Don’t Look Now But

We are now on Version 2.0 of JanetWatch! She has managed to tee off the Canadians!

It is time to start up the betting pools on how long she will last at her current job. I wonder, what were her qualifications for this job? I seem to have forgotten.

Freud used the term “<em>illusion</em>” in the title of one of his books on religion: <strong>The Future Of An Illusion</strong>. A contemporary writer used the term “<em>delusion</em>” in the title of his book on the same topic. Both these terms have common, and technical psychiatric, definitions. Let’s take the more straightforward of the two, “illusion,” first, and cite two examples of its technical definition.<br />
<br />
From a more or less modern (1980) glossary from the American Psychiatric Association.<br />
<br />
<blockquote><em>illusion</em> A misperception of a real external stimulus. Example: the rustling of leaves is heard as the sound of voices. See also hallucination.</blockquote><br />
<br />
From the somewhat dated (1968) <u>Psychiatric Dictionary</u>.<br />
<br />
<blockquote><em>illusion</em> (i-lu’zhun) An erroneous perception, a false response to a<br />
sense-stimulation; but in a normal person this false belief usually<br />
brings the desire to check or verify its correctness, and often<br />
another sense or other senses may come to the rescue and satisfy him<br />
that it is merely an illusion.<br />
<br />
When a small ball or bead is rolled on the table between the tips of<br />
the crossed middle finger and index finger, one has the tactical<br />
illusion of rolling two balls instead of one. But our own eyes<br />
convince us that our tactile sensations are misleading, that two<br />
balls are but an illusion. If a straight glass tube is lowered into<br />
a tumbler of water, we have the visual illusion that the submerged<br />
portion of the tube has bent and forms an angle with its free upper<br />
part. This unexpected sight impels us to pull the tube out and<br />
convince ourselves that there is nothing the matter with the tube,<br />
merely our eyes have misinterpreted the situation into an illusion:<br />
it merely looks, but actually is not bent.<br />
<br />
Similarly a line-segment with > < at its ends (>—-<) appears to us<br />
definitely longer than an equal segment with < > at its ends<br />
(<—->). But the simple application of a ruler dispels this visual<br />
illusion.<br />
<br />
But the fact that in all these illusions the stimulus and the<br />
illusion (i.e. the reaction) involve the identical sense and can be<br />
disproven, makes it so much harder to realize that it is not an<br />
illusion when, sitting alone in a room, we suddenly start because we<br />
have ‘heard’ somebody else in the room, only to convince ourselves<br />
that we are still alone in the room and that no sound had actually<br />
been heard. This absence of a sense-stimulus places the reaction in<br />
a different class from those cited above — it is a hallucination<br />
(q.v.). Obs. Fallacia.</blockquote><br />
<br />
Here are corresponding definitions, from the same sources, of “<em>delusion</em>.”<br />
<br />
From the more modern glossary.<br />
<br />
<blockquote><em>delusion</em> A false belief firmly held despite incontrovertible and obvious<br />
proof or evidence to the contrary. Further, the belief is not one ordinarily<br />
accepted by other members of the person’s culture or subculture.<br />
<br />
Some examples are:<br />
<br />
delusion of being controlled - Experience of feelings, impulses,<br />
thoughts, or actions as being imposed by some external source.<br />
<br />
delusions of grandeur - Exaggerated ideas of one’s importance or<br />
identity.<br />
<br />
delusions of persecution - Ideas that one has been singled out for<br />
harassment; see also paranoia.<br />
<br />
somatic delusion - Pertains to body image or body function.<br />
</blockquote><br />
<br />
From the older dictionary.<br />
<br />
<blockquote><em>delusion</em> A false belief, born of morbidity. A belief engendered<br />
without appropriate external stimulation and maintained by one in<br />
spite of what to normal beings constitutes incontrovertible and<br />
‘plain-as-day’ proof or evidence to the contrary. Further, the belief<br />
held is not one which is ordinarily accepted by other members of the<br />
patient’s culture or subculture (i.e. it is not a commonly believed<br />
superstition). <br />
<br />
Like hallucinations, delusions are condensations of perceptions,<br />
thoughts, and memories and can be interpreted much the same as<br />
hallucinations and dreams. Delusions are misjudgments of reality<br />
based on projection. The sequence of events in the formation of<br />
delusions is often seen to be as follows: the patient’s relationship<br />
to objects is an archaic, ambivalent one; he attempts to incorporate<br />
the object, which then becomes a part of his own ego; the object is<br />
then reprojected into the external world and becomes the persecutor.<br />
Persecutory delusions thus represent projections of the patient’s<br />
bad conscience; since the superego (conscience) is usually an<br />
introjected object of the same sex, the struggle against the<br />
