Chapter 23

The Perfect Psychiatrist at Work

Peter didn’t waste any time. As soon as we’d had our coffee he immediately began where we’d left off.

‘Now,’ he said, ‘in order to explain why a person needs purification in the Dark Night, St John of the Cross details the typical faults and failings of beginners in first fervor. The funny thing is that when a person is busy playing the part of a would-be saint, they are usually quite blind to what others around them can see quite clearly. Shakespeare said that all the world’s a stage and the men and women merely players, each playing their part. Nobody wants to see themselves as they really are, let alone have others see what they can’t face for themselves. So we pass through life as if on a stage, playing a chosen part and posturing to make ourselves acceptable to those who we feel wouldn’t otherwise accept us.

‘Nobody must be allowed to see what is below the surface, what is under the stage. The trapdoor to the grim and grimy underworld must be kept closed at all times. The truth of the matter is that despite all our play-acting, we are in fact determined by what we try at all times to keep locked away belowstage in our unconscious. Sometimes what’s called a “Freudian slip” takes place, when something is revealed that we have been trying to keep hidden away, not only from others but even from ourselves. Then the real cause of what has been dressed up as rational human behavior suddenly springs out from below-stage, from the unconscious, before we have time to put our foot on the trapdoor. In an instant we stand exposed for what we are, before the audience we were trying to impress the moment before.

‘It happened to me in a rather dramatic way some years ago. I received a letter from my brother Tony, who was then a missionary in South Africa, to say that he was not only leaving the Order but getting married. My parents received a similar letter, but no mention was made of his desire to get married. They were so upset that they decided to go and see him and they asked me to go with them. The family came together at a little place called Piet Retief in the Transvaal, where he was the parish priest. My brother didn’t beat about the bush. He told us immediately not only that he was going to leave the Order and the priesthood, but that he intended to get married in the near future.

‘Naturally my parents were shocked when he actually told them, but they were in no way prepared for what came next. He told them he was going to marry a black African, a Zulu, whom he had met at one of the mission stations. They were shattered and said so. You can imagine all that they said on the spur of the moment; the racism that they had no knowledge of came pouring out. The atmosphere in the room was electric. I sat there as the still and silent center amidst all the turmoil, and I said not a word. But I was horrified at what was happening within me. Everything that my parents were saying out loud I was saying to myself. Everything happened so quickly that I had no time to put my foot on the trapdoor. The racism that I had never dreamt was in me came up and flooded my mind. I managed to close it quickly before anything more could come out, and managed to close my mouth too, so that nobody would know that what was in my parents was also in me.

‘I didn’t sleep that night. I’d been shattered to the roots of my being – there’d been an evil spiritual cancer within me for years and I didn’t even know it. I’d been the president of the Anti-Apartheid League at college. I’d spoken out and written about the pernicious disease of racism. I’d demonstrated time and time again in Trafalgar Square in front of the South African Embassy, and all the time I’d been one of them myself. But that wasn’t all that kept me awake that night – it was the thought of all the other prejudices that were harbored deep down within me, determining for the worse the man I thought I’d known so well but who had suddenly become a stranger to me.

‘I knew then, and I knew for sure, that I had been prejudiced against black Africans. I knew it must have shown in the raucous way I’d demonstrated for them, and in the patronizing way I’d treated them. And yet I hadn’t seen it, I hadn’t even dreamt it could be possible, and I would have reacted violently to anyone who suggested otherwise. Just how many other prejudices lurked deep down within me – that was the question I asked myself as I tossed and turned my way through the night. How much of the behavior of the man I thought I knew was determined by another man, what St Paul called the “Old Man”, who had homed himself deep down within me? Then I thought of the enormous pride that had blinded me to the truth. I’d not only managed to deceive others; I’d deceived myself about the real quality of the man who had the audacity to think he was a “saint in the making” just because he had religious pretensions that were probably born of some pride or prejudice of which he had no knowledge.

‘That night was the moment of truth in my life. Now I could see as never before that the man who’d been playing the wouldbe saint on his own little stage to his chosen audience was a fraud, a fake, a phony. He was ruled from deep down within by the pride and prejudice of the “Old Man” – he was his creature, though he hadn’t known it. I think the worst realization of all was that even though I could see so clearly what I’d never been able to see before, there was nothing I could do about it.

