Theology Today - Vol 33, No. 3 - October 1976 - ARTICLE

224 - Pop Psychology and the Gospel

Pop Psychology and the Gospel
By Andrew M. Greeley

"Therapy groups replace worship, encounter weekends substitute for retreats, sensitivity training replaces contemplation . . . Transformation of religion by pop psychology has been so complete that we take it for granted . . . [But] personal development is an erratic, uncertain, and arduous process. It takes a long, long time to become holy and even longer to become a saint. The rhetoric of the personal development craze in American religion conveniently overlooks these harsh and unpleasant facts. "

THE rhetoric of personal growth, self-fulfillment, life satisfaction, and interpersonal encounter has become so pervasive in the churches that it often appears that many clergy and devout lay people are incapable of using any other rhetoric or of distinguishing between pop psychological jargon and the gospel. That mainline Protestantism, which hasn't believed in anything for a long time, should be swept away by pop psychology is perhaps not too surprising, but Roman Catholics, evangelicals, and even fundamentalists have succumbed to the temptation of personal development and interpersonal life satisfactions that have become not merely the official goals of religious rhetoric but have replaced salvation as the unique aim of religious activity.

We are no longer told that something is sinful but that it will impede our growth, that it is a turning in on ourselves, that it is a flawed encounter. We don't do penance anymore, rather we "understand what we are doing"; we are not reborn again through the grace of the Holy Spirit, we rather renew our commitment to our life project. "Authenticity" substitutes for justification, we "confront" one another or "respect one another's freedom"; we "respond" to interpersonal

Andrew M. Greeley, a Roman Catholic theologian and sociologist, is Director of the Center for the Study of American Pluralism, part of the National Opinion Research Center of the University of Chicago. He is the author of numerous books, including Priests in the United States: Reflections on a Survey (1972), That Most Distressful Nation (1972), and Unsecular Man (1972). Father Greeley participated with other researchers in the newly published report, issuing from the Center, Catholic Schools in a Declining Church (Sheed & Ward, 1976). The Report discloses that while Humanae Vitae, the papal encyclical on birth control, has driven many Catholics out of the Church, a surprising number of even these lapsed members support the parochial school system.

225 - Pop Psychology and the Gospel

needs, we "nurture" or "stroke" one another instead of loving one another. Therapy groups replace worship, encounter weekends substitute for retreats, sensitivity training replaces contemplation; and in some of the prayer houses of Catholic Pentecostalism, the techniques of behavior modification replace the holy rule and canon law as the glue that holds the community together. Freud has not substituted for Jesus, but Jesus begins to sound very much like Freud.

Transformation of religion by pop psychology has been so complete that we take it for granted and are no longer surprised that it happens. Yet, before the fact, one could hardly have predicted it. The founders of modern psychology, be they psychoanalytic or behaviorist, were not religious and, with the exception of Jung, were vehemently anti-religious. The reaction of most religious leaders to psychology, for several decades, was hostile; psychology was not taught in Catholic seminaries (save for "philosophical psychology"). I can still remember the New York Catholic psychiatrists who left the church the day after Bishop Sheen denounced psychoanalysis. (Apparently the good bishop was seen as the unquestioned official spokesman of the church.) Even in the late 1960's, Pope Paul VI condemned the psychoanalytic monastery at Cuernavaca (an action which only locked the barn door well after the horse was gone). Yet by the late 1950's and early 1960's, sacrament of salvation.

There are a number of reasons for this transformation. First of all, the stern exegetical and linguistic criticism that had become staple diets in the seminaries and divinity schools was frequently too much for the fundamentalist faith of the young men and women who were training for the ministry. The shattering experience of graduate school education alienated these young people from their traditional religious symbol systems and left them with great generosity and desire for service but with no hard core of convictions around which to orient such service. The pastoral counseling courses, themselves not necessarily anti-theological, provided convictions with which to fill the vacuum. The religious symbols, now devoid of any transcendental content, were often converted to serve the goals of personality development-just as in later years they would be converted to serve the goals of social relevance or even "liberation" and "revolution." As a vacuum-filler, pop psychology left much to be desired, but for many of the young clergy in training it was all they had. They could not afford to be too intellectually rigorous in their criticism.

Furthermore, the religion of personal growth seemed to have a certain intellectual affinity with the existentialism of Bultmann and Tillich, which was then all the rage among the religious elites. For the

226 - Pop Psychology and the Gospel

gloomy Germans, existentialism was a philosophy not a psychology, a theory not a way of life; but any book called The Courage to Be was made to order for pop psychological interpretation. The demythologizers and the language critics had left nothing for faith; the existentialism which Bultmarm put in its place seemed to translate nicely in the American environment into self-fulfillment. Why not?