superego represents also a struggle against the patient’s<br />
homosexuality. The imagined persecutors, however, not only threaten<br />
and punish the patient; often also they are perceived as tempters<br />
who lead the patient into sin or weaken his potency. “This can be<br />
explained by the fact that…the hallucinations and delusions of<br />
reference represent not only the superego but also, at the same<br />
time, the (ambivalent) loved object; the sexual wish for this object<br />
is perceived as a destructive sexual influence that emanates from<br />
him.’ (Fenichel, O. <u>The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis</u>, Norton,<br />
New York, 1945). See <em>paranoia</em>.<br />
</blockquote><br />
<br />
<br />
<h4>References</h4><br />
<br />
American Psychiatric Association, <u>A Psychiatric Glossary</u> 5th ed., Washington D.C.: American Psychiatric Association, 1980.<br />
<br />
Hinsie, L.E., Campbell, R.J., <u>Psychiatric Dictionary</u> 4th ed., New York: Oxford U.P., 1970.<br />
<br />
<hr width=”60%”/><br />
<br />
<h4>Discussion</h4><br />
<br />
The distinction brought to light in all these definitions is or ought to be second nature to anyone working in or around psychopathology, and it is simple enough boiled down to its essence, which consists in two discernments:<br />
<ol><br />
<li>Illusions have a source in the real world, i.e. the objective world of physics, the material plane as it is sometimes termed by our more etherically minded souls. Delusions do not arise from or correspond to any event or feature of that objective world. Thus there is a “public” component to illusions, whereas delusions are completely “private” in their being.<br />
<li>Illusions are primarily phenomena of the sensorium, and thus are not principally ideational, although a “thought content” may accompany them. Illusions are disordered perceptions. Delusions are disordered thoughts. It ought to be noted that strictly speaking illusions and delusions are not counterparts, or “opposites.” The opposite of a delusion is a belief firmly grounded in everyday “public” objective reality: a claim commonly accepted in the culture at large. One might say that hallucinations are the perceptual parallels to delusions.<br />
</ol><br />
<br />
<br />
These are very old distinctions in psychiatry. It is certain that Freud wrote <strong>The Future of an Illusion</strong> with this terminology in mind. What is less clear is whether he stuck to it consistently throughout the book. I think not.<br />
<br />
How does Freud mull over the distinctions? When he calls religion the outcome of a wish, and therefore an illusion, he stays with the main thrust of the old technical definitions in that he anchors religion in something “outside” of itself, just as illusions properly speaking always have a starting point in the real, objective world of sense perceptions. This is so even notwithstanding that the “anchor” in question is the believer’s neurotic wishes toward his or her father. Illusions, unlike delusions, are not fabricated entirely out of whole cloth. So, although Freud does not use the term illusion in its exact technical meaning, he is leaning on its most salient feature.<br />
<br />
What is at stake of course is the status of religious belief: is belief in God an illusion or a delusion? Is God anchored in reality, or in the feverish imaginings of my childhood neuroses? In <strong>TFOAI</strong> Freud at first seems to insist on a rigorous adherence to the agnostic refusal to adjudge belief delusional. His discussion of the question evidences his awareness that without <u>knowledge</u> of God’s <u>non</u>-existence the application of the term “delusion” is not justified. The sense, retained in both definitions of delusion above, that commonly accepted beliefs or “superstitions” are not to be classed as delusions comes into play here. Like any good clinician, aware of the diagnostic gravity of a finding of delusion, Freud urges prudence in the application of the term to religious belief throughout <em>most</em> of the discussion of <strong>TFOAI</strong>.<br />
<br />
But I believe his deep dislike and distrust of religion gets the better of him at the end of <strong>TFOAI</strong>. There, he answers one of his imagined critics, who has taken Freud to task for the hope he expresses that someday the progressive rise of civilization will so strengthen man’s intellect that he can accept the renunciation of instincts required by society without producing in turn universal neurosis (our present condition, according to Freud) <u>and</u> without need of religion .<br />
<br />
<blockquote>I know how difficult it is to avoid illusions; perhaps the hopes I have confessed to are of an illusory nature, too. But I hold fast to one distinction. Apart from the fact that no penalty is imposed for not sharing them, my illusions are not, like religious ones, incapable of correction. They have not the character of a delusion.</blockquote><br />
<br />
So religious belief is for Freud, after all, delusional. The older definition of illusion above notes that commonly, along with an illusion, a desire to correct it arises, and also that it is, also commonly, relatively easy to do so. In a sense, we usually have clues that tell us our illusion is in fact <em>an illusion</em>: <br />