‘I felt so helpless. I knew that I, the great moral crusader, was a racist and I could do nothing to change myself. I remember a therapist who used to lecture in psychology at teacher training college, explaining how, once the cause of irrational behavior had been discovered in the unconscious mind and shown to the sufferer in the conscious mind, they would be cured of their affliction. I thought he was wrong at the time. Now I know that he was wrong. I was a racist although I’d not known it, and the mere fact that I knew what I didn’t know before didn’t change me at all.

‘I remember wandering through the streets of Johannesburg, looking at black African women and trying to imagine my brother married to one of them. I simply couldn’t, nor could I do anything to free myself from the racism that had me in its power. How could I possibly be cured? It was only after they were married in England that I went to visit my brother and his wife at their home in Liverpool. I found the first visit terribly difficult and would have avoided it if I could. Subsequent visits became easier and easier, until from becoming a duty they became a pleasure. Gradually, as I got to know my sister-in-law, Protasia, I came to like her; then I came to love her and experienced her love for me. It was her love for me that effected the cure. It did for me what no earthly power could have done, but after all, love isn’t an earthly power.

‘To begin with, it was her love for my brother that uncovered the terrible racism that I had no idea was in me, but in the end it was that same love reaching out to me that cured it. Her love enabled me to see the terrible truth that I shrank from, and then it gave me the strength to rise above it. The strange thing is that when a loving relationship changes your attitude to one member of a group or tribe or race that you had been prejudiced against before, then your attitude changes to every member of that group. It doesn’t make you think they are all wonderful, but it does mean that you treat them according to their merit, not your prejudice.

‘Some years ago I had to go to Africa to give a series of talks to different groups of people in Uganda, Kenya and Cameroon. I felt completely at home. Many of them remarked on the ease with which I was able to mix with everyone without the slightest hint of the patronizing way I had treated black Africans before. I have my sister-in-law, Protasia, to thank for that. That’s what love can do. I don’t mean to suggest that her love changed me completely; it didn’t. I was still full of a hundred and one racial and other prejudices that I knew I would have to face up to one way or another, if I was going to be the sort of open, balanced and Christ-like person that I ought to be. But what I learnt from her was that love and love alone can change a blind and prejudiced bigot like me into the person I would like to be.

‘I realized that it’s not just love but the experience of being loved that frees a person from the prejudices that make so-called rational human beings behave irrationally towards one another. However, I could see that it was no good depending on chance encounters to purify me of the innumerable prejudices that I knew corrupted me from within. Only the Perfect Psychiatrist who was sent to the spiritually sick on the first Pentecost day could do that. Only he could show me the real truth about myself and give me the love that would empower me to rise above it.

‘When I realized this, I packed up teaching altogether and retired to the little island of Vatersay and later to Calvay in the Outer Hebrides, to find the place where I could radically open myself to the only One who could heal me from the inside. It was in that solitude that I had to undergo the baptism of fire in the Dark Night, where the Perfect Psychiatrist shows you the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. It was here that I had to see not just my prejudices, but also all the pride and the perverted love within me. I had to see the insufferable selfishness that had ruled my life so far, and which would continue to rule it if something, or rather if Someone, didn’t do something about it.

‘I saw quite clearly that although I’d been created in the image of the “New Man”, the “Old Man”, the egotist within me, had the power to destroy me if he were allowed to do it. His love was twisted, perverted. He loved everyone and everything, including God, for what he could get out of them. Even God-given impulses to give oneself in love to another, to have a home, to bring up one’s own children and order one’s life and family for the good of all, could be reduced to lust, greed and power-seeking. And then, if the egotist couldn’t get what he wanted, he’d be consumed with anger against those who stood in his way, and with envy and jealousy against anyone who had what he felt had been denied him. I saw all this and so much more as the Perfect Psychiatrist was working so that the “New Man” could reign where the “Old Man” had reigned before.’

‘I find what you’re saying is frightening,’ I said. ‘At least it frightens me. I think what you call a “Freudian slip” was really a gift of God and it’s led to more gifts, but I’m beginning to wonder if I want them. If all that you say is true – and I believe it is – it’s true for me, too. I’m as blind as you ever were, and as in need of the Perfect Psychiatrist as you were. But tell me, how does he show you the truth? Does he speak to you or show you visions or give you some sort of infused knowledge in prayer?’

‘No! He doesn’t do any of those things,’ said Peter. ‘He does only one thing. He just keeps on doing what he does all the time. He just keeps on loving. The purification begins to take place as you respond to his loving. To begin with, as you have found, it’s difficult to turn to him and open your heart to allow him in, because your heart’s pulled in so many directions by temptations and distractions. They are but a pale reflection of the powerful perverted desires and urges that have been shut away belowstage in the unconscious. Then as you persevere, putting all the distractions under the Cloud of Forgetfulness and doing all in your power to keep your heart’s attention on the Cloud of Unknowing and the One who is hidden behind it, a subtle change begins to take place. This subtle change is the first sign that the Perfect Psychiatrist is about to begin his work.

