work generate significant public interest as well.

   The decline of modernism, specifically of secularism, socialism and sexualism, the rise of the Islamic challenge to the West, the growth of religion and more recently the interest in virtue, provide large cultural contexts for why I believe religion and in particular God must return to and be part of our elite universities if they wish to remain relevant in the coming century.  However, for most of our elite universities and in particular for Harvard there is a historical and institutional reason why God should come back.  The problem of the absence of a soul is really the problem of the absence of God.  The idea that Harvard has turned its back on God would have been considered impossible by the founders of the college over three hundred years ago.  Harvard was founded and in many respects formed as a Christian seminary or college.  Over the centuries Harvard like most of our elite universities first neglected, then forgot and now has rejected God. This I suggest is no longer acceptable. Thus the first reason for bringing back God is that any institution that turns its back on its founding principals, on its founding charism as we say in Catholic circles, is in danger of cutting off its basic life principle and motivation for future growth. The convincing lament of soul-less ness so well described by Dean Lewis can be understood, at least in part, as a consequence of Harvard’s rejection of its founding principles and heritage. A second important reason for re-introducing God is the basic commitment to intellectual and moral truth that characterizes any genuine university.   The impressive number of important contemporary intellectuals who believe in God is something that the modern university has closed its eyes to.  Serious theists are rarely encouraged, much less honored, at our premier universities. Atheism or at least an active skepticism is the standard operating position in our academies.  Nevertheless for many years now increasing numbers of intelligent believers have come onto the intellectual scene. Much of the recovery of a theistic mentality has happened outside of our universities where, of course, so much of the country’s intellectual life has been happening in the last few decades- in think tanks and private institutes.

    Let me almost conclude by suggesting that a university that is looking for a soul should sponsor a series of talks given by prominent intellectuals who believe in God.  This series of lectures would not focus on argument and dialectic. Instead, the talks would present examples of accomplished intellectuals and scholars whose belief in God has been important for their intellectual work and also for their personal and moral integrity. It should not be feared that such speakers Protestant, Catholic, Jewish or other would attempt though argument to impose their views.  Instead, this kind of lecture series would be a small step in the right direction for any university or college that understands that it has lost its vision in today’s world of nihilistic relativism.

    This proposed lecture series, which could be called Plan A, however, might seem too unsuited even too radical for the present university scene, too politically loaded for professors or administrators to feel comfortable in such a sponsorship. In addition, the need for a new moral vision is so immediate that a positive treatment of God however stimulating might be too abstract or removed from such a more pressing need. So, I propose a Plan B or fallback position for those wanting some constructive but more concrete response to the moral vacuum on campus. Let me suggest a different series of lectures by academics and intellectuals focused on the recovery of the great virtue tradition – a tradition with a long Western heritage but also one found in all the world’s major civilizations. A good lead speaker might be Prof. Seligman but there are many fine philosophers, theologians, psychologists and cultural commentators who would be appropriate. I believe none of us would be surprised if college students’ gave an enthusiastic response to intelligent new treatments of the topic of the virtues rediscovered. For many students are hungry not only for some kind of moral vision, but also for evidence that their university is aware of their need and has something positive and exciting to satisfy it.

Experiencing the Supernatural: A Problem of Will

Posted on August 16, 2009

(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 August, and this is his third post).

Taken from Things on Heaven and Earth, Exploring the Supernatural (Brewster: Paraclete, 1998), 81-92).

I would like to address the skeptic, the atheist, or the agnostic (and the doubter in all of us) who rejects both God and spiritual reality. Doubting the transcendent may seem to solve many intellectual dilemmas because it teaches us to rely on what we can know empirically-the data most easily transformed into technical solutions. Certainly the advent of the twentieth century brought with it tremendous hope that age-old problems of the human condition could best be addressed in this way.

