Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
What’s the role of conscience, ethics, and morals in psychological development and individuation?
Psychoanalysis should be free! From this motto, we're looking at making the insights of more than a century of psychoanalytic understanding available to anyone and everywhere. Our first goal is to produce a package of general introduction videos about psychoanalysis as well as to explain its key concepts.
Support us through our Patreon page! https://www.patreon.com/berlinpsychoanalytic
The psychology of conscience.
Featuring Donald car,
Sean McGrath and YOKA PKI.
What's the role of conscience,
ethics and morals in psychological
development and individuation.
To investigate this question.
We invited again, the Toronto bay,
psych analyst, Donald carve and
philosophy and theology professor
Sean McGrath for a conversation.
As the base for our discussion, we have
read the important 1958 young essay,
a psychological view of conscience.
Donald carve is the author of the
book, a still small voice psycholytic
reflections on guilt and conscience.
Sean McGrath is a Canadian philosopher
and professor of philosophy at
Memorial university of Newfoundland.
He's known for his published
work in the history of philosophy
and the philosophy of religion.
Major single authored works includes
for example, the dark ground of
spirit shelling and the unconscious.
There is also a separate podcast
series called secular Christ where
Yaka, Luki discusses questions
related to Christianity today.
Yaki is a union psych analyst
with a private practice in Berlin
and the host of this podcast.
Jakob Lusensky real: First of all, I
just want to say that I, I'm very happy
to have both of you in the same room.
You have both very different voices,
but voices I've learned from, and then I
had the opportunity to have conversation
with and Yeah, I'm really excited to
see how our conversation develops today.
And when I spoke to you, Dawn, we, we did
delve into the Metro of, of conscience.
And you have, you know, written
on that, worked with that.
And you have a lot of experience.
And my, the thought came to me that it
would be an interesting exercise together
to, to use conscious as a starting
point to, to delve into the, to the
psychology of that, but also to through
hopefully the help of Sean and get a
little bit of a theological backdrop to
conscience, which is of course a huge
theme concept truths that we have to
wrestle with in, in, in limited time.
But I would like to, I thought it could
be appropriate to start , this discussion
on conscious with Martin Luther.
Actually the first lecture that I
invited Sean to do in Berlin was Luther.
Deconstructionism some
years back a great lecture.
That's still available on YouTube and
Luther been sort of accompanying me
in, in various ways, you know, through
an, after my secondary training.
And he has a lot to say also on the theme
of conscience, but I thought as a, as
a starting point for this conversation
today could be the reformation movement
at the diet of worms back in 1521,
when Martin Luther standing before the
emperor, Pope's representative said
the following since then your Syrian
majesty and your lordships seek a simple
answer, I would give it in this manner.
Neither horn, nor unless I am convinced
by the testimony of the scriptures
or by clear reason, I am bound by
the scriptures I have quoted, and my
conscience is captive to the word of God.
I cannot and will not retract anything.
Certain sense.
It is neither safe nor right to go against
conscience and supposedly the secretary to
the orchestra, Bishop of premier disregard
disregarded disregarded Luther's appeared
by shouting lay aside your conscience.
Marty, you must lay it aside the
court because it is in error.
And I, I thought it is 15 because
this also puts a context for, for the
complexities of discussing conscience
and separating those inner voices.
Luther's appealing here to conscience
and the assertion of freedom of the
human conscience against the hegemonic
power of the church and state.
And this is seen as the start of of
the reformation process, but it also
shows that complexity to know when can
one be sure that conscience actually
speaks to the voice of good or the
voice of truth or the voice of God.
And or when is it that devil in
disguise or perhaps one of our
parents or other authority that we
grew up in that is speaking to us in.
So I thought that I would from here
invite you Sean, to see where you would
go with this, that if you could yeah.
Maybe share your reflections on, on
this moment or was it a shared, but also
to give us a little bit of a theory,
theological framing of conscience?
Sean McGrath: Well, Luther in this moment
is in fact being a good Scholastic is
there's there's there is something in this
moment, that's that veers away from the
tradition, but it's not what you think.
So Luther insisting that he stands by
his conscience is in fact completely
compatible with the tradition, the
medieval tradition that he's trained
in and his critics accusing him, having
of having an error in conscience is
also compatible because conscience
in this medieval tradition very much
like in the UME article, conscience
is not identical to knowledge
it's compatible with ignorance.
Conscience means co scans.
Yes.
So it's a, there's a, it's a double
knowledge, or it's a knowledge
that accompanies knowledge.
And so there's this, there's this, there's
this kind of ambiguity and conscience.
And it seems to me that that's, what's
coming to the fore in this, in this
exchange, what Luther does in this moment.
That's actually against the, that
that, you know, violates the Catholic
tradition is he says, I will stand by
scripture and reason and conscience.
And he, he excludes tradition.
So that's, that's the re
the reformation moment.
The reformation moment is not that
Luther insists on standing by his
conscience over it, against the church
that would want him, you know, that it
encourages him to violate his conscience.
That's kind of a pop version.
The real thing going on here is
that he's, he's cut tradition out
of the out of the out of theology.
But if we go back to the business of
conscience, you know, it's a medieval,
it's a medieval principle that every
conscience binds, even an Aaron one.
Sorry, Thomas Aquinas argues that one
should never go against one's conscience.
And if you think about it, it's
pretty clear what he means there.
What would it mean to go
against your conscience?
It means to do something
which you believe to be wrong.
That's always, always a sin.
Now that said conscience.
And this is what I like about
the young piece, actually.
I think we might have some internet
connections here, but you can look
after that after, you know, th the
conscience is not innate knowledge of
the good, it's not enough just to kind
of spontaneously follow your conscience
because your conscience can be in error.
And this is what Lou Luther's critics are
saying, your, your conscience is an error.
So the question is whether Luther's
conscience is informed enough, whether
his conscience has become, if you want
to speak, psychoanalytically has to
become conscious enough to be trusted.
Because conscience cannot simply is.
As I said, it's not simply innate
knowledge of the good, it's a kind of
innate capacity for the good, or it's an
innate tendency towards the good, which
requires inf which requires knowledge.
That's how the scholastics
would put it over.
It requires conscious.
So there's this idea that one has to be
responsible to one's conscience when it
has to inform her when asked to read,
when asked to think, when asked to listen
to authorities, and one has to discern
whether there's any doubt, whether one
is in any doubt about, you know, what w
when regards by a conscience as the good.
And if there's a, if there's a
bit of doubt there, then one has
to actually pause, suspend the
judgment and, and inform oneself.
And what Luther is saying here, which
is perfectly in accordance with the
Catholic tradition is that I, there
is no doubt in my conscience and
therefore I need to do what I'm doing.
That's that is, that is
fully Orthodox position.
Jakob Lusensky real: And
what about the the conscience
as, as consciousness of sin?
Can you say something about that as well?
Sean McGrath: Well, that's,
what's so interesting here.
So there's a, this is a complicated
story that goes all the way back to play.
And it's the connection between
knowledge and virtue, right?
So out of Play-Doh you get this
idea that knowledge is virtue.
That one cannot know the good and
not do the good and one cannot
do the good and not know that.
And sometimes that's been spun as
a kind of determinism, but it's
actually an extremely deep point.
And I think it's the very root of
this idea of the duality between
conscience and consciousness,
that they're not the same thing.
