2. We're moving out of the Freudian era into a new age

By Tom O'Connell

We're moving out of the Freudian era into a new age. And this movement has been going on now for decades. During much of the 20th Century, psychotherapy and spirituality seemed to be at odds with each other. But in recent years I have detected a growing willingness to heal the split. After all, how can an attempt to heal a person's mind ignore the vital importance of a client's spiritual essence and belief system?

Sigmund Freud, who rose to great prominence in the world of psychoanalysis, seemed to have a mental block against giving a high value to the world of the spirit. He was a brilliant and egotistical man, who deserves credit for trying to view psychology as a science, but in his attempt to remain "scientifically objective" with his patients he tended to play down the inherent mysteries in religion, mysticism, spirituality, and human life itself.

Instead of accepting the concept that we humans are spiritual beings with physical, mental, emotional, and social aspects, he moved in the opposite direction, and suffering from a substantial blind spot, he tended to discount the importance of the spiritual. 

Reviewing his own career, Freud writes with great pride, "I myself dared to venture to make the first attempt into the problems of the psychology of religion in 1910, when I compared religious ceremonials with neurotic ceremonials." Can Freud's bias against the world of the spirit be more clearly stated?

Freud's negative views on religion also come to the fore when he writes about a case in which a patient is "forced to experience" the New Zurich therapy (C.G. Jung's approach) as if the therapy is some kind of torture. This patient reports, "each session made tremendous demands on me....Some of these demands were: inner concentration by means of introversion, religious meditation, living with my wife in loving devotion, etc. It was almost beyond my power, since it really amounted to a radical transformation of the whole spiritual man....All that this physician recommended any clergyman would have advised, but where was I to find the strength?"   

What is interesting here is that Freud, in trying to prove his own point, seems to be contradicting himself. While referring to an experience with psychoanalysis, the patient uses words that lump introversion, or looking within, together with other factors that Freud would have preferred to discredit. After all, looking within to find answers is what  psychotherapy is all about, including Freud's. In truth, the psychoanalyst is simply a catalyst for the client's introspection.

However, looking deeply within for divine guidance is also at the heart of spiritual growth, and that kind of behavior would fit in with Freud's idea of "neurotic." If given the opportunity, I think Freud would have been likely to label Jesus as a neurotic when he told people to go into their closets and pray, and said, "The kingdom of God is within you."

A close look at Freud's use of the words "religious meditation" tells me that he is standing on the other side of the spiritual fence. And as for living with one's partner in an atmosphere of devotion, is there something wrong with that? Also, does Freud think the  "radical transformation of the whole spiritual man" is a problem instead of a solution?

Well, it seems like we've spent a major part of the 20th Century trying to remove God from psychology, the schools, the economy, relationships, and every other place. But finally we have arrived in the post-Freudian era. Views about the mind/spirit connection have been shifting dramatically in recent decades. And the split is beginning to heal.

We're in a time when the world of the spirit, with its basic optimism and hope, is coming back strongly. However, this is not without the loyal opposition. While the quest for spiritual meaning is rapidly growing, at the very same time the worship of materialism, with its built-in pessimism and its basis of fear, is escalating.

It's very interesting to observe this play of opposing philosophies. And what I find most interesting about all of this is that the Twelve Step addiction recovery programs, which have been widely accepted throughout the world of traditional medicine in the second half of this century, never got themselves lost in Freudian psychology. Instead they adopted a spiritual basis for living as the antidote for self-poisoning with toxic substances. And they did this in the late 1930s when the Freudian approach was beginning to catch on.

Also, it just happens that psychologist Carl Jung, Freud's rebellious pupil, helped  set the stage for the formation of AA when he told an alcoholic patient that his only hope for a cure was a spiritual conversion. Freud would never have adopted such a stance. And the rest is history. Millions have been guided toward sober and wholesome lives through a spiritual development program that features the human spirit instead of setting aside the spiritual domain for the sake of "scientific" objectivity. As if dealing with the mysteries of the human mind can be resolved through science!

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