            I am convinced, however, that the rejection of God and the transcendent which figured so large at the start of modernity must be dealt with if we are to overcome our current dilemmas from bioethical, to environmental, to social-political. The Western intellectual community has shown serious bias it seems to me, in failing to bring these issues into the open. They ought to be part of the public debate. Many people are waking up to the possible linkage between spiritual questions and such prob-lems as family collapse, crime, environmental degradation, and “predator youth.” The collapse of ideologies such as Marxism, Freudianism, behaviorism, and the like is causing us to reassess many questions once thought disposed of, specifically the exis-tence of God and humankind’s ability to apprehend God. Therefore, the time, I believe, is ripe to make God and the spir-itual life an active part of the contemporary intellectual agenda.

            There need to be good reasons to do so, of course. Let’s investigate a promising argument.

            An important initial point is that throughout human history and its varied cultures three great external types of reality commonly have been assumed to exist. These are the external physical world, the world of other minds, and the transcendent spiritual world, for example, of God or the gods. An interesting feature that these three presumed realities share is that we cannot prove the existence of any of them (1). Indeed, in 1967 the eminent philosopher Alvin Plantinga published God and Other Minds, in which he proved that the degree of rational uncertainty about the existence of other minds and about the existence of God is exactly the same. (This proof assumes what is called “classical foundationalism”-namely, that an argument or proof for God’s existence is required, and that an acceptable argument is one derived from an original set of self-evident axioms.) Plantinga shows that the rational grounds for accepting the existence of God and other minds has the same structure and involves the same assumptions-assumptions that he then demonstrates are often question-begging. There need to be good reasons to do so, of course.  Let’s investigate a promising argument.

            An important initial point is that throughout human history and its varied cultures three great external types of reality commonly have been assumed to exist.  These are the external physical world, the world of other minds, and the transcendent spiritual world, for example, of God or the gods.  An interesting feature that these three presumed realities share is that we cannot prove the existence of any of them.[1] Indeed, in 1967 the eminent philosopher Alvin Plantinga published God and Other Minds, in which he proved that the degree of rational uncertainty about the existence of other minds and about the existence of God is exactly the same.  (This proof assumes what is called “classical foundationalism”-namely, that an argument or proof for God’s existence is required, and that an acceptable argument is one derived from an original set of self-evident axioms.)  Plantiga shows that the rational grounds for accepting the existence of God and other minds has the same structure and involves the same assumptions-assumptions that he then demonstrates are often question-begging.  For example, we never directly experience other people’s minds, and our assumption that they exist is based on an analogy with our own mental life.

            Plantinga’s proof itself is sophisticated and cannot be summarized easily, but its general structure is not hard to grasp.  Plantinga first systematically shows that neither natural theology nor natural “atheology” offers a satisfying solution to the problem of a rational justification of belief in God’s existence or of God’s nonexistence.  He then tries another approach to the justifications of belief in God by exploring its analogies and connections with a similar problem, the “problem of other minds”; that is, how do you rationally justify the existence of other people’s minds?  Plantinga goes on to “defend the analogical argument for other minds against current criticism and argues that it is as good and answer as we have to the question of other minds.  But…it turns out that the analogical argument finally succumbs to a malady exactly resembling the one afflicting the teleological argument [for God's existence].” (2)

            The malady is that the analogical argument-derived from our own mental life-proves too much. That is, the argument can prove not only that other minds exist and feel pain, but also that the mind can feel all pains, and so on. Since we do not feel all pains, or remember all past experiences, the argument must be wrong. Likewise the same argument for God’s existence proves too much. Plantinga concludes that “belief in other minds and belief in God are in the same epistemological boat; hence if either is rational, so is the other. But obviously the former is rational; so, therefore, is the latter.” (3) His formal proof for this conclusion has stood without a successful challenge for some thirty years.

