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The art and science of spiritual direction is in need of a
thorough reevaluation of its foundations. This ought to include, for example, a close look
at the old image of the spiritual 'father' who listens to his spiritual children and makes
some sort of judgment which is to be accepted as the will of God. Another area that needs
examination is the traditional descriptions of the stages of prayer. Do these schemas
actually represent what the saints said? And if they do, is their experience to be taken
as typical and normative today? Will discussions of the various states of prayer that
supposedly intervene between meditation and infused contemplation or mystical experience
survive a rigorous theological and historical scrutiny? In essence, spiritual direction as
a whole needs a careful theological evaluation.
But what I would like to do here is pursue the other half of
this process of reassessment, which is the need that spiritual direction has for a natural
science of the psyche like Jung's, and more specifically the use of his psychological
types which, as we have seen, are simply another face of the process of individuation
itself. Spiritual direction has long been aware of the role for such a psychological
instrument. John of the Cross made use of the four humors of the Greeks, and Teresa of
Avila has many acute psychological observations, but naturally no empirical science of the
psyche existed to allow them to deal at length with the concrete personality of the person
they were directing in the life of prayer.
The twentieth century has seen any number of attempts to make
up for this lack. Alexander Roldán, for example, in his Personality Types and
Holiness made use of Sheldon's somatotypes and temperament types as the foundation
upon which to erect what he called a 'hagio-typology'. Complementing Sheldon's endomorphy,
mesomorphy and ectomorphy we find contemplative love, apostolic action and moral
obligation which in various combinations would make up different kinds of holiness. Fr.
Roldán finds Francis de Sales a model of a holiness in which the first component
predominates, Francis Xavier represents the second component and John Berchmans the third.
Roldán's work has the merit of choosing Sheldon's typology, but it also illustrates the
difficulties of extending a psychological typology to the spiritual life, especially when
we rely on historical material. Roldán, for example, joins affective prayer to
contemplation so that Francis de Sales becomes the model contemplative rather than John of
the Cross.
Henry Simoneaux in Spiritual Guidance and the Varieties
of Character selected the typology of Heymans and Wiersma as presented by René Le
Senne and utilized it to explore different attitudes towards spiritual direction by means
of the analysis of a questionnaire. Le Senne had described three basic components which
have some similarity to those described by Sheldon. The first is emotionality, which means
going by the heart instead of reason. The second is action, or more precisely the
"disposition to action." The third component is the retention of impressions
which is divided into a primary who lives completely in the present and a secondary who is
inclined to be interior and "replaces spontaneity with reflection and might readily
forgive an injury but finds difficulty in forgetting it." (p. 49) These three
components and their negations give rise to eight types.
Much more popular today than the work of Roldán or Simoneaux
is the Enneagram. Reputed to be of ancient Sufi origin, its modern roots are traced to
Gurdjieff, Ichazo and Naranjo. The Enneagram describes nine types which are depicted as
nine interconnected places on the circumference of a circle. Descriptions of the strengths
and weaknesses and paths of development of these types will vary according to whether
someone follows the work of Helen Palmer, Don Riso, Maria Beesing and her companions, or
some other proponent of this system. But in general there are strong parallels between the
Enneagram and Jung's psychological types, as well as with Sheldon's temperament types.
Type 5, for example, is described by Beesing, Nogosek and O'Leary as someone who would
agree with the following statements: "keep my feelings to myself," "hold on
to what I have," "Intellectually I like to synthesize and put together different
ideas," "need much private time and space," "I have trouble reaching
out and asking for what I need," "I try to solve my problems by thinking,"
etc. And all these characteristics can be related both to Jung's description of the
introverted thinking type and Sheldon's description of the ectomorphic cerebrotonic. Don
Riso in The Theory of the Enneagram provides a list of what psychological types
go with the various Enneagram types, (p. 330) and Helen Palmer in The Enneagram
describes research which relates the various Enneagram types with results from the
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator which attempts to measure Jung's psychological types. My own
first impressions of the correspondences between the two systems are as follows: Enneagram
I is closest to Jung's extraverted thinking type, 2 to extraverted feeling, 3 to
extraverted sensation thinking and extraverted sensation feeling, 4 to introverted
intuition, 5 to introverted thinking, 6 to some sort of introvert, 7 to extraverted
intuition, 8 to extraverted thinking and 9 to extraverted sensation.
There are other typological theories like the Ayurvedic
system of ancient India, which again is based on three principle elements: the vata, the
pitta, and the kapha. Each of these three components is assigned various physical
characteristics as well as psychological traits. While this system is making its way into
the West it seems confined for the moment to Hindu-oriented circles.
Among Catholics typology usually takes the form of either the
Enneagram or Jung's types as seen through the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. But both these
approaches have limitations. The Enneagram is basically a descriptive typology and it
lacks the depth that would come to it from being an integral part of an entire empirical
science of the psyche. Don Riso in The Theory of the Enneagram makes an
interesting attempt to broaden the Enneagram's theoretical foundations and make the 9 type
descriptions more flexible, but this is an enormous undertaking which will not necessarily
be successful. Jung's typology, on the other hand, is the personal dimension of his
process of individuation, and as such is already integrated with the rest of his
psychology with all its therapeutic techniques, well developed literature, and body of
professionally trained analysts.
