readoldthings

In these posts, I've outlined a perspective on human psychology that derives from Transactional Analysis, especially the work of Eric Berne and Stephen Karpman. But the the approach that I have suggested in response is rooted in a far older model, rooted in magical theory and practice, but more deeply in ancient and medieval Christianity, and ultimatley in the philosophy of Plato. I want to briefly review what we've said so far, and then conclude with some notes for future study and practice.

The Theory

Eric Berne writes that every individual has within them three possible ego-states.

The Parent is the ego state derived from their own parents. When the Parent acts directly, the individual behaves as if they were one of their own parents. When the Parent is indirect, the individual acts as their parent instructed them to act. The Parent is especially concerned with judgment, opinion, and (naturally) the rearing of children.

The Adult is the ego state which is capable of reason and objective analysis of facts.

The Child is the ego state which is preserved from childhood. The Child has two forms: the Natural Child and the Adapted Child. The Natural Child is intuitive and capable of creativity and spontaneity. The Adapted Child is an ego state typically formed by the child in response to adverse circumstances; we might call it the Hurt Child or Traumatized Child. The Child is primarily emotional, for good or ill.

Relationships between individuals are relationships between ego states, and not always consciously. Two adults-- make them husband and wife-- complaining over a beer about the problems of the world these days are relating Parent to Parent. The same two adults carefully reviewing their finances and deciding how much of a certain amount of money should be directed toward investments versus paying down debts are relating Adult to Adult. Finally, the same two Adults, getting dressed up to go out for the evening, with expectations of still more fun upon their return, are relating Child to Child.

The existence of each ego state is necessary. The Parent ego state allows for actual parenting to take place; the Adult for serious problem-solving; and the Natural Child for joy in life. Problems arise when a particular state takes over inappropriately. If Wife says to Husband "Let us review our finances," (Adult-Adult) and Husband responds, "You're always hassling me!" (Child-Parent), a crossed relationship has taken place.

Many social interactions are basically scripted and ritualized. This is okay. But social games are particular scripted interactions which result in drama and emotional turmoil. The turmoil appears to arise unintentionally through the interaction, but it is actually the purpose of the interaction. Moreover, this purpose is hidden from one and often both of the participants. This is what makes it a game.

Finally, the Karpman Drama Triangle is a model which accounts for many of the problems we face in social life. This describes a type of game with three roles. The Victim is always innocent and always under attack. The Persecutor is always guilty and always attacking the Victim. The Rescuer is here to save the Victim. All of these roles are pathological.

The Platonic Psychology

In the Republic of Plato, the soul is divided into three parts:

The Nous is what we usually think of as the "mind." It includes the capacity for thought and opinion, sensory knowledge, and contact with spiritual realities.

The Thymos is sometimes translated "spirit" or even (poorly) "anger"; we might better think of it as "vitality." The Thymos is the seat of courage and aggression, social emotions and the drive for status and success.

The Epithymia is the seat of the passions and appetites.

As in the Berne model, none of these is "bad" or "good," each simply has its proper role in the functioning of the soul. The Republic of Plato is an extended analogy which compares the soul to a city. A properly ordered soul is akin to a kingdom in which the nous governs the epithymia with the aid of the thymos. A disordered soul is akin to a democracy in which the thymos and epithymia use their majority to rule the nous.

Justice is the proper order of the soul. In order to establish Justice, we suggested several practices designed to purify each part of the soul. For the nous, prayer and religious ritual. For the thymos, charitable giving and forgiveness. And for the epithymia, fasting, delayed gratification, and quiescent or apophatic meditation.

Notice that there is a meditative practice appropriate to each. For the nous, both discursive meditation and what is called "contemplative" meditation. For the thymos, forgiveness meditation and loving-kindness meditation. For the epithymia, quiescent meditation.

I want to now suggest a couple of additional practices, which may be controversial, and then discuss the ways that the Berne model and the Platonic model interact.