            In his more recent work, Plantinga shows that, just as we can-not prove the existence of other minds, it is also impossible to prove the existence of external physical reality or even to prove the existence of the past. Again, he shows that the failure in each proof is identical to the failure of the teleological argument for God’s existence. One obvious implication of Plantinga’s work is that if scientists tend to accept the existence of physical reality and of other minds, but to reject that of God, then this is done on nonrational grounds. Before we turn to some of the nonrational reasons behind the rejection of the spiritual realm, it will be useful to discuss how it is that the existence of the external world is commonly accepted. First, the problem of proving the existence of external reality arises once one accepts the fact that our knowledge of external reality is always mediated by the nervous system: All we are directly aware of is our own states of mind. We must-we can only-infer an external reality existing behind and acting as a cause of our sensations, perception, and so on. But the validity of this inference is what cannot be proved. We may accept Plantinga’s reasoning in this matter or we may be convinced on other grounds that proving the existence of the physical world is not possible. There are, of course, many skeptics on this issue in Western philosophy; for example, the writings of David Hume, Bishop Berkeley, and Thomas Reid certainly support Plantinga’s conclusion on this issue.

            Nevertheless, almost no one has ever doubted physical reality to the point of trying seriously to live by such a position. Someone who lived on the basis of such doubt should not bother to eat food and would surely walk into walls, fall into ditches, and make other such blunders. A few idealist philosophers seem to be the intellectual representatives of a position that does deny or comes close to denying the physical world, but they do it only in their lectures and writings, not in their daily lives.

            The overwhelming majority of scientists, not to mention ordinary citizens of the world, have always accepted the existence of an external physical reality. Scientific theories are, after all, about something outside of us. The grounds for this acceptance seem to be that we are so made that sensory and perceptual experience carries with it the completely convincing notion that we are experiencing external reality. Put somewhat differently: Our normal interaction with what appears to be physical reality naturally creates a firm conviction of its existence. Of course, in some rare instances one’s perception of external reality may be faulty. There are such things as illusions and hallucinations. But even these errors are observed, noted, and corrected by more refined and systematic perceptual contact with the same presumed external world. Hence, to believe that the whole realm of physical reality does not exist, or that most, or even much, of our perceptual experience is without an external source, is rightly considered bizarre. Except for certain kinds of philosophers, such as the above-mentioned idealists, who are given a kind of philosopher’s license, at least briefly, to suspend common sense, anyone who fails to believe in the external world is judged as suffering from a mental pathology.

            Likewise, our belief in the existence of other minds comes from interaction with other people. Sensory contact with a per-son, plus interaction involving language and symbolic communication, appears adequate to persuade us of the existence of other minds.

            It is important to note that a crucial issue with respect to initiating and maintaining contact with external physical reality or with other minds is whether the person has the will or desire to initiate the interaction with the presumed reality. For example, suppose you find a man who is on an artificial respirator in a darkened room and who believes there is no external reality. After some investigation you discover that he has not walked or used his eyes or ears for some time. You desire to cure him of this intellectual ailment-one obviously supported by his markedly reduced physical and perceptual activity. A reasonable strategy would be to get him to open his eyes and unstop his ears, and to. talk with him often. In time you, his guide, would encourage him to strengthen his muscles and begin to walk so that he could come out of his room and enter the outside world. Therapy for his pathological intellectual position is thus to immerse him in direct interaction with the reality that he denies. In this case, there is every reason to believe that such a program would convince him of the reality of the physical world. But such a procedure depends upon his willingness to cooperate with you in interacting with the outside world. As for logical proof, that would remain, as always, impossible.

            Now let us suppose we find someone who denies that other minds exist and lives as though other minds do not exist. (Such a position, of course, seems to be quite rare, so rare that I have never heard of its existence.) However, let us also suppose we have found such a person and that our subject’s condition is strongly supported by his social isolation. He lives alone and has for years; he never speaks to anyone, and he appears to have withdrawn completely from interpersonal communication. As a result, his lack of belief in other minds is not that surprising. He remembers interacting with people when he was young, but these experiences he attributes to a childish and immature understanding of things at the time. Again, this man’s condition is fundamentally pathological, and correction would involve the introduction of interpersonal communication into his life. In time he would discover friends and enemies; perhaps he would even love or hate. Later, after years of friendship, if he were to be reminded by an old friend of his former belief that other minds do not exist, his only answer might be to look at his friend and laugh. In short, interaction with other minds is necessary in order to accept their existence; apparently in all known cases this interaction is sufficient.

