Psychology and Spirituality
Pastoral Ministries Program, Santa Clara University
(last taught Winter 2002)

Lecture 9: Suffering/ Healthy and Unhealthy Spirituality

1. Housekeeping
   1. Student presentations next week
2. (John 20:19-28 NRSV) When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you." {20} After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. {21} Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you." {22} When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit. {23} If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained." {24} But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. {25} So the other disciples told him, "We have seen the Lord." But he said to them, "Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe." {26} A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you." {27} Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe." {28} Thomas answered him, "My Lord and my God!"
   
3. Discuss in small groups:: "True healing, true salvation, true wholeness do not mean elimination of the scar. True healing means triumph over the effect of the scar." (Emerson, Suffering: Its Meaning and Ministry, p. 136)
   
   
4. Evil and Suffering
   1. Last week, we touched briefly on evil-- on aspects of shadow and need to confront and relate to it. With "suffering," we highlight the fact that change is not easy and that evil does genuine damage.
   2. What is suffering? What are its characteristics?
      1. Unavoidable fact of life
      2. Sometimes a moral issue, sometimes not (Matthew 6:34) "So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today's trouble is enough for today." (cf. Luke 13:1-5; )
      3. We avoid it, or try to
      4. Numbing, paralyzing or hope-giving
      5. Suffering and meaning
      6. What has been the theology of suffering?
         1. punishment (Garden of Eden)
         2. testing/refining
         3. participation in Jesus' suffering
5. Emerson (1986): speaks of "suffering work"-- like "grief work"; suffering as choice
   1. Tasks of suffering work:
      1. Balancing separation/ relationship
      2. Balancing identity and oneness
   2. Role of supporters:
      1. Affirm the sufferer in relation to God, others and self
      2. Find balance of relationship and privacy
      3. Permit suffering work
   3. Psychology of suffering:
      1. Related to hierarchy of needs [see chart] (Maslow, 1970). Maslow's hierarchy of needs includes (from lowest to highest): physiological needs (food, water, sleep), safety needs (shelter, protection, order), belongingness and love needs (family, friends, intimacy), esteem needs (adequacy, competence, respect), self-actualization (growth, meaning).) however, rather than being a late developing need, the need for meaning is foundational.
      2. Viktor Frankl observed that some in death camps were able to endure, identified the key factor as being able to find meaning-- developed logotherapy "meaning-therapy." (Frankl, 1962). (An interesting application of Frankl's theory to the New Testament is found in Leslie, 1965).
      3. Developmental theory-- the tasks of suffering are precisely those required to move from stage to stage in Erikson's or Fowler's system
6. Dealing with suffering
   1. Individual suffering:
      1. Empathy
      2. Naming-- finding symbols that come alive
      3. Relating-- coming to terms with self and others
      4. Consciousness-raising/ sensitizing; bringing suffering issues to awareness
      5. Prayer/ scripture/ meditation
   2. Corporate suffering: need to recognize that suffering never is isolated; need to identify clusters of problems/ interrelations
      1. Awareness of cluster of impacts
      2. Approach that deals with all aspects of cluster, not just individual
      3. Attention to changes that must be made (sometimes relationship requires confrontation)
      4. Catharsis
      5. Allow time for process to work through
      6. Surrender
      7. Discovery and use of symbols to deal with guilt and enable healing
7. Suffering Healer
   1. Not just the "wounded healer," but the "healed wounded healer"
      1. Learned how to deal with woundedness
      2. Experienced healing
      3. In moving back and forth between being wounded and being healed has become able to heal (need for self-counseling)
   2. Alter: "it is our scars that make us credible and it is our scars that make us sensitive." (Resurrection Psychology, p. 165)
   3. Suffering healing requires:
      1. Professionalism, but rejection of professional idolatry
      2. Space for personal renewal
      3. Continual practice of developmental task of letting go
      4. Allowing for risk of vulnerability; being available to pain
      5. Worship and surrender to victory; (Liturgy very important for healing; a space and time for affirmation and restoration; celebration of symbols of healing and hope).