And, and, and that, that is that
you know a conscience that has
become fully conscious, you could
say is a knowledge of the good.
And at that point, you know,
we have everything is in place.
It's a complete, an entire participation
in what ought to be done, but anything
short of that is going to have trouble.
So this idea here that comes from
Socrates, you know, who says that
no man can do wrong knowingly.
That is you can't look into the
face of the good and choose evil.
That is, we all desire the good
on some basic level, even if
it's just the good for our.
You know that there's, there's even, even
a suicide, even the masochist in a certain
way is preferring death and pain to life
and pleasure and saying, this is my good.
And so there's a, there's
a kind of inborn bend.
This is the tradition out
of which Luther is speaking.
There's this inborn
drive towards the group.
Which is incompatible with with,
you know, voluntarily doing the bad.
But th that said the, the good has
to be brought to consciousness.
That is there has to be a growth
from this kind of unconscious.
It's very interesting, but
conscience in the tradition is kind
of like an unconscious inclination
towards the good left on its own.
It's not enough.
It's gotta be raised up to consciousness.
And with this elevation of conscience
to consciousness, we have, then all
that's required for the moral act.
Now, of course it has to be done freely.
So it's not, there's not a mechanistic
thing, so one's will as involved.
And so this leads to
certain kinds of paradoxes.
So how do we, how do we accuse
somebody of being guilty of sin
that is of knowingly doing what's
wrong and Aquinas who's very subtle.
Thinkers says, well, what's going on.
There is disavowal he doesn't use the
word, but basically when you see either.
Culpable evil.
What you see is culpable ignorance.
Somebody is refusing to elevate
this unconscious inclination towards
the good which we call conscience
to the level of consciousness so
that it could be a fully moral act.
Instead, there are kind of at a certain,
and this is really very puzzling moment.
They're saying, no, I will not to no,
no, it's what Jesus calls ideology.
Now I will not to know.
I do not know.
I will not know what I need to know
in order to, to trust my instinct.
You could say my spontaneous inclination.
And at that point we have something, you
know, problematic, but, but nevertheless,
the principle remains that every
conscience binds even an error in one.
And that's that, that, that rich
paradox at the center of the medieval
tradition is coming right to the fore.
And this dialogue that.
Jakob Lusensky real: Don.
Do you have any in for now any spontaneous
reactions to what's been shared?
Donald Carveth: Well, the idea of the
need for conscience or for the voice of
conscience conscience to become conscious.
My thoughts immediately go to the
young paper and the Superbee example
he gives of the man who has the dream
of both arms covered in black dirt.
So this is a man who before his
discussion of his dream with you has.
Then having an unconscious conscious
and unconscious reaction of constancy,
he has not been conscious of what
his conscience is aware of and is
saying through the analysis of the
dream, he becomes conscious of it.
So our capacity to blind ourselves
to Constance is is profound.
It's all over the place.
I, I think much of my practice
involves the kind of thing that, that
young is describing in that dream.
Sean McGrath: And what I think what
young is, what he's so superbly pointing
out there is that this voice of God.
Conscience.
It is not enough.
Sometimes it's just the
voice of the community.
Sometimes it's some buried you
know, instinct for what's right?
And sometimes it's actually something
that actually should be resisted.
In other words, the spontaneity of
the voice, the fact that the voice is
direct and instinctive is not enough.
It has to be brought to this other level.
And I think this is very strong in,
in you somewhere Jung says that the
only evil is unconsciousness and, and
this, I think, touches to your work
Don that this growth in consciousness,
but cycle which psychoanalysis aims
towards has to be understood as a moral
drive towards the good or as an ethical
drive, I guess, is as liberal or young
would prefer it because he makes this
distinction between morality and ethics.
And I think your work
has brought this out.
What I understand Don to be doing
is he's, you know, he's, he's giving
the lie to a kind of classical
Freudianism, which understood the
psychoanalytical tradition to be.
You know, amoral in a certain way or
indifferent to moral, and then I guess,
metaphysical and religious questions,
because they all tend to go together.
As Freud saw pretty clearly that once
you started talking about morality in
a religion and philosophy is around the
corner, he didn't want to go around that
corner, but it seems to me what Don has
done in his book is he's argued though.
You've already turned that corner in so
far as conscious consciousness, a growth
and consciousness is always a good thing.
And a resistance to consciousness
is always a bad thing.
And that seems to me to be something
that's actually a medieval principle.
Donald Carveth: So I, I have
a problem with a part of
what you said earlier, Sean.
And it's, it's a problem.
I think in a lot of the literature,
I think also in young part of
the problem is the failure to
distinguish conscience from superego.
The word conscience is being
used to indiscriminately here.
I mean, I think we really need
a radical distinction between
conscience and superego.
I mean, both conscience and superego
appear as voices in our heads.
Both conscience and superego
can show up in dreams as in
the dream offered by young.
But, but they're very different
principles and it very much confuses
our thinking to use the word
conscience to, to describe both.
Because I think conscience is of God.
And I think it's a lot of the
time, not nearly as hard as
people think to discriminate
between these voices in our heads.
W well, I suppose my favorite
passage from the new Testament
is one for seven to 12 beloved.
Let us love one another, because love is
of God and everyone who loves is be gotten
by God and knows God, whoever is without
love does not know God for God is love.
Okay.
The conscience is the voice of God because
the conscience is a principle of love.
The superego is a principle of hate
You know, so when these voices speak
hatefully, cruelly, sadistically,
mockingly, attacking the that we're
doing, we're dealing with super ego there.
When the voice is loving however sad
and aggrieved, it may be because, you
know, the child is off the path and the
father who's calling him back to the
path, has tears in his eyes that father
with tears in his eyes speaks in a very
different way than the superego does.
So you know, I think a lot of
Well, let me just leave it at that.
I think this distinction is
crucial to our discussion
Sean McGrath: and it strikes me that
while both remain unconscious, the
distinction between them cannot be made.
That is, you know, superego and conscience
become confused precisely because
they're left sort of in the basement.
Exactly.
This connection between
conscience and knowledge.
They're not the same thing.
And even in the quote in the passage
from one John, you just cited, you know,
there is this play on loving God and
knowing God, and he loves knows God.
And he who does not love does
not know God that we are.
There's always this reference.
There's always this
connection to knowledge.
That's, that's coming forward here
and the connection is, is, is, is
there because we need to recognize.
That that it's not enough, for
example, to have a spontaneous
drive towards something.
It also has to be in a certain
way, illuminated by knowledge.
So like John could have said, you
know, he who loves his of God, but he
adds that he, you know, that loving
God and knowing God are actually one.
And if you do not know God, then
you're not loving in the right way.
I mean, it seems to me,
that's the implication.
This strikes me as important in our
day and age because we are, so we
are, we're still knee over romantics
where you're so fascinated by
spontaneous and instinctive behavior.
We're inclined to trust it.
You know, I trust my heart.
I have to do it.
I cannot do otherwise, you know,
kind of doing a Luther in our,
in our post post-modern moment.
But the spontaneity and the
directness of an action is not enough.
To, to, to validate it ethically,
there needs to be this second moment.
And this I think is what's coming out of
the medieval tradition and that young is
kind of brilliantly touching on the second
moment where conscience becomes conscious.