‘There are no dramatics to begin with; in fact you hardly feel anything. It’s just that you begin to notice over a period of time that, although you get nothing out of this strange new form of prayer without feelings, you are in some way impoverished without it. You get a subtle and hardly definable strength that you need to maintain some semblance of the Christian life to which you aspire. Then, when you least expect it, you begin to find yourself drawn into a sort of recollectedness that does not banish the distractions that disturbed you before but continues in spite of them. This experience comes and goes and is in no way dependent on your choosing. Then it can deepen and widen and become more and more absorbing. This is what St Teresa of Avila calls “Prayer of Recollection”, as I explained to you before. At times the experience becomes more and more intense, raising you up into ever-higher degrees of mystical awareness, into the Prayer of Quiet or even the Prayer of Full Union, when the absorption is so great that there are no longer any distractions or temptations at all.

‘Now, as you become more and more absorbed in the love of God whose Spirit envelops you, you are, as it were, lifted up out of yourself and off the stage where you so often performed in the past. Then, as you are no longer able to keep your feet firmly on the trapdoor that you have always kept closed, it opens to admit what you’ve never admitted before. Gradually, the unacceptable works and pomps of the unconscious work their way up and onto the stage. When the temporary absorption of your will is discontinued and it returns, as it were, to its senses, then those senses have to see what they were always able to avoid seeing in the past. You have to see something of the truth about yourself that you’d always tried to hide from before, as well as keeping it from others.

‘If you continue persevering in prayer, come what may, the subtle magnetic force of God’s love becomes stronger and stronger, and draws more and more of the moral muck and mire out of your unconscious mind as it draws your conscious mind towards itself. So great highs are followed by great lows; light is followed by darkness. The experience of God’s goodness is followed by the experience of one’s own badness. Now the “Old Man” is seen for what he is. He may well have been originally created in the image and likeness of the “New Man”, but he has become twisted and perverted by what has traditionally been called “original sin”, the sin of others that is handed on to one generation after another by nature and nurture. He is not only affected by the “sins of the fathers” through his genes, but by the sinfulness of his parents, brothers and sisters, friends and relatives, and others who project their sinfulness onto him by what they say and do, and so determine his growth for better or worse.

‘Then personal sin adds to the influences that are brought to bear on him by the sins of others. All these powerful influences combine to pervert the love that should be directed towards God and the neighbor in need, and turn it inwards instead, where it festers in self-love. The “Old Man”, the egotist, thrives on selflove; he wants the world to revolve around him; he wants to take what he wants when he wants it and is consumed with anger when he is thwarted. It is the works and pomps of this egotist that everybody tries to hide from others, as they try to hide them from themselves, by shutting them away deep down below-stage in the unconscious. Only the power of God’s love, the Holy Spirit, the Perfect Psychiatrist, who is both love and truth at one and the same time, can heal and make whole what cannot be healed without him.

‘It was once thought that a person could be healed from any abnormal human behavior that prevented growth merely by unearthing the cause of that behavior in the unconscious and presenting it to the conscious mind. This was the half-baked idea that my psychology lecturer had taught at college. The theory was that once the cause of their abnormal behavior was seen and understood, then it would automatically facilitate the necessary healing and return to psychological health. Unfortunately it is not true; it is just a modern psychiatric representation of the old Socratic fallacy that knowledge is enough. Knowledge is not enough; something further is required. It is not enough just to see the truth, to see what has been preventing human growth, but it is necessary to experience simultaneously the love that enables that growth to continue. It was some time before it was fully realized that the psychotherapist’s skill at unearthing the cause of abnormal behavior must be complemented by a loving-kindness and compassion that is the main factor in facilitating the healing of the patient. This is what I learnt for myself from the love I received from my sister-in-law, Protasia.

‘A good and successful psychiatrist will always be characterized by an ability to uncover the truth while simultaneously imparting a genuine, healing love. However, the Perfect Psychiatrist will be able to uncover the whole truth and impart the fullness of love that will free a person, not just from some psychiatric obstacles that prevent them becoming normal human beings, but from all obstacles, both psychiatric and spiritual, that prevent them from becoming perfect human beings.

