Searching for God # 19

 And aberrant behaviour lies at the heart of many personal and social tensions, problems, and intractable situations, all of them needing and begging for our attention, both as part of our psychological perspective and also our theological perspective. (Closing sentence from #18 Searching for God)

What is aberrant behaviour? Who decides? And, also, importantly, who decides what to do about it?

Merriam-webster.com defines aberrant this way: deviating from the usual or natural type; straying from the right or normal way; a person whose behaviour departs substantially from the standard..

Synonyms are: unusual, abnormal, unique, uncommon, outstanding, extraordinary, exceptional, rare, odd.

James Hillman, in Revisioning Psychology, writes:

The falling apart of the individual at death, the dissolution of his complexity, which the Buddha taught in his last cautionary enigma—'Decay is inherent in all composite things. Work on your salvation with diligence.’--points to the absolute non-normality of each individual person. If the fundamental principle of psychological life is differentiation, then no single perspective can embrace psychological life, and norms are the delusions that parts prescribe to one another. A standard for one figure may be pathology for another, and pathology for one part may be normal from another perspective within the same individual. Hillman, Revisioning Psychology, p.88)

Starting from a different vantage point about normality, and its opposite abnormality, Hillman stresses both individuality and the imagination in its inveterate and interminable movement into and out of images, both conscious and unconscious, some of which ‘take us over’ as in our dreams. Often a psychological diagnosis, specifically I reference the appellation, ‘abnormal,’ is a kind of professionally applied designation that serves as a flag on a forehead stigmatizing the individual for ever. Some clients might exclaim, ‘I always knew I was weird!’ while others might silently wonder, ‘What is the ‘norm’ to which I am being compared?’

Preferring a world in which we are less targeted by medical, scientific psychological/psychiatric diagnoses, Hillman seeks a metaphoric image, a voice of a mythic god or goddess, that might add both depth and profound connection to the enacted behaviour in question, much of which, if perceived and viewed imaginatively, brings with it a very different orientation to the ‘behaviour’ and to the person who struggles with how and why s/he did or said something. One of the more serious implications of the current medical, scientific, diagnostic model is that we ‘enchain ourselves to some moral deviance’ (supported and enhanced by that diagnosis of abnormal) before we even begin to look for what else might be going on.

Obviously, the word aberrant is used here in a direct push-back to the clinical psychological diagnosis of abnormal. It is perhaps risqué  and a little dangerous to suggest, or even contend, that ‘abnormal’ as a psychological diagnosis is, even without intending to be, a reductive, and socially estranging adjective, especially given the deep well of psychological terms that have infiltrated the social lexicon, to the point where, at times, each of us attempts to be a wannabe professional. And without perhaps realizing it, ‘the other’ instantly becomes a ‘patient’ or a ‘case’ or a ‘problem’ or a…..(fill in the blank with you choice). None of us lay persons, untrained and unschooled in the academic disciplines of either psychology or psychiatry, is exempt from honest, experiential expressions of how another impacts us in the multiple ways that impact occurs. Whether it is body image, voice timbre, scent of the day, vocabulary, any idiosyncrasies or any other ‘vibe’ that we ‘get’ goes into our imagination and forms an image of our unconscious and conscious combined temperament.

An appropriate analogy might be the relationship of all parents to the school which their child attends. Most parents are not schooled and trained and educated in pedagogy, nor in school administration, nor in school counseling, nor in athletic of kinetics or science or any of the other academic and technical subjects in which their child is or will enrol. And yet, on parents’ nights, every parent, being an expert on their child, offers opinions, insights, recommendations, and even criticisms to teachers about how to ‘manage’ and ‘teach’ their child. For teachers to disregard those ‘lay’ comments is a peril of self-sabotage, based, perhaps sadly, on the ‘superior knowledge of the teacher to that of the parent. The combination of both views, even if different, can lead to a better relationship at home and at school.

The potential balance, integration, blending of lay and expert perspectives is a missing ingredient, from many interactions between professionals and ordinary people. And that is especially true in the realm of personal theology, relationship to God, questions about dogma, the meaning and purpose of life and death, healthy relationships, and especially about hot-button issues in the public square. Generally, in a world filled with ‘professional experts’ advising, counselling, and admonishing others, it has been my experience that in general people sitting in pews in Christian churches respect, and even honour and absorb, both cognitively and emotionally, as part of their ‘religious pilgrimage,’ the words of the clergy. And those words, as are all other words written, spoken, debated and even battled about God, about God’s role in our lives, and God’s relationship to the universe, have to be quarantined into ‘speculative’ and ‘imagined,’ and based on the speculations and imaginations of others, some of them scholarly, some of the mystical, some of them historical, some of them prophetic and some of them delusional.

