My Love-Hate Relationwhip with Psychology

As we left church Saturday evening, I picked up a weekly bulletin with the headline: Mental Health Awareness Month: Stopping the Stigma of Mental Health.  I thought it odd at first, until reading the article which encourages compassion and outreach to the numerous mentally ill people in our community, many of whom are served by Catholic Charities in our diocese.  This brought to mind my love-hate relationship with psychology over the years.  I never gave much thought to psychology until I studied management in grad school where there was a significant emphasis on behavioral psychology.  Modern management techniques were based then (the 1970s) largely on the studies of psychologists like Abraham Maslow and B.F. Skinner who did research on the ‘hierarchy of needs’ shared by all people, and delved into what motivates behavior.  I was impressed by my studies in this area, even to the point of subscribing to Psychology Today for several years, until it became obvious that the entire field of modern psychology had become dominated by a strong liberal bias against religion.   What I read not only infuriated me, it led me to conclude that in many instances psychological help might be inflicting more damage than it repairs. 

About the same time (1979), we moved to California and my job in health insurance caused me to interact with psych hospitals, some of whom were violating ethical norms to maximize profits, until they got caught and a bunch of executives from Charter Medical Centers went to jail.  I had become so cynical about modern psychology that I am ashamed to admit I used to say, “Anyone who sees a psychologist ought to have their head examined.”  Because of the abuses I witnessed from several psych hospitals, I began referring to mental health as a “fisco-genic” disease, meaning that if you had money or insurance, the hospitals would diagnose you as mentally ill enough for in-patient care; but when your money or insurance coverage ran out, you were suddenly ‘cured’ and released.   Unlike physical health which can be assessed objectively with lab tests and measurable results, mental illness and behavioral health is subjective, based largely on opinion and feelings reported by patients.  In other words, it is very difficult to accurately diagnose the degree of illness.  This is why insurers put time and money limitations on the amount of coverage.  This limited exposure to fraudulent claims, but sadly, it also truncated the coverage of those who were genuinely mentally ill.

As I dug into this a bit deeper, I started reading books written by Christian psychologists, notably, Fr. John Powell, M. Scott Peck, and others.  They warned against left-leaning modern psychologists who set aside the importance of religious conviction, focusing instead on bolstering individuality and personal freedom.  A handful of Christian mental health professionals cited having great success working with patients to restore their relationship with God, as a means of regaining self-esteem and mental well-being.  Sadly, this is not often the case among secular mental health professionals.  More often than not, patients are treated with medication and scant little counselling, leaving them to believe that medication alone will make them feel better, if not get to the root cause of their illness.  I understand that chemical and hormonal imbalances are in many cases causes and contributors to mental and behavioral health problems, but so are our experiences which form our deepest beliefs about the nature of existence and the meaning of our lives.  I believe everyone taking medication should also be participating in other therapies, including counselling.  This is the standard of care in most of the modern world, if not in America.

Last week I came across the review of a book entitled:  Admirable Evasions: How Psychology Undermines Morality, by Theodore Dalrymple.  The article asserts that, “It is now commonly understood that Freud’s work was completely unscientific, unmeasurable, untestable, and founded on nothing more than speculation.  The ego, the id, the Oedipus complex, have all been consigned to the intellectual trash.  Worse than Freud’s lack of scientific foundation, and much more significant, was the effect his odd and baseless theories had on our civilization.  The effect was to ‘loosen man’s sense of responsibility for his own actions, freedom from responsibility being the most highly valued freedom of all.’  Freud’s message that desire, if not fulfilled will lead to pathology, makes self-indulgence man’s highest goal.  It is a kind of treason to the self to deny oneself anything.”   Sound familiar?  I can’t help but wonder if this isn’t at the root of many of the emotional health problems plaguing our nation.

There is no question that there is a pandemic of mental and behavioral health illness in America.  Sixty million Americans (20% of the population) have a psychiatric diagnosis.  There are 1 million attempted suicides every single year, and about 40,000 of these are successful.  By far the most widely prescribed class of drugs in America is anti-depressants.  Despite our national wealth, our personal freedom, the highest standard of living in the world, and all our modern conveniences, we suffer greatly from mental and behavioral health illness. 