And I think Don you correct me at that
point, the distinction between that voice,
which is just an introjecting parental
voice of repression, the super ego and the
voice of God, they can be distinguished.
They can only be distinguished on the
level of consciousness, not on some
kind of spontaneous, unconscious level.
Donald Carveth: Right.
I, I agree.
I mean the whole psychoanalytic project
is trying to make that, which was
unconscious conscious and to promote
the development of self knowledge.
So I, I completely agree with that
point, but In terms of, you know,
the critique of the spontaneity.
I hesitate a little bit there because
one of the things I learned from the
young essay I finally finally found a way
that I could agree with his idea of the
archetype, because to me, the archetype
has always seemed like a very fuzzy
woolly concept of sort of innate ideas
or mythical patterns that come from where
I don't know, what are they grounded in.
But suddenly I realized that part
of what he's trying to do with the
concept of, of the archetype is to
say that He's referring to nature.
He's referring to elements of our
being that aren't natural that are
unlearned that do not come from culture.
And of course he's saying that
conscience is such a natural thing
and he he's referring to archetype
or patterns unlearned given built in.
And I think that conscience is grounded
in our mammalian and primate inheritance.
I think part of the problem in our
discussion again is, and here I, here I go
Friday and we, we need the distinctions.
We need the ed as well
as the ego, the superego.
We also need the conscience
and the ego ideal.
We need five structures.
But for Freud, the ed is grounded
in our animal inheritance.
Young seems to be sort of saying
that he makes me think that
conscience is part of the ed because
conscience is grounded biologically.
So the ed would contain natural urges,
like aggression urges, which could lead
to evil and destructiveness our dark side.
But the ed, I would argue,
also contains our light side.
The ed contains conscience
as well as as aggression.
I think young is pointing
to this with his idea of the
archetypical basis of conscience.
So yeah, so.
So just a word in favor of the
spontaneity of the built in the natural.
There is something there that
is very important that I think
that young is pointing to.
And, and I'm pointing to, by
trying to ground conscience
in attachment Bowlby, you know
points to our primate inheritance.
This is where attachment.
Our tendency towards
attachment is grounded.
It's instinctual in that
sense, it's in a unlearn.
So this is a big, important theme.
And it's enabled me to connect
with young in a way that I never
was able to connect to before.
Sean McGrath: Yeah, I hear
the point and it strikes me
that, you know, the ed, right?
That's S that's, the German is
really just a word for the it's.
It's a term to name the impersonal
dimension of the psyche,
at least formally speaking.
And it seems to me, what we're touching
on here is how D how differentiated.
Sense of the impersonal stratum truly is.
So the impersonal is not just violence
and excess and animal, but it's also, you
know, you could say angelic in a certain
way or it's, you know, it's got our demons
that are angels they're also transpersonal
or sub personal or something like that.
Donald Carveth: Yes, yes.
But, but, but here by, by grounding
the angelic in the ed I think
we get around a problem that I
don't think young got around.
He's stuck on, he's such a profoundly
dualistic thinker and he has such a
profound insight into the dualities of.
Our nature.
And he stuck on this dualistic concept of
God, which I find utterly unacceptable.
God is not both the dark and
the light God is the light.
God is love.
And when he points to the Lord's prayer,
lead us, not into him tent to temptation
this is an image of God is leading us
into temptation, putting us into danger.
And to me, all I can say is that as
a, that is either a flaw in the Lord's
prayer that needs to be revised.
Or I want you to tell me
there's a translation problem.
Somewhere.
If we go back to the Greek or we go back,
we'll find that that sentence lead us,
not into temptation, but of course, you
know, the Bible is full of images of.
Of a destructive God punishing God.
But to me, this is not, God, God
is the Summum bonum God is love.
This other stuff comes
from other from elsewhere.
Okay.
What's your reaction to all of that, Sean?
Sean McGrath: Okay.
So Don, you said a couple of
things there that are really
important, at least to my mind.
Young's dualism on the one hand.
And then the question of spontaneity on
the other and the question of spontaneity,
I find an easier one to deal with than the
dualism with regard to the spontaneity.
You know, there's, it seems to
me there's two problems here.
One is that we can repress our spontaneous
self to such a degree that we become,
you know, what, shelling calls a fish
then dismiss a person of just empty
understanding of rationalist automaton.
You know, somebody with no license and
clearly psychoanalysis is dealing with
that kind of illness all the time.
We might call that a
predominant form of neurosis.
Someone who's sort of cut off from
their instinctive life, whether it's
a, it's a knotty, whether it's their
animal life or their moral life, or even
just their personal being in the world.
And so that's a, that's a certain kind of.
Yeah, but there's another kind of
evil, of course, which is that one
has so surrendered oneself to nature.
You could say that reflection
and moral discernment and
responsibility have become negated.
And this is enough.
This is, this is a, you know, this
is, this is a, you could like the,
the D the D the delusion problematic,
because Delores has such difficulties
with reflection that at the end of
the day, he just wants people to kind
of spontaneously produce themselves
without any kind of moral discernment.
And ultimately that leads to a denial of,
of the distinction between good and evil,
but the distinction, which you just quite
clearly articulated in response to you.
So, for me, in my guide here is, is
shelling who in a very famous passage
says there's two kinds of madness.
One madness is the madness
that represses the spontaneous.
By the understanding and in
that kind of person, there is no
life, nothing comes from them.
They're kind of a walking dead.
And there's another kind of madness,
of course, in which this spontaneous
natural self has completely eclipsed
consciousness and knowledge and culture
and you know, some kind of psychosis.
So there's a kind of delicate
balancing act required here.
And I think that's what
we're trying to get at.
And that's what, that's what young is
getting at quite articulately in this
essay, the best parts of his assets.
But let's talk about the
bad parts of disaster.
For me, young is a
complete theoretical mess.
You know, this is why he's so interesting
because he he's just, he produces one
insight after the other insight and there
he's full of genius and possibility,
but the thing never gets knitted
together in any kind of satisfying way.
And he'll say one thing that,
you know, one could develop.
And, but then follow it up
with something else, which
completely confused as matters.
Exactly.
It's exasperating to read for that
very reason entirely confused.
And, and with regard to this question of.
That God that you know, that the dark
side of God and God has this shadow
side and God is beyond good and
evil and he's neither good nor evil.
And so we end up with some kind of,
I don't know what to say, you know,
some kind of monistic idea out of
outer Asia, rather than the moral
discernment between good and evil
that you were discussing earlier.
Those are two very different ideas
and they, they don't, they do not
fit together in Young's world at all.
So for example, if we follow the dark
side of God theme, which many unions
are very attached to the logical
consequence of that is that we should
do whatever it is we want to do.
You know, we should be
like Allister, Crowley.
We should you know, I will,
as the only law, right.
I, you know, because I
want it, it should be.
And any any kind of any kind of judgment
about that is something to be a jury.
There is no good and evil.
There's just really.
Power and the expression of it.
And I think, I think, or like
Dilas, who was very influenced
by you UME, he actually brought.
He actually filled out that sentence
and brought it to its conclusion
where he says, actually, no,
there's neither good nor evil.
There's just power and its expression
and its failed expressions, kind of a
niche-y and spinach, autistic amoralism.
