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IX. NAMING PERSONAL EVIL

By Stephen Palmquist (stevepq@hkbu.edu.hk)

25. Dealing with the Devil's Disease

Where does evil come from? This deep question has vexed philosophers and theologians for thousands of years. Psychologists, too, are now entering into the discussion. Those who know a little bit about Jungian archetypes sometimes have a tendency to identify evil with the "shadow" (see Lecture 17). This is because the shadow consists of those possibilities we have been taught to repress for mainly moral reasons. However, this does not justify a simple identification between evil and the shadow. For according to Jung, the shadow, like all archetypes, is morally neutral: evil arises only when a person stands in an improper relation to his or her shadow. This week we shall explore in detail the difference between a proper and an improper way of relating to the shadow. The basic point is quite simple, yet somewhat paradoxical: we become evil when we ignore or run away from our shadow (i.e., from those parts of ourselves that are unconscious because we believe they are evil); we begin to overcome evil when we become aware of the shadow and meet it face to face.

Learning to deal boldly with the evils we face in ourselves and in the world is a skill we must possess before we can break out of the "cocoon" of our preliminary transformations into the fullness of our individual Self-identity. Indeed, we shall see that evil, if treated properly, can itself turn out to be the force that works in the darkness of the cocoon to shape and prepare us for the final breakthrough into the light. But before we look in detail at the psychological nature, source and implications of evil, I'd like to tell you a little story, taken from the first chapter of M. Scott Peck's book, People of the Lie. The story is called "The Man Who Made a Pact with the Devil".

George was a successful traveling salesman. He and his wife had three children, a good home and a satisfactory marriage. But then he began to be obsessed with thoughts about his own death or about causing someone else's death. For example, one night on his way home from a long trip, he drove over a familiar bridge. The thought suddenly popped into his mind that he would never cross that bridge again. That night he could not sleep as he debated with himself about how to respond. Finally, got he dressed, drove 73 miles back to the bridge, and triumphantly drove across once again. He returned home at dawn, happy that he had proved to himself that the thought was wrong. After that, each time a new thought began to obsess him, he would feel compelled to return to the place where the thought occurred, as a way of convincing himself the thought would not come true. This compulsive behavior caused him to lose a great deal of sleep, and as a result, his business and home life soon began to deteriorate. When George finally broke down and told his wife about what had been happening, she convinced him to see Dr. Peck, a neo-Freudian psychotherapist.

After numerous frustrating therapy sessions, without any significant progress being made, George one day came to Peck's office announcing that his problems were solved: he had overcome his neurosis. He no longer wanted to talk about his obsessive-compulsive behavior. Yet the real problems in George's life, his failing business and miserable home life, showed no signs of improvement. Ten days later, he confessed that the change occurred when he "made a pact with the devil" (PL 28). George had been raised by a very religious mother, but hated his experiences of being dragged to church for hours several times each week. As an adult he had never taken religion seriously. But, he explained, when his latest compulsion had come, he "made this agreement that if I did give in to it and go back, then the devil would see to it that my thought came true." He did not really believe in the devil, so this arrangement seemed to be a harmless way of overcoming his problems. However, he then admitted that, as part of the deal, he had agreed that if he ever gave in to a future obsession, then his youngest son would die an early death. This served as "insurance" to prevent him from using the devil's nonexistence as an excuse to continue acting on his compulsions.

After making this confession, George wanted Peck to help him eliminate the guilt he felt about having made such an imaginary pact. Instead, Peck told him he was glad the guilt existed, because it showed he had really done something wrong. Whether or not the devil really exists is not the point: even if the pact was merely a fantasy, it was evil. For it revealed George's long-standing tendency to run away from the true problems he was facing in the search for an "easy way out". But there is no easy way out of life's problems. George finally saw how cowardly he had been and, on Peck's advice, decided to renounce this clever "solution". Naturally, the obsessions returned; but this time he struggled to face them instead of avoiding them through compulsive responses. Over a two-year period of psychoanalysis, George was eventually able to overcome his problem and regain a normal life at home and work.

What went wrong with George? In his book, Peck uses this and numerous other stories to argue that the traditional categories of psychotherapy are inadequate to solve certain types of psychological problems, such as George's. Traditionally, people are regarded as either "healthy", "neurotic" or "psychotic". But Peck introduces a fourth category, consisting of people who always prove to be highly resistant to psychotherapy. Therapists can often work with such people for years without ever making significant progress. Peck boldly suggests that the proper name for such people is "evil". Unlike ordinary neurotics and psychotics, who are obviously "sick", evil people appear to be normal, both to themselves and to all (or most) people who know them. But inwardly, they are totally alienated from themselves and yet (perhaps out of fear of what they might find) highly resistant to any change.

The key difference between a genuinely healthy person and one who appears healthy but is actually evil is somewhat paradoxical: healthy people regard themselves as imperfect, but are able to cope with their problems well enough to make progress on the path to wholeness; evil people regard themselves as perfect (or at least, they are unable to recognize any significant defects), and therefore believe they are more or less whole, when in fact they are headed for destruction. When taken together with the traditional distinction between neurotics and psychotics as two types of "sick" people (i.e., people who are caught in the middle between wholeness and destruction, and are therefore unable to cope with their own imperfections), Peck's new category enables us to construct the following map of psychological states:

Figure IX.1: Four Psychological States

As this diagram indicates, evil people differ from psychotics mainly by the fact that they do not find it necessary to invent a new reality; yet they share the important characteristic of being largely unaware of their own problems, thus giving them a totally false impression of their psychological state-just as deceptive as the psychotic's.

