Religion and Spirituality in Psychiatry

24 Joel James Shumanby “a trusted, authorized official… not unlike the‘fear not’ formula of Isaiah 43:1”:But now says the L ord,he who created you, O Jacob,he who formed you, O Israel:Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;I have called you by name, you aremine.(18)This suggests that the public, communal performanceof these texts was an important resourcethat sustained the community and its membership,not simply in extraordinary times, but alsoin the difficult conditions that characterize theebb and flow of everyday life. The psalmists andprophets seem to understand that, even at its mostpedestrian, life frequently presents us with tragiccircumstances that we cannot imagine resolved toour satisfaction, apart perhaps from the extraordinaryintervention of God, which in the shortterm, as the poet Michael Blumenthal says, is“oblique and obscure and not even assured.” (19)One might argue, of course, that it is the sense ofpenultimate pathos characteristic of the psalmists’and prophets’ worldview that is the problem,and that it is not necessary, much less healthy, toexperience the ebb and flow of everyday life asfundamentally tragic.(11) Yet in the view of thebiblical authors, this objection itself might be partof the problem. One prominent scholar of the OldTestament goes so far as to claim that one of theprimary purposes of the prophetic writings is tocall a people numbed by the comfortable socialand economic stability typical of life in a politicallypowerful state to move beyond their superficialcontentment and “engage their experienceof suffering to death.” The solution to the tragicand sometimes apparently absurd human conditionis not blissful sleepwalking, but a hopefulengagement with an emerging reign of peace andrighteousness secured by the love of God. Such anengagement can be sustained only by an imaginativecountercultural community devoted to themutual well-being of its entire membership.(20)But how is any of this threatened by the modernnotion of “mental” illness? There appears tobe a trajectory within modern psychiatry thatcalls into question the biblical embrace of pathos,and in particular the undeniably social characterof that embrace. On the one hand, this questioningtakes the form of identifying religious belief,and communal religious practice in particular, ascollective delusion; religious practice in this viewis, at best, a less-than-optimal means of copingwith the Sturm und Drang of life and, at worst,a dangerous avoidance of reality that needs to beunlearned by a rigorous course of therapy. (7) Amore contemporary and much more commonform of questioning, however, comes from therecent ascendancy of applied neuroscience andpsychopharmacology, which tends to reduce theexperience of mental illness to aberrations in theparticular brain chemistry of the individual. I donot wish to take issue with the efficacy of contemporarypsychopharmacology, which has provenitself, notwithstanding thoughtful social andphilosophical interlocution; rather, I wish to visitthe question of the theological significance of thisefficacy. (10, 11) What are the implications for biblicalfaith of psychoactive medications that can, ina remarkably short time, effect deep changes inmood, behavior, and even personality? (21) Whatdoes it mean to have a “soul” so profoundly susceptibleto chemical manipulation that personalityitself appears to be transformed, quite apartfrom a change in circumstance or the mutual helpand support of a faithful community?Inarguably, neuroscience and the diagnosticand therapeutic interventions it has spawnedchallenge much conventional thinking about thesoul. Some neuroscientists have gone so far as toclaim that, since what was once identified as “soul”can now be accounted for largely in terms of brainchemistry, the very notion of “soul” is no longertenable and should be regarded as one moredecrepit member in the crumbling edifice of anoutdated biblical worldview.(22) As it turns out,however, neuroscience and psychopharmacologyare much more serious threats to the legacy of Platoand Descartes than to Judaism or Christianity.Descartes, who is sometimes called the “fatherof modern philosophy” because of his emphasison the human subject as the ultimate arbiter