Solo

In one of the most brilliant, original, parody of the creepy meaninglessness of modern existence Chesterton’s poet and “Man who was Thursday” Lucian Gregory and a secret police agent Gabriel Syme, who is checking on Gregory’s secret organization of atheist anarchists are having a lobster dinner. It happens in the policeman’s nightmare:

- “Excuse me if I enjoy myself rather obviously!” [Syme] said to Gregory, smiling. “I don’t often have the luck to have a dream like this. It is new for me for a nightmare to lead me to a lobster. It is commonly the other way.”
- “You are not asleep, I assure you”, said Gregory. “You are close to the most actual and rousing moment of your existence”.

Chesterton, of course, was a psychologist par excellence and therefore dubbed as a mock theologian. He worshipped orthodoxy by calling Saint Peter a “shuffler, and a coward” and the weakest link of the company of The Atheist Poet in the need of posterity to a meaningless life. Since groups are only as strong as their weakest link, Christ made him the Rock of his Church. In that, said Chesterton, he assured that the Catholic Church was indestructible. The gluttonous saint and modern defender of Catholicism also had a simple explanation for the superiority of the Catholic faith over the other Christian denomination: unlike them, it admits every kind of believer, even a respectable one.

Unlike Chesterton, Koenraad Elst, is neither a psychologist, nor a theologian. He is a contemporary Belgian orientalist with close ties to India. He confirms his lack of humour in matters religious, by a series of essays published by Voice of India, entitled “Psychology of Prophetism”. The electronic volume has a subtitle which pledges “A Secular Look at the Bible”.

The reason I dragged in Chesterton to introduce Elst is to contrast approaches to the subject of religious imagination. Chesterton obviously clued in on what Mohammed Abduh, one the 19th century founders of modern Islamism (salafi’a), described as “cutting the head of religion with the sword of religion”. Elst does not grasp that saying “secular look at the Bible” has a way of being read as something akin to “Mozart for the tone-deaf”. And it becomes clear very soon that the book is going to be read that way. I can imagine the sense of jubilation when a Christian traditionalist discovers that le fou belge believes that the book of Revelation is best explained as a copy of Jesus’ message which he sent to John from exile. (Elst holds Pilate changed his mind and had Jesus taken down from the cross to spite the Sanhedrin). As Chesterton’s clueless Gregory Syme is a heaven sent to the anarchists, and George W. Bush is Allah’s gift to Osama bin Laden, so Koenraad and his mentor Herman Somers are the answer to conservative religious prayers. The problem with none of these real and imaginary gentlemen has to do with faith. It has to do with competence.

Elst opens his series of essays with the observation that Christianity is on the decline. He promptlyly suggests that nothing can be done about it because its edifice has been built on prophetic monotheism. Then he goes on to debunk its foundation as an expression of identifiable assortment of mental illnesses, with delusional states and personality disorders. Yet, in his assessment of the decline of faith which he attributes to the decline in belief in the miracles there is no awareness that the classical, fairly temperate, churches, with emphasis on community and continuance of traditions, are decaying fast while the virulently fundamentalist, individualist, creeds are on the rise. In the overall decline then there is a large pocket of resistance in the swell of the rabid, non-adaptive, and deeply irrational religious sects. Worse still, the void left by the disappearing religious mainstream, is being filled on the outside by all sorts of irrational (non- and anti-religious) belief systems ready to lap up anything coming on their “channel”. I have observed for example, that among the fans of the Da Vinci Code prominently figure not just women, but university educated women, and among them (on the sample available to me, which is admittedly small) women who are still nominally Catholic. They are impervious to reason: one such group would argue vociferously that the tradition of Jesus and Mary Magdalene procreating was well attested into the Middle Ages (via the Cathars) even though the real source of that notion is perfectly on display and available to us all. It comes from Baigent, Leigh, Lincoln’s book Holy Blood and the Holy Grail written in 1982 who put it together based on their reading of the marriage at Cana in Jn 3, as irreducibly Jesus and Mary Magdalene’s nuptials. The idea, I have learned recently, reportedly horrified Pierre Plantard de St.Clair, the fraudster who invented the Priory of Sion (of the Da Vinci Code fame) in his bid to claim the French throne as a Merovingian. Never mind that he admitted his idiotic fraud to police and declared the idea of Mary Magdalene having a child by Jesus sacrilegious. Sooner caravans will pass through an eye of a needle than Dan Brown declaring bankruptcy because Da Vinci is nonsense.
Elst registers the bizarre cultic beliefs displacing the ineffectual Christianity, calling them “Pagan” but remains oblivious the palpable shrinking of the matrix of shared social values they bespeak which deeply troubles many social commentators; e.g. the late Christopher Lasch on the left, Francis Fukuyama in the middle and judge Bork on the right.

