Tikkun Magazine, January/February 2008

Psychotherapy and the Politics of Meaning

by Tony Campolo

EVER SINCE HANS EYSENCK'S STUDY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF London in 1952, there have been questions about the effectiveness of psychotherapy. That study, along with subsequent research, showed that those who seek relief from depression through psychoanalysis are less likely to find deliverance than those who receive no help at all. That may be because so much of psychoanalysis is self-centered. Therapists far too often cater to the egoism of the client and make the object of the therapy sessions some sort of self-actualization in which the individual is encouraged to live out his or her repressed yearnings. The emphasis is on individualization.

Philip Rein, one of the most brilliant social theorists of our time, has pointed out in his book The Triumph of the Therapeutic that counseling prior to Sigmund Freud was, for the most part, a ministry of reconciliation. If there was a troubled marriage, the counselor, usually a member of the clergy, concentrated on helping the individual to achieve a healthy relationship with his or her partner. If the client was experiencing depression caused by a sense of loneliness, then efforts were made in the counseling sessions to emotionally reconnect the isolated person with the community from which he or she felt estranged. If the client was feeling cut off from the spiritual "ground of all being," the minister, priest, or rabbi strove to re-establish fellowship with God. In short, it was then assumed that there was healing in community, and counseling sought to bring troubled persons back into relationships that could cure the maladies of his or her soul.

Western society experienced a loss of the sacred under the impact of the Enlightenment. Simultaneously, we were victimized by the estrangement from community brought on by the urban-industrial revolution. In a world wherein God became increasingly unreal, talk of fellowship with God grew for many to be an archaic concept. Living in a mass society made many of us feel that we were living in what David Riesman called "The Lonely Crowd."

This new cultural milieu created what the sociologist Max Weber would call an "elective affinity" for a new method of curing the sicknesses of the soul (that is, if the word "soul" was any longer viable). This new cure was to be found in psychotherapy, and especially in that form of therapy, proposed by some of Freud's followers, called psychoanalysis. The ardent followers of Freud (though not Freud himself) came to believe that psychoanalysis could, in and of itself, cure the angst and depression that had become endemic to our times.

It took a generation before social scientists discovered that there might be something amiss in this approach. Among those who came to question psychoanalysis was Philip Reif. As he studied the effects of psychoanalysis on those who sought its help, he came to the strong conviction that to simply understand why individuals suffer psychological ills, as psychoanalysis does, proves to be of very limited, if any, help. This is not to say that people do not need to understand how "the child is father to the man," as the poet has said, but Reif argued that only understanding who and what we are and how we got that way is not enough. In-depth analysis of the psyche will not of itself, he claimed, cure the emotional condition that Soren Kierkegaard once called "the sickness unto death." Self-understanding is good, Reif said, but something more is needed. There is no salvation without commitment, and he contended that psychoanalysis was a therapy without commitment.

Reif's thinking is in harmony with much of the Bible. In the Hebrew Scriptures existential decision-making is a requisite for spiritual and psychological well-being (Ps. 65:4). To all who are trying to "find themselves" through analysis, Jesus declared that they would end up losing themselves. He then emphatically preached that those who are willing to lose themselves in commitments to doing God's will in the world will find themselves (Mark 8:38). In straightforward language, what Jesus was saying is that the best therapy comes from committing ourselves to living out God's call to love each other and to work for justice in society.

In his book The Politics of Meaning, Rabbi Michael Lerner wrote in harmony with what Jesus said as he pleads for Americans to reject the "Culture of Narcissism" which is concomitant with the pop therapies of our age, and instead to embrace altruistic lifestyles marked by living out spiritual values by making commitments to caring for others. Following such directives, Lerner encouraged us to believe that we are cured through praxis, which is to say that in what we do to create a world marked by health and well-being for people and for the rest of nature, we ourselves become spiritually and emotionally whole. In other words, as we commit ourselves to changing our society into the kind envisioned by the prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures and by Jesus, we will find cures for the maladies of our souls. Deliverance comes from working for the social salvation of others, according to Lerner. It is by "losing ourselves" in commitments to creating the Kingdom of God "on earth as it is in Heaven," that we become whole.

