What’s Caught My Eye…

Why don’t we encourage sufferers to aim for joy? Perhaps we think of suffering and joy as a two-step process, as if what we see in Psalm 126:5-6—We go out weeping and return with shouts of joy—is the only pattern. This view sees suffering and joy as fundamentally incompatible and unable to be experienced simultaneously. But that can’t be true. Scripture indicates that life in the age of the Spirit will have the hardest suffering and the greatest joy—and both can be experienced at the same time. The Apostle Paul illustrated this as one of the many of the implications of the gospel: “in all our affliction, I am overflowing with joy” (2 Cor. 7:4).

This means that even when we are in pain, we can go in search of joy with the expectation that it will, indeed, find and surprise us. Think about the end of war and enemies defeated (1 Chron. 16:33, Ps. 27:6), water in the desert (Is. 35:6), how the Lord delights in the welfare of his servants (Ps. 35:27), how the Lord comforts his people (Is. 49:13), how the Father, Son and Spirit take joy in each other and, through Jesus, we are brought into that joy (John 15:11). Think about how forgiveness of sins has secured for us all the promises of God, which are summarized in his unceasing presence with us. This presence, and the future glory of seeing him face-to-face, is to be at the very center of our joy.

But in this search we still have a problem. The prevailing treatment and dominant metaphor today for alleviating pain is medication. We take a pill and wait for it to be effective. We give the treatment limited time to show its worth before we move on to a new prescription. Joy does not follow this pattern. It does not come quickly. In fact, if we expect quick results, we are not actually seeking joy and it will never come. Joy does counterbalance pain, but that is a side effect of joy rather than its goal.

Read the whole thing here: The Hard Pairing of Suffering and Joy.

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Mourning, Melancholia and the Clergy

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One of the things I come to understand over the years is that depression is simply part of the background noise for many clergy. And this holds true whether the individual in question is Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant or Evangelical Christian, male or female. This isn't to say that the cleric in question is incapacitated. Far from it in fact. Many of the clergy I know who are depressed are rather high functioning and often considered to be successful and even exemplary examples of pastoral ministry in their tradition.

But depressed they are nevertheless.

Freud somewhere argued that depression is a result of the loss of one's love object. In Freudian psychoanalytic theory, the love object is that person or project in which I invested my libidinous energies. While the term libido now has sexual connotations, this was not the case for Freud. Rather libido, was more a generic term for psychic energy (though granted, this energy can, and often is, in Freud's view sexual in character).

When that love object is lost, whether literally or figuratively, I experience depression, or (to use Freud's term) melancholia. Robert Clark, a Reader in English at the University of East Anglia​, in his brief essay on Freud's essay on depression, “Mourning and Melancholia”> (1917), writes that Freud thinks of depression or

melancholia as a “profoundly painful dejection, cessation of interest in the outside world, loss of the capacity to love, inhibition of all activity, and a lowering of the self-regarding feelings to a degree that finds utterance in self-reproaches and self-revilings, and culminates in a delusional expectation of punishment.” (Penguin Freud Library, Vol. 11, p. 248).

And again, as I said a moment ago, while melancholia results from “the death of a loved person, but it might also occur when something has been lost as an object of love, or even when 'one cannot see clearly what has been lost. (254).”

Mourning, on the other hand, has a slightly different content. Again, as Clark writes, “In mourning 'it is the world that has become poor and empty; in melancholia it is the ego itself' (254).” Clinically, “Freud noted that melancholics were inclined to accuse themselves of many failings in an entirely unjustified way, and noted that the accusations were such as should have been more correctly directed against someone whom the patient loves or has loved.”

Freud's description of depression then is of loss and anger turned inward against the ego or the “I” that should, more reasonably, be directed outward at those who have abandoned or failed me (and again, this might be literally or symbolically). While there is much that I would reject in Freud, it seems to me that his insight into depression is profound. It is all the more profound as I think about my own, and other's, experiences in ministry.

Loss is inseparable from ministry because it is inseparable from human life in general and the Christian life in particular. It is hard, for example, to read the sayings of the desert fathers and not come away with the realization that mourning is essential to the Christian life. For example, Abba Poeman says that “He who wishes to purify his faults purifies them with tears. . . . ; for weeping is the way the Scriptures and our fathers give us, when they say, 'Weep!' Truly, there is no other way than this.” And Isaac the Syrian goes so far as to say “The man who follows Christ in solitary mourning is greater than he who praises Christ amid the congregation of men.”

But if mourning is essential to the spiritual life, melancholia/depression has no place and reflects mourning that has gone terribly wrong. Again, as Freud reminds us, in mourning, I come to sense the poverty of the world—m ourning (to transpose Freud into an anthropology more consonant with the fathers) is the realization that though this world is a great and beautiful gift, it is nevertheless “transitory.” It is only to the degree that I realize this that, as St Gregory the Great somewhere says, I am able “to stretch out the mind in humility to God and [my] neighbor.” Mourning is what helps “preserve patience against offered insults and, with patience guarded, to repel the pain of malice from the heart.” Mourning is to foundation of my love of the poor and makes it possible for me to “give [my] property to the poor, not to covet that of others, to esteem the friend in God, on God's account to love even those who are hostile.” It is through mourning that I am able to be and lead others to become evermore that “new creature whom the Master of the nations seeks with watchful eye amid the other disciples, saying: 'If, then, any be in Christ a new creature, the old things are passed away. Behold all things are made new' (2 Cor. 5:17).”

While mourning and melancholia are similar, they are not the same. Worse, if we are not careful we can easily confuse mourning and melancholia. It is unwise to expect clergy, or for clergy to expect from ourselves, a life of selfless service if we are not also clear that such service is different in tone and content from depression. I think rather too easily we all of us—whether clergy or not—allow ourselves to confuse mourning and melancholia; too easily when we ought to counsel detachment we are instead fostering depression.

Too simply be angry with myself, to see my own failings and shortcomings in isolation from any larger content that realizes my own (and other's) weakness is a way of life that is psychologically and spiritually unsustainable.

I am very much taken by St Gregory the Great's notion that the mournful person is able to stretch out, in humility, his mind to God and neighbor. To understand humility as if it were some species of melancholia is, I think, to misunderstand humility. Yes because of my manifold sins and transgressions, I fall short of the glory of God (see Rms 3.12). But do I realize that even if I were not sinful, I would—; as a creature—fall short of the Divine Glory?

