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WHY PSYCHOLOGY NEEDS THEOLOGYPart 2: The Therapeutic Personality and its relationship to the contemplative lifeAuthor: Dr Neil Preston (Organisational Psychologist)
Introduction Part 1 sought to identify a possible synthesis between psychology and theology by examining where these two disciplines over lap. The essay argued that most of modern psychology seeks the reformation of the individual and not the transformation of the individual. Questions of meaning are often relegated to transitory states of being which can be “worked through” to restore the person back to health which is now synonymous with happiness which in turn is synonymous with pleasure. Part 2 explores how a contemplative psychology can bridge the gap of the ‘meta-physical brick wall' where health and wholeness is seen in terms of holiness by reconstituting personhood into mystery itself. The Therapeutic and Religious Personality Rieff argues in ‘The Triumph of the Therapeutic' (Rieff 1966) that increasingly the Western psyche has undergone a radical shift in emphasis of being. Essentially this has been brought about by the remarkable ability of the West to provide abundant material needs and industries of leisure and pleasure (Putman 2000; Putman and Feldstein 2003) . The Therapeutic Personality exists in a world where the culture has ‘present goods and absent gods'. In times of material abundance the ontological concern is one of release and pleasure. The avoidance of breakdown towards one of functionality and productivity are emphasised. This culture of material abundance is a relatively recent phenomena in the West (past 50 years), but such is its pervasiveness that any alternative view of reality is seen as strange or down right pathological. Prior to the culture of material goods, the West and the rest of the world for that matter existed in a culture of scarce resources and restricted life choices. In a culture where goods are scarce the Religious Personality thrived where there was ‘abundant gods but scarce goods'. In this culture, renunciation, self discipline and commitment to something other than self pleasure was valued. The cosmological frame of reference was based upon both the here and after life. Ways of being were constructed around virtues of attaining salvation beyond the present situation (Tarnas 1991) . Hard work and self denial led to the accumulation of massive amounts of capital (the Protestant work ethic in particular) which then with latter generations were invested into material gain and immediate gratification or happiness of the self. Only recently, accumulation of saving money was seen as a virtue while now shouldering and managing large amounts of debt is seen as virtuous. In the current climate ‘rainy days' are not saved for as much as holidays on islands with cloudless skies are invested in on credited loans. In this way of being, contemplation as a natural state of the human condition is not only foreign but absolutely prohibitive to ‘the good life'. In a simplistic way the imperative is ‘the pursuit of happiness' over the pursuit of truth. The Religious Personality inherently seeks truth which may or may not be a pleasant or happy experience. The ‘Lotto Life' exemplifies a life where wealth has ‘lowered the pressure of inherited communal purpose' where the self can play in self gratification, power, access and privilege. Freedom in this ontology is seen beyond the cares of this world rather than within the cares of this world that the Religious Personality aspires. So what does this have to do with psychology and contemplative psychology in particular? It has everything to do with the intention of the therapeutic aim. The Religious Personality seeks salvation coming from the Latin word salve meaning balm or medicinal ointment. It too seeks healing of the human condition but for very different purposes or intentions. The Religious Personality seeks truth and beauty as the human imperative constituted within mystery of the self and the entire human family. The Religious Personality seeks ‘to believe'; the cry of the ascetic (Rolheiser 2002) rather than ‘to feel' or even ‘to think' the imperative of the Therapeutic Personality the child of Descartes and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. Contemplatives throughout the ages of virtually any spiritual or religious tradition argue that renunciation, asceticism, limiting attainable desires, the restriction of the senses and the renunciation of enjoyment and gratification, (Rolheiser 2002) are the central tenants of being in truth. Indeed Jesus' advice to the Rich Man to give his wealth away and follow him was advice aimed at those who primarily seek truth in the pleasure of material goods ( Mark 10:17-22) . The advice is simply a pragmatic one, informing ‘the sad man' that he won't find happiness there. In another gospel story, Jesus gently rebukes Martha about her busyness and affirms Mary who sits at the Master's feet to simply contemplate the mystery of God as God (Luke 10:38 – 42). The emphasis here is that this contemplative approach to life will ‘not be taken away' and that indeed ‘a better path' towards being in the world has been chosen. The frenetic pace of mastery, skill and management of the self through psychotherapeutics may not be required of Martha, but to simply act towards the consent of being. In other words a renunciation of fixing, explaining and analysing is the contemplative stance (May 1982; May 1993) . This renunciation is indeed a spiritual practice and all religious traditions down through the ages have techniques that navigate the world of self renunciation (Hanh 1973; Hanh 1975; Keating 1986; Manss and Frohlich 1989; Keating 1995; Lama 1996). Ways of Understanding Reality The