can psycholog escape religion

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THE INTER NATIO NAL JOURNAL FOR THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION, 7(1), 1-12CopyrightQ 1997, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

INVITED ESSAY

Can Psychology Escape Religion?Should 1t?lDon Browning

The Divinity SchoolUniversity of Chicago

The author asks: "Can psychology escape giving an account of the multiple ways inwhich religion influences it as both a science and a professional practice?Examiningthe psychologies of Freud, Rogers, Maslow, Erikson, Kohut, and Skinner, he findsreligious themes in each, expressed in various narratives and metaphors. He argues,not for a "religious psychology," but in favor of a religiously informed philosophicalanthropology for psychological practice.

Can psychology escape religion? Like most questions, this one invites refinement.It does not, for instance, announce an article on the psychology of religion. I willnot use this essay to advance a justification for that subdiscipline of psychology. Ibelieve psychology should study religious phenomena, but this is not my mainconcern in this article. The need for psychology to explain religious data suggestsa soft form of the question: "Can psychology escape religion?"My goal is more ambitious. I want to address a hard form of the question. Thestronger form goes like this: Can psychology escape giving an account of the multipleways in which religion influences it as both a science and a professional practice?My answer to this difficult question is this: Psychology cannot escape the multipleinfluences of religion nor should it attempt to do so. Rather, psychology should striveto give an account of, and a theoretical justification for, its inevitable enmeshment

Requests for reprints should be sent to Don Browning, The University of Chicago, The DivinitySchoo l, 1025 East 58th Street, Chicago, IL 60637.'This was the William James Award address delivered at the 1994 meeting of the American

Psychological A ssociation.

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with religion. It should do this as a necessary feature of its duty to be both a sclenceand a professional activity designed to serve the human enterprise.My thesis is simple. Psychology, in all its forms, is first of all a hermeneuticdiscipline. By this I mean that psychology begins its investigations into the psycheby being first shaped by culturally or historically mediated images of the human.These images contain complex mixtures of what human beings are, what they ideallyshould be, and how they go wrong or fail to achieve the ideal. These historicallymediated Images of the human shape us as individuals long before we begin to reflectcritically on their meaning, character, and nature. They form and shape us prior tobeginning our more systematic investigation of human nature as psychologists andbehavioral scientists.All of our scientific psychological efforts to understand the human psyche-bethey clinical, experimental, or phenomenological-are attempts to gain some"distance" from the models of the psyche contained in these inherited images ofthe human. I have placed the word distance in quotation marks because I want tosignal my special use of the concept. I am following the French philosopher PaulRicoeur and his concept of epistemological distance developed in his philosophyof the human sciences. Distance is his way of talking about objectivity. He prefersthe word distance, however, because it communicates that objectivity is nothingmore than a degree of distance from a prior state of belonging.To what do we belong? With regard to the disciplines of psychology, Ricoeurwould insist that we first of all belong to our inherited and historically mediatedimages of the human, which shape us even before we reflect on them and submltthem to our various methodological maneuvers (R~coeur,1981, pp. 43-62, 64,87-94). Without this prior state of belonging to these historically mediated im-ages-without this prior inheritance-we would have nothing to reflect on, nothingto understand. For when we study human behavior, we never study it in the raw;we study it through linguistically and historically mediated images that ~nfluenceboth our subjects and the perceptions of scientific observers. Following the herme-

neutic theory of Hans-Georg Gadarner, Ricoeur claimed that human under-standing--even the understanding achieved in such specialized scientific disciplinesas psychology-is primarily an attempt to understand images of the human thathave already formed in us. Without beginning with that to which we already belong,human understanding comes to nothing or at best leads to confusion (pp. 116-1 17).A DEFINITION OF RELIGION

Ricoeur's concept of distanciation suggests that psychology as a discipline is, andshouldbe,tradition saturated. Even its most objectivistic forms-neuropsychologyor experimental behaviorism--only find meaning and relevance with reference tothe historically mediated images of the human from which they gain relativedistance in their scientific work.