Give Your Cattle A Large Field

In the Daode Jing we read "To give your sheep or cow a large spacious meadow is the way to control him." As in the case of the Republic, passages in this text referring to politics are usually interpreted as actually, or additionally, describing psychic and meditative practices. And we can apply this advice here. The nous is meant to rule, but it need not rule by repression. Thymos and epithymia have their proper place. Simply try to destroy them and problems will immediately follow.

In the case of the thymos, the natural aggression and team-spirit must be allowed to direct itself toward a socially and personally constructive, or at least harmless, end. We can see how this works by preferring again to C.S. Lewis's description of the psychic economy as a whole:

Without the aid of trained emotions the intellect is powerless against the animal organism. I had sooner play cards against a man who was quite sceptical about ethics, but bred to believe that ‘a gentleman does not cheat’, than against an irreproachable moral philosopher who hadbeen brought up among sharpers. In battle it is not syllogisms that will keep the reluctant nerves and muscles to their post in the third hour of the bombardment. The crudest sentimentalism about a flag or a country or a regiment will be of more use. We were told it all long ago by Plato.

As Lewis shows, the emotions, trained in the spirit of cooperation and comeradery, can be critical for the survival of an individual and an entire nation. The thymos is compared to a warrior, because it is, ultimately, especially concerned with war. And so we must give it a war. Men in particular, and young men especially, seem to literally need war, and to die of despair without it. But to start a war is among the worst of crimes, and to start a war for reasons that amount to "because I was bored" is monstrous evil. What can we do?

Freeing the Thymos

Let me give three suggestions.

Spiritual Warfare. By this I do not necessarily mean exorcisms or the struggle against spiritual powers. Rather, by "spiritual warfare" I mean any activity which engages the thymos, along with others, in a struggle toward a particular end, where the end is moral or spiritual rather than temporal, and especially rather than physically violent. What this looks like will vary from individual to individual. Those fortunate enough to be caught up in alcohol or drug addiction can find a brotherhood of fellow-sufferers in places like Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous. Others can find the same degree of meaning and purpose in organizations like the Freemasons or the Knights of Columbus. (Knights-- notice the martial symbolism.) For others, organizations like the Lions or the Rotary Club will do.

The requirements are as follows: First, we need an organization; second, we need a obstacle to overcome; third we need a method to overcome it. If at all possible, it should have a religious or spiritual outlook; secular or atheistic organizations have a limited shelf-life and tend to turn toward the poison of ideology to overcome their failure of faith.

I've come to think that we need a new type of fellowship, one suited for people who are geographically dispersed, open to members from different spiritual traditions. Perhaps a Druidic organization, with martial symbolism, but distinct from the organizations which currently exist. Maybe we should talk about this in a later post.

Sports. By "sports" I'm including a broad range of physical activities, from marathon running to martial arts to yoga. The thymos is the strength and the vitality, and the vitality needs to be exercised regularly. Discussing the training of the future rulers of the Republic, Plato begins with music and gymnastic as the training of the soul and the body. (Both are understood more broadly than we would today-- "music" also includes poetry and literature, and "gymnastic" refers to all the forms of physical training which took place in the Greek gymnasium, and not simply to tumbling and the like.) Again, the specific form will vary from person to person, but some form of physical exercise which allows the individual both to train his or her body and to cultivate their vital spirit (qi, prana, nwyfre) is necessary.

Professional Sports. Yes, I know, this will probabyl be the controversial one. But the exact same sort of trained sentiment that Lewis describes as the salvation of soldiers on the battlefield can be channeled into professional sports teams. Indeed, this is the point of professional sports: to allow cities to go to war with one another without anyone having to be killed. I especially recommend this as an antidote should one be inclined to become too involved with politics-- take at least part of the time you would normally spend reading about what those lousy Democrats or those awful Republicans are doing, and watch a football game instead. You will be doing the exact same thing-- participating in the shared emotions of struggle-- but without having to add in the dangerous delusion that the people you hate are evil and need killing, or that your team is here to save the world. There are two symbols which produce a very specific swelling of emotion in my heart; one is an American flag. This the other:

The advantage to the second is that when the Steelers play the Ravens, I'm not likely to convince myself that the Steelers are fighting for justice and goodness and that the Ravens are an unimaginable evil which must be killed.