Real mourning—as opposed to its counterfeit, melancholia—gives birth to real humility. And what is this real humility? I think St Gregory Nyssa offers a good a description as any I've read:

This is true perfection: not to avoid a wicked life because like slaves we severely fear punishment, not to do good because we hope for rewards, as if cashing in on the virtuous life by some business-like arrangement. On the contrary, disregarding all those things for which we hope and which have been reserved by promise, we regard falling from God's friendship as the only thing dreadful and we consider becoming God's friend the only thing worthy of honor and desire. This, as I have said, is the perfection of life.

To befriend God and neighbor is, it seems to me, the fruit of humility and a heart that mourns for its own sins and the sins of the world.

Many clergy struggle valiantly to be friends with God and neighbor But their struggles are often undermined by their own, and others, confusion of melancholia and depression. Thinking about this I wonder if it might not be helpful for clergy, but also for all of us who love Christ, if we made a bit more room in our communities for saying goodbye and seeing all the little (and great) losses of life as blessings and not curses?

Nicholas Ray in his essay (“ Trauer und Melancholie”) on Freud's theory of depresstiont, writes that for Freud, mourning is “not – or at least is not only – a process of remembrance; it is a labour of severance, of slowly cutting ties with what has gone. The painful re-traversal of memories and expectations connected to the lost object is undertaken by the psyche with a separative aim in view.”

Watching the different disagreements and divisions that seem to be inflicting the Orthodox Church in the States, as well as the suffering of my fellow clergy, I wonder, if in fact we have not in someway undercut the hard work of mourning that Freud and the fathers describe? And, if we have, I wonder, what is the way back?

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

Erikson and Orthodox Pastoral Care

(This is a re-write of an earlier post that had a number of errors.  I'm using a new netbook with a smaller key board and screen, so my already minimal editing skills are being rather stretched.)

I'm sitting in the airport (my flights been delayed 1 hour and 20 minutes) on my way home from to the CAPS International Conference in Orlando, FL. Yes, I know, I've got a tough life—actually what I have is an incredibly supportive wife who encourages me in my undeniable eccentric priestly ministry.
In addition to being able to speak with colleagues, I did a poster presentation this year. My presentation—based based on a paper I presented at a conference last year—is a comparison of the. work of Erik Erikson and St Maximos the Confessor. Specifically, I'm looking at how they both look at the experience of failure.
While I say more on the content of my presentation later, as with most my academic work in psychology, the paper my presentation is based is more theoretical than applicative in orientation. My goal is to try and deepen how we in psychology understand the human person. So, my concern is not with St Maximos as such, but with (in the present case) the developmental theory of articulated by the psychologist Erik Erikson.
For those who know me, my interest in doing this is no particular mystery—this is simply a matter of transposing my own spiritual journey from the personal to the theoretical. In other words, my own spiritual life, my own faith as an Orthodox Christian, and my own admittedly eccentric ministry as a priest for that matter, grew out of my interest in psychology. For me, reflecting on Erikson (in the present case) is what inspired me to draw closer to Christ and His Church. Sort of like what the fathers call “natural contemplation,” or a reflection on creation that points the soul beyond creation to the Creator.
So why am I interested in Erikson's work?
One of the most interesting things about Erikson's development theory is that it is teleological. Human growth and development is not a matter of the blind working out of our genetic inheritance in response to environmental stimulus. To be sure as a disciple of Freud, the body (and thus later genetic research) has a role to play in Erikson's theory, but (unlike Freud) Erikson does not limit human development to simply the deterministic working out of bodily needs.
For Erikson human development not only has an identifiable goal it proceeds along following identifiable benchmarks. And not only that, there in Erikson's view of the matter there are also the possibility for missteps. These missteps are possible throughout life and while not necessarily fatal to our consonant development, neither are they inconsequential. At any point along the way, I can at any step off the path of wholesome development that would ordinarily lead from birth to death.
This potential for failure begins in infancy when the new born and is my constant companion throughout my life. It is this possibility of failure that I find most interesting in Erikson's work. Like other, more humanistic psychologists, Erikson has a generally optimistic view of potential. Unlike these other thinkers, however, he is clear about the possibility of failure—and this failure is one that increasingly is a consequence of the misuse of my own freedom.
The summit of human development is ego integrity. At this stage I come (or not) to embrace the totality of my life with all its successes and failures. Part of this embrace is the appreciative acceptance of my own contingency, that my life is the product not only on my genetic inheritance and free decisions, but also of factors over which I have no control (like the culture in which I am born and raised) and which could in fact have been different.
But I can also come to a point in which I refuse to be thankful for my life; I can deny or resent my failures just as I can overvalue or minimize my successes. Whatever the concrete form my lack of acceptance takes, it is grounded in a refusal of my own contingency as the condition of possibility for my own life. It is here, in my exercise (or not) of what Erikson calls the virtue of wisdom, that I have the opportunity to find not only myself, but also to reach out in beyond the limits of my own life and embrace others in compassion.
While Erikson's work fall short of the Church's understanding of theosis (deification) as the goal of human life, his work nevertheless articulates much of the human dimension of this process. In doing so, I think, Erikson's work has a valuable contribution to make to Orthodox pastoral care.
In Christ,
+Fr Gregory

From Psychblog: “7 Reasons Leaders Fail”

Especially as the Orthodox Church in America moves into a new era, I thought the following post on why leaders fail might be of interest. I am especially intrigued by the comment that while there has been a fair amount of research done on the psychology of leadership, we have neglected research into why people follow--the psychology of followership, if you will, is not well researched or understood it seems.

In any event, I offer the below for your consideration, questions and comments.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

Around two-thirds of workers say the most stressful aspect of their jobs is their immediate boss, their line manager (Hogan, 2006). While this will come as no surprise to most, this statistic suggests a massive number of unhappy working relationships. So, does this mean that leadership is failing on a massive scale? Well, not exactly...

