In the Image of God

A Psychoanalyst's View

Stanley Leavy

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9780881632767
• eBook ISBN: 9781317758204
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Applied Psychology
• Index: Psychology

In the Image of God is a compilation of lectures by Stanley Leavy, a psychoanalyst approaching retirement, reflecting on his experience as a follower of Freud and his method and also as a lifelong, faithful Episcopalian. The overarching idea linking the individual lectures is Leavy's belief that "the deliberate study of the operations of the mind must yield results that are not just compatible with religious faith but amplify it," eschewing the faith versus science argument for a more inclusive worldview.

I
Psychoanalyzing

Many ways are open to explore the human mind, and every explorer discovers a new world. So various is human nature that we cannot expect that it will be revealed identically to any two who search it out. Every new program of study will set itself different goals and follow different avenues of research. Furthermore, every student will pursue the phenomena of mind according to his or her own predisposition. An adventure in exploration of the mind is a solitary one, proceeding where no one has trodden before, because every life has been led differently, rising out of the "dark backward" of the womb and infancy and thrown into a world not of its own making or choosing. Consequently, generalizations about the mind are highly artificial and have to be adapted to individual cases. If that were the limit of our knowledge, our situation would be even more troublesome than it is, for we could never have any expectations in common with our fellows, let alone be able to agree on any psychology—that is, on any shared approach to studying the mind. We are not as restricted as that because we are willing to adopt some common programs of study and to pursue them by common methods. Every mind is unique, and we cannot travel together as though advancing up some mysterious river in the jungle or walking in the footsteps of Neil Armstrong on the moon. Nevertheless, by my favorite metaphor, we are explorers who have learned to use approximately the same maps.

As in all human enterprises, we can agree on some principles to follow in making the journey. Humankind abhors chaos, necessarily and universally, and always seeks order in existence. My world is not yours, but at the very least we share some ordering in time and space. Whoever has studied mental illnesses knows that people who do not share those categories become very hard to live with. They may ignore temporal routines entirely and never be where they are expected, or turn night into day and day into night. They may disregard the boundaries of property and privacy. In their presence we have thrust on us how great is our dependence on the conventional rules of order that govern our lives, individually and in community. Even "flower children" of recent memory had to make conventions of their own so as not to infringe on rights that they might have denied in principle.

The student of human nature presupposes much more than these elementary rules of society. As a matter of fact, we have a great organizing system that immediately establishes the boundaries of our examination—language. To discover anything about human nature, we need eventually to talk to one another. To be sure, some psychologists have based their methods on work done with animals, who cannot speak; their studies of human "behavior" have yielded interesting and sometimes surprising results, especially as long as their subjects keep their mouths shut. But when we learn only about what men and women "do", and not what they think and feel, we cannot hope for better than an impoverished story; indeed, they have no story at all if they do not tell us anything in words.¹

So a psychoanalyst's view of human nature is derived from listening to stories told in a shared language, under a set of conditions that provide the elements of a common world. I refer to such fixed elements as agreed-upon times, place, and cost of the patient's treatment, but the common language is of primary importance. It is exceedingly difficult to carry on an analysis in an unfamiliar language, in which at best every nuance is lost in approximations. Some of the German-speaking psychoanalysts who introduced the method to America and England had remarkable gifts for the use of their adopted tongue; others— and accordingly their patients—were less fortunate. But more subtle differences exist within a common national language. Local and class influences affect usage of words, tonal expressions, the gestures that accompany or punctuate words, and so on. A further subtlety may underlie very deep difficulties in mutual understanding—namely, the purely personal values of words that depend on one's own history.

In truth, psychoanalysis is based on two conventions. One is the language shared by the analyst and his patient; the other is the theory espoused by the community of analysts. This theory is a way of observing, classifying, organizing, and summarizing what analysts hear. It purports to tell how the separate items we discover are causally related to one another. As in any scientific effort, we would not have looked for these items in the first place if we had no theory uniting them into a larger whole, but the theory must be elastic enough to leave room for the inevitable exceptions that every patient presents. Theories exist to enable us to see the woods as well as the trees. Yet it is not necessary or even likely that only one theory can be true. Were it not for my experience, I would find it hard to believe that men and women who have studied human nature for many years can conclude that a definitive theory is possible, let alone that it already exists. My own conviction is that analysts will always have many theoretical systems of interpreting human experience as it is reported to us. On the other hand, it is equally sure that not all the theories of mind nor all the available methods of treating mental suffering, will be of equal validity; it is not easy for the seeker after help or truth to know where to turn. I suggest that, coming from diverse points of departure, we must work together to improve our rules for evidence and examine our standards of competence in applying them. Above all, perhaps, we require a degree of openness to listen to one another's theories. It is not out of place here to take a lesson from the history of the doctrines of the church. Divisions arose out of understandable differences or reactions to errors, real or supposed. Often, however, they became so enshrined in borrowed holiness as to be closed to further question, making schism and enmity the consequence of what was supposed to be a better witness to revealed truth. Unfortunately, there is no reason to expect that we disciples of Freud will do a better job than the people of God in tolerating honest disagreement.²