But this Nietzschean split cystic amoral
is it's entirely at odds with the other
element in EWM, which is this strong sense
that there, that there is a kind of moral
responsibility and ethical responsibility
of the individual to develop their
consciousness and to discern.
Yeah.
Like, for example, with regard to
the archetypes there's domination by
an archetype is also the source of
all the worst things in the world.
That was, that was the Young's analysis of
the, of the national socialist movement.
But w we're not to surrender ourselves
to the collective or to the archetypal
or to the impersonal on the contrary,
we are to build a bridge to it, what
he calls the transcendent function.
So to maintain this kind of Eagle
pole, which is in constant life-giving
dialogue with the, you know, the
impersonal archetypal dimension, neither
surrendering to it nor repressing it.
And that for me is the moral, the
ethical access of Young's thought.
And I think you're right, it's for me
incompatible with this, this Asiatic
momism, which he tends to fall into
when he tries to be a metaphysician,
which is always a bad idea for you.
Donald Carveth: Yes, yes.
Yes.
That's helpful.
Yeah, I agree with everything you've
just said, but it, can I bring you back
to his point about the Lawrence prayer,
a God who leads us into temptation?
Yeah.
Remind me that, what he says on that.
Well he's saying that we can't just
trust conscience as the Vox day the
voice of God, because this is a God
who can lead us into temptation.
Jakob Lusensky real: So this is the
quote from the young paper where it
speaks about the Lord's prayer, but if
the voice of conscience is the voice of.
This voice must possess on
comparable higher authority
than traditional morality.
Anyone therefore who allows conscience,
this statues should for better or
worse, put his trust in divine guidance
and follow his conscience rather than
give heed to conventional morality.
If the believer had absolute
confidence in his definition of God
as the Summum bonum, it would be easy
for him to be the inner voice for.
He could be sure of never being
led astray, but since in the
Lord's prayer, we still beseech
God not to lead us into temptation.
This undermines the very trust
the believers should have.
If in the darkness of the conflict of
duty, he is to be, he is to obey the
voice of conscience without regard
to the world, and very possibly act
against the precepts of the moral
code by obey God rather than men.
Sean McGrath: Yeah.
Lead us not into temptation.
This is a God.
Well, young is right.
That God in the Lord's prayer
is identified as one who could
lead us into temptation or at
least surrender us, leave us.
Right.
I think the point of the Lord's prayer
is that we are, the only reason we are
not led into temptation is because God
protects us from such temptation and
should God withdraw that protective power?
We will fall into temptation.
I think that's the point of the prayer.
Not that God leads us into temptation,
but God preserves us from temptation and
sh should God for a moment, withdraw his
hand that we will fall into temptation.
That's that I think is being said
with regard to, you know, a God who
could let us fall into temptation.
Our, we could therefore conclude
that this is a God who is neither
good, nor evil, and he needs
to be transcended or something.
And so this stages of correction happens.
So first you have the alway who's
obviously capable of raffle acts and
violent acts, and so on a God of wrath.
And then you have the, the, the
Christian correction of this, which is
to to, to you know, in the mythic land.
You know, to appease the wrathful
God with the sacrifice of the good
son, and then you have, but the
young is not happy to leave it there.
He says, now there's a third
correction required because there's
a, one-sided miss to the Christian
correction namely that it has excluded
the dark rather than integrated it.
And this third correction apparently is
happening on that level of psychoanalysis.
So I, when I, when I hear young
speaking about Christianity, it, he
seems to be always speaking from the
perspective of, of something that
needs to be corrected and transcend.
Psychoanalytically now the, on
the one hand, I think that's an
interesting point because we can't
just leave the tradition where it is.
The tradition dies.
If it's not constantly being
appropriated, adapted even expanded.
And so I I'm, I'm all on board with
the idea that the psychological
age, actually, it needs to be an
age of the church in a certain way.
And that the revelation, the religious
tradition of at least part of the
world has to be somehow critically
appropriated and, and, and correct
isn't in certain ways who, who wouldn't
agree with that, but where I have
a difficulty is with the kind of
correction that you think is required
because there becomes incoherent there.
We suddenly say that, actually, we're
going to go back now and we're going to.
The Christian correction by integrating
the dark side of God into the Trinity.
Yeah.
And at that point, the whole thing
falls to pieces because now we're
not, we're even worse than y'all way
we're in something that's pre our way.
Aquino is something that is
really deeply undifferentiated.
Donald Carveth: I mean, I know, I mean,
I was a creature of the 1960s, which
started out with peace and love and
sweetness and nonviolence and wound
up at the Altima pop festival with
the hell's angels, killing people.
Well, the rolling stones saying
sympathy for the devil and that youth
counter-culture got entirely into
this two faces of God, including
the worship of the dark Lord.
And there are, are elements of this in
you, which frankly really frightened.
Sean McGrath: Yes.
And it's unfortunately,
it's, it's my experience.
It's what is most predominant
in union circles where young
psychology religion is, is discussed.
I rarely hear the critic criticism.
I hear rather the repetition of
this thing and, and it's it's
yeah, it's entirely inadequate.
So what we're getting at here, so
one of the ways I've dealt with
this theoretically, is to say,
listen, good and evil are not.
And that's very new Testament.
They're not opposites.
Good, good is not in conflict with evil.
That's the theology of George Lucas.
That is not the theology
of the new Testament.
Goodness is transcendent of evil.
Evil is only permitted a space
of time for the sake of some
inscrutable ends that God has willed.
And we're told that in revelation at
the end revelation 20, that evil will be
entirely cast out and rendered nothing.
You know, it's always, the devil
is always already defeated.
Exactly.
So they're not done, you know, or, or,
or the light shines in the darkness and
the darkness does not comprehend it.
So we're not talking about two
countervailing powers here that
have to be held in balance in
the interest of some third.
That is not the image of goodness.
And we're talking about something quite
different, which is you could say more
hierarchical and that's a bad word today,
but nevertheless, the good is infinite.
Qualitatively transcendent of
anything that we might call evil.
And the, the, the, whatever is evil
only is in so far as it's permitted a
space of operation for whatever reason
and reasons that we can't comprehend.
And that's what I hear Christ
saying in the Lord's prayer.
When he says lead us, not into temptation
into temptation, he's saying temptation,
the devil, the dark that we deal with,
the sin that we are so vulnerable to
all of this really is something that
God could wipe away in an intense.
But he has not for reasons
that we do not comprehend.
And so we are therefore vulnerable
and we need to depend entirely on the
mercy of God to protect us from this.
It's it's not a question
of a duality here at all.
It's a question of absolute
dependence to quote Schleiermacher.
Jakob Lusensky real: I mean, on a
theoretical level you know, this, this
all makes sense to me that as we also
know, Eugene was not a theologian.
He was foremost a clinician.
He was foremost, you know,
developing his theory out of
his own experience with himself.
I mean, it's patients and good and evil.
You say it's not in conflict.
I agree, theoretically.
No, I didn't say they're not in conflict.
That's not what I said.
I said that they're not counter poles.
They're not, they are not opposing
forces, but in man, they are.
And that's what Jeremy speaking of, I see
he doesn't try to develop a theology here.
He's speaking of in human nature,
they are absolutely in opposition
and in conflict all the time.
And in the story of job, God
fence, the devil to tents, job.
It's I mean, God is the man behind
the confession in that story.
