catholicgnosis.wordpress.com-PatristicPsychology.pdf

7/25/2019 catholicgnosis.wordpress.com-PatristicPsychology.pdf

1/3

http://catholicgnosis.wordpress.com/2008/09/25/patristic-psychology/ November 6, 2012

Patristic Psychology

Posted on September 25, 2008 by John Uebersax

The ancients were far better psychologists than we give them credit f or. It is a supreme folly of modern men to think we are vastly intellectually superior t o the ancients. True, we aretechnologically more sophisticated, but there is no evidence that we are fundamentally bet ter anddeeper thinkers than they.

Indeed, ther e is good reason t o t hink just t he opposite. Modern culture suff ers f rom the ef fects of three centuries of radical materialistic empiricism. It has reached the absurd point that we have apurported science, psychology, which barely acknowledges the existence of the psyche. We havefallen into t he habit of believing that what ever we cannot touch, see, or measure does not exist.

One consequence of this is that centuries worth of sophisticated Western psychology originatingin antiquity and developed by Greek and, later, Christian writers, has been entirely neglected in thecurriculum of modern academic psychology.

It is now abundantly clear that we need to get beyond the limiting empirical-skeptical paradigm. Butas we do so, we shall discover that we do not need to re-invent psychology: we instead need topick up the thread where it left of f (around the time of the Renaissance).

Briefly, what I propose here is that some department(s) of psychology most logically locat ed ata Catholic or Orthodox university or seminary initiate a special program in Patristic psychology. Theaim would be to present, develop, and train students and future teachers in a full system of psychology specif ically that area of psychology t hat relates to personal spiritual development based on principles found in the Patristic tradition, earlier Greek philosophy, and later writings of Doctors of the Church (St . Thomas Aquinas, St . Bonaventure, St . Gregory Palamas, St . John of

the Cross, etc.).

Indeed, one o f the f irst challenges would be to more clearly identify what this particular field of psychology is it is not exactly clinical psychology, nor cognitive psychology, nor depthpsychology, nor personality psychology, not t ranspersonal psychology. Rather it shares elementswill all of these. For now, I propose t o call this a psychology of personal spirituality or even thestudy of psychological salvation.

The book, Orthodox Psychotherapy , by Archimandrite Hierot heos S. Vlachos, appears to me thebes t one currently available that might serv e as a start ing point.

From the Introduction:
http://www.pelagia.org/htm/b02.en.orthodox_psychotherapy.00.htmhttp://www.printfriendly.com/print/v2?url=http%3A%2F%2Fcatholicgnosis.wordpress.com%2F2008%2F09%2F25%2Fpatristic-psychology%2Fhttp://www.pelagia.org/htm/b02.en.orthodox_psychotherapy.00.htmhttp://www.printfriendly.com/print/v2?url=http%3A%2F%2Fcatholicgnosis.wordpress.com%2F2008%2F09%2F25%2Fpatristic-psychology%2F


2/3

The term Orthodox Psychotherapy does not refer to specific cases of people suffering from psychological problems of neurosis. Rather it refers to all people. According to Orthodox Tradition, after Adams fall man became ill; his nous wasdarkened and lost communion with God. Death entered into the

persons being and caused many anthropological, social, even

ecological problems. In the tragedy of his fall man maintained the image of God within him but lost completely the likeness of Him, since his communion with God was disrupted. However the incarnation of Christ and the work of the Church aim at enabling the person to attain to the likeness of God, that is toreestablish communion with God. By adhering to Orthodox therapeutic treatment as conceived by the Holy Fathers of theChurch man can cope successfully with the thoughts (logismoi)and thus solve his problems completely and comprehensively.

Lets consider a single example of where this might lead. Cigaret t e smoking is one of thegreatest health epidemics in the world today. Yet modern medical psychology is unable toconceptualize or t reat t he problem adequately. One reason is that medical psychology here is outof its depth. Smoking can only be understood fully, and remedied, by understanding it in itsspiritual context. Smoking is not just a physiological addiction, a habit, or a conditioned reflex. Itoriginates with facto rs and forces the material level.

Let me make a statement boldly, but then allow me to qualify it: Smoking is a sin, and it is demonic.

Now what is meant by sin and by demonic here? That is precisely the question. Demonic here,for example, doesnt mean there are invisible goblins jumping around placing cigarett es in peoples

paths and tricking them into smoking. The mere word demon, or, to use the o riginal form,daemon is a linguist ic token, a symbol, used to denote a concept that is, at some level,experientially self-evident. There is a realm of mental experience and activity, with behavioralcorrelates, that, lacking any clearer term, we have come to describe with the word, demonic. Onequality of this activity is that it is energized in a certain way as though coming from a force out sideus. Basically, this much is all we can say with certainty and in saying this much we have no tcommit ted ourselves to a specif ic metaphysical position.

In short , that smoking is sinful and demonic is known t o us intuitively and experientially. This ispresent in our folk wisdom and manifest in colloquial language. If someone says of a person, hehas f inally rid himself of his demons nobody ever asks what t hat means. We know what it means,

at least roughly we simply cannot explain it in words.It s even more obvious t hat smoking is sinful in the psychological sense of being self -destructiveactivity, and corresponding to a f allen cognitive state certainly one in which one is not beingdirected by anyt hing like Wisdom or higher mental powers. It requires a turning away f rom God inthe mind and heart to smoke. So while smoking a single cigarette perhaps isnt much of sin, it isst ill, technically speaking a sin and we shouldnt lose sight of that o r be too hesitant t o applythe term.

Thus, it is more correct t o say that smoking is sinful and demonic than it is to say, all this talkabout sin and demons is obsolete and unscientific smoking has not hing to do with t hem.


3/3

Another time we may pursue further this particular exampler. For now, let it serve to illustrate thebroader point: that modern psychology, in trying to restrict itself t o a narrow scientific method,has in the process rid it self of the power of human intuitive wisdom. Patrist ic psychology, amongother things, can aid us in reacquiring a system of psychology that is at once scientifically, logically,and philosophically rigorous, and also more f ully consistent with our experience as human beings. Itcan be, simply put, a psychology of bot h the mind and the heart, in contrast to modern version of psychology t hat is only a science of the mind (and only a portion of the mind, namely the rationalmind, at that).

But the ot her point illustrated is the practical relevance of this proposed enterprise. How manylives are wrecked, and how many hundreds of millions of dollars are lost due to the eff ects of cigarette smoking? It is a huge problem. We have, in our arsenal of weapons to levy against it, a2000-plus year old t radit ion of thought developed by t he keenest psychological minds the Westhas ever produced and, for reasons already alluded to above, these ideas have been put aside.Isnt it only logical that we now make a most serious eff ort to see if t hese ideas can help usovercome the scourge of tobacco smoking?

And this is but one example. We could also list among t he current psychological problems thatdebilitate modern society alcoholism, depression, materialism, despair, and apathy. All of these areaddressed by Patristic psychology, and none are adequately addressed by modern psychologicaltheories.

Filed under: Cognit ive psychology , Cultural psychology , Patristics , philosophy , religion , Sapientialeschatology
http://catholicgnosis.wordpress.com/category/sapiential-eschatology/http://catholicgnosis.wordpress.com/category/religion/http://catholicgnosis.wordpress.com/category/philosophy/http://catholicgnosis.wordpress.com/category/patristics/http://catholicgnosis.wordpress.com/category/cultural-psychology/http://catholicgnosis.wordpress.com/category/cognitive-psychology/

Documents

catholicgnosis.wordpress.com-PatristicPsychology.pdf