...Freud's scientific label permits the nicest girl to discuss intimate sexual details with any man, the two stimulating each other erotically during the talk while wearing poker faces, and at the same time proving themselves learned and liberated. What a convenience in puritan America!
This is, of course, not the total explanation; Freudianism would never have become popular in a more normal civilization. Marx and Freud would not have written in the thirteenth century and would have had a trivial audience in the Elizabethan era; their plea now is due to the fact that the climate of the world is more favorable for such a philosophy. There had to be a materialist preparation for Sexism. Lewis Mumford rightly contends, "Despite the scope Freud gave theoretically to man's deepest subjective impulses, he looked to science alone to effect man's improvement.
Unconsciously, he accepted as final revelation of truth the ideology that was formulated in the eighteenth century; that of Locke,Hume, Diderot, Voltaire. Doctor Reinhold Niebuhr relates Freud to a reaction against optimism: "The romantic pessimism which culminates in Freud may be regarded as symbolic of the despair which modern man faces when his optimistic illusions are dispelled; for under the perpetual smile of modernity, there is a grimace of disillusion and cynicism." Thomas Mann makes Schopenhauer the source: "Schopenhauer, as psychologist of the will, is the father of all modern psychology. From him the line runs, by way of the psychological radicalism of Nietzsche, straight to Freud and the men who built up the psychology of the unconscious and applied it to mental science."
It is unhistorical and philosophically unsound to blame Freud for the current overemphasis: Instead of being the creator of the popularity of sex, he was rather its expression and its effect. Far from being the founder of an age, he was its postscript. There are some faithful disciples still writing who consider Freud's method and his philosophy as absolute truth; they bitterly and instantly resent any criticism, calling it "reactionary" or "obscurantist." But many others have already changed or abandoned fundamental Freudian ideas; among these are Karen Horney and Theodor Reik.
The reasons for the exaggerated interest in sex lie deep in our civilization:
To communicate with Mars, converse with spirits,
To report the behaviour of the sea monster,
Describe the horoscope, haruspicate or scry,
Observe disease in signatures, evokes
Biography from the wrinkles of the palm
And tragedy from fingers; release omens
By sortilege, or tea leaves, riddle the inevitable
With playing cards, fiddle with pentagrams
Or barbituric acids, or dissect
The recurrent image into pre-conscious terrors
To explore the womb, or tomb, or dreams; all these are usual
Pastimes and drugs, and features of the press:
And always will be, some especially
When there is distress of nations and preplexity.
The principle reason for sex deification is loss of belief in God. Once people lose God, they lose the purpose of life; and when the purpose of living is forgotten, the universe becomes meaningless. Man then tries to forget his emptiness in the intensity of a momentary experience. This effort sometimes goes so far that he makes someone else's flesh a god; there are idolatry and adoration, which eventually end in disillusion when the so-called "angel" is discovered to be only a fallen angel and one of no great attraction. Sometimes one's own flesh is made the god: Then one tends toward tyranny over the other person and, finally, toward cruelty.
There is no surer formula for discontent than to try to satisfy our cravings for the ocean of Infinite Love from the teacup of finite satisfactions. Nothing material, physical, or carnal can ever satisfy man completely; he has an immoral soul that needs an Eternal Love. "Not by bread alone does man live." Man need for Divine Love, once perverted, impels him to go on seeking Infinite Love in finite beings - never finding it, yet not able to end the search despite his disappointments. Then follow cynicism, boredom, ennui, and finally, despair. Having lost spiritual oxygen, such a person suffocates. Life ceases to mean anything precious to him, and he thinks of doing away with himself as his last and final act of rebellion against the Lord of Life. As E. I. Watkin observes of such moderns,
...Rationalism has robbed them of faith in God and spiritual love-life of union with Him. Being men, not calculating machines or vegetables, they must have life, concrete, intense, passionate. They therefore turn to sex, the biological image of spiritual life, its passion and union - but for what it really can give and has given in all ages, but for the content of that other and supreme love-life which it reflects.