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However, to argue that psychology is tradition saturated does not, in itself, showthat it is and must be shaped by religion. My thesis will only hold if I can show arelation between tradition and religion, tradition and sacrality. It will advance thisargument if I first suggest a definition of religion. Religion, I claim, is a narrativeor metaphorical representation of the ultimate context of reality and its associatedworldview, rituals, and ethics. Before one identifies a particular phenomenon asfully religious, one should find all four of these elements-(a) narratives andmetaphors of ultimacy, (b) worldviews, (c) rituals, and (d) ethics. Furthermore, theconcept of religion assumes that the narratives, worldviews, rituals, and ethics areheld and celebrated by some identifiable community.Whereas full-blown religions have all of these elements, expressions of humancreativity that contain at least the first two of the four-narratives and world-views-are quasi-religious in nature. Many modern phenomena that are thought tobe secular are in reality at least quasi-religious. Various scholars have built the casethat such modern social science disciplines as Marxism, evolutionary science(Midgley, 1985), neoclassical economics (McCloskey, 1990), and certain formsof psychology and psychotherapy (Browning, 1987; Szasz, 1991; Vitz, 1977)are examples of quasi-religions. Narratives of ultimacy and metaphoricallyexpressed worldviews have been detected in these disciplines and movements.In addition, these allegedly scientific and secular disciplines are often the objectof trust, faith, and devotion of a kind that can only be called religious, or at leastquasi-religious.This definition of religion, you will have noticed, omits all reference to thesupernatural. For many people, religion at its core is the belief in supernaturalbeings and their intervention in human affairs. Such a rigid definition ofreligion is probably not entirely adequate. Although many religions believe inthe supernatural, some religions-notably Buddhism and Confucianism-either omit it or de-emphasize it. Hence, it is better to see religion in itsbroadest sense as a faith enterprise-an existential leap that tries to specify,beyond the evidence of sense experience, the nature of the ultimate context oflife and experience.If religion primarily has to do with a faith about how things really are-a faiththat goes beyond our sense impressions-then a wide range of academic andscientific enterprises take on a religious aura. This includes, I argue, the disciplinesof psychology. It is too strong to say that the modern psychologies are religions orhave fully religious foundations. However, it is not too much of a claim to say thatthey are quasi-religious, contain quasi-religious faith assumptions, and performquasi-religious functions for both their consumers and their professional providers.It is also reasonable to suggest that their quasi-religious dimensions are dilutedforms or fragments of historically inherited, and indeed sometimes competing,religious traditions-traditions to which modern psychologists still belong, how-ever hazily or unconsciously. In trying to illustrate this claim, I will set forth some



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themes first laid out in my book entitled Religious Thought and the ModernPsychologies (1987).

NARRATIVES AND METAPHORS IN MODERNPSYCHOLOGY

Here I attempt to give som e illustrations of the religious dimensions that are inextri-cably a part of modem psychology. I start first with psychology as theory in contrastto psychology as professional practice. I start with theory to show that my argum entshould make a difference for research as well as therapy and other forms of practice.My illustrations come from the field of psychotherapeuticpsychology. Some readersmay feel that this is the least scien tific aspect of modern psychology. I wiH not debatethe truth of this suspicion. It is still the case, however, that psychotherapeutic psychol-ogy is the most fertile field for the generation of powerful theories in personalitytheory, developmental psychology, and the various thearres of individual, family, andsocial change. If1candemonstrate the religious dimensions of some of the more promi-nent psychotherapeutic theories, I may have gone far in building at least a prima faciecase for the feasibility of my claims about he wider domains of modem psychology.Certainly Freud, in both his early and later models of personality, is the mostobvious place to begin and the eas iest pickings. In F reud's more positivistic earlyphase, metaphors of mechanism ran throughout his hydraulic theory of libido andhuman sexuality. It is precisely his metaphysical positivism that turned thesemetaphors into metaphors of ultimacy-metaphors that depic ted mechanism as theway the world most basically is (Freud, 1895; see also Browning, 1987, p. 36).Even though Freud (1900), in his The Interpretation of Dr e a m , turned to a m oregenuinely psychological, in contrast to a mechanistic, approach to the humanpsyche, his early electrical and mechanical models of the mind lingered on in histhought (see Ricoeur, 1970, pp. 159-177). For exam ple, his theory of m otivationshifted significantly after Beyond the Pleasure Principle (Freud, 1920). Yet, hisearlier metaphors of mechanism only became transmuted into more organic-likemetaphors of life and death. Although his late essay "Analysis Terminable andInterminable" (Freud, 1963) denied that he was following Em pedocles in makingEros and Thanatos into cosmological principles, he in effect did this by turningthem into psychobiological principles and then making the positivist assumptionthat psychobiology is the only effective context for human life.Freud even went beyond the boundaries of hazy metaphysical speculation andused these two grand tendencies as sources of religious comfort. Note the confes-sional and distinctively existen tial tone of h is words when he wrote in Beyond thePleasure Principle:

Perhaps we have adopted th e belief [in these two tendencies] because there is somecomfort in it. If we are to die ourselves, and first to lose in death those who are dearest

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to us, it is easier to submit to a remorseless law of nature, to the sublime Necessity,than to a chance which might perhaps have been escaped. (Freud, 1920,p. 45)In spite of Freud's struggle to maintain his Jewish identity and his ambivalent

admiration for the moral seriousness of Moses (see Rieff, 1979, pp. 209-210), hislater psychological theories rest on metaphors of dualism that are more Greek thaneither Jewish or Christian. Freud viewed nature as primarily formless vitality thatgains its moral order from sources transcendent to it-from parental imagos, culture,history, prophetic figures or, finally, the more benign externality he called "psy-choanalytic insight." Both Jewish and Christian anthropologies hold more positiveviews than did Freud of the form-creating and moral relevance of nature and instinct.Its disparaging and dualistic view of nature, even more than its alleged determinism,explains why psychoanalysis has always been an object of skepticism in the circlesof both popular Christianity and popular Judaism. Freud's psychology was basedon a metaphysic deeply at odds with that contained in either Judaism or Christianity.His psychology undercut not so much the religious beliefs of Judaism and Christi-anity as it did the broader mode of being-in-the-world of those closely relatedtraditions. It did this, not finally in the name of science, but in the name of analternative worldview and ontology arrived at more through faith than science.

If Freud's faith engendered a dualistic ontology or metaphysic of life againstdeath, the entire spectrum of humanistic psychologies offers another faith-andanother religious ontology--equally at odds with the basic symbols of the Westernreligious traditions. However, the deep metaphors of humanistic psychology aredeceptive in their comforting and reassuring features. When one reviews thetheories of Carl Rogers (1961) and Abraham Maslow (1971), one finds implicitand explicit metaphors of harmony freely strewn throughout.

We find metaphors of harmony embedded in Rogers's (1961) concept of self-ac-tualization and its alleged capacity to balance inner needs with external realities. Inone place, Rogers told us the more persons are able to flow with the basic biologicalfeelings of the actualization tendency, the more "they take their appropriate placein a total harmony of his feelings" (p. 118).Rogers wrote about the natural harmoniesthat exist between the lion and his environment: The lion eats, even sometimes kills,but does not go on wild rampages of killing, and he does not overeat. If humansstay close to their experience as guided by the actualization tendency, Rogersbelieved they too can achieve some spontaneousand natural harmony between theirinner and outer worlds. Harmony-patterns of nonconflictual correspondencebetween inner and outer realities-is, for Rogers, the final or ultimate context ofhuman experience, something we can rely on and trust in our daily living.

One sees similar metaphors of harmony functioning in Maslow's (197 1) descrip-tion of peak experiences and his later concept of synergism. This is the idea that inthe good society "one person's advantage is the other person's advantage ratherthan one person's advantage being the other's disadvantage" (p. 209). Such easy

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harmony between self and others functions in both Rogers and Maslow more as ametaphysical hope than an empirical fact. It is an assumption more akin to faiththan it is to a tested scientific hypothesis.Metaphors of harmony can be found in later psychoanalytic ego and self-psy-chologists such as Erik Erikson and Heinz Kohut. The well-known concept ofepigenesis and the theory of cogwheeling between the needs of child and parentinfuse an aura of trust and complementarity throughout the writings of Erikson(e.g., Erikson, 1964, p. 114). The later Kohut moved toward similar metaphors ofharmony. Kohut spoke in How Analysis Cures (1984) of "our innate talents," a"blue print" of our potentialities, and an "innermost design" that throws us "into amiddle-age crisis" when we discover we have not been true to it (see also Kohut,1977, p. 40). In his late essay entitled "Introspection, Empathy, and the Semi-circleof Mental Health" (1982), Kohut rejected the conflictual model of Freud's image ofGuilty Man in the name of an alternative, more harmonistic image he calls TragicMan. Tragic Man is tragic precisely because he is induced to fall away from thisinner design and its harmony with others and the world.From one perspective, the deep metaphors of Erikson (1964) and Kohut (1977,1984) are similar to the Greek eudaemonistic images to be found in the grandexemplars of humanistic psychology, Rogers (1 961) and Maslow (197 1).From anotherperspective, they resonate with motifs found in the Jewish and Christian symbols aboutthe goodness of God's creation. In spite of their similarities to Rogers and Maslow,Erikson's and Kohut's more complex understanding of the anxieties and vulnerabilitiesof the self makes human fulfillment less dependent on unfolding, harmonious, innerpotentialities than on trusting sources of regard and affirmation beyond the self.This makes their implicit metaphysics, 1submit, closer to Jerusalem than to Athens.However, it is not my intention to settle in this article to which religio-culturalconglomerate Erikson and Kohut rightly belong. Rather, my point is more modest;their psychologies-as did the psychologies of Freud, Rogers, and Maslow-havereligious horizons for which they give no explicit scientific account.

