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Jungian Analyst Jakob Lusensky engages in dialogues and research at the intersection of psychology and religion, for the purpose of individual and cultural transformation. Forthcoming book C.G Jung: Face to Face with Christianity.
I think Eros is often confused with lust in our world. And it's, it's not that it's a, it's a deeper, more powerful, broader, richer vein of, of desire. That can unify and can unite without confusion, different aspects, both of ourselves and of the cosmos.
It has to be real, otherwise it's not Eros. It can't just be a kind of lip service to kindness.
Welcome to Psychology on the Cross. In this episode, I speak to Pia Chaudhary about her book Dynamis of Healing, Patristic Theology and the Psyche, published by Fordham University Press. Pia holds a doctorate in theology from the Department of Psychiatry and Religion at Union Theological Seminary in New York, and she's a founding co chair of the Analytical Psychology and Orthodox Christianity Consultation.
Thank you for listening in on our conversation.
So welcome to the podcast, Pia Chaudhary. Today we're gonna discuss your book, Dynamics of Healing, Patristic Theology and the Psyche, which was published in 2019 by Upwardham University Press. , it took some time to read through the book, but I would just want to say that it's a, it's a beautiful book, and very thoroughly written.
, what you're doing is tying links between the tradition and practice of Orthodox Christianity and patristic theology, with a field of depth psychology specifically, or more focus on analytical psychology. So we're going to talk about the book, and we're going to talk about Your findings in all this research but before diving into the book, I was wondering if you could tell me a little bit about yourself and and maybe what led up to you writing this book.
Yes. I mean, thank you so much for the opportunity to be here. It's, it's, it's really wonderful to have a conversation, a second conversation with you now and to explore some of these, these topics. Yeah, it's not a book I ever imagined myself writing. It's not something I set out to do a long time ago, but it was a kind of culmination of many years of wonderings, if that makes sense, that I care deeply about.
Healing. I always have. And at a certain point in my journey, I became Christian which was also an unexpected move for me. And, and, and Christianity is a religion that, I mean, we don't always hear this emphasis, but in fact is very focused on healing. That the church is a hospital and that... Even the early understanding of the word salvation had, I think the, it's true to say that the early church used the word therapia, that there was a therapy of the world taking place.
So there is this idea that something was actually being healed and restored and not just kind of in an abstract way saved. And so I, I wondered about. You know, I come from a, my father was a scientist, I grew up in a scientific world, and you know, I tried to hold these two areas together for a long time.
There's science, there's psychiatry, there's psychology, and then there's religion, and there's faith, and there's... It's apparently now what I was coming to understand in my own journey, this whole area of healing in the, in the church as well. So I think for, for quite some time I held, I just wondered, you know, without doing much about it, how do these areas relate?
Do they relate? Can God cure depression? You know, what, how, I mean, how, how does this work? And eventually I found myself in seminary. And and had the chance to, to work in a really fantastic program that was run at the time by Anne Ulanov called, and at the time it was called the Department of Psychiatry and Religion.
And, and this just seemed like a place to really wrestle out a lot of these questions working with the, you know, primary sources from Freud, from Jung, Winnicott, Fairbairn, you know, it was, it was a really a deep dive, and at the same time, I was studying early church history with Father John McGuckin, who is an Orthodox theologian, church historian.
And so the, in a way, the kind of the holding of the two areas was coming closer together. At least I had everything in one school now and and was able to go from, you know, from office to office rather than from school to, you know, medical school to, to religious school. And so the, the worlds were coming closer and and yeah, I, I began to see and, and feel and trust that there were really what I call in the book meeting places, that there's a, some kind of sense of integration, which is in fact something that both Eastern Orthodox theology and depth psychology, as you know, emphasize.
And, and it made sense to me after a while that of course there would have to be because. We are only, we are one creature and to, so we, so for our psyches not to be split between the sort of the divine and the natural, we would have to, it would have to be integrated in us in some way. And, and I think that that's where I began to find that.
No, it's not as simplistic as, Oh God, we'll just cure your depression if you pray hard enough. That, that I think is a very dangerous place to go sometimes, but, but it is true that it's all connected and in some way, and that there are places of shared understanding. Between orthodox theology and depth psychology.
And how come that you were drawn to or started to go into orthodox Christianity of the different, can you say something about orthodox?
Yeah, and again, one more path I never imagined myself on. I wasn't raised with any connection, although my beloved second family is Serbian Orthodox. I had a little bit of, you know, exposure as a child growing up, but that was it.
I think What happened is I, I got to seminary and I, as I mentioned, I was studying with Father John McGuck in early church history because I, I had had some experiences that, that led me towards Christianity, but I wanted to explore them. I kind of, I wanted to explore them in my own way, if that makes sense.
I think a lot of young people who arrive in seminary and aren't necessarily on ordination track have questions, and I had questions. And And I wanted to get back as close in time to the original event, the, the Christic event, as they call it, and then go from there to see what I was going to make of Christianity.