A recent article published in American Psychologist beautifully explains why so many people experience their managers as piping hot geysers of stress (Vugt, Hogan & Kaiser, 2008). What emerges is that bosses aren't inherently bad people (mostly), but that the modern culture of work sets them up to fail. Here are the seven main reasons I've picked out from this article for why leaders fail:

1. Strict hierarchies.

For Mark Van Vugt of the University of Kent and colleagues a large part of the problem with many modern organisations is their hierarchies. Leaders are at the top of the chain and are assumed to have all the answers, so they make most of the decisions. In reality knowledge and expertise is spread across people in organisations. But it's the leaders who must be seen to lead and so followers get frustrated because their superior knowledge and expertise is frequently ignored. This leads to:

2. Poor decision-making.

Leaders often don't make any better decisions than followers, and frequently make worse ones. This is another consequence of strict hierarchies. Rather than setting up leaders to fail, Van Vugt et al. (2008) argue it's better to agree that leaders are not always the best people to make the decisions. Spreading the responsibility around, or using more participatory strategies for decision-making is often more effective. But this isn't the way things generally work, part of the problem is:

3. Huge pay differentials.

Followers often hate their leaders because of the huge difference in their salaries. It's hard to feel any sympathy for someone whose pay is stratospheric (average CEO pay is 179 times that of average workers). And, because more pay means more status, leaders can quickly come to believe they really deserve the God-like status their pay suggests, resulting in their thinking they have all the answers and that they have the right to treat their employees less than fairly. In the bosses' defence, though, there are:

4. Impossible standards for leaders.

Perhaps because of the huge pay and incredible demands, followers expect their leaders to be almost superhuman. The leadership literature identifies a whole range of personal qualities thought important for a good leader. These include integrity, persistence, humility, competence, decisiveness and being able to inspire the troops. While a leader may be high on one or two of these, they are unlikely to have the full set. Followers are almost bound to be disappointed by what is, after all, another fallible human who is just trying to:

5. Climb the greasy pole.

If the boss is nice to you, it's a bonus, because it's not required for them to get on in the organisation. Leaders are promoted by those higher than them, not those below them - so it's only necessary for bosses to impress their bosses. This is a recipe for disaffection amongst the followers. Talking of which, forget the psychology of leadership, what do we know about the:

6. Psychology of followership?

One of the best points Van Vugt et al. make is that although it's leadership that has been most extensively studied and discussed, most of us end up as followers. So really the psychology of followership is more important than leadership. What is it that makes us follow someone else? And, more subversively: do we need leaders? For example, some research shows that when people know what they're doing, they resent having leadership imposed on them. Generally, though, there's little known about followership, and how to avoid:

7. Alienation.

As a result of the strict hierarchies, huge pay differentials, poor decision-making, greasy-pole climbing and feeling powerless to change huge bureaucracies, followers naturally develop feelings of alienation, and alienation kills motivation and productivity, along with any hope of job satisfaction.

Talk is cheap

By implication the way to rectify these perceived problems is to do the reverse. Don't instigate rigid hierarchies, discourage huge pay differentials, democratise decision-making and don't set impossible standards for leaders. Some organisations are already managing this - presumably those in which followers don't find their bosses the biggest sources of stress - but most are not.

Of course talk is cheap and recognising the problem is quite different to knowing what to do about it, or having the courage to do it. Anyone wanting to make these types of changes across an organisation would have to be a really great leader - and there are truly few of those around.

What do you think?

Do you recognise these problems in your organisation? Has anyone tried to do anything about it? Are there other major reasons leaders fail?

From:
http://www.spring.org.uk/2008/11/7-reasons-leaders-fail.php

Psychology Professor Develops New Model For Collaboration Between Clergy And Clinicians

ScienceDaily (Jun. 2, 2008) — Many of the clergy who lead America's 260,000 religious congregations turn to psychologists who share their religious values when they refer congregants to social workers. However, this approach could impede people from getting the care they need, maintains Dr. Glen Milstein, Professor of Psychology at The City College of New York (CCNY).

For the past decade, Professor Milstein has led a multidisciplinary team of researchers in developing a new model for relationships between clergy and clinicians that is religion inclusive rather than faith based. Known as C.O.P.E. (Clergy Outreach and Professional Engagement), the approach is design to reduce burdens on both professions. It was described in detail earlier this year in the American Psychological Association's journal "Professional Psychology: Research and Practice."

The key to the C.O.P.E. model is the recognition that mental illness is a chronic disease with which patients sometimes can function and other times can not, Professor Milstein explains. "Clinicians and clergy perform distinct, complementary functions in treating these syndromes. While clinicians provide professional treatment to relieve individuals of their pain and suffering and move them from dysfunction to their highest level of function, clergy and religious communities provide a sense of context, support and community before, during and after treatment."

The program aims to improve care of individuals by facilitating reciprocal collaboration between clinicians and members of the clergy, regardless of either's religious affiliations. It is based on two principal ideas: The first is that clergy and clinicians can better help a broader array of persons with emotional difficulties and disorders through professional collaboration than they can by working alone, and secondly, that the program's success is predicated on collaboration easing the workload for both groups.

Professor Milstein describes the approach as "religion-inclusive" since it calls upon the therapist to both assess the role of religion in the patient's life and to educate themselves about the patient's religious tradition. Often that education includes contact with the patient's clergy.

Faith-based approaches, which call for the individual to be referred to a clinician from his or her own faith, can restrict care by excluding access to professionals best able to treat the condition, he maintains. Professor Milstein cites a research study comparing the work of religious psychotherapists with the work of nonreligious psychotherapists in treating religious Christians. The study found that nonreligious therapists who provided religiously informed psychotherapy achieved the best clinical outcomes for this group.

Working from the National Institute of Mental Health's four prevention categories, Professor Milstein and his team developed two handouts, one for mental health professionals and the other for clergy. They provide descriptions in a hierarchal format of the four care stages and illustrate when it would be appropriate for clergy to contact clinicians and for clinicians to contact clergy.

The goal of C.O.P.E., Professor Milstein explains, is for clergy and clinicians to provide a continuum of care, whether the person is fully functional, is under stress, requires treatment or is trying to avoid relapse. The approach has been used to facilitate collaboration between expert clinicians and clergy from a variety of faiths including: Armenian Orthodox; Roman Catholic; Ethical Culture; Hindu; Muslim; Judaism, as well as evangelical and mainline Protestant denominations.

Because clergy tend to see people throughout their lifetimes and in different circumstances, they often are in a better position to identify whether or not someone is functioning properly, Professor Milstein points out. For example, they are likely to distinguish between someone who has lost a loved one and is going through a normal bereavement process and someone who could be clinically depressed. "Recommending an intervention for someone who may be depressed relieves their (clergy) burden," he adds.

Similarly, religious communities can relieve the burden on the clinician by helping people reenter everyday life, Professor Milstein adds. "Religious communities are primary areas of social support for most people. If religion is an important part of an individual's life, the clinician needs to make that connection. They should contact the clergy and let them know to look out for and welcome the person back."

Conversely, he points out that the approach would not be helpful for patients who have had negative associations with religion or religious leaders. "The model is not a panacea, but, rather, an option to engage the whole person. Patients need to be assessed and treated individually without judgments about whether religion is good or bad."

