Couched Symbols:
Responding to the use of Psychoanalytic theory
in the Social-Scientific Study of Religion *
by
James V. Spickard
University of Redlands
Presented at the Annual Meeting of the
Society for the Scientific Study of Religion,
Houston, TX, Oct 22, 2000.
Copyright © 2000
Without psychoanalysis we would never know that
when we think a thing the thing we think is not the thing we think we think
but only the thing that makes us think the thing we think we think we think.
- Anonymous
It is somewhat ironic to be asked to comment on the
revival of psychoanalytic approaches to the study of religion at the SSSR. This
is, after all the Society whose journal was roundly criticized some years ago
for publishing a psychoanalytic interpretation of the Rosary.1
One of those critics, a prominent rational-choice theorist, expounded his
views to me over salmon at my father's house some years ago. Little did he know
that my step-mother was a sponsor of the Seattle Psychoanalytic Institute,
though her firm Catholicism gave her as much antipathy as he to seeing rosary
beads as symbolic feces.
The merriment goes on: the author of that Rosary article
later published a devastating critique of that same rational-choice theorist's
work, which exposed several biases of the rational-choice approach to religion.2
This tit for tat, however, did not return the psychoanalysis of religion
to its former state of grace. To say that it has been out of favor in recent
years is an understatement of the first water.
I shall not restore it today. Nor shall I try to undercut
it further. With Herbert Marcuse,3 I respect
psychoanalysis precisely to the degree that it honors religion's depth and its
ability to unite human cognition, emotion, and physicality. Few theories treat
religion with as much respect; but few theories are as empirically
indemonstrable. Can psychoanalytic approaches to religion be scientific? Or are
they condemned to being suggestively meaningful?
It is worth reviewing Jürgen Habermas's analysis of the
grounds of scientific inquiry, which is still the best epistemological treatment
that psychoanalysis has received. In Knowledge and Human Interests,4
Habermas described three forms of scientific inquiry arising out of three
specific human interests. These are descriptive or explanatory science,
interpretive or hermeneutic science, and liberatory science - the word "science"
here being used in its original meaning of 'a disciplined way of knowing'.
According to Habermas, descriptive/explanatory science
stems from the human interest in control, from an intent to model reality so
that we can manipulate it. Descriptive/explanatory theory is thus 'true' if it
predicts events accurately. Among the social-scientific theories of religion,
rational-choice theory claims this mantle, though rational-choice work to date
has produced possibly true predictions from demonstrably false premises - not a
good sign if one seeks to explain anything.5 In any
event, descriptive/explanatory science does well with the physical world, but
not so well with human beings, who are notoriously unpredictable. (They are
especially unpredictable after they read scientists' reports and decide to
change their behavior.)
Habermas argues that humans are better understood through
the hermeneutic sciences, which stem from the human interest in communication.
These ways of knowing try to capture people's views of the world. Like
descriptive science, hermeneutic science puts forth theories, but these
theories' test of truth is different: not predictability, but affirmation. I can
only know whether I have captured others' world views by checking with them, and
being told that I have done so. My success is limited, however, because people's
views change, sometimes because of my conversations with them. Simply by
studying the Los Angeles Catholic Worker community, for example, I change it. My
presentation of their view of reality is thus not 'objective' as would be my
description of the flight of an artillery shell. 'Objectivity' is not truth, in
the hermeneutic view. The model for these sciences is dialogue, in which
knowledge arises as much from the process as from the conclusions.
For Habermas, psychoanalysis is neither a descriptive nor
an hermeneutic science. Its theories do not depict fixed aspects of the human
psyche; neither do they capture people's self-understandings. Instead,
psychoanalytic "truth" transforms those understandings in the direction of human
freedom. By describing people's inner blocks, it sets off their transformation.
The process works something like this. If we look at
Freud's treatment journals, we do not find the reified "ids", "Oedipal
conflicts", and "super-egos" of his theoretical works. Instead, we find accounts
of client-therapist conversations. Mostly, the client talks, both exploring and
demonstrating his or her neuroses, though as yet in an ungraspable form. After
months of this - or years, in some cases - Freud intervenes: "I think you have
an unconscious conflict with your father," he may say, or: "Have you noticed
your underlying desire for your mother?" These statements take the form of
descriptive explanations, yet they are not that. Their subject matter is
unconscious, remember, and is thus not subject to confirmatory observation.
We can only know their 'truth' by their results: by whether their utterance
changes the client's inner life.
