DOES PSYCHOLOGY UNDERMINE MORALITY?

In “Admirable Evasions: How Psychology Undermines Morality” (2015), psychiatrist and essayist Theodore Dalrymple has written that it does:

·       Theodore Dalrymple explains why human self-understanding has not been bettered by the false promises of the different schools of psychological thought. Most psychological explanations of human behavior are not only ludicrously inadequate oversimplifications, argues Dalrymple, they are socially harmful in that they allow those who believe in them to evade personal responsibility for their actions and to put the blame on a multitude of scapegoats: on their childhood, their genes, their neurochemistry, even on evolutionary pressures.

Psychology not only regards us as a product of social and genetic causation, but it also communicates a materialistic worldview in which our values have no objective basis. Instead, we are told that our values are relative to the material causes that have produced us.

With these materialistic assumptions in place, we are doomed to see ourselves as nothing more than materials and the result of material causes. How degrading!

Dalrymple reveals that:

·       The fashionable schools of psychoanalysis, behaviorism, modern neuroscience, and evolutionary psychology all prevent the kind of honest self-examination that is necessary to the formation of human character. Instead, they promote self-obsession without self-examination, and the gross overuse of medicines that affect the mind.

How does clinical psych cause self-obsession? Simple – it claims that you have the resources within yourself to change. You just have to learn how to unlock these resources. One way is to believe in yourself by building your self-esteem, and this requires a lot of self-obsession and self-reconstruction.

Why? Life is difficult. We need hope to get out of bed in the morning. Without God, hope inevitably centers on the self, and this will cause us to obsess on whether or not we can bear the weight of this hope. This turns out to be a costly hope.

In contrast, Jesus taught:

·       Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30)

Consequently, I no longer have anything to prove to myself. This is because I am no longer the source of my hope. A great relief!

HIGH SELF-ESTEEM vs. LOW SELF-ESTEEM

 

I met an experimental psychologist on the train to Princeton. We eventually touched on the question of what humans need to thrive.

Of course, everyone has a different take on the subject. Some propose that we need high self-esteem, while others propose the opposite – a low self-esteem. I know that this sounds strange, so let me try to explain the rationale of the latter group.

The proponents of a low self-esteem do not call it “low self-esteem,” but that’s what it is. It involves the denial of freewill and moral accountability. They believe that we are just a sophisticated biochemical machine. As such, all of our thinking and deciding is pre-determined by the laws of chemistry and biology. Consequently, everything that we think has already been determined by physical forces. Therefore, there exists absolutely no basis for free choice or even thinking.

How can such a view of humanity be desirable? Isn’t it demeaning to think that we are nothing more than a wet machine, a mere result of chemical-electrical reactions? Psychologist James Hillman warns against adopting a deterministic view of ourselves:

·       “We dull our lives by the way we conceive then…By accepting the idea that I am the effect of…hereditary and social forces, I reduce myself to a result. The more my life is accounted for by what already occurred in my chromosomes, by what my parents did or didn’t do, and by my early years now long past, the more my biography is the story of a victim. I am living a plot written by my genetic code, ancestral heredity, traumatic occasions, parental unconsciousness, societal accidents.” (“The Soul’s Code: In Search of Character and Calling,” Random House, 6)

Why then would some psychologists promote such a demeaning self-image? In the short run, it does relieve shame and guilt. How? Well, if the client is convinced that he couldn’t have acted in a way contrary to his biological programming, then there is no real basis for shame and guilt. These feelings are reduced to inappropriate reactions and can be ignored.

An atheist friend had confided that he adopted this self-identity at an early age, and this enabled him to reject these very bothersome feelings. Also, if we believe that we couldn’t have acted otherwise, this view enables us to dismiss feelings of regret and other burdensome feelings. It reduces life to this attitude, “I am just along for the ride. What will be, will be.”

