Psychology & Spirituality
Evolutionary history, human psychology, biblical texts, and God. Whatever you think of the array of views Jordan B. Peterson holds on social issues, his lectures on the psychology of biblical stories are worth listening to. The introductory lecture, Introduction to the Idea of God, was just re-released on his podcast.
Along these same lines (the attempt at reconciling evolutionary history (“Big History”) with religion and ideas of God broadly) is John Haught’s The New Cosmic Story.
I'm not sure what to make of Jungian psychology, but I came across this statement today in his Man and His Symbols:
"Our psyche is part of nature, and its enigma is as limitless."
Its enigma is as limitless. One thing a meditation practice will teach you is that you do not know yourself. Not that you are analyzing yourself during meditation, but I think it makes you overall more aware of all the various drives, motivations, traumas, etc. swimming around in your mind. I often think of the psyche as an ocean with no bottom.
One of the hopes of having a regular practice is that the psyche is pliable. That we can actually be changed, through the practice, in a deep and lasting way.
But I'm not sure we'll ever really know who we are. I think what matters is the healing – the positive change – if such a thing is actually happening. Not the self-knowledge.
This is an extended quote from Viktor Frankl on the limitations of "reductionism" – what might be called the tendency to reduce human behavior to "nothing but ___" (insert whatever lens you want, biology, physics, evolutionary psychology, etc.). I love his analogy in the figures below. This is kind of a wordy quote from this book, but overall I find Frankl to be a very clear writer. If you want to go a little beyond his famous Man's Search for Meaning, this would be a great next book to read. To me, Frankl still the most clear and straightforward psychologist who works from a generally spiritual worldview.
"Reducing conscience to the mere result of conditioning processes is but one instance of reductionism. I would define reductionism as a pseudoscientific approach which disregards and ignores the humanness of phenomena by making them into mere epiphenomena, more specifically, by reducing them to subhuman phenomena. In fact, one could define reductionism as sub-humanism...
...Let us ask what may have caused reductionism. To answer this question we must consider the effects of scientific specialization. We are living in an age of specialists, and this takes its toll. I would define a specialist as a man who no longer sees the forest of truth for the trees of facts. To choose one example, in the field of schizophrenia, we are confronted with a lot of findings furnished by biochemistry. We are also facing a vast literature on the hypothetical psychodynamics underlying schizophrenia. And another literature is concerned with the uniquely schizophrenic mode of being in the world. However, I deem that he who contends that he knows what schizophrenia really is is deceiving you, or at best himself.
The pictures by which the individual sciences depict reality have become so disparate, so different from each other, that it has become more and more difficult to obtain a fusion of the different pictures. The difference between pictures need not constitute a loss, but may well form a gain in knowledge. In the case of stereoscopic vision, it is the very difference between the right and the left picture that makes for the acquisition of a whole dimension, that is, the three-dimensional space over against the two-dimensional plane. To be sure, there is a precondition. The retinas must be capable of arriving at a fusion of the different pictures!
What holds for vision is also true of cognition. The challenge is how to attain, how to maintain, and how to restore a unified concept of man in the face of the scattered data, facts, and findings supplied by a compartmentalized science of man.
But we cannot draw back the wheel of history. Society cannot do without specialists. Too much of the style of research has become characterized by teamwork, and in the framework of teamwork the specialist is indispensable.
But does the danger really lie in the lack of universality? Doesn’t it rather lurk in the pretense of totality? What is dangerous is the attempt of a man who is an expert, say, in the field of biology, to understand and explain human beings exclusively in terms of biology. The same is true of psychology and sociology as well. At the moment at which totality is claimed, biology becomes biologism, psychology becomes psychologism, and sociology becomes sociologism. In other words, at that moment science is turned into ideology. What we have to deplore, I would say, is not that scientists are specializing but that the specialists are generalizing. We are familiar with that type called terrible simplificateurs. Now we become acquainted with a type I would like to call terrible généralisateurs. I mean those who cannot resist the temptation to make overgeneralized statements on the grounds of limited findings.
I once came across a quotation defining man as “nothing but a complex biochemical mechanism powered by a combustion system which energizes computers with prodigious storage facilities for retaining encoded information.” Now, as a neurologist, I stand for the justification of using the computer as a model, say, for the activity of the central nervous system. It is perfectly legitimate to use such an analogy. Thus, in a certain sense the statement is valid: man is a computer. However, at the same time he also is infinitely more than a computer. The statement is erroneous only insofar as man is defined as “nothing but” a computer.
Today nihilism no longer unmasks itself by speaking of “nothingness.” Today nihilism is masked by speaking of the “nothing-but-ness” of man. Reductionism has become the mask of nihilism.