So here’s my arm-chair diagnosis:  We do not understand the meaning of love.  I know this is an over-simplification, but it gets to the heart of what causes so much emotional pain.  The further we distance ourselves from True Love, i.e. the Love of God, the more anxious, the more unfulfilled, and the more restless we become.  Because we are created with both body and spirit, our eternal soul pines for perfect love, and will never be fully satisfied with anything less.  When we confuse love with personal happiness, we risk settling from much less than God intends for us.  By attempting to achieve happiness through physical means alone, we are left wanting more, and seeking greater meaning.  Because “God is Love” (1 John 4:16), and “Love never ends,” (1 Cor 13:8), when we love as God loves, we enter into God’s eternal presence.   Perhaps this is what Jesus meant when He said, "Peace I leave you, my peace I give you.  It is not as the world gives that I give to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled...” (John 14:27)

Sunday’s gospel contains the parable of the Good Shepherd who “lays down his life for his sheep.”  This willingness to sacrifice oneself for the love of others, is the key to understanding the meaning of True Love, the Love of God as expressed and revealed by Jesus.  This is the cornerstone of life.   Jesus is that cornerstone, the stone rejected by the builders, by the modern world, and by liberal psychology.  To build without a cornerstone is to risk monumental failure.  Building a life without participating in the Love of God is to risk everything, including our mental health and well-being.  Happiness is not our goal, but rather a consequence of abiding in the Love of God, by loving as He loves: selflessly.

Speeches, Movies and The Culture War

Last Monday was the 150^th anniversary of President Lincoln’s assassination which occurred on Good Friday 1865, just a few months after he signed the Emancipation Proclamation, and six days after General Robert E. Lee surrendered, ending the Civil War.  Seven weeks earlier, Lincoln gave one of his last speeches, his second inaugural address.  It was only 703 words long, lasting just 7 minutes.  Lincoln gave fewer than 20 speeches a year, almost all of them short and to the point.  His second inaugural address is considered by many to have been his best, appealing to God to heal the nation and highlighting the role of Divine Providence in ending slavery and reuniting our nation.  Here’s how he ended that speech, including a quote from Psalm 19:

“ ‘The judgements of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.’  With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the light, let us strive to finish the work we are in: to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan – to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves and with all nations.”

Lincoln’s speeches were always humble and filled with references to God and faith.  He never referred to himself, but rather, underscored the importance of acknowledging the role of Divine Providence in protecting human dignity and rights, as outlined in our Constitution.  In contrast, President Obama has given over 2,050 speeches during his presidency, an average of 500 per year, more than one a day, almost always referring to himself and his role in reshaping America.   In his speech at Selma last month, the president said, “America is a constant work in progress… unconstrained by habits and conventions and unencumbered and ready to seize what ought to be.”  For president Obama, “self-evident truths” are uncomfortable, and he recommended instead, “moral imagination…attuned to the fierce urgency of now.”  In other words, he advocates a new morality as evidence of progress toward greater freedom, even if it means legislating restrictions on religious freedom.

All this brings me to a quote from Sunday’s second reading from the first letter of Saint John: “The way we may be sure that we know him (i.e., Christ) is to keep his commandments.  Those who say, “I know him,” but do not keep his commandments are liars, and the truth is not in them.” (1 John 2:4)  Clearly, President Obama ignores the biblical truths about marriage and the right to life, and this is evidence of not knowing Christ.  Comparing Lincoln to Obama calls to mind Proverbs 29:2: “When the impious take up the leadership, the people shall mourn.”  I mourn for the 58 million children killed by abortion, and the children suffering the effects of broken marriages. I also mourn for all the women suffering the lingering effects of not only abortion, but from the emotional and psychological damage caused by illicit sexual relationships.

President Obama still holds a relatively strong approval rating, mostly along party lines.  His supporters apparently accept and approve his brand of morality, in which personal freedom trumps personal responsibility, notwithstanding the many negative consequences of such a worldview.  As our world becomes more secular and less religious, virtue declines and our democracy risks slipping into nothing more than mob rule. The great cinematic director Frank Capra knew this well, and used his art of movie making as a means of educating the public about the importance of moral education.  Prior to World War II his movies Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and Meet John Doe, all portray heroes who fight against political corruption and moral relativism.  This was the era of FDR, whose progressive ideals led him to expand the reach of government massively, setting up huge federal departments empowered to write administrative law, with little or no congressional oversight.  In one pivotal scene, Mr. Smith, played by Jimmy Stewart, sits in front of the Lincoln memorial trying to decide whether or not to fight the establishment and he takes his courage from Lincoln’s words inscribed on monument.  Wrapping up his filibuster, Smith says, “Great principles don’t get lost once they come to light.  They right here.  You just have to see them again.”