‘This then is how the Perfect Psychiatrist operates in the Dark Night to bring the mystic through into the light, putting to death the “Old Man” so that he may be fitted into the “New Man”. It is indeed a mystic death that in some ways parallels physical death. I don’t know if you’ve ever read Elisabeth Kübler-Ross?’

‘No, I haven’t,’ I said.

‘She’s a doctor,’ explained Peter, ‘who has studied the various stages a person goes through in the dying process. I came across her by chance and was astounded by how closely these stages parallel the stages that a person has to go through in mystical death.’

‘What are they?’ I asked.

‘She mentions five,’ said Peter. ‘Firstly denial and then anger, followed by bargaining, which inevitably leads to depression and finally acceptance. At the beginning of their mystical death, a person whose experience of God seemed so vibrant and alive before can’t or doesn’t want to believe that they are on any sort of mystical journey, and will even try to convince their spiritual director that the diagnosis is wrong. But if they do nevertheless persevere and things get progressively worse, then they become angry and, like so many people who suffer from anger, they begin to cope with it by projecting it onto others with whom they live or work. They can become very bad-tempered and bitter. Then they can turn on God, the so-called God of love who’s got them into the mess in which they find themselves, who doesn’t seem to care a fig, doesn’t seem to be doing anything to get them out of it.

‘And so in dark moments they can curse and even blaspheme against God. Dr Kübler-Ross shows how in a physical death a person bargains with God for the reversal of their sickness, promising to live the good and decent lives that they didn’t live before, promising anything to the only One who seems capable of doing what medical science seems incapable of doing. This is the only stage that has no parallel in mystical dying, because in mystical dying a person can choose to run away at any time, run away from the prayer life that enables the Perfect Psychiatrist to continue the purification that causes such spiritual and psychological pain.

‘Depression sets in when anger seems to get them nowhere, and they have to face more and more the murk that is dragged up from the depths. It seems that they can do nothing about it, as they become ever more passive. When asked what he found most difficult in the spiritual journey, the Curé D’Ars said “Depression”. No sinner can become a saint without having to pass through depression – depression far deeper than most of us have to face, because few of us ever have to face up to our real selves.

Although the Holy Spirit does the main work, there is something that can be done to assist him. When we see the sinners that we are, the sins that we have committed and the guilt that we have suppressed being hauled out into full light of day, it’s time for confession. The Desert Fathers always taught that one should seek out a holy person to whom one should open one’s heart. Later it became more common to submit oneself to a priest in the Sacrament of Confession, to receive absolution and the psychological peace of mind that confession brings. However, it’s not only one’s sins that have to be seen and faced but the sins of others, too, that may have disfigured one physically or psychologically from childhood. It could be helpful to seek out a person with genuine psychological qualifications and expertise to help heal the scars from the past that can hinder one’s journey in the present. When the darkness of depression becomes prolonged and debilitating, it may be appropriate to approach a doctor. Modern anti-depressants can be of great help, not only to alleviate the worst psychological effects of depression but also to restock the neurotransmitters in the brain that are always depleted in depression. Depression has physical as well as psychological effects on the sufferer.’

Peter took out a handkerchief and mopped his brow. I turned the gas fire down. It was getting quite hot and oppressive in the room.

‘I’m sorry to sound like a prophet of doom,’ said Peter, ‘but I’m telling you the truth, not to put you off but to support you, by preparing you in advance for what will most certainly happen if you choose to continue on the journey. Now, although therapists, counselors, doctors and such can be a great help in this journey, it is of paramount importance to have a good spiritual director if at all possible. Their role will be to oversee everything; otherwise the essential spiritual nature of the journey through depression can be lost sight of in its darkest moments.

‘A person needs to be continually reminded of what is happening, because their faith in the love of God seems to evaporate at times. When a person no longer feels the love of God for prolonged periods of time they begin to say, “Where is God?”, and then “There is no God”, and if there is no God, there is no hope. And so the famous temptations come at last in the darkest moments – temptations against what are called the “theological virtues”, the very foundations of the spiritual life – temptations against faith, hope and charity.

‘If there is no love, there is no hope, and so when a person’s faith is put to the ultimate test they can even be tempted to take their lives, because what is the point of living without love? Remember, St Thérèse of Lisieux warned her sisters not to leave poisonous medicine by her bedside when she was in her darkest hour. It is at the midnight hour in this Dark Night that a person experiences a truth that they thought they had known before, but which they had only known intellectually. It is that the desire for God is God’s gift, and what he gives he can take back. Even though I said at the beginning that this desire for God is one of the first signs that a person is on the right path, even this is ultimately taken away for a time. So too are the theological virtues: faith, hope and love. They are God’s gifts. What he gives he can take away, or at least it seems he takes them away, so that a person gradually learns not to take for granted what they had taken for granted before.