Elst’s methodology shows similar lack of care. He starts with a bombastic announcement that his psychological investigation comes from the premise that the Bible text is based on real events. Of course - he goes on to happily reverse himself - with all the writing and rewriting there will some mistakes and embellishments, some of it will be blown up to mythical proportion. But all this aside - he reverses himself again - the Bible traditions could not have existed if the main protagonists did not exist. Well, ok, not quite all of them but, let’s say, from Moses on down.
So apparently - psychologically speaking - the parting of the Red Sea was a real event, the only uncertain thing being how far it parted. Or alternatively Moses, and the slaves actually might have had to swim across.

Elst is not as naïve as to leave himself open to a mythicist reproach. He cites a Dutch Marxist scholar who maintains that Jesus was a literary invention. In that case, he says, if at all there is a scope for psychological analysis it is of the…motives and attitudes of the writers, not of the text’s characters since these are fictional.

Similarly, Bultman’s followers pose no problem. For the Entmytholisierung’s buffs he is willing to excise the flagrantly unhistorical events such as the virgin birth, the telepathy of the Wise Kings, Jesus lifting off heavenward and such, as literary implements.

No, wait: that is not yet the method: there are actually good reasons for not giving in to the extreme skepsis (which he has done but a few paragraphs above). One is that logically it is impossible to have a religion that inspires loyalty without someone actually founding it. Here is a theory: if Athena did not spring from Zeus’forehead, she could not have been invented because she would not have had the necessary appeal! The second reason is - I am not making any of this up, I swear - that there is actually some historical evidence for Jesus, as there is for the Hebrew migration from Egypt, mind you some people will argue it is not a historical evidence at all, but that is just a detail which we have already covered with the Dutch Marxist. Third reason - and I am sighing the way a liberal German in 1920’s would have sighed when he read that Hitler too thought Versailles was humbug – that there is internal evidence in the gospels that Jesus born to a virgin does not mean he too sprang from someone’s forehead.

To sum up, Elst has no recognizable, consistent and disciplined way of approaching the materials. He is all over the place, and worse of all, it never dawns on him that it is because he has an urge to commit himself to an absolute stance and overstate his case. Couching his hypotheses in probabilistic terms or dealing with disconfirming points of view (except in listing them) does not appear to impress him as necessary.

He relies reverentially on Herman Somers, a former Jesuit, who has an academic background both in theology and psychology. Yet Somers was heavily criticized by the liberal Catholic heavyweight E. Schillebeeckx as someone who has a poor grasp of the issues. For example, Somers is said to believe Saul’s conversion on the road to Damascus had been the effect of sun stroke. Now, this has been discussed, and it is not a new opinion. But a number of theologians have discounted the three-times repeated Acts story as legend, not originating with Paul.
Luke portrays the encounter as traumatic, disabling comeuppance and Paul is pressed into service under extreme duress. Paul’s letters, in contrast, speak of the conversion as a pleasurable, euphoric event. God chose Paul from his birth, through his grace and was pleased to reveal to Paul his Son (Gal 1:12-15). Paul’s inaugural epiphany is described in 2 Cor 12, as being in heaven, and the post-euphoric downside is ascribed to the work of Satan. None of this fazes Elst, who not only accepts the historicity of the Damascus conversion but has Jesus personally attend to Paul in the city and give him preaching instructions.

