Library Collections: Document: Full Text

CHRISTIANITY, as we find it in Christ's precepts and life, constitutes a unique system of mental hygiene. The grounds for this statement as here made are neither philosophical nor theological, but plain, matter-of-fact insight into human nature as we find it; and the contention of this article is that the fundamental principles of Christianity are the fundamental principles of a thoroughly wholesome mental life.

A prominent psychiatrist recently said that he believed no theological student should be graduated without spending at least three weeks of active service in an insane asylum; he believed it was impossible to thoroughly understand human nature or to minister most intelligently to its needs until one became somewhat acquainted with its pathological phenomena. His thought was not far wrong, however exaggerated his statement may at first appear. The insanities of mind certainly help us to understand many a shadow that crosses our normal consciousness. They expose human frailties and limitations with awful distinctness, while they indicate morbid tendencies that we must ever strive to correct and counteract. Their value, however, is not all negative; just as in general we regularly fail to appreciate health until we come into contact with disease, so, I believe, the insanities of mind reveal the hygienic value of many phases of our normal life that we ordinarily fail to appreciate. It is in this light I would be interpreted when I say that my work in pathological psychology has brought home to me over and over again the marvelous wholesomeness of the teachings of the Christ.

The wholesomeness of religion is not a universally admitted thesis. On the contrary religious phenomena are only too often regarded as something morbid and abnormal. The Master himself was accused of being in league with the spirit of evil. The little band of apostles were thought to be intoxicated when they were first baptized with the Holy Spirit. Even now conversion is sometimes studied as though it were something pathological; and religion is given a prominent place in the etiology of insanity by a majority of the text-books. Moreover, many a scientist leading a blameless life, inspired by high ideals of service to humanity, holds himself aloof from the Christian Church because he is unwilling to compromise his high standard of truthfulness by subscribing to dogmas which he is unable to prove; and we not infrequently find an honest, upright man who regards religious enthusiasm as some sort of unbecoming emotional weakness. Unquestionably there is an element of truth in some of these counter contentions. Religious excitement certainly has occasioned the breakdown of many a weakened and unbalanced mind; but adolescence and childbirth have occasioned many more breakdowns, and they cannot be termed pathological or abnormal. I must admit, however, that the real difficulty is not got rid of in this easy negative argument, for there must be some morbid element in an otherwise normal event when it is the cause of a pathological process. I think it must be sorrowfully admitted that there are some quite generally accepted methods of stimulating religious interest which are not thoroughly wholesome, but they are certainly very far removed from the gentle, tactful methods of the Master when he called his disciples or awakened the slumbering longing for a better life in the Samaritan woman at the well of Jacob. And I venture the opinion that, since these questionable methods of revival have little in common with the spirit of the Master, Christianity should not be held responsible for their excesses.

It must be admitted, too, that insanity often adopts the formulae of religious expression. Special revelations from God, special missions and even reincarnations of Christ are among its most frequent vagaries. But the time has passed in the history of psychiatry when the form of the delusions can be made the essential characteristic of the diseased condition. Any given delusion must be regarded not as the essence but as an accident of the disease process. The self-styled Messiah who promenades his asylum ward, contemptuously disdaining to notice either his fellow-patients or his physicians, has chosen a religious word to express an ego-centric consciousness which is perhaps as empty of religious content as a phonograph is which could reproduce the Lord's Prayer. It may be true that "there is no more weak, unstable, and shifty nature in the world than that which finds its joy, perhaps its refuge, in an extremely narrow, exclusive, and egotistical religious profession," but I insist that here, too, religious forms are degraded by an irreligious spirit. The haughty ego-centric consciousness and narrow bigotry have nothing in common with the spirit of Christianity. Indeed, whatever name it assumes, nothing could be more manifestly antichristian, if we measure Christianity by its founder, and the doctrines he gave us, as he washed his disciples' feet, and rebuked forever the spirit of pride and selfishness.