Even the hard-headed B. F. Skinner (1972) had his implicit deep metaphorsthat animated his psychology in ways he did not fully understand. It is com-monly acknowledged that Skinner's behav~orismwas riddled with contradic-tions. There were conflicts, for instance, between his philosophical determinismand his unacknowledged assumptions about the intentionality of those whowould design the schedules of reinforcement of the good society. Skinner nevermade clear who would have the freedom and intentionality to design ~u c hschedules of reinforcement.This irreconcilable tension in Skinner (1972) was actually held together by deep

metaphors of husbandry borrowed from his early childhood experiences of animalcare and gardening. Time and again, Skinner unwittingly imagines n his psychologicalwritings a sort of benevolent, paternalistic, and almost supernatural husbandry per-formed by some personified power-a power or intelligence that can plan productive

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schedules of reinforcement without itself being subject to them (1972, pp. 47-48;see also Browning, 1987, pp. 94-1 16).Metaphysics and Metaphors of UltimacyThe deep metaphors in these psychologies function as metaphors of ultimacy. Theyintimate ways in which the most determinative context of experience can be seenas trustworthy or untrustworthy, warm or cold, dependable or capricious. Thesemetaphors are unknowingly chosen from one or another religio-cultural traditionthat constituted the classic hermeneutical resources of Western culture. Somepeople might complain that insofar as such deep metaphors exist in these psycholo-gies, they are an embarrassment and discredit any psychology aspiring to be ascience. From another angle of vision, it can be argued that insofar as thesemetaphors exist and influence psychology, it can only gain credibility when it learnsto acknowledge them and submit them to critical analysis. If the modern psycholo-gies can avoid engendering such attitudes and holding such metaphors, it is clearthat they have not as yet found a way to do so. The modern psychologies have notup to now found a way to escape faith, and faith, as I have argued, is an essentialelement in the more comprehensive concept of religion.

Psychology, Metaphysics, and ReligionSome writers have advanced arguments similar to mine, but with some differences.Thomas Szasz (1991) and Paul Vitz (1977) charged that various modern psycholo-gies are pseudo-religions. Both have done so, however, with a derisive tone. Szaszbelieved that this is a fault of the modern psychologies. Vitz, on the other hand,complained not so much about their religiousness but about the reality of theiralleged heresies. A view analogous to the one I have just developed was made byWilliam O'Donahue in his 1989 American Psychologist article entitled "TheClinical Psychologist as Metaphysician-Scientist-Practitioner." O'Donahue's ar-gument, however, was more about psychology's relation to metaphysics than toreligion. Building on the philosophy of science of Karl Popper and Imre Lakatos,O'Donahue argued that every science, including psychology, contains metaphysi-cal assumptions at the core of its theories. This theoretical core is protected by aseries of auxiliary hypotheses that are thought, in turn, to be a credible researchprogram in the extent to which they predict novel facts. The scientist's belief incausality, the possibility of rational explanation, or continuity in experience are allexamples of metaphysical assumptions of this kind.

Metaphysical assumptions of this type, however, are not exactly the same asdeep metaphors of a quasi-religious nature. This is where O'Donahue's argumentdiffers from mine. All religious metaphors imply metaphysics of some kind, butnot all metaphysics directly imply religion or faith. Metaphysical principles become

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quasi-religious in character when they elicit attitudes of trust, hope, faith or, indeed,some of their existential opposites suchasdoubt and despair. All of the psychologiesI have just reviewed, and many more, contain such religiously inspiring metaphors.