8. Suffering in Prayer: Primary Speech
   1. Connected with aggression: aggressive anger is one way we defend against suffering; it arises naturally in reaction to the suffering of those for whom we care and of the world as a whole. Aggression also is the energy that enables us to hold on in the face of suffering and loss (67)
   2. In Intercession, prayer links us to the suffering of others
      1. Whether or not we offer our suffering for others, it exists and will continue; it is part of human life
      2. Suffering of the mind: inevitable with the nature of human relationships and the difficulty of intimacy
      3. Suffering of the spirit-- the silence, absence of answers
      4. seeking "union with the unity which is at the center of the geometry of suffering" (94)
9. Healthy/ Unhealthy spirituality
   1. As helpers (teachers, catechists, pastors, etc.) We will find ourselves in positions of dealing with unhealthy or even pathological spirituality (Waco; Heaven's Gate); maybe not someone plucking out their eye "because it offends them," or someone committing suicide in a cult, but at least someone agitated over having committed "the unforgivable sin."
   2. Ruland (1994) Sacred Lies and Silences.
      1. The Three Ways-- patterned on Hindu margas: [ see chart]
         1. Only a heuristic framework: usefulness is to recognize that people have differing orientations and to understand what our own inclination might be
         2. Interrelationship of all three:
            1. Need for balance-- any overemphasis leads to distortion
            2. Each has characteristic strengths and weaknesses-- characteristic distortions and images of the sacred
            3. compare to four spiritualities by Richardson 1996
      2. The Way of Action (most valued in our culture)
         1. Discipline and choice; renunciation (letting go of some possibilities to realize others
         2. Action in relation to God: a difficult balancing act.
            1. Immanent power
            2. Deputized power
               1. God-possession
               2. God aloof and uninvolved
               3. working in partnership (hard balance to maintain) "in any discrepancy of status between friends, the inferior can be overwhelmed by the superior personality and become spoiled and overconfident because of a privileged connection" (65).
         3. Three characteristic disorders:
            1. Religious self-assertion
               1. relegating the divine to one's own will
               2. God exists to comfort and support me
               3. found in the Deuteronomic books of the Bible-- do well and God will reward you; countered by books like Job
               4. Selling the good news-- the gospel of prosperity
               5. activist/ missionary-- sense of justification in persecution (if they stone me, I must be a prophet).
            2. Religious paranoia
               1. the "will to make-believe" (71)
               2. illusion of total control is threatened-- counterattack/ arrogance/ pretentions of control and competence
               3. inquisitors, witch hunts, but also over-docility-- appeal to "martyrdom," mentality of persecuted minority (religious right and left)
               4. millennial/ apocalyptic mentality
                  1. God <--> Satan duality
                  2. purity vs. Corrupted world
                  3. separation and hostility
            3. Religious obsession (Freud's opinion was that this is the essence of religion)
               1. Self-assertion is overbalanced toward the self; obsession is over-balanced toward the divine
               2. impossible to please God-- ridden with doubt and guilt
               3. doubt as a problem; need for certainty
               4. ritual-- "not to seek truth, but to follow a secure path blindly" (76)
               5. counterfeit guilt: guilt feelings, not a genuine sense of having violated core value; free-floating and non-specific
            4. All three distortions of action are characterized by an ideal of absolute religious purity over against the world of messy experience
      3. The Way of Affectivity
         1. Closeness and affection
         2. Love of God-- God the loving seeker
         3. Rapturous union; possession/ passion
         4. Distortions:
         5. Religious dependency:
            1. cherished images can help foster sense of connectedness; can also become idols
               1. spiritual search may stop with the imagesperson may subordinate whole self to a partial vision of the divine/ sacred
               2. need for childlike interdependence easily becomes over-dependence
               3. distortions rooted in early relational problems: frustration or overindulgenceco-dependency and cults (cult: a voluntary group with relatively firm boundaries to exclude the outer world and bond together, often with a charismatic, authoritative/ authoritarian leader)
         6. Religious self-effacement
            1. self sacrifice (the lamb is also the slaughterer) example of Andrew Greeley's perfect mother: (Greeley, 1974: 129f): "We all know her very well. She's such a marvelous woman! So dedicated to her children, so unselfish, so sacrificing. She lives completely for them, and they are all totally devoted to her. The closeness of their family life is the envy of everyone in the neighborhood. She can expect a priest or nun or two from her brood, and amazingly enough, none of the rest ever marry; they become old maids and bachelors whose lives continue to center on their mother just as they did when they were little children. Her husband? Well, he died young, leaving her the responsibility of raising the children. The cause of his death? People said it was some kind of liver ailment."