Therapeutic Personality as Rieff understands it seeks ‘self-fulfilment' in an act of deconversion from the values and ideals which restrict enjoyment, release and indifference to community. The goal of the Therapeutic Personality is human-ease. Talk of flow states in positive psychology are mistaken as contemplative states of being which can be harnessed at any time with the right cognitive attitude to life. Some New Age gurus may argue that not only can these states of being be harnessed they can also become a permanent state. Most contemplative spiritual traditions argue that these states are transitory at best, not willed but gifts from God and more poignantly not God himself but manifestations of how God can act in the world (Cross 1935; Avila 2003) . The Religious Personality seeks to be constituted in mystery itself while the Therapeutic Personality ultimately seeks mastery towards ever increasing states of happiness and well-being. So what is wrong with being happy you may ask; how can this not be religious or indeed spiritual? Once again the meaning and intention of the happiness determines its aim and ultimately the way of being and seeing in the world. If the aim of life is to seek pleasure as happiness (the therapeutic process) over truth and beauty (the religious process) it eventually creates a culture of narcissism (Rolheiser 2002) not in any moral sense but as a simple consequence of its intent. Moreover, any way of being that seeks to disrupt this hedonistic principle, is disruptive of life itself and can be soon pathologised and ostracised as some anachronistic superstitious infantilism (Dawkins 2006) . In other words those patients who wish to seek meaning beyond their own suffering, or seek to embrace the suffering of the world and other human beings may need to seek ‘spiritual guidance' and not therapeutic counselling. This is where the metaphysical brick wall enters into the therapeutic counselling room and the therapist without knowing says I can journey with you on your way to ‘reformation' but transformation is beyond my expertise or indeed my own experience. James Hillman laments the notion that the therapeutic exchange should be a hot bed of revolution rather than the restoration of happy individuals back into a culture of accumulation, mastery and endless self seeking pursuit (Hillman 1976; Hillman 1989; Hillman and Ventura 1993) . This he argues is why psychotherapy has not delivered a revolution of healing of the human condition beyond the strictures of a culture that continues to seek happiness over truth. Symptoms or Daimons: the Personalisation of Emotion In ancient cultures including the Greeks and Hebrew cultures, emotions were as much a collective experience of possession from without rather than a personalised experience within . Restoration of these maladies was seen in relation to the community one operates within. Emotions were not a sign of a simple individual process, but a collective response to gods or God not being pleased with the way people were behaving in relation to each other and creation as a whole (Hillman 1976; Hillman 1989) . Symptoms are personalised phenomena embedded within the individual self that are expressed outwards, while daimons are energies both good and bad that visit an individual from a collective relationship with the divine. With the advent of Cartesian dualism and Rousseau's proclamation of the individual self, emotions have become increasingly internalised and personalised. It is a radical notion for modern people to understand a malady was a possession of daimons either malign or benign depending on the demand made of the individual (Hillman 1992) . These maladies were seen as much as a sign of cultural responsibility as much as any individual responsibility towards the self. The Therapeutic Personality almost exclusively sees emotions as energy within the individual either interjected within or projected on another person. Contemplative psychology may suggest other wise. A contemplative stance immerses itself within the human condition beyond the individual itself. Emotions are thus relativised and corporatised. In the Therapeutic Personality radical self constitution is emphasised and so an enormous amount of energy is required to ‘re-constitute' the self via a myriad of therapeutic techniques. If happiness is the single aim in life and the sign of happiness is pleasure then the fundamental organising principle is a culture of indifference towards the other or community. With the oppressive responsibility of love beyond the self along with the demands and strictures this presents to the Religious Personality, the Therapeutic Personality cultivates a being of indifference towards the other. In this way of being, indifference is mistaken for freedom (you do your thing and I'll do mine – whatever) and relativism is substituted for the seeking of truth (your reality is yours and my reality is mine). These ways of being are in fact necessary to the Therapeutic Personality since happiness is the fundamental organising principle where indifference and relativism are necessary handmaidens. Symptoms are essentially a sign of un-ease which need to be remedied or managed. Well this may be true in a therapeutic world, in a contemplative world they may be signs of growth and dieing of false assumptions about the self. Far from these symptoms being manifestations of pathology, they may be the expression of the daimons of a world relentless in its pursuit of happiness through the pleasure principle. Outside of the religious context such a proclamation is seen as heretical and at direct variance ‘from the evidence' or for what constitutes ‘the good life'. Whether emotions are seen as a corporate responsibility or a personalised pathology depends upon how one