Professor Milstein's research collaborators were: Amy Manierre, an American Baptists minister currently pursuing as Master of Social Work Degree at University of Houston; Virginia L. Susman, M.D., Associate Medical Director and Site Director at New York Presbyterian Hospital and Associate Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at Weill Medical College, and Dr. Martha L. Bruce, Professor of Sociology in Psychology at Weill Medical College.

The research was supported by grants from: the DeWitt Wallace-Reader's Digest Research Fellowship Program in Psychiatry; the National Institute of Mental Health; the American Psychological Association and the Professional Staff Congress – CUNY.

Athens and Jerusalem, part 2

I have received several emails regarding my interviews with the host of "Our Life in Christ," on Ancient Faith Radio ((you can download the interviews here
and here). Below is an edited version of the second email I wrote to one listener, T.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

Dear T.,

Your comments about understanding the limits of science (in your case __________, in mine psychology) are right on target. Much of the resistance I think to psychology comes out of not simply a lack of awareness of what psychology does and doesn't offer, but a more fundamental lack of a sound philosophy of science. I hasten to add at this point, a deficient philosophy of science is not limited to non-scientists—very rarely do psychologists seem to understand the limits of our own discipline. Psychotherapy, to take but one example, does not deal in certainties, but probabilities that are always, and necessarily, subject to revision and even rejection. In this sense, my therapeutic work is rather limited in what it can accomplish.

But for all its limits, I think psychology offers us a useful anthropological vision. This is less so in particular and more in a general or foundational sense. When evaluating any psychological theory or practice I return again to the provisional nature of all science. To me at least this suggests that psychology offers us a dynamic view of the human person. So not only are our findings are always subject to revision, any psychological theory that neglects to take account of the dynamic character of human life is in need of correction.

Taken within its own limits as a science, psychology is a rather humble endeavor. We are not concerned with articulating a unified theory of life, the universe and everything. Or even for that matter of what it means to be human. Psychology is the science of human dynamism and as such a great partner to Christian anthropology's view of the inherent and transcendent openness of the human. It is interesting that when one reads personality theorists, they are generally rather dismissive of static thinking or rigid patterns of behavior. While this is often hinted at by the social and political liberalism of the psychologist, this is accidental to the science of psychology as such. In fact I would suggest that the liberalism of psychology—at least in an American context—reflects not simply the character of psychologists, but a certain tendency in some quarters of American society to a moralizing anthropological vision that is "allergic" to a dynamic and transcendent view of the person.

You observed, correctly I think, that many clergy adopt uncritically pop psychology. In recent weeks, for example, I have pointed out to clergy that the Myers-Briggs Personality Test is NOT a valid (in the sense of validated) psychological test. From the point of view of science, the Myers-Briggs tells us nothing about personality. Indeed personality theory is an area of great debate in psychology precisely because it does not lend itself to empirical verification. This does not mean we have to dismiss the Myers-Briggs or personality theory, but it does mean that we need to be clear that in using it we are in the realm not of quantitative but qualitative science.

Clergy, however, will often pick up pop psychology without every applying the same standards that they would apply to any other philosophical or theological vision. Or, and here my cynicism is clear for all to see, I suspect that they do evaluate pop psychology with the same rigor they apply to their philosophical and theological reflections—which is to say they aren't very rigorous at all. Observing over the years the use of psychology by clergy I have come to think that—for all the seriousness with which they may speak—there is often a rather painful lack of intellectual rigor in how most clergy approach their own theological and philosophical patrimony. Yes, certainly, they are very good about quoting Scripture or the Fathers. But for all their quotations and systems building, the intellectual rigor is simply not there. If it were, then I suspect they would not be so easily swayed by pop psychology.

In other words, psychology is in my view something of a test case. How rigorous and thoughtful are we about the content of the Christian tradition and its implications for the pastoral life of the Church? Too easily, and here I will conclude and invite your comments, we confuse anger with conviction, bullying with real authority and rigid and narrow thinking with fidelity to the living witness of the Holy Spirit not only in the past but in the present.

Again, thank you for your comments.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

Athens and Jerusalem, part 1

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I have received several emails regarding my interviews with the host of "Our Life in Christ," on Ancient Faith Radio (you can download the interviews here and here). Below is an edited version of an email I wrote in response to one such email.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

Christ is Risen!

Dear T. and S.,

Thank you both for your very thoughtful comments and questions.

In response to T's question: "Is psychology necessary?" I would answer "No." But then, strictly speaking, anything that is other than God is also not necessary. This is not me language playing games. Rather it reflects what I think is the Christian faith that all that is not God is contingent upon Him and created by Him out of love and without compulsion. Creation does not add to God, but it does reflect His love.

Because everything created is, by definition, contingent, it is also unnecessary. But unnecessary does not mean unimportant or without value, though the value created being is always relative. This relative value is two-fold:

1. relative to God (as a gift and expression of His love) and
   
2. relative to its place in creation in general and the human community in particular.
   
   

Unlike the historical claims of Christian theology, modern psychology (and really it is more accurate to think in terms of a variety of schools of contemporary psychologies) does not claim to be universally applicable. Under the best of circumstances (as S. suggests) it is a tool. While it can be a helpful tool, its value depends on the skill of the craftsman using it and the needs of the person to whom s/he is responding.

Right up front, let me say that I am not convinced of the relative superiority in psychological matters of an earlier generation of Christians. How is one to evaluate the proposition that spiritual Fathers, directors or doctors of an earlier era were more effective than contemporary psychologists? First, we need to decide on the standard of comparison and then the measurement instrument. Simply put, even assuming we are comparing apples to apples, we have no way of actually making the determination that one group was more competent then the other.

Like it or not, we live in a world in which psychology has a large role to play. It seems to me that if earlier eras struggled with issues of Christology ours age seems to struggle with anthropological questions (and this includes the nature of the Church). While there are great anthropological insights to be found in the Fathers (and this is a central theme in my own writing and praxis as both a psychologist and a priest), these are not well developed or maybe as well developed systematically. Contemporary psychology, unlike the Fathers, is concerned with the systematic study of human behavior.

If this or that Father was a better natural psychologist then say a given contemporary psychologist, well thank God, but (absent written records) so what? While I can easily imagine, for example, St Basil or St John Chrysostom or St Augustine, as extraordinarily gifted confessors and spiritual directors, they did not leave us the kinds of records that help us understand how they heard confessions. It is a bit like asking if a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it does it make a sound. Yes, and while we know this theoretically, even if we do not know it experientially. And in the spiritual life, experience counts as much, if not more than, theory.

