Freud, Economics and Salvation

Posted on January 19, 2012 by Fr Gregory Jensen

Sigmund Freud, 1856-1939

One of the great contributions of Freud and later psychoanalytic theorists is that they taught us to look sideways at ourselves. Sometimes what seems clear and straightforward is, on closer analysis, muddy and frustratingly complex.

This is one of the reasons why in recent years, I’ve found myself more and more interested in economic issues. Like psychoanalytic theory, economics brings a healthy dose of skepticism to any conversation about human action. Unlike Freud and his disciples, however, economic analysis is scientific in the sense that it offers for consideration hypotheses and theories that are empirically and logically falsifiable. Put another way, when Freud is right about our dark, unacknowledged motives, he is as right as any of the Church fathers are about the pervasive and corrupting consequences of sin.

And when Freud is wrong? Well this is where I think intellectual honest requires me to part company with him. Not so much because he and his followers are wrong but because how they respond to the shortcomings of their own work. There is a tendency in their theorizing not simply to resist but actively and even aggressively reject criticism and so correction. This is done by the use of a clever rhetoric device that allows them to take disagreement as evidence not of their own error but of their critics’ bad faith and resistance to the illuminating insight of psychoanalysis. In a word, psychoanalysis lends itself to bullying.

So why my interest in economic issues? Continue reading →

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Virtue, Economics and Our Life Together

Posted on July 1, 2011 by Fr Gregory Jensen

What I want to focus on with you the distinction Jennifer Roback Morse made in her lecture (“Economic Way of Thinking”) between two different, though I think related, approaches to the study of economic. We can understand our economic life in terms of scarcity or in terms of exchange.

The former is typically the way economics is taught and researched. Especially in a postlapsarian world, that is the creation as it has been marred by Adam’s sin, such scarcity is a given. The latter model, economics as the study of exchange or trade, is less common approach at least among contemporary scholars. Morse argues that we make ourselves better by mutual exchange and that if exchange doesn’t make me better off I won’t (absent compulsion) make the trade. From this she draws the conclusion that profit, at least from free mutual exchange, is not only not unjust it is morally good. Continue reading →

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The Human Limits of Empirical Research

Posted on February 25, 2011 by Fr Gregory Jensen

The Human Limits of Empirical Research

Neuroskeptic has an interesting post on the “decline effect.” In a nutshell, replication is a key to empirical research in both the natural and social sciences. In the latter however what we are seeing is that often it is not possible for later researches to replicate the findings of earlier studies published in referred journal. This leads to, for example, what appears to be the declining effectiveness of a psychiatric medication over time. While early published studies show the drug to be effective, later studies don’t.

One suggested reason for this is that more often than not the studies that get published (at least initially) are the ones that show positive results. What the research doesn’t submit or what doesn’t get published are studies without any results. So, how does this happens and why does this matter?

As for the first

The problem is that there are so many ways to statistically analyze any given body of data that it’s easy to test and retest it until you find a “positive result” – and then publish that, without saying (or only saying in the small print) that your original tests all came out negative. Combine this with selective publication of only the best data, and other scientific sins, and you can pull positive results out the hat of mere random noise.

In other words, intentionally or not, the fix is in. Contrary to the popular understanding, if empirical research is trustworthy at all, it is only so when it is the fruit of virtuous researchers and reviewers who are truthful about ALL their findings.

So why does this matter? Continue reading →

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The Ascetical Character of Psychotherapy

Posted on December 21, 2010 by Fr Gregory Jensen

Mental Health (Care and Treatment) (Scotland) ...

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The relative success of psychotherapy requires that the client learn to integrate his suffering in to his own life. This may at first sound odd—after all, isn’t the alleviation of suffering that motivates the client to seek help. Yes and no.

