Musings

Mental Illness: Window Into the Soul

(This musing is based on an email conversation I had today with a medical student who wanted my advice about how to be more comfortable and sensitive toward mentally ill patients.)

How does your toaster work?

If you are like me, you won’t find out until it doesn’t work.  When mine stopped browning bread slices, I turned it over (not before unplugging it) and unscrewed the bottom and discovered its mechanism.  Very interesting!

So it is with the soul.  We discover how it works when something goes wrong.  Mental illness can be one of those occasions.

For several years, I was the director of an agency serving homeless people, most of whom had one form or another of mental or emotional disability.  A relative of mine suffered from depression and anxiety, with some dramatic, unusual symptoms.  Starting when I worked at Stanford, and now at USC, I have spent a lot of time with students suffering from bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and other mental illnesses.

A turning point in my relationships with them came when I realized that the seemingly random and disconnected utterances of people in psychosis turned out often to have very deep significance.  Their symbolic, ritualistic expressions were profound reflections of their subjective experience.   I began to see that much of the content of their expressions was universal in nature: a window into the souls of us all.  We take our inner lives for granted, not examining the structure of the psyche, until there is a breakdown of that system.  Then its contents are revealed, and we get a look at our inner emotional and spiritual structure.   This inner architecture is beautiful, but it’s not neat, tidy, and rational, and this can be a scary discovery.

When I was serving homeless people, many of them suffering from schizophrenia, I read a book that helped me greatly:  The Far Side of Madness by John Weir Perry.   Perry was a Jungian, from a school of psychology that is not embraced by a lot of folks in academia, but from which many insights can be gleaned.  The book describes the subjective experience of the journey of the patient through schizophrenia, the collapse of his/her entire “cosmos” and the patient’s effort to re-establish order in it.  The book reflected remarkably the stories of dozens of schizophrenics whom I knew well.  I was staggered by the creativity of their efforts to bring order to the chaos they experienced.  I began to see the heroism in their struggles, and this gave me a great deal of respect for them.  I listened with new ears, and they responded positively when I took seriously what they had to say.  It also inspired from me a new level of compassion for them, because their struggles were so tremendous.  This went a long way in establishing trust that could translate into referrals to mental health professionals.  Usually these patients needed medication of some kind, but they desperately needed their subjective experiences and expressions to be honored in the process.

The words and the actions of mentally ill people are often very meaningful, even if we don’t comprehend the meaning at first, or ever.  This meaning has an intrinsic value that they need the rest of us to honor, even if we don’t get it.  Even if medication or treatment is needed to dampen the symptoms, that does not mean that the symptoms are worthless.  They need to be heard and respected even as the professional works to eliminate or resolve the processes that resulted in them.  

The world’s religious literature can help us better understand people suffering from mental illness.  It’s striking how many schizophrenics, who were not religious before their psychotic breaks, start using a lot of religious language and ritual after those episodes.  This demonstrates that the real truth in the world’s religions is not “propositional”.  It is not about dogmas that are somehow objectively “true”.  Rather it is found in religion’s reflection of the structure of the psyche.  Why do so many schizophrenics believe they are Jesus?  Because the myths about him describe him as the savior of the whole cosmos.  He came to re-order the universe by himself, bring heaven to earth, bring order to chaos, redemption out of suffering.  He took on the sins of the world, just as the schizophrenic senses that the whole universe is broken and it is up to him or her alone to fix it.  The loneliness, the rejection, the existential suffering of the Christ profoundly mirror the psychotic’s experience. 

In turn, I’ve also learned a lot about religious texts from my efforts to understand the experiences of mentally ill people.  What people in psychosis have to say is “insane” only if one tries to take it literally.  Interpreted symbolically, one discovers they often are speaking in powerfully evocative poetry.  To speak in straight prose might downplay the overwhelming intensity of their experience.  The same can be said of religious texts which are problematic when viewed as statements of historical fact, but, when read through the lenses of symbol and myth, are seen to be rich with insight.

So it should be no surprise that in the gospel stories of Jesus, the people we’d now categorize as the mentally ill were the first to identify him as the Son of God.  And to this day, many cultures identify as shamans and saints the very people we lock up in psychiatric wards.  Mental illness causes great suffering, but we should not overlook the spiritual awakenings and the depths of compassion to which it can lead us all.

Shocked by "The Shack": Book Review

 

I’m a few years late reading The Shack by William P. Young (Windblown Media, 2007), which made a big splash in the world of evangelical Christians.  On vacation now, I took the time to read it, and it surprised me in many ways.

 

The protagonist of the novel is Mack, an evangelical Christian whose youngest daughter is kidnapped and murdered in a mountain shack in the Northwest.  Still grieving, months later, he gets a mysterious written invitation from “Papa”, his wife’s term of endearment for God, to go back to the shack for an encounter.  He returns to the place where his daughter was killed, and there he meets the Trinity.  “Papa” is a black woman, the Holy Spirit is an ethereal Asian woman, and Jesus is a stereotypically Jewish-looking carpenter.  The old shack is transformed into an idyllic cabin in the woods that could have been painted by Thomas Kinkade.  He is fed home-cooked meals by the female “Papa” God, or “Elousia”, led through a gorgeous garden by the shimmering Holy Spirit named Sarayu, and his heart is opened to love by Jesus while lying outside at night looking at the stars.  The three-person God enables him to meet his daughter, then to meet and reconcile with his late father from whom he had been estranged.  When his time at the shack is over, he is full of compassion, forgiveness, insight, and renewed faith.

