The Dragon of Grandiosity (Part 2)

Continuing on from yesterday's post, unregulated grandiosity is a disaster relationally. The real person you are relating to will intrude into your grandiosity. They might not worship you, or then again might not want you to be their slave, and our grandiosity won't like that at all. However, the best location to deal with grandiosity is to relate to others, so that where we can find healing for our grandiosity is exactly that place where we can be undone by it. There is nowhere else to go to be healed other than relating to real people (and a real God, but more on that later).

No one is ever fully healed of grandiosity. It must be confronted and worked with, intelligently. Relating to real people is essential, as are two other techniques. We need to keep in contact with our real humanity, which includes particularly what the Christian tradition calls our sin. We are not the centre of the universe. The other tool is prayer. Prayer enables us to direct our own spiritual energies, and those we receive from others, onto the one who is able to carry it, namely God. These two techniques of connection with our sin and prayer are important especially for those leadership professions where people transfer their individual grandiosity onto the leader. For example, teachers, priests, politicians,and counsellors are all susceptible to this transferred grandiosity, and it can be disastrous. Look how much ego there is in politics, secular or ecclesiastical, for example. It also goes part of the way to explain the moral failure in these professions. When a priest, politician or counsellor has an extra-marital affair, Moore is suggesting that it is, at least partly, an attempt to ameliorate excessive grandiosity by human failure. (There's a better way to do it, of course.)

Facing the Dragon is an important book, and while the Jungian language can get a bit too much at times, it is worth it for the deep insights into being human.

Some quotes:

When we consciously face our hidden superiority complex, our preening sense of entitlement, enlightenment, and self-righteousness, then we can escape our delusional claim to be helpless victims and our anxieties mysteriously begin to diminish. (p. 207)

Spiritually speaking, you don't ask, "Am I a sinner?" You ask, "How am I a sinner?" So psychologically speaking, you shouldn't ask, "Am I carrying any narcissistic pathology?" You should ask, "Where is my narcissistic pathology? How am I acting it out? Where is my continuing residual unconscious, unregulated grandiosity possessing me and destroying my relationships?" (p. 147)

I love to teach comparative psychotherapy , because all therapies are trying to help you do that same type of thing, to be more realistic, to be less totalistic in your claims, to do less exaggerating, to do fewer behaviors based on some sense of entitlement or special exemptions, and help the individual to face limitations. All therapies tend to address these issues in some form or another. (p. 144)

Sometimes people think if they just prayed enough, or went to enough masses, then their grandiosity would stop being seductive. Or if they became a cardinal, or a bishop, or a mother superior, it would not be seductive anymore. The truth, or course, is just the opposite, because the more successful you get, the more seductive grandiosity gets. The more traumas and tragedies you have in your life, the more grandiosity will attack you. It can tell you how impressive it is that you are still alive, or it can chide you into depression by suggesting you might as well go ahead and commit suicide. Many suicidal thoughts come from a grandiose perfectionism. (p. 136)

(On the need to pray if you are in a profession of archetypal transference of grandiosity from others onto you, e.g. priest, politician, teacher)
If you are in one of those helping professions where you get a lot of archetypal transferences, you do not pray because it is pious or sweet or nice ... You pray to stay alive, to get help in dealing with your grandiosity... You can take that energy that is coming toward you and, through your prayer, pass it on. "Here," you say, "this is really yours, Lord. Take it. It belongs to you." (p. 95. See also p. 93.)

The Dragon of Grandiosity (Part 1)