Catholics, characteristically enough, were rather slow to come around, but they made up for lost time by their frantic enthusiasm. After the collapse of church order, caused more by the encyclical letter reaffirming the birth control prohibition, Humanae Vitae, than by the Second Vatican Council, Catholics discovered sensitivity training and pursued it with all the hunger of those who desperately needed an eighth sacrament because their confidence was woefully undermined in the other seven.

However, not all the influence was inside the churches. Training institutions for the clergy, religious journals, and devotional manuals turned personalistic, to a considerable extent in response to the wave of personalism that seemed to be sweeping the world outside the churches. In the wake of the Freudian revolution, self-conscious pursuit of the personal growth of the individual and the fulfillment of human potentialities became the over-riding concern. Wave after wave of pop psychological fads washed up on the shores of American culture, and the intellectual and cultural elites, instead of serving their appropriate role as critics of the new fadism, strove to be one step ahead of the masses in discovering what the latest psychological gimmicks were.

Americans became conscious of their mental health, and heaven only knows (you should excuse the expression) the mental health of a lot of us was not all that good. We took courses in psychology, read paperback books, and in very considerable numbers flocked off to one kind of therapy or another. Loneliness, existential or situational, was rediscovered as a painful aspect of the human condition. We were not fulfilling ourselves, not exercising our talents, not living up to our potential-all of which were simply other ways of saying we were unhappy. We needed help, and what do you do when you need help? Well, our fathers and mothers used to go over to the local church to see the pastor, the parson, the minister, or the priest (according to your choice). It seemed to us the reasonable thing to do with these newly-labeled "interpersonal" hungers of ours. And sure enough, when we got to the rectory, the parsonage, or the parish house, the pastor or priest had read the same books we had, and had acquired some of the skills of psychotherapeutic healing. The counseling or group therapy sessions were already going on Tuesday evenings in the rectory basement. More recently, some clergy have chosen to become charismatic healers, but they are only a tiny proportion compared to those who have chosen psychotherapeutic methods-some with the required skills and clinical internship, most with nothing more than a few

227 - Pop Psychology and the Gospel

courses, a few books in their libraries, and a few weeks first at Bethel Main, then later at Esalen. It was cheap therapy replacing cheap grace, and the encounter marathon served the role that the camp meeting did in the days of the old-time religion.

Of course, there is a natural overlap between religion and psychology, for in the Judeo-Christian tradition religion is interpersonal. To say that God has come to us in Christ Jesus and expects the gift of us in return is not existentialist rhetoric but simply a sober statement of biblical belief. To say that the goal of human life is the generous and loving service of our fellow humans is not pop psychological jargon but merely a restatement of the gospel. There is a natural affinity between Christianity and psychological categories; the appropriation of these categories by religious leaders may have been uncritical and unwarranted, but the leaders would have had to have been blind not to see the opportunities that psychological theory provided. Even the most severe critic of the psychotherapeutic religious style has to admit that while psychology may not be substituted for religion (and vice versa), there are natural affinities between the two, and that any attempt to purge religion completely of its psychological concerns and emphases is absurd. They are distinct areas of human behavior but they overlap, and the intellectual as well as the pastoral problem is to keep the areas distinct without separating them. It has not proved an easy task.

A therapeutic experience is not the same as growth in holiness. One can be in touch with one's emotions, understand one's neuroses, define one's hang-ups and still not be generous in one's loving service of other human beings. Indeed, long psychoanalytic treatment can often produce simply more subtle and sophisticated techniques for taking out one's aggressive needs on others. Still, in psychological wholeness there is a strain toward holiness. Therapy is for many people an indispensable prelude to loving service because it is the only way one can break out of the constraints of fear and anxiety in which one is trapped. The liberation experience produces an "overflowing" of energies and emotions which draw one-though not irresistibly-toward unselfish love. It is surely the case that such love is both the goal of the gospel and the only way by which human beings can find personal happiness and fulfillment. The mistake of much of pop psychology is not so much to see these two goals as the same but rather to think that perfection in them (or even a remote approach to it) is the usual result of therapy or even just reading psychology books and using psychological jargon.