At one of the town meetings that were part of the 1992 presidential campaigns, a young man asked George Bush and Bill Clinton, "If elected, what will each of you promise to do for me to make my life better?"

As I listened to that question, I thought of an answer that probably would have come from another president years ago, "Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country!" That president might have told that young man that by striving to create a great society, he himself would become great. That in seeking the good of others, he himself would become good.

Lerner is right when he contends that the American people have a spiritual hunger for a new kind of politics. Perhaps unconscious of our own need, we long for a politics based on generosity and love. Lerner is picking up on the message that Erich Fromm made clear in his book The Art of Loving: it is in loving and working for the well-being of others that we find deliverance from that sense of separateness that has rendered so many of us emotionally empty and devoid of any feeling of meaning. At a time when so many believe that being loved is the answer to their estrangement and despair, Lerner's Politics of Meaning proposes instead that it is in loving and serving others that we ourselves become whole persons. Being loved is vital if for no other reason than that it is in being loved that we are equipped to carry out the commandment to love others as we love ourselves. But if we do not live out love for others by seeking their good, we fail to access the healing of the soul we all ultimately need.

The individualization and self-actualization that are often the goals of psychoanalysis can lead to self-indulgent hedonism. When therapists promote being freed from the impulse restraints that were imbued through early socialization, they may be opening a Pandora's Box that can result in living out destructive behavior. Instead of overcoming our inhibitions, as some psychoanalysts suggest, the cure for the sicknesses of our souls is likely to be found in living out a politics of meaning. Analysis can create paralysis, but commitments to creating God's Kingdom here on earth may be just the therapy that our troubled generation needs. Jesus said, "Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and all these things will be added unto you" (Matthew 6:33). That Kingdom is one in which the poor get the good news that there will be economic justice; captives are set free; God's creation is restored; racism, sexism and homophobia are abolished; and all of us come to live together as brothers and sisters in shalom.

As Reif argued in The Triumph of the Therapeutic, the goal of the clergy who counseled troubled souls prior to Freud was always to foster reconciliation for those made sick because of alienation. They tried to renew love between married couples, and to bring those cut off from their religious communities back into fellowship with fellow believers. And when dealing with those who felt that hell was other people, it was to engender empathy for those who were deemed strangers. But after Freud, things changed. With psychoanalysis, as with most other forms of psychotherapy, the end often became just the opposite. It became the actualization of the individual that was primary. That self-actualization often involved breaking bonds that were far too easily viewed as enslaving social forces.

Of course, it takes no genius to recognize that there are a variety of relationships that can be extremely destructive, but Reif makes the case that it is community that provides most of what is required for personal fulfillment. Love and generosity toward others are the essential grounds of our humanness.

This emphasis lies at the core of the Biblical message, and in contemporary politics this is what Tikkun is striving to propagate. The call to our fellow citizens is a call to commitment, not to individualization, but to a community. It is a call for all of us to affirm our ties as part of a universal family and to commit ourselves to tearing down the barriers that prevent us from being one people.

We are not to seek uniformity, but we are required to seek unity. We are not asked to abandon the diversities of religion, race, and culture, but we are called to recognize that the same God who created us all is waiting to be embraced in all who encounter us, regardless of their differences. This in no way excludes our secular humanist brothers and sisters. We join them in recognizing the infinite value that they find in all who meet them on life's way. It is just that the transempirical quality of being, which they find in people all around them, we religionists call the "image of God."

We believe that it is in a common commitment to living out love and justice for the entire human family that much of the angst and fear that haunts so many seekers of health can be cured. We Christians are convinced by the New Testament that we find joy in life when we join together with others who seek the common good in a "ministry of reconciliation" (2 Cor. 5:18). That is what our Jewish friends at Tikkun, with its politics of meaning, are all about. And that is why this Christian is honored to be part of the Tikkun family.

Anthony Campolo, Ph.D., professor emeritus at Eastern University, is the founder of the Evangelical Association for the Promotion of Education, an organization that develops schools and social programs in various third world countries and in cities across North America. He is the author of thirty-four books, including his most recent two, Letters to a Young Evangelical and The God of Intimacy and Action.

Campolo, Tony. 2008. Psychotherapy and the politics of meaning. Tikkun 23(1):52-53, 66.