entertains a contemplative stance within the world. A ‘man of sorrows' could well be seen as a man with low serotonin uptake in his neural networks, or a habitual thinker of ‘negative attributional styles'. To entertain the notion of a contemplative that weeps for ‘all of creation groaning as in one great act of giving birth' is likely to be seen as aberrant, delusional and grandiose at best. The triumph of the therapeutic without a contemplative stance means that attainment of immediate goals and expectations within the material world become the proclamations of being, and the exploration of other realities is not only impossible but a hindrance to the human condition. The focus is on contentment and so being is focused on the attainable, not the holy longing of unattainable and ‘awesome' notions of salvation and unity with God or the nature of reality beyond private concerns. In this world, the bridesmaids blow their candles out and let the wick go dull because they might miss out on having all the fun that's presented now!!! In this world St Benedict Joseph Labre would be seen as a homeless man with a mental illness, coping ‘poorly' with the loss of his desired vocation of becoming a monk. His mendicant lifestyle in a therapeutic world would be seen as self serving, pathological and pure folly (Merton 1961) The search for happiness over the search for truth A contemplative psychology does not necessarily seek human happiness as the ultimate goal of the human condition. Contemplation seeks truth about what it means to be human. Human freedom is not the freedom to choose happy thoughts, or pleasurable goals that seek emotional contentment for the self, but rather to be bound by a metaphysical ethic or way of being which transcends the pleasure principle or simple phenomenological experience. In other words happiness is a by-product of contemplation and not its original goal. For example finding joy in the midst of suffering may lend itself to a contemplative stance as well as commitment towards narrowed options, over an endless freedom of choice. This means that what defines us as authentically human is not our desire to seek pleasure, (since all animals can do this including the human animal), but to transcend this pleasure principle beyond self gratification towards a universal ethic of ‘the other' (Tagore 1961) . Contemplative psychology essentially challenges what a person believes rather that what a person feels or rationally understands. Faith in this instance is not an enemy of reason but constituent of the human condition. Co-existent of faith is hope which informs the individual in what they believe in beyond the seeking of pleasure or normative functioning. It informs us of our existential and ontological boundaries. The core existential question here is do humans fundamentally seek truth over happiness or the other way around? It is quite possible that we may never satisfactorily answer this question but they appear to be driven with fundamentally different ontologies and external conditions. When a society has abundant material goods and an array of choice, one would expect happiness and the contented life to also increase. A society with a complex system of providing material comfort should expect most people to be happy and contented. While it is true that most Western societies are happier than less materially abundant societies, there is very little evidence which shows economic growth is correlated with happiness. In fact while gross domestic product has increased considerably over the past 50 years, indices of happiness have remained relatively unchanged in the Western world (Putman and Feldstein 2003) . Other indicators of pathology however have increased in the same period including concomitant anti-depressant medications to alleviate psychological suffering. Herein lies the paradox, we have never had it so good but we have never felt so bad or more importantly felt so pointless (Hamilton 2008) . The positive psychology movement postures that things are not really as bad as it seems, it is just the way we look at it. From this point of view, despair is simply a symptom of poor resilience and incorrect attributional styles. There may well be some truth in this but such a posture once again privatises emotions and traps the individual into a solipsistic adventure to rid themselves of bad thoughts while also ignoring the structural social conditions that may give rise to despair in the first place. The social and corporate conditions that give rise to the malaise is once again conveniently ignored or seen as a problem too large for any individual human to bear or do anything about. The Therapeutic Personality must retreat into some form of quietism, lest its emotional world be disturbed with structural injustice or responsibilities beyond their own pursuit of happiness. A personality that seeks truth and beauty may see the world in a more contemplative stance, where the social conditions are felt as much as their own privatised emotions. The Religious-aesthetic Personality may choose to enter into the human condition not only to alleviate their own suffering but the suffering of others through actions that may not give immediate personal pleasure or may even not experience any satisfaction other than to live a virtuous rather than a happy life (see the notion of the Bodhisattva in Buddhism) . Within this personality framework, Theresa of Lissauex is seen as a saint seeking salvation of all souls not only in this life but in the next, and not some infantile personality with poor attachment to her mother who expresses her abandonment through grandiose religious delusions. As pointed earlier, as the pursuit of happiness becomes an all pervasive definition of being, a contemplative stance towards life