PSYCHOLOGIST AND .PRIEST
By THE RIGHT REV. STEPHEN NEILL
MOST people are dimly aware of the extent to which our genera- tion suffers from mental instability and psychological overstrain. Various reasons are given for this present-day distress— smaller families, the increasing burdens of industrial civilisation, the shattering impacts of war, a weakening of the fibre of the race. "Anxiety neurosis" is as common in current parlance as " shell- shock " was in the days after the last war. Most people are also dimly aware that the need has called into existence its own remedy, and that modern methods of psychotherapy have come to the rescue just in time. But there are those among both psychiatrists and laymen who are beginning to be doubtful whether psychiatry alone can give the final answer to the problem ; it is easy to dissect ; has psycho- logical medicine the power also to reconstruct an1:1 to rebuild damaged human nature?
This year, two novelists have ventured to step on this dangerous ground. Arthur Koestler's Arrival and Departure is a great book, though not quite in the same class as Darkness at Noon. Nigel Balchin's Mine Own Executioner cannot be called great, but it is competent and disturbing. In each book we find the psychiatrist faced with the fact that there are depths in human nature which his plummet cannot sound ; when he has come to the end of the psyche, he touches the beginning of the pneuma, the mysterious region in which the human spirit is face to face with God ; there only God Almighty can deal with the situation ; and, though the psychiatrist has often to play the part of God Almighty, that is just the thing that in his heart of hearts he knows that he can never be. In that field the expert is not the psychologist but the priest.
It ought to be easy for priests and psychologists to co-operate. Both are dealing with the ills of the mind and the emotions. But in practice co-operation is difficult and rare. It is not hard to see why this is so. Sigmund Freud was a great genius ; to him we owe the discovery of a world as new and as fascinating as that of the electron and of atomic energy. But some of Freud's interpretations and the language in which they were expressed have created a prejudice against psychiatry, which is not easily to be overcome. Some Freudians, at least, deny the existence of spiritual reality ; to such all is relative, and absolutes are excluded. It is not surprising that some priests regard psychology as one of the devil's best weapons for the propagation of infidelity. The excessive emphasis of the Freudian school on sex has awakened a profound suspicion that, when Freud comes in by the door, morality flies out at the window. The psychologist spends so much of his time dealing with the failures of the religious sects that he tends to regard religion as no more than a morbid symptom to be excised as soon as possible. So much of the time of the priest is spent dealing with the failures of the psychologists that he is inclined to retaliate by regarding psychiatry as at best an ineffective mumbo-jumbo.
Fortunately, this is not the whole story. There are many priests who realise that some among their penitents need a kind of healing other than that provided by the confessional. There are psychologists who know that when they have done their utmost for a patient he must be handed on to the care of a spiritual adviser, who can build up where psychiatry has done no more than to pull down. But there is perplexity on both sides. There are far too few first-rate psychia- trists who are also first-rate Christians. There are far too few priests who have the understanding and sympathy needed for this kind of work, and to whom the psychiatrist can send on his patients with confidence. It is high time that something was done about it. But it is not yet very clear who ought to do it, and what they ought to do.
The priest who can deal with mental sickness has immense advan- tages over the psychiatrist. In the consulting-room everything tends to raise the patient's resistance to the highest potential—initial susnicion of the whole business, anxiety as to where all this will lead, the regular taking of notes, the sight of other patients in the waiting- room. But until this resistance is broken down, the specialist cannot even begin his treatment. The parson in his study or in the vestry of his church has not to contend with this difficulty in the same way ; his trade is traditionally associated with comfort and release ; if he knows his job, he can quickly establish in the patient a feeling of confidence and readiness to talk. But where are such priests to be found? Where are the men who both know their job as spiritual healers and who also, knowing their limitations, do not. rush in to deal with situations they are incompetent to handle? If they are not available in sufficient numbers, how are they to be produced, and where are they to be trained?
It is obvious that the right starting-point is the theological college. The Anglican Church alone is dealing with four thousand Service candidates for ordination ; by June of next year all the theological colleges will be filled to overflowing. Every man, during the course of his training, should receive efficient instruction in pastoral psychology. But to say this does not get us very much further. Who are to be the teachers, and where is the apparatus for teaching? Most of the existing manuals of pastoral psychology are amateurish, and based on inadequate clinical experience. For the layman, to read books on psychology is as dangerous as to read medical text- books ; he tends, like the hero of Jerome's Three Men in a Boat, to end up with the conviction that he suffers from every ailment in the book except housemaid's knee. The inclusion in the theological course of a few sporadic lectures on psychology may produce precisely the wrong result ; it would be a disaster if the theological colleges were to send out a generation of self-confident amateurs, ready to apply their new-found knowledge without discrimination or reserve. To a very large extent both teachers and methods of teaching are as yet undiscovered. Before psychological teaching for the ministry can be put into effective practice, priests and psychologists who care for one another's work are faced with an initial problem of research.
Some small beginnings have already been made. One of the most encouraging known to me is a small group of practising psychologists, parsons and social workers, who meet from time to time to pool their experiences and to work out terms of closer understanding. It is understood that language may be entirely uncensored, that nothing is to be excluded from the arena of discussion, and that all must be prepared to give and to receive hard knocks. The experience of a few meetings has made it clear that, while the jargon of psychology is unintelligible to the parsons, the ordinary language of theology is a sealed book to the psychologists. Frequent demands have to be made on the services of the member of the group whose special task it is to translate jargon into honest English words of not more than one syllable. When this has been done, minds touch minds in a new way, differences are seen to exist more in word than in thought, the area of agreement expands far beyond the limit of what at the outset either party would have thought possible. Understanding is the first step towards co-operation. It may' be that co-operation in practice is still very far in the future ; it is at least something that a first foundation for mutual understanding is being laid.
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