And Luther also says sometimes
God sends the devil that we have
to see how we should work with
that Devenish element in us.
Yes.
As you said, Don, in our last
conversation, we cannot sort
of get away with a superego.
We need to have it working for us.
The devil needs to cut.
To refer to Luther.
Donald Carveth: W so I'll leave it
to Sean to address that part of it.
God sending the devil to tempt Joe.
But let me just say that in terms
of the battle between good impulses
and evil impulses in human nature
here is where I think we need
the Freudian concept of the it.
Because, because it's pretty clear to
me that we can trust our conscience.
We have to distinguish
it from the superego.
We have to distinguish the voice
of conscience from all of these
other voices, but the voice
of conscience is the Vox day.
It's guided by the principle of love.
It can be trusted.
It is quite distinct from
other ed contents that can be
absolutely destructive and demonic.
And as you said earlier, that
the discernment of spirits here
is the work of consciousness.
Yes.
Yes.
That's crucial.
Jakob Lusensky real: And I think you
may not agree with this, but I think
the journalist of youngest that speaks
about the duality in the treatment.
And the struggle, you know, on a human
level, not he doesn't form a theology
or ethics, if it is one, it is.
Sean McGrath: I mean,
this is where I'm go.
I'm completely sensitive to the idea
that you wants to speak as a clinician.
And if they only spoke as a
clinician, I'd be all on board.
He's constantly transgressive
in this limitation and he loves
to play amateur theologian.
He even loves to play amateur
metaphysician with, you know, the
cycloid and say you know, the objective
psyche and this kind of stuff.
So I've just never, I've
never taken it seriously.
That union psychology has obeyed the
strict boundaries between clinical
work and more theoretical speculative
work, whether it's in theology or
philosophy, I just don't believe it.
I don't believe it in Freud.
And I don't believe it in you, which is
why I think Dawn's work is so important.
Kind of he's kind of saying, listen, we're
already transgressing these boundaries.
We're already in the domain
of the ethical we have.
We can't pretend that.
Jakob Lusensky real: I
am the union in the room.
So I agree with your Sean that
you is going between positions.
I, but my point is that, you know, I
think it speaks about the human heart
and the struggle that people have.
And that's a very dualistic
struggle at times.
I agree.
But if you
Sean McGrath: happy transgressing the
boundaries, why doesn't invite the
others in now he does on occasion,
you know, Victor white was invited
in but generally speaking, there's
a lot of hesitation and even kind of
naive critique of the theological or
philosophical voice in union circles.
You know, they're speaking even
somebody who is a spectrum of Lee adept
as giga, Rick has this kind of EPO.
K you know, do I remember
wanting to ask him giggle, Rick?
You know, shouldn't we talk about
metaphysics and you know what he said
to me, he said, that's a 10 patient.
We cannot go there.
So absolute psychology.
So fills the space that there
is no room for any other voice.
There was no plurality.
There there's no voice, there's no room
for this, the theological voice or the
philosophical voice coming from whatever
tradition and, and consequently, what
happens is this kind of amateur theology
tends to kind of colonize the space and
we have all these confusions perpetuated.
I can agree with that.
There's a lot of confusion within the
union field and discourse, and I want
to protect the unions, but I would
like us to say that it's interesting.
That we're discussing this paper that
you wrote one of his last papers in
1958, a psychological view of conscience.
And we all getting some insights from it.
Donald Carveth: It's a magnificent paper.
He's says the Freudian tradition never
got there to this distinction that, that
he sees very clearly in certain aspects.
I have a problem with, with
your mentioning the concept of
the heart earlier, like the the
division, th th the conflict within
the heart of men kind of thing.
I have trouble with that because
I think the heart is closely
allied with the conscience.
And I think that the demonic
does not come from the heart.
It comes from other aspects of our nature.
Reliable.
Well, I think they've cops into the heart.
That's, you know, that's
the part of the work.
I mean, when you're in sin, I
mean, it's, it goes to the heart.
Sean McGrath: I mean,
that's actually Christ.
Jesus says that himself.
So the hardest a metaphor, this is the,
I love the metaphor, but as a metaphor,
it's got a lack of precision, right?
So we're speaking about the, when
we say the heart, we mean what
the core, the inner most right?
The ground, if you like, well, I
associated with love is the seat of love
and therefore it is not the seed of Eagle,
but wouldn't you say Don, that evil is
only one with a heart is capable of evil.
Yes.
So in a certain way, you could say
that out of the heart spring, all evil
thoughts, which is a paraphrase of what
Jesus himself says, not that the whole.
Is evil, but only one with a
heart can still misuse themselves
has to be productive of evil.
Oh, that, that I would agree with,
but that's not, that's not saying
that the evil comes from the heart.
That's only saying that only someone
with a heart could be drawn into evil.
Yeah.
That's so that's why I find the heart,
you know, a rather imprecise way to speak.
I would prefer to speak about the ground
or, you know, th th the, the core of
freedom out of which personality grows.
And so there's, there's a certain
kind of perversion that only
human persons are capable of.
And this is why I think it's a mistake
to, to to speak about goodness and evil
in the non-human world in a certain way.
We, we admire plants and animals
and the universe precisely because
it is so confirmed and it's being,
but there's a kind of vacillation
at the core of the human being.
We don't have to say it's the
heart, if you don't like, but at the
ground with a human being, there's
this, there's this vacillation.
And the shelling says, you know, they're
out of the ground, emerges a decision,
a decision for good, or for evil.
What shelling means by
that is not that we choose.
This is an inside of, we
actually divide at this point.
It's not, it's not that we choose
preexisting op pre-existing
possibilities, like, you know, Yacob
chooses his good, good Yakob over evil
Yacob, rather than in the decision.
This personal ground produces
something that has never been before.
And it's it's either a form of evil
that was never before, or it's a form
of goodness that was never before.
But in any case, it's, it's, it's, it's
produced out of this ground of freedom.
Yes, yes.
Out of the ground of freedom for sure.
Donald Carveth: This is why I love my dog.
My dog is incapable of.
Exactly.
But I hate to say it, Don.
It's also means that the dogs and capable
of good and really oh, absolutely.
That's true too.
So we miss we miss you
used the term when we go.
Good dog.
That's true.
Jakob Lusensky real: Well, Sean,
I used to want to hear if you have
any comments about the temptation.
Sean McGrath: Yeah.
I've got God sending the devil.
Well, I mean, that's exactly
true that God sends the devil.
That's exactly true.
We certainly know that that's
biblical, that's new Testament,
but in the Lord, his God, he had
an issue with that or no, I didn't.
That was actually speaking precisely.
If the devil is on the scene,
it's only because God has allowed
the devil to be on the scene.
So that's the terrible insecurity.
The situation of insecurity
in which we stand.
Right.
We, we, we do not command this terrain.
You know, we're not the master
of this house, if you want to
speak in the Freudian phrase.
So that means there's a kind of
dependency on the mercy of God
to protect us from these things.
And the truth is that
we shall be protected.
You know, the whole story of Christ
is his con here's the best man who
ever lived you, if you want, or the
logos incarnate more accurately.
And he is constantly, he is constantly
subject to the power of the devil.