Psychoanalysts have been schooled in the theory of the mind that Freud began propounding around a century ago and modified extensively in the course of his lifetime. It was devised in the first place to facilitate the treatment of suffering people, and to a great extent that is what psychoanalysis remains. Since Freud's death in 1939, the theory has been further modified by his followers, who are, as we have seen, by no means of one accord in their theoretical positions. Psychoanalysis as a whole is only one of many theories of the mind current in our century, perhaps the most famous one because it initially seemed to defy much of received opinion. Its opposition to traditional points of view, especially in religion and morals, may have helped it achieve a succès de scandale in quarters where its positive values were less apparent. I have practiced Freudian psychoanalysis throughout my professional life in a way similar to what Freud taught, although I have not shared some aspects of his theories, much less what I take to be his prejudices. I have held to the general program of psychoanalytic explanation without always coming to Freud's conclusions (an autonomy that I share with many of my colleagues). Psychoanalysis is a rare science in that one man's discoveries have had such a lasting impact. Although the name of Einstein comes up most often in popular discussion of modern physics, several other scientists—Planck, Dirac, Bohr, Heisenberg—are acknowledged to have similar rank. But no other psychoanalyst has rivaled the influence that Freud continues to exert nearly fifty years after his death. It is too easy to dismiss our respect as idolatry (which it sometimes is); the truth of the matter is that Freud's genius and energy drove him to a nearly universal inquiry into the workings of the mind, and that his ideas continue to stimulate new researches.³

The general program of psychoanalysis holds, to begin with, that when a person speaks, he or she always says more—and often something quite different—than is consciously intended. The situation in psychoanalysis is deliberately designed to make such double or unintended messages more readily available. The patient is asked to speak freely, not to withhold anything purposely, and preferably (in order to make this freedom easier) to lie in a relaxed position on a couch with the analyst out of sight behind him. In this way, the patient abandons much of the control that we normally exert over thoughts and speech and that ordinary conversation requires. Naturally, it is difficult for some to learn this unfamiliar mode of speaking; every patient has to accept "on faith" at first that it might be advantageous to think to no purpose. Disparaging comments (not sparing the analyst), business or personal confidences, dreams, religious and racial antipathies, embarrassing memories, sexual irregularities, or just intimacies not ordinarily narrated to others—all these make the process called "free association" difficult. Besides, patients in analysis at times have an overwhelming preference to talk only about the troubles that caused them to search for help.⁴

What is the purpose of this dubious freedom from inhibition? Is psychoanalysis a species of confession, related to the sacrament of penance? Although it does not include anything at all like the methodical listing of offenses recommended by priests to penitents, psychoanalysis does resemble penance, because no life is lived without infractions of some code of right and wrong. Feelings of guilt are relieved by telling the causes to a noncondemning ear, and the patient, like the penitent, feels at least temporarily restored to harmony with the community from which he or she had felt alienated. Simultaneously, the analyst, like the priest, learns many things about human nature that can be applied generally. In time, both analysts and confessors come to be good listeners because they have "heard everything" and are no longer surprised by the curious things their fellow humans do, think, and say—if their own lives and experience of analysis have not already healthily disillusioned them.

But obtaining confessions is of very limited usefulness in psychoanalysis. One might say that psychoanalysis begins where confession to a priest ends, although the reverse is also true, since absolution in the religious sense is not to be looked for in psychoanalysis. An analyst, believer or not, does not as such represent the sacred being against whom the confessed offense is ultimately directed and from whom forgiveness comes. Further, an analyst is not so called because he hears secrets or even because he is understanding, learned, or an expert on sexuality. Analysts are able to interpret the unconscious meaning of what patients tell them—that is, to discern intentions of which the speaker was not aware. This is a rather specialized ability, one that is not even potentially present in many who might aspire to treat patients and that demands extensive training of those who do possess it. While the interpretation of dreams—especially his own dreams—was Freud's original "royal road to the unconscious" and remains an invaluable procedure today, it is only one of several means of access that the analyst must possess to hear the unconscious intentions in the stories told by the patient.