For Capra, the problem was how to make people see the principles once again that make our nation great.  He understood that freedom not only offers opportunity, but establishes a duty for all citizens, an obligation to preserve that freedom for our posterity, and only those willing to bear the burdens have a right to its rewards.  During an interview about his last great film, It’s A Wonderful Life, Capra explained that this movie summed up his philosophy of film-making:  “First to exalt the worth of the individual; to champion man; and second, to plead his causes, protest any degradation of his dignity, spirit or divinity.  There are just two things that are important: one is to strengthen the individual’s belief in himself, and the other, even more important, is to combat a modern trend toward atheism.”  In his 1971 autobiography, Capra was critical of modern filmmakers, most of whom he said were, “stooping to cheap salacious pornography in a crazy bastardization of the great art, to compete for the patronage of deviates.”  Imagine what he would think of filmmakers today!

There is no question that Hollywood has an impact on our culture.  It both reflects our culture and directs it.  Not only are most movies overloaded with illicit sex, violence, and foul-mouthed heroes, but millionaire actors have come to believe that they are paragons of the culture, emboldened to use their celebrity for political causes that promote the liberal, progressive agenda.  Only recently have there emerged a few good filmmakers willing to produce G and PG movies with decent moral content.  The same writers who produced God’s Not Dead, this spring released Do You Believe?  Shot in Manistee Michigan, it tells the story of one man whose profession of faith might cost him his job.  The handful of Christian filmmakers’ efforts falls short of regenerating the morals of our country, but perhaps they are an early indicator that we are approaching the bottom of this cycle of declining morals.   The emergence of films like Capra’s, with a moral message, may represent the beginning of a reawakening of our moral nature.  

What our country needs now is another leader like Lincoln, who will stand on principle and inspire us to return to the moral underpinnings of our nation.  Quoting Proverbs 29:2 again, “When the just men are multiplied, the common people shall rejoice.”  Let’s start praying now for a “just man” to run for president in 2016, one who “knows Christ and keeps His commandments.”

Mercy and Tolerance,aka 'Faith and Reason'

A lot has happened this past week: the 10^th anniversary of the death of St. John Paul II; Pope Benedict’s announcement of ‘A Jubilee Year of Mercy’; President Obama scolded Christians again (at an Easter prayer breakfast, no less);  and the week culminated on Divine Mercy Sunday.  Celebration of the 10^th anniversary of St. John Paul II’s death brings to mind how closely his successors have been following through on his many significant contributions to modern Catholic doctrine.  Pope Francis is getting a lot of attention for his focus on mercy, the poor, economics, and the family, but many don’t realize that the current pope’s agenda is taken almost directly from the encyclicals and teaching of St. John Paul II.

Twenty years ago St. John Paul II released The Gospel of Life which warned us about the “rising culture of death in which what was once called evil is now considered a social good, and when that happens, people drift away from their faith.  This is the sinister result of relativism which reigns unopposed.  In this way, democracy, contradicting its own principles, effectively moves towards a form of totalitarianism.  The state is no longer the ‘common home’ where all can live together on the basis of principles of fundamental equality, but is transformed into a tyrant state.”  When John Paul wrote this two decades ago, it seemed like an exaggeration, but look at what is happening to our culture.  All over Europe and more recently in North America, governments decry long-standing Christian beliefs to be intolerant, prejudicial, and even criminal.  Pope Benedict XVI referred to this as “the dictatorship of relativism.”  St. John Paul II cited the rise of legal abortion and gay marriage as a symptom of moral confusion: people losing the ability to distinguish between good and evil in modern life.  Pope Francis often refers to this as ‘a throw-away culture’ in which marriage, the unborn, and the elderly, are cast aside for the sake of convenience and absolute personal freedom without regard to morality.

Pope Francis will be publishing an encyclical later this year on the environment.  This may seem an odd and novel move, coming from a pope, but in fact popes have a long history of commenting on both the environment and economics.  Over the past 100 years popes have issued numerous encyclicals about the modern world, including the primacy of property rights, the dangers of socialism leading to a ‘nanny state,’ the value of the dignity of work and self-support,  the principle of subsidiarity (making decisions at the lowest possible level of government), and of course, responsible family planning.  When Pope Francis releases his encyclical on the environment, it is very likely to be to ensure that the moral voice of the Church be included, otherwise the dialogue is very likely to focus on population control with an emphasis on more funding for abortion, sterilization, and birth control.

One of the most troubling trends we face as Christians is the growing belief that religious convictions have no place in political debate or discussion.  President Obama and the progressive movement speak frequently about “freedom of worship” as long as our religiously inspired principles are confined within the walls of our places of worship.  Governor Cuomo recently stated that people who oppose abortion and gay marriage “are no longer welcome in New York.”  Corporate CEOs now routinely take it upon themselves to weigh in on gay marriage, threatening to pull their business from states where religious freedom is protected, as seen last week when the governors of Indiana and Kansas caved in to corporate threats and modified their states’ Religious Freedom Restoration Act, despite the fact that it was modeled on federal legislation signed into law during the Clinton administration.