I didn't want 2, 000 years of accretions on, on top of it in, in my understanding. And so I, I spent some time in, in what I later came to understand as early church history and then also early church theology, and I found it captivating. And In large part, because there was a very strong emphasis on experience, that, that people that did Church Fathers were writing out of a, out of an experience that they'd had, that this was experiential, it wasn't abstract or cerebral, as, as heady as they can be, that there was a real sense of connectedness to lived life, and, and that they had experienced something that led them to then change their lives to write, to reflect, to, you know, to, to sacrifice themselves in, in many cases as well.
So I, I was drawn to that. And I also found increasingly that it seemed many of the questions I had about sort of, as I got further along the theological journey and had, was able to ask more maybe involved or sophisticated questions of the theology than I had been previously, I had concerns about atonement theory and understandings of Christ's sacrifice and whether, wouldn't that in fact.
Lead us to some kind of setup within ourselves if, you know, are humans bad and, and, and God had to sacrifice himself to save us. And so what does, you know? And doesn't that kind of clash with a therapeutic understanding that, you know, we're, we're not bad and we have to work to heal. And so I had, I had these kinds of questions and I found that within the Orthodox Church there was much, every time I would ask these questions, they would be answered in a way that made sense to me.
That yes, there is a sacrificial aspect, but we also have to focus on the incarnation and we also have to understand that this was a question, much like in therapy, of, it was almost like a rescue mission rather than a kind of, you know, the sort of penal substitution of God had to die himself to satisfy God's own honor, the kind of legalistic understandings that came later or were emphasized later.
Some of them were there from the beginning. So I don't know if that really quite addresses what you're saying, but, but I think I found space in the church for understandings that did not contraindicate or, or contradict What I was also learning in my study of deaf psychology and in my own therapeutic journey.
Hmm. And, and could you say something short about also that? The, the, the therapeutic journey and, and, and Jung and analytical psychology, how you, how you got involved in that and also then also practiced as a therapist .
Yeah. I mean, I, I was Well, I had, I had the great good fortune to study with, you know, really wonderful teachers at Union and Union of Harry Fogarty. Both of whom are Jungian and and in the, in the, in the department of psychiatry and religion. And, and I found that there was a, a capaciousness there for, again, all kinds of experience. And and I don't know, I mean, I don't know how much the listeners will be interested to know and the differences between say Jung and Freud, but one of the. You know, as you know, one of the main differences as I experience it is that there isn't just the emphasis on the reductive in Jung, that this idea that we, you know, have to go back in time to find the origin of the wound or the trauma, and then kind of wrestle through it.
But there's also the, the perspective. There's the question is where is the person going? Where is the symptom taking them? And not just where does it originate? And what is the telos of their journey? And so I found that very enlivening because it's, it's a very, very hopeful paradigm, I think for, for healing to have, you know, as you know, someone come in and say, Oh, well, you know, I've got this and this, I've got this depression or I've got this, this crazy fantasy that keeps coming up or I've got, you know.
This kind of, you know, compulsion and and one of my, my dear colleagues at my former training institute is working right now on a, a whole paper and book on compulsion and the role that it plays in, in moving us forward, if we can understand it, you know, properly. So this idea of symbol is, or symptom is symbol.
And not just symptom as pathology or issue to be removed was very, very powerful. And you know, and again, just to link it back, this kind of, it's almost an allegorical way of thinking, which was, you know, really a big part of early church theology, even origin and others used allegory all the time to understand scripture and to understand theology.
So for people like myself who are not well versed in Orthodox Christianity or, or patristic theology, I wonder if it would be possible to, give some context or to define some key fundaments. of Orthodox teaching that can be helpful as, as we're exploring these what you call meeting places between the field of Orthodox Christianity and analytical psychology?
Yeah. I mean, it's, it's a vast question. I, it might be that along the way it's easier to kind of flesh out a few things, but I will say that maybe the first thing to know that would comes to mind anyway, to me, the first thing is that Orthodox. Orthodox Christianity is a sacramental Christianity. So there's a heavy emphasis on the sacraments, which are in fact considered meeting places between the human and the divine.
And back, I think it was in the 12th century, St. Gregory of Palamas wrote extensively on the difference between the divine energies of God, the sort of uncreated energies of God, and then the created energies of creation. And, So this, it brings a few things in, which is the first is that the belief that God can be experienced directly in the sacraments.
And it's not, again, it's not a cerebral experiencing, it's not a moral experiencing. I was just reading earlier a wonderful quote by St. Maximus about that, which I can bring up later. But, but it's an, it's a direct experience of, of, of the uncreated energies of the divine. Which then imbue our, our, we are created in the, you know, we're on this side of creation with us along with all of creation.
We are created. We're not the creator. And so the sacrament is the meeting place between the uncreated and the created. And so that gave me then an immediate The second you bring experience in, you can now reflect on it, and the second you're reflecting on experience, you're already in the realm of depth psychology, to some degree.