            2. desire to control the beloved
            3. seeking to wipe out the self
            4. anorexia and saints (see Ruland, 89-94)
      4. The Way of Contemplation (least valued in the West)
   1. "Stop and smell the roses"God of wonder and silence-- the sacred for its own sake
   2. Language proves inadequate
   3. Seeking the center in oneself- not achievement or union (Zen)
   4. Distortions characterized by excessive self-concern and isolation from others:
      1. Religious avoidance
         1. "lowered expectations" not willing to seek or expect anything
         2. false sense of self-sufficiency and narcissism
         3. monastic withdrawal as avoidance-- dependent and inert, hiding in a group
         4. introvert, defending against an extravert world-- inferiority, over sensitivity and awkward relationships
         5. need for re-engagement with others and the world
      2. Religious gluttony
         1. focus/ emphasis on ecstatic illumination
         2. "home recipe" spirituality (104)yogurt example; "Ultra meditation"-- seeking the experience without undergoing the discipline
         3. "trying to get permanently stoned on the sacred" (106)
      3. Religious depression (is this really a distortion, or is it a corrective to the first two?)
         1. the "Dark Night of the Soul" (John of the Cross)
         2. not easily distinguished from clinical depression or "aridity, cynicism and existential despair" (107)
         3. often told "pray harder"-- this just intensifies the feeling of disconnection and dryness
         4. process of pruning or weaning; lifting person out of self-preoccupation
   3. Interaction of the ways-- each offers counterbalance to correct the weakness/ distortion of the others; any overbalancing of one against the others results in problems. Three ways can be related to three dimensions of Freud's psychological model: an overemphasis on superego (Action) stimulates obsessiveness; centering on the id (Affectivity) can give rise to eroticism; an emphasis on the ego (Contemplation) results in narcissism.
10. Healthy Spirituality (regardless of religious tradition):
    1. Works toward what expands, enlivens the individual; fullness of life, freedom, Christ-likeness; more freedom, life, closer relationship to God and others
    2. Awareness of complexity and alternatives, choice of options
    3. Coherence and integrity (not just lip service)
    4. Respect for appropriate boundaries
11. Unhealthy Spirituality:
    1. Often hard to spot, as it maintains a good front (M. Scott Peck notes that, as the core of evil is lying, there are a lot of evil people in churches, keeping up the appearance of goodness (1983)).
    2. Self-righteousness or persona of religiosity
    3. Diminishes the person-- less life, fragmentation of personality, constrained/ constricted
    4. Rarer forms
       1. visual or auditory hallucinations, ecstacy or frenzy
       2. obsession/compulsion (religious ritual used as a way to hold back fear or anxiety; if a ritual is not performed properly some disaster might occur)
    5. religiosity: "psychological defense mechanisms that bind anxiety and prevent the emergence of unwelcome ideas"
12. Pruyser: marks of neurotic coping: (1991c, p. 64):
    1. Energy sapping
    2. Heavy-handed, boomerang effects
    3. More costly to the soul than rewarding
    4. Does not deal with reality
    5. Growth-stunting; sacrifice of talents
    6. Regressive- stuck in archaic patterns
    7. Poor compromise with aggression
    8. Covert aggression toward others- control, dependency
13. Important to know ourselves-- be careful about pathologizing forms of spirituality that may simply be different (example of Christian Scientists refusing health care for children; it is an issue of ethics, not pathology)
    1. Know your own images of God and reality
    2. Recognize your own prejudices
    3. Use intuition and discernment (gut level feelings are important; can alert us to "countertransference"-- a reaction to unconscious material that another may be projecting onto us
14. Dealing with unhealthy spirituality; is it our responsibility to straighten everyone out?
    1. Affirm the person, not necessarily the theology or behavior
    2. Respect boundaries
    3. Develop a list of trusted professionals to whom persons can be referred.
15. Comparison of Forms of Psychological and Spiritual Guidance