March, 2002

The Psychology of Mature Spirituality

Polly Young-Eisendrath and Melvin Miller, Eds.,

London, Routledge, 2000, 200 pps.

Several years ago during a workshop held by our society on Abraham the Father, the Jungian analyst Henry Abramovitch made an interesting comment. He stated that he often encountered people whose image of God was that of a very old man with a very long beard, insinuating that their sense of God and spirituality had never really developed beyond childhood. The Psychology of Mature Spirituality consists of a collection of essays addressing the concept of spiritual meaning beyond the perspective of the child, that is, as it is experienced in its full maturity. The various contributors to this book offer some interesting answers to the question of how we can be spiritual in these post- modern, post-theistic times.

The book is divided into three major sections related to the major components of mature spirituality: integrity, wisdom and transcendence. Introducing the first section, Jungian analyst John Beebe describes integrity as an individual’s accountability. He finds the Jungian ideal of individuation as “personality in a continuous state of consciousness” to be an impossibility. He asserts that the total personality cannot be individuated; rather what becomes individuated is the willingness of the person to face his/her total personality including the shadowy parts.

[It is] not the particular character flaw that a hero (person) may possess, but rather the attitude toward it that matters. There seems to be something especially attractive, spiritually speaking, about owning of the parts of oneself that do not fit the usual gestalt of one’s moral identity.

The highest level of integrity is realizing our connection to all others on this planet, seeing all as part of a larger whole, that is, “the capacity to recognize the spirit of God in experience that is unexpectedly meaningful and to celebrate that experience by uniting the world.” Other chapters in this section include an entertaining story about the Buddha and his shadowy cousin Devadatta, by Richard Hayes, associate professor of religion at McGill University and a chapter by Demaris S. Wehr, professor of religion and Jungian psychotherapist, who speaks about her own experience of being spiritually abused by a healer and describes the effects of such abuse on the individual.

Sherry Salman, Jungian training analyst in New York City, begins the section on wisdom. She describes Jungian analysis as having many of its philosophical and spiritual roots in the wisdom path of the Western mystery tradition, which “emphasizes a sustained regression into the unconscious for the purposes of individual and collective spiritual transformation.” The unconscious embodies wisdom because it is “the seat of deepest levels of information processing in the service of developing better ways in which to meet the future,” and because “it partakes of the ‘two-million-year-old-person’ reaching backwards to the instinctual, genetically hard-wired codes that make up a human being, hailing from the ancient plains of the African savannah or from present-day New York City.” Amor fati, the love of one’s fate, is also part of wisdom. It is our ability to be creatively involved with what life offers us with all its conflicts. Other chapters in this section include a thoughtful essay on relationship as a path to attaining wisdom by psychology professor Ruthellen Josselson and a chapter comparing and contrasting the theories of Jung, Erikson and Maslow by David Rosen and Ellen M. Crouse.

Up to this point in the book, one could question how spiritual maturity differs from psychological maturity. Integrity, after all, was conceptualized by Erik Erikson as the eighth and final stage of psychosocial development and wisdom was proposed as the basic virtue accompanying that stage.

It is in the final section of the book, on transcendence, that spirituality is most highlighted. This section begins with an insightful essay by the co-editor, Jungian analyst Polly Young-Eisendrath entitled “Psychotherapy as Ordinary Transcendence.” The author describes transcendence not as a New Age, otherworldly experience but rather as something inhabiting everyday life. For example it can occur in the moments of connectedness and realization of interdependence that can be felt in the psychotherapy consulting room. It can be experienced in the idealizing transference which awakens “spiritual yearnings in the patient—yearnings for compassion and wisdom.” These longings can also be for the transcendent function which can help the patient discover a third personality, a new element which resolves a conflict in which he/she has been embroiled.

In this book transcendence is presented in its horizontal dimension as opposed to the usual vertical one. This is most clearly outlined in the excellent chapter entitled “Green Spirituality” by Michael C. Kallen, director of the Liberal Arts Program at the University of Washington. He writes of “ecosystemic interdependence,” which does not view human beings as the pinnacle of evolution because of evolved brain capacity. Rather, he takes the stance that human beings are just part of the great community of life. In a horizontally framed spirituality, “the question of belonging acquires a newmeaning. We exist always and only enmeshed in the relational reality of surroundings and situation.” Nature becomes sacred and transcendence is premised on life rather than the evolution of mind. In this view we transcend our little egos, become part of it all, and pay homage to all our relations, that is, all sentient and insentient beings, in the Native American sense.

This thought-provoking book offers an important contribution to the understanding of spiritual maturity. It is not an easy read however. Some chapters such as the one on authenticity and integrity from a Heideggerien approach can be intellectually challenging. The book is definitely not a “how-to” manual. It offers few suggestions on how to achieve the qualities of wisdom, integrity and transcendence except perhaps through depth psychotherapy. As well, its emphatic psychological bias precludes discussion of spiritual practices such as meditation. There is only passing mention of compassion as a significant aspect of mature spirituality, although one can argue that compassion is implicit in discussions of embracing cast-off parts of ourselves and connecting deeply to others. In any case, this volume is a most enlightening contribution to our understanding of the psychological dimensions of mature spirituality. I highly recommend it.

—Mary Harsany