So that's sort of how that got set up. It's also a very sensuous experience of the church there, the, the icons and the incense and the flames and the smell of the beeswax and the chanting and the paintings on the wall. It really brings your whole, there's the prostrations and there's fasting and there's feasting and there, you know, so there's a very, it's very embodied, which also gave me a place from which to engage with the psychology.
The , second chapter in the book, you given the title, That Which Is Not Assumed Is Not Healed. Which is says, I understand the core maxim of patristic soteriology, and I think the quote was from Saint Greg of Nazi.
Nazi, yes. Yeah. Nazi. And, and, and with that quote, that which is not assumed, is not healed, you start to draw links to depth psychology and the valuing of the . The shadowy parts of the human psyche or, or the it and, and, and integration of, of parts or complexes that we might not want to face.
Yeah, well, I mean, this is, this is really core. I think you, you know, you've gone right to the heart of the matter, because I think many people confuse religion with morality, and as such, have a kind of, understandably so, a fidelity to a certain moral, not even moral stance, but a moral self understanding.
One of the things that Jung, I think, you know, struggled with in his own, you know, as, as I'm sure many of your listeners know that, you know, Jung was the son of a pastor and grew up in a, in a certain time. And, and I guess in, you could say in Protestant history, where, where the, you know, when you, when you read his writings, he's obviously struggling to find the meaning in the symbols of the church.
And so anyway, so Jung goes on his own, his own journey. You know, when he writes about the shadow and the need to encounter the shadow, I think over time he really developed his thinking on the shadow, but I think initially there was just some sense of, you know, Oh, hey, look, you've got to really confront who you really are, not who you think you ought to be from a moral standpoint.
And, you know, kind of like the Pharisee and the Republican will thank God I'm not someone who's envious or spiteful or greedy or jealous. And then of course, you know, you go into analysis and you find out you're all those things. And so you. You know, I think he was sort of reckoning with the shadow in a way that the church actually encourages people to do as well through confession, but of course in the Protestant church you didn't have confession.
So that's sort of, you know, one, one difference there. But I, I think that this idea that we would split away from the parts of ourselves that are not. That don't meet our own moral standards or our own sense of who we are or want to be You know, I mean that's sort of depth psychology 101, right? But the idea then that when you the danger then income in bringing religion into that, is that of course we can then say, well, there's the danger of putting kind of a God complex, I would say, rather than God on the throne there that says, well, don't, don't go there into that part of yourself.
I mean, don't look at the porn addiction, don't look at the cheating or the lying or the, you know, the stealing or any of that, because, you know, God hates that about you. And you've got to You know, you can maybe take it to confession, hopefully you are, but it's nothing to be explored or understood in any particular way.
Whereas, you know, Jung would say, Oh, well, you know, let's go right there and see what's going on. And so I think that. The, that which is not assumed is not healed was a kind of, it just rang so clearly in, in my head through the centuries of my goodness, you know, if that's what they were saying, and they were saying it also with regards to, I mean, to many things, it was also to the, as Maximus picked it up later, had to do also with the human will, but it was a basic understanding of if we are being saved by Christ.
Then, Christ must have within himself all of who we are. Because if there's any part of us that is not in his human experience, it cannot be saved by him. Does that make sense? I don't think I'm saying this very eloquently, but... If he, if if he knows suffering, then suffering can be healed. If he knows grief, then grief can be healed.
But, but the temptation then, of course to say yes, but of course Christ never did steal and he never did kill and he didn't, you know, do all these terrible things that we do, but he has to have had the ability to do it or else our will can't be healed. Right. His will was free. He has to have had a free human will.
And so, I kind of elaborated on that to say, okay, but then, so we're also talking about the psyche, then, like, all of the psyche has to have been assumed into this project of therapia, of salvation, otherwise... There's just parts of our psyche hanging out that can't be healed and that's not what surely not what the fathers were saying.
So that means even our porn addiction, even our envy, even our murder has to have some place in it where healing can happen to some place where Redemption can happen and not just in a, again, in a juridical sense of like you're absolved and, and, and you can still, you know, have a shot at heaven someday.
It's more, can it be reached and can it be integrated and can it be pulled back and. And I found such a, a depth of wisdom in the patristics around again, it's tricky because you can't, you don't want to be sort of anachronistic in, in the using of the language, but, you know, Pseudodionysus talks about how everything has to participate to some degree, however minute, in the good, because if it didn't, it wouldn't exist, because God is the good and God is being.
And so even someone who has a, you know, A life filled with what you might call sin or complexes or however is still attached is is still participating in life And so there therefore is still connected to the good and that that's the starting point And then I think we're young took it further is then to say I mean sort of circling back to what we were talking about earlier Okay, but even this point of sin now Does it, does it have a purpose?