One of two things happens. Either the client does not
respond (or responds with the equivalent of a "Huh?"), in which case the talk
resumes. Or the client responds with a "Eureka! You've hit it!" In the latter
case, the client then alters his or her own self-understanding, accepting
Freud's theory as a "true" account of his or her inner life.
So far, this is merely an hermeneutic in which the
observed accepts the observer's narrative of the inner life, rather than the
other way around. But what distinguishes liberatory science from hermeneutics is
that this changed self-understanding often makes neuroses vanish! Not only does
the client's understanding of his or her inner life change; that inner
life itself changes - a change made manifest by altered behavior.
Psychoanalysis has effected a "cure" - has moved the client from (as Freud
elsewhere put it) from being "neurotically unhappy" to being "normally unhappy."
(Freud did not have a very optimistic sense of life's possibilities.)
Habermas developed his account of liberatory science to
justify Marxism, which, he argued, transforms society by transforming the
consciousness of the working class. Like psychoanalysis, Marxism masquerades as
a descriptive/explanatory theory of real life, but is not "scientific" in that
limited sense of the term. Its "truth" is not demonstrable "objectively," but
only demonstrable in so far as it transforms society in the direction of human
freedom. It is an hermeneutic-with-results. The results are objective, though
the theory that generates them neither models an objective reality nor reflects
people's preexisting consciousness. The proof of liberatory science is thus "in
the pudding," as it were, as it moves people towards freedom.
I am not, here, going to discuss any of the wider issues
opened up by this account, including "Why towards freedom?" To do so would
involve us with Hegel, and if there is anything more out-of-fashion than
psychoanalysis in the SSSR, it is Hegelian philosophy. But Habermas's schema
puts the words "truth", "science", and "psychoanalysis" into the same sentence
in a rather useful way. By distinguishing between three types of science,
he opens the door for psychoanalytic theorizing to reenter the social scientific
study of religion - and thus prevents the papers we have heard today from being
ruled out a priori .
In this light, let us look at the two papers that I was
able to review before this conference.
Julius Rubin6 argues that we
cannot understand religious conversion without considering its psychological
dimensions - and on a deep, not just a superficial level. In his discussion of
cases from the First Great Awakening, he shows the compatibility of
psychoanalytic and theological accounts of conversion - not just as changes of
mind but as changes of soul. George Whitfield's charismatic conversion undid and
redid his Self in exactly the way that his spiritual mentors said all
conversions require. Samson Occom's account, though less detailed, shows how he
"achieve[d] new integrations of religious personhood and public ascendance as an
Indian leader and spiritual intermediary between Indian and White worlds."7
The question is: does psychoanalysis "offer an explanatory
model that provides additional insights into New Light religious experience and
conversion,"8 as Rubin claims? I don't think so -
and not because of any failure on Rubin's part. He shows, instead, how one
psychoanalytic description of the conversion process matches the
then-current theological description of First Awakening conversions. Both
describe the subjective experiences of the converts, and neither reduces these
experiences to something that they are not. But they both have the same
metaphysical status: they are both hermeneutic descriptions of subjective
events, not explanations of them .
What Rubin has done is to translate a theological
description of conversion into a psychoanalytic one, without demonstrating the
objective truth of either. He has thus not "explained" anything - though I am
not sure why he would want to. His psychoanalytic understanding of conversion is
phenomenally identical to Whitfield's theological understanding of it. Both
exist on the same plane.
There is one difference, however. I doubt that a
psychoanalytic understanding of Whitfield's and Occom's inner processes would
have motivated either of them to pass through the trials that led them to their
transformed life's work. Had they seen themselves as tearing down and rebuilding
a Self, rather than as opening themselves to God, they would not likely have
persevered. In Habermasian terms, neither religion nor psychoanalysis
explains conversion, both understand it, but only religion provides
liberatory knowledge. In this case, psychoanalysis would not provide the
knowledge that allowed Whitfield and Occom to transform their lives.
On to Niame's far more complete and detailed paper.9
Niame presents, with a great deal more sophistication, the
psychoanalytic theories of Jacques Lacan. She differentiates him from Freud,
especially in his insistence that the Self is constructed in social interaction.
(This is not the cheap, contentless constructionism that one gets from the
symbolic interactionists, but a depth constructionism with various hypothesized
dynamics, growth, and development. Surely, this is a fruitful line of inquiry
for sociology as a whole.)