Furthermore, religious faith can be an indispensable asset in the psychotherapeutic experience. Every psychiatrist would acknowledge that the most tenacious problems with which to deal are those that become focused on religion. However responsible the churches may have been for inculcating that kind of problematic religion, or providing a

228 - Pop Psychology and the Gospel

kind of inkblot into which disturbed personalities can project their fears and anxieties, the Christian religion cannot be held responsible.

For Christianity is a religion of hope, confidence, and joy. It is a religion which underpins and validates human risk-taking, a religion that demands we die to the old creature in order that we might rise to the new creation. In its best form, Christianity provides the resources of personal strength and commitment which can reinforce the death and resurrection experience that is at the core of the psychotherapeutic process. One is terrified at the thought of dying to one's defense mechanisms, but then one remembers that such death to the old self is an essential prelude and a cause of rebirth to the new, and that the loving God has created for us a context in which we can afford to take such risks. Religion may be an inkblot into which neuroses are projected; it is surely no cure for neuroses. Yet authentic religion is also a considerable asset in the psychotherapeutic experience because it can encourage people to take the chances they must take if they are to experience healing. Therapists may respond that it is the unusual patient who has that kind of Christianity. The believer might observe that most people with that kind of Christianity rarely need therapy.

It is also true that growth-producing psychological experiences can serve to open up the religious question. One is freed from one's neuroses (more or less) and now can be one's authentic self; one can grow and develop and fulfill. Life takes on warmer colors, richer meanings, deeper hues; but unless people are totally insensitive they will eventually ask themselves for what is the psychotherapeutic experience paradigmatic? One continues to grow and develop only through the death-resurrection process which one experienced in therapy, but death-resurrection is not an easy way to live. It requires sensitivity, effort, courage, conviction. Why bother? One may fulfill oneself, but why? It will all be blotted out in the nothingness of death. One may develop and grow; but for what? For the corruption of the tomb?

The question of the meaning of life always lurks in the background of human consciousness, but it cannot remain the background of a consciousness that has escaped the bonds of fear and neurosis and is embarked on the rough, rocky challenge of continued psychological development. Sustained effort makes sense if one believes that human effort is not ultimately wasted in death; self-development as a process which is rewarding in itself may appeal to some people, but it will not appeal to most; it is too slow, too erratic, too fraught with the possibility of failure and humiliation.

Religion and psychology, then, both deal with the same phenomena, the human personality, and both are concerned with its openness and its fulfillment. "Extrinsic" or, if you will, "inauthentic," religion is a well nigh perfect focus for neurosis. "Intrinsic" is not necessarily the result of psychotherapy, but therapy can open the religious question and make it explicit, and it can free a person for generous dedication of

229 - Pop Psychology and the Gospel

the self to other human beings. Religious conviction can sustain a person through the therapeutic process while at the same time it is being purified, refined, and clarified.

In principle, the outlines of a theory linking religion and psychology, but not identifying them, are reasonably clear. It is possible to keep religion and psychology distinct but not separate. In practice, however, we have a long way to go, and the fault must be put almost entirely on the side of religion, or rather more precisely, on the side of religious personnel.

III

Religious leaders are essentially practical people, because religion is essentially a practical subject. It does not purport to be theoretical or speculative (whatever the theologians may do with it), but rather it answers practical questions about the meaning of life and the way one should live. If all Americans are possessed by a "how to do it" mentality, religious functionaries may well be the most pragmatic of Americans. They don't want to be bothered by theory, by data, by experiments, by research; they want concrete, practical programs, gimmicks, techniques, methods. They want to know what to use in next Sunday's sermon, next Wednesday's instruction class, tomorrow night's difficult counseling case. Who needs theory? Who needs research? Who needs evidence?

As a result, there are within the churches a very notable shortage of clergy who are well trained clinical or research psychologists. Hence there is shallowness and superficiality (clichés and slogans, fads and fashions, gimmicks and panaceas) in the psychological practice of the church. Worse yet, there is no one around with the professional credentials and expertise to criticize shallowness and superficiality. Indeed, when the occasional critic with the proper credentials does arrive on the scene, there is not the environment of respect for scholarship and learning which would incline people to listen.

