Modern Man in Search of a Soul

Modern life presents a unique challenge to the human spirit, one that can be reckoned with only by those who are fully conscious. The problem is hard to define, and it’s easy to fall back on lofty words that skirt the issue. Those who ponder these questions must proceed with caution.

The modern mind needs to step beyond old traditions and ways of thinking, disavow past allegiances, and, though rejected by society, face the present and future as if “before a void out of which all things may grow” (202). It’s a lonely enterprise; ordinary people sometimes imitate it, but the apparent loneliness of “pseudo-moderns” is merely emptiness.

The great risk of modernity is that it regards itself as a glorious end-product of civilization. World War I is proof enough against that idea. Modern life is a culmination only in that it presents a new crisis to be solved. In the past, people could deny the powers that well up within the psyche, but today those powers are too big to ignore—our faith in the future has been shattered—and psychotherapy has risen to respond to it.

When people look within to the darkness of their own minds, they hope that curing themselves of this turmoil will also cure the great problems of human society. Along with psychotherapy, people turn to alternative belief systems from the East, such as Gnosticism, Theosophy, Kundalini Yoga, Hinduism, and Buddhism that teach awareness of unconscious forces. Searchers pursue these ideas to find out for themselves what their old religions taught on faith; hence, some alternative creeds present themselves as “sciences” to attract the skeptical.

Meanwhile, European societies continue to pride themselves on their goodness, yet they colonize other peoples and suppress or warp those cultures. Some of the colonized believe white people are unwell because of their endless ambitions. Indeed, therapists note the upwelling of dark urges and motives in the modern age: “No wonder that to unearth buried fragments of psychic life we have first to drain a miasmal swamp” (218). Until people can see their dark side, they can’t access their potential for growth.

While Europe has colonized the East and transformed its material situation, the East has colonized the West with alternative philosophies. The recent discoveries of psychoanalysis have sophisticated counterparts in ancient Asian texts; the wisdom of Eastern religions trickles into Europe just at the time it needs it most. At the same moment, a rejuvenated interest in the body and its needs expresses the physical side of human life as a counterbalance to mental and spiritual quests.

Other positive signs include a more humanistic outlook toward all peoples, along with a desire for more peaceful relations between countries as idealized in the League of Nations. Finally, the rise of an upbeat “American tempo” tests Europe’s composure; whether that tempo will usher in a worse or better world remains to be seen.

Since the late 1800s, science has tried to solve the mysteries of mental dysfunction by searching for organic causes—brain defects, glandular problems, even the misfiring of human “instincts.” The chief causes of neuroses, though, are disturbances in the psyche: conflicts about social dilemmas, doubts about one’s purpose, and so forth.

The therapist effects a cure by talking with the patient. It’s the meaning of the words exchanged, and not some pill or injection, which brings relief. Such conversations sometimes even lead to cures of physical disease. The analytic approaches of Freud and Adler locate the unconscious source of neuroses but apply therapies based on drives—for sex and power, respectively—that, like much of modern science, assumes there is no spiritual realm and therefore nothing within it to cure: “they do not give meaning enough to life. And it is only the meaningful that sets us free” (230).

The greatest achievements of the psyche, “faith, hope, love and insight” (231), aren’t taught: They come from experience, which can’t be forced. Great lessons sometimes arrive unexpectedly: Saul went to Damascus because he hated the Christians; his complete conversion during that trip came as a total surprise.

The clergy know about good and evil but aren’t trained in the psyche or how it confronts ethical dilemmas; meanwhile, the therapist understands the twists and turns of mental struggles but doesn’t have clerical insights on religion and ethics. A questionnaire sent by Jung to an “educated” group of patients returned the result that most who chose to consult a therapist were Protestant, while most who saw a cleric were Catholic. Those who visited therapists believed religious professionals weren’t adequately trained in psychological theory.

Patients sometimes seek out a therapist in the belief that such a professional might have insights into life’s meaning that a priest or pastor can’t account for, beyond religious platitudes that have lost their force in the modern age. Therapists don’t necessarily have those answers either, but their own confessions of doubt make them somehow more able to confront those issues than the clergy.

They’re also less likely to judge their patients, which gives those clients room to look at their inner conflicts without self-condemnation. Therapists can do so because they’ve learned to accept themselves, even the dark parts of their personality.

A cleric may research Freud’s and Adler’s theories, but those ideas disregard religion and spirit. Yet these needs must be addressed: Of Jung’s 35 middle-aged patients, none were healed without developing a satisfying religious outlook. Thus, psychologists and clerics need to work together.

Many of the symptoms of modernity, including crises of faith, are written off by Freudians as disturbances in the sexual drive. Sexual problems often get started in childhood, but perhaps it’s the loss of life’s meaning that reactivates those issues and leads people to overindulge in pleasure so that they can cover up their feelings of emptiness.

In rebelling against the meaninglessness of modernity, a person asserts the ego. Strangely, though the ego is one of the worst parts of neurosis, it is also essential for growth. By rejecting the call to reduce their own egos, people assert themselves, yet at the same time they learn the loneliness of the individual. In that loneliness, the patient discovers that “The archdemon of egoism leads us along the royal road to that ingathering which religious experience demands” (243-44). In this way, inner conflict can cease.

Modern people, especially the young, turn away from the emptiness of both tradition and science, and begin to experiment with life, to find out for themselves what is possible. This is a dangerous enterprise that can take disastrous paths but restraining such a venture can only harm the seeker. Therapists must keep open minds.

It’s not enough merely to point out the dark side of the psyche, as the Freudians do. It’s vital also to provide some sort of spiritual guidance; thus, a therapist is forced into the role of priest. They can do this by pointing out the curative images that erupt from a patient’s collective unconscious: “the archetypes come to independent life and serve as spiritual guides for the personality, thus supplanting the inadequate ego with its futile willing and striving” (247).

Though therapy today steps in for the counseling that religions once provided, the impulse toward spirituality is eternal, and new forms of its expression will continue to arise.