The Christian Neurosis/Christian Psychology/The Observing Self/Care of Mind/Care of Spirit:
Kotre, John N.
Psychotherapy & spirituality THE CHRISTIAN NEUROSIS Pierre Solignac Crossroad, $12.95, 168 pp. THE CHRISTIAN PSYCHOLOGY John M. McDonagh Crossroad, $9.95, 115 pp. John Kotre THE OBSERVINC SELF...
...For the most part he is a thoughtful guide for those who seek the inward path...
...He settled into a "post-Christian" agnosticism, saw psychology as the savior that would liberate him, and spent fifteen years "committing" social science...
...Never mind the confusion on this point, and never mind Deikman's curious refusal to call mysticism "religion" or "spirituality" (to him it is "science...
...How should we accept what you call yourselves...
...spiritual direction, on the other hand, seeks detachment from the hold of these values...
...Spiritual guides and psychotherapists, what do your names mean...
...They may also be separated by intent: psychotherapy seeks to promote living in accordance with a culture's prevailing values (in today's "autonomy-intoxicated culture," that means achieving a sense of mastery over self and circumstances...
...We need to know...
...In Care of Mind/Care of Spirit, May demonstrates that the distinction affects every aspect of practice, from overall climate to the discernment of suffering...
...AS distinct types of psychotherapy multiply into the hundreds, as more and more of us try a bit of one and a bit of another, Jacob Needleman's questions become ever more important...
...If you want to laugh at them, try John Powers's play, Do Black Patent Leather Shoes Really Reflect Up...
...Are specific ideas and concepts to be brought into therapy, or does mysticism stand over and above therapy...
...I have the distinct impression the author is using his patients to voice his own dissatisfactions...
...When May encounters hopelessness and emptiness in his clients, he is careful to distinguish clinical depressions from "dark night" experiences...
...Western psychotherapy has concerned itself with the contents of consciousness - with the things I think and feel and do - but not with awareness itself...
...May is versed in both psychiatric and ascetical literature and possesses a judiciousness and good sense born of experience...
...But psychotherapy must understand that there is more to mysticism than meditative techniques, Deikman states, or else it will continue to collect the oyster shells and throw away the pearls...
...It is a critical question, for wheri"we are most in need of them we are least able to pick them out...
...There are times when hands self-consciously grasp and claw, meddle and manipulate...
...In psychotherapy the healer is felt to be the therapist (or in humanistic variants, the therapist and the client), while in spiritual direction the healer is felt to be God...
...Deikman proposes to introduce it not only in theory but also practice...
...Between these extremes are times when skilled, seasoned hands flow naturally and simply do what needs to be done...
...I sense a wholeness in the author, but he is too fresh from a particular journey to lead others along their own...
...In therapy one tries to work through problems, but in spiritual direction the atmosphere is one of quiet clarity in which one tries to see through problems...
...We need to know what remains of the religious after the incursion of the psychological...
...These are the hands of the true guide, and they are evident in every page of Care of Mind/Care of Spirit...
...There are other times when we sit on our hands and forcefully prevent their movement...
...The "Christian neurosis" he claims to have identified turns out to be every complaint priests and nuns and occasional lay Catholics have brought against their church...
...They told me not to masturbate, they demanded absolute obedience, they were hypocritical, they, they, they...
...These, too, must be brought over if the "observing self is to be enhanced...
...Above all, we need to separate those who merely promise a Way from those we can trust to guide us along one...
...May likens therapy and spiritual direction to the movement of hands...
...John Kotre THE OBSERVINC SELF Arthur J. Deikman Beacon, $13.50, 194 pp...
...The "observing self is the self of pure subjectivity...
...He received "Baptism in the Holy Spirit," was healed, and now gathers evidence for the reality of bodily resurrection and disembodied consciousness (or "soul," as they used to say at Fordham...
...I need to know...
...Though his book is written for spiritual directors, psychotherapists can gain from it an outside perspective on their work...
...The center of human experience, the "I" that observes all the rest of me, is missing from its theories...
...If you want goose flesh from the skeletons in Catholic closets, go back to James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man...
...his self-absorption and buried anger create feelings of frustration and anger in the therapist...
...We need to see the difference between spiritual journeys and therapeutic paths...
...Unlike Deikman, Gerald May insists on a clearly marked boundary between the psychological and the spiritual...
...The complaints are conveyed through barely credible interviews in which patients are suddenly cured when Solignac points the finger at Catholic education...
...In depressions, the sufferer functions poorly...
...McDonagh is careful with this material, but eventually enthusiasm takes over, as when he concludes that Jesus "knew his way around the astral sphere...
...The bulk of his Christian Psychology consists of heavily footnoted arguments that the last bend in the path fits the teachings of parapsychology and the New Testament...
...In particular, there are teaching stories, prescriptions for virtuous behavior, and a metaphysic of the unity of all being...
...Who are the true guides...
...CARE OF MIND/CARE OF SPIRIT Gerald C. May Harper and Row, $11.49,175 pp...
...In "dark night" experiences, on the other hand, the sufferer functions amazingly well, arid his enhanced compassion may even leave the director consoled...
...Then he read Raymond Moody's Life After Life and began to devour other literature on near-death experiences...
...Though John McDonagh says his Christian Psychology is a synthesis between modern psychology and religion, it is best read as the autobiography of a journey...
...Two other books that walk the paths of therapeutic and the spiritual deserve careful reading...
...In so doing he is unclear about the relationship between mysticism and psychotherapy...
...A few cures come from reading a text in Freudian psychology or having sex with one's housekeeper...
...One who promises enlightenment but offers none is Pierre Solignac, author of The Christian Neurosis...
...Arthur Deikman argues that Western psychotherapy can learn much from Eastern mysticism and operates from the premise that there is continuity between the two...
...In Care of Mind/Care of Spirit, Gerald May uses that of the West" to discern the action of Spirit...
...McDonagh was a sophomore at Fordham when he began to have doubts about his Catholic faith...
...In The Observing Self, Arthur Deikman uses the mysticism of the East to show the way to Self...
...But do not expect clarity or guidance from Solignac's volume...
...In guidance, he says, the two may be distinguished by content: psychotherapy centers on the mental and emotional dimensions of inner life, while spiritual direction centers on experiences that reveal the leadings of God...
...Behind these names, which of you are the real spiritual guides and which the real psychotherapists...
Vol. 109 • November 1982 • No. 19