 

Repeatedly in its story line, The Shack drifts over the line into evangelical heresy, even as it makes notably awkward attempts to appear orthodox. The author obviously has an ambivalent relationship with the theology in which he is situated.  Mack’s little daughter hears the story of an Indian maiden who sacrificed herself to save her tribe, and the daughter makes the connection with the story of Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross. Mack says that the Indian story was a legend, but “sometimes legends are stories that teach a lesson.”  When she asks if the Jesus story was a legend, Mack says no, it was true, and then he changes his mind and says the Indian maiden story was true, too.  Later, in a conversation with the Holy Spirit, Mack says to her that some people think that the story of the Garden of Eden was a myth.  “Well, their mistake isn’t fatal.  Rumors of glory are often hidden inside of what many consider myths and tales,” she says.  Mack answers:  “Oh, I’ve got some friends who are not going to like this”.  (p 134)  The Shack gives the reader implicit permission not to take the Bible literally. 

 

The social and political views of the author are evident in the text.  Young is a Canadian who was raised in New Guinea by missionary parents.  Mack, the protagonist, loves watching Bill Moyers (though his name was spelled “Moyer” in the novel), and listening to the edgy folk/rock music of the Canadian virtuoso, Bruce Cockburn.  The author clearly is disgusted with the politics – internal and external – associated with evangelical Christianity.  Mack says of some of his fellow church members that “they loved Jesus, but were also sold out to religious activity and patriotism.” (p 181) Jesus tells Mack that “religious machinery can chew up people”…. “I don’t create institutions – never have, never will!” (p 179)  “My church is all about people and life is all about relationships.” (p 178)

 

Mack once went to seminary, where “he had been taught that God had completely stopped any overt communication with moderns, preferring to have them only listen to and follow sacred Scripture, properly interpreted, of course.  God’s voice had been reduced to paper….”  (p 65)  The glaring heresy of the book is that Mack meets the Godhead face to face, and its three members aren’t what the Scripture described.  The book’s premise is itself a reflection of the increasing tendency of Americans, even among evangelicals, to rely increasingly on the authority of their own encounters with the divine, and to seek a "religionless" faith.  At one point, Mack encounters Sophia, the figure of Wisdom found in the book of Proverbs.  She is portrayed in a way that would make her fit right in with the other members of the Godhead in the novel.  But when Mack asks if she is God, Jesus tells him that no, she is just a personification of God’s wisdom (p 171).  This orthodox disclaimer, inserted into what is otherwise a very unorthodox narrative, is so weak as to be ludicrous.

 

The book suggests an opening between progressives and evangelicals on the topic of religious pluralism. Jesus says that people of all religions love him:  “I have no desire to make them Christian, but I do want to join them in their transformation into sons and daughters of my Papa, into my brothers and sisters, into my Beloved!”  “Does that mean,” asked Mack, “that all roads will lead to you?”  “Not at all,” smiled Jesus Most roads don’t lead anywhere.  What it does mean is that I will travel any road to find you.” (p 182)  This is a premise that might undercut any claim by one religion, including Christianity, of superiority over all others, while still giving evangelicals a way to keep Jesus at the center of their devotion.

 

The theological discussions among Mack and the three members of the Trinity leave the reader with at least as many questions as Young’s imagined Godhead gives unsatisfying answers.  Theodicy, the problem of evil, is answered with the well-worn concept that without the freedom to sin, we would not have the freedom to love, and our sin is what has wrecked the world.  The redemption that comes to Mack after the death of his daughter is clearly a parallel to the traditional formula of the sacrifice of Jesus for atonement, yet the novel vigorously denies this.  Mack is told it was necessary for Jesus to die on the cross for redemption, but the other evils that happen in the world are not required by God for demonstrating divine compassion. Why, one has to ask?  The novel repeats standard evangelical theology, while undermining it in roundabout ways.  I was left with the strong impression that the author is looking for a way out of this box, but he is afraid to take the next steps that would follow the trajectory of his book.

 

And that trajectory is toward a loving relationship, beyond doctrine or religions institutions, that characterizes God in the intimacy of connection among the three persons of the Trinity, and characterizes the connection between God and people.  Young’s God will do whatever it takes – including sending us notes and changing appearance in order to meet us where we need to be met – in order to establish and maintain that kind of relationship with us.  That’s the charm of the book, and also its charming heresy.  

 

I recommend The Shack to all theologically and socially progressive Christians who are looking for ways to engage positively with evangelicals. The book speaks for countless evangelicals who are privately disgusted with the glib morality and obsession with doctrine of their churches and institutions. The book offers fresh language and imagery, and creatively points the way to a faith that is based on loving relationships rather than rules and dogma.