The weakness of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator approach to
typology is the degree in which the test is used in isolation from the rest of Jung's
psychology. A spiritual director, for example, cannot simply administer the test and
expect that the results will be particularly enlightening for himself or the client. Even
if the test provides the correct type diagnosis, which is not always the case as the
test's creators warn, this description will only have practical efficacy in the measure
that both director and the person being directed have developed their own insight into
Jung's typology and the psychology that underlies it.
While a type test can be useful, I prefer to take a slower
and wider approach to both type diagnosis and the cultivation of insight into what it
means to be a particular type. What this kind of approach is like and how it has been
integrated with Sheldon's work has been discussed previously and can be found in detail in
the two volumes of Tracking the Elusive Human. The result, I think, is a
comprehensive typological instrument that can be employed in spiritual direction. But what
kind of questions arise when spiritual direction and Jung's typology meet?
First, we have to clearly distinguish the work of the
director from that of the analyst. The analyst can use psychological types to help someone
journey towards wholeness. By discovering someone's type the analyst can focus on the
distinctive pathway by which that person, by means of the third of fourth function, can go
down into the psyche and encounter the unconscious. In this setting there is nothing
theoretical about psychological types, for they are manifested in dreams and everyday
events, and Jung could call them his compass on the voyage to individuation.
In contrast, the role of the spiritual director is to guide
someone on the road that leads to union with God. The director is directly concerned, not
with the god image or self in the center of the psyche, but how a person can travel to a
real and living union with God. This task implies certain things. The director ought to
have a clear and concrete grasp of the interior life, a mental map of the various roads
that lead to divine union. He or she also ought to possess a keen sense of human
differences in order to determine which of these roads this person is best suited for. And
finally, the director has to realize that theory alone is not adequate, for what is at
stake is an actual inner journey so that the work of the spiritual director is analogous
to the work of the analyst, for both are trying to help this or that individual reach an
interior goal.
But the role of the spiritual director is made more difficult
today because the foundations of this art and science of the soul are in need of
clarification. The director cannot turn to one unified map of the terrain that we travel
through to reach divine union. What exists instead is an enormous, unintegrated body of
literature which ranges from tales of misplaced piety to vivid autobiographical accounts
of visions and revelations, and any number of descriptions of different paths that lead up
the mountain of divine union. John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila, for example,
concentrate principally on the contemplative life and have distinctive perspectives even
on that, while Ignatius of Loyola and Francis de Sales have other views of the interior
journey. The director has access to many manuals of the spiritual life, but they are for
the most part too abstract and theoretical in character to be of much service. In essence,
what this means is that the spiritual director has no well developed practical science of
the soul to guide his work. The first major hurdle a renewal of spiritual direction faces,
then, is the need for a comprehensive account or map of the life of prayer based on the
experience of its practitioners. Such an account would have to address questions like
this: What are the ways in which people are converted to a serious interest in the life of
prayer? What are the actual forms that the ‘sensible' spirituality of beginners take?
How many people actually experience this time of fervor and consolation, and how long does
it last before it fades away? For those for whom it disappears what is the next step? Do
many people actually go by the way of infused contemplation that John of the Cross
describes? If not, what happens to them? Is there any sense in talking about an acquired
contemplation halfway between meditation and infused contemplation? How often do people
experience visions and revelations, and what are the criteria for examining them?
These and many other issues would have to be examined if we
are to create a renewed science of spiritual direction, and they have to be asked in the
light of a psychology like Jung's because we want to describe the actual life of prayer
and that takes place in the psyche of this or that individual. Here we have arrived at a
situation analogous to the one in which Jungian psychology confronted St. Thomas'
philosophy of nature. Under the stimulus and light of Jung's psychology, the practical
science of the life of prayer would make this psychology an instrument of its own renewal.
Such an enterprise would not only aim at a comprehensive overview of the spiritual life
based on experience, but it would adapt Jung's psychological types to the task of
determining just what path this person is meant to take to reach union with God. This is a
much greater challenge than adding an appendix of spiritual characteristics and
inclinations to psychological type descriptions, for we have to be led by actual
experience to discover the relationships between distinctive spiritual paths and the
various type. At this stage in time we cannot be sure of which types, for example, are
called to contemplation. Perhaps they all are, but contemplation takes different forms in
each case. Nor do we really know how individuation interacts with the Journey to divine
union. What role, for example, does the inferior function play in the transition between a
prayer life based on the use of the natural faculties and one which is centered on infused
contemplation? I have looked at, from a Jungian point of view, some of John of the Cross'
descriptions of the temptations and upheavals that accompany the life of prayer, (St.
John of the Cross and Dr. C.G. Jung, Chapter 7), but that is just the beginning of
the long road that would have to be followed in order to clarify the foundations of
spiritual direction.