Does it have a meaning? Is there, what is behind the, I'll just use again the pornography, you know, addiction online, it's so rampant that, is there a search for intimacy here? Is there a desire for communion here? It may be distorted, quote unquote, but is something trying to happen here? So rather than writing it off as a sin, why don't you explore it and see what it's trying to pull the person towards?
And it seemed to me that when you do that, you will often find one of the goods of life behind that, the pulling the person towards Eros and communion and desire and, you know, all of those things that are embedded in it for them. So it's, I think it's a very important. understanding that God's grace is, is so beyond what we think it is when we set ourselves up as God, and that it all is assumed in some way.
It has to be. All of the human experience, again, not, not to say that God in Christ, you know, if you're Christian, assumed all of the the sins, but, but the, but, but all of the psyche was there, and it's the psyche that it's all rooted in, if that makes sense.
As you speak, I got curious about if the Orthodox Church and the sacraments, if you would say that it holds the therapeutic process alive. Or if there are things there that it would learn from or benefit from depth psychology, or if it already has a depth psychology sort of integrate into it.
Well, I think, you know, we, some years ago with some colleagues, we started something called the analytical psychology and Orthodox Christianity consultations called APOC. And we We started putting together some gatherings to try to address exactly some of these questions. So we would invite and Orthodox priests and speakers and we would invite Jungian analysts and and we would try and get a conversation going just across the Across the border as it were And I think it's a, you know, it's a tricky thing to say.
It's both a tricky thing to say that neither one can learn from the other. And it's a tricky thing to say that they can learn from each other because they're not operating in the same, with the same set of assumptions and the same set of values. So I think you always have to be very careful to to respect.
These are two very different animals meeting each other, if, if I may use that image, and not to expect them to act like each other or to appreciate or want or desire the same things necessarily. That said, this is also why I wanted to find out whether there were any meeting places, right? And and And, and mainly just again because otherwise, you know, we risk being very split as, as persons.
So I, I think that, you know, I'll just say this, that one of the, the areas of conversation that was lively was around the issue of like fantasy, for example. So I mean the Orthodox world does have https: otter. ai
And of course, many, many, you know, priests and spiritual fathers and mothers now are also psychologically informed. So it's sort of hard to say what's, you know, to just tease out. It's as if they've never influenced each other, but of course they have. But I think that
there's, there's always a concern. About fantasy and what can come in is, is one thing that I've experienced. So when you're in, you know, in the clinical room and, and a client comes in and has a dream about I don't know, a demon or a, you know, a nightmare with a demon or something, you know, we tend to not immediately assume it's an actual demon, but that what's going on, what's the psyche, what's the dream ego saying, you know, you kind of interpret it and analyze it.
I think that. Images like that. Others, like sexual images or, or violent images have, have had a, a different meaning in the Orthodox church as more of a, if not overtly demonic, but as a symptom of passions that are, or sins that are, are in need of, of tending and they can be tended to with compassion, but they're still seen.
I mean, I could be wrong, but I would propose that they're seen less symbolically than in depth psychology, that the idea that there might be something else behind this image that's just trying to happen as a psychological event is not as focused on, understandably, because their focus of the interior life in the Orthodox Church is, you know, the union with God through prayer.
So, it's, it's a different. It's a different emphasis. And in that life, you can, you can have a lot of images come up that they will look at more as temptations or as something to be prayed perhaps through. Whereas we might in the Jungian world tend to look at them more as, Oh, look, here's a fantasy. Let's work with the image. So it's, it's a, it's a different emphasis.
And on that note, I wanted to ask as well about the dreams, like, historically, is that something that has been. Is it more valued or put emphasis on in the tradition, or is it more a skepticism or something you can say about that on dreams?
Well, you know, I'm not really an expert on that, so I don't, I don't really, I haven't studied dreams very much in the church tradition, but it is striking that they do show up in scripture.
And, you know, it says warned in a dream and you know, an angel appeared in a dream. And so there's a kind of, I think there was a openness to to, to dreams, but again, I think where you will, you know, as I'm thinking out loud right now, I think that the main area you run into trouble is that, and this is a question of method, you know, the Orthodox and, and so let, let me lay this out without.
saying that I'm agreeing or disagreeing with one side or the other, but this is my experience of each one, is that in the Orthodox Church, you are talking about the ultimate, right? You're talking about God and, and there are truth claims that are made about God. In the Jungian world, Jung himself says, I, you know, no one can know what the ultimate things are.
So I'm going to talk about Psyche, and that's all I can talk about and then of course he talks about God endlessly But you're supposed to have caught that first caveat. He makes where he's saying I'm not speaking as a theologian I'm I'm speaking as a psychologist the the danger I think on the Orthodox side of course is when you make truth claims about God you are making claims about the ultimate and so People who don't share those of course are not going to understand or agree, but it, you know, it's, it's, that is the nature of religion and that's the nature of the church to make these claims.
I think the danger on the Jungian side can be that this, it becomes, that the psyche is all encapsulating, that everything is psyche and you can't ever have an experience of God because even that's a psychological experience. Mm-hmm. that's generated by Psyche, and I think that's the danger on the Jungian side, so.