How should we cope with this state of affairs? How is it possible to preserve the humanness of man in the face of reductionism? In the final analysis, how is it possible to preserve the oneness of man in the face of the pluralism of sciences, when the pluralism of sciences is the nourishing soil on which reductionism is flourishing?
Nicolai Hartmann and Max Scheler, perhaps more than anyone else, have tried to solve the problem confronting us. Hartmann’s ontology and Scheler’s anthropology are attempts to allot to each science a province of limited validity. Hartmann distinguished various strata such as the bodily and mental ones plus a spiritual apex. Here again spiritual is meant without a religious connotation, but rather in the sense of noological. Hartmann sees the stratification of human existence as a hierarchical structure. By contrast, Scheler’s anthropology uses the image of layers (Schichten) rather than strata (Stufen), thereby distinguishing the more or less peripheral biological and psychological layers from the central personal one—the spiritual axis.
Certainly both Hartmann and Scheler have done justice to the ontological differences between body, mind, and spirit by conceiving of them in terms of qualitative rather than merely quantitative differences. However, they do not take into sufficient account what is opposed to the ontological differences, namely, what I would like to call the anthropological unity on the other hand. Or, as Thomas Aquinas put it, man is a “unitas multiplex.” Art has been defined as unity in diversity. I would define man as unity in spite of multiplicity!
Conceiving of man in terms of bodily, mental, and spiritual strata or layers means dealing with him as if his somatic, psychic, and noetic modes of being could be separated from each other.
I myself have tried simultaneously to do justice to the ontological differences and the anthropological unity by what I have called dimensional anthropology and ontology. This approach makes use of the geometrical concept of dimensions as an analogy for qualitative differences which do not destroy the unity of a structure.
Dimensional ontology as I have propounded it, rests on two laws. The first law of dimensional ontology reads: One and the same phenomenon projected out of its own dimension into different dimensions lower than its own is depicted in such a way that the individual pictures contradict one another.
Imagine a cylinder, say, a cup. Projected out of its three-dimensional space into the horizontal and vertical two-dimensional planes, it yields in the first case a circle and in the second one a rectangle. These pictures contradict one another. What is even more important, the cup is an open vessel in contrast to the circle and the rectangle which are closed figures. Another contradiction!
Now let us proceed to the second law of dimensional ontology which reads: Different phenomena projected out of their own dimension into one dimension lower than their own are depicted in such a manner that the pictures are ambiguous.
Imagine a cylinder, a cone, and a sphere. The shadows they cast upon the horizontal plane depict them as three circles which are interchangeable. We cannot infer from a shadow what casts it, what is above it, whether a cylinder, a cone, or a sphere.
According to the first law of dimensional ontology, the projection of a phenomenon into different lower dimensions results in inconsistencies, and according to the second law of dimensional ontology, the projection of different phenomena into a lower dimension results in isomorphies.
Now how should we apply these images to anthropology and ontology? Once we have projected man into the biological and psychological dimensions we also obtain contradictory results. For in the one case a biological organism is the result; in the other one, a psychological mechanism. But, however the bodily and mental aspects of human existence might contradict one another, seen in the light of dimensional anthropology this contradiction no longer contradicts the oneness of man. Or does the contradiction between a circle and a rectangle contradict the fact that both result from a projection of the same cylinder?
Dimensional ontology is far from solving the mind-body problem. But it does explain why the mind-body problem cannot be solved. Of necessity the unity of man—a unity in spite of the multiplicity of body and mind—cannot be found in the biological or psychological but must be sought in that noological dimension out of which man is projected in the first place.
However, alongside the problem of mind versus body, there is the problem of determinism, the problem of freedom of choice. But this problem, too, may well be approached along the lines of dimensional anthropology. The openness of a cup necessarily disappears in the horizontal and vertical dimensions. Well, man, too, projected into a dimension lower than his own seems to be a closed system, be it of physiological reflexes or psychological reactions and responses to stimuli. Those motivational theories, e.g., which still adhere to the homeostasis principle, deal with man as with a closed system. This, however, means disregarding and neglecting that essential openness of human existence which has been evidenced by Max Scheler, Adolf Portmann, and Arnold Gehlen. Particularly the biologist Portmann and the sociologist Gehlen have shown us that man is open to the world. Because of the self-transcendent quality of human existence, I would say, being human always means being directed and pointing to something or someone other than itself.
All this disappears in the biological and psychological dimensions. But in the light of dimensional anthropology we can at least understand why this must happen. Now the apparent closedness of man in the biological and psychological dimensions no longer contradicts the humanness of man. Closedness in the lower dimensions is very compatible with openness in a higher one, be it the openness of a cylindrical cup, or that of a human being."
– Victor Frank, The Will to Meaning
"In an age in which the Ten Commandments seem to lose their unconditional validity, man must learn more than ever to listen to the ten thousand commandments arising from the ten thousand unique situations of which his life consists."
