Freud, Teilhard and Rogers
Today’s Post
In the last two weeks we have followed Carl Rogers as he described his observations of a client in the process of finding his kernel of person-ness: what we have referred to as “secular meditation”. He also describes what emerges when we begin to trust and cooperate with this fundamental energy which Teilhard identifies as the ‘thread of evolution’, and Karen Alexander as the ‘cosmic spark’, as it rises in us
This week we will take a summary relook at the three approaches we have addressed in the past few weeks, those of Sigmund Freud, Teilhard and Carl Rogers, as they relate to the process of ‘secular meditation’ in search of a ‘core of personness’.
From Freud: the Dark Side
Even the most casual study of human history reveals a ‘dark side’ of humanity. All of the great books of ancient religions recognize it and warn against a turgid undercurrent which thwarts our ‘better nature’. To make things worse, with the explosion of popular media in our time, we are awash in the hyperventilating but financially rewarding reports of dystopia.
Sigmund Freud was the first to systematically apply the emerging practices of science to a study of the human person, and as we saw a few weeks ago, assembled a magnificent edifice of concepts, terminology and theory which was applicable to diagnosis and treatment of human emotional problems.
Unfortunately, as we also saw, his premise of the dangerous nature of the basic human, combined with his disdain for organized religion, colored this remarkable undertaking with a deep-seated pessimism that was to permeate his ‘school’ of psychology.
Freud’s view of human ontology was surely influenced by Darwin’s theory of evolution, in which the human was seen to evolve from a non-human animal ancestor. Freud held that this evolution explained the source of our ‘dark’ side, and hence had to be overcome if we were to rid ourselves of our ‘psychoses’. The “taming of ourselves” required the “taming of the ancestral animal within”.
While Freud (and Darwin) accurately identify these roots and how they affect us, they don’t take into account another perspective on such evolution. Teilhard remarked on the ‘transitional’ states of evolution, such as the formation of particles of matter from raw energy, atoms from subatomic particles, cells from highly complex molecules, and self-aware persons from otherwise conscious animals. He points out that in every case the first manifestations of each of these ‘new’ entities initially are virtually indistinguishable from their predecessor. He refers to the earliest, prokaryotic (non-nucleus) cells as emerging ‘dripping in molecularity’. If it were possible to see them in a population of highly complex, non-living molecules (such as amino acids), it would be very difficult to distinguish them. In contrast, at the evolutionary level of, say, neurological cells, the uniqueness of living tissue has become obviously different from complex molecules.
Teilhard sees the same thing happening with the human. Were it possible to see the first homo sapiens individual in a jungle filled with pre-humans, how would we tell them apart? Today there would be no problem with such an observation.
We humans have indeed emerged as animals with more complex brains, but that makes all the difference. The pre-humans, with only their reptilian and limbic brains, are at the mercy of their instinctual stimuli. The reptiles fight or fee, breathe, eat and procreate according to their basic, instinctual brain stimuli. Mammals add new powers of nurturing offspring, clannish connections and improved adaption to environment changes. These new behaviors, due to their new limbic brain, are in addition to the stimuli from their reptilian brains, and endow them with more instinctive evolutionary fitness.
Even though we humans have a third layer to our brains, the instinctual stimuli of the lower brains is still active, but the neo-cortex provides the capability of modulating them. I have suggested that the key manifestation of evolution in the human person can be found in the evolving skill of the neo-cortex to ‘ride herd’ on the instinctual stimuli of the lower brains.
So, even though Freud correctly recognizes the ‘dark side’, his assumption that the kernel of the person is dangerous does not take into account that it is through engagement with this kernel that the human evolves from the emotional immaturity of the child toward the personal wholeness of the mature adult. It’s not that the child’s essence is negative, but that its growth towards maturity is incomplete.
From Rogers: Toward the Light
As we have seen, Carl Rogers assumes a view of our personal evolution that is quite different from Freud. He assumes that each human person comes into the world with a quantum of potency, and that instead of being broken, is incomplete and capable of personal evolution –growth– towards increased being.
It should be noted that Rogers’ articulation of the emerging characteristics of a maturing person are purely secular. His methods are those of science: observe, theorize, and test. They require no adherence to religious belief (and are often antithetical to some), but rather a basic, fundamental belief in the trustworthy nature of the basic self, and a willingness to cooperate with it.
While there might not be a universally accepted list of the characteristics of human happiness or articulation of human potential, Rogers’ list of the characteristics displayed by a person in the process of growing is not only an excellent beginning but universally applicable.
Combined with the unique (and universal) nature of Rogers’ therapeutic relationship, ‘religious’ concepts such as belief, faith and love not only take on a new, secular, meaning, but one more relevant to human life.
Rogers’ approach offers a structure for a true, secular, employment of secular meditation as a means to self-discovery.
From Teilhard: The Light Itself
As we have frequently seen, Teilhard starts from the ‘other end’, describing how the ‘ground of being’ is manifest in the very basic manifold forces which power the evolution of the universe itself. He describes how these forces combine to effect all that we can see, and not only the human as a species but active in individual human persons as well. In his view (and that of Blondel, Rohr and others), it is impossible to distinguish where these forces leave off and where we begin since each act of such distinguishing requires the action of this force as it rises in us.
Freud, Rogers and Teilhard in a Nutshell
Freud applies science to atheism, “It is Id, be very afraid”
Rogers applies experience to science, “It is myself, I am trustworthy”
Teilhard applies science to religion. “It is I, be not afraid”
As Teilhard affirms, finding ourselves is finding the thread of universal evolution as it rises in ourselves. As Rogers discovers, the legacy that we receive as our basic human human birthright can be trusted to power our growth towards more complete being. God can not only be found, ‘He’ can be embraced.
The Next Post
After identifying God as the agent of evolution,
by which things increase in complexity over time,
through which the process of evolution is possible,
from the big bang to the human,
as products of evolution: even in our individual lives,
with which we can come into contact
by searching for the kernel of ourselves
using the emerging insights of science
the next post will now go on to the final stage of Relating to God: the secular side of ‘Loving God’