Throughout his book, Peck makes numerous helpful suggestions as to how to recognize an evil person. He points out, for instance, that "evil" is "live" spelled backwards (PL 42). This coincidence can remind us of a much deeper truth: evil will always produce life-destroying fruit. Evil destroys life because it is based on a profound lie. The lie is the belief that "I have no problems, I am fine just as I am". Such a view can be held only by "people of the lie"-i.e., people who hide themselves from themselves, who do not know who they really are, but (unlike psychotics) think they do know. The illusion of perfection created by this lie breeds covert evil. This evil typically manifests itself in the form of "unnatural death" (44). In the case of George, the basic lie was the pact he made to help him overcome his time-wasting compulsion. George's willingness to use his own son's life as a bargaining chip (at least in his imagination) is a typical example of the tendency evil people have to bring about unnatural death of one kind or another (often in the form of murder or suicide). His "solution" only made the real problem worse by hiding it. Had the pact continued, new and even more destructive compulsions would eventually have surfaced, until the death he had been trying so hard to escape in his imagination would have become real.

The main reason ordinary psychotherapeutic techniques normally do not succeed with evil people is because such people have an "unsubmitted will" (78). Because they are not willing to see their ego as being under any higher authority, the therapist's attempts to help are consistently resisted as illegitimate or unnecessary. (Interestingly, Peck is here supporting a view that is closer to Jung than to Freud: in order to reach wholeness the ego must submit itself to a higher power, such as the Self-or, as we shall see in Lecture 26, to God.) The evil person is afraid of self-observation, for to take an honest look inward would require a painful struggle with numerous problems and imperfections. To evil people, such introspection is like psychological suicide. Without a fundamental inner transformation (e.g., a religious conversion), such people will never emerge from the cocoon of self-transformation; the "butterfly" of their true individuality will never come to be.

If you are having a great deal of trouble interpreting your dreams, if every interpretation just seems meaningless or false, or if you simply have not been able to record any significant content in your dream diary, then you should ask yourself whether you might be suffering from what Peck calls an "evil" personality. For in dreams, the ego automatically submits its authority to a higher power. As such, they provide us with a natural mechanism to protect us from evil: with every dream we are reminded that our conscious interpretation of life is limited and rooted in something far deeper. But this means the more evil a person is-i.e., the more difficulty a person has in submitting their will to other authorities -the harder it will be to treat dreams seriously. One of the main purposes of the dream diary project is to encourage you to develop the discipline of self-observation by learning to supplement your normal, conscious way of approaching life-situations with the more submissive stance required in order to engage in a dialogue with the unconscious. By doing this you equip yourself to deal more openly with what Jung calls the "dark side" of your personality (i.e., your shadow), and you thereby protect yourself from succumbing to evil.

Peck's analysis of the psychology of evil is helpful in many ways; but we must be careful not to interpret too rigidly his suggestion that therapists should actually label certain patients as "evil". A more accurate (and honest) approach, I believe, is to recognize that every person is evil to some extent or from time to time. Much the same is true for psychosis and neurosis: according to Freud, we all experience a temporary psychosis each time we dream; and most psychologists agree that even psychologically healthy people have minor bouts of neurosis here and there. In the same way, each time we discover ourselves unconsciously projecting one of our archetypes onto another person, we have brought to light an area that had formerly been obscured in darkness, and in so doing, we have broken the power of evil over that area of our life.

The phenomenon of projection, or "scapegoating", is one of the hallmarks of evil in human beings: evil causes us to blame our own shortcomings on another person. People bound by evil always tend (paradoxically) to see themselves as good, because the evil within them can survive only in the midst of a darkness that makes them blind to the weaknesses within their own soul. Projecting these weaknesses onto others enables a person to preserve the status quo and avoid the painful option of self-criticism. By keeping us unaware of our own evil, projection protects us from the guilt that would otherwise produce in us a desire for transformation. Without such a desire-as long as we would rather sacrifice others in an act of self-justifying evil than sacrifice ourselves (our ego) in an act of self-giving love-we are unable to experience any significant personal growth. Our individuation is spellbound (cf. DA 135).

Evil is indeed like a magic spell cast on a person, preventing them from seeing who they really are. How can we break the power of this spell? Before answering this question, I would like to point out one thing we should not do. There is a tendency, especially among religious people, to confuse evil with temptation. A temptation is a thought or desire that just "pops" into our mind or heart, making us want to do something that goes against our conscience (or at least, against the ethical norms of our society). Religious people often believe that the best response to a temptation is to run away from it-i.e., to avoid situations that give rise to the temptation, or to find ways of diverting one's attention from the thought or desire whenever it appears. (This is precisely what George was doing each time he gave in to his compulsion to return to the place where some obsessive thought arose.) In terms of Jung's psychology, however, temptations should instead be regarded as hints from our unconscious, clues that enable us to locate the dark areas of our soul that are still providing safe haven for evil's influence. By "changing the subject" when a temptation comes, we unintentionally allow the genuine evil at the root of the temptation to continue unabated.

Another way to look at this issue is to think of it in the traditional language of "angels" and "demons". St. Thomas Aquinas, the famous 13th-century Christian theologian, once defined angelic beings as "thoughts that think themselves". Just as such beings come in two types-good ones, called "angels", and bad ones, called "demons"-so also our spontaneous thoughts can be both good and bad. Bad thoughts are temptations, whereas good thoughts are insights. The problem is that, if we wish to open our minds to the influence of "messages from above" (i.e., insights), then we must accept the fact that the door is open to both angels and demons. Having a temptation should never be equated with doing evil. On the contrary, truly evil people are likely to believe they have their temptations largely under control. Why? Not because they have gone through the painful process of uncovering all the evil binding their soul. Their lack of temptations is more likely to be a sign of a heart and mind that has closed itself off from itself-i.e., an evil psyche. Our focus should be on learning to distinguish between angels and demons, without imagining we can continue to grow without experiencing both.