Yes, in the sense that it is the pain that drives the client—often unwillingly—to seek professional help. But for all that it can become a moment of liberation for the client, to the degree that it is motivated by suffering, the client’s entrance into a therapeutic relationship is not freely chosen. Again this may sound odd but think for a moment what it means existentially to do something because you are in pain. It is not you who decide, it is rather the pain that pushes you as if by an outside force. Indeed one can say that the client who initially seeks out a therapist (or for that matter, the sinner who seeks out a priest for confession) is under the (relative) control of his symptoms. Or to put the matter differently, the client’s symptoms aren’t so much his as he is theirs. The client suffering is, again existentially, a loss of freedom in the face of hopes and fears, sorrows and joys, of his own life. Continue reading →

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Modern Psychology and the Christian Tradition

Posted on December 16, 2010 by Fr Gregory Jensen

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My professional background in psychology begins in 1978 when I was a (very junior) research assistant at the Veterans Administration Hospital in West Haven CT working on a drug study looking at the effectiveness of tricyclic antidepressants. This job was also my first real taste of clinical work and though I have always maintained a strong interest in clinical work—especially group psychotherapy—my early work experience in research established the dominate note in my later work as a psychologist. As I continued my education, I became more and more interested in anthropological issues in psychology. Specifically, I have sought to the vision of the human person presupposed in the work of both psychological theorists and clinical practitioners.

After finishing my undergraduate degree in psychology at the University of Dallas, I stayed on to pursue a MA in moral theology. My thesis research sought to develop a Christian ethical framework for psychotherapy that respected both the Christian tradition and psychotherapy as a human encounter. Though my research made heavy use of transcendental Thomism and Catholic phenomenology, its anthropological conclusions are consonant with the tradition of the Orthodox Church.

When viewed theologically, psychotherapy presupposed the fundamental value of the human person, his flawed existence and his transcendent nature as a being who rightly aspires to a life of personal perfection. I concluded that while psychotherapy can serve a valuable role in the perfectibility of the human person, the person cannot reach this goal based on neither his own internal resources alone nor on the mere application of the insights of empirical science. Psychotherapy, and indeed the science of psychology, must always look outside itself to find a more expansive anthropological vision within which to pursue its own scientific and clinical goals.

This more expansive anthropological vision, which by the way can be theological, is essential for two reasons. I look at the first of those reasons tomorrow.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

Difference between Criminal Psychology and Forensic Psychology (newsyatra.com)
Which Is In A Bigger Mess Over Culture – Psychology or Anthropology? (psychologytoday.com)
Psychology: The Study of the Soul? (psychologytoday.com)
How Psychotherapy Works (psychologytoday.com)
The Power of Positive Psychology (everydayhealth.com)

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Scarcity, Choices and the Pastoral Life

Posted on September 17, 2010 by Fr Gregory Jensen

Several years ago a brother priest made the comment that I don’t think or speak like a priest. His comment startled me and I ask him what he meant and if I was doing something wrong. No, he said, it wasn’t that I was doing anything wrong, just different. He continue by saying that I though and spoke like a psychologist and while this was valuable for the Church, it was also something that I need to take into consideration when I worked with people, especially in a pastoral setting.

This came to mind this week at the FREE conference here in Montana. One of things I’ve noticed both here and in other venues is that clergy are often mystified by the findings and insights of the social and human science. Largely this is because most clergy are not educated in the social science beyond an introductory course to psychology or economics when they were in college.

Practically, that is to say, pastorally, this means while clergy are often guided by their own deeply held ideals, they sometimes lack the practical skills to translate their vision into reality. More importantly, however, when I lack a grounding in the social and human sciences—that is to say, when I lack a sound formation in the virtue of prudence—I can easily confuse the ideal, but abstract, solution to a problem with a solution which makes sense within the limits of the situation.

Economics as the science of human choice, asks us to think about choice within the context of scarcity. Scarcity doesn’t necessarily me the relative absence of resources (though it may) but rather is the sober acknowledgement that for any given resource—time, talent, treasure, good will, etc.—there are usually at least two alternative uses.

For example, on Sunday morning I can choice to use my time sleeping late or attending Liturgy. Empirically, if not morally, I am free to do either; but I can’t do both. An extra hour of sleep can only come at the cost of an hour at Liturgy and vice versa.

This then is what economics mean when the speak about the scarcity of resources. Yes, our resources are limited. The more important point however is that what really limits my freedom is not the relative absence of resources but my choice in how I use the resources I have.

Put another way, I can’t do every good things I want to do. Human freedom, even when pursuing the good, is inherently self-limiting in the empirical order.

Why does this matter? For two reasons. Continue reading →

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