Archbishop Chaput of Philadelphia observed last week that, “The religious vision and convictions that once animated American life are no longer welcome at the table.”  He cited ‘marriage equality’ as a term that is widely used as a euphemism for same-sex marriage, as an example of ‘dishonest political language’ that blurs rather than clarifies the subject at hand.  When Christians, with a fundamental belief in God’s Natural Law, raise objections to gay marriage or abortion, they are accused of intolerance and violation of people’s civil rights.   The confusion here is that Christian doctrine has always and will always demand respect for the dignity and freedom of every individual, including homosexuals, who are to be loved and respected.  However there is a difference between loving a person and agreeing with their doctrine.  The New York Times routinely runs scathing articles about the Catholic Church’s intolerance of heresy, accusing anyone who opposes women’s ‘right to choose’ or ‘marriage equality’ of bigotry.  But this ignores that fact that every Church is based on the definition of its doctrine.  If the doctrine of the Church were to be discarded, what exactly would the Church stand for?

When Barack Obama gave the commencement address at Notre Dame and was awarded an honorary law degree, the most disturbing aspect of this was the Catholic University president’s introduction in which he rationalized the president’s appearance as ‘inviting open dialogue.’   But when someone openly opposes what the Church believes to be moral truth, there is no room for compromise.  Image the former president of Notre Dame, Fr.Ted Hesburgh, who marched at Selma with Martin Luther King Jr., inviting George Wallace, then governor of Alabama, to speak on the virtues of racial discrimination, and awarding him an honorary law degree.  It never would have happened!  When moral truth is obfuscated or denied, there is no room for compromise.  People complain that we must not impose our morals on others, but this is not to say that religiously motivated dialogue should be shut down.  That’s pretty much what Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler did when they decided to attack, destroy, and eliminate religion and any religiously motivated debate.

God’s amazing mercy and forgiveness are at the central core of our faith.  But faith without reason is sterile.  God created us with reason which informs, clarifies, and enhances our faith.  Reason enables us to use our rational minds to assert the FACT that God exists, not just the hope that He does.  We conclude this from rational thought.  For example, the fact that reason itself exists, although it is intangible, is proof that there is a greater reality than that which we can observe and measure in a laboratory.  Reason is much more than the evolved thinking of our human brains, it had to have its source in something even greater, otherwise why would there be consensus on so many ethical issues?  The very fact of existence begs the question of where the universe came from, because common sense dictates that something cannot come from nothing.  Human reason demands that we answer the question of whether or not our existence and the miraculous complexity of our bodies and minds, is the product of random chance, or had its source in something much greater.  We use reason to assess the ‘common good’ and the consequences of our personal and political choices.  Tolerance, a form of reason, becomes unreasonable when it is used as an excuse to bash those with whom we disagree, as the President did again at the Easter prayer breakfast.   Reason enables us to distinguish between respecting the dignity of every person, (no matter their race, age, or gender preferences), and their beliefs, when moral clarity has been lost.  The old adage, ‘Love the sinner, hate the sin’ comes to mind.

Cause for Hope in an Increasingly Broken World

While it may seem that the world is becoming an increasingly bleak place, I submit that Hope abounds!  It’s easy to be consumed with anxiety and fear over the incessant drumbeat of bad news throughout the world.  News outlets seem to be almost gleeful as they announce the latest brutal winter/spring storm, then follow it up with yet another atrocity committed by ISIS or one of the other terrorist groups competing for world attention by trying to outdo one another, upping the ante week after week.  One group beheads 21 men, a few days later another group kills 40, and the following week yet another splinter group guns down 147 Christians on a college campus. 

Meanwhile back in America, we continue to cut the Defense Department budget, we make dangerous concessions to Iran to save face after months of failed diplomacy.   Our Justice Department occupies its time investigating ‘civil rights’ offenses against transsexuals in prison who are denied injections to maintain their altered appearance, while refusing to review Hillary Clinton’s illegal destruction of public records.  The Obama administration is using the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) to file lawsuits against religious organizations for refusal to pay for abortion-inducing drugs, despite having lost several pivotal cases that went all the way to the Supreme Court.  I guess they’re so busy using the Justice Department to enforce the new administrative laws they’ve put on the books, that they simply don’t have the time nor the will to enforce actual laws passed by Congress, such as the immigrations laws, or the voter-rights laws, both of which they claim they can ignore under the principle of “prosecutorial discretion,” just like they refused to enforce the Defense of Marriage Act until they could get it overturned by the Supreme Court. 

