On Alchemy and Christian Existentialism

Whence the Moral in Psychology? I. Concerns about “the good” or “the good life” a. Core concern to psychotherapy, that’s what people pay us to figure out b. But psychology’s assumptions assume certain goods and preclude examination of other goods c. Where does this come from? II. The Greeks a. Aristotle – “All of psychology is a footnote to Aristotle” i. Virtue and the civic society ii. We’ve lost this b. Christianity – “Love thy neighbor, do unto others” i. We’ve lost this, God died in the hearts of men (Nietzsche) c. Science i. Science cannot tell us what is “good” ii. I can use science to commit great atrocity iii. I can use science to undertake miracles 1. Science only helps us study what we already assume to be true about things science can’t touch (like the moral) 2. Sam Harris’ problem – he scientifically found that his moral values were “true” and not others’ iv. With the death of God we turn to anything “science” sounding because science sounds certain 1. Although no true scientist experiences science this way v. With no God, we turn to science who shrugs its shoulders and says “um, survival of the fittest?” 1. Behaviors/experiences that increase your chance of survival and the survival of your genetics are pleasurable a. Sleep, sex, eating, doing what you want 2. Behaviors/experiences that decrease your chance of survival and the survival of your genetics are painful a. Deprived of sleep, celibacy, fasting, doing what you should III. The good = pleasure, happiness, bad = suffering, unhappiness a. People come to therapy to either decrease their pain, increase their pleasure or both i. And so that’s what therapists do ii. The “I just want to help people” problem b. But this discounts the “redemptive power of suffering” (Jerome Frank) i. Suffering can be meaningful, important, and necessary ii. The condition of mortality is suffering 1. The Zen approach a. Suffering-as-experience b. Acceptance 2. The Christian approach a. Suffering-as-redemptive b. Acceptance i. Perhaps suffering is a condition of Being 1. God losing 1/3 of his children 2. God-as-Christ killed by his own (why did His God not save Him?) a. The fallacy of “why is God doing this to me?” 3. But the suffering is meaningful and important a. Compassion, and perhaps love, exist only in the face of actual or potential suffering 4. And in that comes acceptance (not happiness) c. When is pleasure problematic? i. The middle-aged man, the Porsche and the 20 year-old personal trainer ii. The narcissistic black hole iii. The counsel “do as thou wilt, and that is the whole of the law” causes more problems than it solves. d. A funny aside: The Nine Satanic Statements (LaVey, 2969) Compared to the Implicit Values of Psychology (Richardson, Fowers, and Guignon, 1999) i. Indulge instead of abstain - yup ii. Seize the day - yup iii. Know yourself, don’t deceive yourself - yup iv. Only be kind to those that will be kind to you - yup v. Stand up for yourself, don’t turn the other cheek - yup vi. Be responsible for yourself and not others - yup vii. Man is just another animal - yup viii. Pursue physical, mental, and emotional gratification – yup ix. Principles as enemy to the Church - yup Christian Existentialism and Transformational Alchemy, or Therapy as Compassionate Soul (Discussion in Draper’s PSY 4300 Counseling Class) I. Fundamental Assumptions a. We do not have free will, we live engaged in the world (the world is a part of us and we are a part of it) so we have a contextualized agency i. This means that context simultaneously provides possibilities and constraints (especially morally) b. Human behavior is teleologically caused, subsuming and including all other causes (biology, nurture, and context) c. We learn through our Being-in-the-world, mostly an epistemology of practice (a very hermeneutic assumption) d. Morally speaking, we are not separate entities, we are engaged entities to various degrees, agentically-situated with one another and co-constituting one another i. Beings-in-the-world with Others and alongside things 1. Doing this would mean cultivating in ourselves not only love and interest in others, but also a genuine curiosity—the kind of love which seeks to know. G. K. Chesterton asserts in his book Orthodoxy "how much larger your life would be if your self were smaller in it; if you could really look at other men with common curiosity and pleasure. . . . You would begin to be interested in them. . . . You would break out of this tiny and tawdry theatre in which your own little plot is always being played, and you would find yourself under a freer sky, and in a street full of splendid strangers." G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy. (Garden City, New York: Doubleday Image Books, 1959.), pp. 20-21, quoted in Neal A. Maxwell, More Excellent Way: Essays on Leadership for Latter-day Saints (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1973), 83. ii. Communitarian ethos (I am my brother’s keeper) iii. Because of this, we are a part of one another’s hurting and one another’s healing iv. We are a part of one another, indicating that rationality is not the best foundation for morality, but compassion (love) v. This love is deeply contextualized (what