So yes, Chrysostom may very well have been an extraordinary psychologist (and certainly his sermons suggest this), but the Church today does not much profit from his skill. Contemporary psychology, to the degree that the psychologist (be he a researcher or a therapist) is honest can help the Church fill in the lack of anthropological data rooted in experience. In my work, I find a new depth of understanding of Chrysostom's sermons is possible precisely because--as a psychologist--I have some insight into human behavior that remains only implicit in his sermons.

As I think I alluded to in the interview, I did not come to psychology as an Orthodox Christian, much less a priest. Rather it was the other way around, I came as a psychologist to the Orthodox Church and eventually, and again as a psychologist, to the priesthood. This is to say I came looking for something to make up what I found lacking in my experience as a therapist and theoretician (and these days I am more interested in ideas about psychology and psychological theorists more than I am in actually doing therapy--though God knows I do a fair amount of that every week!). A therapist who is honest and committed to really working with and for clients will say that this work is invariably a confrontation with the fact of human contingency—that nothing in the client's life is necessary or of lasting value.

This is grim I realize—but this awareness is where faith begins.

I must first grasp that I do not possess my own life—that autonomy in the radical sense of the word, is not possible. This is so because I live in midst of a web of relationships that are given to me prior to any decision that I make. And, more painful still, it is precisely this web of relationships that exist prior to my free decision that in fact makes my subsequent freedom possible. I am free only to the degree that I first embrace the manifold limitations that make my life possible.

Tracing out the particular limits of a particular human life is what psychology excels at doing. In this sense then, psychology is the science, or maybe better art, that (like philosophy) is concerned with the pre-evangelism stage of human life. Psychology and especially psychotherapy (can) prepare us to receive the Gospel. How? By returning us to an appreciative consideration of our own limits, our own contingency in its ontological and empirical modes (what medieval philosophy refers to as primary and secondary causalities; I am absolutely dependent on God for my existence and relatively dependent upon my patents). Psychology, the other social and human sciences (sociology, anthropology especially) as well as the natural sciences (especially the biological sciences, but also the physical sciences and physics), are concerned with articulated the structures and dynamics of this secondary causality.

In this regard theology and the Church need modern psychology. Not need in an absolute sense to be sure, but certainly in a relative sense. For this reason I would assert that especially for pastors to ignore contemporary psychology is not only harmful but irresponsible. For all its shortcoming and limitations (and I am intimately familiar with these), modern psychology add insights about the human condition that the Fathers did not, at least not explicitly, have.

Implicit within the question of the use of modern psychology is a certain forgetfulness of the importance of our attending to the particular human person and the concrete community. Answering the questions "What use is contemporary psychology for Christians?" is not possible theoretically, but only personally. I think the examples that S. raises are good ones—I know as a priest that I have often encountered situations in the life of the Church in which my background as a psychologist has been extremely helpful. But, as I often tell my brother priests, being a psychologist doesn't make me more objective or a better priest, but simply a priest who has a different bias and a different set of skills. There are situations where an appeal to the Fathers will simply not move us forward. Granted those situations may very well be in the minority, but well, those are the situations within which God seems to call me to minister.

Finally, what I have found to be the best approach to the questions you raise T. is to seek not integration or hegemony, but reconciliation between the insights of the Fathers and contemporary psychology. As I said above, your questions do not admit to easy theoretical answers—but they can be answered personally.

In all humility I think that the work I do is consonant with the work the Fathers did in their time. These men and women of Christ, committed as they were to Him, the Gospel, and the life of the Church, entered into a conversation with Greek philosophy. At times they embraced pagan philosophy as a manifestation of divine wisdom. At other times they rejected it as demonic. It is as a result of that conversation however, that we have the great theological works of the first centuries.

In a similar fashion, and with the hope that I too will grow in holiness as a result, I have my conversation with contemporary psychology. Some of what I find is life giving and some is death dealing. But what is most important is not how this or that conversation or debate is resolved, but how struggle with the issues raised by the conversation between the two parts of my life transforms me. The questions you raised are important one, but their answer is given vocationally and not theoretically. In this, I would suggest, the questions you raise about contemporary psychology's relationship to the Church are no different the questions raised in an earlier age about the role that pagan philosophy and literature ought to play in the life of the Church.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

My Interview on "Our Life In Christ" (Ancient Faith Radio)

Above: Our Life in Christ, program hosts Steven Robinson and Bill Gould,

Interview with Fr. Gregory Jensen on Psychology, Part One
Tuesday, April 29, 2008

From the program web page:

Steve interviews Fr. Gregory Jensen, an Orthodox priest and psychologist. Fr. Gregory discusses the place of clinical psychology within Orthodox spirituality, particularly as it relates to pastoral care and confession.

You download the interview as an mp3 by clicking here: Our Life in Christ.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

The Suffering of Self-Creation

Maximos' notion of the gnomic will points us to one of the greatest, and most bitter, ironies of human sinfulness. My self-referential turn leads me not to myself, but to a life of ever increasing estrangement from self. This comes about because this turn to the self comes at the expense of my relationship with God in Whose image and likeness I have been created.

As a consequence of my estrangement with God and self, there arise in me as well an estrangement from my neighbor—who now becomes for me, and I for him, my enemy—and the created world. Think of events that follows immediately after he and the Woman have eaten of fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. What has happened to me as a consequence of my inward turn? I no longer seek out God. And creation is no longer for the arena of my encounter with God, it is rather where I try, futile, to hid myself from God. I find myself now lamenting with Adam:

Woe is me! The Serpent and the Woman have deprived me of my boldness before God, and I have become an exile from the Joy of Paradise through eating from the Tree. Woe is me! I can no more endure the shame! I once was king of all God's creatures on earth; now I have become a prisoner, led astray by evil counsel. I was once clothed in the glory of immortality, now I must wrap myself in the skins of mortality, as one miserable and condemned to die. Woe is me! Who will share my sorrow with me? But, Lord and lover of mankind, You have fashioned me from the earth and are clothed in compassion: Call me back from the bondage to the Enemy and save me! (First Sticherion at Lauds, Sunday of the Expulsion of Adam from Paradise)

Like Adam, my life, my will, is not obedient, not loving. I have become a self-referential being and become a slave to my own finitude and mutability. The very dynamism that ought to open me evermore to divine glory, instead now drags me down evermore into a life of shame and degradation. It is this life of self-perpetuating and deepening humiliation is a result not of any withdrawal of divine grace. It is rather a consequence of my withdrawing from divine grace and more and more into myself.