They are, of course, disappointed, and they will continue to be disappointed. But their search is a judgment, a testimony and a summons. It is in the first place a judgment...Human ratiocination cannot attain the clear and complete system of truths on which alone a stable world-order of a purely rational description could be constructed. He [man] is devoured by the submarine monster of biological life lurking in his irrational instincts, the whale of sex. For, like the whale, sex should feed man's wants, not swallow him. But sea-monster may after all prove an instrument of his deliverance. In its belly, dark and confined, he learns, like the prophet, the impotence of his natural powers to satisfy the demands of his spirit, his need of divine illumination and grace. Thus the judgment of sex in its modern idolatry becomes a testimony to man's need of the life and love which God alone can bestow, a witness to the reality it prefigures and reflects.
A second reason for the cult of sex is a desire to escape from the responsibility of living and from the unbearable voice of an uneasy conscience. By concentration upon the unconscious, animal, primitive areas, guilt-ridden individuals feel that they no longer need to fret about the meaning of life. Once God has been denied, then everything becomes permissible to them. By denying the ethical in life, they have substituted license for liberty.
Those who are aware of the evidence brought forward by modern psychology for the large part played in man's opinions and conduct by the conscious or unconscious force of sexuality may well incline to the view that the will to overturn the social order is not due entirely to undiluted love of justice or even to the need of food and property among the hungry and dispossessed; a more or less open wish to get rid of social restrictions on sexual activity is a frequent and important factor.
That is why an age of carnal license is always an age of political anarchy. The foundations of social life are shaken at the very moment when the foundations of family life are destroyed. The rebellion of the masses against social order, which Marx advocated, is matched by the rebellion of the libido and the animal instincts, which the sexists advocate within the individual. Both systems deny responsibility - either because history is believed to be economically determined or because man is called biologically determined. Yet the very individuals who deny all human responsibility and freedom in theory freely blame their cooks for the burned bacon in the morning and say "Thank you" at night to the friend who praises their latest book, There Is No Freedom.
A third reason for overemphasis on sex is the modern denial of immortality. Once the Eternal is denied, the Now becomes all-important. When people believe in immortality, they not only seek the continuance of their spirit in eternity, but also the continuance of their flesh, through the creation of families that will survive them and meet the challenge death otherwise presents.
The denial of immortality thus gives death a double mastery, first over the person who denies survival, though he needs must die, and second by leading him to repudiate family life, which is now regarded as a mere hindrance to the pleasures of the brief hour of life. It is a historical fact that in times of disaster, epidemic, bombings, etc, some individuals who have no eternal values to sustain them, seeing the lease on life about to run out, plunge into orgies of debauchery; concentration on the perishable things of earth tends to dry up moral enthusiasm and to stimulate cravings for bestial satisfaction when such humans see their ends approaching. But such catastrophes are not needed: Whenever time on earth is seen as all-important, the elders talk about "the future which is in the hands of the young" everyone is afraid to speak of his age, and the subject of growing old is treated in a manner midway between an insult and a sneer.
Like beasts trapped, not in cages but in time, such humans become angry with time for passing: The hastening years diminish pleasure and cast a shadow one must try not to see. But since one cannot hope to escape it forever, the fear of death grows apace. It is no accident that the present civilization which has emphasized sex as no other age in the history of Christianity has emphasized it, lives in constant fear of death. Baudelaire rightly pictured modern love as sitting on a skull. When the flesh is given a moral value, it produces life; when sex frustrates morality, it ends in death.
A child who is given a ball and told that it is the only ball he will ever have in his life cannot enjoy it much because he is over fearful of losing it. Another child, told that if he is good he will be given another ball, one that will never wear out and will give him unending pleasure, need not be fearful of losing the first. So it is with the person who has only one world, in contrast to the one who believes otherwise. Even in the enjoyment of life the first person walks in fear of its end. His very pleasures are shadowed by death. But the one who believes in a future life, conditioned by morality, has the great advantage of being able to be happy in this world, as well as in the next.
The predilection for sex is characteristic of a profoundly naturalistic age. Even before psychoanalysis was conceived, one can observe notable signs of such a development. The naturalistic literary school of France - which became tremendously influential, starting with Flaubert, Guy de Maupassant, and Zola - emphasized sex. None of these writers was an "ïmmoralist" but they shared the idea that "nature" must be discussed openly and without restrictions. There is little licentiousness in their writing; but it happened that these works, intended to describe things human as they are, were welcomed by readers who sought quite another effect from them. The naturalistic school thus became, involuntarily, a preparation for a growing licentiousness. The success of psychoanalysis in America - not with the psychiatrists, but with the public - has the same source as the success of certain novelists of sex, like D. H. Lawrence.
