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Beyond Unity, Integration and Experience: Cultural Psychology and the Theology of Mediaeval Mysticism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Peter Hampson
Peter Hampson*
Affiliation:
Psychology Group, University of the West of England, Bristol, Frenchay Campus, Coldharbour Lane, Bristol, BS16 1QY UK
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Abstract

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Type
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Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 86 , Issue 1006 , November 2005 , pp. 622 - 641
Copyright
Copyright © The Author 2005. Journal compilation © The Dominican Council/Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2005, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA

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Footnotes

*

The author would like to thank Dr Mervyn Davies for his invaluable comments on an earlier draft of this article.

References

1 McCabe, Herbert 1987. God Matters. London: MowbrayGoogle Scholar.

2 Turner, Denys 2002. Faith Seeking. London: SCM PressGoogle Scholar, see especially pp. 21, 31–35, 46.

3 Searle, John 1995. The Construction of Social Reality. London: PenguinGoogle Scholar.

4 See Southgate, Christopher, Murray, Celia Dean‐Drummond Paul, Negus, Michael, Osborn, Lawrence, Poole, Michael, Stewart, Jacqui and Watts, Fraser 1999. God, Humanity and the Cosmos: A Textbook in Science and Religion. Edinburgh: T&T ClarkGoogle Scholar, for a discussion of this distinction. Also Lynne Rudder Baker. ‘Third Person Understanding’. Chapter 8 in Sandford, Anthony (Ed.), 2003. The Nature and Limits of Human Understanding: The 2001 Gifford Lectures. London: T&T ClarkGoogle Scholar.

5 This appears to be the position generally adopted by Watts, Fraser 2002. Theology and Psychology. London: AshgateGoogle Scholar.

6 Denys Turner 1995. The Darkness of God: Negativity in Christian Mysticism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

7 See Theology and Psychology, op. cit, chapters 6 and 7 for a related though not identical distinction of religious experience, where Watts helpfully contrasts and thoroughly discusses cognitive neuroscience and social construction approaches. The former partially exemplify what I term intra‐psychic approaches, the latter form a necessary but not sufficient component of a more fully developed cultural psychology.

8 For example Bruner, Jerome 1990. Acts of Meaning. Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University PressGoogle Scholar.

9 See Theology and Psychology op.cit., p. 106, for a related point on special providence.

10 Irony intended. Presumably on its own admission postmodernism is groundless! See also Meynell, Hugo 1999. Postmodernism and the New Enlightenment. Washington D.C.: Catholic University Press.Google Scholar

11 Ibid. Also see Brian Hebblethwaite 2003. The Nature and Limits of Theological Understanding. Chapter 10 in The Nature and Limits of Human Understanding: op. cit., for a strong defence of theological supervenience.

12 James, William 1952. The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature. London; Longmans, (originally published 1902)Google Scholar.

13 Ibid., pp. 407–408.

14 Pepler, Conrad OP 1958. The English Religious Heritage. Oxford: Blackfriars Publications, p. 394Google Scholar.

15 See for example: Ewert Cousins 1969. Psychotherapy and spiritual growth. Pastoral Counsellor 7(l), 3–9; Dereck Daschke 1993. Individuation and the psychology of the mystic union. Journal of Psychology and Christianity 12(3), 245–252; Fateux, Kevin 1996. Beyond unity: religious experience, creativity and psychology. Journal of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis. 23 (4), 6l9–634Google Scholar;Frederica Halligan and John Shea 1992. Sacred images in dreamwork: The journey into self as journey into God. Pastoral Psychology 40 (1), 29–38.

16 Susan Andersen and Serena Chen 2002. The relational self: an interpersonal social‐cognitive theory. Psychological Review 109, 619–645.

17 Dan Via 1977. Prodigal Son: A Jungian Reading. Semeia 9, 21–43.

18 Mark, Brigitta 2000. Mysticism and Cognition: The Cognitive Development of St John of the Cross as revealed in his works. Aarhus: Aarhus University PressGoogle Scholar.

19 Karmiloff‐Smith, Annette 1995. Beyond Modularity: A Developmental Perspective on Cognitive Science. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

20 See Benson, Ciarán 2001. The Cultural Psychology of Self Place Morality and Art in Human Worlds. London: Routledge, pp. 222–235Google Scholar, for a useful, corresponding, secular critique of ‘self‐esteem’ culture on the grounds of its self centredness, also Lane, Belden 1998. The Solace of Fierce Landscapes: Exploring Desert and Mountain Spirituality. New York: Oxford University PressCrossRefGoogle Scholar, for a more theological one.