The more open a person is to his or her own spiritual nature, the more influence he or she will feel from angelic and demonic thoughts and desires. Those who cope with such influences are healthy and experience personal growth despite the ups and downs, while those who do not cope become sick. But the alternative to the risk of sickness, closing oneself off from such influences altogether, is the root of all evil. What, then, is the proper response to a temptation? The proper response is to come face to face with the psychological/spiritual reality represented by the temptation, to focus on the temptation so attentively that its true nature becomes apparent in the light of self-awareness. This is how Jesus responded to temptations. We read in Matthew 4:1-11, for example, that he went to the desert in order "to be tempted by the devil". After fasting for forty days, Jesus experienced three specific temptations: to let the devil satisfy his hunger, help him overcome death, and make him ruler of the world. Rather than quickly leaving the desert once these bad thoughts came, Jesus courageously spoke insights that cut through the temptations. As a result, "the devil left him, and angels came and attended him."

This story about what happened to Jesus just before he began his public ministry teaches us that the power of evil can be overcome only when we become aware of it and call it by name. Just as Peck's "evil" person believes he or she is good, so also the Bible portrays people who are possessed by demons as being totally unaware of what is happening to them. But as soon as it is called upon, the evil spirit's power is broken, and it can be cast out-especially if the demon's name is disclosed (see e.g., Luke 8:27-36). The supposedly "good" people who observe evil being dealt with so openly often believe the one who names the evil must be evil (e.g., Matt. 9:32-34). This is because they themselves are unable to distinguish angels from demons. For only by facing the evil within us, by getting to know its source, can we disarm it. As a result, those shadowy aspects of our personality that we used to fear, thinking they were evil in themselves, can be transformed into the source of our greatest strength. Resisting the devil's offer to feed him bread enabled Jesus to become the "bread of life" (John 6:35); overcoming the temptation to stage a miraculous, self-serving recovery from death enabled him to become the "resurrection" for all people (11:35); and seeing through the false glory of ruling the world made him worthy to be called "King of kings" (1 Tim. 6:13-16).

Do you remember how we began this course in Lecture 1? That's right. I asked that illusive question, "Who am I?" and Student A answered by giving my name. Interestingly, this same answer has been given first nearly every time I have taught this course. Why do we so easily associate personal identity with names? Is this really as naive as it appeared to be on that first day? Or is there something special about names that really does make them one of the most important aspects of who we are? Saying a person's name has an effect that is not unlike casting a little spell on them: it guarantees their attention for at least 10-15 seconds. I learned this lesson from some advice my father gave me when I was working my way through college. Before I started a job as a telephone salesman, selling advertisements to local businesses, he told me to find out the name of the person in charge beforehand; as soon as that person answered the phone, I would say his or her name, followed by a very brief sales pitch. I discovered that whenever I was able to say the person's name, I would have their undivided attention, whether they were interested in buying an ad or not.

This is just one of many illustrations that can broaden our understanding of what a powerful force naming can be in overcoming evil. In the next two lectures I shall provide numerous other examples, from the realms of religion and psychotherapy, respectively. To conclude this lecture, however, I would like to encourage you to apply this way of dealing with the "devil's disease" (i.e., evil) to your dream interpretations. Some dreams will actually tell us the name of a specific archetype. But usually, we need to give names to different manifestations of our various archetypes. These can be actual people's names, or they can be labels that accurately describe the character of an archetype. I have adopted the latter approach in sharing various dreams relating to my "authority-figure" shadow. Giving it this label has helped me recognize it whenever it occurs, giving me a power over its influence that I would otherwise not have. This transforms its evil into an opportunity for growth. Similarly, my wife sometimes dreams of an animus character whom she calls by the name he once disclosed to her in a dream. This makes that aspect of her animus easier to identify and interpret.

Over the next few weeks, as your dream diary project draws to a close, you should take some time to review all your dream entries. As you do this, look for patterns (whether in the form of archetypes or other symbols) that you can clearly identify. Then name any recurrent patterns. You will soon discover how effective your dream interpretations can be in awakening you to the reality of the evil that is within.

26. Religion and the "Dark Side" of God

How effective is religion in helping people overcome evil? Clearly, the answer depends on the character of the religious person and/or group in question. Religion sometimes serves as a subtle disguise for evil that fools people into believing they are already perfect and therefore have no need to be self-reflective. But genuine religion encourages people to reflect deeply on the evil within them, thus stimulating a lifelong process of personal growth. I shall examine Jung's views on religion in more detail in Week XI. But in this lecture I'll focus on one specific aspect of his psychology of religion that has often been misunderstood and prematurely rejected: his view of the proper role of evil in a healthy religion.

Before launching into this subject, let's take a quick look at the traditional "problem of evil" in the philosophy of religion. The problem, in a nutshell, is that the existence of evil on earth (especially in the form of undeserved human suffering) seems incompatible with the existence of a good and all-powerful God. If God can do anything and if God is perfectly good (as seems to be required by the Christian concept of a loving God), then why do some good people suffer needlessly while some bad people live long, happy lives? Of the many conflicting ways of attempting to solve this problem, one stands out as particularly relevant because of its similarity to Jung's psychological treatment of evil. An early church father, named Irenaeus (130-202 A.D.), developed a theory that has recently been refined by John Hick and called the "soul-making" argument. It assumes the main purpose of human life is to experience the kind of personal growth that leads to spiritual wholeness. From God's all-knowing point of view, the best way to stimulate soul-making is to give human beings freedom and put them in an environment where evil seems to be as strong as (if not stronger than) good. For although evil inhibits personal growth, its possibility (like sand in an oyster) can also work as a growth-stimulating agent-one that brings us closer to wholeness even when we are unaware of how the transformation happens.