loving means takes shape within a context, but love is a virtue that can fit within any situation). e. Love heals all wounds, even if it takes an eternity i. For God so loved the world . . . ii. Christ as the ultimate partner in dialogue (embodying perfect openness and perfect virtue at the same time) – Bakhtin f. Levinas – It becomes clear that with the end of traditional philosophy, the task of genuine thinking is itself an ethic. What becomes most needful is a responsibility for the world, a caring for what is as it is, a shepherding, a letting be, an allowance for Being’s generosity, an attunement to the gift-giving of worlds. Ontology becomes an indebtedness to what is, a quiet listening vigilant against its own interference, cautions of its own interventions, careful not to disturb. In a word, thinking becomes a lovingkindess. II. Christian Existentialism and Perspectives on Being a. Christ loved into the world i. His love is both: 1. Immanent a. The experience Christians have of meaning deeply, the loving and caring acts of those around us, the miracle that we love and are loved 2. Transcendent a. There are more ways to experience Him and His lovingkindness than we imagine, the more we love the more limitless we find loving to be b. Saw in others the divinity at two levels i. The actual (the loving one-ness between people) ii. The potential (people could develop this one-ness even more) c. Commanded all to do two things: i. Love God and one another 1. Faith in something/someone greater than us 2. Hope for salvation from the unnecessary suffering caused by mortality (and others within) 3. Love for the Divine, trusting and opening ourselves up to the ultimate Other d. Christ believed these principles so intensely that he died for them i. Offered At-One-Ment 1. Four models of atonement 2. Number four: Exemplar model a. Died to set the example, to bring us at-one not only with Him (and thereby His Father) but also to encourage our at-one-ness with one another b. Romans experienced this lovingness as madness i. The letter from the prison warden 1. They loved us with their hands, so we severed them. They loved us with their feet, so we removed them. They loved us with their eyes so we burned them out. They loved us with their voices so we cut out their tongues. Now they love us with their smiles, and we are helpless before it. III. Transformational Alchemy, Renaissance Christian Alchemy a. Misunderstood (modern) not about matter, but about soul b. Physical matter in-relation to spiritual i. Meaning of “stuff” co-constituted in-relation to me ii. A matter of willingness to experience differently, not just see differently iii. To coin a phrase, it’s a soulprocess, not just a mindset 1. Process = fluid, approximate, hopeful enough to move, uncertain enough to remain humble 2. Soul = deeply felt, transcending mere “mind” cognition and implicating deeply our hearts, spirits 3. As you adopt the soulprocess to experience things differently, so too do they become different a. As I experience the substance before me as possibly worthwhile, do I experience the worth with the substance as I relate to it i. What is lead good for? (lots) What purposes can it serve? (many) c. How do we do this? Relate to things differently? See the worth in what is before us? i. Reminding ourselves that we are not passive receivers of existence, but active participants with existence in a very deep and layered way (the very essence of who and what you are exists in-relation to what is not you to the point that what is/is not you becomes shared rather than isolate) 1. Manifest = the first layer – the surface that is glanced at a. Our/their obvious characteristics (gender, race, height, weight, cultural identifiers/assumptions) 2. Given = the deeper level which we can only get to if we allow what is to be given to consciousness a. See the potential valuable uses for lead b. See beyond the surface to the fundamental value in another 3. We participate in the meaning of both the manifest and the given (manifest – sexism, racism) (given – surprised at depth, appreciation for potential) ii. To experience beyond the manifest to the given requires the unity of three feelings/attitudes for our soulprocess (not categorical but always related subtly different ways of making meaning): 1. Faith – the capacity for what is to be more than what it is, the capacity for the other to be more than what they seem to be 2. Hope – the belief that things can get better a. Christ & the Tao: i. Everything turns out all right in the end ii. if it’s not alright, fear not iii. it’s not the end. 3. Compassion – the willingness to not only have empathy for the other, but to allow their experience to matter to us in a practical way (not only “I feel you” but also “here’s what I can do”) iii. The process by which we peer past the manifest and experience the given is called a reduction 1. This isn’t a reduction in the atomist or determinist sense of the word 2. Rather, a holist sense to allow ourselves to reduce not the other, but our experience of the other to what is actually fully wholly there a. In actuality b. In potentiality i. Faith, hope, compassion . . . 