Psychology Cannot Solve the Basic Human Dis-Ease

Being As Communion is both the title and the thesis of a book by Orthodox theologian John Zizioulas. I love this book. When I started reading it, I was an Evangelical; by the time I finished, I was an Orthodox Christian.

Before reading this work, I had never considered the fact that the Trinity represented a “communion”—One God in three Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And, as Zizioulas explained, this leads one to understand being itself as communion.

The immediate question that came to my mind was what does this make of man’s being, since he is created in God’s likeness and image? For the Orthodox Christian, it means that man’s being is also a matter of communion.

What interests me most as both a psychotherapist and a wannabe theologian are the points at which therapy and theology intersect. The vital role communion plays in both mental health and theology makes this topic a crucial crossroads.

Interestingly, you will not find the actual word communion in classic psychology texts (at least I’ve never run across it). Psychology as a whole does a good job purging its language of religiously-charged words, which I don’t actually bemoan. The association of communion with a Christian rite is so common that things could easily get confusing if clinicians were using words like communion when all they really mean is something like attachment or connection.

But what is lost along with the term is a concept of the individual that points beyond the self to an inherent need of union with the other, not just a luxury to consider if one is so inclined, but a need upon which our basic well-being depends (and ultimately our very existence). Even that phrase is strange to a modern ear. Try saying “Union with the other” out loud in a conversation at a coffee shop and see how many side glances you get. “Connection with the other,” or “Attachment with the other,” no problem. This is because, in a culture dominated by centuries of individualism and philosophic materialism, the terms ‘connection’ and ‘attachment’ are fairly safe. They do not give the impression that relationships require a sacrifice of one’s identity or independence. But ‘union’ smacks of losing one’s uniqueness in the process of merging one’s self with another self into a single unit.

This is, unexpectedly, where the word ‘person’ comes in. For us, it is a mundane and otherwise lackluster little word, but it was the center of attention during the great Christological debates in the early centuries of the Church, and is profoundly intermingled with the Church’s concept of communion.

As John Zizioulas stated: “The person both as a concept and as a living reality is purely the product of patristic thought.” Before the patristic Fathers’ work on this, it was not possible to conceive of a person the way we do today.

To give a little needed background, ‘Person’, from the Greek word prosopon, was, in ancient times, used to describe a single aspect of an individual, and not necessarily something real; it related to a mask or persona that someone would wear temporarily, not a permanent quality of the individual.

Ontological monism, the prevailing metaphysical belief of the average ancient Greek, rested on the idea that being constituted a unity despite the multiplicity of existing things. In the final analysis, the one being—i.e., the kosmos—was the only enduring, concrete reality. All the evident differentiation or accidents that now exist were eventually destined for disintegration. This was also true for those human qualities that seemed to demonstrate personal agency, autonomy, or freedom.

This was why the theater, and tragedy in particular, went off with such a bang in ancient Greece. As John Zizioulas writes:

“The conflicts between human freedom and the rational necessity of a unified and harmonious world… are worked out in dramatic form. It is precisely in the theater that man strives to become a ‘person,’ to rise up against this harmonious unity which oppresses him as rational and moral necessity. It is there that he fights with the gods and with his fate…”

Zizioulas continues:

“As a result of this mask, man—the actor, but properly also the spectator—has acquired a certain taste of freedom, a certain specific ‘hypostasis,’ a certain identity, which the rational and moral harmony of the world in which he lives denies him… In the ancient Greek world, for someone to be a person means that he has something added to his being; the ‘person’ is not his true ‘hypostasis’ [hypostasis, meaning his basic nature or substance].”

In short, it was not conceivable for one to be a person in the modern sense according to popular Greek thought, because one’s mask or persona was not part of one’s basic nature; that is, we did not actually possess freedom.

The Early Church needed a new understanding of the word person in order to articulate how the eternal and limitless God could appear in human flesh, that is, how God could come into existence in time and space in the person of Jesus Christ. Additionally, how is it possible to accept Christ as God without believing in polytheism, which was the epitome of heresy in the Jewish religion? According to the vocabulary available at the time, either Jesus was simply God the Father appearing to mankind in a particular mask or role (Sabellianism), or Jesus was a separate and inferior god created by God the Father (Arianism and Gnosticism), or Jesus was merely a good man and, if one was feeling generous, maybe even a legitimate rabbi (Judaism), to name but a few of the Christological options.

Again, saving the reader a large amount of theological jargon, the word ‘person’ came to express a concrete, enduring personal identity (a specific hypostasis). Applied to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit separately, it makes possible the otherwise absurd notion of One God (ousia, essence, substance) in Three Persons (hypostasis). Where the term ‘hypostasis’ once referred to the substance or underlying nature of being, the patristic Fathers were able to make it refer, instead, to the Person.

(Reading back over this article for the thousandth time, I am fully aware that what I have described so far leaves a laughably incomplete treatment of the subject. I pray the reader forgives me as I am attempting to give needed background to a theologically and historically mammoth topic, requiring several volumes to do it justice.)

Important for this article is to distinguish between the notions of the person and the individual. An easy way to tease this out is to simply think about what it means to be personal; ‘person’ is a communal word that signifies a relationship. ‘Individual,’ on the other hand, denotes the lack of relationship. In its original Trinitarian usage, the Persons of the Holy Trinity are the communion of the one God. When applied to human beings, it speaks of both one’s relationship with other human beings and with God, as well as our enduring personal identity.

Being a person means that our very nature is communal. Personhood is not an additional quality among a list of qualities constituting our human nature; it is not the highest-ranking quality of our nature; it is the very nature of our being.

This is precisely why communion as a word took on such a deeply spiritual connotation—it is the revelation of a metaphysical truth. The Christian rite of communion is the very body and blood of Christ—the elements of the Eucharist—which give new life; the gift of being “born anew”. It is through communion with Him that our nature is, as it were, reconstituted to its original stature—the grace of communing with God, becoming a “partaker of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4).

The life God gives is one of personhood in communion: freedom of union with the other without loss of our distinctions.

The life modernity gives is that of individualism: freedom from the other and fortification of our distinctions. It calls individuals to develop their own powers—intelligence, beauty, strength, etc.—and secure the good life. The “good life,” epitomized by the freedom of movement, health, comfort, prestige, and, in the words of Charlie Sheen, of “winning.” For those who have not yet made the connection, the promise of individualism is indeed reminiscent of the Biblical Tree of Knowledge.

And now for a preachy…

Communion and personhood are intricately woven together. Without proper communion, our personhood suffers, and every psychic and emotional dis-ease awaits us. Christ gave the Eucharist as the very means of entering the mystical communion with Him and His Body—the Church. It is through this sacred rite that the person is given access to all that is needed for true relationship: communion with God, with people, with nature, and, yes, with oneself.

Where psychotherapy is lacking is not so much about what it gets wrong, but rather what it cannot get right. Psychotherapy cannot provide communion, as discussed above, nor authentic personhood. It can be wonderful for human connection, education, and specific, targeted therapies, etc., but it cannot give the most basic and primary thing necessary for mental well-being. That said, there is one obvious caveat. It is also true that having communion and personhood do not guarantee well-being; they only guarantee its potential. Like having a car installed with the greatest engine ever built cannot guarantee that it will ever leave the parking lot (what if it has flat tires?). It only guarantees its potential to drive. Likewise, the gift of communion and personhood assumes a recipient who participates in the gift. As my priest always says concerning the Eucharist, “It’s not magic, fellas.”

Thanks for reading!