Mm-hmm. . But, but if you respect again that they each are coming from those two places. And you have to understand that then there's going to be a limitation on how much you can agree on then, okay, but you can still have a conversation, you know, it's, it's still an interesting conversation to have, you just have to understand that, that there's a very, two very different places that we're speaking from.
Hmm. When I would say you start that kind of warning to the field of depth psychology to make everything into psyche. It reminds me of what Sean McGrath, which has been a guest on the show, and we also did a podcast together called Secular Christ. He speaks about psychological absolutism and the dangers of that, and the limits of psychology and understand that better.
But I was also thinking as we ambulated around and as you Yeah, I have to unpack, this beautiful quote, that which is not assumed is not here. I was thinking about a book that came out a few years ago. I don't know if you saw it, but it became very popular. It's called No Bad Parts. By this research works who developed a therapeutic system or technique called internal family system, which is becoming very, very popular, which basically works, , much like active imagination that you get in contact with different parts and start dialogues.
But it's a little bit more, I would say, maybe a bit more concrete and a bit more systematized, but it's just something with that title, no bad parts, because it connects to the idea that, , It's all, it's all there for some sort of reason and that we have to be open to examine it and to look at it and Right.
And as you to see it. . Yeah. And I think, you know, one of the things that I think it is important to, to say, and I mean obviously there are , there are many different types of schools of depth psychology and, you know, many analysts out there. And so there's a whole wide range. But I think it, you know, Yong talked about how.
You can only be morally responsible for that which you're conscious of, right? And so, I do want to clarify, it's, it's not in my understanding at least that Okay, if we go, if everything is assumed and there are no bad parts, then therefore everything goes, anything, you can do whatever you want, it doesn't matter, it's not, you know, I don't think that Jung himself was sort of disavowing any kind of moral stance towards ourselves or the community around us.
But, but simply saying that, first of all, you can't be morally responsible for what you're not in control of and you're not in control of the unconscious and you're not in control of the conscious, but you know, like you don't have even an understanding of why you're doing this kind of compulsion or whatever it is.
And then secondly, that yes, there is. Every possibility that there is something really valuable hidden for you here. So even, and that's what we have to make conscious, is what, what's really going on. And then, and then you can see whether you want to keep doing this or not, and how that squares with your own morality.
But I, let me just read you this little quote. It's in, it's in the book. And it's, I just came across it earlier, it was St. Maximus, and I was just reminded of how powerful this is, I think, because I think it's so easily forgotten in our world in general. And it's not just the Church that has morality, you know, as a kind of banner it waves.
And it's just a kind of interesting quote for, I think, our times in general. But he said that, this was him writing on the Lord's Prayer, that the Spirit... has to persuade the intellect to desist from moral philosophy in order to commune with the supra essential logos through direct and undivided contemplation.
For when the intellect has become free from its attachment to sensible objects, it should not be burdened any longer with preoccupation about morality as with a shaggy cloak. And I just, I just love this idea of morality. Preoccupations is a shaggy cloak. And I like to think that Freud would have liked that too.
And, and of course, so Maximus is talking about this idea of, again, sort of direct and experience of God through contemplation of the logos. And this is very much a patristic idea. You know, it's a sort of a mystical apprehension of, of God. But I'm reminded of Jung's quote, and I, I don't know where he has this, but he wrote somewhere that.
The, you know, the idea of the superego, Freud's superego, is a necessary substitute for an experience of the self. And I just think it's so marvelous not to equate, again, the self with God, because self... Even from a Jungian perspective, as much as it may connect to God, as Yulanov writes, it's also part of the created order.
And, and St. Maximus is talking about, you know, apprehension and perceiving of, of, of God, of the energies of God. But, but analogously, this idea that it's not morality that is the thing, you know, Maximus writes this elsewhere. He said that as you say, it That the truth does not exist for the sake of virtue.
Virtue exists for the sake of the truth. So it's, it's, it's a, it's both a guidepost and a byproduct of engagement with the truth.
Yes. We had a lot of discussion, a lot, but some discussion on the podcast with, with different people around this. Different, the superal from, from conscience, for example.
Mm-hmm. Something that Jung also developed his thoughts on, in his latest, say, a psychological view of conscience, where he makes these distinctions and, and speak of conscience as, as, as the V day or the, you know, potentially the, the vo, the voice of God. And, and differentiating that from this internalized father images or images of authority and, and the importance of doing that work like you're moving from a moral as a sort of idea of the, of the mass to, to, to, to ethics.
So I just Yeah. To ethics. Yeah. Yeah. And to conscience and to, so I was actually thinking, yeah, please. No, and I'm just thinking in the role of course, of projection in, in so much of what is ethical or not ethical, that how we, how we dehumanize others, how we project onto them. That the, you know, so much of the work of depth psychology and the recollection of projection off of people actually allows for a much.