For several years I fought a losing battle with the sensitivity enthusiasts within Catholicism (before that fashion passed and was replaced by charismatic healing). I was a social scientist, I had read the sensitivity literature, I was familiar with the research, I knew its limitations and its risks, I knew what it could do and what it couldn't do. But the enthusiasts were not about to listen, not about to consider my criticisms, not about to look at the research literature themselves. They had been to Bethel for two weeks; they had nothing to learn from someone like me who bad never even been to a sensitivity training session. Some people ended up in the hospital, some ended up in bed with their clergy, some left their marriages because their spouses couldn't tolerate the new techniques of aggression, some destroyed moderately healthy church groups with their new enthusiasm, some oppressed others into sensitivity ordeals with no freedom of choice. Then the craze passed. If there had been more serious social science

230 - Pop Psychology and the Gospel

criticism and a climate of respect for such criticism, the craze might not have done nearly the harm it did. I gather from my Protestant colleagues that the problem was not limited to Catholic enthusiasts.

One of the results of superficiality is that what is difficult is made to look easy. Psychology and religion can be connected, but it is only with care and difficulty and work that one can work out the precise shades of meaning and nuance which are required to maintain the distinction between the two. Shallow enthusiasts have no time for bard and careful thought.

Nor is there any time for the hard work and the painful sacrifice that are necessary if one wishes to grow into the authentic self. Personality growth, self-fulfillment come to mean "doing your own thing" or "doing what comes naturally" or "being spontaneous" or-not to put too fine an edge on things-doing exactly what you want to do. Any sound psychological theory will insist that self-fulfillment requires discipline, restraint, effort, sacrifice, slow and painful progress. But if you are tired of your husband and children in your late thirties and you want to "fulfill" yourself, it may well be that what you really want is to be rid of your husband and children. A personalistic ideology may provide a superb rationalization to cover such selfishness, but, as one discovers in the cold lonely days after divorce, a change of environment does not at all mean a change in self or the elimination of unhappiness.

We live in a less than perfect world. Self-fulfillment is neither painless nor complete; personal development is an erratic, uncertain, and arduous process. It takes a long, long time to become holy and even longer to become a saint. The rhetoric of the personal development craze in American religion conveniently overlooks these harsh and unpleasant facts. You can gather a group of people together, usually perfect strangers, put them through an intense hyped-up interlude over a weekend, and (presumably) get instant Christians as an output. So argue the psychological enthusiasts, and they try to cite evidence to prove the case: people enjoy the experience (at least those who will talk about it); they have come to know one another and to "find Jesus"; they continue to come to meetings afterward; they report that their lives have been transformed, that they finally know what religion means, that they have finally become active members of the church.

But Christians are not mass produced, they are not turned out on weekend assembly lines. Holiness does not spring forth, like Venus, fully formed during an intense emotional binge. Psychological techniques will not succeed where spiritual techniques of countless preceding generations have failed. There is no shortcut to holiness, only a shortcut to neurotic religious hyperactivism of the sort that makes one even more intolerable to one's spouse, one's neighbors, and one's clergy.

Even worse is that tiny wing of the psychology and religion move-

231 - Pop Psychology and the Gospel

ment which thinks that you can produce instant mystics by the use of drugs. Real mystics don't need drugs, and they are not likely to hang out with those that do.

The argument here is not that religion has nothing to learn from psychological theory nor that religion should never use psychological methodology. The argument is that religious people who use psychological language and methods should know what they are talking about and what they are doing. Only the most naive and inexperienced could think that such is the case today.

In the final analysis, however, religion starts where psychology leaves off. Try as it might, psychology cannot explain the purpose of human existence, the meaning of human life, the ultimate destiny of the human person. Some psychologists have tried to do all of these things, but when they do, they cease to be psychologists and become religious prophets (a fact B. F. Skinner cheerfully admitted to me once on a public platform at Yale University). Religion deals with the ultimate in the human condition; psychology cannot and normally does not pretend to. Out of its own data and its own theory, psychology must respond to ultimate questions with an agnostic shrug. Religious personnel turn to psychology as a substitute for religion only when they do not think that their own ultimate answers are valid or that ultimate answers can ever be achieved or that ultimate questions are worth asking. The first two issues may be debatable; the third is not. Ultimate questions are worth asking, and they will be asked whether religious personnel want to answer them or not.

To say that the purpose of life is self-fulfillment, that the universe exists for personality development, and that the destiny of humankind is personal growth may be a satisfactory answer for the bemused divinity school graduate or the anxious young elitist who has read "everything" and learned nothing. But they are not the sort of answers that can sustain very many human beings for very long, and they are no answers at all for that most fundamental of religious questions: "What does my death mean for me?" Psychology may give hints; religion gives responses (though no magic answers). If religious leaders are content with psychology, their people may well respond with the scriptural judgment, "We ask you for bread, you give us a stone.