Page 2:

We would not be understood to assert that Christianity presents a universal cure-all for diseases of the nervous system; neither does our thesis mean that it can altogether prevent the fruition of degeneration and atavism as we find them in any given individual. We do assert, on the other hand, that, if we take conditions as we find them, the only revelation of an absolutely wholesome soul life for ourselves and for those who will come after us is the revelation of the Nazarene. The conception of the Christ as a teacher of mental hygiene is not nearly so unnatural or forced as it may at first appear. On the contrary, we are thoroughly accustomed to think of the Christ as Saviour and Physician; so accustomed, I fear, to the words that we seldom ask seriously what they mean. Even in the Mosaic law there was a close relation between religion and wholesome life. Not the least of the wonderful features of the grand old body of traditions of ancient Judaism is the insight into the origin and prevention of disease. Unquestionably the Jewish race feels the influence of that insight down to the present time in its heritage of vitality and endurance. It almost seems as though those ancient lawgivers must have had some prevision of the facts brought to light by our modern bacteriology. Christ's power over disease is surely one of the most prominent characteristics of his work. Wherever he was he healed their infirmities, both bodily and mental. But Christ's emphasis was always on the soul life rather than the physical. Over and over again he insisted that his cure of physical disease was only an accident of his mission. It is doubtless this change of emphasis from physical well-being to spiritual well-being that most markedly differentiates Christ's teaching from the ancient Jewish tradition. The ancient law condemned the libertine and murderer to death; Christ condemned the libidinous and the angry thought. The early Jews worshiped the God of battles with bloody sacrifice and complicated temple ritual; Christ revealed a God of love and peace to be worshiped exclusively neither in the temple at Jerusalem nor in the holy mountain in Samaria, neither with sacrifice of burnt offering, but in spirit and in truth, with humility and a pure heart. At no time, however, is the physical ignored. The service of the temple he would purify and spiritualize, not abolish. The subordination of the physical to the spiritual does not degrade it, but puts it in a new light of perpetual transfiguration. Not in precept alone, but also in his life is the spiritual supremacy evident. Christ chose deliberately to be king, not of material empire, but of the hearts of men. He suffered physically even unto death for that spiritual supremacy which, doubtless, could never have been otherwise realized. If Christ's mission really was to fulfill the law and spiritualize it, we should naturally expect to find in his teaching some spiritual analogues of the hygienic precepts in the older revelation. Our contention here is that this expectation is justified by the facts.

It would be amply worth our time to point out what I may call the lesser hygienic principles of Christ's teaching. Take, for example, the lesson of the lilies, with its principle of implicit trust and freedom from worry both physical and spiritual. True, it is not altogether new. There are similar precepts in the Psalms and prophets. There are similar precepts in pagan literature. But what we now seek to impress is the essential fact that it is altogether wholesome. The psychiatrist doesn't ordinarily fear the strain of honest work. It is good for one. And nature may usually be depended upon to make her demands for rest and relaxation in no uncertain voice. That part of our duties which rightfully belongs to any given moment is never oppressive. It is the emotional disturbances of the accumulated duties of the next week or month heaped together into one overwhelming present that is unbearable. It is congested worry that chokes and kills. But the lesson of the lilies is not limited to the worry of toiling and spinning. It is the principle of universal peace. This is not to be confounded with Stoic indifference. Notwithstanding the misconceptions of the early Church, Christianity has little in common with the philosophy of repressed emotions and shirked social responsibilities. The Christ was thoroughly alive to every duty from his childhood. He rejoiced and wept. He pitied and he loved. His emotional life was rich and full. Only the unwholesome was banished. He never hated, he never worried; no, not when he journeyed toward Jerusalem for the last time or supped with his disciples in the upper chamber under the shadow of a disciple's faithlessness and of a bitter death.

Even more important to our thesis is the Christian antagonism to selfishness. The ego-centric consciousness is always conspicuously unwholesome. It is typical of almost every form of insanity from the megalomania of dementia to the contracted consciousness of the degenerate. Egotism is not only typical of developed mental diseases, it is also characteristic of their early stages. It is the constant and often absurd reference of casual occurrences to the self that marks the beginning of the manias of persecution, as well as the insanities of degeneracy. Christ's emphasis on humility and a life of service to others is not an arbitrary barrier to his kingdom. It lies in the very nature of things that selfishness and egotism are always morbid and unwholesome.

Page 3:

Both of these and, I believe, all the other lesser hygienic principles are special phases of one central principle of wholesome life, which seems to me to be coincident with the most characteristic and fundamental part of the Christian revelation. It is not our purpose here to discuss the question of origins. Whether the principle is intrinsically religious and consequently hygienic, or vice versa; whether, in any adequate conception of the world, the religious and the wholesome are identical, is for the present a secondary problem. Our object is to show that from whichever standpoint we view the matter, Christianity in its essence as attitude and activity is not only wholesome, but the only absolutely wholesome attitude and activity. It is a truism that healthy organic life depends on the complete organization of all parts of the individual into one whole. Foreign matter must either be absorbed or expelled or it menaces the total welfare of the individual. Independent growths within the organism are always pathological. It is equally true that the organization of thought and activity is a condition of wholesome mental life. The most universal manifestation of deteriorated mind is what the pathologist calls its disorganization. A lack of unity through memory results in a "change of personality," or in dementia. A lack of unifying interest and the control of active attention results in a weak and vacillating existence, the prey of momentary temptations, the slave of every chance impulse. Morphine, alcohol, and other nerve poisons work the fearful havoc by which we know them, not merely through the short periods of lost self-control and irresponsibility directly following their use, but through the permanent weakening of mental organization, and inhibitory systems which condition the delicate restraints and balance of normal life. It is not the mere habit of taking opium or alcohol that enslaves men and makes brutes of them, it is the disorganization of mental life they produce, which gradually weakens every controlling motive, and leaves the victim no longer an individual, but an incoherent mass of conflicting tendencies, swayed by the first impulsive idea; no longer a personality, but a mob in which every consciousness of duty and justice is stampeded by the first blind passion. A similar phenomenon is presented by the disorganization of judgment. Whenever the criteria of truth and falsehood are consciously or unconsciously ignored, the first forceful idea presented by an imposing personality or reiterated with sufficient frequency assumes all the prerogatives of truth. Typical forms of such disorganization occur in the unsystematized paranoia of dementia precox and in our dreams. When the disorganization of action and thought becomes so complete as to endanger the individual's physical existence or society he is universally accounted insane; but I insist that insanity consists not in any special degree of disorganization but in the disorganization itself. Only the completely organized life is thoroughly healthy.

Primitive mental organization we call foresight. The laws of physical well-being force us to forego many an indulgence to escape future pain. Indeed we often accept a present pain to avoid a greater. We submit to the merciful discomfort of the dentist's chair, to the washing of a wound, to the setting of a broken limb, not because of any intrinsic satisfaction in the operation, but because it belongs to a more or less far-reaching plan. He who allows each momentary impulse unbridled force is not only weak and unstable, his activity is ultimately self-destructive and suicidal. The plan according to which the various impulses of our lives are controlled and selected never remains for the fully developed human being at the level of the primitive mental organization. Man is a social being, and we sacrifice the present for the future, not merely with reference to self, but also with reference to others. The welfare of the family, the social system, or the state becomes part of our plan of life. This sacrifice readies its extreme limit when the individual voluntarily abrogates his right to live for the sake of the welfare of others.

The first type of organization is the type of material organic adaptation to the totality of the physical environment. The second is social and ethical. It presupposes a larger unit of existence than the first, and in it the individual becomes an organic part of a greater whole. It is interesting to note how large a part these two stages of organization played in the religious life of the ancient Jews. The prayer, "O Lord. avenge me of mine adversary," grows out of a religious activity which seeks in God a powerful ally for the accomplishment of selfish ends. It is a little more than an extended primitive organization of the ego-centric type. The hope for the coming of the kingdom of the Messiah with its personal sacrifices ever looking toward Jerusalem in its prayers is typical of the second form. The individual forgets himself for social ends. It must be evident that there is a still higher type of organization corresponding not to the temporal and spatial, nor yet to the family and social environment. It is none other than that absolute organization which is conditioned by the attempt to effect a correspondence with the Infinite and the Eternal. This highest type of organization is preeminently the religious. It is the very essence of religion, I am convinced, to recognize a supersensuous reality and to attempt to effect correspondence with it. The standpoint may be ego-centric as in fetichism when the worshiper prays, "My will be done." It may be socio-centric. Or, finally, it may be absolute, when the true worshiper prays, "Thy will, O infinite and eternal God, be done!" This absolute organization, I insist, it is the unique service of Christ to have made tangible and real for us, partly by his discourse, most fully in his life.

Page 4:

The primary question with relation to the Christian religion which is before us as individuals for consideration, is not how much of this or that sectarian creed we can subscribe to, but solely and alone whether we shall follow that one life which lived not for self but for all men, not merely for his own time but for all time, whether we shall attempt to coordinate our activities under some eternal principle, whether we shall seek to make our life count for an onward step in the great world processes, or whether, on the other hand, we shall allow life to flicker away in self-contradictory activities, possibly storing up evil that our successors must painfully counteract. Whatever else conversion may mean to us it must ever mean preeminently a "new birth" into the civitas Dei, into the world, not of the now and the here, but of the Eternal and the Absolute. When the highest aspiration of our souls may find expression in the prayer, "Thy will, O Lord, be done by me! if so be that my life may count in the fulfillment of thine eternal purposes;" only then, I insist, can our life, taking its place in the life eternal, be thoroughly organized or thoroughly wholesome.

Raymond Dodge