If you take his first appearance to be
at the, at the baptism of the Jordan,
you know, as he appears in mark, without
the infancy narratives, which are very
likely, well, they are constructed,
they're constructed after the fact,
I think th th Jesus enters history
as a 30 year old man being baptized
by John the Baptist at the Jordan.
What happens immediately after.
Yeah.
This moment of initiation, where he is
actually called the son of God, he is
led into the devil into the desert where
the devil has his way with him, or at
least tries to have his way with him.
And he withstands that.
And then the devil departs until the
appointed hour, which is his moment of
greatest trial, which is the passion.
The point being that this the
best men is not the man who never,
who was never subject are never
tormented by evil, but the one who
is constantly constantly subject to
the, to the power of evil and never
the less holds fast or has held fast.
Donald Carveth: Maybe it's just my
naivete, but I feel thankful that
I'm spared having to deal with these
difficult theological metaphysical.
Concepts, because there's a fundamental
sense in which I do not believe in God.
If God is love, I believe in love.
But the idea of an omnipotent,
God, some kind of supernatural God,
some kind of creator or God, I have
no relationship with that at all.
I don't understand it.
I don't feel the need for it.
And so I'm left with the religion of love
and I'm left with a religion of sacrifice,
the math, the Christ fund lacrosse
the sacrificial element, human beings.
We live in this culture of narcissism.
Nobody understands that it is
necessary for people to sacrifice.
Of course, we have to distinguish
masochistic sacrifice from
creative sacrifice, but.
I, I find it surprising that say, I
could be in such agreement with you on
so many levels, Sean, but I think you and
I have this radical difference in that.
I just have no use for, for, for
concepts of, of a creator, omnipotent
God who act as a person acts,
I can't relate to this at all.
I, I find it surprising.
Be so much agreement.
I feel, I feel very in sync with the
Christian tradition in so many ways.
And to a point that either Yakob or
you made earlier about the need of the
Christian tradition for psychoanalysis
completely it's psychoanalysis.
That brought me back to
my, to my Christian roots.
It was in the course of analysis and
the analysis of my dreams that I re
recovered my connection to Christianity.
So certainly I agree with that.
Sean McGrath: Well, that's, you
you've drawn us into completely
different terrain there, Don.
I wonder if I'll succumb to the
temptation and take it up so, or stay
on safer ground talking about young
and God's sending the devil reserve
this one for another time maybe, but
I don't mind saying something quickly.
But I can agree with
you that God doesn't do.
And yet I believe in him.
So lately I've been reading a lot
of Buddhism, particularly shouldn't
Buddhism, and there's a concept in shin
Buddhism that I, that I've really, I've
really grown to like very much that's
the concept of provisional names.
The bionic tradition or Buddhism,
generally speaking, regardless,
everything to be empty of self.
And therefore, any names that we attach
to things are somehow arbitrary because
there is no, you know, there is no
separate entity that corresponds to the
name and it's these names which create
this discriminating consciousness,
which becomes attached to things in
the wrong way and stands, diluted in
and outside of the light, so to speak.
And so dropping the names is kind of
the key, but in the sh in the shin.
They, they sort of went a step further
and they said, well, yes, that's entirely
true, but we still need provisional names.
And so to be it, that means we need to,
we need to be able to name things while
recognizing the inadequacy of our names,
the inadequacy of naming for me, this
is very close to the mystical medieval
tradition, which is my inspiration or
the tradition of negative theology.
That one, one has to
be able to use a term.
In precisely, it's like a precise,
precise deployment of a inadequate term.
It's actually what we do when, when we're,
when we're, we're doing other kinds of
indirect statements, like when you're
using metaphors and poetry or speaking
indirectly in Zen koan or something, it's
a very precise deployment of a vague term.
And for me, that is what we, that
is God is a perfect example of
this, this kind of provisional name.
It's entirely inadequate
to what we're naming.
And so too is loved by the way.
Donald Carveth: Well, no Jews, right?
God, the G dash D right.
I mean, that's always appealed to me for.
Sean McGrath: Exactly.
Yes, the Jews or the, the Jewish
tradition is, you know, from the
get, go for bids, a certain kind of
speculative effort to control this
terrain to render it knowledge.
So God is who God says he is, you
know, and he's got a personal mate
in a certain way, which is like
saying, you know, he's X or he's
built, but you know, what, what is he?
We don't know.
And, and this, this, this
continues right into Aquinas.
So quietness is five proofs, which
are usually trotted out as the,
the, the height of medieval hubris.
If you look at them carefully at the end
of each proof, he says, and this is what
we, this is what most people call God.
And then you, then you read the
proofs in conjunction with his
doctrine on the divine names.
And you find this proposition.
We know that God is, we
do not know what God is.
And when we use names of God, we
use names in a very strange way.
We are actually naming something that
we cannot in principle understand.
So, so I hear, I find a lot of
convergences with different traditions.
When we come, we come to this
mystery, which which resists our
precise use of language, which is
nevertheless not so empty of meaning
for us that we could ignore it.
You know, like the Buddhists are very
interesting in this regard because
they're, you know, emptiness and so on,
but nothing is more affirmative than this
claim that all things are empty of self.
It is from there that they
find their moral energy.
And it's an extremely moral tradition.
It's from there that they find their
courage to transcend the, you know, the,
the darker sides of the ed and so on.
Donald Carveth: Well, that's
all compatible with the
biblical critique of idolatry.
That's right.
That's right.
That's really helpful.
It's fun.
That's quite helpful.
Thank you.
Sean McGrath: Yeah, but there's another
way in which we, we sort of make this
claim to Trent and this maybe be comes
back to you to have recognized the
provisionality of our names, which is
to elevate ourselves above the business
of naming CA to assume this kind
of meta perspective, this metahuman
perspective, we transcend the tradition
and we don't need it anymore because
we have a higher, higher standpoint.
And what I'm intrigued by is the
critique of that position as hubris.
In other words, higher than this
meta perspective is the perspective
that says I'm stuck with my name.
And they're not adequate.
And therefore on this side for
me, this is liturgy, right?
You go to the liturgy and, and, and your,
your, your, your mouth and your ears
are filled with all of these symbols,
not a single one of which you could
properly define, and they carry you.
They just, they just carry you
into the space of the sacred, you
know, the liturgy of the mass.
For example, it just, it just
carries me for a long time.
I tried to live without it.
I thought after having
sex, I don't need liturgy.
You know, I'm beyond that.
And then I realized, you know,
not too long ago that actually
I really do need the liturgy.
I need it.
I need to be carried by these symbols
into a space that's beyond me and
my reason and my hubris to be able
to command this terrain from some
kind of safe, rational position.
But I don't want to just go anywhere.
I don't want to just go nuts.
I want to be, I want to go somewhere
that I want others there too, and not
just the people around, but I want.
You know, democracy of
the dead is Chesterton.
Put it instead of the oligarchy of
those who happen to be walking around,
I want to be carried by the saints.
I want to be with Paul and Thomas
Aquinas, John of the cross.
I don't want to be just
put the folks around me.
And it's it's through that
symbol, the shared symbol.
Donald Carveth: Yeah.
You want to be with the right folks who
are carrying you in the right direction.
You know, it's possible to have ecstatic
experiences by swallowing certain drugs
or twirling and doing all kinds of things.
But I understand entirely what you're
talking about in terms of the liturgy.
I hadn't been to church in a long
time, but we bought a new house.