            Let me suggest that the situation with respect to belief in the transcendent spiritual realm is similar. First, note that most of the people who consistently deny the existence not only of God but indeed of the entire spiritual realm constitute a relatively small group that seems to have come into existence in Western Europe about 250 years ago. Most of them have been trained in science or other rationalistic and intellectual disciplines. They tend to work in universities or certain professions that are highly specialized and often involve peculiar environments. They tend to socialize mostly with those having similar skeptical outlooks. What they mean by “real thinking” is the mental manipulation of abstract written symbols, often numbers, or other very digital elements. To such people a proper belief system or world view is something constructed by the correct sequencing of these symbols with occasional checks on whether some kind of observation backs it up. That is, their world view is something that exists in a digital code, and they seem to assume that digital codes are adequate for representing any kind of question, problem, or knowledge. The very notion of a belief system based on perceptual information coded in the body and often unavailable to conscious verbal expression, or on a world view based significantly on direct personal experience, does not occur to them.

            Also striking is the fact that these people never or almost never go to church or synagogue or read religious writings. But most peculiar of all is that they appear never to pray, to meditate, or to engage in other spiritual exercises. That is, they rarely, if ever, use the well-known procedures for getting and staying in contact with the transcendent spiritual realm.

          Again, the answer to this pathology is not some logical attempt to prove the existence of God or of spiritual reality. As in the cases of the physical world and other minds, this is impossible anyway. The answer is to try and convince such a person to pray: that is, to talk with God, to listen for God’s voice, or to engage in other spiritual activities. If such a person refuses to interact with the transcendent and is determined to remain in spiritual isolation, there is little one can do. This requirement that one engage in prayer and meditation is a serious one. For example, if someone doubted some astronomical or physical claim-such as the existence of moons around Jupiter or the reality of a whole level of physical existence (e.g., of subatomic particles)-an honest search for an answer would require a number of steps. First, the person, if ignorant of astronomy or physics, would need a guide–a trained scientist-and would have to become at least something of an amateur scientist. It would take considerable time and commitment from the seeker. After all, observations are often ambiguous; in any case, observations do not reliably interpret themselves. Even more important, a person who denied the very existence of the external world would be unqualified to judge the validity of physical knowledge; likewise, a person who did not believe in the existence of other minds could not be an adequate psychologist. (4)

            In almost all religious and spiritual traditions a knowledgeable person–a guide, if you will–is needed. And prayer and meditation are the primary instruments, the “telescopes,” for contacting or interacting with spiritual reality. No scientist who refuses to seek religious experience has the intellectual right to say that spiritual reality does not exist or that the mind cannot be affected by that reality. A person who has had no religious experience is simply unqualified to comment on the existence, much less the nature, of spiritual phenomena. Please note, I am not saying that the person must have a particular interpretation or understanding of his religious or spiritual experience–only that he must have had a reasonable amount of such experience. Perhaps after various religious experiences the person will conclude it was all an illusion or something other than what it first appeared to be. Fine. Scientific observations, too, can be mistaken; there are such things as artifacts. Particular spiritual experiences can also be artifacts, or perhaps even all such experience is illusory. However, a scientist who has no systematic empirical understanding of a phenomenon is not in a position to give informed criticism. And a scientist who was ignorant of and refused to become involved with the experimental methodology used to demonstrate that a major phenomenon existed would be considered incompetent to evaluate the claim. If he actively per-sisted in rejecting the phenomenon on a priori grounds, his col-leagues would rightfully dismiss his claims as unqualified, even should subsequent research prove his position to be right.