Religion and a Philosophical Anthropology for PsychologyThe reader may now be asking: What is the point of this quick overview of thequasi-religious character of many of the modern psychologies? Does this mean thatmodern psychology must become explicitly religious, that it must come under thedomain of some historic religion, that it must become explicitfy Christian, Jewish,or Islamic? Does it also mean that the researchers and practitioners of modernpsychology should become confessors of a specific religious tradition to be goodpsycholagists? Because I am one who identifies with the Christian religion, am Iin this article subtly, or not so subtly, trying to convert the reader-indeed all ofmodern psychology-to the religion with which I am sympathetic?Such a goal is not my purpose. My point, I believe, is more complex. I argueinstead that it is useful for psychology as a modern academic discipline to do itsresearch and practice in dialogue with a broad philosophical anthropology informedby the deep metaphors and narratives of the Western religious traditions--chieflyJudaism, Christianity, and Islam. When I say this, I mean to include the variousways these living religious traditions have absorbed elements of the reiigloustraditions of Babylon, Greece, and Rome-traditions thought to be dead but whichactually live on in a transformed state in their successors.It has been my argument that these living religious traditions provide the classicimages of human nature and fulfillment that inform the "effective history" ofWestern cultures. The idea of effective history comes from the hermeneutic theoryof Hans-Georg Gadamer (1982). It refers to the way certain classic texts andmonuments of the past live in our current experience, shaping our sensitivities andaspirations even if we have nearly lost them to our conscious memory (pp.267-274). These classics contain symbolically expressed images of the human thatinform our cultural imagination long before we distance ourselves from themsufficiently to begin critical reflection and more refined psychological research.As Paul Ricoeur (1962) wrote, these symbols and metaphors "give rise tothought." Scientific and philosophical thought arise out of these inherited symbolsand metaphors, whether or not these disciplines fully understand how this is so.Our so-called scientific thought abstracts its technical models of the human fromthese richer images of human existence, fault, and fulfillment. The cognitivedistancing of the scientific psychologies is just that-a distancing from that to whichthey already belong in varying degrees. These classic religio-cultural images of thehuman inform our psychologies, not only as objects to be explained as in thepsychology of religion, but as anthropoloplcal models or philosophical anthropolo-



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gies that inform the very conceptuality of our psychologies from their inception(see also Jones, 1995). Remember the deep metaphors that inform every aspect ofthe psychologies we reviewed earlier.These religio-cultural images tell us about the realities and possibilities of humannature and inform our normative images of health, moral obligation, and transcen-dence. Our operative psychologies may vary from these inherited symbolic anthro-pologies, but that is just the point-they are variations on inherited themes. Werecognize the variations with reference to the classic images and models that wentbefore them.Let me give an example of a philosophical anthropology that can be abstractedfrom the symbols and narratives of Judaism and Christianity-the two most centralreligions shaping the effective history of the modern West. Although Judaism andChristianity have differences, they also share vast similarities. Setting aside for themoment the different beliefs they hold about the person of Jesus, these closelyrelated religions share overlapping images of human nature. Both traditions viewhumans as finite, conditioned, yet free and self-transcending. They understandhumans as created by a trustworthy higher power to live in a basically trustworthyworld. They both view creation as good in the basic premoral sense of the wordgood. Yet this good creation is susceptible to distortions through the misuse offreedom. Such an image of the created order roots human beings fully in nature,body, history, and community. For this reason, the philosophical anthropologyimplicit in these traditions can take account of the conditionedness of life mediatedby instincts, society, and tradition. Because these religious traditions understandthe conditionedness of life, they can accept some social science insights into thisconditionedness as well. Yet, these traditions represent humans as also self-tran-scending, that is, free and capable of forming a reflexive relation to oneself. Thiscapacity for reflexivity-for forminga relation with oneself-is called spirit. Spiritas self-reflexivity is thought to mirror the essence of the divine.Both these religious traditions understand human freedom as relative andvulnerable-a finite freedom in contrast to the absolute or extreme freedom of someforms of existentialism. Human freedom in these traditions is a kind of dialogicalfreedom-a freedom that is elaborated in dialogue with God and neighbor. Thecapacity for dialogue is the foundation of the capacity to be addressed and heldaccountable by others--especially the transcendent source of all life. Consciencein these traditions is not primarily a product of manipulated affections and inter-nalized prohibitions, as it was for Freud. As important as this aspect of consciencemay be, Jewish and Christian theory see conscience developing out of a dialoguebetween self and neighbor and between self and this transcendent source.This is why Martin Buber (1957) and others such as H. Richard Niebuhr (1963)and the later writings of his brother Reinhold Niebuhr (1955) were right to makedialogue so central to their religiously informed philosophical anthropology. Buber'sphilosophical anthropology made significantcontributions o theology, philosophy,