In commenting on a fairytale, Jung makes a similar point about the role of evil in purifying the individual (CW 9.453):

it is possible for a man to attain totality, to become whole, only with the co-operation of the spirit of darkness, indeed ... the latter is actually a causa instrumentalis of redemption and individuation.... The fairytale tells us how to proceed if we want to overcome the power of darkness: we must turn his own weapons against him ...

This way of responding to evil is essentially the same as that pursued by the alchemists (see SD 10), who learned and taught that, like the fire that transforms base metal into gold, "bitter experience could sometimes purify the character and eradicate corrupting elements." This enables us to see decay and even death itself as a normal part of the everlasting and ever-changing process of life. One of the best literary accounts of the risks involved in applying this principle is the classic story of Faust, an alchemist who (like George in Peck's book) made a pact with the devil in the hope of turning the devil's tools against evil in pursuit of wholeness. This story is well worth reading, both for its literary quality and for its depth of psychological insight.

As we saw in the previous lecture, Jungian psychology views evil as arising whenever we ignore or attempt to separate ourselves from the unconscious influence of the archetypes-most notably, that of the shadow. The archetypes are Jung's analysis of what our instincts look like when they show their influence on our conscious life. Jung teaches us how to integrate them into a higher-level understanding of who we are. If we ignore these instincts, they will control us unconsciously. If we don't learn to cooperate with our archetypes, if we try to banish them as an evil part of us that can simply be thrown away, they will come back to haunt us like ghosts, when we least expect it. But when we learn to call them by name, their evil, ghostly aspect ceases to control us: "[l]ike giving a ghost its right name-it collapses" (DA 72).

Unfortunately, as we have seen, some people are so afraid of evil (or misunderstand it so deeply) that they convince themselves the way to become good is to run away from evil. Yet this only intensifies the power of evil welling up within, for "when people try to be abnormally good, something [unconscious] is trying to go absolutely wrong" (DA 6). Jung often repeats this and similar points:

... the more one turns to the light, the greater is the shadow behind one's back. (49)

We are evil, man is necessarily evil, because he is so good. Only domesticated animals misbehave; a wild animal never misbehaves.... Therefore for us to kill the [wild animal within us] would be blasphemous, a sin, it would mean killing the natural thing in us, the thing that naturally serves God. (37)

The thing you have buried grows fat while you grow thin. If you get rid of qualities you don't like by denying them, you become more and more unaware of what you are, you declare yourself more and more non-existent, and your devils will grow fatter and fatter. (53)

Jung later points out that such a denial is a danger that plagues some Christian interpretations of the experience of "conversion" (76):

You cannot jump out of your sin and cast all your burdens aside. To think like that is wrong.... It is a mistake to deny the shadow. If you do, a reaction from the collective unconscious will loom up from the dark ...; the more pious [a person] is the more evil are the things that befall him.

What then is Jung's alternative to this unhealthy religious illusion? Genuine religion, as suggested in the previous lecture, requires us to face our shadowy side, to come to know it so well that we can name it, just as Adam had to name the "beasts" and "birds" (Gen. 2:19-20) in order to "subdue" the earth (1:28). This approach to evil, incidentally, is closely related to Freud's approach to "resistance" (see Lecture 13): just as the power of resistance to an open dialogue with the unconscious can be broken if we stop fighting it and simply welcome the feeling, accepting it as our own, so also does evil's power lie in the very illusion that resisting it means avoiding all contact. Jesus cuts through this illusion with shocking commands such as "Do not resist an evil person" (Matt. 5:39) and "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you" (5:44)! This is precisely what Jung means by facing your shadow. In both cases the transformation that comes to those who accept such a challenge aims at one and the same goal, expressed by Jesus in the command (5:48): "Be perfect ... as your heavenly Father is perfect."

Jung believed this call to perfection (a word that means "wholeness") comes to every human being through a very significant archetype I have not yet mentioned: the "God-image". In a famous BBC interview shortly before his death, Jung was asked if he believed in God. His somewhat cryptic reply-"I don't have to believe, I know"-means that, despite the metaphysical uncertainties that make it impossible to prove God's existence, the image of God is an undeniable psychological fact that does exist. Jung had gathered ample evidence that such a "God-image" operates in the human psyche. He expresses this point elsewhere as follows:

The idea of God is an absolutely necessary psychological function of an irrational nature, which has nothing whatever to do with the question of God's existence. The human intellect can never answer this question, still less give proof of God. Moreover, such proof is superfluous, for the idea of an all-powerful divine Being is present everywhere, unconsciously if not consciously, because it is an archetype. (quoted in PW 11; see also CW 12.1589)

Jung often expresses himself in this cautious way to remain consistent with Kant's demonstration that we can never prove God's existence as a separate Being over and above humanity (see TP, Chs.7, 18); but when pressed, he freely admits his conviction that a real God exists "behind our images, but it is inaccessible" (CW 11.1589; see also 12.14-15).

A good illustration of the empirical character of the God-image as a psychological reality in the human soul comes in Jung's account of his treatment of a female philosophy student who came to him with a mild neurosis caused by a "father complex" (CJBW 109). Despite having no religious background, this woman's dreams repeatedly exhibited God-images. At first, these "larger than life" figures were projected onto Jung in the form of a transference (i.e., falling in love with the therapist). But the therapy progressed to a deeper level (113-118) only as Jung began to recognize how the dreams were compensating for her conscious lack of attention to a necessary aspect of the human character: the archetypal God-image that gives human beings a naturally religious disposition.