We went to the local church.
It was an even song service.
Man it lifted me right up.
But, but, you know, because it's,
it's, it's being lifted up within
the context of the right tradition.
Sean McGrath: Yeah.
And that's a difficult question.
Of course, what tradition is, right.
And how do we choose and so on?
And that's a whole other issue,
but I think the most important
point is that we need to be free.
We need to be freed from our, our,
you know, Rational surveillance
and control of the domain.
There's a, there's a kind of ecstasy
that we want and the silicide been
you know gobbled lots of it when I
was in my twenties or well, teens
and I'm absolutely not interested.
I'm very, I'm very happy to hear that
people are finally understanding these
wonderful plants and how to use them,
but I don't need that kind of mechanical
push into a state of transcendence.
I much prefer to have something
that's more aligned with.
You know, my, my consciousness, my
ethical orientation is compatible
with my daily life and not a kind
of complete, complete rupture from.
Right.
For, for this reason, I don't even
want a big mystical experience.
You know, I've been thinking about that.
I got, I actually don't
want any big experience.
I I'd much per se.
I was asked in a class on philosophy
and mysticism by a student.
She said, have you had a mystical
experience day one of fall term.
Right.
I had difficulty answering that.
Of course I've had experiences in
the past, but there's still trivial.
It seems to me what matters to me is that
that religion has become a sustaining.
Yes, that following is the Germans
say rather than at lameness.
It's right.
It's just, it's, it's actually become a
pattern of life rather than a momentary
disruption of the, of the day to day
by something that I don't understand.
Jakob Lusensky real: I just want to say.
I, I think, I mean, I guess it does
depend on where you are on your journey.
You know, I mean, I, I also meet
people taking psychedelics of course.
You know, for someone who doesn't dream
or for someone who hasn't, you know,
sort of been in the monastery or, I mean,
these experiences, it can, it can lead
us completely Australia, but I also see
examples of people getting in contact
with our conscience through these type
of experiences or getting into analysis
through these type of experiences.
And unfortunately, most people don't
think about, oh, let's go to the
church and work on, on what happened.
You know, they probably much earlier
go to you Dawn or to me, or coming
to the church of today that maybe
that's erratic to say, but the
practice room, the analytical room.
And this brings me back to a question
that I've been fitting, which,
which, which I think is important.
And since we're limited with time, and
that is this question of conscious.
In the analytical space, because you
done with your theoretical work, have
done a great service and saga as well.
And others in, in, in dealing and
working on these matters and showing
the importance of differentiating, for
example, super equal from conscience.
But, but I'm wondering also
then we have this comment from
you, Sean, about the union.
So sort of as a whole, a little bit
immoral or there is no ethical Kompass on.
Yeah, well the question w whereas
conscience, you know, where it's good and
wrong, where, where that, where is God?
If I can say, so I wanted
to hear about you Don first.
What do you think about this is
psychoanalytic practice today, a
practice without conscience, or
is it actually there, but we just
don't talk about it in these terms.
You know, we do help people to maybe
love better and transcend some part
of their narcissism and see the
other, they might not call themselves
Christians, but, you know, as you said
before, you, you say you speak about
psychoanalysis as a commercial experience.
Donald Carveth: Well, I think a
conscience to some extent is built
into standard psychoanalytic practice.
But Freud lied about it and, and Friday
ins had been lying about it ever since.
They hide it behind this medical
facade, they talk about mental
health rather than trying to convert
people from badness to goodness.
They want to admit what they're
doing, but nevertheless, the,
the value system is there.
They could do so much better if
they raised it to consciousness.
If they, if they got honest about
what it is that they are about
they could do it much, much better.
But they're embarrassed about the
ethical nature of their practice.
There's.
I mean, they're not going to get paid
in Ontario by oh, hip for trying to turn
people from badness to goodness, or even
from narcissism to object love, which
is the way Freud put it in 1914 when he
momentarily slipped up and for God has
disguised, he stopped talking that way and
shifted to the language of mental health.
So it's there in the tradition, but,
but the tradition is really suffered
from not being fully conscious, not
really being honest about itself.
There've been major failures
of conscience unconscientious
elements within the psychoanalytic.
Tradition, which I think might've been
avoided if, if, if we had been able to be
honest about the ethic that undergirds the
whole, the whole enterprise just on the
question of, of working in the, in the, in
the clinical room, much of my work follows
the line of the example that you gave us.
I, my patients are doing all kinds
of immoral and unethical things
and they're lying to themselves.
But they produce dreams in
which their hands are dirty.
And or they're, they're doing things like
stealing and cheating, and I'm not going
to be super egoistic and reproach them
through this, but I am going to be alert
to what do they do with the dirty money.
Mostly they lose it or they
get it stolen from them.
Or they get hit by a car.
Or they developed migraine headaches
and I'm always pointing out.
Look what happens whenever you cheat on
your wife you get the headaches or you get
that rash all over your body, whatever.
So I'm, I'm confronting them with the
consequences of their actions, thus
trying to lead them to, to face the
fact that they have a conscience and
they have a superego they're they're,
they're busy blocking both superego and
Glanzmann's, that's how I, how I work.
Sean McGrath: Well, there's
so much on the table here.
I don't know where to begin.
So I'm going to start from what
the first thing I remember and
then bring it right back to the
interesting thing that Dawn just said.
So first thing that you said Yaakov is
that unions are immoral that I actually,
I don't, I can't think of a single union.
I met that I would call
immoral on the contrary.
I, I think that they just don't
understand the, the ethical thrust of
their practice and they're, misnaming it.
And that young has not helped them
with his monistic idea of a good evil
God, that, that, that was my claim.
Not that they're immoral, but that their,
their theory is an adequate to the ethical
thrust of what they're doing, which is
I think, more or less what Donna's is
saying about the Freudian tradition.
Yes.
And then with regard to the
church, you know, what, what
are we, what is the church?
What does church mean?
There's two words in the
tradition, ecclesia and care.
K ecclesia is the one I liked the
best because it really just means
a gathering of concerned citizens.
So it's a gathering of people.
And in the new Testament context, it means
those people who have gathered around
the Christ and if we wanted to secularize
this, which I think we should, because as
I've said that many times, we're fortunate
that Christianity is self sexualizing.
It's the gathering of
those called to love.
It's the community of those calls to.
That's the church.
So what if it happens in your consulting
room or in the cathedral down the road
for me is of no moment, really wherever
it's happening, the church is active and
I'm convinced that the church is alive
and well when speed regard it in this much
bigger sense of the word, this ontological
sense and stop identifying it with certain
transitory institutions, which are passing
away, which were always part of it and
which will not always be part of it.
But what I wanted to come back to there
was this embarrassment about the ethical.
I thought that was so interesting dog.
So, and you used the
word lie multiple times.
They're lying about what they're doing.
They're, they're promoting health.
And I immediately thought of, you know,
the, the etymological relationship between
the word health and whole and whole.
You know, and there's a kind of, there's
a, kind of a reductionistic refusal of
that, of, of that Adam, a logical and I
think ontological relationship between
health holiness, wholeness, and it, and
it occurred to me as I heard you speak,
you know, that I can, well, imagine
many situations in which the right thing
to do is to lie, but I cannot, I can't
imagine a single situation in which the
right thing to do is to lie to yourself.