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and psychology. In fact, Buber's work is an excellent example of how a religiouslyinformed philosophical anthropology can provide a framework for more detailedscientific inquiries and practical applications. However, there are other examplesof powerful philosophical anthropologies with potential for informing psychology.Ricoeur's (1992) own philosophical anthropology is another excellent example.As central as the metaphor of dialogue is to Western religious traditions, it isnot fully adequate to comprehend the richness of these traditions. The deepmetaphors of these traditions range dialectically between metaphors of creation,covenant, and dialogue. These are the controlling deep metaphors that shape theimages of human fulfillment in these traditions. These metaphors need to beconsidered for the philosophical grounding of psychology in place of its proclivityfor metaphors of mechanism, harmony, or dualism. Even then, there is doubtless aplace for this latter set of metaphors, but they might play a more balanced role inpsychology if they were subordinate to the metaphors of dialogue, creation, andcovenant. To advance this claim now, however, would take me too far beyond theboundaries of this short essay.Philosophical Anthropology and Psychological PracticeWhat is the payoff of a religiously informed philosophical anthropology forpsychological practice? It is one thing to say that such an anthropology is relevantto psychological theory. It is another thing to argue that it would be useful forpractices informed by psychology. There are, I believe, several such advantages. 1have space to mention and elaborate only three.First, there is the advantage of making explicit what is implicit in psychologicaltheories. If there are deep metaphors in psychological theories, a religiouslyinformed philosophical anthropology should help us identify them for further criticalanalysis.A critical conversation is possible between the implicit deep metaphors ofthe modern psychologies and the deep metaphors of the Jewish and Christiantraditions. Many of the issues dividing different schools of psychology are notnarrowly empirical in nature; they may be philosophical, even quasi-religious,as well. An analysis of these psychologies from the perspective of Western religiousanthropologies may be useful in uncovering some of the sources of theircompeting claims--claims that have implications for practice as well as theory.Second, psychology should keep in constant conversation with a religiouslygrounded philosophical anthropology as a way of enriching its research agenda.For instance, the classic Jewish and Christian religious expressions have neverbeen simply Jewish or Christian. They have been Jewish-Greek or Chris-tian-Jewish-Greek. In short, they have been syntheses of various religio-culturalelements. Bringing Greek rationality together with Jewish and Christian revelationhas led most classic Western religious expressions, in one way or another, to holdthat religious revelation and reason are either identical or closely related. What are

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the consequences for human behavior of holding that rationality and religious revela-tion overlap? What happens in those societies when reason and revelation breakapart? Psychology might want to study such a question. It stands not only as an excitingresearch agenda. It is as well a practical problem of the utmost importance. Especiallyis this true in a day marked by the decline of more rational forms of religion and theelevation of individualistic, mystagogical, and magical forms of religion.Last, and the most important, psychology with areligiously grounded philosophi-cal anthropology could help heal the growing gap between the culture of the psycho-logical professions and the culture of its clients. Research by David Larson, formerlyof the National Institute of Mental Health, demonstrated that the mental healthprofessions are far more secular than the general population. Whereas 90% of thegeneral population believe in God and are sympathetic to religion, only42% of psychia-trists believe in God and are sympathetic to religion (Larson, Pattison, Blazer, Omran,&Kaplan, 1986).Psychologists and social workers are significantly lower than psychia-trists on these measures. Larson and his colleagues discovered an emerging culturalgulf between the religious sensibilities of clients and the clinical practitioners whoserve them. This cultural gap has led to a situation of mistrust between much of thepopulation and the mental health professions. This in turn is leading to the emergenceof an alternative mental health establishment-a so-called religious or Christianpsychology that competes with allegedly secular psychology and psychotherapy.I go one step further than Larson and argue that if the modern psychologies containdeep metaphors of aquasi-religious kind, the chasm is not so much between religiousclients and secular therapists. The split may be between religious clients and their deepmetaphors and therapists who hold an alternative set of deep metaphors of an equallyreligious character (seeBrowning& Evison, 1991;Browning, Jobe,& Evison, 1990).My proposal for situating the clinical psychologies within areligiously informedphilosophical anthropology would help heal this gap. It would assist in this taskwithout asking psychological clinicians to become explicit believers in the doctrinalaffirmations of any of the Western religious traditions. Developing these disciplinesin close association with a religiously informed philosophical anthropology will helpclinicians both empathize with and critically assess the Western religious ways ofbeing-in-the-world of their clients. This could happen whether or not the psycho-logical practitioner canaffirm he specific beliefs of any one Western religious tradition.The relation between the religious sources of modern psychology and thepsychological study of religion is finally a circular relation. Before psychologistscan adequately study religion psychologically-whether theoretically or in theclinical context-they must learn an important lesson taught by Paul Ricoeur.Ricoeur (1959, pp. 42-47; 1992, pp. 16-23) pointed out the ways religioustraditions and their symbols inevitably shape what Descartes called the"cogitow-the knowing ego. These symbols shape the cogito of both the psycho-logical researcher and the subjects he or she attempts to study. If Ricoeur is right,psychology as an objective science, in the 19th century sense of Naturwissenschaft