not only becomes an anachronism; it increasingly becomes to be seen as a wholly foreign and inhuman experience. As the therapeutic response increases, contemplation at best will only be reserved for the select and quaint sensitive soul who is yearning for a world long since dead and a God that no longer exists. Art, poetry, music and painting are relegated to ‘mediums of entertainment' and not mediums where an expansive human condition is explored and indeed expressed. A Therapeutic Personality seeks these mediums within a therapeutic milleau like art therapy or music therapy and not simply for the act itself. Every act is either sentimentalised in a thinned out ontology (see Disneyland's movement away as a creator of myth to a provider of entertainment), or utilised to some ends (to get well or feel better). In addition, when the paramount source of being is happiness, anything which interrupts this is an interruption on the right to happiness as being inalienable. Political correctness takes this to an extreme where someone's right not to be offended is greater than the right to free speech. In this environment debate about the human condition is completely shut down lest someone's personalised feelings be hurt or interrupted out of a happy state. We are unable then as a society to confront our collective concerns in the fear that privatised emotions may be challenged or even violated. The net affect is that the person is even more estranged from the authentic self that is full of hypocrisy, contradiction and paradox. A contemplative stance to the world accepts this as fundamental constituents of all humans most especially themselves, and understands this by allowing such states of being to be truly embraced as part of who they are. The contemplative stands within his or her human condition not to eradicate unpleasant ways of being but to allow these states to foster a fuller exploration of true human authenticity and response (Merton 1961; Merton 1998) . The beatitudes of Christ in a therapeutic culture simply fade into the distance as a puzzling piece of irrational gobbledygook. How can someone be happy while mourning; how by being little does it make you great, you would have to wait longer in line with that attitude to life says the ‘ life coach' . The Therapeutic Personality seeks utility over meaning, or more stridently, if it doesn't work it ain't worth doing. Raimon Panikkar a Hindu and Catholic Priest once stated that to go to yoga class in order for you to be more flexible so you can be more alert and competitive at work is good for you but bad for yoga!!! Once again we are back to intention, the Therapeutic Personality seeks the utility in all things including the spiritual and wonders why it is not working or things are getting worse. In this way of being, even spirituality and contemplation is to make one feel better (pleasure) rather than to consent to see the nature of things as they are (truth). Even certain religious groups may find a contemplative stance towards the world as a foreign experience. Those religious groups who mistake feelings for God may find the deus abscondus (absent God) not a genuine progress in the spiritual journey but a sign of God's disfavour. Without a contemplative point of view of the world, who can inform those who mistake pleasure as favour, or material abundance as blessing or that other ways of being are not only genuinely human they are genuinely spiritual? A person with Religious-aesthetic sensibilities once entering into the therapist clinic may come out even more estranged from the exchange than before entering, since his or her sense of the world is either described as anachronistic, pathological or grandiose. Worse still if the therapist has no experience of the contemplative dimension of the human condition the therapeutic response is one of bemusement or a sense that such a way of being is in fact inhuman. In the therapist's chair there is no room for the aesthetic, the prophet or the martyr apart from the ‘secondary gain' such ‘complexes' are used to control other human beings. Some comment on happiness It is not the intent of the author to suggest that happiness is a bad thing while suffering is good. All of us wish to seek happiness but we can not seek genuine happiness without meaning and so purpose and meaning are constituent of each other. Meaning is both a private and cultural process. The human condition seeks meaning and finds pleasure in this. The sharing of this amongst individuals creates culture. The foundations of all art, poetry, literature, music, dance and spirituality is an expression of this corporate experience of seeking meaning as a fundamental constituency of being human. If the purpose of life is happiness for its own sake then the net affect is a ‘thinned ontology'. The loss of personhood is not only to the individual but also to the culture. We then meet people who have little opinion on many things, or leave the complicated questions of life ‘to the experts', or find such questions of meaning ‘too hard'. Such a culture produces people concerned with the trivial, the particular and the amusing. Any contemplative space which draws people into a reflective stance beyond self concern may demand a kind of response too foreign for someone intent on remaining always happy. The more people who seek happiness over truth will then characteristically demand the cultural conditions required of this way of being, namely abundant material goods, fast access to goods and services and a sense of privilege and right over responsibility. The irony is that in the pursuit of happiness over meaning beyond the self, ontology is both thinned and quickened. The trivial is entertained and relationships of persons are held briefly as a utilitarian source of