‘Having said all this, I must say that great wisdom is learnt in the Dark Night, though it seems that nothing is learnt at all. There is much that is good as well as evil in the unconscious and this too is drawn out in the purification. Spiritual travelers rarely see it for themselves because they are all too conscious of the sinfulness that they have to come to terms with. But others see in them a wisdom that they cannot see, a wisdom that they have learnt in their dark mystical purification. Others seek them out for help and advice, which they give so accurately and with such compassion. All they can see, however, is their utter helplessness, their sinfulness and their weakness. For long periods of time it seems that they cannot pray at all. It seems that there is nothing spiritual in them. All they can do now is to wait patiently at the foot of the Cross. Although they do not realize it at the time, it is here that their prayer is about to reach its highest point this side of the Mystical Marriage.

‘If all they can manage to do at the darkest moments is to cry out “Help!”, then it’s a cry from the heart that reaches the heavens because it’s the most powerful prayer they have ever made. The author of The Cloud of Unknowing said that this prayer is like the cry of a drowning man. When a man rises for the third time from the water that threatens to drown him, he doesn’t waste a single breath on anything other than his deepest need and so he cries out “Help!” At that moment the drowning man is more totally one than ever before, body and soul, heart and mind, united in that single cry. The same is true of the mystic in their hour of greatest need, when they have waited and waited at the foot of the Cross, when they have learnt patience the hard way, when they have learnt true humility. Then, when they cry for help, they make the most powerful prayer that they have ever made.

‘This is the moment when their heartfelt cry enables them to be raised up from the foot of the Cross to be united with the Priestly Prayer of the One who hangs upon the Cross. They are now able to enter into the same Priestly Prayer that Christ made throughout his life as it reaches its most perfect expression at the end of his life. It was a prayer that was made in extremis when surrounded by terrible sufferings and awesome temptations. It was a prayer in which he totally committed himself to his Father with his whole heart and mind and being.

‘The mystic is finally fitted into the New Man at the moment when their priestly sacrifice is brought to its completion. Now they no longer even pray for help, as they pray not just in harmony with Christ but in total conformity with him, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” This is the prayer of complete acceptance, the final stage of mystical death.

‘Now, as they experience their own human weakness as never before, the mystic enters into the moment when Christ experienced his human weakness as never before. They enter into what the Greek Fathers called his kenosis, his self-emptying, so that they can be totally open in, with and through him to what they call the pleroma, the fullness of the Father’s life, the final and complete gift of the Holy Spirit that filled Jesus in his glorification on the Cross. At this moment all his tears were turned into joy, and his agony was turned into ecstasy. It is this gift which brought about the definitive theosis, the divinization, of Christ’s human being and human acting. It is this self-same gift that brings about the theosis, the divinization, the glorification of the mystic, so that he or she is transformed into the Risen Christ.

‘This final transformation is instantaneous. The moment the baptism of fire has been completed in the Dark Night, the very second sin has been forgiven and its roots have been destroyed at source, is the moment when the mystic can receive the gift of the Holy Spirit more fully than ever before. Then he or she can experience the peace that surpasses understanding as he or she is fitted fully into the “New Man” who rose from the tomb on the first Easter Day.’

Peter looked at his watch. ‘Dead on time,’ he said.

I looked at the clock on the mantelpiece. It was exactly one o’clock. Both of us stood up.

‘I hope you don’t mind,’ I said, ‘but I’m afraid I haven’t prepared anything to eat. I’m hopeless at cooking, so I was thinking of taking you out for a meal.’

‘That’s fine by me,’ said Peter. ‘I know the ideal place.’

On our way there, I asked Peter how things worked out after his brother Tony had married Protasia.

‘They worked out perfectly,’ he said. ‘Well, you could see for yourself. You met Protasia after the funeral, didn’t you, and the two boys?’

‘Yes, I did. They seemed to be a lovely family.’

‘Believe me, they are! And yet I was one of many who were against the marriage and so was my brother David. Tony is now a changed person thanks to Protasia’s love.’

We parked the car outside Ye Olde Cock Inn in old Didsbury village, where Peter had promised we could be sure of a good meal. He was right, and I needed it – it had been a long, hard morning, but I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.