What then is this "God-image"? Several weeks ago I asked you whether or not you think God has a shadow (see p.136, above). Many of you answered negatively, arguing that God is not a human being, or that God has no evil in his nature, so the concept of a "shadow" cannot be meaningfully applied in this case. From a purely philosophical (metaphysical) point of view, this answer is no doubt correct. But Jung asks us to consider this question from a psychological point of view. Along these lines, he performs a little experiment in his book, Answer to Job, by seeing how far he can go in psychoanalyzing God. This is legitimate insofar as God must in some way be "humanized" in order to come into any relationship with human beings. With this in mind, Jung turns to the Bible and other religious texts with a view to discovering not only God's "personality", but also to what extent God has developed along a path of individuation toward personal wholeness. The rather unorthodox character of his conclusions made Jung rather apprehensive about publishing this book until near the end of his life.

Jung believes his daring experiment reveals that God has a "dark side" (a shadow). In the Old Testament God is alienated from his shadow, so he projects it onto the world, in the form of Satan. Drawing on a wealth of textual evidence, Jung argues that from a psychological point of view much of the evil in the Old Testament can be traced back to God's decision to cast Satan out of heaven. Originally, Satan was as much a part of the Godhead as was Jesus; they were, in fact, like rival brothers. I shall give more details of this view in Lecture 33, when we discuss Jung's doctrine of the fourfold nature of God.

For now I want to focus on a very interesting parallelism Jung observes between the account of human nature and the origin of evil given in the Genesis creation story and that given in the book of Job (regarded by some scholars as the oldest book of the Bible, as far as its date of authorship is concerned). The traditional Christian interpretation of Jesus' death and resurrection (the interpretation first put forward by St. Paul) is explicitly based on the Genesis account, where God is good and Adam is responsible for evil (see e.g., Rom. 5:12-21). Jung's interpretation, by contrast, is based on the Job account, where God is the source and controller of evil, while Job is "blameless and upright" (Job 1:1,12; cf. Ez. 14:14,18,20).

My view is that we can accept both of these accounts and interpretations, each as valid from its own standpoint. The former can be accepted as an accurate account of how we as individuals grow and develop in our relationship with God: we are responsible for the evil that plagues us; and our reactions to this evil determine the extent of our personal growth. Because we inevitably fail to respond properly, Jesus is required to save us from our shortcomings and bring us back into relationship with God. Jung's interpretation can also be accepted as an accurate account, provided we understand that it relates not to the individual, but to the human situation: God, as author and creator of this situation, is fully responsible for evil from this point of view. Jesus' death then serves as a form of "apology" to mankind on God's part-an apology for the terrible mess the human situation puts us in.

The Bible contains many other passages that can be interpreted as confirming Jung's view of evil, both as it relates to God and as it relates to how we, too, are to face our "dark side", just as God did (in the human form of Jesus), by dying on the cross. For instance, all seven references to an "evil spirit" in the Old Testament state that God sent the spirit (see e.g., 1 Sam. 16:14-16). To see how the Bible also relates this view of the ownership of evil to the human situation, let's look more closely at four separate examples: (1) Cain killing Abel, (2) the renaming of Jacob, (3) Jesus confronting the Pharisees, and (4) Jesus' death on the cross.

(1) The first story told in Genesis after Adam and Eve are expelled from the garden of Eden is about how their eldest son, Cain, kills his younger brother, Abel, over a dispute about sacrifices (Gen. 4:1-16). Since there was no prior evil in the garden, this story can be regarded as offering us a basic insight into how evil is to be overcome, once it exists. Cain is a farmer and Abel is a shepherd. When it comes time for each to bring an offering to God, Cain naturally brings the best of his crops, while Abel brings the best of his flock. Cain becomes angry because God approves of Abel's sacrifice, but not Cain's. In a fit of jealousy, he kills his brother. God punishes him by taking away his ability to grow crops and making him a wanderer for the rest of his life.

What was Cain's sin? Many legalistically-minded readers assume Cain's offering of crops must have disobeyed a prior command to offer an animal sacrifice. A common suggestion is that Cain should have traded his crops for a lamb that could then have made a pleasing sacrifice to God. But nothing in the text justifies such an assumption. Instead, God encourages Cain not to react in anger to what appears to be an unfair situation, but to be humble enough to trust in the rightness of God's judgment (4:6-7):

Then the Lord said to Cain, "Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at the door; it desires to have you, but you must master it."

God is not condemning Cain for giving the wrong kind of sacrifice, but is telling him to view this as a character test lest he fall into sin. How significant, that God's first words outside of Eden encourage us to face our own shadow and thereby to overcome the power of sin! Unfortunately, Cain fails the test and kills his brother instead. But from the psychological standpoint, even murder is not the root sin. The root sin is Cain's unwillingness to be self-critical, to "master" the threat of sin by admitting he may have been wrong or his brother's offering may have been better. Unnatural death (in this case, murder-an ironic displacement for killing a lamb) is only the effect of the evil that Cain had allowed to take over his personality.

(2) Most of Genesis is about the four "patriarchs" (i.e., archetypal fathers of the Jewish faith): Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph. Of these, Jacob (Abraham's grandson) is the one after whom the entire nation of Israel was named. His original name, "Jacob", means "one who grasps the heel", because he was born holding onto the heel of his twin brother, Esau. But "Jacob" is also a figure of speech meaning "deceiver"-a name that matches Jacob's personality quite well, as numerous stories illustrate. His name is changed to "Israel", however, after he spends a whole night wrestling with "a man" who turns out to be God (Gen. 32:22-32). This new name means "one who struggles with God" and came to be regarded not as a term of reproach, branding a rebellious spirit, but as a term of honor and respect that defines the basic character of a whole nation of people who are willing to interact with God. Such struggling with God is indeed a necessary part of what Jung calls "individuation". Whereas Cain was a good man who was simply unwilling to consider the possibility that his goodness might have a dark side, Jacob was an obviously deceitful man who was nevertheless rewarded with a deep self-awareness because of his willingness to struggle with God face to face.

