Paul Overend reviews The Psychology of Mature Spirituality:
Integrity, Wisdom, Transcendence Editors Polly Young-Eisendrath and Melvin E. Miller Routledge 2000, £17.99 (pb.), pp.220, ISBN 0-415-17960-2 This book was lent to me during the publication of SOF61, but unfortunately too late for me to read and to review it there, or I may have written the editorial more wisely. Its back cover, under the questioning title ‘Spirituality beyond humanism or theism?’ says that ‘Enlightened secularism and humanism no longer seem adequate for living an ethical life, but religious practices and spiritual paths still seem at odds with intelligence and rationality’. It invites readers to explore a ‘new sceptical spirituality outside of institutional religion. I received the book as I began a secular job, after a decade of Anglican ecclesiastical employment, and so was eager to read it.
The contents, which are preceded by an extremely promising introduction by the editors, are a collection of essays grouped under the themes of Integrity, Wisdom and Transcendence. It seems that these themes constitute the editors’ understanding of a mature spirituality. The essays differ in style, with most of them not requiring any great knowledge of psychology and avoiding academic cross-referencing to specialist works. They are an enjoyable and stimulating read, and the differences between the different writers’ approaches to the themes are most thoughtprovoking.
The essays range from considering the Buddha as an example of integrity to a consideration of Taoism, where the dualism (t’ai chi) of yin and yang proceeds towards wholeness (wu chi); and from a consideration of spiritual abuse by spiritual directors to a paper on fundamentalism that questions the psychotherapist’s traditional attitude of neutrality in relation to the patient. Papers consider the relationship between age and wisdom, and spirituality and wisdom in terms of relationships and attitudes to others’ opinions and values, rather than in terms of the independent subject. A timely reminder to me, following SOF61, was a consideration of Heidegger’s subject (the situated human being, Dasein), a concept of the subject that seeks to overcome the inner/outer dualism of the subject that psychology has inherited from a Western tradition going back at least to Augustine of Hippo. Here the idea of living authentically involves not inner intent and outer deed, but purposefulness with regard to the future, more like Henry D Thoreau’s idea of living life deliberately (at Waldon Pond). Yet another, provocative, paper suggests an alternative of living lightly and letting go, and touching only on religious ideas ‘like a zen koan’.
Only occasionally did theological ideas jar on me as being unreflective, as in a line ‘psychology both assumes and sometimes touches the dimension of the sacred...’ (p.157). What is that supposed to mean?
Commendable though this collection is, however, the papers are selected with a particular presupposition of what a mature spirituality is, and I cannot readily accept this presupposition.
For example, one’s body (diet and exercise) and one’s sexuality and sexual relationships are all excluded, ignoring many feminist criticisms of Western (Christian) spirituality. The editors also assume that we only mature psychologically through our own angst experiences of suffering and tears, and not through life’s fulfilment and laughter. Also, although the cover suggests we need a spirituality ‘adequate for living an ethical life’, there is little reference to any ethical issue other than that suggested about environmental consciousness in a paper on green spirituality which fails to suggest any reason for environmentalism other than a vague idea of transcendence as being in tune with nature- - whatever that is - by ‘belonging to the universe’. This notion simply replaces one spirituality of escape, to an eternal “otherworldly” ethereality, with another form of escape, from society and responsibility. If this kind of environmentalism results in no action to change our homes and lifestyles and those of others with whom we share the political world, it is the self-indulgent spirituality of middle class retreat centres. Moreover, a spirituality that does not relate to my neighbour’s hunger (which might lead us to considef its causes with the IMF and the market-liberalization ‘conditionalities’ to World Bank loans), or which does not consider the pain of humans and other sentient beings (whether in factories that answer telephone enquiries, make textiles or produce milk and eggs) does not seem to me to be a spirituality that is fully developed, which is to say, is not a ‘mature spirituality’ at all.
Perhaps it is the title and the editors’ introduction that were problematic, seeking to attract the reader by offering more than this volume can deliver. What it does deliver though is worth reading.
P. Young-Eisendrath, M.E. Miller, Introduction: Beyond Enlightened Self-Interest: Spiritual Maturity in the Twenty-first Century.
Part I. Integrity.
J. Beebe, The Place of Integrity in Spirituality. R.P. Hayes, A Buddha and his Cousin. M.E. Miller, The Mutual Influence and Involvement of the Therapist and Patient: Co-contributors to Maturation and Integrity. D.S. Wehr, Spiritual Abuse: When Good People do Bad Things. C. Guignon, Authenticity and Integrity: A Heideggerian Perspective.
Part II. Wisdom.
S. Salman, The Wisdom of Psychological Creativity and "Amor Fati".
R. Josselson, Relationship as a Path to Integrity, Wisdom, and List of Contributors to The Psychology of Mature Spirituality Meaning. G. Labouvie-Vief, Affect Complexity and Views of the Transcendent. D.H. Rosen & E.M Crouse. The Tao of Wisdom:
Integration of Taoism and Psychologies of Jung, Erikson and Maslow.
Part III. Transcendence.
P. Young-Eisendrath, Psychotherapy as Ordinary Transcendence:
The Unspeakable and the Unspoken. R. Brooke, Emissaries from the Underworld: Psychotherapy's Challenge to Christian Fundamentalism. J. Sevene-Long, The Prism of Self: Multiplicity on the Path to Transcendence. T.L. Gibson, Wholeness and Transcendence in the Practice of Pastoral Psychotherapy from a Judeo-Christian Perspective. M.C. Kalton, Green Spirituality:
Paul Overend now works in the School of Religious and Theological Studies at Cardiff University, and tutors in the Department of Philosophy in the School of English, Communications and Philosophy and at St Michael’s theological college. He is the editor of the SOF magazine.