<br />
<blockquote>…in a normal person this false belief usually brings the desire to check or verify its correctness, and often another sense or other senses may come to the rescue and satisfy him that it is merely an illusion.<br />
</blockquote><br />
Freud leverages this sense of “illusion” into his statement above, where he terms religious illusions “incapable of correction;” this gives them even more the character of delusions per se. <em>Doubt</em> plays an important role in religious belief, but not in the same way it plays a role in our debunking ourselves of the occasional perceptual illusion. It has been pointed out that no religious believer believes in something he or she knows to be false. Belief may beshaky at times, uncertain, prone to doubt, but no one cleaves to belief in a known falsehood. Illusions seem to bear almost within them doubt as to their veracity, whereas religious belief, usually termed “faith,” bears within itself a sense of its truthfulness. Others have put it much better than I. Bear with this longish excertp from a discussion in dialogue form of Hegel’s magnum opus <u>The Phenomenology of Spirit</u>:<br />
<br />
<blockquote><br />
The Distortive Effect of Clarification<br />
<br />
Hardith: The new phase of the dialectic seems to hinge on two distinct ways of approach to belief. May I speak of them as centrifugal and centripetal? The first represents action at a distance, so to speak, since it is not belief which is the proper object of concern but rather its remote and external manifestations. The other has to do with the inward state of belief itself, its peculiar quality and intimate relation to the individual aware of entertaining and cherishing the belief. The distinction between knowledge by description and knowledge by acquaintance is here singularly apposite. Enlightenment, which is by hypothesis purged of belief, can only view it from without. Intent upon explaining it in terms of origin and influence, it affixes to belief pejorative epithets and traces it to the combined chicanery of state and church. But the center of belief lies in the will instigating it, and none can actually know belief from within save those personally familiar with its impelling force. And it is generally conceded that having a belief and believing it true go inseparably together. What a gulf divides the outer view of belief from the inner! Those convinced of the truth of their faith must needs feel appalled at the denigration of it by the enlightened critics. Not by malicious caricatures can a faith be shaken held by its adherents to be invincible. Does not the conflict thus epitomized inhere in the inevitable contrast between experience uniquely enjoyed and its conceptual translations?<br />
<br />
Meredy: The contrast you note reappears in different forms throughout the Phenomenology. The development of the dialectic is partly determined by the recurrent tension between what seems intrinsic and what extrinsic to the types of experience examined, seems because the two crucial terms vary in import from context to context and their relations shift continually in the course of the analysis. Belief, too, exemplifies the tension between what it is intrinsically felt to be and what it is extrinsically described as being. The requisite vocabulary, though flexible, Hegel adapts to the peculiar nature of religious belief at war with its rationalistic detractors. The gravamen of the charge against enlightenment is simply this, that its conceptions of belief are not only extraneous but essentially distortive, striking the confirmed believer as being wanton misconceptions. What, for example, could be more preposterous than inclusive condemnation of belief as superstitious because, forsooth, it does not accord with a standard of credibility germane to abstract logic or exact science? If credible is whatever mind can see itself in, to emulate Hegel in playing upon the word insight, the issue boils down to this: is the notion of mind posited by enlightenment necessary as well as sufficient for the double task devolving upon it? One task, the negative, consists in discrediting belief because rational thought fails to recognize itself in it; the positive task involves the defense of credibility as an attribute belonging solely to everything that proves pervious to the light of reason. But does not the believer likewise find himself in what he believes? He contends that his mind is broader than the rationalistic. Imbued with trust and certitude, his mind is inspired by reasons of which reason is ignorant. The heart has reasons which the ‘enlightened’ are too purblind to see.<br />
<br />