(3) Skipping over the many other biblical stories that relate to the theme of naming evil, I'll conclude with two illustrations from the New Testament. First, Jesus frequently contrasts what he calls the "kingdom" attitude with the attitude of the Pharisees. One of the main characteristics of the former is an awareness of one's weaknesses. Thus in Matthew 5:3 Jesus preaches: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs in the kingdom of heaven." The Pharisees, by contrast, felt their responsibility as religious leaders required them to set a good example of pure and proper behavior, so they were far more concerned with pointing out weaknesses in others than in themselves. But Jesus saw through their persona of purity, calling them "hypocrites" and comparing them to "whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men's bones and everything unclean" (Matt. 23:27).

Jesus' warning "that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven" (Matt. 5:20) must not be interpreted legalistically, as a reference to the purity of one's outward persona, but as a call to adopt a deeper and more genuine religious disposition. The difference between the truly religious people who enter God's kingdom (perhaps even unexpectedly) and the falsely religious people who are shocked at being excluded (25:31-46) is that only the former were willing to face their shadows. The final proof that the Pharisees were of the latter sort is that, when faced with a man who was calling people to a deeper form of spiritual wholeness, they still refused to engage in self-examination; instead, they plotted to kill Jesus. Here again we see the same pattern Peck says is the hallmark of all evil: unnatural death. The Pharisees believed they were protecting the Jewish people from an evil influence, yet in their self-righteousness, they were in fact the perpetrators of the worst possible evil!

(4) Despite being somewhat at odds with Jung's views on the dark side of God, the orthodox interpretation of Jesus' death and resurrection nevertheless includes some features that are quite consistent with Jung's main point about healthy religion being a means of breaking through the traditional black-and-white, surface distinction between good and evil and reaching a more perfect (complete) way of life. The Bible portrays Jesus not as an innocent victim of an unfortunate political injustice, but as someone who consciously submits to a death he does not deserve. In so doing, Paul tells us (1 Cor. 4:21), "God made him who had no sin [i.e., Jesus, the Christ] to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." This amazing transformation, whereby the sinless one becomes sin, is described elsewhere in terms of Jesus being "made perfect" through the sufferings he endured (Heb. 5:9-10). The traditional doctrine of salvation that appears in these (and many other) passages, whereby ordinary human beings now have the opportunity to be transformed into "sons of God" (see e.g., Rom. 8:14,19; Gal. 3:26), must therefore be understood as deriving its validity from the fact that Jesus faced up to God's shadow. He was thereby able to defeat evil-not by nullifying it, but by "swallowing it up" (cf. 1 Cor. 15:54-55) in an act of ultimate wholeness.

The lesson in all of this is that the Bible itself portrays the deepest evil (perhaps the only "unforgivable sin" [see Matt. 12:31-32]) as the refusal to admit that we are evil. The best way to distinguish between a psychologically healthy religion and one that does more harm than good to its members is to assess whether the official teaching and practice allows participants to face their shadow (both collectively and as individuals). As we have seen, the Bible provides numerous excellent examples that support a healthy view of religion. And Jung's reinterpretation of the cross provides the best possible support by suggesting that in order to be perfect, even God (viewed from the psychological standpoint of his relation to humanity) had to face the shadow of evil that arose as the dark side of God's absolute goodness. God's willingness to accept responsibility for that evil by taking it back into himself on the cross serves not only as an apology for the human situation, but also as a reminder to all that nobody is exempt from the need to face their own shadow. Though it has sometimes been interpreted in exactly the opposite way (as an excuse to ignore our dark side), the Christian message is that those who seek to follow Christ must face their shadow. For the God-image within us calls us to break out of the "cocoon" of our own self-transformation, through the insight that true "self-realization" must be a realization of ourselves in God and of God in ourselves (see Lecture 35).

27. Therapy's Aim: From Evil to Love

Jung's notion of "self-actualization", the ultimate goal of the individuation process, has become very popular among many subsequent psychologists. Most notably, Abraham Maslow has examined this concept in great detail, relating it to his empirical studies on topics such as creativity, genius, and "peak experiences" (see Lecture 21). As we have seen repeatedly over the past few weeks, the Self is an idea of wholeness that lies beyond the ego's limits of consciousness. Self-awareness therefore entails a paradoxical willingness to submit to a higher authority. Traditionally, religion has been the guardian of that authority in most human societies. For centuries, people who have had trouble overcoming obstacles on the path to self-discovery have found strength and encouragement from their religions. But what happens nowadays, for people who simply cannot bring themselves to believe in God, or whose religious belief is of little help, because their religion is itself blocking the path to further growth? This last lecture of Stage Three will assess the twentieth-century's answer to this question, by examining the nature and purpose of psychotherapy, particularly as it relates to the problem of how to overcome evil.

Good therapy will encourage an attitude of submission to a higher authority, without identifying that authority as the therapist. Instead, therapists aim to empower their patients (or "clients") with the ability to find that higher authority within themselves. As we saw in the previous lecture, such an emphasis need not be contrary to religion, as long as the patient is free to identify this inner authority as God. In such cases therapy and religion can obviously work hand in hand to combat the evil influences that are at the root of most (if not all) psychological problems. However, some therapists, such as Freud, explicitly deny the need to appeal to any authority beyond the conscious ego. How can such psychotherapists deal effectively with evil?