To some extent, it is highly pretentious for any of us, including especially this scribe, even contemplate or envision strict and inflexible ‘rules’ or even ‘directions’ or certainly ‘mandates’ that are required of anyone seeking God, as prescribed by that God (of any faith). Whatever impulses, images, instinctual urges, visions, and even fears and traumas, conscious and unconscious, comprise the totality of both one’s psychological life, as well as one’s religious and spiritual life. In the view of this scribe, those lives are inseparably intertwined and it may be impossible to extricate one from the other.

The imaginative, archetypal psychological perspective, however, offers a potential bridge, a glimpse of how we might distinguish, or perhaps reconcile our psychological life with our spiritual life.

Over decades of being ‘churched,’ I found that dark moments, both in the church’s life and in the lives of individuals seemed relegated to evil, almost without reflection. Death is viewed variously as a result of sin or an entrance into an eternal heavenly afterlife. Satan, another personification, the preeminent doctor of evil, holds sway in such moments, leading one away from the holiness and unconditional love of God…..or so goes the basic, reductionistic theology. Underlying that premise is the implicit threat of ‘Hell’ and/or purgatory, depending both on the ‘sin’ and the perception of the clergy and his or her penitent, unless and until confessed and atoned for. Any conversations about darkness (in human behaviour), in my experience, were shrouded in silence, secrecy, and the inevitable unavoidable gossip.

By hijacking morality the church has effectively bifurcated both our thinking and our world view into ‘good and bad’…do good, do not do evil. Such a proposition either overtly overlooks or covertly denies that each of us is both capable of and mysteriously and inexplicably susceptible to both…And we live our lives in a complex and often murky middle…and what seems to be skated around, like the end-run of a quarterback or halfback around the defensive end in football, is the serious and often malignant impact of our families, our culture, our anima mundi, as Hillman reminds us.

Indeed, he goes so far as to utter, that, in a world so troubled and troublesome, only those who do not ‘fit’ are the most healthy, and that many, in such a world, would legitimately consider taking their own lives.

In his introduction and editing of Hillman’s A Blue Fire, Thomas Moore writes:

To the archetypal psychologist the world, too, is a patient in need of therapeutic attention. (P.95)

In an essay entitled Peaks and Vales, Hillman writes:

Vale in the usual religious language of our culture is a depressed emotional place-the vale of tears. Jesus walked the lonesome valley, the valley of the shadow of death…The meaning of vale and valley include entire subcategories referring to such sad things as the decline of years and old age, the world regarded as a place of troubles, sorrow, and weeping, and the world regarded as the scene of the mortal, the earthly, the lowly. (Hillman, A Blue Fire, p. 115)

He then borrows from the Dalai Lama, who compares peak and vale:

In a letter (to Peter Goullart) he (Dalai Lama) writes:

The relation of height to spirituality is not merely metaphorical. It is physical reality. The most spiritual people on this planet live in the highest places. So the most spiritual flowers…I call the high and light aspects of my being spirit and the dark and heavy aspect soul. Soul is the home in the deep, shaded valleys. Heavy torpid flowers saturated with black grow there. The rivers flow like arm syrup They empty into huge oceans of soul. Spirit is a land of high, white peaks and glittering jewel-like lakes and flowers. Life is sparse and sounds travel great distances. There is soul music, soul food, soul dancing and soul love…People need to climb the mountain not simply because it is there but because the soulful divinity needs to be mated with the spirit.  (A Blue Fire, pps. 115-116)

This message is one I would respectfully and humbly offer to the candidates for ministry, as well as to the curriculum designers in the theological faculties. Church sanctuaries, as well as every social event among parishioners where safety and confidence have been established can avail the opportunities to exchange their dark moments, as part of their spiritual journey, without having either to closet them or to bury them like squirrels with their nuts for winter. And the churches themselves, all of which have experienced very dark periods, not measured only by falling revenues and attendees, but by racial, economic or political or social strife, perhaps even suicide, have to be permitted to release their experiences together, in a safe environment, both the ‘healing of the community, and also for the modelling of such release for each family.

Preserving the psychological and the psychiatric for the clinical office visit, not only obviates the religious dimension and potential for psychic and spiritual growth; it also forecloses on the conscious demonstration, not only in the privacy of prayer, but to others whom one trusts, the universal truth of our own shared humanity.

It was Hélene, my first chaplaincy patient who asked, in the depths of her lethal diagnosis of breast cancer, ‘Why is God doing this to me? I have lived a good life and do not deserve this!’

It is the human cry, of ‘why have you forsaken me’ to which both religious faith and psychological verdancy both speak and answer. And the answers need not be divorced one from the other. Indeed, more than some combination of both perspectives can enhance our understanding of our spirit and our soul. And all of these questionings and wonderings, curses and blessings comprise a lively and rigorous life of abundance for which, it seems, God is both profoundly familiar  and hyper-supportive.

Continuing through these keys to struggle with the blending of both psychology (archetypal) and religious aspirations…

To be continued…..