Well, what’s the matter with this comfortable ride? Much! First of all, it contradicts our experience and perceptions that we do have freewill and could have behaved otherwise. To doubt something as basic as our experience of making free choices, is also to doubt all of our perceptions about self. It is also to fail to make sense of this world, where we see that freewill is a relative thing. Some have less freewill than others – the heroin addict and the comatose. However, from the perspective of the above materialistic denial of all freewill, there is no way that we can say that some are more free than others.

For another thing, if we cannot act otherwise, then punishment is no longer justified. Why not? There is no longer any basis for guilt and culpability.

Lastly, if we cannot make changes, why try? Why attempt to learn, improve our job performance, or confront relational problems? Why not take the easy way out – denial and avoidance of anything uncomfortable? In short, this self-concept represents a tragic denial of reality.

High Self-Esteem (HSE): Well, if this form of low self-esteem is a dead end, does this mean that we should aim towards inflating our self-esteem, believing, “I can do it.”

This is the “normal” and more common strategy. HSE gives us a confidence and enables us to get out of bed in the morning and to proactively face life. This strategy had enabled me to face threats. I told myself that nothing could stop me and that I could endure anything that life would throw at me, and it worked, at least until I faced some threats that were bigger than me.

Western society had made HSE into a cult, claiming that it could heal all of our hurts and failures. However, this faith hasn’t been able to withstand scrutiny.  Psychologist Roy Baumeister has extensively researched the relationship between high self-esteem and performance:

• For three decades, I and many other psychologists viewed self-esteem as our profession’s Holy Grail: a psychological trait that would soothe most of individuals’ and society’s woes. We thought that high self-esteem would impart not only success, health, happiness, and prosperity to the people who possessed it, but also stronger marriages, higher employment, and greater educational attainment in the communities that supported it.

• Recently, though, several close analyses of the accumulated research have shaken many psychologists’ faith in self-esteem. My colleagues and I were commissioned to conduct one of these studies by the American Psychological Society, an organization devoted to psychological research. These studies show not only that self-esteem fails to accomplish what we had hoped, but also that it can backfire and contribute to some of the very problems it was thought to thwart. Social sector organizations should therefore reconsider whether they want to dedicate their scarce resources to cultivating self-esteem. In my view, there are other traits, like self-control, that hold much more promise.

• There are now ample data on our population showing that, if anything, Americans tend to overrate and overvalue ourselves. In plain terms, the average American thinks he’s above average. Even the categories of people about whom our society is most concerned do not show any broad deficiency in self esteem. African Americans, for example, routinely score higher on self-esteem measures than do European-Americans.

HSE also represents a flight from reality into what feels good for the time being. However, how can it be a source of problems? In order to manage our lives effectively, we must first understand our lives and their long-term needs. However, HSE represents a rejection of understanding and reality in favor of short-term comfortable feelings.

For one thing, building HSE is always comparative. It is not enough to improve our performance. Instead, HSE requires that we see ourselves as superior. I had taken a test that I feared I had bombed. However, I delighted to find out that I had been given an “A,” until I found that most of the class had received an “A+.” Consequently, this need for HSE brings us into harmful competition with others.

HSE is also a refusal to engage the truth about ourselves. It refuses to look at our painful aspects. As a result, HSE increasingly cannot take criticism and needful self-examination.

HSE spells death to relationships where humility and forgiveness are key. Those afflicted with HSE are increasingly unable to apologize, because they see no need to apologize. Why not? They are assured that it is the other person’s fault.

HSE is seldom grateful for their partner. Why not? They are convinced that they deserve better. As I have learned to confront some ugly truths about myself, the more grateful I became for my wife who would love and tolerate me. However, before I couldn’t and wouldn’t see this. It was just too demeaning.

Both of these options are reality denying. They serve as a comforting addiction, but we find that we need increasingly high doses of this HSE drug. The richest man in the world, John D. Rockefeller had been asked, “How much more money do you need to be happy?” His answer – “Always a little bit more.”

Is there a third reality-affirming alternative? As Jesus had taught, our normal response is denial:

·       And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. (John 3:19-20)

We avoid discomfort and run from the painful truths about ourselves. Is there anything that can break this cycle to enable us to live in the truth and yet not be crushed by it?