Up to a point, Freudian therapy certainly can promote personal growth: it has proved its effectiveness in helping neurotics overcome their illness, for example. But what about the apparently healthy people whom Peck suggests we label as "evil"? The core of these people's problem is their unsubmitted will, so the pure psychoanalytic approach of encouraging them to rid themselves of unconscious illusions through the power of their conscious ego is likely to make their problem even worse. This is why (as Peck observes) Freudians have been stumped by their inability to help certain types of people. It is also why Jung's approach proves to be much more effective in helping ordinary people deal with the threat of meaninglessness faced by anyone who takes seriously the realities of modern culture. Jungians build into their therapeutic approach the same conviction that gives religions the ability to fight against evil: that there is a higher authority to whom our egocentric preferences must be submitted, if we hope to reach wholeness.

Peck, himself a neo-Freudian therapist, proposes an answer to this problem: therapists should view their interactions with patients in terms of "the methodology of love" (PL 263-269). Using therapy to love patients and to teach them, in turn, how to love others is an admirable goal-one we shall examine in more detail next week, when we consider the therapeutic value of friendship (see Lecture 30). Peck's view, shared by many therapists, is a natural response to the fact that people usually come to therapists because of their inability to relate in normal, healthy ways to their loved ones (friends and relatives). But for now, I'd like to point out a major problem, or at least a danger, in this way of thinking about the nature and purpose of therapy.

The reason therapy should not be viewed simply as a way of loving is because the therapist-patient relationship is contrived; as such, it cannot be regarded as a model for ordinary friendships or family relationships. The main factor here is that the patient ordinarily must pay the therapist. This puts the therapist in a position of complete control over the patient: the amount of contact is strictly limited, both spatially (only in the therapist's office) and temporally (only one, or perhaps a few, hour(s) per week). And when the patient stops paying, the relationship normally ends. If we regard psychotherapists as experts in soulful intercourse, then there seems to be an irresistible parallel between this relatively new profession and the world's oldest profession: prostitution. For prostitutes can be regarded as experts in sexual intercourse. Just as prostitutes offer their bodies in a contrived form of "making love", so also therapists offer their souls in a contrived form of "making friends". In both cases the person using such services is someone who has been unable to fulfill the normal human need for healthy relationships and so turns to a professional in the field, who performs acts of intercourse (intimate conversation for the therapist, sex for the prostitute) for a fee.

This raises a serious ethical issue about the whole psychotherapeutic industry. Is paying a therapist to give your soul the kind of intimate, unconditionally-accepting attention that we normally associate with love any different from paying a prostitute to give your body the physical counterpart of such "love"? After all, the therapist's (genuine) need to impose various limits makes a truly mutual friendship virtually impossible to realize-unless the relationship progresses beyond that of a normal therapist and patient. And in such cases, the patient is generally asked to find another therapist, if any further professional help is needed.

In considering this ethical issue, it is noteworthy (though surely no more than a coincidence) that the word "therapist" in English is actually composed of the words "the rapist"! Of course, therapists defend their discipline by pointing out that the patients who come to them for help do so willingly (in most cases), and that paying for a "temporary friend" is basically a business relationship not different in principle from paying a medical doctor to help diagnose a physical illness. (This is why many modern therapists refer to those whom they help as "clients" rather than "patients".) This response is legitimate: the therapist is not (or at least, need not be) raping the patient's soul. But if he or she claims to be loving the patient, how is this arrangement any different in principle from the person who pays a prostitute to give physical love? Prostitutes defend their profession in exactly the same way therapists do: "We offer a strictly business arrangement as a realistic response to a sick society's needs."

Freud's theory of "transference" is (or could be regarded as) a response to this problem. Freud taught that feelings very much like falling in love (or hatred) are likely to occur in any healthy psychoanalytic relationship. But he warned that this, as well as the "counter-transference" that often follows (whereby the therapist begins to project feelings of love or hatred onto the patient in return) must not be confused with "the real thing". Therapists must rather learn to endure the temptation to treat it as such, in order to maximize the opportunity for healing and personal growth. As usual, Jung takes Freud's view a step further, suggesting that transference may be rooted in the archetypal human experience of "longing for a god", this being "the highest and truest meaning of that inappropriate love we call transference" (CJBW 114). This suggests that, without connecting it to the universal human impulse to be religious, the mere recognition that transference is illusory is an insufficient solution to the ethical dilemma raised by the psychotherapeutic relationship.

In a book highly critical of psychotherapy as a discipline, Jeffrey Masson explores such ethical problems in detail. Against Therapy argues that "the very idea of psychotherapy is wrong" (AT ix). For it is based on the fraudulent claim "that the truth of a person's life can be uncovered in therapy" (240). Yet, he argues, the problems faced by patients are not the kind that could, in principle, be solved by such a contrived relationship. Masson (a former psychoanalyst himself) exposes numerous examples of obviously unethical (i.e., evil) acts perpetrated by therapists, often in the name of "love". More important than isolated cases of obvious abuse, however, is his claim that all psychotherapy is inherently abusive, because of the unequal power relationship that holds between the "sick" patient and the therapist who claims to know what is "normal". Unfortunately, the book offers no clear alternative for how we are to deal with the evil we find in ourselves and society.

A key issue here for Freudians is whether the "forgotten memories" they help patients to "become aware of" might sometimes refer to events that never really happened at all. Masson claims that even Freud himself seems to have sometimes wrongly treated his patients' fantasies as if they were genuine childhood experiences. The possibility of confusing reality with fabrications of the therapist's and/or patient's imagination makes therapy very dangerous. For the patient may then blame his or her psychological problems on a parent, who is in reality quite innocent of the misdeeds he or she is supposed to have done. Nowadays all too many people react to therapy by taking legal (or other, equally damaging) action against their loved ones. Yet these are the very people therapy ought to be teaching the patient how to love.