21 The Darkness of God, op. cit., p. 22.

22 Ibid., p. 185.

23 Nancey Murphy 2003. On the role of philosophy in theology‐science dialogue. Theology and Science 1, 79–93.

24 The Cultural Psychology of Self op. cit.

25 Harré, Rom 1998. The Singular Self An Introduction to the Psychology of Personhood. London: SageGoogle Scholar.

26 Damasio, Antonio 1999. The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness. New York: Harcourt Brace and CoGoogle Scholar.

27 Lakoff, George and Johnson, Mark 1999. Philosophy in the Flesh. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar

28 Acts of Meaning, op. cit.

29 Taylor, Charles 1989. Sources of the Self The Making of Modern Human Identity. Cambridge: Mass.: Harvard UniversityGoogle Scholar.

30 The Cultural Psychology of Self op cit. p. 83.

31 Philosophy in the Flesh, op. cit.

32 See SirBartlett, F.C. 1932, Remembering. Cambridge, Cambridge University PressGoogle Scholar, for an early discussion of this issue.

33 The technicalities of this process are interesting, but need not detain us here, the interested reader may care to examine Phil Johnson‐Laird's 1983. Mental Models. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Johnson‐Laird provides evidence that mental reasoning may not arise from the application of logical rules, but rather from the internalisation of sensori‐motor activities applied to image like structures. We retrieve, form, build and then deconstruct mental models. Thus, reasoning, understood now as a skill rather than rule application, appears to involve the recursive application of analogues of physical processes on imagined structures.

34 Philosophy in the Flesh, op. cit.

35 The Cultural Psychology of Self op. cit., pp 73–74, 83, 122.

36 Ibid, 91.

37 Ibid.

38 Darkness of God, op. cit., p. 140.

39 The Cultural Psychology of Self op. cit, p. 91.

40 Meister Eckhart, Sermon 6. p.13 1. All references to Eckhart are from: Meister Eckhart: A Modern Translation. New York: Harper, 1941Google Scholar. (trans. Raymond Blakney).

41 Ibid. pp. 3–4.

42 There is a (temporary) disappearance of what Lynne Baker would refer to as first‐person perspective, Lynne Rudder Baker. 2003 ‘First‐Person Knowledge’. Chapter 7 in The Nature and Limits of Human Understanding, op. cit.

43 Meister Eckhart Sermon 13, p. 158.

44 This is not to suggest that Eckhart should be read in a reactionary way as an experiential account of mysticism. Rather, it seems likely that he will have undergone changes in first‐person, self understanding along with his deepening theological critique, and that these changes will most likely have added implicit understanding to and support for his explicit theological analyses.

45 Ciarán Benson, in press Oct. 2003. The unthinkable boundaries of self: The role of negative emotional boundaries in the formation maintenance and transformation of identities. In Harré, R. and Moghaddam, F. (eds.), The Self and Others. Positioning Individuals in Personal, Political and Social Contexts. USA: Praegger/GreewoodGoogle Scholar.

46 Meister Eckhart, Sermon 6, p. 131.

47 It is tempting to rewrite the cogito as “I am co‐constituted therefore I am’, as I am indeed co‐constituted by my embodiment, by persons, places, things and, of course, in the image and likeness of God, were it not for the risk of reducing personal being to conscious experience.

48 I see this argument as converging from a psychological analysis onto the theological stance adopted by Denys Turner 2002. ‘Apophaticism, idolatry and the claims of reason’. Chapter 1 in Davies, Oliver and Turner, Denys (eds.), Silence and the Word: Negative Theology and Incarnation. Cambridge: Cambridge University PressCrossRefGoogle Scholar. Only by a whisker, as Turner puts it, and through his understanding and firm belief in his utter dependence on the unknowable God, was Eckhart himself saved, by his Thomism, from lapsing into a premature nihilism.

49 Meister Eckhart Sermon 13, p. 159.

50 The Darkness of God, op. cit, pp. 157–165.

51 Meister Eckhart, Sermon 6, p. 131.

52 See for instance Fergus Kerr's careful response to critics in the postscript of Kerr, Fergus 1997. Theology After Wittgenstein. London SPCK, pp. 194–197Google Scholar, (first edition Basil Blackwell, 1986).

53 Brian Hebblethwaite 2003. Chapter 10 in The Nature and Limits of Human Understanding: op. cit., makes a similar point.

54 Maclntyre, Alasdair 1981 After Virtue. London: DuckworthGoogle Scholar.