3. As you are willing to experience others as worthy of compassion, so too do you find that they are worthy of compassion a. In philosophical speak – as you are willing to break through the crust of what is merely manifest you can experience the limitless potential of the given i. The Other, it turns out, is both: 1. Immanent (we can see what they are and how they behave on the surface) and 2. Transcendent (there is so much more to the other than we can experience in the moment, the Other is eternal) iv. Seems soft-hearted, and often is 1. But there is a very firm core morally-speaking deep in this theory, that love is the ultimate good a. Love is eternal from this perspective, therefore as I care for others I do so in a loving way, not only what will see to their needs and their capacity to love others in the short run, but the long run as well, at-one-ment i. Can be “tough love” depending on the context ii. Worth facing any adversity for (that madness) d. Not inevitable process, but an agentic and relational one i. We are co-constituted entities, so change does not happen in a vacuum ii. Change entails openness to the event for both therapist and client 1. Openness/closedness a. For therapist b. For client IV. A Case Study on Transformational Alchemy: Hock a. Leader of a gang in prison b. Caucasian male, bald, goatee, tattooed from fingertip to jawline i. Transferred to WVCF to split him from his gang c. Glaring i. “I ain’t no bitch, I don’t need psych” ii. Manifest: a criminal’s criminal, will continue to commit crimes and will be re-incarcerated again and again so no need to feel hope or have compassion at all iii. Reduction: Fierce demeanor, protecting something . . . what? Cares about something enough to fight for it . . . what? Gang? Brotherhood? Requires care sufficient to risk his own life . . . perhaps potential there? 1. “My bad man, if you ever want to talk man-to-man shoot me a kite” d. To be honest, forgot about him until a year later he came to my office on the DL i. Held out a photo of two little boys, 2 and 4 years ii. His ice-hard glare softened for a moment “I heard you had kids doc, I don’t want that therapy bullshit, I just want to know how to be a father” e. Nobody knows how to be a father and everyone knows how fathers are i. His knowledge of fathers truncated, incomplete, damaged ii. Older of two boys, father absent, mother alcoholic, Hock dropped out of early Jr High to “hustle” to make enough money to feed his family iii. Got really good at hustling and attracted followers 1. From a group of kids trying to survive the mean streets to a gang of angry and well-armed young adults making cash in a strapped town f. One summer a Baptist church group came through doing service projects for a few weeks i. Hock smitten by one of the leaders, got his flirt on ii. She put him to work on the service projects 1. And they became friends, and then more-than-friends 2. Took Hock to a church dance a. Father fiercely objected, she ran away to be with him b. Didn’t want her on the streets, bought her a small house in the “good” part of town c. Hock became increasingly absent from the gang, preferring to spend time with her g. Discontent amongst the group i. Beta meets with rival gang and arranges for Hock’s murder ii. Delta, also in the meeting, gets nervous and tells Hock the day before the murder 1. Murder planned at a crack house in guise of a “meeting” 2. All people at meeting to be disarmed, Hock to be killed in a drive-by as he leaves 3. Hock arrives the night before, and plants 4 machetes in the crack house a. Under the cushions of the couch, under the lip of a coffee table, two in the kitchen 4. Meeting starts, participants disarmed a. As Hock negotiates he draws a machete from under the couch cushion and (still negotiating) kills the alpha of the rival gang and as the others flee, injures three others severely b. Murder-as-message 5. Hock sits on the front porch of the crack house, calls 911 on himself, and waits the 45 minutes for the police to arrive a. Pleads down to charges amounting to 10 years, 5 with good behavior, two years in h. Is Hock’s request (learning to father) appropriate? Loving? i. Yes. ii. How to father? What is essence of fatherhood? iii. Hebraic definition, av, one who brings strength 1. Explored with Hock how to bring true strength a. False strength – that which requires us to do things that will weaken our family i. Deal drugs, fight, neglect our family for our “bros” b. True strength – that which requires us to do things that will strengthen our family i. Provide security, companionship, mentorship, quality time as quantity time ii. Strength-as-love 1. How to love sons? 2. Practical demonstrations a. Food, shelter, clothing, “things” 3. Emotional demonstrations a. Listening b. Affectionate touch c. Words of affirmation and pride d. Time dedicated/sacrificed i. Hock softened but did not weaken i. Titanium vs. steel ii. He slowly withdrew from gang leadership iii. Earned a transfer to a medium-security prison 1. Received electrician training 2. Apprentice to Journeyman 3. Supports his family, loves his family V. What therapy means a. The transmutation of soul through the mutual exercise of compassion with eternal goals, should we be open to it i. Counselors bring: 1. Compassion/love 2. Outsideness (perspective) 3. Openness (hopefully)