Psychology and Religion: Collaborators or Competitors?

1. Psychology and Religion: Collaborators or Competitors? Raymond F. Dlugos, OSA, Ph.D. The Southdown Institute

2. Collaboration • Easier said than done… • Requires a Secure Relational Style by at least one party in the relationship… • Dismissal of either one’s own value or the value of the other defeats collaboration. • Failure to acknowledge and name the competitive reality unconsciously sabotages good intentions.

3. Collaboration Requires Different Perspectives and Approaches • Religion offers access to revealed wisdom not otherwise accessible • Focus outside or beyond the self • Psychology offers access to self-knowledge • Focus on the self. • Spirituality is a place of integration between the self and the rest of the universe.

4. Psychology, Spirituality and Religion • Psychology and Religion are both servants of a person’s spirituality. • Spirituality/Religion relationship • Spirituality welcomes the collaborative relationship; religion might not. • Spirituality values the collaboration of the two and can be damaged by the competition.

5. Integrity=Behavior Consistent with Values • Spiritual level is the point of integration: • Our basic orientation and purpose in life • Fundamental moral options • Orientation to the transcendent • Relationship with the all • Effective integration on the spiritual level requires input from many different sources, both internal and external. • Over or undervaluing any one source over another can result in disintegration.

6. Personal Background • Roman Catholic • Professed Member of a Religious Community with a Spiritual Tradition within Roman Catholicism • St. Augustine and interiority • Seminary Education • The Three K(C)arls • Ordained Priest • Doctoral Studies in Psychology • “Passionately Committed Psychotherapists” • Integrating Psychology and Religion at the Southdown Institute • “The effective integration of the best of psychological science and practice with the wisdom of the Catholic spiritual tradition.” • Lonergan’s Method in Theology as foundational to my understanding of the process of integration and change.

7. The Historical Perspective on the Competition • Mythological Wisdom • Archetypal Patterns Discerned • Natural Religion • The wisdom of art, drama, poetry, philosophy. • An Axial Moment: • The prophets of Israel co-terminus with the golden age of Greek philosophy and the discovery of subjective morality.

8. The Historical Perspective on the Competition • The Pre-Modern World • Revealed Religions as Agents of Social Control • God as the Measure of All Things • Mystery handled Theologically

9. The Historical Perspective on the Competition • The Modern World • The Enlightenment • The Cartesian Turn to the Subject • Mystery Handled Scientifically • Prediction and control of the universe pursued enthusiastically. • The Science of Psychology and Practice of Psychotherapy emerges.

10. The Historical Perspective on the Competition • The Post-Modern World • Failure of Modernity results in chaos • Mistrust of science and religion • Self separate from community is the measure of all things • Excessively narcissistic self-focus

11. The Historical Perspective on the Competition • In Whatever We Call the Current Time • Antidote from chaos and alienation sought through fundamentalist theocracies that promise safety, community, and meaning. • Fear as primary motivational force • Respond to threats to this view with violence. • Wars in the name of God…

12. Self in Relation to Formative Forces • Religion is one of many essential forces exerting influence on the self’s process toward integration.

13. EXTERNAL FORMATIVEFORCES Religion Societal Political Realities Ecological Realities Familial SELF Economic Realities National/Ethnic Groups Personal Spirituality Communal

14. Reality of the Formative Forces • They are real, powerful, and motivated toward influencing individuals to conform to their wishes. • They are in competition with each other and the self is the battleground of this competition. • They are unlikely to change and self does not have the power to influence a formative force. • They use fear as a primary motivational force because it works. • There are real consequences to acting contrary to a formative force.

15. The Self in Relationship to Formative Forces • Forces are necessary to the integrative project of the self. • Dismissing or disempowering the formative forces does not serve the integrative project. • Acting with freedom requires conscious assertion of values arising from the self that may be contrary to the values of the formative forces.

16. Engaging the Formative Forces • Each one matters to some extent • How do I resolve the competition for my mind, heart, and soul? • The self matters • What is it like to be me in response to these demands? • The tension arising from competing demands and desires seeks resolution. • Premature resolution of the tension thwarts growth toward integration. • Dismissal of the Self as irrelevant or meaningless. • Dismissal of Formative Force as irrelevant or meaningless

17. What Religion Can Offer to Spiritual Development • Wisdom collected over centuries tested through individual and communal experience. • A Transcendent perspective that expands the vision of reality beyond what one individual is capable. • Moral framework • Symbolic connection with mystery

18. What Psychology Can Offer to Spiritual Development • Offers the self ground to stand on so as to engage the formative forces effectively. • Offers tools to access the inner wisdom and transcendent nature of the individual self. • Can assist the self to come to a place of free and conscious choose about how to respond to life without dismissing the other formative forces. • Individuation that allows a person to life in conscious freedom rather than in reaction only to internal and external forces.

19. Engaging the Resistance Creatively • Religion provides ample resources for resistance to the work of psychotherapy • Efforts to control the session by client • “Can we start with a prayer?” • The search for a therapist with common religious beliefs. • Innate mistrust of psychology from religious people. • Animosity toward religious values.