I am forever constructing and reconstructing my view of reality. And with each construction, with each reconstruction, I deviate further from God, my neighbor, creation, and self. It is this that, in the Christian East, that is the real consequence of sin. Death of the body and physical illness are only the symptoms of my spiritual death. And it is from this living death that Christ's comes to save me.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

Expecting More Than Creation Can Give

When we try and acquire things through the exercise of our will it is as if we are trying to see with our ear, or hear with our eyes. The "carnal will" is the human will that loves something other than God. It is not even necessarily that we love the gift more than the Giver. The simple fact that we loving something other than God is sufficient to undo us and cause our downward spiral into grief and our subsequent neurotic flight from our own life. Once we exercise our will in the service of our desire for people, things, wealth, possessions, we kill off by little steps any gratitude to the Creator.

Centered as it is on the self and the desires of the self, the gnomic will is a stranger to gratitude and blinds us to the reality that creation is gift to be received from God. And as our lack of gratitude grows creation, and eventually even God Himself, become merely instruments in the service of my own self-satisfaction. Creation, the things of creation, and even my understanding of God, all become substitutes for God. Or, to use Augustine more economical mode of expression, lusts.

If these lusts are not resisted, they eventually become habits; without even thinking about it, I begin to relate spontaneously to people, events and things in terms of how they can please me, gratify me, promote my agenda and me. Eventually, I become enslaved to the habit of my lust. I can no longer live, except that I exploit the world around me for my own selfish ends. Ironically, the very things that—at first anyway—brought me pleasure and even happiness become my master and I become their slave.

The problem then, for Augustine, is not (as it is for the Manicheans) the body, but the will. Sin arises not out of the body, but out of the will's attachment to the body rather than to God. In effect, I sin because I prefer the body and the things of the body (for example, sense knowledge, emotion, food, drink, pleasure, status, etc.) to God. And so Augustine says:

Thus with the baggage of this present world was I held down pleasantly, as in sleep: and the thoughts wherein I meditated on Thee were like the efforts of such as would awake, who yet overcome with a heavy drowsiness, are again drenched therein. And as no one would sleep for ever, and in all men's sober judgment waking is better, yet a man for the most part, feeling a heavy lethargy in all his limbs, defers to shake off sleep, and though half displeased, yet, even after it is time to rise, with pleasure yields to it, so was I assured that much better were it for me to give myself up to Thy charity, than to give myself over to mine own cupidity; but though the former course satisfied me and gained the mastery, the latter pleased me and held me mastered (VII.5.12).

But again, the real perversion, the real corruption of the human, is not desire as such. It is rather that, as Augustine says in Book IV of his deceased friend, that we expect from creation what we can only reasonably, truly, expect from God: To be a worthy object of the human will.

For Augustine, unlike Horney, the will is not the vehicle of human desire, but the faculty that attaches us to God. And it is from that attachment that our identity arises. It is less that our will is damaged, and more that our will is attached not only to the Eternal God Who does not change, nor even to temporal, created realities that are in constant flux. No the "problem" of the will is that it is attached also, and even primarily, to itself.

Grief & the Gnomic Will

Stepping back and with the advantage of age and spiritual maturity, Augustine comes to the self-realization that his sorrow, for all its unique features, was not his alone. Augustine's grief is the grief of the Old Adam. "I was miserable, and miserable too is everyone whose mind is chained by friendship with mortal things, and is torn apart by their loss, and then becomes aware of the misery that it was in even before it lost them" (Bk IV.6.11). It is for Augustine this chaining of the will through our attachment to the created rather than the Uncreated, that is the true human misery: "Woe to the madness," he writes, "which thinks to cherish human beings as though more than human!" (Bk IV.6.11) Possessed by this madness, we find ourselves in a place of inconsolable grief and sorrow. And in this state we can make Augustine's words our own:

Within in me I was carrying a tattered, bleeding soul that did not want me to carry it, yet I could find no place to lay it down. Not in pleasant countryside did it find rest, nor in shows and songs, nor in sweet-scented gardens, nor in elaborate feasts, nor in the pleasures of the couch or bed, nor even in books or incantations. . . . [E]verything that was not what he was seemed to me offensive and hateful (Bk IV.7.12)

We are now in a position to say that what Horney identifies as neurosis is really something much more profound then we might have at first imagined. The grief, frustration, anxiety, and aggression that Horney describes as symptomatic of the neurotic, is the psychological manifestation of a life that has lost its transcendent focus. To be human is to be a self-transcendent being. This self-transcendence is not part of human nature, as is for example, the will. We are not by nature transcend. It is rather that the human person is called by God to a transcendent way of life.

Yes, the transcendent, or the spiritual dimension, I would hold, is the distinctive quality of the human person. But we, I, am only a spiritual being, a self-transcendent being, in response to a call that comes to me from outside the created dimension. To lose sight of this, is not simply to misunderstand the spiritual aspirations of the human person. It is rather is to reduce our highest aspirations to merely a subjective choice, a fleeting desire (and all desires are fleeting) and rob the person of the very gift of a transcendent life that we would foster.

Again, Augustine is remarkably helpful here. In Book VIII he addresses the question of the human will. Contrary to what we sometimes imagine, Augustine's besetting sin is not sex, but ambition. On the one hand he wants to pursue Truth—he wants to devote himself to the contemplation of God. On the other hand, he has worldly ambitions. In a moment of blinding clarity about himself (and the human condition) he says that

[It] was no iron chain imposed by anyone else that fettered me, but the iron of my own will. The enemy had my power of willing in his clutches, and from it had forged a chain to bind me. The truth is that disordered lust springs from a perverted will; when lust is pandered to, a habit is formed; when habit is not checked, it hardens into compulsion. These were like interlinking rings forming what I have described as a chain, and my harsh servitude used it to keep me under duress. . . . And so the two wills fought it out—the old and the new, the one carnal, the other spiritual—and in their struggle tore my soul apart (Bk VIII.5.10).

Augustine would agree with Horney that there is something wrong in human willing. But where Horney tends to see the will as damage, like a broken bone, Augustine sees the will more as misdirected. Our frustration comes from a will that is not damaged, but misused, turned to things in addition to God.

In the next installment, we will look more fully at the effects our turning will to things other than God.

We Ought Not To Grab the Gift

Psychoanalytic theory brings to our attention not only the importance of the human will, but also (and contrary to the unreasonable anthropological optimism of the Enlightenment) out "loss of capacity to wish for anything wholeheartedly." But what psychoanalysis terms "neurosis" is by no means an undiscovered country. Rather Horney points out something long recognized both by the biblical revelation and classical Christian spirituality has recognized as the symptom of a life lived separate from God. Neurosis is simply the gnomic will turned inward; the neurotic is so because he picks and chooses among which aspects of himself are to be valued.