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(natural science), is all the more difficult to conceive. However, without recognlz-ing this epistemological state of affairs, psychology as an academic discipline willbe lost; it will be unable to account for itself. Furthermore, a psychology isolatedfrom the symbolic richness of Western culture will be out of step with, and evenseditious of, the society and culture that it hopes to serve.

REFERENCESBrowning, D. (1987).Religious thought and the modem psychologies. Minneapolis, MN: FoNess.Browning, D., & Evison, I. (1991).Does psychiatry need a public philosophy? Chicago: Nelson-Hall.Browning, D., Jobe, T., & Evison, I. (1990). Religious and ethical factors in psychiatric practice.Chicago: Nelson-Hall.Buber, M. (1957). l and thou. New York: Scribner's.Erikson,E. (1964). Insight and responsibility. New York: Norton.Freud, S. (1895). Project for a scientific psychology.S.E., I, 283-341.Freud, S. (1900).The interpmation of dreams.S.E., V, 339-622.Freud, S. (1920). Beyond the pleasure principle. S.E., XVIII, 7-87.Freud, S. (1963). Analysis terminable and interminable. In P. Rieff (Ed.), Colle cted pap ers of SigmundFreud (pp. 262-265). New York: Collier.Gadarner, H. -G. (1982). Truthandmethod. New York: Crossroad.Jones, S. (1995). A constructive relationship for religion with the science and profession of psychology:

Perhaps theboldest model yet. American Psychologisb 49(3), 84-199.Kohut, H. (1977). The restoration of the sel f:New York: International Universities Press.Kohut, H. (1984). How ana lysis cures. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Larson, D. B., Pattison,M., Blazer, D. G., Omran, A. R.,& Kaplan, B. H. (1986). Systematic analysisof research on religious variables in four major psychiatric ournals. American Journal ofpsychiarry,143,329-334.Maslow, A. (1971). The further reaches ofhuman nature. New York: Viking.McCloskey, D. (1990). Ifyou're so smart. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Midgley, M. (1985). Evolution as a religion. London: Methuen.Niebuhr, H. R. (1963). The responsible self: New York: Harper & Brothers.Niebuhr, R. (1955). The selfan d the dramas ofhistory. New York: Scribner's.O'Donahue, W. (1989). The (even) bolder model: The clinical psychologistas rnetaphysician-scien-tist-practitioner. American Psychologist, 44, 1460-1468.Ricoeur, P. (1%2). Thehermeneutics of symbols and philosophical reflection.Inte mtio nal Philosophi-

cal Quarterly, 191-218.Ricoeur, P. (1970). Freudand philosophy. New Haven: Yale University Press.Ricoeur, P. (1981).Hermeneutics and the human sciences . Cambridge, England: Cambridge UniversityPress.Ricoeur, P. (1992). One selfa s another. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Rieff, P. (1979).Freud: The mind of the moralist. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Rogers, C. (1961).On becoming a per son . Boston: Houghton Mifflin.Skinner, B. F. (1972).Beyond freedom and dignify. New York: Bantam.Szasz, T. (1991). Ideology and insanity. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.Vitz, P. (1977).Psychology as religion: The cult of seg-worship.GrandRapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans.



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can psycholog escape religion

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