What Elst lacks in substance, he makes up in chutzpah. He, a doctor habilitated in contemporary Hindu political revivalism, attacks Albert Schweitzer’s credentials, in the latter’s pronouncements on Jesus’ mental health. Elst maintains that Schweitzer was not a psychiatrist, but a general practitioner (a Doctor), and that his psychiatric training, at any rate, is outdated as his Psychiatric Study of Jesus was written in 1913. Like Elst, I believe, there are issues with Schweitzer’s view of Jesus as basically healthy, but that is largely beside the point here (I will deal with the study at some future time). On a point of fact, Schweitzer’s study was his doctoral dissertation, and used the current psychiatry available to him. The diagnostic nomenclature has not changed much around the major mental health issues of reality testing and the relation of self to others. In fact, nothing of Kraepelin, whose ideas Schweitzer deploys, was dramatically overturned by later discovery; the major developments came in treatment; with psychopharmacology all but displacing other invasive procedures. On top of being a medical doctor, Schweitzer, of course figured as the greatest Protestant theologian of his time. Few people would argue with that.

By comparison, Elst, though decently educated layman in both areas, has nothing much of value to offer. On the contrary, his grasp of the issues is often very weak and easy prey to mistaking marginal opinion for the authoritative last word.

My main objection to his exercise overuse of “psychology” is that he makes very few original, psychological observations of the subjects, outside of medical labeling. And the labeling, to be sure, is extremely maladroit. and hugely questionable.

Elst seems to have only the faintest notion what magic diagnostic tools may or may not do. He apparently believes that having them assures events as historical by simply declaring them as such, and comparing them to a sample of contemporary predicament. He calls for “coherence of syndromes” as a criterion of psychopathology, but without explaining what he has in mind. One would have expected a small paragraph, a few sentences, as reassurance that he is aware of the big issues he has taken on. The biggest one of course arrives with the problem of using diagnostic methods outside of the scope for which they were designed. Strictly speaking, diagnosis without a patient is pointless, and naturally invites inquiry why would one want to apply psychopathological labels to people who have been dead for two millenia. What other purpose is there to this exercise of diagnosis ê distance than transparently discount views or actions of people with who one disagrees, by describing them as pathological. There is an added burden in this case where we talk about mental disease, which has traditionally connoted basic incompetence and to a great degree led to a view of the sufferer, or a patient, as someone who lost irretrievably his or her human identity and dignity. The doctor uses medical labels to help a person to get better or to resolve some forensic issue. If one wishes to use them to evaluate historical figures, without access to properly controlled diagnostic data- as such, without re-qualifying them as literary implements - on scraps of legendary happenings or pronouncements, one leaves the door open to all sorts of severe criticism, especially when he goes about it the way Koenraad Elst does.

Most of the prophets Elst surveys (with the help of Somers) have some sort of schizophrenic label attached to them. This, in itself, is not outrageous. There are indeed many ideational patterns which suggest that or some closely allied condition. It is just how Elst goes about it. He calls Isaiah, a “more tragic example” than Elijah (whom he considers a trickster) and goes on to explain that the prophet had a “’schizophreniform accident’, a vision with schizophrenic content, which deeply influenced his further thought, but did not form a chronic condition of schizophrenia. In reality, the DSM-IV diagnostic manual has nothing to say in support of viewing a schizophreniform episode, as accident. Its distinguishing feature from schizophrenia is that it is episodic, i.e. patient is remitted of symptoms after one to six months. There is not a known cause and it is unclear what the ‘deep influence’ relates to, whether a relapse to delusional symptoms or to purely cognitive material. It is even less clear how Elst arrived at this particular diagnosis without having at least a partial biography of Isaiah, one that would confirm the episodic nature of his condition and the absence of differentiating symptoms, especially symptoms of affective origins. He imputes to him “prophetic style of logorrhea”, which in fact may be the familiar feature of a shamanic “speaking in tongue” or glossolalia, prominently associating with bi-polarity. Elst does not seem to be aware that there are in reality two prophets speaking as Isaiah, separated by 300 years. And in fact, beatific visions for which Isaiah is renowned are present in both, with prominent euphoric affects and themes of redemption, which would convince most therapists that they are looking at strongly affected, patterned, poetically vivid imagery which all but excludes schizophreniform disease as a candidate.