Hardith: You have clarified admirably some difficult passages of the text. Are you sure the clarification involves no distortion? You may, for all I know, have done to Hegel what enlightenment is here accused of doing to belief. Seriously, clarification not seldom turns out to be misrepresentation when what is being clarified relates to the reflective processes of another’s mind. The rationalistic explanation of belief as having been fostered by a corrupt and deceiving priesthood the believer must reject as scandalous. How can deception enter a mind whose belief is vouched for by intuitive certainty? No consciousness, unless it be open to outer inspection, may be said to suffer from delusions; accordingly, a believer, deeply convinced of the truth of his belief, would unhesitatingly repulse a charge so outrageous, retorting that the maker of the charge must himself be deluded. With matters affecting a man’s inner life no outsider can have direct acquaintance. But belief usually finds expression in denotable and inspectable objects, such as documents, emblems, ceremonials. Here enlightenment seems to be on firmer ground; belief though not directly subject to rationalistic animadversion, may be approached as it appears in forms externally observable.<br />
<br />
Meredy: Although the manifestations of belief do come within the compass of external observation, they defy explanation by reason as much as belief itself. Without vicarious participation in their symbolic aura, they are apt to be reduced to mere objects of perceptual experience. And to such, enlightenment does indeed reduce them, thereby missing altogether the spiritual significance they have for the believing consciousness.<br />
<br />
The worship of things made with hands—for example, statues and pictures—thus come to be confused with what they symbolize and are easily derided as if the worshiper actually believed works of human contrivance to possess divine attributes. How unjust is the equation of all image-worship with barbaric idolatry! Rationalistic criticism directed at the believer’s attitude to the visible objects of his worship sheds more light on the limitation of enlightenment than on the consciousness of belief.<br />
<br />
The same may be said as regards rationalistic treatment of the sacred events narrated in sacred books. In vain does the enlightened student look for clear evidence of their alleged historicity. The higher criticism may of course subject them to scrupulous examination, and enlightenment, going further, can point with malicious glee to this or that supposed event as inherently incredible and scientifically discreditable. All this, however, must appear to the convinced believer as sheer impertinence. Sacred books, he might aver, can furnish no support of religious belief such as would commend itself to the scientific historian, insisting that his belief’s truth does not depend on the antecedent authenticity of certain documents but rather that certain documents derive their authenticity from the prior truth of belief. What believer worth his salt would suffer a jejune rationalism to usurp ultimate jurisdiction over questions of faith? And whenever a believer does appeal to historical evidence for confirmation of his religious persuasion he simply evinces the corruptive influence of enlightenment and fights a losing battle with weapons borrowed from the enemy’s arsenal.<br />
<br />
Rituals, too, and sundry practices which belief prescribes, must strike the rationalistic outsider as acts without rhyme or reason, incapable as he is of perceiving the harmony within the devout consciousness between religious faith and religious observance. Judged by the standard of utility, how purposeless, not to say foolish, seems the believer’s assiduous concern with matters of so little consequence? Why, for instance, renounce the pleasure of indulging in certain food on certain days? But what the enlightenment may find trivial or meaningless forms part and parcel of the secret of belief; when practised, belief entails sundry postures and exercises the inwardness of which must needs remain a sealed book to the uninitiated.<br />
<br />
Such then is the threefold attack on belief’s observable expressions: religious worship is but idolatry; religious evidence has no rational basis; religious observance lacks practical usefulness. To such attack the genuine believer remains immune as long as he refuses to submit his faith to any external standard of description and explanation.<br />
</blockquote><br />
<br />
Source: Jacob Loewenberg, <u>Hegel’s <em>Phenomenology</em>: Dialogues On The Life Of The Mind</u>, LaSalle: Open Court, 1965. pp. 235-238.<br />
<br />
<em>To be continued…</em>

I’ve set myself a goal: to deflate the claim, now current with the crunchy granola, pigtail and leather hat wearing crowd, that all monotheisms are inherently intolerant. This position — and it’s not sufficiently well thought-out to merit that label — comes with a corollary, i.e. that all monotheisms are equally culpable for the evil now rampant in the world. For those who hold to its truth, the corollary alleviates the need to examine the major monotheisms with regard to their significant differences. <br />
<br />
Some among us have difficulty noticing things such as the complete absence of Jewish or Christian terrorist organizations. If you succeed in compelling such a one to admit that Islam has “issues” concerning spreading the faith via violence, and with granting rights to followers of other religions, the usual retort is that the United States is a Christian terrorist organization, and Israel, a Jewish one. No monotheism is any better than any other monotheism. If one is innately violent and intolerant, then all of ‘em must be that too.<br />