Greater morality in, in a right, in a way because you can actually, you begin to engage with others as others and not just shadow projections or, you know, whatever other complex there might be. So I think that the idea that, yeah, working through these issues actually frees up true conscience. Kind of a, a true ethic of, yeah, of relatedness.
Makes a lot of sense.
And, I mean, this is probably too big of a question, but is there something you could say on conscience and its role, you know, in the Orthodox tradition? I understand it's a huge question, but I do think you touch on it in the book.
Well, I think that just anecdotally, it's, it's something that is considered to be, you know, a prompting of God in the heart. It's a kind of. You know, when someone's struck by a moment of conscience, it's, it's part of how, I mean, I haven't looked at this sort of in depth theologically, but I, I would myself link it to this notion of the image of God in it, speaking, if I'm speaking as a theologian, that the image of God in us.
It has this understanding of what's true in, in it, embedded in it. And when we, you know, again, I really love the works of St. Maximus, and so it comes up a lot when I talk, but you know, to go back to St. Maximus, he talks about how the passions arise when we distort our perception of an object. And combine that with one of our natural faculties, like desire or anger.
And so it's, it's, again, the natural faculty is good. It's been given by God. The capacity for anger is also the capacity for courage and desire can be love. But when you, when there's a distortion in your perception of something, it's, then the desire becomes lust or, you know, the anger becomes vengefulness or, you know, so it's, they get what they called, they like to use the word distorted.
And I think that conscience is, is that deep knowing in you that something has been distorted here and you're acting on it.
But yeah, I'm, but I'm not, I don't know, you know, that's not an area examined overly much theologically. Yeah. But moving maybe into, to areas that I know that you, you have examined deeply in your book I was thinking about What you just brought up here, Eros, and the importance of Eros and desire, both in the analytic process, but also then the question of its role in in a patristic theology.
Your chapter four is called Eros, Healing Fire. It's a great title. Could you speak a little bit about Eros and desire and what you found in your, in your research there?
Goodness, where to start? Well, I think, you know, again, I mean,
so I'm just thinking for a moment how to frame this, but when I was working through this research, the, there were two things again, that I stood out at me in this, particularly in a Jungian approach. So it's also, I mean, I, I studied many of the other psychoanalysts and really benefited from them as well.
And I've always It's kind of employed an eclectic understanding in my own clinical understanding. So let's just sort of parenthetically, but, but Jung has both this idea in his method that there is a kind of a psyche that is. I mean, that we have this, we are, we have been given wherever it comes from psyche itself.
And then there's, there's the, as we talked about earlier, the, the telos of the person, the journey of the person, right. Through life and, and the, you know, their, their own arc of, of destiny. And Yeah. Excellent. And healing in an analytic, you know, individual, it's, it's basically the path of individuation for them.
Right. And I was astonished when I was doing this research, I was really pulled to the, to the works of St. Maximus. And I, I was actually quite literally dumbfounded when I understood that a basic tenant of St. Maximus's understanding was what he called the, the what are basically the, Logos of Being, and then the trope of being.
Meaning that, Being is given to us, and then there is the trope of being, which is, is how we, again our arc through life, that how we go through life, what we do with our own sense of being. So there was a kind of incredible overlap of understanding that made me want to really explore. And so the first part, the kind of the.
The Logos of Being, the, the Psyche Qua Psyche and Self as Self, that's one of the chapters in the book where I look at what I think was a kind of, it's the image of God, it's the innate impetus towards healing, it's, it's the kind of, the blueprint of the self as Jung talks about, it's kind of what's given, it's what's there, right?
And the chapter on Eros is the next part, which is how you go, what, what takes people from a kind of. Not stasis, because it's not static in, in that way, but a kind of potentia to an actualization, right? To a going out into the world and doing something to you know, it's, it's the innate talent to be an architect.
And then it's the drive to go to architecture school, right? It's the, it's the, it's the potential versus the actualization. And I think that in, in both of those. Whether it was St. Maximus or, or a more modern day understanding of the person. Of course Eros is, is key because Eros is, you know, I think it's, I discussed in that chapter can be understood in, in a lot of different ways.
It's not just sexual, although it, it certainly manifests sexually. But it's, it's desire moving out into the world, seeking connections, seeking relatedness, seeking the object of the desire.
And so that seems quite it seems sort of to make, it was common sense within the, the psychoanalytic world, it makes sense that desire would be so key. What I was surprised to find was how key it was in the theological world as well, that, that it's the desire for life, for being, for God. It's, it's the, it's the, the seeking of union with the good that then also creates a kind of doesn't create, but participates in a,
in a thrust of Eros that is also about integration and not just again Oh, you know, I, I
think Eros is often confused with lust
in our,
in our world. And it's, it's not that it's a, it's a deeper, more powerful, broader, richer vein of, of desire. That can unify and can
unite and can
unite without confusion, different aspects, both of ourselves and of the cosmos
as Maximus talked about.