Similarly, Jesus goes to camp with the schizophrenics on suspicious paperwork. He is assessed as a paraphrenic. Elst defines the condition thus: Paraphrenia is fairly rare mental affliction in which the patient develops a delusion (mostly genetic, i.e. concerning his parents or ancestry), which is triggered and fed by only rarely occurring hallucinatory crises. From this delusion he builds up an entire system complete with interpretative delusions (misreading events to make them fit, rather than disturb, the basic delusion). Otherwise he remains well-integrated in his environment…there is more pap that follows but I will spare you. It is clear that by this definition Elst himself is a paraphrenic, suffering from a primary delusion that he is a psychiatrist, and hallucinating diagnostic classifications and manoeuvres that do not exist. In real life, a disorder which is primarily delusional and referential is called paranoia. By contrast paraphrenia remains somewhat grey area in diagnosis (it is not an official label as far as DSM-IV is concerned) and refers mostly to late-onset schizophrenia with paranoid features or one that has relatively benign complexion, preserving a measure of affect and cognitive capability. There is no suggestion in professional psychiatric literature that the disease is “triggered” by hallucinatory crises or that the primary delusion concerns “mostly” the family tree. In fact, by far the most common delusions, in paraphrenia (or paranoia) are persecutory in origin. Like in many psy crises, genetical factors, previous history, elevated stress levels, social isolation, and general health, form the background for paraphrenia

It is possible that Jesus was paraphrenic, but not probable. Unlike Schweitzer, I am convinced that if the Jesus references in the NT relate to a single individual, regards his relation with his family, his beliefs vis-ê-vis God (calling him “Father”), his commission to forgive sins, the anticipation of a permanent euphoric kingdom and relating his mind-states to it, his explosive anger, his belief that those who do not harken to him will be suffering torture in hell, his apparent insomnia , and his devil-may-care attitude, point consistently to a serious mental health and/or personality problems. In these problems, paranoid delusions and most probably hallucinations played a role. But these have many origins. There are over forty medical conditions in which delusional symptoms appear, some are episodic, some chronic. Some delusions or hallucinations have organic origins, some follow head injuries and brain swelling (oedema). Hallucinations commonly occur as a result of lack of sleep, together with other paradoxical forms of mentation.

Having decided (via proxy of Somers) that the only plausible explanation for the naïve reports of Jesus sometimes strange behaviour and ideas was that he suffered from paraphrenic syndrome, Elst happily fits all manner of gospel happenings to fit that shoe. The fig tree story has been a favourite among psychological exegets as it strongly suggests as originating a lapse in Jesus’ reality testing. The Mark’s story has been baked cognitively in three separate ideational strata. One, from a report of Jesus attempting to feed of a fig tree out of season, getting angry when the tree did not yield fruit and cursing the tree. Psychologically, this story was told as the disciples found this behaviour extremely odd. Two, from a later re-processing and expansion of the story, to the “miracle” of the tree withering, which would be a classical example of later belief in Jesus’ omnipotence which had to rationalize his failure to effect a miracle and feed himself. Three, in the final, theological, layer is the teaching on the magical property of faith, which can move move mountains in pointing to the secondary expansion, but being ambushed by the original, core report of the story.