We need confidence and hope. However, I have found that Christ has provided for my needs. How? He has loved, assured, and forgiven me to the extent that I can now face my failings confidently and healingIy. Consequently, I no longer need to lie to myself and rely on HSE. I now have Him to rely upon.

And this self-image is ennobling. There is no greater privilege than to know that I am serving the source of all life, truth, and love.

My psychologist acquaintance was listening. I pray that this will become a seed that will germinate.

Taking this case a step further – If psychologists and other professionals are really concerned about human thriving, they have a responsibility to consider Christ, the ultimate among change-Agents.

Building Self-Esteem, Self-Deceit, and Self-Acceptance

When the non-Christian is asked, “If there is a heaven, will you be admitted,” the vast majority answer “yes.” When asked why, 95-98% answer, “I’m a good person.”

Are we all “good people?” By what standard have we determined this? It seems that we have merely deceived ourselves into believing in our surpassing moral superiority, as many parallel studies indicate:

• In one study of nearly a million high school seniors, 70 percent said they had “above average leadership skills, but only 2 percent felt their leadership skills were below average.” Another study found that 94 percent of college professors think they do above average work. And in another study, “when doctors diagnosed their patients as having pneumonia, predictions made with 88 percent confidence turned out to be right only 20 percent of the time.”

• 25% of college students placed themselves in the top 1%, relative to their ability to get along with others.

• 84% of Medical Residents thought that Doctors influenced by gifts from pharmaceutical companies, but only 15% of the respondents thought that they would be so influenced.

• Psychologist Shelley Taylor writes, “Normal people exaggerate how competent and well liked they are. Depressed people do not. Normal people remember their past behavior with a rosy glow. Depressed people are more even-handed…On virtually every point on which normal people show enhanced self-regard, illusions of control, and unrealistic visions of the future, depressed people fail to show the same biases.” (Positive Illusions, p.214)

We don’t suffer from a low self-esteem but an inflated and costly one. The more we inflate ourselves, the more we need to justify our inflated esteem against reality and the more scaffolding we need to maintain our façade. While servitude is measured by the incessant need to maintain a front or image; freedom is not having to. It is the freedom to simply accept ourselves as we are, warts and all, and not have to worry about what people might think!

This is the point of humility – not to beat ourselves down but to simply accept the painful truth about ourselves, the truth from which we have always fled, including the fact that we are not worthy of any of God’s gifts.

The Apostle Paul explained why he had to be vigilant against inflating himself and trusting in his moral merit before God:                           

·       But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ--the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death. (Philippians 3:7-9)

Paul was not arguing that his attainments were rubbish. Instead, trusting in their merit before God was rubbish. Considering himself more deserving than others, because of his attainments, was rubbish.

However, this kind of self-trust is worse than rubbish. It is a spiritual and inter-personal poison. The higher we think about ourselves, the lower we think about Christ and His cross. The more we trust in ourselves and our own attainments, the less we will think about His gift of righteousness. Therefore, Paul actively regarded all those things that had given him a sense of entitlement as manure - nothing that would entitle him to receive anything good from God.

However, manure provides a good basis for growth, as long as we are willing to recognize its utility. Why was Paul so strenuous about this practice of humility? So that he would “gain Christ!” Receiving Christ requires that we see ourselves as we truly are – sinners who need a Savior. It also requires that we see Christ as He truly is – our only hope of deliverance from the darkness of conceit and death.

It had to be broken by decades of depression followed by panic attacks before I was willing and able to see my manure. Once seeing it, I began, with more earnestness, to cry out for the only One who could turn my rotting life into a garden.

Pursuing an accurate self-concept doesn’t simply get us into salvation’s door; it also bears a continual harvest – “the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death.” Learning more about Him and about us is the “truth that sets us free” (John 8:31-32).

How? In so many ways! As we learn and grow convinced of His all-sufficiency, we learn to put down our guard, to accept ourselves, and then to live the life to which He has called us.