More fundamentally, the neurotic is such because he has not only turned inward, but also against, himself. Rather than receive his life as a gift from God, the neurotic makes life a project to be completed. And rather than seeing his or her limitations and inconsistencies an invitation to transcendence, the neurotic instead organize them according to an artificial and ever more restrictive hierarchy. As Christos Yannaras says in his Elements of Faith, this is a reduction of the spiritual life to the merely "ethical." That the neurotic's ethics are false not because the irrational, but precisely because they are rational—they are deduced with great clarity from rigidly held first principles about his personal identity and value (p. 57).

But, as we will see I hope in a moment, in this you or I, the religious systems we cling to, are no different from the neurotic. Like the neurotic I too forget that "life and the expression of life is an event of communion." (p. 57) In The Confessions, St Augustine, that master psychologist of the spiritual life, looks inward and explores his (and our) own double mindedness (see James 4.8), his own propensity to live life according to his own artificial and ever more restrictive views of how life "ought" to be.

In Book IV the mature Augustine looks back on his youth and reflects on the unexpected death of a dear and unnamed friend. His words capture the anguish he suffered at the loss of his boyhood friend:

Black grief closed over my heart and wherever I looked I saw only death. My native land was a torment to me and my father's house unbelievable misery. . . . I hated all things because they held him not, and could no more say to me "Look, here he comes!" as they had been wont to do in his lifetime when he had been away.

Reminiscent of Horney's description of the self-estrangement of neurotic from his own conflicting desires, Augustine says that in his grief he became "a great enigma" to himself. And when, as he says, "I questioned my soul, demanding why it became sorrowful and why it so disquieted me, . . . it had no answer." (Bk IV.4.9)

While we might be tempted to ascribe the depth of Augustine's feelings to the immaturity of the adolescent, Augustine quickly rejects this explanation. His words and the feelings they embody are not simply the result of the melodrama of a callow youth. No, he sees in the depth of his grief over the loss of his friend the more general suffering of the sinful human will who attachment to God is no longer singular. And so, as Augustine writes,

If I bade [my soul], "Trust in God," it rightly disobeyed me, for the man it held so dear and lost was more real and more lovable than the fantasy in which it was bidden to trust. Weeping alone brought me solace, and took my friend's place as the only comfort of my soul (Bk IV.4.9).

I will, in the next installment, examine the symptom of this lack of trust in God and subsequent estrangement from self: Grief.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

 

 

Have We No Place to Stand?

Continuing my last post of neurosis and the gnomic will, I would argue that one consequence of the gnomic life, or if one prefers a neurotic approach to the spiritual life is an ever growing sense of isolation. This experience of isolation, I would suggest, is in fact inescapable since the exercise of gnomic will undermines a life of communion. Why do I say this?

Living by own idealized self-image means (and here I return to Horney) that I am "driven instead of being . . . the driver" of my own life. My idealized self-image, precisely because it is false, or at least unrealistic and out of balance, causes me to see the world around me as one that is "peopled with enemies ready to cheat, humiliate, enslave, and defeat" me (p. 101). Why is this world so hostile, such a threat? Because even if the world of persons, events and things affirm my own idealized self-image, I eventually come to realize that, just because they are there, other human beings disturb the placid flow of my own fictitious self-image in much the same way that rocks disturb the flow of water in a river.

Tragically, choice undermines autonomy.

And so I find myself structuring my life in such a way so that that I can avoid any "questioning or criticism from outside, any awareness" of my own failures "to measure up to the image" of myself that I have created. To remain undisturbed by "any real insight into the forces operating" within me, requires that I "restrict" my life. My life must become increasingly restricted, I must evermore narrowing the nature my encounters with others, "lest [I] be exposed to such dangers" that make inevitable the contradiction of the story I tell myself about myself. To maintain my idealized self-image I must be every vigilant, always "the mastermind" of my own life. Failure in this regard leaves me vulnerable to "an admission" of powerlessness that I find unbearably "humiliating" (p. 110).

Over the years I have come to realize that I am especially vulnerable to the image that I, and others, have of the priesthood. In this I am no different than any other priest, minister, rabbi, imam or shaman, or (for that matter) human being. But for a complex of psychological and sociological reasons, clergy seem especially vulnerable to a life "dependent upon the endless affirmation from others in the form of approval, admiration, flattery—none of which, however, can give . . . more than temporary reassurance" (p. 110). For reasons not simply of our own choosing, clergy often find ourselves "on a pedestal" and are even more prone to the common human tendency to "tolerate [the] real self still less." As a consequence we are therefore also more prone to "rage against [our real self], to despise [it]" even as we "chafe under the yoke" of others, and our own, "unreasonable demands" (p. 112). I recognize this tendency in myself, and not a few of my brother Orthodox clergy as well as Catholic and Protestant clergy friends. Horney describes this the neurotic's constant wavering "between self-adoration and self-contempt, between [the] idealized image and [the] despised image, with no solid middle ground to fall back on" (p. 112).

The lack of middle ground, or so I would suggest, is the chief psychological consequence of the gnomic will. Or maybe more accurately, it is our futile quest for a middle ground of our own creation that is the chief consequence of the gnomic will. No where is the futility of this quest seen then in our approach to religion in general and the Gospel in particular.

I will, in my next post, turn our attention to the psychological difference between faith as a choice and faith as a gift.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

Neurosis and the Gnomic Will

My thoughts have been very much taken up these past few weeks with the central role of detachment in the Christian life.

Part of what has informed my inner monologue has been my preparation for an upcoming psychology conference. The conference, which is scheduled for April in Phoenix AZ, is the annual meeting of the Christian Association for Psychological Studies and looks at the implications for psychology of the human person being created in the image of God. Besides looking forward to hearing some interesting presentations and research, I am presenting a paper on the understanding of the will in Karen Horney and Maximos the Confessor.

A central theme of Horney's work is that human beings are not free. We are rather internally conflicted and driven by compulsions. This dovetails well with Maximos's notion of the gnomic will:

The term 'gnomic' derives from the Greek gnome, meaning 'inclination' or 'intention'. Within Orthodox theology, gnomic willing is contrasted with natural willing. Natural willing designates the free movement of a creature in accordance with the principle (logos) of its nature towards the fulfillment (telos, stasis) of its being. Gnomic willing, on the other hand, designates that form of willing in which a person engages in a process of deliberation culminating in a free choice.