– Victor Frankl, The Will to Meaning
"Thus, to all appearances, meaning is just something we are projecting into the things around ourselves, things which themselves are neutral. And in the light of this neutrality, reality may well seem to be just a screen upon which we are projecting our own wishful thinking, a Rorschach blot, as it were. If that were so, meaning would be no more than a mere means of self-expression, and thus something profoundly subjective.
However, the only thing which is subjective is the perspective through which we approach reality, and this subjectiveness does not in the least detract from the objectiveness of reality itself. I improvised an explanation of this phenomenon for the students in my seminar at Harvard. 'Just look through the windows of this lecture hall at Harvard Chapel. Each of you sees the chapel in a different way, from a different perspective, depending on the location of your seat. If anyone claimed that he sees the chapel exactly as his neighbor does, I would have to say that one of them must be hallucinating. But does the difference of views in the least detract from the objectivity and reality of the chapel? Certainly it does not.'
Human cognition is not of kaleidoscopic nature. If you look into a kaleidoscope, you see only what is inside of the kaleidoscope itself. On the other hand, if you look through a telescope you see something which is outside of the telescope itself. And if you look at the world, or a thing in the world, you also see more than, say, the perspective. What is seen through the perspective, however subjective the perspective may be, is the objective world. In fact, "seen through" is the literal translation of the Latin word, perspectum.
I have no objection to replacing the term 'objective' with the more cautious term 'trans-subjective' as it is used, for example, by Allers. This does not make a difference. Nor does it make a difference whether we speak of things or meanings. Both are 'trans-subjective.' This trans-subjectiveness has really been presupposed all along whenever we spoke of self-transcendence. Human beings are transcending themselves toward meanings which are something other than themselves, which are more than mere expressions of their selves, more than mere projections of these selves. Meanings are discovered but not invented...
...Thus we have arrived at a definition of what meaning is. Meaning is what is meant, be it by a person who asks me a question, or by a situation which, too, implies a question and calls for an answer. I cannot say. 'My answer right or wrong,' as the Americans say, 'My country right or wrong.' I must try hard to find out the true meaning of the question which I am asked.
To be sure, man is free to answer the questions he is asked by life. But this freedom must not be confounded with arbitrariness. It must be interpreted in terms of responsibleness. Man is responsible for giving the right answer to a question, for finding the true meaning of a situation. And meaning is something to be found rather than to be given, discovered rather than invented."
– Victor Frankl, The Will to Meaning
We could say that meaning is the answer that an individual must give in light of the demands of life.
Here's Frankl with a short interview on The Will to Meaning:
In his various discussions of Centering Prayer, Thomas Keating often uses the term "False Self." This term has also been used by other writers including Thomas Merton, Richard Rohr, etc. Each author uses the term in a slightly different way.
For Keating, the False Self is created when we experience emotional trauma throughout our lives. As we experience wounding in areas of our core psychological needs (for Keating, these needs are summarized in the categories of power/control, esteem/affection, and security/survival), we develop attachments to people, places, and situations that bring us comfort, and aversions to people, places, and situations that lead to discomfort in the light of these wounds.
This collection of attachments and aversions results in what Keating calls "emotional programs for happiness."
A young child overhears his father saying, "I wish he was more like his brother," which attacks his core psychological need for esteem/affection. The incident then becomes buried in the boy's subconscious. He may not even remember the incident in adulthood, but, on a subconscious level, part of him continues to want to imitate his brother to achieve his father's affection. The "emotional program for happiness" of "needing to be like my brother" becomes a deep part of who he is. As a result, he develops attachments to things that make him more like his brother, and aversions to things that make him different. These attachments and aversions, at least in part, continue to drive his behavior throughout life.
On this model, each human being has a host of emotional programs for happiness running at the same time, each based on our unique traumas. These programs create anxieties as we interact with the world, and may even conflict with each other.
For Keating, the False Self is our wounded self; and our self that searches for things in the world to help us deal with those wounds.
The solution, for Keating, is experiencing the "Divine Therapy" through Centering Prayer. As we get deeper into our practice and become more open to the presence of God, these incidents are released from the subconscious and we eventually become healed of our traumas. Keating calls this the Archaeological Dig. The result might be what Keating would call our True Self, our healed sense of self that has our core needs fulfilled through the presence of God.
For more on Keating and Centering Prayer, check out the Centering Prayer page of the site.
Viktor Frankl believed that, beyond anything else, human beings crave meaning. We can endure any what, he thought, as long as we have a why. Without a "why," we are simply adrift in the world, and at best find some measure of satisfaction through distraction and entertainment. But that is not living deeply, and a life without felt meaning ultimately leads to neurosis and depression.