I have just read an excellent book by Robert Moore entitled Facing the Dragon. Confronting Personal and Spiritual Grandiosity. He comes out of a Jungian tradition so you have to be able to work with the archetype theory of the Jungians. I have to admit being a little sceptical about it, although given the utility of the archetypes in a book like this, I could be persuaded to give it a great deal more respect. Made in the image of God we have such energy for life, but universally, it is distorted into grandiosity, thinking we are the centre of everything and the universe needs to bow down to us. This grandiosity shows itself in pride, but it can also show itself in all sorts of ways, including vanity, jealousy, lack of self-esteem and depression. These last two are interesting because we would associate them with the opposite of grandiosity. But Moore says that behind every disintegration of a sense of self is a prior extolling of the self. It's just that some recognise they can't live up to the grandiosity, so end up hating themselves or depressed at their failure. I approach this kind of claim with caution given that the 'presenting problem' is a deflation of self, and the feminist critique of universalising male sin onto women as well. However, it does make a good deal of sense. another example he gives is our dislike of criticism. Most might see this a a lack of self, producing a fragility that is easily shattered. Possibly, but it might also indicate that we don't like people who won't worship us. (archetypally we want people to worship our little king or queen within us. Sounds corny, but there is something in the idea. See p. 146) The tradition is quite strong on this too, and although the feminist critique would say that the tradition is strong on pride because it is a male sin, it can't be that easily dismissed. Grandiosity is hardly restricted to me. so in the Christian tradition despair is a sin of self-centredness: what, you are so beyond help that even God can't help you? Yeah, right, and you're not stuck in grandiosity either.

Anyway, Moore's contention is that unless we are consciously aware of this spiritual energy to greatness, work with it, confront it and harness it (at times), we will be in the thrall of evil. Moore takes seriously the human propensity to evil, and he says that not to do so is to be blind to both history and what we do to each other in our daily lives. So "(w)e either identify with this inner complex of grandiose energies, or we repress it and project it onto others." (201) When we identify with the energy of grandiosity, we inflate the self; when we project our grandiosity we become slaves to others, or demonise them. (A nation can project their grandiosity onto a leader, and demonise another group at the same time. The Fuhrer and the Final Solution come to mind.) Tribal grandiosity displaced the grandiosity from the individual to the group, preventing the individual psychosis that extreme grandiosity can produce. This was fine for the individual while my tribe rarely met any other tribe. But as human 'tribes' (ethnic groups, religions, etc) were forced to live closer and closer together, so tribal grandiosity slipped into demonization of the other tribes. (This demonization is everywhere still. Think of the continuing history of intra-european demonization we saw in Bosnia, or the conflicts in sub-Saharan Africa.)

Book Review: Rowan Williams, 'Tokens of Trust. An Introduction to Christian Belief'.

A guest-post by Joan Durdin.

The author, a theologian, philosopher, teacher, writer and priest expands on addresses that he delivered to a Holy Week congregation in 2005, and offers them to a wider audience. His teaching is prompted by his conviction that there is a crisis of trust in our society. Without trust we cannot fulfill God’s agenda for us, to live in peace with each other, free for our foremost activity of offering praise to God.

The book’s sub-title is ‘An Introduction to Christian Belief’. It is based on the church’s time honoured statement of belief, the Apostles’ Creed. The writer presents his teaching in six chapters, each exploring the implications of one segment of the Apostles Creed. The first chapter is entitled “Whom can we Trust?” and the answer is immediately provided in the words ‘I believe in God the Father almighty’. The issues raised include the lack of trust in today’s society – indeed, in the history of humankind, and the justification for putting our trust in God the Father - God thought we were worth dying for. A few examples from biblical times to the present, draw our attention to the lives of people whose trust in God, in the most daunting circumstances, never failed them.

In the second chapter, entitled ‘The Risk of Love’, the focus is on the phrase - ‘maker of heaven and earth’. This is where questions about the existence of God come up. Chapter 3, ‘A Man for All Seasons’ is developed from the words ‘and in Jesus Christ his only Son, our Lord’. The fourth, fifth and sixth chapters are respectively titled ‘The Peace Dividend’ (He suffered and was buried and the third day he rose again); ‘God in Company’ (I believe one catholic and apostolic Church); and ‘Love, Actually’ (I look for the resurrection of the dead). Each chapter offers a wealth of Christian doctrine and teaching.

Several features of the book have special appeal to me :

• The structure is made clear in the list of chapter titles and sub-titles and helped me to ‘see the wood for the trees’.
• From the depths of his theological understanding, the writer shares his insights on many issues of concern to the Christian, including the problem of evil, miracles, pain and suffering, the answer to prayer, sacrifice, the virgin birth, forgiveness.
• He displays a sense of humour which lightens the reading and points to his natural ‘human-ness’ and humility
• In each chapter the selection and framing of certain key statements provides, in a sense, a summary which helps the reader to recall the content.

The illustrations which appear throughout demand attention. As Archbishop Williams stated in the introduction, the paintings invite us into a much deeper world by the mysterious lightness of the strokes and the colours. They ask us to look at the world in a new way.