What all this shows is that bad psychotherapy can be just as unhealthy as bad religion. Both can be equivalent to raping the soul, though (as I'll try to demonstrate next week) this need not be the case. For now, my initial recommendation for preventing therapy from becoming a prostitution of the soul is to steer clear of the belief that therapy shows or teaches love to the patient. Instead, I suggest we think of it first in negative terms, as a dark and self-enclosed context (not unlike the caterpillar's cocoon) for naming the evil that is within us. Such naming requires a willingness to suffer on the part of both the therapist and the patient. This, by the way, is the reason I have persisted in using the term "patient" instead of the more fashionable "client". The word "patient" comes from the Latin patiens, meaning "suffering". In a healthy therapeutic relationship, both parties must be willing to suffer, to be patient with and to be patients for each other. This is not love, though it may well be a necessary prerequisite for love to arise (see Lecture 30).

We are accustomed nowadays to the fact that medical doctors perform an important function when they name a person's sickness: they actually give us power to subdue its negative influence over us, like taming a wild beast. In a book that argues convincingly that western psychotherapists share much in common with non-western "witchdoctors" (the main difference being that the former usually declare themselves to be nonreligious, while the latter generally work within the confines of their culture's religion), E. Fuller Torrey treats this same kind of naming as one of the key elements of any effective therapy (WP 18):

Both therapists are to name what is wrong with their clients. The very act of naming it has a therapeutic effect....

The naming process is one of the most important components of all forms of psychotherapy.... It says to the patient that someone understands, that he is not alone in his sickness, and implicitly that there is a way to get well. It is used by all therapists everywhere, by witchdoctors and psychiatrists equally effectively.

Quoting Levi-Strauss, Torrey goes on to note that the knowledge gained through the naming process "makes possible a specific experience", and through this experience, the patient's health is restored (see also 61).

The creative power of naming can be described in philosophical terms as an application of the "analytic a posteriori" status of all genuine belief (see TP 59-60). As you work on your dream diaries, you should regard this power as the essence of any good interpretation. For instance, two apparently "evil" themes that have appeared in many of my students' dreams over the years are the death of a parent (or sibling) and being chased by someone who intends to harm the dreamer in some way. Instead of simply reacting in fear to such dreams, we can interpret them as symbols of transformation, indicating that significant changes are on the horizon. The interpretation becomes powerful once we find a name for whatever transformation is being symbolized.

The same is true for the relationship between a patient and a psychotherapist. If that relationship does not involve the naming of evil as and where it appears, then any attempt to love will be misguided and could just make matters worse. But once the evil is named, the possibility for love is freed from the misuses discussed above. Rather than talking further about therapy at this point, though, I'd like to conclude with some thoughts about how evil and love interact in a religious equivalent to the therapeutic relationship that relates directly to the theme of prayer, discussed in Lecture 24.

Long before the advent of psychotherapy, the discipline of spiritual direction was well established in religious circles, especially in monasteries and convents (see e.g., CP 36). One of the main reasons people who take their spiritual development seriously usually require the help of a spiritual guide is that, as monks have known for centuries, the psycho-dynamics of evil are bound to make the spiritual journey a dangerous one. As Merton explains (24), "the way of prayer brings us face to face with the sham and indignity of the false self that seeks to live for itself alone." The only way to respond authentically to the "dread" we inevitably experience when we take the risk to bring ourselves into the presence of God (see TP, Ch.26) is to "break with the familiar ... and go off into the unknown." Thus the monk is called to silence above all else (CP 25): "The monk faces the worst, and discovers in it the hope of the best." Oppositions like "distress" and "comfort", "sin and redemption, wrath and mercy" become one when we experience the creative presence of the Word of God in our hearts (26). A good spiritual director will be able to see how the obstacles we experience in our prayer life have "very deep roots in our character" (36).

Merton warns against using prayer as a means of escaping from the realities of life, reminding us (39): "Meditation has no point and no reality unless it is firmly rooted in life." The purpose of contemplation is not to enable us to escape from the world into our own self-enclosed mental life, but rather to free us from that life so that we can enter more authentically into the world. The contemplative must therefore be satisfied with a state of humble ignorance: "The contemplative is one who would rather not know than know. Rather not enjoy than enjoy" (89). We must empty ourselves before we can be filled with God's Word. This "is not a psychological trick but a theological grace.... Emptiness might just as well bring us face to face with the devil, and as a matter of fact it sometimes does" (90).

All the paradoxes of the contemplative life, Merton suggests (94), can be "reduced to this one: being without desire means being led by a desire so great that it is incomprehensible." Even though contemplative prayer (the prayer of emptiness in the presence of God [114]) may seem to be a form of withdrawal from attachments, love itself, with its emphasis on attachment, is the true essence of all prayer. For deep prayer (prayer that goes beyond the "comfort zones" we unveiled in Lecture 24) is a withdrawal that puts us face-to-face with our own darkest side, for the purpose of "finding ourselves in God's truth" (67). By purifying our dark side, prayer has the miraculous ability to transform evil into love. No less dramatic than the change from caterpillar to butterfly, this is indeed the hope that keeps us going through the darkness of life in the "cocoon" of our sin and dread: that there is love, health, and connectedness on the other side is not just an alchemist's impossible dream; it is a reality we can experience here and now, and a hope to which all therapy (whether spiritual or psychological) should bear witness. To this reality we shall turn next week, as we pass from Stage Three of our course to Stage Four.

QUESTIONS/TOPICS FOR GROUP DISCUSSION

1. Is God responsible for the evil that exists in the world?

2. Do you think the professional relationship between a therapist and a client is ethically justifiable? Why or why not?

3. Share a dream that has a special name in it, and explain the significance that name has for you.

4. Share a dream without interpreting it. Then have other group members say what that dream would mean if it had been their own dream.