Today there is a new and practical interest in the life of
prayer on the part of Catholics, and it is being accompanied by a good deal of critical
scholarship which is providing us with new editions of many spiritual writers. But just as
we noted in regard to theology, this critical historical sense ought to be complemented by
a psychological critical awareness that would give us a new way to evaluate just what
these spiritual authors are saying and how it fits into the larger map of the interior
life.
In the actual practice of spiritual direction and of
analysis, for that matter, a partnership of director and analyst could be very fruitful
despite the difficulties it would have to overcome. First it would have to face in a
distinctive way the general question we have been meeting all along, which is the
requirements necessary for a truly interactive approach. Both the director and the analyst
need a clear sense of the nature and limits of their respective roles. If the spiritual
director embraces some radical form of Jungian spirituality, then he or she is really an
analyst in disguise. If, in contrast, the director is hostile to or ignorant of psychology
we are going to be left with a situation in which this director is blind to the very
psyche that the life of prayer takes place in, and thus to the many problems that arise in
the spiritual life that have a strong psychological dimension. In short, the spiritual
director, without being an analyst and without aiming at individuation, ought to have a
keen appreciation of the psyche which he is constantly encountering.
And will not the analyst hear on occasion more of those
"metaphenomenal" questions that arise in the midst of Jung's psychology but
cannot be answered there? For is it not conceivable that someone who has experienced the
god-image in the center of the soul could experience an attraction for the one whose image
it is and who dwells, as the mystics tell us, beyond all images? In such a situation the
inner dynamism of the life of prayer would certainly have an effect on the rest of the
psyche and the analyst would need considerable delicacy to avoid injuring either interior
journey.
I don't want to wax too eloquent about the dazzling
possibilities of such a partnership, for old prejudices on both sides die hard, especially
the more unconscious they are. How comfortable can the spiritual director be with the
analyst if he secretly fears his own psyche and would rather pretend that the spiritual
life has nothing to do with it. And the analyst cannot be comfortable in this partnership,
either, if he views Christianity as a distorted attempt at individuation and the life of
prayer as a literalizing of the encounter with the archetypes. But despite these
difficulties many fascinating conversations are possible not only on the issues I have
already mentioned, but on very specific problems. For example, an analyst who has dealt
with cases of obsessive compulsive disorder will have noticed the religious overtones that
can appear in them, and even the close relationship this disorder has with the traditional
malady of scrupulosity. (Cf. Judith Rapoport, The Boy Who Couldn't Stop Washing)
The analyst could read with interest the graphic descriptions that John of the Cross has
on this and other related disorders, as well as the explanations he began to frame, while
the spiritual director would be remiss if he did not become acquainted with the latest
psychiatric findings that center on the possible biochemical foundations and treatment of
this disease. Further, he could profitably inquire of the analyst about the role of the
fourth function and the unconscious in producing these symptoms and how the work of
integration could help at least the less severe cases.
I have not even mentioned the extension of this interaction
of analyst and director to the social and communal aspects of the Church both in
marriages, religious life and the Church as a whole. Catholics would do well, for example,
to apply a basic understanding of typology to an understanding of the Popes and their
exercise of authority in the Church. Pope John had a considerable degree of endomorphy in
his body type and he exhibited some of the traits often associated with it like a
free-flowing extraversion of affect that put people at their ease and made them feel
accepted. Pope Paul was much more introverted and lacked John's easy social skills and
therefore suffered in comparison, for many of his gifts were more hidden, like his strong
powers of intellectual concentration. Unfortunately, the exercise of authority did not
come natural to him and he agonized over making decisions. Pope John Paul II possesses
neither the endomorphic qualities of John nor the introversion of Paul, but rather is
mesomorphic and extraverted. How many of the characteristics that Sheldon enumerates in
his checklist for the mesomorphic temperament would fit Pope John Paul? Sheldon's list
includes: high physical energy, the need and enjoyment of exercise, a love of physical
adventure, a clear cut sense of authority and obedience, and a lack of hesitancy in
exercising power. It would profit the whole Church to realize that his behavior is not an
unsolvable personal riddle but has a strong typological foundation that would greatly aid
us in understanding where he is coming from.
In summary, a dialogue between the analyst and the spiritual
director ought to join those of the analyst and the philosopher of nature and the analyst
and the theologian in any genuine dialogue between Christianity and Jung's psychology.
I am both a Catholic and a Jungian. I am a Catholic by birth
but also by an inner process of conversion by which I decided to embrace the faith I had
been born in. (Cf. The Inner Nature of Faith, Part I) And I am a Jungian in
virtue of the wonderful gifts that I have received from Jung's psychology. Without the
experience of its inner transforming power my life would have been much poorer. (Cf. Tracking
the Elusive Human, Vol. 1, Part I) And it is precisely the personal pursuit of these
two interior paths that has convinced me that they are intimately connected with each
other while they aim at different goals.
But being a Catholic does not blind me to the painful fact
that the Church suffers immensely from a lack of psychological knowledge that Jung's
psychology could supply. Nor does being a Jungian prevent me from seeing the shell of
philosophical presuppositions that surrounds Jung's psychology and poses a serious
obstacle to its use in the Church. Yet despite these difficulties I look forward to the
day when the Jungian-Christian dialogue will finally yield its long awaited fruits.
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