So it, but we need that thrust and we need that ability to, to love. And it's not a sentimental love. It's not a it's not a moral love in, in, in that I would say air quotes around moral, in a sense, like. It's not, it's, it's it's full of life and it's full of fire. And it's,
it has to be real, otherwise it's not Eros.
It can't just be a kind of lip service to kindness.
So it's, it's, it's, it's, I think it's very much related to this poor sense of self that we were talking about and the true sense of self. And of course, God is love in, in the Christian tradition. So it's all, you know, whether you're, you know, you're contemplating God, you're immersed in love, you're, it's, and the images of fire abound as well.
So, but it's hard because then you, you, you know, you. You can say all of that, but then how many of us really live that way? And I think that's where the deaf psychologists really, you know, excel. And they have all kinds of understandings of where Eros can get stifled, where it can be shamed, where it can be blocked, where it can be a cause of great fear, where it can be attached to the wrong.
You know, like Fairbairn's idea that we, we are confected to internalized objects, even if they're destructive. You know, the, the abusive parent, you, the child still loves them because that's their parent. And now, you know, 50 years later, that inner object still is the object of a lot of arrows, even though it hurts the psyche of the person, it hurts the person in their life.
So it's, it's a, you know, it's a very powerful force.
Well, moving to another side then, , a link that you're drawing between Patristic theology and Analytical Psychology has to do with the, the belief in the, the healing impetus of the psyche or the reliance of the healing impetus of the psyche. While we are Yeah, I, and because the listeners are aware that that's a fundamental in, in analytical psychology, but you spent some time also expanding on that in the book.
Yes. I mean, I think that's, that is what I was sort of referring to earlier about the, the kind of the logos of being the, the, the image of God and the person from a theological perspective or, or the psyche, the self and.
You know, I was reminded of this wonderful quote by Anne Ulanov of, of, I'm paraphrasing a little bit, but, that the psyche insists. that all of its parts be included, all of its feelers, and all of its feathers. And I always get this wonderful image of a caterpillar with feathers coming along. But, you know, the psyche can conjure up such strange images for us, and seems so alien and other to us.
But this healing impetus, I think, that is such a gracious way of understanding these strange aspects of the psyche that can crop up and And be very uncomfortable it's part of the case to be made for that, that which is not assumed is not healed is also that what shows up appears to want integration.
It appears to want inclusion. It's not, it's not indifferent to its
its lived outness in our lives, if that makes sense. So, again, like a compulsion or a complex or a symptom that keeps bothering us, on the one hand, you know, if you're having panic attacks, I mean, they're absolutely awful and it is devastating. On the other hand, is there something there that is trying to get included and worked out and, and brought into life in a different way?
Whether it's a wound or a, or a desire that is, seems to be too dangerous to have, you know, so it, it, it, it, it just seems that in the living of it, there is a, a desire for inclusion, but I think that that is the brilliance of Jung to say, Yes, the symptom is not just a symptom that, again, we want to get rid of so that you're better functioning or, you know, people love to say what's quote unquote normal or what's quote unquote healthy these days, but it's, it's, it's deeper and bigger and, and you know, I would say better than that.
It's not just about being functional. It's about living. And, and so there seems to be fundamentally a deep desire for life that can then get very distorted because of the hand we've been dealt and, and the choices we make or some combination of both. So I think from a, you know, it's very important to, to see that from a depth psychological perspective and then just to say, well, that makes perfect sense because if the image of God lives in us.
What's it doing, you know, I mean, what, just being very practical about it, like what, what would the point of it be if it means nothing in our lived lives? And this was a way of wondering if this is part of what that is. It's this is part of the image of God,
and instead this type of openness also in the Orthodox experience or, you know, as you experience it for for also I'm thinking now for desire for the passions for seeing and putting value to the longings of the body, often, I guess, stereotypically, we look at most Christian sort of, you know, traditions as against that, or, you know, disown that
I think it's difficult to say it's one thing. I can speak anecdotally and say that I've mixed, mixed reception. I think there have been times when I have Loaded some of these ideas, for example, I remember there was a article on, on internet pornography addiction and they were talking exactly about, this was a psychological article, about that this was a kind of really a desire for intimacy and, and connection and should be understood as such.
And I, I took it to a priest and professor and said, what do you think? And he said, that's exactly an Orthodox approach. That's how we would understand it too. And I thought, wow, you know, I, I wasn't expecting that. But you know, I've also heard others, it, it depends, you know, priest to priest, church to church, and not because the theology is actually that individual, but I think people, you know, they, they take it and understand it in their own ways and in light of their own background.
And so you can certainly find a great warning against images of sexuality, of passion. I think that they, even in the early church, talked about how, you know, when trying to do the liturgy or, or to do something, you know, to engage in deep prayer, that, you know, the demons will send images of erotic temptation to, to derail you.