A fourth reason for the overemphasize on sex is the denial of the rational soul and the equating of humans with animals. This connotes the complete abandonment of the ethical in human relations. Not the will but instinct now reigns supreme, as the standards of morality give way to the practices of the barnyard. The modern tragedy is not that human beings gave way more often to their passions now than in previous ages, but that, in leaving the right road, they deny that there is a right road. People rebelled against God in other ages, but they recognized it as rebellion. They sinned, but they knew that they sinned. They saw clearly they were on the wrong road; today people throw away the map.
The equation of man with the animal is a great fallacy; sex in man is not the same as sex in animals. An animal feels, but no animal loves. In the animal, there is no body-mind conflict; in man, there is. In the animal, sex is mechanical, a matter of stimulus and response. In man, it is linked with mystery and freedom. In the animal, it is only a release of tensions; in man, its occurrence is determined by no natural rhythm, but by the will. Sex can cause a loneliness and sadness in humans that it cannot cause in animals. The animal can satisfy its desire below; man cannot do this, and his tension comes from trying to substitute the chaff of sex for the bread of life. As Prinzhorn says, in speaking of Freudianism of a certain type, "It gives to people who are over intellectualized, out of touch with the living earth, in the grip of a debased sexuality, a false religion, which is admirably suited to their condition."
A totally neglected feature of the sex problem in man is the role that original sin has played in causing it, although it must be said to the credit of modern psychology that it has implicitly reaffirmed the fact under the name of "tension." Man's nature is not intrinsically corrupt, but it is weak; as a result, the emotions often gain supremacy over the reason. With profound penetration, Berdyaev writes,
There are two different types of enjoyment - one reminds us of original sin and always contains poison; the other reminds us of paradise. When a man is enjoying the gratification of sexual passion or the pleasure of eating he ought to feel the presence of poison and be reminded of original sin. That is the nature of every enjoyment connected with lust. It always testifies to the poverty and not to the richness of our nature. But when we experience the delight of breathing the sea or mountain air or the fragrance of woods and fields, we recall paradise; there is no lust in this.
We are comparing here pleasures that have a physiological character. But the same comparison may be drawn in the spiritual realm. When a man is enjoying the satisfaction of his greed or vanity he ought to feel the poison and be reminded of the original sin. But when he is enjoying a creative act that reveals truth or creates beauty or radiates love upon a fellow creature he recalls paradise.
Every delight connected with lust is poisoned and reminiscent of original sin. Every delight free from lust and connected with a love of objective values is a remembrance or a foretaste of paradise and frees us from the bonds of sin. The sublimation or transfiguration of passions means that a passion is purified from lust and that a free creative element enters into it. This is a point of fundamental importance for ethics. Man must strive first and foremost to free himself from slavery. Every state incompatible with spiritual freedom and hostile to it is evil. But every lust (concupiscentia ) is hostile to the freedom of the spirit and enslaves man.
Lust is both insatiable and bound to pall. It cannot be satisfied, for it is the bad infinity of craving. There exists a different kind of craving that also extends into infinity, for example, the hunger for absolute righteousness; those who hunger and thirst after righteousness are blessed because they are concerned with eternity and not with bad infinity. The divine reality that fills our life is the contrary of the boredom and emptiness born of the evil lust of life. Lust from its very nature is uncreative and opposed to creativeness. Creativeness is generous and sacrificial, it means giving one's powers, while lust wants everything for itself, is greedy, insatiable and vampirish. True love gives strength to the loved one, while love-lust vampirically absorbs another person's strength. Hence, there is opposition both between lust and freedom, and between lust and creativeness. Lust is a perverted and inwardly weakened passion. Power is a creative force, but there is such a thing as the lust of power; love is a sacrificial force, but there is also the lust of love.
Whatever be the primary reasons for the present overemphasis on sex, it must not be attributed to Freud himself. A distinction must in fairness be made between Freud and Freudianism, a kind of pan-Sexism that reduces everything to sex in a way that Freud himself never intended. Those who have carried his theories of analysis to the extreme of interpreting everything in terms of sex have been subject to considerable satire; the most interesting example appeared in G. K.'s Weekly, which translated life into terms of beer instead of sex. It reads:
It is now as established fact that all human motive and action is due to Beer; not merely among adults but also among children...