            I trust the argument is clear. Religion for most people is sup-ported by religious or spiritual experience in which people claim a relationship or interaction with a spiritual realm, in par-ticular with “spiritual minds” This may mean interaction with God, or Jesus, or with a dead person, or even with evil spirits. To evaluate the validity of these extremely important claims requires that an investigator seek contact with spiritual reality. There are various ways people do this, but first they must have the will to seek. The desire to seek, of course, is something rooted in psychological factors and has relatively little to do with what we usually refer to by such terms as “reason” or “evidence.” (5)

         This issue of having the will to seek interaction with spiritual reality is a very important one. For example, the prominent American intellectual and philosopher Mortimer Adler frequently wrote about the case for belief in God, but pulled back from accepting such belief. In his autobiography Adler wrote that his reluctance “[lay] in the state of one’s will, not in the state of one’s mind” And he admitted that to become seriously religious “would require a radical change in my way of life…. The simple truth of the matter is I did not wish to live up to being a genuinely religious person.” (6)

            Countless other atheists and skeptics presumably suffer from the same motivational weakness. They are likely, however, to disguise their problem as due to the evidence of modern science or some other similar “reason:’ And, of course, many atheists and skeptics are extraordinarily superficial in their motives for unbe-lief. This understanding is well described by the Baron d’ Holbach, the French Enlightenment philosopher and perhaps the first public atheist. But though an atheist, he was very critical of many nonbelievers. He wrote: “We must allow that corruption of manners, debauchery, license, and even frivolity of mind may often lead to irreligion or infidelity…. These pretended free-thinkers have examined nothing for themselves; they rely on others whom they suppose to have weighed matters more carefully. How can men, given up to voluptuousness and debauchery, plunged in excess, ambitions, intriguing, frivolous, and dissipated–or depraved women of wit and fashion-how can such as these be capable of forming an opinion of a religion they have never thoroughly examined?” (7)

            Presumably such motivation is very prevalent today, especially in the media and entertainment industries. One is reminded of Psalm 14: “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God:”‘

            Sigmund Freud wrote as follows in his critique of religion, The Future of an Illusion: “If the truth of religious doctrines is dependent on inner experience which bears witness to that truth, what is one to do about the many people who do not have this rare experience?” (8) The problem with Freud’s lament is that, first, religious experience is far from rare and, second, Freud himself never sought God or religious experience. Freud was unwilling to seek; thus, he did not find, nor should he or we be surprised at his predictable failure. At best, Freud’s complaint is foolish, at worst, dishonest.

            In any case, given the will to seek, the most common instruments or techniques for contact with spiritual reality are prayer and meditation; they are the “telescopes” of the religious person. No truth-seeker should be afraid to look through any kind of telescope. Another way to put it is to note that in the United States some 95 percent of the population says they believe in God. Every year millions of people in the United States alone have personally significant religious experiences. To ignore evaluating this obviously relevant information is an act of intellectual denial that boggles the mind.

            The major reason for raising the question of spiritual experience is its relevance to the social and moral dilemmas of our postmodern age. These dilemmas have taken many years to unfold, and no doubt they will take many years to resolve. I am convinced, however, that until we can regain the perspective of our intermediate place in reality, there is no way to deal with our crisis. That intermediate position is between God and nature while being thoroughly connected to both. Thus, many of our problems today come from a self-preoccupation derived from an intellectual misunderstanding of who we are. We are not autonomous and alone; instead we are part of nature interacting with the external world, and we are part of our relationships with other minds. Our purpose is transcendent, derived from interaction with God. To once again accept this ancient wisdom, the modern intellectual community will have to address the reality of the transcendent–in particular, God.

 

 (1) Certain Catholic philosophers do believe it is possible to prove the existence of God.  If this is true, then the present argument is irrelevant and the problem is the bias of modern intellectuals.  However, the failre of so many thinkers to accept such a proof is probably evidence that the proof is unsatisfactory.

(2) A. Plantinga, God and Other Minds (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1967), viii.

(3) Ibid.

(4) Certain forms of extreme behaviorism at least in theory came close to denying the existence of other minds.  However, such positions were rare, and appear to be nonexistent today; in any case this kind of behaviorism made for a grossly inadequate psychology.

(5) For a book treating the psychological factors behind atheism, see the forthcoming The Psychological Origins of Atheism by Paul C. Vitz (Dallas: Spence).

(6) M. Adler, Philosopher at Large:  An Intellectual Biography (New York: Macmillan, 1977), 316.