Of course, this is precisely why the introduction of politics into professional sports a few years back is such an unmitigated evil.

Freeing the Epithymia

The epithymia is simpler than the other two, including as it does those instincts which we share in common with the simplest animals. As such, its care and feeding is somewhat simple, as caring for a pet lizard is comparatively easier than caring for a cat or a dog. The Epithymia simply neds to be indulged.

This is best done at intervals, and it is here that the traditional customs of Christian civilization come in handy. In the old way of doing things, the year is punctuated by fasts, in which the epithymia is restrained, add feasts, in which it is liberated.

Now fasting and feasting both refer, traditionally, to food, and also, often, to drinking alcoholic drinks. Obviously the epithymia has desires beyond those for food and booze. And it is here that the traditions we've inherited often fail, or at least seem to fail. In most of us the desire for sex is nearly as strong as that for food and, in most of us, stronger than the desire for alcohol. And in the Roman Catholic tradition, this desire is specifically regarded as evil, and attempts are made to totally suppress it!

...Or so it seems. And so you would learn if you spoke with a Catholic of the "Traditionalist" school. They would be happy to tell you that sexual intercourse must be limited to the most obvious acts, between husband and wife, and with minimal enjoyment. They'd then explain that this is the "tradition," and that it's only "modernists" who disagree.

One thing you learn when you study older writings-- that is, when you read old things-- is that most of what people think of as an unbroken tradition is anything but. These days, in fact, very often what is called "traditional" in any field of life-- from religion to working out to learning music and languages-- turns out, upon examination, to have been an invention of the Nineteenth Century. The "Traditionalist," in other words, is usually just a partisan of the revolution before the last revolution.

And so it is in this case. In fact, the Church's teachings on sexuality have varied widely over the centuries. Some authorities taught that whatever two married people are doing with their free time is fine, and a priest-confessor shouldn't ask them about it. Others taught that all sexual pleasure is evil, and sex should be as brief as possible and no one should enjoy it. One pope-- I'm afraid the name escapes me-- actually taught that it's only the man who shouldn't enjoy it! And then, very recently, Pope Leo XIII in the 19th Century taught that parish priests ought to grill their parishioners in the Confessional, find out every nasty, dirty little detail of their sex lives that they could, and assign them penance for it (or threaten them with hellfire if they continue).

Obviously I don't support the latter approach, either in the life of a church or the life of an individual. With limited exceptions, training the epithymia needs to include some level of indulgence. There are obviously a few appetites that shouldn't ever be indulged, and these tend to create a cascading series of problems. Here again, though, a measure of indulgence is often better than simple suppression. The obvious example is the addict who goes to the methadone clinic in order to help themselves get off of heroin. Notice that, under ordinary circumstances, methadone use is an evil. As an aid in heroin recovery, it becomes a lesser evil and so, in this case, a good. On the other hand, if you had-- oh, I don't know-- a doctrine which insisted that methadone and heroin use were both equally and mortally sinful, and that if you happened to be hit by a bus upon exiting the methadone clinic you'd go straight to Hell, well... I'm sure you can see the problems this would cause.

And so this is my suggestion for epithymia: For legitimate desires, such as those for food, lovemaking, minor intoxicants and screen usage, a period of abstinence should be balanced by a period of indulgence. For less legitimate desires-- again, strong intoxicants such as heroin are the primary example, but my guess is that the worst forms of screen addictionw ould fall under this as well-- we should be willing to allow ourselves a lesser evil as a stepping stone toward the good. Ignore your inner Pope Leo; he was a jerk who also believed tha

As usual with these posts, I've run out of time, and so we will have to-- really, actually, seriously-- wrap this up tomorrow. See you then!