PSYCHOTHERAPY: WHAT WE SEE WHEN WE LOOK BEHIND THE CURTAIN

Why do most people speak highly of their psychotherapist and their healing process? In an article entitled “Freud is a Fraud,” Chris Noble, MD, had written:

• Speculation was and is at the heart of psychoanalytic theory and practice. However, unlike scientific speculation, which leads to testable hypotheses and controlled experiments, psychoanalysis was developed mainly by unscientific, if not anti-scientific, minds. One searches in vain among the analysts for any semblance of the typical concerns and attitudes of scientists. There is no concern for testing their claims, which are put forth dogmatically rather than tentatively. Skepticism about their work is rare; bravado and bold assertions are common.

Psychotherapists now widely accept the many findings that the relief that their clients derive is not the result of their theoretical approach or even of their particular practices, but of the empathetic relationship they form with their clients.

Some practices are even widely regarded as arrogant:

• Freud's theories and practice can be attacked not only for his ideas and methods, but for his arrogance and contempt for his patients and colleagues. (Noble)

Freud had even stated:

• "I can't help being convinced that my dear fellow men, with few exceptions, are worthless." http://somniloquy.online.fr/TSI3/freud.html

The real Freud wasn’t the one that his patients had been seeing. In the midst of the Vietnam War, I had asked my psychiatrist to write a letter claiming that I was unfit for military service. He gave a copy to me. I was glad to read that the letter made an excellent case for my psychological unfitness. During our next meeting, I thanked him for his convincing letter. He answered, “I meant every word of it.”

The curtain had been pulled back, and I was devastated to find what he really thought about me. He saw me as Freud had seen his clients - as “worthless.”

I too saw myself as worthless - as irreparably damaged merchandise, despite his positive affirmations of me during our counseling sessions.

Years later, after I had a life changing encounter with Jesus, I returned to college and obtained a degree in social work and did my fieldwork in a community mental health center. I would sit in as the psychotherapists would share their cases and receive feedback.

The mask was put aside, and they discussed what they really felt towards their clients. I was surprised by the contrast between what I was seeing in these meetings and the face they wore with their clients.

I wondered if this would happen me once I became a Christian psychotherapist. In retrospect, I found that our Lord painfully humbles us so that we would accept our unworthiness in the face of His love and acceptance for us:

• Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. (II Corinthians 1:3-4 NKJV)

Years later, I have found these verses true. I has now became unthinkable for me to regard anyone as worthless or even beneath me. It is because of God’s love and acceptance of me that I can now love and accept other broken people - no mask needed!

Self-Awareness and Machiavelli

At a discussion group, a PH’D student in clinical psych stated:

• Growth is about self-awareness. According to the psychoanalysts, illness is a product of failing to bring the subconscious into consciousness.

We agreed about the value of self-awareness – something we need in all areas of our lives. We need accurate data whether we are driving a car or servicing it. We need to know where to put the gas, oil and water. Any mistake can have tragic consequences. Likewise, in order to manage our lives, we need to have accurate data and understanding. I therefore asked her, “What in your training enables you to bring about self-awareness?”

I was surprised by her answer:

• I don’t have a clue! Some people respond to psychotherapies and others don’t. I don’t know why this is. 

I agreed with her that psychotherapy often fails to bring about its desired result of self-awareness. This was my opportunity to infuse some light:

• I could not face myself. It was just too painful to see my failings. Therefore, I hid behind denials and rationalizations and built myself up with illusory self-affirmations. It was only through Jesus’ assurances that He loves and forgives me that I began to grow in courage to engage the truth about myself. Knowing that He loves me and would never forsake me, I fearfully began the painful process of confronting my ugliness that I had. However, this confrontation eventually led to freedom. 

I then braced myself for the storm of criticism from this staunchly secular audience. One angry but articulate young man surprised me with his response:

• When the human race isn’t busy killing off anyone who is different, it returns to its obsession of manipulating and using one another for its own benefit.

He even seemed to include himself in his dismal assessment of humanity. I wondered how he could live with himself with such self-awareness. Perhaps he had gravitated to this understanding because it gave him license to act immorally. So I asked him:

• Why would I or anyone else be willing to invite you into their home? Perhaps you might decide to attack us?

He assured me that he didn’t need God and that he had compassion instead. I therefore grabbed the floor and fired back:

• What then happens when you don’t feel the compassion? Will you abuse your host?

The moderator intervened and re-positioned the conversation back onto safer ground. But the question remained - What do people do when their feelings of empathy run thin, which they surely will? What then will keep them situated on moral high ground?

I still believe in the value of self-awareness. However, self-awareness without the conviction that we live under the scrutiny of a just God is useless. It’s like a Machiavellian understanding and awareness of others, only to more skillfully use and abuse them.