The whole life of a child (of either sex) is actuated by Beer. The first action of which a child is capable is a lusty yell; we have established that this is no less than a cry for Beer, or a any rate for some kind of drink. The next action of the child is to drink. If it does not drink beer it is because its system is not yet capable of drinking beer. But behind the relish of milk is the desire for beer. These we call the primary instincts. The secondary instincts are to be found in the love of popping corks, of yellow-brown colours, of frothy substances (like soap) and so on. The child instinctively calls his father Papa (which represents the popping of the cork) and his mother Mammy ( which gives the noise of the liquid being poured into a glass). All the gurgling noises of childhood go to prove the strength of the instinct...
Most of our knowledge is based upon dreams, which we have taken as the most reliable evidence scientifically possible. We know (by means too long and elaborate to tell here) that even very young children dream about beer; nay, more, that they dream about nothing else. When a child dreams of a boat upon a lake, what is it but a symbol of beer? Of a shower of rain, a river, a sea? Everything yellow or brown is beer. Everything frothy or sparkling is beer. Everything in something else is beer (a nut in its shell, for example, is obviously representative of beer in the bottle). Everything that moves is beer, particularly quick-moving, jerky things, which are reminiscent of "hops." In fact, we may say that the child cannot dreams of anything but beer. There is no dream possible but beer...
Here is an example. The patient was Miss X. She came to us in great trouble. "My nerves are all gone to pieces." she said, "I want you to help me." Professor Bosh questioned her, and kept her under observation. He discovered that before going to bed she was in the habit of brushing her hair. "The brush was an amber color, and was transparent. The patient would raise it slowly to her lips, pause and then proceed to brush her hair. This was quite unconscious. In reply to my questions it transpired that several years before she had been forbidden by the family doctor to drink anything alcoholic. She had been in the habit of taking a glass of ale every night at supper." Professor Bosh explained this to her, and at once convinced her of its truth. She submitted herself to treatment, and was soon perfectly well and strong.
Unlike the extreme Freudianism, Christianity is not so narrow minded as to make sex the most important instinct of life or to attribute mental disorders exclusively to its repression. If the repression of its errant and unlawful impulses is the cause of mental abnormalities, why is it that those who are most abandoned to carnal license are the most abnormal, while those who believe in religion and morality are the most normal? Using a more comprehensive and saner outlook on life, Christianity traces, not one, but several roots of mental disorders in the nonphysical and moral realm. There is sex, to be sure; but there are also six other possible causes - pride, covetousness, anger, envy, gluttony, and sloth.
In order to understand the proper role of the sex instinct, consider the true nature of man. Every human is looking for perfection - constantly trying to transcend himself, to get out of himself, in some way to expand himself, to escape his self-limitations. There is a kind of holy impatience in us all. The "I" the "Me" in each of us feels limited; it craves for expansiveness; it finds the earth too small, even the stars too close; the possessed makes us hungry where most it satisfies. We want to be perfect; but we are only in a process of realization. Not being able to find peace within ourselves, we seek to atone for our limitations by extending ourselves in one of three directions - through the mind, through the body, or through things.
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Sunday, May 24, 2009
I have through years of reading, pondering, reflecting and contemplating, the 3 things that last; FAITH . HOPE . LOVE and I would like to made available my sharing from the many thinkers, authors, scholars and theologians whose ideas and thoughts I have borrowed. God be with them always. Amen!
I STILL HAVE MANY THINGS TO SAY TO YOU BUT THEY WOULD BE TOO MUCH FOR YOU NOW. BUT WHEN THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH COMES, HE WILL LEAD YOU TO THE COMPLETE TRUTH, SINCE HE WILL NOT BE SPEAKING AS FROM HIMSELF, BUT WILL SAY ONLY WHAT HE HAS LEARNT; AND HE WILL TELL YOU OF THE THINGS TO COME.
HE WILL GLORIFY ME, SINCE ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. EVERYTHING THE FATHER HAS IS MINE; THAT IS WHY I SAID: ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. - JOHN 16:12-15 -
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