Why is it of use to interpret what has been unconscious? We all go through our lives living out intentions of which we are unaware at least as much as intentions that we recognize. A desire to get ahead in the world, to be "successful", is natural enough, since success carries with it possibilities of pleasure, security, prestige, and freedom that lack of success does not. On the other hand, the desire for success may obscure another intention. This can make it difficult if not impossible to achieve our goals—for instance, to surpass the brother who outdistanced us in childhood, as a student or athlete, or won unmerited praise from our parents. Such intentions, based on lifelong jealousy, may have remained hidden or been treated as of little importance, because it would be painful, shameful, or depressing to acknowledge them. Recognizing such intentions is by no means easy; they may have entered into all sorts of other motives and become involved with a host of one's human relations. We might say that keeping them in the dark has been a major business of one's mind. Clues to these intentions can often be picked up very gradually, as the analyst detects in words and phrases— and some actions, too—particular allusions that are at variance with more evident subjects. In the unconscious struggle of the man with his brother, the hidden intention might have come to light through mention of those fairy tales of Grimm in which the youngest child is specially favored, so that the analyst eventually exposes the patient's hidden fantasy of becoming the favored one and triumphing over the wicked siblings or giants. In reality, this outcome might amount to little more than becoming rich or influential socially or academically, but as long as the secret desire remains unfulfilled, the success remains un-gratifying. An unconscious childhood fantasy, holding a foothold in consciousness through the mediation of the Grimm story, has governed too much of a person's life.⁵

When I evaluate the important and enduring in Freud's discoveries, I place the active unconscious at the top. We need to consider the consequences of that role. If whatever we say or think—and, by the same token, whatever we do—is not only what we consciously intend but also the vehicle of purposes that we did not know we had, then it is as if we were inhabited by another personality in addition to the one we habitually present to ourselves and the world. The question of responsibility immediately comes to mind, as it has since Freud first put forth his theories of the workings of the mind.⁶ If my actions are dictated by forces over which I have no control, whose actions are they? In other forms, this is hardly a new idea. St. Paul said something of the sort when he lamented doing the things he ought not to do and failing to do the things he ought to do, as if he, too, were reflectively aware that he acted, or failed to act, unconsciously⁷Even if he meant only that he quite consciously yielded to temptations too strong to withstand, the implication is that the act of yielding was against his will.

One of Freud's earliest ways of presenting the idea of unconscious motivation was as "counter-will" (Gegenwille), a word that is worth keeping in mind whenever we say "the unconscious."⁸ Will, so rich in philosophical overtones, has been played down by psychoanalysis. Being a verb as well as a noun, the word will always implies a subject. When I do something that I claim I didn't want to do, that I didn't will, my listener has the right to ask, as any analyst might, "Who, then, did want to?" The answer must be that I did. It does no good to plead that blind, impersonal, unconscious forces "did" the act: they are me. But it is equally incorrect, we learn from psychoanalysis, to assume that all our actions are willed in the same way. We may ask, paraphrasing Spinoza: "It is true that I can do what I will, but can I will what I will?"⁹ The aspect of the "I" that— or who—enforces my willing is hard to grasp. In psychoanalysis we try to reveal that other will and to be brave enough to acknowledge it as our own. Paul, no mean psychologist, is again helpful in reminding us of our inability to carry out the Law as he understood it.¹⁰ I think that, faced with the psychoanalytic evidence of unconscious motivation and aware as he was of our unwillingness to acknowledge our helplessness, Paul would see yet another evidence of divine Grace in our owning up to the unconscious.

To set things in the right perspective, I must warn that Freud often put the matter in quite another fashion. Much of the time, he and his followers have thought of psychoanalysis as a natural science. One of the deepest convictions of natural scientists has been, until pretty recently, that they observe nature objectively. The ideal of scientific study was to be impersonal, free of the "human factor," and not to import subjective intentions into nature itself. There have been surprising alterations in these views in our century, especially among physicists, but psychoanalysis, as an attempt at natural science, was built on the foundations of an earlier science.¹¹ Freud did not stay with the "counterwill" but posited a personal unconscious powered by impersonal energies—"instincts" or "drives" (Triebe), as he called them.¹² This shift had the seeming merit of approaching the terminology of academic psychologists who work with animals (whose intention or "will" we can never know because animals do not tell stories), or better yet, the physicists and chemists whose methods permit them to differentiate, record, and measure the "energies" underlying the properties of physical forms.

Reading Freud, or hearing the lectures of some psychoanalysts, one must not be misled into believing that psychoanalysts have discovered impersonal and yet supposedly mental forces acting within human beings. It is true that we are not so free as we sometimes like to think, ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction: Imago Dei
• 1. Psychoanalyzing
• 2. Becoming
• 3. Loving and Hating
• 4. Concealing
• 5. Suffering
• 6. Believing
• 7. Ending
• 8. Reflecting
• Index