Biblical Psychology, Part 2

September, 2003

by: Justin Erickson

The field of Psychology began as a secular one. Man attempting to help fellow man make sense of life and pursue fulfillment, apart from a look at the supernatural or spiritual elements within the universe. In the next series of review articles, we will examine secular psychology's meaning, its origin and history, its major tenets, and its scientific claims pragmatically and Biblically to discern whether it has the answers to life's issues for man.

Robert Feldman defines psychology as “the scientific study of behavior and mental processes… ‘behavior’ encompasses not just what people do, but their thoughts, feelings, perceptions, reasoning, memory, and biological activities” (Taken from the most helpful research of John Street, "Psychological Trends and People" [Grace Community Church: Shepherd's Conference, 2002], p. 1). Therefore, psychology does claim to be able to deal with the internal faculties of man as well as his behavior.

Psychologists do not all agree on this definition nor are they consistent in their application of the principles that they hope will produce real and lasting change in the life of their clients. John Street observes, “There are over 230-300 distinct schools of [thought in] psychotherapy and counseling in the United States alone.” Finding secular Psychologists who agree on principle and methodology alone will be difficult. Why the diversity? The origins and history of secular Psychology will perhaps clarify this.

Tracing the roots of Psychology is challenging because many have contributed to what is still evolving. Beginning with the “Egyptian Physician Imhotep (525 BC)”, traced through the history of the “Ancient Mesopotamians [who] used incantations as psychosomatic medicine” to the religious roots of “Animism — objects or trees have an indwelling principle or ‘soul,’ and in ‘hylozoism’ the belief that matter has life or sensation,” to China's “Buddhism and Chinese humanism” and to “Japanese Psychotherapy in Zen Buddhism” numerous contributors have shaped and formed what is the current psychological trend. It has classical roots from “Aristotle (384-322 BC), Heracleitus of Ephesus (540-480 BC), and Socrates” followed by its medieval roots through “Augustine of Hippo, and Thomas Aquinas,” and its renaissance roots via "“Rene Descartes.” One can see the reason for differences within the psychological movement due to the scattered roots from which it has formed.

Concerning its biological and physiological roots, the contributors who examined man from a more “scientific” perspective include “The Pythagorean physician, Alemaeon of Croton (6^th century BC) [who] identified thinking or consciousness as the distinguishing feature of man and localized these functions in the brain. He is accredited with tracing perception to the sensory organs of the body and emotions to the heart.” He is joined by Charles Darwin (1809-1882) who “held that emotions in man were inherited in an evolutionary sense, reflecting emotional behavior that served the survival of lower animal species. [It is notable that] Sigmund Freud formulated his theories about the unconscious from presuppositions of Darwinian evolution.” All of these people, who contributed to the work of understanding man, had their findings formulated into theorems by four main psychologists, whose work finds itself in nearly all of the secular psychological practices today. They are Sigmund Freud, Carl Gustav Jung, B.F. Skinner, and Carl Rogers.

“Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) was the founder of psychoanalysis. [He] developed ‘free association’ to allow material repressed in the unconscious to emerge to conscious recognition.” He contended that the problems in our lives were due largely to the trauma faced in life, which is suppressed in another state of consciousness. If our lives are to be normal, we must release that material and deal with it in the realm of the conscious. As Street observes, “Freud believed the goal of therapy was to make the unconscious conscious.” As an atheist, he “believed all religion to be a neurosis.” Note the following statements by Freud on religion(taken from http://home5.inet.tele.dk/kimbeck/freud.html):

• “Religion is comparable to a childhood neurosis.” [Sigmund Freud, "Future of an Illusion." 1927]
• “Religion is an illusion and it derives its strength from the fact that it falls in with our instinctual desires.” [Sigmund Freud, “New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis”]
• “Religious ideas have sprung from the same need as all the other achievements of culture: from the necessity for defending itself against the crushing supremacy of nature.” [Sigmund Freud, “The Future of an Illusion” 1927, p.34].
• “While the different religions wrangle with one another as to which of them is in possession of the truth, in our view the truth of religion may be altogether disregarded. Religion is an attempt to get control over the sensory world, in which we are placed, by means of the wish–world, which we have developed inside us as a result of biological and psychological necessities. But it cannot achieve its end. Its doctrines carry with them the stamp of the times in which they originated, the ignorant childhood days of the human race. Its consolations deserve no trust. Experience teaches us that the world is not a nursery. The ethical commands, to which religion seeks to lend its weight, require some other foundations instead, for human society cannot do without them, and it is dangerous to link up obedience to them with religious belief. If one attempts to assign to religion its place in man's evolution, it seems not so much to be a lasting acquisition, as a parallel to the neurosis which the civilized individual must pass through on his way from childhood to maturity.” [Sigmund Freud, “Moses and Monotheis,” 1932].

Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) is the “founder of analytical psychology who said 'Religious mythology can be a solution for mental problems.'” He also believed that the “unconscious mind shares a collective unconsciousness of wisdom and ancestral experience passed down from prior generations.”

He differed with Freud who “believed the goal of therapy was to make the unconscious conscious. In doing so Freud made the unconscious an unpleasant place of seething desires, a bottomless pit of perverse and incestuous cravings, a burial ground for frightening experiences that come back to haunt the counselee. Jung was never entirely convinced of Freud's theory of the unconscious. Therefore, through a serious of dreams and analysis Jung developed a threefold theory of the psyche.” Religious beliefs under–girded Jung's psychological theories as well. For example, “Jung claimed to have a personal spirit guide named Philemon. Jung thought he could talk to the dead, and the dead could talk back .” (Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p. 18, 70-199)

B.F. Skinner viewed man in his mind from the perspective of a circuit box which contains the collection of stimulus-response connections, believing that man has no purpose or significance, denying the existence of the soul, like Freud. He established the current behavior modification theory that suggests if you change the environments of a person, you can change his behavior. Thus controlling a person's behavior results in deciding his destiny and the goal becomes to manipulate the circumstances of a person to maximize personal pleasure (humanistic hedonism).

Carl Rogers (1902-1987) is best known for his contribution to “client-centered therapy. He believed man had everything within himself to deal with life.” Rogers “doubted the presence of a universal truth ‘out there,’and was even more skeptical that we could know at all if it does exist.” Moreover, he was a secular humanist who later became involved in the occult. It is noted that “he later embraced the occult by engaging in necromancy” which is the practice of supposedly communicating with the spirits of the dead in order to predict the future; a sort of black magic and sorcery (William Kirk Kilpatrick, The Emperor's New Clothes, p. 177).

It is clear that the foundation builders of psychology had a worldview that colored the way in which they approached human life and behavior — through the eyes of their religious conviction, from which they were unable to divorce their psychological methodologies. The question is: can a system of diagnosing attitudes and actions that has secular and godless motives and methods be compatible with Christianity? We will explore more in the next review.