Among many books which have I have read on the subject of Christian belief, I find ‘Tokens of Trust’ particularly satisfying. It requires careful reading and reflection.

Book Review: Rowan Williams, 'The Dwelling of the Light. Praying with Icons of Christ.'

It is because the uttermost of death and humiliation cannot break the bond between Jesus and the Father that what Jesus touches is touched by the Father too... Because of his relation with the Father, a new relation is made possible between ourselves and this final wellspring of divine life. (p. 41)

This is a beautiful little book. First, it is tastefully set out and illustrated. Second, it provides an excellent guide to four key icons of Jesus. Third, it allows Rowan Williams to explicate a number of theological points, and especially allows him to talk about the point of the doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation in terms not reliant on philosophy or esoteric theological knowledge. an example:

And what is true about Jesus is - if we really encounter it in its fullness - shocking, devastating: that his human life is sustained from the depths of God without interruption and without obstacle, that it translates into human terms who and what God the Son eternally is. The shock comes from realizing this means that God's life is compatible with every bit of human life, including the inner terrors of Gethsemane (fear and doubt) and the outer terrors of Calvary (torment and death). (p. 12)

In the introduction he provides a helpful summary of the theology behind the iconoclast controversy that raged in the Orthodox world over a thousand years ago. Indeed, Williams makes the point that the fruit of this debate provides us with the justification for any Christian art and imagery. Essentially, he says that the supporters of icons argued that icons "were actually a natural consequence of the way the God of the Bible worked." (p. xiii) He means here the Incarnation: the opponents thought that depicting Jesus was contrary to Chalcedon by depicting the human Jesus, and thus potentially splitting his divine and human natures; in reply, the proponents of iconography said that icons depicted the human Jesus without separating the natures because the human in Jesus is utterly "soaked through with divine life." (p. xvi)

The four icons he chooses to examine are: the Transfiguration, the Resurrection, the Hospitality of Abraham, and Pantocrator. His discussion of the Transfiguration and the Resurrection are particularly good, although that might just tell you my two favourite icons! It is worth reading his discussion of the first icon, the Transfiguration, for itself, but also because he introduces a number of features common to iconography. Especially important is the mandorla of darker colour representing the depths of God from which Jesus comes and brings with him the depths and power of the creator. The meaning of the icon hinges on this, but it doesn't follow that humanity (Jesus' and ours) and the rest of creation are excluded. This is the whole point of the Incarnation, and the icon of the Transfiguration.

The second icon he examines is the Resurrection:

• This is not an icon of the resurrection - the resurrection was a 'private' event. This is an icon of the effects of the resurrection.

• Jesus is in the centre of the icon, and framed by a mandorla
  
  
• The icon is of the victorious Christ standing over the broken down gates of the underworld.
  
  
• The defeated Satan is visible under his feet, and
  
  
• The dead have been liberated, standing behind the main action we see various figures of biblical history
  
  
• In the foreground with Jesus stand Adam and Eve, and Jesus is re-introducing them to one another.

The effect of the resurrection is the liberation of those who have been frozen in death without Christ, and through this a new and revitalised life of reconciliation. But more than this, Jesus has been to the very beginning of human sin and estrangement from each other and God.

'Adam and Eve' stand for wherever it is in the human story that fear and refusal of God began - not a moment we can date in ordinary history, any more than we can date in the history of each one of us where we began to forget God... The icon declares that wherever that lost moment is or was, Christ has been there, to implant the possibility, never destroyed, of another turning, another future; in his resurrection, he brings all those possibilities to reality.(p. 38)

Williams has a good discussion about the need to read all of Scripture through the lens of the resurrection (pp. 33-35) and our re-introduction to one another and all of creation (pp. 30-36)

I could keep going on the next two icons but you get the idea. This is a profound book, well worth reading, and if you have the opportunity, run a session on these icons in your local church.

A quote on the resurrection to finish:

The Christ of this icon, standing on the bridge over darkness and emptiness, moving into the heart of human longing and incompletion, brings into that place the mystery out of which his life streams, represented in the mandorla against which his figure is set. The locked gates of death, the frozen lives cut short, these are overcome in the act of new creation which we are witnessing. (p. 41)