Psychoanalysis and how it has Failed to Address Human Need

Psychoanalysis has been no friend to religion. Sigmund Freud regarded it as no more than a “childhood neurosis” and even worse:

·        The whole thing is so patently infantile, so foreign to reality, that to anyone with a friendly attitude to humanity it is painful to think that the great majority of mortals will never be able to rise above this view of life. It is still more humiliating to discover how a large number of people living today, who cannot but see that this religion is not tenable, nevertheless try to defend it piece by piece in a series of pitiful rearguard actions. (Civilization and Its Discontents,1930)

Therefore, psychoanalysis failed to give it any credibility as an aid in treatment. However, many therapists now recognize the need to take faith seriously and respectfully. Alan Fontana and Robert Rosenheck wrote about those who have experienced severe traumas:

·        One of the most pervasive effects of traumatic exposure is the challenge that people experience to their existential beliefs concerning the meaning and purpose of life. (“Trauma, Change in Strength of Religious Faith, and Mental Health Service Use among Veterans Treated for PTSD,” Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 192, 9 (2004): 579)

If we are flesh and blood, we have to seek flesh and blood solutions to our problems. However, if we are also moral and spiritual beings, then these dimensions must be addressed, and even more so if this is the presenting concern of the client:

·        Pursuit of mental health services appears to be driven more by their guilt and the weakening of their religious faith than by the severity of their PTSD symptoms or their deficits in social functioning.

·        A primary motivation of veterans’ continuing pursuit of treatment may be their search for a meaning and purpose to their traumatic experiences.

While Freud regarded feelings guilt as an artifact of evolution, perhaps even neurotic, at the least, these feelings require serious attention. A.A. Howsepian, assistant professor of psychiatry, UC San Francisco, writes:

·        Guilt about one’s own perceived morally damaging combat actions is a significant additional risk factor for suicide in war veterans. (Christian Research Journal, Vol.36, Number 02, 23)

However, resolving guilt requires more than a therapist simply communicating, “You are a good person. Be gentle with yourself.” Counseling has to recognize that guilt is more than a feeling. Instead, it is like a fire alarm. It is not enough to turn the alarm off. The reality – the fire - that set the alarm off must be addressed. Feelings of guilt usually indicate that there is a fire raging somewhere. Sometimes, the fire is a matter of making reparations for the offense of the soldier. Howsepian affirmatively writes about Vietnam Veterans of America, an organization that seeks to help veterans heal by linking them up with humanitarian projects in Vietnam.

This program recognizes that there was a real and objective wrong that, at the least, must be restituted. Clearly, it is not enough to merely visualize helping victims – a technique of systematic desensitization. If guilt is real, it has to be addressed as such. If I cheat on my wife, and she finds out about it, it would not be appropriate to inform her that I feel better about the situation, having done some visualization exercises. Neither would it be enough for me to apologize by saying:

·        I don’t really believe that I did anything wrong, but I feel bad because I can see that I hurt you. Therefore, I won’t cheat on you anymore.

This is a demeaning response. It fails to acknowledge that my wife has a legitimate grievance. It treats her feelings as if they are completely arbitrary, subjective and not reality-based. It conveys to her that she is simply not “enlightened” enough.

Even more importantly, if my morality and behavior merely depend upon feelings, then I will eventually return to the same tempting behaviors when the feelings change, which they will. Besides, if my wife goes out of town, and I think I can have a fling and get away with it, why not!

On top of this, my wife will never trust me. If I really don’t believe that my behavior is wrong in an objective sense, then she will realize that I lack sufficient motivation to resist future temptations.

Instead, contrition and confession offer the only real hope of forgiveness and reconciliation. Where there is a complete and humble confession acknowledging real guilt, there is real healing and forgiveness. I’ve experienced this relief and reconciliation many times. Without this, the discomfort is so great that we are inevitably constrained to deny and rationalize our guilt.

If we refuse to acknowledge that our guilt feelings reflect very real transgressions, we block the possibility of an authentic reconciliation. When we don’t experience this reconciliation with our closest friends and family, it might also be that we don’t experience this on a divine level.

Therefore, we have everything to gain to consider the possibility that we have transgressed a higher moral principle. Admittedly, this idea can be terrifying. However, Scripture promises:

·        If we confess our sins, he [God] is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:9)

The Perfectibility of Humanity, Marxism and Psychoanalysis

During a panel discussion exploring the relationship between Marxism and psychoanalysis, one panelist explained that, for many Marxist psychoanalysts, Marxism provided the necessary optimism that humanity could change. In fact, Marxism had to believe in the perfectibility of humanity! Without this belief, they would have absolutely no rationale to pursue their bloody utopian ideal that cost the lives of 100 million, according to some estimates.