Ok then what is the explanation of the original layer ? Elst and Somers are clueless. And yet, there is a psychological explanation readily available if one studies the “feeding” patterns of Jesus and his entourage and understands the forms of mentation reported on – it originates in a common, minor, hallucinatory state known as hypnagogia. Everyone experiences it. On sudden waking from a dream, the dream continues for a while in parallel with the waking sensory processing, until it resolves and fades. The “resolving” can be sometimes directed by the dreamer, i.e. a threatening dog turns around, or lottery money is secured in the bank. During episodic insomnia, hypnagogic hallucinations occur during all waking hours but mostly during habitual hours of waking (Matthew states the event happened in the morning) as doses of paradoxical mentation inject into consciousness, in mini-sleep. In the most base form, again we all experience it as the deja-vu perplex. This deja-vu feeling, in psychotic episodes (some of which originate in sleeplessness), becomes much larger and intricate . Normally, objects are perceived, registered as perceived, and then presented to the cognitive gear to deal with them. During a paradoxical mode of operation, objects are perceived, and processed without being registered; they can’t be seen for looking, so to speak. Yet the periphery knows about them and processes them. So, for example, one has a great desire for an apple. Boom, the apple suddenly appears on a table – by miracle ! But the apple was there all the time, it was seen. Yet, in the characteristic cognitive miscue, the apple “presentation” was delayed, until a new meaning to its appearance was fabricated by the dreamer, and suggested as wish-fulfilment. This process was known to the early Christians and it is attested by the saying: “do not let your your left hand know what the right hand is doing”. Its original context is preserved in the Gospel of Thomas. To grasp this hypnotic mind state is to understand the ABC of the mystical, prophetic claims. Essentially, the subject predicts an apocalypse or the coming kingdom, on the basis of being able to predict an apple on the table.

So what happened to Jesus with the figs ? The problem with the paradoxical “meanings”, as everyone who had the dubious honours of traveling with “Jesus” knows, is that they eventually don’t work. Reality has a brutal way of (re)asserting itself. What seemed like figs to a paradoxic brain sleeping while awake, were not figs. It was a mini-dream of figs. Naturally, in the cognitive gear available to Jesus to deal with his chemically challenged brain’s tricks, the Satan from the desert was upon him again. The tree had to be exorcised. Jesus knew he was hallucinating. He just could not stop it !

Like the fig tree story, Elst hopelessly fumbles the Q tradition of Jesus desert struggles after his baptism. He wishes to believe that the wilderness where Jesus retired is a historical setting yet, characteristically, he convinces himself that if Jesus saw wild beasts in it, he was suffering zoopsy (hallucination of animals). The meaning the story transparently conveys is that Jesus struggled with the devil for sanity, by resisting the delusional scenarios fed to his ego by his over-excited brain. The devil is not necessarily a hallucinated entity, as Somers suggests to Elst, it could be, and likely was, an elliptical, parabolic way of describing internal events. Jesus literally would have struggled with a disordered sense of self. In this context also, it is irrelevant that he had urges to fly and that these related to vestibular issues physiologically. What is relevant is that he was aware his brain was fooling him and sought to free himself from the delusional, psychotic, mindset that he was temporarily locked in. This story suggests itself as a therapeutic tool in the earliest community, used by mystical adepts, undergoing similar tribulations and struggles to recover their identity after Jesus epiphanies of euphoric sleepwalking.

In reality, the diagnostic profile of Jesus is far from certain and revolves around much more pointed issues. There are many, many questions, but the tip of the ice-berg looks like this to me:

Was Jesus destroying himself purposely as a way out of his madness ? Or was it a delusional scheme of going to the brink which he wanted to test ? Or was the self-fulfiling prophecy of his demise a classic paranoid display of persecution, which just happened to come true ? Did he believe God would intervene and supply the meaning to his suffering ? Did he believe that God would supply that meaning to him, or to those who witnessed this suffering in themselves ?

What did he believe ? How do I know ?

I think a decent psychologist would need to ask these questions before pronouncing himself on what happened. Not asking them carries the risk of self-delusion, and waking up from a nightmare.

Jiri