I finally pushed the button to send my Indian lectures to DVK for the publication process this morning. The proposed title is 'Picturing the Soul: Revisioning Psychotherapy and Spiritual Direction'. They are hoping they will be published (Dharmram) by June. So here's a sneak preview from Chapter One...
love
Peter
Psyche
The words ‘psychology’, ‘psychotherapy’ and ‘psychiatry’ all have their
roots in the Greek word psychē/ψυχή . As well as
attachments to the mysterious Greek goddess of that name the original Greek
word relates to a number of concepts that can be translated as breath, bright, coloured, iridescent, moving, life, spirit and even butterfly
(See Tyler 1997:82). These
fragile creatures, so memorably described by the German poet Hermann Hesse in
his poem Schmetterlinge im Spätsommer, have what the Germans call the
sense of the unheimlich or ‘not-at-home-ness’ which often characterises
the workings of what us children and grandchildren of Freud might call the
‘unconscious’:
The
time of many butterflies has come…
Expensively dressed, in
pearls and satin;
Glittering
in jewels, they sway before us.
Splendid
and sad, silent and possessed;
Strangers
here, bedecked in the honeydew
Of
the arcadian under-meadows they left in paradise.
Short-lived
guests from the East,
That
we in dreams, forgotten homeland, see,
Receiving their pledge
of a more perfect world.
(Hesse, H. Schmetterlinge
im Spätsommer in Schmetterlinge: translation Peter Tyler)[1]
From Sigmund Freud (1856 - 1939) onwards Western
culture has sought to ‘pin down’ the iridescent, sparkling and constantly
changing psyche into particular categories. In the hundred years or so since
Freud published his first papers in Vienna the science and study of psychology
has flourished and developed in many different directions. The direction taken
by psychology and psychologists has often depended on their attitude to what is
called the mind-body problem, or, as the contemporary British
philosopher Colin McGinn puts it ‘how can the water of the physical brain be
turned into the wine of consciousness?’[2] Simply
put, when we consider the rich storehouses of our mental lives – dreams,
fantasies, thoughts, memories, motivations etc. and then look at the physical
processes of a chunk of grey material the size of an average cauliflower we
seem to have two different materials – two different substances even – how can
the two be related?
Although of great contemporary scientific and
medical relevance this question is not new and has troubled philosophers for
centuries, beginning with Plato (429 –347 BCE). How we respond to this question
will determine our view of psychology, psychotherapy and ultimately of
mind/soul. Broadly speaking, since the development of the cognitive sciences
and medical approaches from the middle of the twentieth century onwards there
has been a branch of psychology that tries to reduce, or at least limit
the functions of the mind to those of physical brain processes (much present-day
cognitive psychology would fall into this category) and a branch of psychology
which attempts to interpret mental function without necessarily relating it to
physical function (many psycho-analytic and counselling approaches would tend
to fall into this category).
The ‘Father of Psychology’, Sigmund Freud, fell
into both categories. Trained originally to investigate cognitive processes
through physiological means under the influence of the then fashionable ideas
of Hermann von Helmholtz (1821 -1894), he later became interested in the
functioning of psychic processes qua psychic processes. His middle to
later work shows the influence of both approaches and he seems to have lived in
uneasy tension between the two. We shall return to this tension in our final
chapter.
One of his earliest collaborators and original
psychological thinker in his own right, Carl Gustav Jung (1875 –1961) tended to
move away from reductionist views of the mind and saw mental processes as part
of a larger, or in his terms, archetypal psyche out of which much of
human civilization, development and indeed religion derives.
Following on the insights of Freud and Jung later
psychologists have concentrated on key aspects of psychological development,
the processes of intellectual thought and the development of human emotion and
feeling. We shall return to these in a later chapter. Indeed, many of the
developments and ideas of psychology over the past hundred years seem so
self-evident to us and are taken for granted that we do not realize how
relatively modern they are in terms of human cultural development. We speak
easily and knowingly of someone being ‘extrovert’ or ‘introvert’ and we use
phrases such as ‘the unconscious’ or ‘the ego’ without really considering what
we mean by these terms. In fact, all of these terms, as used today, are
relatively modern in their development and usage. Coupled with these developments of our
understanding of personality we have also largely increased our understanding
of the physiological functioning of the brain and how this relates to
psychological functioning. The upshot of this is that we now have a vastly
differing view of mind than held at any time throughout the 2,000 years of
Christian history.
The Therapist
If the psyche is indeed ‘iridescent and sparkling’ like a butterfly,
how then do we ‘heal the butterfly’ – be a therapōs of the psychē? If you have ever picked up a butterfly to
release it from its prison in your house you will know the care required to
transport it to freedom without damaging its gentle and fragile nature. This is
the challenge that faces all who work with the psyche whether they be counsellors, therapists, clergy, lay
healers, psychiatrists or spiritual directors. And it is on this delicate and
finely wrought cusp between the gentle mystery of the life of the psyche and the intervention of the practitioner
that this book lies.
In seeking a mode of
expression and analysis of this process a helpful guide is the postmodern
philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889- 1951). Commenting on the role of the
philosophy in the contemporary world, he stated:
Philosophy may in no way interfere with the actual
use of language; it can in the end only describe it. For it cannot give it any
foundation either.
It leaves everything as it is. (Philosophical
Investigations: 124, hereafter PI)[3]
Philosophy simply puts everything before us, and
neither explains nor deduces anything. – Since everything lies open to view
there is nothing to explain. (PI: 126)
Philosophy,
like therapy, counselling or spiritual direction, is for Wittgenstein a process
of seeing correctly what lies before us.[4] So, in
the case of our trapped butterfly, we don’t have to prod and push it but
observe its movements, how it flutters, now this way, now that, until we can
see at which point we can gently usher it towards its exit and freedom:
What is your
aim in philosophy? – To show the fly the way out of the fly-bottle. (PI: 309)
As Kunkel
said, we ‘watch and we wait’.
Kostbar
an Farben, pelz- und samtbesetzt,
Juwelenshillernd
schweben sie enher,
Prächtig
und traurig, schweigsam und benommen,
Aus
untergangner Märchenwelt gekommen,
Fremdlinge
hier, noch honigtaubenetz
Aus
paradiesischen, arkadischen Auen,
Kurzlebige
Gäste aus dem Morgenland,
Das
wir im Traum, verlorene Heimat, schauen
Und
dessen Geisterbotschaft wir vertrauen
Als
eines edleren Daseins holdem Pfand.
[2] See, for
example ‘Can we solve the mind-body problem?’ in Mind 98 (1989) reprinted in Philosophy of Mind: A Guide and
Anthology ed. J. Heil, Oxford: OUP 2004.
[3] For more
on the relationship between Wittgenstein’s philosophy and Christian
spirituality see Tyler 2011.
[4]
Wittgenstein uses the phrase Übersichtlichkeit
– literally, ‘right seeing’ or ‘clear overview’. For an excellent recent
discussion on Wittgenstein’s choreography of saying and showing in relation to
his views of self see Chapter Two of Jose Nandhikkara’s Being Human after Wittgenstein (Nandhikkara 2011).
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