Strangely, as my Savior has become more, and I less, I have been set free from so many self-concerns that had imprisoned me. I no longer obsess about myself but about Him and what He has done for me. As a result, I just want to serve Him.

Sweden and the Costs of Self-Promotion

When trying to prove that atheism is fruitful, atheists appeal to the “atheistic” country of Sweden for support. (Obviously, they can’t invoke the militant atheistic communist nations!) That’s why I was delighted to meet an engaging Swedish woman at a hostel in Krakow, Poland, who I assaulted with a series of questions.

She quickly dismissed that assertion that Sweden was atheistic, affirming that most Swedes believe in God even though they aren’t church-goers. Nevertheless, she acknowledged that the Christian faith was continuing to shrink away from the Swedish public arena. Even though not a Christian, she acknowledged that the public disappearance of the faith was associated with the growth of social ills:

• The youth have been taught to think that they are #1 and that they can do all things. Consequently, they can’t deal with setbacks.

She explained that their unrealistically high expectations have not prepared them for failure. Besides, failure undermines the very foundation of their self-concept and therefore, it is too painful to endure. It boldly tells them that they are not superior.

This made me think that Sweden was not very much different from the rest of the West, although it might have played a pioneering role. But why do we find this tendency so prevalent in the West?

It seems that when a culture minimizes God, a vacuum is created – a vacuum that needs to be filled. If the West can no longer rely on God, what then can it rely on if not the self! If God is no longer the answer to our hopes, then we are forced to pick up the reigns. Our dreams and hopes must now be fulfilled by us.

While this “captain of my ship” orientation is greatly esteemed, the costs are seldom considered. Yes, there are costs! My Swedish friend noted a few of them – alienation, loneliness, and the breakdown of community.

However, at first glance, there seems to be no causal link between these social ills and believing in oneself. It would seem that self-trust and self-esteem might even provide some extra confidence in navigating the threatening waters of social interaction, but this might not be the case. A study performed in the U.S. about 18 years ago found that only 10% admitted that they lacked a friend to whom they could share their innermost concerns. When the survey was repeated 15 years later, that percentage had climbed to 25%, despite higher reported levels of self-esteem.

What can account for such a troubling upturn? Self-esteem costs! When we attempt to fill the God-vacuum, we have to deny and suppress disturbing truths about ourselves. These truths clearly tell us we are not gods and can’t trust in ourselves. Instead, we fight an ongoing battle against our perceptions in order to believe the unbelievable about ourselves. It becomes too painful to acknowledge that we have weaknesses and failings that we have not been able to overcome. Consequently, we suppress the painful and accentuate those things that bring us psychological comfort.

This is not guesswork. Many surveys have demonstrated that the mentally “healthy” live lives of self-delusion. For instance, in one study, the subjects were asked to rate themselves according to numerous characteristics. Then others who knew the subject well rated him. The subject’s rating was almost always higher than those who knew him best.

How would a heightened self-image affect relationships and alienation? Here are several thoughts:

1. If we are in a constant battle to define our artificially high self-image, we might feel threatened by how others would regard us and isolate ourselves. Defensiveness interferes with relationship formation.

2. It is hard to relate to someone who doesn’t share the same reality, namely, our self-image. This would produce dissonance and consequently, social isolation. Just think of the problems trying to relate to someone who thinks that they are the next Einstein.

3. When someone is engaged in trying to heighten their self-esteem, we will either feel coerced into helping them or we will also feel the need to prove ourselves in face of such arrogance.

4. If we feel superior to others, we will not value them sufficiently.

5. In contrast, humility is self-accepting and non-coercive. It esteems the other. It also allows our associate to lay down his guard and to be himself.

It is hard to play God. It also seems to be costly. We are not equipped to play God but rather to be the beneficiary of His mercy. Therefore, Jesus warned:

• “For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.” (Luke 18:14)

Consequently, to reject God is to reject ourselves and the hope of real attachments and community.