Psychology and demonology.

Something always strikes me as a little bit off when I read articles on society-level psychology. See, for example, “happiness studies,” or levels of niceness. This is largely because that sort of thing seems to be completely inapplicable to the actual decisions I have to make. Say I have a bundle of research that tells me what makes most people happy: how in the world to I apply it? Straining for objectivity might work for policymakers, but it’s never rung true for me. (Perhaps some people find that clinical descriptions of their psychological situations give them a sense of control; if so, these people are clearly neurotic.) And, really, what could we find that hasn’t been somehow observed before? I mean, we couldn’t see cells before the microscope, but we’ve always had some kind of access to our own thoughts.

I can’t even think about this topic without recalling Reverend Darcourt’s drunken rant near the beginning of Robertson Davies’s novel What’s Bred in the Bone. Darcourt, a theologian and Anglican priest, has loosened up after an evening of wine and conversation with two dear friends, and he becomes voluble:

“Well, science is the theology of our time, and like the old theology it’s a muddle of conflicting assertions. What gripes my gut is that it has such a miserable vocabulary and such a pallid pack of images to offer to us—to the humble laity—for our edification and our faith. The old priest in his black robe gave us things that seemed to have concrete existence; you prayed to the Mother of God and somebody had given you an image that looked just right for the Mother of God. The new priest in his whitish lab-coat gives you nothing at all except a constantly changing vocabulary which he—because he usually doesn’t know any Greek—can’t pronounce, and you are expected to trust him implicitly because he knows what you are too dumb to comprehend. It’s the most overweening, pompous priesthood mankind has ever endured in all its recorded history, and its lack of symbol and metaphor and its zeal for abstraction drive mankind to a barren land of starved imagination. But you, Maria, speak the old language that strikes upon the heart. You talk about the Recording Angel and you talk about his lesser angels, and we both know exactly what you mean. You give comprehensible and attractive names to psychological facts, and God—another effectively named psychological fact—bless you for it.”

Now, I obviously can’t endorse the statement that God is an effectively named psychological fact, but it does give one something to think about. But I think I can go most of the way there with demons. Why should vain moderns mock Martin Luther for writing that he was tormented by demons? That’s exactly how clinical depression can feel. Calling it a demon gives you something to fight—and a way to disassociate your soul from its disease.

Is it all right to read the New Age movement as an attempt to re-name some of these “psychological facts” in an apprehensible way? Would New Age writers disagree with that characterization? More importantly, how do we deal with the dissonances of the metaphorical perspective? If you know your depression is not really a strange small fellow whispering in your ear, can you sustain the image? Or are you be better off viewing yourself as in the cold light of the laboratory?

C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien set for themselves the goal of reinvigorating the Christian imagination. They’ve certainly helped, although the section of any bookstore for “Christian literature”—that abomination!—makes it clear that we still have a ways to go. In the end, the task is to keep searching for “language that strikes upon the heart,” but to make sure that it strikes truly.

N.B.: I’m not against psychiatric medication. Not entirely, anyway.