The tragedy of the gnomic will is that we imagine our choices are both grounded in, and the realization of our freedom. Instead of freeing us, our gnomic will increasingly narrows even our ability to decide between options: If I make the decision to write this morning, I can only do so at the expense of sleeping late and vice versa.

It is from the self-limiting character of the gnomic will that there arises in us, or so I would suggest, the overwhelming sense of what Horney calls our life of "inner conflict." Try as I might, I cannot by an act of will or through my deliberations, bring myself to a place of wholeness. Ironically, I find that it is through the exercise of the deliberative process of the gnomic will that I move further and further away from a life that bears any resemblance to wholeness.

In Our Inner Conflicts: A Constructive Theory of Neurosis, Horney undermines any naïve view that we are free simply because we are able to make choices between options. With great clarity and charity, she points our attention to compulsion that is the heart of the neurotic strivings that afflict us all. She begins by asserting that "Compulsive drives are specifically neurotic" and continues by arguing that these compulsive behaviors "are born of feelings of isolation, helplessness, fear and hostility, and represent ways of coping with the world despite these feelings; they aim primarily not at satisfaction but at safety; their compulsive character is due to the anxiety lurking behind" (pp. 12-13).

There is therefore no joy, or even in the strict sense pleasure, in my neurotic strivings only a rather fragile sense of being safe. This sense of being safe however is brittle resting as it does upon my ultimately futile attempts to embrace "contradictory attitudes towards others" (which in time grow and become as well "contradictory attitudes toward the self") and my own inner word of "contradictory qualities and contradictory sets of values" (p. 15).

My "freedom," much less of "wholeness," are illusory. This illusory sense of wholeness, ground as it is in my attachment to the decisions of my own (gnomic) will requires from me that I invest an "amazing amount of energy and intelligence" in my "more or less desperate efforts to 'solve' the conflicts, or more precisely, to deny" the existence of my inner conflicting attitudes, qualities and values in order to "create an artificial harmony" (pp. 15-16). Horney sketches out for us a number of different concrete ways in which I can strive to create this artificial harmony; while all of them are interest (and familiar) they can be subsumed under the rubric of the "idealized image" of the self.

To "solve his conflicts or, more precisely, to dispose of them" I create "an image of what [I believe myself] to be, or what at the time [I feel I] can or ought to be." Not unsurprisingly, this image "is always flattering in character" (p. 96). With great insight, Horney observes that to "the extent that the image is unrealistic, it tends to make the person arrogant, in the virginal sense of the word; . . . to arrogate to [himself] qualities [he] he does not have, or that [he] has potentially but not factually." Tragically, "the more unrealistic the image, the more it makes the person vulnerable and avid for outside affirmation and recognition" (p. 97) even as his arrogance tends to isolate him all the more for his neighbor.

And here then is the heart of the matter: My suffering flows from my attachment not simply to things, but to a self-image which, no matter how dynamic, open, or realistic, is an attempt to contain within myself a life of increasingly contradictory attitudes, qualities and values. No matter how accurate, I am attached to a view of myself that is the creation of my own gnomic will and (for this reason) intrinsically self-limiting.

Something must break the cycle of the gnomic will and the view of self that flows from its decisions—if I understand the convergence of Horney and Maximos correctly, my decision create my self-image, even as the self-image comes in time to guide (however erratically) my decisions.

More later.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

Depression as an advantage?

Philip Dawdy over at Furious Seasons (which the author describes as "A blog about the crazy world of mental health and America"), has an interesting interview with Tom Wootten on depression as an advantage. Wootten is the author of The Depression Advantage (2007) and The Bipolar Advantage (2005). According to Dawdy, Wootten "has different ideas about how to address depression than does the rest of the Western world" and so he "recently interviewed him via email about his bold claim that depression is an advantage."

To give you an idea at what Wootten is getting at:

Depression is an advantage. What are you talking about?

How we choose to look at our experiences in life and how we react to them determines whether it is an advantage or a disadvantage. Depression is a very painful state that has a very real chance of killing you. Most people would say that it is the worst thing that ever happened to them. A few have chosen to use it as a catalyst that changed their lives while they gained power over it.

It is not the hardships we face that matter, it is what we become as a result of facing them. Some of the greatest people in history have said that depression is what made them great. The Depression Advantage is about facing our condition while accepting the possibility that we might gain from it instead of trying to hide from the experience. Avoidance leads to a diminished life where we live in fear that some day depression will return and we will not be able to handle it. When we learn from it we find that we gain power over it and it does not affect us the same as it used to.

Our first depression seemed impossible to survive, but as we experience deeper states we find that the level that first seemed impossible can now be managed very well. We can even help others because we understand it and can empathize with them. At least in lower levels, we gain an advantage over depression instead of it having the advantage over us. Taken to the extreme, Saint John of the Cross said that it was his "Dark Night of the Soul" that made him a saint.

Information on Wootton's integrative approach to depression can be found in the Success Center section of his bipolaradvantage.com website.

As I mention in my comment, both personally and pastorally I have found it of immense value to be able to integrate the darker moments of life into a wider context of meaning (what Wootten calls the "big circle'). As he says:

"Some people think that the problem is that we have wrong thinking. They propose that we catch ourselves thinking sad thoughts and replace them with happy thoughts, as if that is going to change the picture. It is the same as focusing on the two small circles. We will never fully understand our condition until we begin to focus on the big circle and find meaning in our experiences. As long as you think that sad thoughts are an illness you will not find the advantage of your condition.

"The example of our saints is that they got to a point that they were in the same state of oneness no matter what happened to their body or mind. Saint Francis was in incredible pain at the end of his life, yet had the ability to keep focused on the big picture. It is not that he was somehow separate from his experiences; he experienced them just as you and I would. But since he was focusing on the big picture, he was in bliss. Bliss is the state that is not affected by the duality.

"As our saints grew in understanding, they still experienced the pain, but from the perspective of bliss it did not affect them as much. That is why Saint Teresa said: 'All these illnesses now bother me so little that I am often glad, thinking the Lord is served by something.'

"It takes the perspective of extreme pain for some of us to see the truth of bliss. The Depression Advantage is that we have the chance to understand something that few ever will."

Surf over and take a look at Furious Seasons. Some of the things I agree with, others I need to think about. Having cut my theoretical teeth through my readings in the anti-psychiatric movement, I find Furious Seasons well worth my time.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

p.s., You can find my comments on Wootten in the comment section of the post.

+FrG