Psychology = religion? See !
roger gonnet
=http://www2.startribune.com/stOnLine/cgi%2Dbin/article%3FthisStory=81651206
Published Saturday, May 6, 2000
Psychology, religion share similar goals
Graydon Royce / Star Tribune
Humans are creatures of despair. We worry. We cry. Our hearts break, and our
minds race with unanswerable questions: "Why do we live? What does it mean?"
Sometimes despair locks the body with panic, anxiety and depression -- to
the point where we need help, answers, direction.
But where do we turn? Are these religious or psychological crises?
Increasingly, professionals are wondering themselves, integrating concepts
from both disciplines into their quest to help individuals struggling with
hopelessness. After all, psychotherapy and religion both attend to the soul
and the sense of purpose in life.
"In many ways, psychotherapists have become a new priesthood," said Walter
Bera, a licensed psychologist who works in the Twin Cities. "The old
priesthood based its authority on the Bible, and the new priesthood on the
diagnostic manual. In the old priesthood, you would do a confession, and in
the new priesthood you do an assessment. In the old, the focus would be on
your sins; in the new, it would be on your symptoms. The old would prescribe
penance and the new would prescribe therapy."
Bera's analog points out what this discussion is often really about --
simply a matter of language.
"What you're talking about is the technique of getting at the essence of a
person," said Dick Wagner, a licensed independent social worker in
Minneapolis.
Wagner participated in a workshop in March co-sponsored by the Wisdom Ways
Institute at the College of St. Catherine and the Minnesota Jung
Association, dedicated to exploring the intersections between psychotherapy
and the practice of spiritual direction. Though enrollment for the seminar
had been limited to 125, more than 140 people packed into the Carondelet
Center in St. Paul, and 20 more were turned away, testifying to the hunger
evident throughout America for spirituality, mental health and the quest for
wholeness.
"The essence of being human is spiritual," said Carol Schoenecker, a
spiritual director who along with Wagner and several other professionals
helped lead the workshop. "Spiritual direction is a way of connecting on a
deeper level -- it's a way to bring the spirituality into your everyday life
and the relationship with God," she said in an interview a few weeks after
the event. "When you go into psychotherapy, you're going to learn coping
skills, to uncover some of the stuff you do subconsciously that doesn't make
sense and keeps getting you into trouble."
That discovery, said Bera, is important and one of the psychologist's fears
is that religion can tend to gloss over these flaws with a feel-good
philosophy.
"Faith has been a refuge for many psychological and sexual problems," he
said, "and it can be an escape for being accountable to yourself, or to your
marriage or your family."
Religious proponents would probably disagree with Bera, arguing that even
though faith involves forces outside the person, it requires good conduct,
self-examination and responsibility for others.
The Wisdom Ways workshop promised to pinpoint intersections, but by the end
of five hours many were still searching for those points of blending; one
leader said that they don't blend, that eventually a person needs to make a
choice for psychotherapy or spiritual work. Ira Gordon of the Jung
Association said in a later interview that he agreed the session hadn't
directly identified those intersections but said the seminar had "begun the
discussion" of the similarities. Gordon expressed Jung's point of view: "How
can you not have them blended?"
While understanding the psychologist's desire to keep the two separated,
Gordon argues for "wholeness" in treating the individual. The segregation,
he suggested, has a price greater than integration.
Keep them apart
That integration, or blending, of the two disciplines, is much the cause of
David Blankenhorn's despair these days. Blankenhorn, a member of the
Institute for American Values, fears that psychology has replaced religion
as the spiritual guidepost for seekers in the 21st century.
"The classic Jewish and Christian answer to that question of 'What are we
here to do?' is to know and love God," Blankenhorn said recently.
"Psychology's answer, I believe, is 'meeting my needs as I define them.'
Instead of looking up to God, you look in the mirror."
For Blankenhorn, the commingling represents a fundamental shift in how we
apprehend and understand the world. No longer as a society do we accept the
notion of moral and natural laws that exist outside our own recognition, he
said. These laws, which have shaped our understanding of life and purpose
have been replaced, he contends, by a subjective creation, defined by each
individual.