I, along with many others, agree with Frankl. I think we desire meaning more than comfort. I think the sense that our actions have real significance is a fundamental need of humanity.
But, if we truly do need some sense of significance, where does it come from?
One option, probably the most popular in modern society, is the idea that meaning is fundamentally a human construct that we have the ability to superimpose on reality. That is, we create our own meaning in the world. We give ourselves a why. It seems to me that without invoking some type of spiritual reality (i.e. God, a meaning-giver, etc.), if we want to hold on to some type of concept of meaning, this is what we are left with.
I've never been satisfied with this idea. To me, it just seems to make meaning arbitrary, and arbitrary meaning, at least in my mind, is just as good as no meaning. Take the following two statements:
"My main purpose in life is to drink soda."
"My main purpose in life is to raise my son well."
If I'm just creating my own meaning in the world, either one of these is equally valid. It's my choice.
But one of these statements intuitively feels more correct. If I had a son and subordinated raising him well to my soda habit, most people would say something is drastically wrong. Most would say that I'd be missing out on a life filled with more meaning (giving my best energies to raising my son), for one with less meaning (drinking soda).
Another way to think about meaning is the idea that it is something we discover. That it is an inherent part of reality, an actual part of the universe that we find. This, it seems to me, gives the concept of meaning some actual weight, some depth. Meaning becomes real and not simply a product of our minds. And I think the only way to leave this idea open as an option is to invoke some type of spiritual worldview.
Frankl was mostly concerned with helping people find meaning in their own lives and circumstances. And that's, mostly, what we need. The abstract question "What's the meaning of life?" is less important than the question "What's my meaning in life?". But, as Frankl seems to say, if there is such a thing as my meaning, it seems that it must be a function of the meaning of life.
Frankl calls this ultimate meaning of life its "super-meaning." For Frankl, the super-meaning will be forever beyond our grasp as finite humans. Our task is not to bear the meaninglessness of life, but to bear the fact that we can't fully understand its ultimate meaning.
"This ultimate meaning necessarily exceeds and surpasses the finite intellectual capacities of man; in logotherapy, we speak in this context of a super-meaning. What is demanded of man is not, as some existential philosophers teach, to endure the meaninglessness of life, but rather to bear his incapacity to grasp its unconditional meaningfulness in rational terms. Logos is deeper than logic."
– Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning
The idea that there is a "super-meaning" – an Ultimate Meaning of Life – even if we can't fully understand it, seems to allow us to hold that the meanings we find in our own lives are an actual part of reality and not merely a creation of our imaginations.
Thomas Keating has a very influential psychological model through which he interprets Centering Prayer. He calls it "The Divine Therapy."
In this model, during Centering Prayer, God takes a role similar to a psychotherapist. Over time, as we experience deep rest in the presence of God, we begin to encounter emotional traumas that we have been holding within. As this material from our unconscious is "released," we are able to address these incidents with God's help. Here, Keating describes the process by which he believes we can become "purified":
"The second purpose of the Divine Therapy is the process of purification. In the ongoing course of the treatment, we are gradually made aware of the dark side of our personality and of the repressed emotional trauma of a lifetime. To state the issue in another way, we are made aware over time of whatever in us is opposed to the image and likeness of God in which we were created. The affirmation of our basic goodness, as sublime as it truly is, is only half the story. At the same time as these affirmations are going on, the Divine Therapist, proportionate to our desire to be healed of our false selves, is taking away the support systems that keep the false self firmly in place.
Through external circumstances, but mostly through reducing our attachment to our emotional programs for happiness and our over-identification with our group, God regularly interrupts these delightful spiritual consolations with lengthy periods in which we confront the emotional wounds of a lifetime. Thus, in daily life we are likely to perceive how we project our frustrating emotions on other people so that we don't have to feel them ourselves. Or again we may indulge in various kinds of compensatory activity in which we try to manipulate other people or events to hide from ourselves painful emotional traumas that we may have been subjected to in early life and from which we are continuously running away through one means or another.
The Divine Therapy, through the intensification of our experience of God and the deep rest that occurs from spiritual consolation, loosens up the residue of the painful emotional traumas. In early childhood, in order to escape emotional pain, we are likely to repress these traumas into the unconscious. God gently, but with incomparable skill, brings these emotional wounds and painful truths about ourselves to our attention both during prayer and in the course of daily life.
The Divine Therapeutic process normally takes years to negotiate. It is something like an archeological dig."
– Thomas Keating, On Divine Therapy
Thus Keating believes that through the ongoing practice of Centering Prayer we can become healed of our emotional wounds.
For more on Centering Prayer, Keating, and the Divine Therapy, see the Centering Prayer page. The following is also some brief audio of Keating. Much of his recorded work has also been made available for free on the Contemplative Outreach Youtube Channel.