The panelist went on to explain that both psychoanalysis and Marxism deny that we share a basic ego defect that precludes meaningful change. While Marxists believe that we are the product of society, and society is the product of the means of production – and so just change the means of production and humanity is changed – the psychoanalyst believes that when knowledge and insight are changed, humanity is changed.

These observations highlight how a very basic difference in worldviews can effect everything else that we believe. If we believe that humanity is basically good and perfectible, this belief exerts a profound effect upon our politics and the way we view life in general. This is the logic behind promoting the “Arab Spring.” If we can just eliminate those repressive regimes, these Muslim nations will find new life – a virtual spring of luxuriant new growth.

This worldview plays itself out in many different areas. At the Socrates Café at the Ethical Culture Society, conversation usually centers on dealing with the ills of the world and what can be done about them - having the right government, the right laws, or just the right understanding. Mankind is basically good. If we can only come to understand that we all will benefit if we just work together to do the right thing, we will live in peace and harmony. This, of course, will require the reeducation of the mentally backward – that means us.

I protested:

• Sometimes we might benefit more by doing the wrong thing. If we tell a little white lie to protect the boss, we might get the raise or promotion we’ve been seeking. If we don’t, we’ll miss out. I therefore don’t think that these pragmatic solutions will work.

According to the others, I was ignorant, and so I added:

• Besides, you can’t build a better world on sand. You are moral relativists – you believe that there are no higher God-given standards. For the moral relativist, morality is just a matter of how you think and feel when you get out of bed. What reason, then, do you have for doing the right thing? Consequently, the spread of moral relativism is strongly associated with the spread of crime. As a Christian, it is a delight for me to honor my God by doing the good.

The response was thunderous:

• You have no reason to suggest that we don’t have our own basis for moral thinking.

I agreed with them:

• Truly, the law is written on the hearts of all of us. We are wired for moral truth, and I’m therefore glad that you know the truth. However, you do not have an adequate logical rationale to do the truth, if it’s just a matter of our feelings – the product of chance evolution.

One participant shook his head, “You have a very low view of humanity.” Another began to attack the Christian faith:

• Your religion is fear-based. If you don’t do what your God wants, he’ll condemn you to hell. What type of God is that!

I responded that serving my God was the greatest joy in my life. However, later I thought of a better answer:

• I can certainly see why you’d call Christianity fear-based. Anyone on the outside should experience fear. In fact, this would be a very healthy response, like feeling fear when standing at the edge of a tall building. Besides, your assertion seems to suggest that if there is a Creator, He has no right to judge His creation. But do you have a basis for this assertion?

Once again, this worldview is based upon the belief that humanity is basically good and therefore couldn’t possibly deserve eternal punishment. We’re just too good for that type of thing. The only reason that Hitler had not done what was right was either because he wasn’t raised properly or hadn’t received the right understanding – both of which weren’t his fault. In fact, there can be no real fault, because if we have received all of the benefits of a proper environment, we would naturally be good and loving. Therefore, subjecting Hitler to eternal consequences would show a gross lack of understanding on the part of God.

Interestingly, this “understanding” is mere philosophy/religion. It rests upon nothing any more substantial than cultural bias. In fact, all of the evidence tends to prove the very opposite thing – the more our needs are satisfied, the less we are concerned about moral living. While absolute power corrupts absolutely, absolute satisfaction with ourselves also corrupts.

Ironically, what might look like a high view of humanity might not be so. A high view of humanity:

• Regards us as moral agents who are fully culpable for the things that we do. We’re not merely the result of formative processes. This idea is demeaning.

• Does not regard us as the result of a mindless process – an accident, the product of a bloody process of the-survival-of-the-fittest. Instead, we are created in the image of God and now we grow into His likeness “to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness” (Ephes. 4:24). Consequently, our lives are infused with meaning and purpose.

• Does not regard us as just another animal, valued for its usefulness alone, to be discarded when we outgrow our social value. If our value comes from the fact that we are basically good people and are perfectible, what will happen to our value when it’s found that we are not perfectible? Likewise, our rights should not depend upon any social equation or a temporary concession made out of expediency. Instead, our rights come from the fact that we are beloved by our unchanging Creator, who assigns great penalties to those who victimize other humans.

Furthermore, if we derive our sense of value by thinking that we are good or perfectible, we are then coerced to go to great lengths to defend this source of value by denying whatever data that suggests otherwise. How can we possibly face the extent of our selfishness and nastiness when our value as a person depends upon seeing ourselves as good?

How then can we face the truth about ourselves and still live at piece with ourselves? While some need to attach themselves to a utopian ideal to derive their sense of self-importance, we can attach ourselves to a God who will always be there for us:

·        For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:38-39)

It is only this kind of love that can give us the optimism we require.