exchange. In this world people ‘ get over things' rather than ‘ go through things '; in this world there are no rights of passage into the human condition but things to be avoided in an attempt to stay ‘forever young and forever healthy and happy'; in this world people have ‘networks' not friends. The concern in this paper is not about the pursuit of happiness per se, but how an individual pursuit is placed within a social or cultural phenomenon. What does a culture look like when everyone is seeking their own self fulfilment? Does this culture look very much how the West appears today and does this culture require abundant material goods to supply its meaning and purpose in life? In addition to this, does such a culture entertain other ways of being beyond pleasure and happiness and seek authenticity in cultural practices that are not so reliant on a vast array of choice and material goods? How does the therapeutic process of psychology understand these ways of being ? Does psychology support the cultural process of a thinned ontology, or does it seek to understand the human condition beyond the happy, the functional and the pleasurable? What is also important to remember that the Religious or Therapeutic Personality here is more a heuristic aid and not a typology of personal character. To make this assertion would fall into the assumption that a person is either a Religious or Therapeutic Personality. This is dualistic and a rather simplistic description of the human condition and personhood in general. The argument here is that the two personalities are born out of two very different social conditions where one is predicated on aesthesis both interiorly and exteriorly and the other predicated on abundance. It is more accurate to say that most of us have both types of personalities but at this stage in Western culture; one appears more privileged than the other way of being namely the Therapeutic Personality. It would also be incorrect to say that the Religious Personality is derived exclusively through organised religion or through Church doctrine. It would be more accurate to say that the Religious Personality would align itself more closely to a tradition or lineage of knowing and being like that of the Sangha in the three jewels of Buddhism, or the body of Christ in Christianity. In this sense the Religious Personality understands that the practice of any authentic spirituality is a communal or community based practice, grounded in a lineage and not a private devotional practice or search for the divine. For example, in this sense the Religious Personality would understand that the Apostle's Creed is what ‘we believe in' and not what ‘I believe in'. The Religious Personality will often struggle with the ‘corporate wisdom' of a spiritual practice and lineage but understand that with this struggle the spiritual life is not ‘always about me' or how I feel or think about something but must understand itself in relation to a lineage of thought and experience. So why does psychology need theology? In its present form psychology needs theology because without psychology knowing, it can restrict what it means to be fully human. Psychology appears to be embedded well and truly in a cultural process that seeks function over form, pleasure over truth and ease over beauty. The therapeutic process by and large seeks a personality that functions without the quirks of the human condition, by having an ideal of the normative person by increasingly defining what is not normal. The fact that each Diagnostic and Statistical Manual used to diagnose ‘clinical psychopathology' is getting larger than the last manual published is testamount to this process. Indeed it is difficult for a therapist to grow into their own eccentricities, since they must always ‘model' the authentic human by always being on time for therapeutic appointments and to be emotionally responsive to whims and projections of every client's emotional need (Hillman and Ventura 1993). If function is the primary goal of the Therapeutic Personality over authenticity then the ‘ethical despair' that is so often characterised in the spiritual journey will be understood ‘ …as a transitional feeling, painful like all transitions, but no more significant than that' (Rolheiser 2002) . It is unlikely to be housed within the cannon of a greater cosmology of the interior life and such a pursuit of the interior life will be either pathologised or itself seen as a narcissistic venture. Pathos will no longer be seen as a virtue let alone be understood as a virtue at all, but an estranged experience far removed from the human condition of pleasure. Theology can assist psychology in reminding it that mystery still exists at the heart of the human condition, constituted in ways of being beyond the functional and happy. Theology can stretch psychology to remind our Western culture that the organising principle of love beyond the self has created our institutions of family, health, education and law. The contemplative stance seeks restoration of the human condition out of loving service towards the other whether that person be deemed ‘functional or dysfunction' and that human dignity lies in the fact that a person exists in their entirety and not how they can contribute to the organising principle of pleasure and the cultural pursuit of ease and convenience. At any rate a contemplative psychology may not be always therapeutic for the contemplative but it certainly is necessary for a society, as Aldous Huxley once stated ". . . a society is good to the extent that it renders contemplation possible for its members; and that the existence of at least a minority of contemplatives is necessary for the well-being of any society" (Huxley, 1945)
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