(7) Système de la Nature, tom. ii, chap. 13; quoted in N. Laforet, The Causes and Cure of Unbelief, rev. and ed. by J. Gibbons (Boston: Thomas J. Flynn, 1909), 123.

(8) S. Freud, The Future of an Illusion, trans. and ed. by J. Strackey (New York: Norton, 1961), 28.

IPS and Modern Psychology: The Big Picture

Posted on August 9, 2009

(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 August, and this is his second post).

Psychology is generally understood as one of the most important forces in contemporary society.  As such, it is useful to trace its modern history in order to truly grasp psychology’s current directions. 

During the first half of the twentieth century, American psychology was dominated by two schools of thought: behaviorism and psychoanalysis.  While both schools made significant contributions to the field of psychology neither seriously acknowledged nor explored the inherent dignity of the human person.  On the whole, mainstream American psychology at first was captured by the mechanistic beliefs of behaviorism and by the reductionism and determinism of classical psychoanalysis.

Sigmund Freud, initiator of talk therapy and the founding father of the psychoanalytic tradition, was led by his study of physical ailments in his patients to probe into the psyche of the person.  He recognized that often there was something mental underlying the observed physical symptoms. His work led to the exploration of the unconscious mind and to understanding the importance of the unconscious in both normal and pathological mental life.

Although Freud claimed his was a scientific psychology, his theory was largely founded on anecdotal clinical evidence. While his theoretical ideas were largely literary (e.g. the Oedipus complex) or metaphors derived from natural science (e.g. his drive or energy theory), he promoted a separation from philosophy and developed a clinical descriptive approach that paved the way for later scientific contributions, such as the evidence for the importance of early mother/child relations, of early physical and sexual abuse, and the findings generated by attachment theory.

While psychoanalytic methods might lead to the amelioration of symptoms for clients, Freud’s view of the human person was generally quite negative.  His reduction of the human person to unconscious sexual and aggressive drives and unconscious defense mechanisms left out much of the actual psychology of the person. In theological terms man is more than his fallen nature. 

In addition, especially in the United States, a pragmatic and scientific school known as behaviorism became widely influential. Developed by such prominent theorists as Ivan Pavlov (Russian), Edward Thorndike, John Watson, and B.F. Skinner behaviorism initially was fueled by frustration with the ambiguity and lack of reliability of the philosophical and non-empirical approaches, which for them included the psychoanalytic model.  

The behaviorist, of course, demanded behavioral evidence for a psychological phenomenon.  This school purported to explain human and animal behavior in terms of external physical stimuli, responses, learning histories, and reinforcements. 

From this point of view, it follows that the person can be reduced to a product of external factors. As a result, behaviorists thought they could solve human problems by controlling environmental factors and thereby shaping human behavior. The clinical implications of this are to ignore anything beyond what is observable. Hence, the internal mental life of the person is bypassed. Nevertheless, within academia, behaviorism was more appealing than psychoanalysis, because it meant the possibility of doing controlled research.

In the middle of the 20th century came a new kind of psychology called Humanistic, or Self-psychology, developed primarily by Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers.  They laid the groundwork for a more positive person centered psychology that tried to understand the client as more than just a sum of environmentally determined behaviors or unconscious factors laid down in childhood.  They were reacting against both psychoanalysis and behaviorism; as a consequence this movement was often called the 3rd force in psychology.

Throughout history, of course, many individuals and groups have affirmed the inherent value and dignity of human beings and humanistic or self-psychology was a largely successful relatively recent psychological attempt to reaffirm that value.

While the value and goodness of the human person were affirmed by the humanists, they failed to recognize man’s fallen nature, e.g. strong natural tendencies to aggression, cruelty, exploitation, narcissism and many kinds of reality denying defenses. They put absolute trust in the self’s ability to govern itself and choose the good.  The pursuit of ‘self-actualization’ which was advocated as the goal of man isolated the individual from others and from God; the total subjective fulfillment of the individual was elevated above all else.  In his client-centered emphasis, Rogers encouraged clients to follow their feelings in every instance.  Thus, a tyranny of narcissism and moral relativism often left individuals controlled by their feelings and isolated from committed relationships with others.