Niame's paper uses this hypothesized dynamic to interpret
Haitian Vodou possession and zombification. As she has pointed out today, she
sees "possession not as a pathological phenomenon … but … as a cultural and
personal opportunity to transform reality by shifting the boundaries of the
mutable self."10 Zombification is its inverse: it
is an "imputed mechanism of social control, [which] acquires its intensity from
the Haitian history of slavery."11 Both religious
events are expressions of peculiarly Haitian psychological dynamics that
ultimately reflect Haitian social conditions.
This is a powerful interpretation, which helps us see
Haitian Vodou in a new light. It makes us think about the social relativity of
all religious expressions, without belittling religion's emotional impact - a
belittlement from which many relativist interpretations suffer. I have nothing
but praise for Niame's effort, and I hope that she soon finds a suitable spot in
which to publish her work.
But: What is the metaphysical status of Niame's
interpretation? This is a question that she does not consider, but which is of
tremendous importance for her approach. Simply put, like Rubin, Niame is engaged
in translation. Her paper translates possession and zombification into
psychoanalytic terms. To the extent that she claims that her approach explains
or objectively describes Vodou possession and zombification, she is
reductionistic - and inaccurate as well. In fact, her approach is hermeneutic:
translating the words of the natives into other terms.
But we can go a bit farther in Niame's case than we can in
Rubin's. Here, the interpretive hermeneutic is much like good literary
criticism. As John Leonard notes, we go to great literature to complicate
ourselves, and literary criticism makes both that literature and us more
interesting. 12 Niame's paper may not do much for
Haitians, besides translating them, but it has the potential to transform
us. No longer can we see Haitians and their religion as benighted. No longer
can we imagine that we are religiously sophisticated and they are not. Our
religions are not 'healthy' and theirs 'pathological'; in a sense, the reverse
is more accurate. Vodou domesticates social reality, so that Vodou practitioners
can live; our religions domesticate us so that we can abide our "unhappy
consciousness".13
Niame's excellent paper encourages us to see the
interrelationship between religious psychodynamics and social structure, not
just in Haiti, but also at home. Here, psychoanalytic reasoning has the
potential to free us from a serious neurosis: the false sense that we have a
monopoly on truth. More: it motivates us to change, because it shows us the
falsity of our previous beliefs. Like Whitfield and Occom's charismatic
Calvinism, it moves us towards freedom. In Niame's paper, unlike Rubin's,
psychoanalytic knowledge is liberatory knowledge - but for us , not for
the people that it supposedly describes.
Habermas pointed out that psychoanalysis can be
liberating; I would add that it can be liberating in unexpected ways.
* These remarks were
delivered at the Annual Meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of
Religion in Houston, Texas, October 19-22, 2000. They were presented as a
formal response to a panel of papers on the topic: "What Psychoanalytic Theory
Says to the Sociology of Religion."
1
Michael P. Carroll: "Praying the Rosary: The Anal-Erotic
Origins of a Popular Catholic Devotion." Journal for the Scientific Study
of Religion, 26/4: 486-498, 1987.
2
Idem.: "Stark realities and Androcentric/Eurocentric Bias in the
Sociology of Religion." Sociology of Religion, 57/3: 225-240, 1966
3
Herbert Marcuse: Eros and Civilization: a Philosophical
Inquiry into Freud. Boston: Beacon Press, 1955.
Idem: Five Lectures: Psychoanalysis, Politics, and Utopia.
Boston: Beacon Press, 1970.
4
Jürgen Habermas: Knowledge and Human Interests,
translated by Jeremy J. Shapiro. Boston: Beacon Press, 1968 [1971].
5
See my "Rethinking Religious Social Action: What is 'Rational'
About Rational Choice Theory?" Sociology of Religion 59/2: 99-115,
1998.
6
Julius Rubin: "Death to the Carnal Self: Theological,
Sociological, and Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Religious Conversion." Paper
presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of
Religion, Houston, Texas, October 19-22, 2000.
7 Ibid.,
p 16.
8
Ibid.
9
Niame: "Haitian Vodou Possession: Becoming the Desire of the
Other." Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for the
Scientific Study of Religion, Houston, Texas, October 19-22, 2000.
10
Ibid., p 2.
11
Ibid.
12
John Leonard: "The Wise Woman and the Whale." New York
Review of Books, July 20, 2000.
13
Herbert Marcuse: One-Dimensional Man. Boston: Beacon
Press, 1964.