Every presidency is characterized by a theme or ‘doctrine.’  In my opinion the ‘Obama doctrine’ will be known as “The Obama non-enforcement doctrine.”   Imagine if this precedent were carried on by all future presidents.  What would be the point of having laws if the president could simply ignore the ones he dislikes?  A Republican president could simply ignore environmental laws, tax laws, and whatever else conflicted with his personal agenda.  Moreover, what would be the point of having a constitution if it were to be regarded as merely a guideline, rather than a guiding principle?  If this were to be the case, we should change the Presidential oath of office to omit the part where the newly elected president swears to “uphold the constitution… and the laws of the United States of America.”

This ostensible lawlessness stems from the modern trend that has its roots in philosophical existentialism.  If one accepts the maxim that there is no obligation to follow the precepts of natural law (which is the basis for our Constitution), because every person has the ‘right’ to determine what is right and what is wrong for themselves, then the only thing standing between anarchy and order is the might of government to impose its will on people.  When Hobbes wrote “The Leviathan” he proposed the need for a massive bureaucracy comprised of super-smart people who would then tell everybody else what to do, because his underlying assumption was that everyone selfishly only cares about themselves.  When our founding fathers wrote the constitution, they were well aware of the pitfalls of bureaucracy and their primary goal was to protect people from government intrusion.  They set up our form of government as a means of preventing abuse of power by diluting it among the branches of government with checks and balances that are now routinely thwarted or ignored.  Madison, Jefferson, et al, could never have imagined that the United States government would become so powerful and have set up the massive bureaucracy ushered in by FDR when he set up the powerful cabinet departments and gave them the power to write administrative laws without congressional oversight.

All this points to the decline of our once great Republic, as it inches inexorably toward becoming a socialist state, similar to those in Europe where government makes up half or more of the GNP, and the state controls every aspect of life.  So what in the world might this have to do with Easter?  The Jews in Jesus’ time were living under the repression of Rome, and hoping for a Messiah who would lead them out of the darkness of suppression and restore their once great nation, freeing them from Rome’s domination.  What they got instead was the Messiah who had been foretold with amazing accuracy in numerous prophecies and in the Psalms.  Leading up to Easter, we heard many of these prophecies from Isaiah who foretold a ‘suffering servant’ who would suffer and die at the hands of his enemies, but who would mysteriously, “rule forever.”  The many prophecies were so precise that they uncannily described Jesus’ torture and death, even down to His last moments on the cross when they broke tradition by not breaking his bones, and cast lots for His garments, even as Jesus Himself quoted Psalm 31 just before dying. 

Jesus did not conquer the Romans by establishing an earthly kingdom or a political movement.  Instead, He accepted the very worst the world can do to a person.  They mocked Him, tortured Him, stripped Him of dignity, humiliated Him, and to make sure He was eliminated, killed Him publicly in a show of merciless and brutal power.  All of this He accepted… then simply rose again from the dead.  He demonstrated once and for all time that no matter how bad things get in this life, God prevails.  No one can destroy our spirit or our eternal life.  This is the really ‘Good News!”  Jesus did not seek to avoid confrontation or death, He accepted it, suffered the worst the world can throw at anyone, and then rose above it. 

If you’ve been a reader of my blogs, you know that I believe in chaos theory.  Throughout history all the major changes affecting earth, biology, humanity, and civilization, are marked by a process whereby things get progressively worse, trending toward entropy or collapse.  Then suddenly, something happens that changes everything: new species emerge; old civilizations disappear and are replaced by new ones.  This is an iterative (repeating) process in which ‘necessity is the mother of invention.’  I believe that the chaos we are currently experiencing, the declining morals of our country, the shifting balance of power coming about as ethic Europeans slowly commit civilizational genocide while Mid-Eastern groups grow in numbers and influence, are all signs of impending chaos.  I don’t have a clue what might trigger the next major change that resets the balance of power.  It might be the emergence of a leader like George Washington, who more than anyone else was responsible for winning the Revolutionary War and setting up our Republic, despite all odds to the contrary.  It might be something more dramatic like a worldwide crisis.  But I do know that no matter how bad things get, God will prevail.  He will keep His promises to us, no matter how horrible things may seem to be, and regardless of what we may have to suffer.  In the end, God’s will, (not mans’) will prevail; and if we respond to His invitation, He and He alone will save us and allow us to participate in His Resurrection for all eternity.