It seems to be there.
We have the, this, the, the
sin that cannot be forgiven.
Not because there's the judgmental,
God who's punishing us for us, but
because we put ourselves into a
place in which we cannot possibly.
Well, and here's the, really the
tradition opposing self-deception
while on-goingly deceiving itself.
Yeah.
And what I wanted to ask
you is why you think.
What do you think that, what do you think
that the root of that embarrassment is?
It's obviously an accidental thing.
It's kind of a structural feature
of the Freudian tradition.
I think.
Donald Carveth: Well, I mean,
I think it has to do with the
enlightenment and enlightenment,
rationalism and materialism,
and so many fro Freud himself.
And so many people are steeped in their
respect for, and their identification
with enlightenment, rationalism and
science, and may can't bear to see
themselves as people who are committed
to love and to kindness over cruelty.
And they see this as sort of sentimental
and non rational and non-scientific,
and they find it all very embarrassing.
Sean McGrath: Yeah, I, I would've thought
my own take on Freud and do some to a
lesser degree on you is that there is
this attachment to what philosophy we
call the positive as tradition positivism.
Yeah, what's real is a thing
that can be measured in space and
time that has that's localized.
There's an interesting passage in the
interpretation of dreams where young
referred says, you know, the psyche
has its own laws and it should be
understood on its own terms and not
explained in terms of something else.
But then he adds, and with time we will
find out that those are the same laws
that pertains to physical things, right?
And then the mind will
be reduced to brain.
And so many of my colleagues have lost
touch with psychoanalysis altogether.
They're into what they're
calling neuro psychoanalysis,
and it's all about the brain.
And it's a total waste of time,
not for brain scientists, but for
psycho-analysis it's a waste of time.
Oh, it's it's we're in a far more deeply
positivistic age than Freud was in 1900.
When he wrote the interpretation
of dreams and neuroscience has.
It has just, it's just dominating
our understanding of ourselves.
And what gets me is, is how
there's a kind of paradox there.
The peop people seem to be here's
the difference back in the end of
the 19th century, when positivism,
you know, 1.0 was destroying our
cultural institutions and our, on
our ethics, people were horrible.
No.
You think of the characters and best
eskies novels who carry the positivism
all the way through and Goldens
butcher, their landlady or something.
There was a, this is horror
that actually it's all just
meaningless matter in motion.
But now when we have this seemingly more
sophisticated, scientific demonstration,
that it's all just meaningless
matter emotion, we're all relieved.
We're all delighted.
It's like, you know, we found the
God molecule, you know, we found a
little part of your brain that if I
tickle it with electricity will cause
you to feel oceanic, bliss, you know,
and people are relieved by this.
They're happy about it.
I don't understand it.
Well I, I guess when it's, it, it saves
us from, it saves us from freedom.
It saves us from guilt.
It saves us from humanity.
I think we're in a deep,
deep, dark positivist age.
And I think this is why psychoanalysis
interestingly has become so out of mode,
you know, when I talk to philosophers
of mind they're, they can't believe
that I have anything to do with
something as wrong as psychoanalysis.
Well, because you're also involved with
something as wrong as Christianity.
It's odd that people don't
understand it was psychoanalysis
that brought me back to Christianity.
So, you know, psychoanalysis is
profoundly involved with the soul.
Maybe I should forgive my medical
colleagues and let them leave them
alone and let them continue to
hide behind their medical disguise
because they're doing soul work.
Maybe it's maybe they need a
shield in this age of positivity.
Yeah, or just, yeah, let them
have their provisional names.
Yes.
Yeah.
I do think that something is coming
and it's going to be neither the
Christianity that we are familiar with
nor the psychoanalysis that we have
more or less worked through to the end.
There, there is not neither
of these things are finished.
So in that regard, you know, I do, I
very much like you when he plays his
prophetic note and he looks towards this
future integration or this new stage of
whatever it is that's, that's working,
that's working its way through time.
In at least the European tradition.
I think that's the proper attitude when
these things are not dead, but they're
actually changing into something new.
Jakob Lusensky real: I think there's
something prophetic and unique, but I also
think there is something very reformative.
I mean, the way I understand
you is he could have been the
greatest of reform of Christianity.
If he would have taken a step.
If it wouldn't have hidden behind
his persona as a psychiatrists.
So, so there is also something, in, in
young, I mean, he's never, he's, he's
envisioning a future, his prophetic,
but it's always rooted in tradition.
Well,
Sean McGrath: what would it mean
Jaco for him to take a stand?
Jakob Lusensky real: I mean, I mean,
a standard, I guess mean, first of
all, that he had would have to kiss
to kneel and kiss the floor and
he would, he, he never did that.
He, he was until the end, as I
understand it I've ever learned in, in
some sort of opposition, he was never.
So, so therefore that wasn't his life,
but you know, his theories are alive
and we can work with them and we can,
you know, do what we're doing here on
our small turf of you to bring in and
what you've done with it, with great,
you know, which holds a great future.
And that we live on Don, you know,
which will work on just bringing
consciousness and sorry, being
conscious back into psychoanalysis
and into union psychoanalysis.
Sean McGrath: I wonder about religion.
You know, you say he should
have kissed the floor.
Are you saying, you know, we might
have religious psychoanalysis.
I imagine Don isn't
quite ready to go there.
Jakob Lusensky real: No, no.
I think we should see that psychoanalysis
is, you know, as Don said in his
latest paper, it's, it's spirituality,
it's bringing us back to, you
know, seeing life as, as it is, you
know, it takes away the blindfolds.
And I'm not saying that we
should develop a Christian
psychoanalysis, but Dom, right.
You know, it's, it's, it's
help us to see the truth.
Donald Carveth: Yeah.
It's a spiritual practice I believe.
And always has been, but in disguise,
And what does it mean exactly to
say that it's a spiritual practice?
What, well, I think first of all, I
think it's, I think psychoanalytic
practice is a form of meditation.
Everybody is so preoccupied
with mindfulness meditation.
I think that psychoanalysis is a
type of that that goes on towards
what I call heartfulness meditation,
but the patient is free associating
and the analyst is enjoined to
have freely hovering attention.
So both the patient and I are sitting
there in a, in a meditative state and
we're watching what comes up in the
dialogue and what comes up in the dream.
So the whole thing seems to me to be a
daily meditative practice for patients who
are on the couch four or five days a week,
it's a deep meditation among other things.
And to the extent that it clarifies.
Conscience and distinguishes it from
superego and helps the patient sort out
these voices in his head and helps them.
Oh, that last question you mentioned
in your list, Yacob Mary Stein is
talking about how we not only have
responsibility to others, but we
have responsibilities to the self.
I think of Winnicott's true self.
I think true self is often ignored and
abandoned and I think a conscientious
person owes others, but also owes his
true self and a terrible conflicts
obviously emerge sometimes too.
Do justice to my true self.
I may have to break a
covenant with another.
So this is just a lifelong ethical
struggle, but I think conscience
is linked to the true himself.
And I think creativity is
linked to the true self.
So I think in, in, in analysis,
we're trying to help people make
contact with their true selves,
by helping them make contact with
their emotions and their dreams.
And we're trying to bring them,
I think that psychoanalysis
involves self-realization
self-actualization and the end result
is a more conscientious person.
And so I think this is
a spiritual practice.