<br />
Freud devoted roughly the last decade of his life to writing about religion, and, specifically, monotheism. I have turned to these texts after reading and mulling over the exchange he had in 1932 with Einstein on the question, <strong>”Why War?.”</strong> One could not imagine two topics more appropriate for the early twenty-first century, and here they were being discussed by two of the most brilliant minds of the early twentieth century (and without much success either, I might add). In going through his <strong>The Future of an Illusion</strong>, which, along with <strong>Civilization and Its Discontents</strong>, and <strong>Moses and Monotheism</strong>, comprise his late work on religion, I came across a reference to a now-forgotten German philosopher, Hans Vaihinger. Vaihinger made popular around the turn of the last century his version of “as-if” philosophy, in which he detailed how most humans are content, and really served quite well in practical terms, with the adoption of many points of view and claims about the world and themselves <em>as-if</em> they were true, without peering too deeply, or at all, into whether or not there were any objective grounds for thinking them true. Vaihinger thus drew attention to our capacity to erect more or less personal fictions to serve us in our navigation of life and the world.<br />
<br />
I wanted to know about him, so I went to Google, which brought me of course to Widipedia. At the very end of its article on Vaihinger came <a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Vaihinger” title=”vaihinger”>this fascinating connection</a> to the work of James Hillman, a Jungian psychoanalyst with whom I have been quite familiar over the years:<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<blockquote>…James Hillman developed both Vaihinger and Adler’s work with psychological fictions into a core theme of his work <strong>Healing Fiction</strong> in which he makes one of his more accesible cases for identifying the tendency to literalize, rather than “see through our meanings,” (<strong>HF</strong> 110) with neurosis and madness.<br />
</blockquote><br />
<br />
<br />
Is Hillman right here, and if not is his error a consequence of Vaihinger’s mistaken reliance on Kant? Are two categories, literal and metaphorical, sufficient to flesh out the full field of our relationships to the world? I would submit they are not, and that at the far “literal” end of the spectrum we need to consider that a third kind of relationship emerges, that of “concrete” connections of our representations to the world. The continuum is: concrete, literal, metaphorical. The worst psychopathology emerges out of concrete, not literal, connectedness to reality. <br />
<br />
Consider that <em>implied</em> in the notion of a “literal” connection is the existence of an intermediary (so to speak) sign, or symbol, or metaphor — in short, “meanings.” In the very use of the term “literal,” there is present the suggestion, the possibility, that one can use the semantic term in question –what I am calling a “meaning” — either “literally,” <em>or some other way</em>, i.e “metaphorically.” The notion of a “concrete” reference to the world holds no such subtlety within itself. Actually, in the concrete experience of the world, the sign or meaning itself <em>disappears</em>; there in NO intermediary entity, just me, and a world fraught with my projections. Hence the florid psychosis that grows out of concreteness.<br />
<br />
Snakehandlers interpret the Word of God “literally,” but <strong>they are interpreting a text</strong>. The presence of that text means they are not connecting to reality in what I am suggesting ought to be called a “concrete” fashion. With regard to so-called “fundamentalism,” the issue from the beginning has always been framed in terms of “scriptural inerrancy,” not “literal interpretation.” Both Islam and the Church of Rome offically hold to scriptural inerrancy. And both do not leave the individual believer free to “interpret” as the mood strikes. Depending on the text in question, Rome will hold to a more or less metaphorical interpretation, but does so in the context of exegesis of inerrant scripture. Protestantism in some of its strains does not hold to scriptural inerrancy, and all its followers are free to interpret literally or metaphorically as the mood strikes them. The yardstick of “literal intrepretation” is too crude to use for assessing religious behaviour. Could it be that this yardstick is applied because assessments made using it will always, again, lump together certain religions in a way that obscures their important differences? Fundamentalist American Protestants will appear to be bedfellows of Islamic faithful.<br />
<br />
My hunch, which I would like to develop over time here, is that the attack on “fundamentalism” is actually an attack on revealed religion’s earnest, heart-felt devotional practices. Freud understood that all true religious practice was in fact “revealed religion,” driven by the faith of its followers.<br />
<br />
<em>To be continued…</em><br />
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