Some years after the humanistic theorists a different and much more pragmatic psychology known as cognitive-behavior therapy was developed and has remained influential. This approach pioneered by Aaron Beck and Albert Ellis generally ignored the patient’s childhood and his or her unconscious. Instead it focused on changing a person’s cognitions and self understanding that were interpreted as causing the problem, e.g. depression or anxiety. In addition, new behaviors that would counter mental pathology were strongly encouraged. Besides emphasizing cognitions and behavior this school engaged in research that demonstrated its effectiveness. Research was neglected by both psychoanalytic and humanistic psychologists.

At present, the newest approach is that of Positive Psychology which began in the late 1990s with Martin Seligman, who has led psychology to a rediscovery of virtues and character strengths.  He began to look at what constitutes a good human life. He is interested in those virtues and character strengths that when developed can both enable persons to recover from past trauma and protect them from possible future psychological problems. This is an important movement which opens the door to the psychological study of what is good and leads to human flourishing. It also reintroduces to psychology the discipline of philosophy and indirectly theology. This is inevitable once psychology admits purpose or teleology into its understanding of the person. The positive psychologists are now starting to introduce training or practice in the virtues into psychotherapy, an innovation much supported by the earlier development of cognitive/behavioral psychology.

Concern for the sources of human flourishing and happiness is now present not only in psychology, but it has also been growing in the general culture where many are searching for meaning in a consumer dominated and hedonistic society.  Self-fulfillment has failed to provide the happiness and peace it was supposed to give. Some of this new mentality is shown by a marked shift toward religion and spirituality as important parts of man’s search for a deeper and more satisfying life. Indeed, religion and spirituality are beginning to become part of contemporary psychotherapy. For example, thanks to the work of such psychologists as Robert Enright and also Everret Worthington the practice of forgiveness is now far from unusual in therapy.

Today, probably more than ever people are aware of their psychological problems and of how these problems undermine happiness and general flourishing. Among our major problems are anger, resentment, depression, anxiety, addiction and narcissism. People know this and are even willing to understand the problem as one of “sin”, that is, as thoughts, feelings and behaviors that hurt others and themselves. Although they know that they shouldn’t live this way, they don’t know how to change.  A good Catholic therapist can help clients address and change these destructive behaviors by using both the best of psychology plus support from Catholic faith and morals. This is how IPS understands the issue of integration: It is the bringing together of sound psychological principles with a Catholic anthropology. Such integration will enable therapists to effectively address psychological problems and to prepare one for a genuine Christian spiritual life.

For example, Jesus told us not to hate but to love our enemies, but he didn’t tell us very much about how to do it. Many people are trapped in a world of resentment and grudges. They would like to forgive those who have wronged them, but do not know how to do so. An integrated psychology allows the introduction of forgiveness as a process into psychotherapy. Of course, one major subject of concern at our Institute is the intellectual nature of integration between psychology and the Faith. Specific psychological problems of special interest to IPS are addictions, narcissism and the familiar problems of depression and anxiety.  Catholics especially have a strong desire, even a duty, to help find answers to these types of suffering both as an expression of agape love and to deepen the faith in the lives of their Catholic/Christian clients.  We are also blessed to have the sacraments, especially confession and the Eucharist to give our lives meaning.

The best secular psychology has paved the way for such a Catholic approach to psychology. One hundred years ago we knew little that was systematic or scientific about abnormal human psychology or how to help those with mental suffering and behavioral problems. Catholics are indebted to the field of modern psychology for opening up an understanding of the psychological interior life of the person. Our present widespread appreciation of the previously unknown psychology now presents a new arena for theology to make contributions. Today the richness of the Catholic faith and theology coupled with philosophy and the discipline of psychology are prepared to more effectively enhance the health and wellbeing of the human person. To help bring this about is the goal of the Institute for the Psychological Sciences.

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