Abstract
Diverse religious communities and traditions share certain common notions among the ways of life they seek to cultivate, notions that contemporary psychoanalysis can illumine. This essay offers three contributions: (a) substantive—characterizing features of a way: being-there-with-and-for; (b) methodological—outlining genres of relating psychology and religion; (c) philosophical—discussing relations between epistemology and ontology (that is, between maps and territory).
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Notes
These questions are sufficiently grand that they require explanation—though space does not permit anything exhaustive. The first and more crucial question can be recast as follows: If we grant that diverse religious traditions—however theoretically complex and historically and culturally unique—are not ultimately incommensurable (that is, noncomparable), how can we carry out a preliminary effort of putting into words a motif that sustains notable overtones and resonances among those cumulative traditions (Smith 1962/1991)? This motif would represent a provisional effort in formulating a bridge among diverse traditions (It is not, subtly or crudely, forwarded as if the core of any and all traditions, the sine qua non, that without which, religion would not be what it is (see Capps 1995); the quest for an essence to which all traditions would be reducible is wrong-headed and doomed from its inception.) To say some of this in another way, since as human beings we naturally and inevitably categorize, classify, and compare phenomena, we ought to practice those activities deliberately and critically. This essay illustrates a preliminary step in that direction, drawing upon some remarkable, though often-ignored, contemporary psychological contributions.
“A MORE”—The divine-discloses itself in various places and spaces, for example, in the wonders of nature, creativity, the arts, in solitude, as well as in dreaming. This essay is expressly concerned with illustrating how relationships provide a profound window to “a MORE.” In that regard, my ideas resemble Buber’s (1958) ideas, captured succinctly in his declaration “behind every I–thou relationship is the eternal Thou.” However, I am not arguing that “more” is to be symbolized only in theistic terms nor that that “more” shows itself only or even primarily in and through human relationships.
Paul Ricoeur (1970) provided a foundation for this third kind of project when he demonstrated that and how psychoanalysis was subject to a variety of “readings,” a foundation extended by Homans (1970). W. W. Meissner notes that “most analysts would balk at this [reading]” (personal communication, September 21, 2004).
This approach originated with Sigmund Freud, who in his varied psychoanalytic studies of religion (1907/1959, 1913/1953, 1927/1961a, 1930/b, 1939/1964) elaborated upon a basic observation: one could understand a “religious” phenomenon (for example, religious ritual, God, religious beliefs) by examining a “psychological” phenomenon it resembled (for example, obsessional neurosis, projection, wish fulfillment). Many authors have identified and explored such resemblances. For example, Browning (1987) draws parallels between religion and psychology when observing that psychoanalysis, like religion, offered "concepts and technologies for the ordering of the interior life" (Browning 1987, p. 2). Psychoanalytic psychology-like religion-outlines a “positive culture,” “a system of symbols and norms which guides a society or group by providing general images of the nature of the world, the purpose of life, and at least some of the basic principles by which life should be lived” (Browning 1987, p. 5).
Of course, Freud argued that the resemblances (analogies) between psychological and religious phenomena betray an underlying identity, and in that regard his psychology and religion was, for all intents and purposes, a psychology (or psychopathology) of religion. However, my point has less to do with his final (and well-known) position than with the methodological step that preceded it: exploring phenomena in two domains—psychological and religious—that bore what we could call family resemblances.
In his recent book entitled, Interpreting the Sacred: Ways of Viewing Religion, William Paden (1992) offers the following illustration. “Imagine a pilgrim climbing on her knees to a shrine. What is it that we see? If we are unaware passersby, we may note erroneously what we take to be a physically disabled person, unable to use her legs. If we are critics of religion in general, we may automatically see an instance of dupery and ignorance, or compulsive self-punishment, or social oppression. If we are sociologists or anthropologists, we may see an observance that functions to integrate individuals from socially marginal classes into the power and values of a central collective institution. If we are Jungians, we may see a person acting out a search for selfhood through a process of humbling the ego and through the symbolism of ascending a hill (the self). If we are scholars of comparative religion, we may see a ritual reenactment of a Christian myth and a local version of the universal pattern of pilgrimage behavior. If we are non-Catholic Christians whose traditions do not include such devotions, we may contemptuously see the superstitions of a rival faith; but if we are Hindus, we might observe a common, normal form of religious expression. If we are Christian mystics, we may see in the woman’s face a oneness with the face of Christ and in her actions the passion of Christ. If we are in an airplane, we may have trouble from that distance seeing the woman at all, and she may look more like an ant. If we are evolutionists, we may admire what an interesting creature the Paleozoic, Devonian fish turned out to be. By varying frames of imaging we may see victimage, irony, loneliness, beauty, illusion, incarnation, heroism, comedy, and pathos. Is there any limit to what one might observe?” (pp. 127–128)
In some measure this effort of articulating dimensions of reality in contemporary symbol systems draws inspiration from the theological project of the Protestant theologian, Paul Tillich. Adams (1965) opens his study, Paul Tillich’s Philosophy of Culture, Science, and Religion, with a chapter entitled, “The Need for a New Language.” He writes, “Paul Tillich ...is acutely aware not only that present-day Protestantism is moribund but also that it is moribund partly because the language of tradition can in our day have little effect upon the believers and still less upon those outside the churches... He believes that a radical protest ...is necessary... This protest must include a rejection of outdated terminology and it must assume in the creation of the word that speaks to our present situation” (p. 18). The contemporary American philosopher, Richard Rorty, in an essay entitled, “The Contingency of Language” in Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (1989), writes about the ongoing process of “redescription.” Whether in personal or scholarly conversation, we are inevitably engaged in a project of redescribing—creating words that speak to our present situation.
At the outset of this essay I spoke in a certain voice about the experience of the process of these ideas taking shape while sleeping as well as while awake. And, this note is written—as are many notes—as “an aside” that seeks to express in a voice that differs from the typically more formal voice of the unfolding text. These voices signal, I suggest, different ways of “being there,” and of “being real.”
Or, I tend to be real in notes in ways that differ from being real in the body of the text.
Dissociation, depersonalization, and derealization refer to phenomena that usually emerge in response to danger, more specifically, to the experience of trauma. By implication, then, real-ness and the achievement of becoming (increasingly) real involve negotiating danger and trauma.
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Schlauch, C.R. Being-There-With-and-For: Contemporary Psychoanalysis Characterizes Notions of Being Religious. Pastoral Psychol 56, 199–221 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11089-007-0105-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11089-007-0105-y