Evangelical Reformation

Freud may influence your life more than you think. Freud generated several major concepts that still influence in our society, and I frequently hear people, including evangelicals, refer to them, often without knowing their source.

One of the crasser manifestations involves referring to someone as “anal.” This alludes to Freud’s theory of psychosexual stages, which hypothesizes that the failure to pass through one of the stages successfully distorts the individual’s personality. The anal stage includes issues such as potty training, and the anal personality is defined as up tight, overly meticulous, and suspicious. This theory of Freud’s is highly speculative at best.

A more serious aspect of Freud’s legacy is found in his view that the human personality consists of the id (desires), ego (conscious rational capacity), and superego (the conscience and ego ideal—what one views to be his ideal personality). The id makes demands such as for promiscuous sexual gratification. The superego condemns those demands. The ego is left to referee between the two.

Pathology results when the battle between the id and superego gets out of hand, placing the ego under excessive pressure. Freud believed that the Victorian sexual restrictions of our society overdeveloped our superegos, creating undue pressure for the ego. If that were the case, people should be really healthy psychologically today. Apparently he was wrong. Nonetheless, his ideas helped spawn the sexual revolution. Now we have liberated superegos, a trashed society, and people in therapy in unprecedented numbers. Where is Queen Victoria now that we need her?

Yet another idea from Freud, one which most people (including evangelicals) believe, is that pathologies result from negative past experiences, which leave emotions bottled up within our unconscious.

Since the source of the problem is buried in our unconscious, the individual cannot resolve the problem himself. Rather, a therapist must help him regress to those experiences and express the bottled up emotions. Doing so will release him from his pathological feelings and behaviors.

Certainly negative past experiences may be the root cause of emotion and behavior problems; however, Freud’s solution is problematic. This process of ventilation makes matters worse, not better. It may give some immediate release, like giving an alcoholic a drink will enable him to feel better temporarily, but in the long run it only exacerbates the problem.

It is easy to understand why. Reliving past negative experiences only refreshes our memory of them, increasing their power. Nonetheless, likening of negative emotions to a polluted swamp that must be drained by validating the negative experience is widely held in our society. As a result, more people feel better temporarily but ultimately prolong the agony and the pathology.

None of this reflects a biblical perspective of the human personality, nor is any of it developed out of good research or supported by it. It was embraced and is kept alive by faith in Freud.

The dictionary supplies two slightly different definitions for “bedrock.” However, that slight difference can make the difference between a stable structure and one that crumbles. The first definition describes bedrock as the layer of rock underneath the soil, gravel, clay, and other surface materials. The second definition is more metaphorical, referring to that which is absolutely stable. The metaphorical definition is based on the assumption that bedrock is bedrock, that when the builder removes the superficial debris, he can count on the underlying rock to be absolutely stable.

Unfortunately for New Minia City in Egypt, this is not the case. Advanced geological studies done at Texas A&M have revealed that the bedrock beneath that city consists of “soft highly fractured and jointed limestone, which is prone to dissolution by acidic rainfall, creating sink holes and caves….” So for New Minia City, their bedrock is not really bedrock.

We must ask if the same is true in regard to the personality theory developed by Carl Rogers. In the past several posts, we have seen that Rogers’ view of human personality has been the dominant force in shaping both our secular and evangelical worldviews. Our analysis of this theory must begin with an examination of what it is built on.

Rogers’ claim is that his views are founded on the bedrock of scientific research. That is one of the main reasons why our secular and evangelical communities have placed so much faith in it. The line of reasoning goes like this. Point one is that research found a cure for polio, but a man on the moon, and what is more important, has developed the television that allows me to watch football games from all over the country and a remote through which I can switch games during commercials without ever leaving my easy chair. Research is obviously a type of bedrock that provides a stable foundation for life. Point two asserts that psychology, being an academic field, is built on research, and therefore stands on a solid foundation. Therefore, the findings of psychology are intellectually credible. Point three concludes that Carl Rogers is a highly credible psychologist, earning a Ph.D. at Columbia University, teaching at Ohio State and University of Wisconsin, and esteemed by the academic community for his research capabilities. Consequently, we should acknowledge Rogers’ conclusions as resting on the bedrock of scientific research.

However, recognizing that scientific research has produced significant accomplishments, it is necessary to consider its limitations. Even in its application within the fields of hard science, the findings of research are frequently overturned. The medical field used to take tonsils out. Now it leaves them in. Eggs used to be off-limits for those with high cholesterol. Now they may not be so bad. The list of reversals in scientific findings is almost limitless.

The situation is far worse for social sciences, especially in the development of broad theoretical structures. In the field of psychology, such broad theoretical structures often take the form of personality theories. In my next post, I plan to demonstrate that it is virtually impossible to build a personality theory using research as bedrock. We will find that those, such as Carl Rogers, who have founded their personality theories on the bedrock of research have in reality built on the type of bedrock found in New Minia City, Egypt.

Chances are that there’s a Curves facility near you. In case you’re not acquainted with this business, it is a chain of exercise facilities that offers a workout circuit requiring about 30 minutes. Drop in several times a week and you can have the body you’ve always dreamed about. Placing the prospect of change in shape, which is so difficult and so important to many people, within easy reach has enabled these facilities to multiply like rabbits. It seems that now there is one in every shopping center.

Change is big business because change is necessary, important, and difficult.

It is necessary because none of us has arrived. We all have those areas that are not what they should be. We all need to change in order to become the person God designed this to be.

Change is important because failure to change produces disastrous consequence. Failure to change one’s diet can produce clogged arteries and ultimately open-heart surgery or a stroke. Failure to deal with one’s anger problem can result in shameful and destructive behavior and ultimately divorce. Change is also important because it represents the doorway to many rich and beautiful dimensions of life. Life is substantially better if we learn to control our diet or our anger. We feel better, we look better, we have better relationships.

But, as we noted in the previous post, change comes hard, especially in those stubborn areas. It can be so hard that we have given up in some areas, reconciling ourselves to the view that we will never be different. Yet, as noted above, in light of what is at stake, giving up is not an option. Therefore, we find ourselves trying again, taking a different approach, reading a new book, seeing another commercial, and hoping that this time it will work—this approach will be effective.

Because change is necessary, important, and hard, the change industry is huge. The health club and physical fitness aspect represents only one small corner. There are the ubiquitous diet programs. There are programs and containers designed to enable you to change from chaos to order. There are organizations that promise to transform your financial irresponsibility to discipline and wealth.

However, the two biggest segments of the change industry in our society are the church and psychology. The main thrust of both is transformation. They both offer the individual the capacity to overcome destructive approaches to life and replace them with productive ones. Education might be considered another major change institution, but its endeavors to transform the character and personality of students is largely guided by psychology.

Therefore, we might view the church, especially the evangelical church, and psychology as competing institutions in the change industry. Especially the evangelical church because more liberal churches have abandoned supernatural means of change, and like education, now look to psychology for help with change.

Since how to change is one of the major questions of life, and evangelical Christian and psychology provide the two primary competing approaches to change, it becomes important to determine which to look to in our efforts to deal with emotional, behavioral, and relational problems. That is the issue we plan to address in the days ahead.