And so I, you know, I don't think that, By and large in the church, if someone has something like that, they go, Oh, this is great. You know, let's just see what this image is all about. But, but there, the reason I think the conversation is worth continuing to have is because there is a deep respect for desire and there is a deep, particularly in the patristics focus on Eros as a, as a.
Almost as like a power of God, right, that it's there. So that's true. But then there's of course the, the, the idea that that's not meant to be focused. The difference is going to be on the object of the desire because it's one thing to, to love another person, but it's, it's relativized by the love of God, if that makes sense.
It's, it's included within the love of God, which is the supposed to be, and the, what You know, it's the struggle throughout life to be the primary love. So it's not... Oh, I love chocolate croissants and I'm just going to eat as many as I can because that's, that's my, you know, my right. And I, that's my desire and I'm living, you know, living life fully.
It's, it's, and that's not even a very good example, but I think I'm just trying to say that the passions are constrained by an understanding of what's supposed to be ultimate. And on the other side, you can say, well, sometimes therapy seems like it just unlooses the passions. And everyone says, Oh, good.
Well, now I'm not repressed anymore, but then, you know, but then where does it go? Does it have a, does it have a, a kind of life giving telos for the person? And, and I think that the idea that it just unlooses the passions and doesn't send them anywhere useful is a often a religious suspicion of therapy.
So it's a kind of you know, it's, it's, again, these are, these are complicated areas to navigate and require respect for both sides, because there also often are assumptions about both sides.
We have, we have already touched on such a fundamental questions for our human existence and how the field of orthodoxy, theology and Christianity engage with that and also the field of analytical psychology.
It's been already very rich. So I'm sort of hesitant to add this last question because it's another huge one, but I think I'll try still. Okay. And that is, you are also making a brief excursion on death. I think you write it like that. And trying to look at and describe how analytical psychology and orthodox Christianity looks at death.
And you say like biological death is not the whole death. that death is not as an opposite to immortality, but to the true life. I thought that, yeah, felt very fundamental. And if you could just say a few more words about your, yeah, your exploration of that.
Yeah. I mean, I, I think again, it's tricky, but it, it kind of was born out of, you know, this idea, they say when the church that Christ has defeated and okay, but everybody's still dying.
So what does that mean? And You know, on the one hand, again, speaking theologically, you can say, well, what it means for eternity and the resurrection and the resurrection of all, you know, all people to, you know, the, the life to come and that, that, that there, that this isn't the only life and that there's a life beyond this.
But again, you know, Jung would say, well, I don't know anything about the life beyond this one. I can only talk about this one. And I think that both orthodox Christianity and depth psychology could agree that there are, there are, I hesitate to even say people, but it just To start by saying that there are people who, who live dead, even though they're alive, that who seem as though they're, they're sort of dead on the inside, even though they're alive.
And I, I think even that's a bit of a straw man, but it's that there are pieces of us that are dead, even while we're alive, or there are pieces of us that are dormant or as if dead. And there are times in our lives when we live, but we feel dead inside. And I don't just mean by dead, we feel nothing or we feel like, you know, but we can feel like we're not there.
We can feel like we're one step removed from our lives. We can feel like nothing we do helps and nothing ever changes. We can feel despair. We can feel walled off. You know, there's so many ways to experience a kind of deadness. And, and we can keep living while we're doing that. You know, biologically, we're living and we're getting up and making coffee and, you know, maybe getting the kids to school or getting ourselves to work or whatever it is, but there's that kind of deadness and And we can look at the reasons for why that is I think despair is usually a big part of it but the idea that that that can be changed that that can that we can You know, again Yulanov in one of her books, I think it was her book on poison ivy at the end of it says that the goal of a depth analysis is not health.
It's not to acquire the ability to have symbolic thinking. It's not, you know, it's, it's not a cerebral exercise or exercise in self insight. It's to come alive. It's livingness. It's that sense that you were just deeply alive and connected. to life. And, you know, and I think that that's, that's the analog on the depth psychological side.
And I think on the, to life and to death, and I think on the theological side, that there is a sense that people experience in the sacraments, the sacraments of healing and communion in confession of, of touching and being touched by a life. a sense of life that is beyond us, that is the, the uncreated energy that, that is a kind of radiance that comes in so that Even as you're struggling with your dead parts and maybe you're in an analysis or therapy at the same time wrestling out these dead parts, there's also this uncreated life and that is being offered and to participate in and that you can do even though you will physically die someday.
So. It's sort of an interesting place to end, right? Because actually we're back right on the, the point of there are analogs, but they're not the same because the, the Orthodox Church is talking about God's uncreated energies and you can, if you're not going to psychologize that, then you have to respect that that's what they're claiming.
And on the other side, there is the, the deep psychological work of working through your own dead spaces and into life. You can bring those two together, they're not the same, but they can meet, and they, and they, they do meet, which is, I believe, which is why I was trying to write this book. Well, it sounds indeed like a good place to, to stop.
Yeah. Beautiful. And thank you so much for sharing with us and taking the time. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, Jakob. It's a pleasure.