The Makeup of Man: Nature and Plateau

Man straddles the universe composed of body and soul matter and spirit and by grace sharing in the divine nature. Yet he knows himself in terms of the knowledge he has of his world, cosmological and historical. Typically, self-knowledge is limited to the practical plateau and so to a pragmatic and hedonistic schema. If he is kept on this plateau, he can be ruled easily by the stick and the carrot.

On the cultural plateau various terms have come in with psychology after the last 112 years. Relevant terms are “body”, neural system, psyche, id, ego, self, intentionality, self-transcendence, self completion, affective conversion, moral conversion and intellectual conversion, subject, subjectivity, personality.

The psyche oversees the transition from the neural to the conscious and intentional. It is the locus of feelings, of images, of words, of memories, of dreams which can occupy a night, or dreams which can occupy a lifetime of folly or wisdom. It is trained in taste and maybe averse to pasta or to any cruelty. Feelings can be trained up and passed on through empathy. A language is learned so the healthy psyche escorts intentionality by giving us the apt word at the apt time. Insight typically is into a schematic image which draws on sense experience but reshapes it so that an appropriate intelligibility emerges. The schematic image needed for understanding politics is different from that needed to give the precision appropriate to mathematics. Both come with the collaboration of the psyche.

The psyche is the locus of judgements which have been made, of principles which are adhered to, of personal values which express a lifelong commitment. It takes time for character to be so formed. Helpful to understand this is the idea that insights coalesce.

An example of insights coalescing would be that the addition of a number to itself, say N times, can be expressed by addition but more simply by multiplication. But if one’s insight is a verified insight which has been weighed by the question “Is it so?” and so affirmed as part of the concrete universe (so the alps are prone to snow), or part of the notional universe (so certain additions can be expressed as multiplications), or part of the moral universe (I had better avoid that temptation) or part of one’s set of personal, affectionate values (I had better do some history and say the rosary).

The task of the psyche is thus enormous. It is the ground of the entire universe as you have come to know it, the ground of questions no longer interesting for you know the answers and of those which will never be interesting for life is too short, and, importantly of those which are interesting, for perhaps some progress has been made and some remains to be made.

One’s horizon, emergent from the psyche, should be coherent, but if one has not attended to things duly, has rushed to judgement here, failed to judge here it may ground complexes which are inconsistent, to which extent one’s character is split. Drives have been admitted which are incompatible with the gospel. They are commanding. One is a wretched sinner and from one’s own resource there is nothing one can do about it. A grace is needed. There maybe something analogous about a human relationship. There is a rift, and it so affects one that one cannot just put it right. An event, something analogous to a grace, is needed – one may rescue a child from the fire and end up no longer disliked but a hero.

The psyche can grant interest, a feeling about some area, but of itself it does not raise a question. The business of questioning and finding answers belongs to our conscious performance going where it has never gone before. If we know an answer, we cannot, except as a rhetorical device, ask that question. A question goes beyond the present content of the psyche to what is not known. It engages the whole person in his conscious performance. I suspect that normally a question is not considered except out of a decision e.g. I ought to find out how much I have in the bank before I buy that new coat.

The psyche assists the questioning process. The process itself involves questions for intelligence (how often, why?); questions for reflection, is it so, is it not so?; and questions for decision – shall I do this or that? The psyche provides the feelings which help intentionality, so it provides a feeling of curiosity for questions for intelligence; it provides the serenity to answer the rational question “is it?” and to base one’s answer absolutely on the evidence; it provides the emotional concomitant to perform some noble or ignoble deed.

Without new questions and answers, without new deeds the psyche is caught up in a repetitive routine and the result is depression. Cardinal Newman’s statement “To live is to change, to be perfect is to have changed often” envisages a sort of newness belonging to a life well lived – new questions lead to new answers and decisions – and we find in Scripture the Lord making all things new. The German ideal of Bildung has the idea of moving to an ideal, whether the image of God or Herder’s “image of humanity”. The English C19th ideal of a gentleman perhaps expresses perfection attained which would confine the psyche and be depressive. Utterly repetitive jobs must confine the psyche.

Fr Doran though sees depression as coming about another way. The psyche as source of imagery and emotion is a finite resource, so if one gets hyperactive on some project the resource runs out of steam. So the character moves from a manic phase to a depressed phase so that the psyche can recuperate through having a rest. I think an awareness of this polarity in oneself- psyche as a principle of limitation and intentionality as a source of almost unlimited possibility – gives one a certain responsibility for psychic health – for oneself, for one’s family and perhaps for one’s people. Diocesan life or parish life could suffer from too much routine or too much activity.

It is not without the psyche providing feeling and image that man moves to the life of love – for family, for people, for God. Lonergan calls this affective conversion, a life of union “in which we are lifted above ourselves and carried along as parts within an ever more intimate yet evermore liberating dynamic whole.”

“Lifted above ourselves”: there is a new flood of meaning to the whole of our life, including its normative exigencies, be attentive, be intelligent, be reasonable, be responsible. Such love might be the love of God, or of spouse and family or of mankind, perhaps in some political process. Such love arises in the content of normal exigency, which already tests integrity: so the cobbler’s son falls for the milliner’s daughter. I see the raising up of love as somewhat like a stone being lifted up in a stream and washed clean as it is carried along. So love is purifying but the purification is a closer attention to the exigencies of what it is to be human, to the norms of intelligence (did I really understand?) of reasonableness (did I really weigh all the relevant evidence?) and of responsibility (do I respect all the values I have come to know of?) Such lifting up is repentance since what is unworthy of existence charged by love has to be dismissed. There is perhaps a wrenching of emotions. There is a movement from drift to commitment in which one is taking the ultimate flow of things (God’s love moves the stars, Dante) as one’s true direction.

In such lifting up, the psyche is no doubt busy and at full performance. The whole direction of life is being found, so rest will be found. But if one is into a succession of such affairs not carried through in commitment, then the psyche will be exhausted and maybe a cynical attitude escorts a permissive world.

Increasing intimacy .... our destiny is not solo performance and solo glory, it is part of a splendidly collaborative world stretching back in time, so the intimacy is with Isaiah and maybe Keats as well as with the Holy Father, one’s spouse and the Green movement. The whole world, as it achieves integrity (through being lifted up) and holiness (which lifts us up) finds itself as part of a single stream moving to a single point, from alpha to omega.

There is to love, rest, peace, achievement, security and indeed happiness. To this, the Sabbath points. There is the sharing of things human and things human, and the sharing also of things human and things divine.

The point of rest here is a point of activity but a point of activity in a way beyond question and so belonging to the psyche in its orientation to the world. The point of rest is not a matter of norms but a matter of normalcy where those fruits of the Spirit ”Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Fidelity, Gentleness and Self Control” have been taken over by the psyche on the process of accumulated wisdom and so rule conduct and irresistibly set in motion wider movements toward redemption.

If any love is intimate yet liberating, intimacy suggests rest and liberation, action. Here is a balance which needs to respect the psyche as needing rest yet escorting intentionality. So Christian life typically moves between contemplation and action.