"We're all psychologists now," Blankenhorn cries. "This is a way of
understanding the world that can answer the most important questions.
Religion has clear answers, and psychology does too. And while we
incorporate both, I think we've shifted toward psychology as the way to
answer this question, "Who am I, why am I here, where am I going?"
Less fearful of Blankenhorn's vision of psychological conquest is Karen
Armstrong, the former Catholic nun who was written extensively on religion.
Humans, Armstrong said in a recent interview, have the capacity for ideas
and experiences that take us beyond ourselves -- ecstasy.
"It's a dimension you can't attain through the process of ordinary, rational
thought," she said. "We've created religion and art -- singing, music,
architecture, painting -- to give us those experiences of ecstasy and
transcendence. We seek those ecstasies to help us live."
Psychology, on the other hand, is more of a mechanism to help people manage
their lives and unhappiness and still function. Sigmund Freud considered
happiness too ambitious a goal for the psychologist. Rather, he sought to
alleviate neurosis to the point where the person was capable of experiencing
genuine suffering.
"The absence of pain is not necessarily mental health," said Wagner. "It's
the ability to experience life to its fullest -- which includes pain."
Back together
Jung would have been sympathetic to Blankenhorn's fears of a myopic society,
fixated on itself. The Swiss psychologist, who with Freud pioneered
20th-century psychoanalysis, felt strongly the need to reintroduce the
religious insight -- that we are all part of something bigger.
"He believed that the reason there were psychologists in business was that
the traditional religions had broken down," said Paul Vitz, a professor of
psychology at New York University. "He felt that people who came to him were
always seeking meaning in life and commonly he interpreted that their
problem was fundamentally a religious problem."
Jung argued there are four ways for the individual to engage with the world:
intellect, emotion, intuition and sensation. It is an idea that resonates
with today's spiritual directors.
"I happen to think our bodies are our wisest spiritual directors," said
Julie Nerass, who has pastored, counseled, taught and worked as a spiritual
director for many years. "Often a trauma or disappointment or stress in our
lives is registered in the body, and I believe that our bodies are finely
tuned instruments that are sometimes smarter than our minds."
Nerass also participated in the March workshop and came away feeling there
is a great hunger among people for spiritual life.
"I think people are understanding that psychology sometimes leaves off at
pathology," she said. "One of the gifts of mythology is to give us a bigger
story, and that's what the religious traditions do as well."
Mythology was an ancient form of psychology. The stories need not be taken
literally, but journeys to the underworld, terror in the labyrinth and
wrestling with monsters held unmistakable lessons for the individual
struggling with personal demons. Mythology and religion both attempt to do
what psychology does -- explain what goes on in the mind and unconscious,
which is a process that exists outside of rational thought.
It could be argued that Eastern religions are much closer to psychology than
are western faiths of the book.
"Buddha, his religion is entirely psychological," said Armstrong. "It's not
remotely interested in doctrines or beliefs. What he's helping people do is
deal with pain, which he says is universal in life. And by various ethical
practices and certain ways of life you devise a whole method to find a still
center within yourself -- a still center absolutely unshakeable of peace,
which he called Nirvana."
Regardless of the similarities, though, religion and psychotherapy still are
kept separate in practice. "There are really good mental health concepts in
the religious texts of many different traditions," said Gay Joel, a
psychotherapist at Fairview-University Hospitals. "But how do you practice a
blending? In your mind's eye, they may be very integrated, but the licensing
board has very strict regulations on how you practice."
So while both psychology and religion may seek to soothe the human capacity
for despair and help the individual find purpose and meaning in life, they
are likely each to stay in its own house for the time being. Still,
practitioners continue to poke in the dark for points of intersection and
commonality.
"The focus of psychotherapy is on symptoms and emotional health," said
Wagner. "But I would hope that it would not be to the exclusion of a
person's spiritual life."
-- The Jung Association will hold a salon on this subject on May 19, led by
David Hawkinson, a pastoral counselor. The free discussion starts at 7:15
p.m., at Immaculate Heart of Mary Church, 1550 Summit Av., St. Paul, the
eastern entrance.
--
roger gonnet
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