A respected and senior priest and province leader once said to me: “Jose, what is this Psychology (he deliberately pronounced it as “pissicology” derogatively) stuff you are wasting your time on? Half an hour of prayer before the Blessed Sacrament will better solve people’s problems!”
This respected priest was not alone in holding a derogatory attitude toward psychology. For years the Catholic Church as a whole had considered psychology to be inimical to the Faith. I was told by one of the senior most priest psychologists in our country that there was a time when priests were forbidden to study or teach psychology or provide any kind of psychological services. I guess this antagonism came mostly from Freudian ideas related to sexuality and neuroticism. Freud, father of modern psychology, was a professed atheist.
Psychology also did not take kindly to religion and spirituality. The antagonism was quite mutual. Freud’s dismissive definition of religion as a neurotic obsession was widely shared by many within the psychological fraternity.
However, today attitudes have changed. The American Psychological Association, the largest body of psychologists in the world, today has a Division that deals specifically with religion and spirituality. The Association has published several books related to religion, spirituality and mental health and held conferences on the interface between psychology and spirituality.
The Church too has changed its attitude toward psychology. Recent Church document on the formation of priests, for example, has categorically stated that there is much that psychology can offer to enhance the formation of priests and has even stated that all those engaged in the formation of priests should have some psychological knowledge.
So, what can psychology do? Let me give an answer by referring to the role psychology can play in enhancing our spiritual life.
Psychology and Spirituality
From my over 20 years’ experience as psychologist, psychotherapist, workshop facilitator and retreat director, I can conclusively state that psychology can help us immensely to explore and enhance our spiritual life. How?
Before answering this question it is important for us first to understand what psychology is and what spirituality is.
Psychology is described as the science of human behaviour. Psychology deals with our perceptions, attitudes, emotions, relationships and so on. Psychotherapy, based on various psychological theories, helps us to heal from our woundedness. What has this got to do with spirituality?
To answer that question, we need to understand what spirituality is. A very simple definition of spirituality is that it is “simply the way we live our everyday lives.” In other words, spirituality is not just a part of our lives – the time, for example, that we spend in prayer, or in doing good works ; it is our life. Our spirituality involves and embraces the whole of our life in the context of everyday living. It is our basic attitude in life and the behaviours that flow from that attitude. It expresses who we are and manifests in the way we live. In other words, the way I live expresses my spirituality.
The way I as priest celebrate the mass and the content of my homilies express my spirituality. So too, the way I conduct a workshop, the way I deal with my students or the staff, the way I eat and drink and use my leisure time, my attitude toward and treatment of plants, trees and animals also express my spirituality.
The way a housewife and mother takes care of the family, relates to her children and her neighbours expresses her spirituality. Her life is her spirituality.
In other words, our spirituality arises from the way we think, we feel, we relate, we behave – the way we live our everyday life. These are also the matters that psychology deals with.
Psychology helps us to understand ourselves – the way we think, feel, relate and behave and helps us to think, to feel, to relate and behave in healthy ways. In this way, by helping jus to enrich our everyday lives, the way we live our everyday lives, psychology helps to enhance our spirituality.
Our way of being in the world, our capacity to love God and our fellow human beings, is compromised when we carry unhealed emotional wounds. Psychology helps us to heal from these wounds and in this way enhances our capacity to love and live our everyday lives in healthier ways. This way too psychology helps to enhance our spirituality. Psychological healing can have a direct impact on our spirituality.
When Anita first came to me for psychotherapy I asked her about her spirituality as part of her personal history intake. She told me she hardly prayed and the practices of piety that she halfheartedly joined in with her community were quite meaningless to her. She did not have any soothing images of God. She experienced God as distant.
Anita had grown up in a very dysfunctional, alcoholic family. She carried much emotional wounding from that family situation. Through several sessions of psychotherapy Anita was able to heal from these woundings and find joy in living. She later reported to me that she spends quite a bit of time in personal prayer, finds community prayer meaningful and also experiences God as close.
Psychological Theories and God Experience
Let me illustrate how psychology and spirituality can mutually benefit using the psychological theories and insights we have discussed in my previous columns in MAGNET.
Some of the psychological concepts we have explored previously are: trust from Eriksonian theory; security from Attachment theory; mirroring, idealization, narcissistic injury and empathic responsiveness from Self-Psychology; and relatedness, competence and autonomy from Self-Determination theory. Do these concepts have anything to with spirituality? Yes, they do.
Trust, we have seen, has much to do with the secure attachments we experienced with our parents and other care givers. It is our repeated experiences of our parents and caregivers as available, responsive and helpful that helps us to develop secure attachments. There are many situations where parents and caregivers are not available, and even when available they are not always sensitive and responsive to our needs or helpful when required.
Unlike our parents and caregivers, our God is always available, responsive to our needs and situations and ever helpful. God is an ever available and sensitive attachment figure. The secure attachment we develop with God helps to compensate for the lack of it from our own parents, and helps to heal from the effects of its absence. This way the quality of our everyday lives is also enhanced.
When we have God as our secure base, we feel bold to reach out and explore, to take risks in creativity and experimentation. This way we develop confidence and competence so necessary for healthy psychological development. This kind of security in God also makes it easier for us to experience God as loving us unconditionally. This in turn reduces anxiety about sin and failure and helps us to live our everyday lives more joyfully.
God is always mirroring our grandiosity, recognizing and affirming us in our self-importance. God is also someone we can look up to, idealize, and feel linked to. God always responds to us empathetically, pouring healing balm into our narcissistic wounding.
This experience of God as our security, as one who mirrors our grandiosity, responds to us empathetically and heals our woundedness has a profound impact on our healthy psychological and spiritual development.
Psychology and spirituality are not enemies, but friends. There is much that psychology can do to enhance our spirituality. And an intimate experience of God as the “Caring Other” enhances our psychological development.
Indeed, there is much that psychology can do!
Questions for Reflection
- What do the issues raised in this article evoke in me?
- What is my attitude toward psychology? Do I think it can help me to enhance my spiritual life? If yes, how? If not, why not?
- Do I experience God as presented in this article? If so, what is the impact of that experience on my psychological and spiritual well-being?
– Rev. Dr. Jose Parappully, SDB, is the Founder-Director of Sumedha Centre, which runs courses and retreats in psycho-spiritual integration. He also does individual and group therapy.
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