di Franco Imoda S.I.
Abstract
This article explores the relationship between psychology and Ignatian spirituality, emphasizing the importance of developing an adequate anthropology that integrates the contributions of both fields. The author highlights how St. Ignatius’ Spiritual Exercises require an approach that takes into account the concrete subjectivity of the person, considering their dynamic and developmental dimension. Six conditions for an adequate anthropology are presented:
The author emphasizes how psychology can contribute to bringing hidden wounds to the surface to open them to healing grace, and to orienting decisions towards self-transcendence. Ricoeur’s thought on the symbolic and teleological role of dreams is cited. The importance of dialogue and synthesis between spiritual theology and psychology for an adequate approach to the Spiritual Exercises is also highlighted.
Keywords
Psychology, Ignatian spirituality, adequate anthropology, Spiritual exercises, concrete person.
The theme of our conference is close to my heart, and I can say that the question it poses has been at the centre of my concern for forty years: how should psychology relate to spirituality? Our era has witnessed the collapse of great ideological battles of the Cold War but in a world characterized by globalization, individuals continued to experience anxiety and a sense of restlessness. Today various solutions are offered to assuage this restlessness and many of these are not adequate. Some proposed solutions limit themselves to economic or technical proposals thinking that solutions of this kind will suffice. Some opt for other cruder evasive responses, including drugs, sex, the pursuit of money, or frenetic activity. More refined evasions include certain practices that promise psychological self-realization or even heightened mystical awareness. Evaluating such solutions returns us to the theme of this conference: How to find an authentic balance and hopefully integration between psychology and spirituality?
Faced with challenges such as these, we are called to rediscover the Spiritual Exercises, understanding them as a pedagogy or mystagogy which could, if they are undertaken in the most radical way possible, address a deep need in modern culture. Such an approach to the Exercises requires that we overcome an opposition between a pedagogy which is prevalently “subjectivist” and a pedagogy which is prevalently “objectivist.” By the former is intended, simplifying things to some extent, one based on the conviction that the subject has a more or less innate capacity to grow and develop (as held by Rousseau and by certain contemporary authors such as Rogers and other humanists). By an objective pedagogy is meant one based on a conviction that the most important source of growth and spiritual development is the person with objective values, such as the Word of God, or also various cultural values and context and perhaps also on the assumption that this by itself is enough.
In his apostolic exhortation Gaudete et exsultate, Pope Francis asks us to avoid both subjectivist and objectivist approaches to our own growth in holiness. He speaks of how the call to holiness is sometimes misinterpreted in terms of either a modern Gnosticism or a modern Pelagianism. Of the first he states: “Gnosticism presumes a purely subjective faith whose only interest is a certain experience or a set of ideas and bits of information which are meant to console and enlighten, but which ultimately keep one imprisoned in his or her own thoughts and feelings” (GE. 36)[2]. Of the second, he speaks of those who hold a mindset where “even though they speak warmly of God’s grace, ‘ultimately trust only in their own powers and feel superior to others because they observe certain rules or remain intransigently faithful to a particular Catholic style’” (GE. 49). This teaching applies as much to how Spiritual Exercises are presented as it does to other pedagogies of growth in holiness.
The organizers of our conference have given me the task of setting the scene for other talks during these days. Consequently, I seek only to offer some elementary reflection on the question of how to relate psychology and the Spiritual Exercises, trusting and leaving it to other speakers to enter more deeply into a variety of questions. My talk has two sections. The first seeks to deepen our awareness of what the problem is that we are facing. The second offers broad lines towards a solution. In the first I speak of the need to help psychology and Spiritual Exercises illuminate each other rather than being considered mutually exclusive approaches to human well-being. In the second, I suggest that resolving this problem requires that we recognize the need to clarify the notion of the human person from which we are operating. I suggest six conditions that need to be fulfilled if the vision of the human person that animates the way we present the Exercises to others is to be adequate.
Part 1: The Problem: Relating Psychology to the Spiritual Exercises
The tensions we are addressing in this conference were not unknown to St Ignatius. He experienced similar tensions as a man of his own age. He is generally credited with having found a balance of principle and a dynamic synthesis between the divine and the human, or in other words, between the supernatural and the natural components of human action. The pedagogy of the Spiritual Exercises is one of interaction and dialogue, not only between the exercitants and the director, but especially between the exercitants and the mystery of God made man in history. However, the richness and depth of this equilibrium and synthesis have not always been respected, either in the past or in the present.
Among signs confirming the difficulty of preserving the Ignatian synthesis between divine operation and human cooperation, one may recall the history of the famous Ignatian maxim: “Let this be the first rule of action: so trust in God, as if successful results depended entirely on yourself and not at all on God; nevertheless make each effort as if you are to do nothing and God is to do everything”[3]. This maxim has been interpreted in different ways over the centuries. It was originally recounted by Fr. Hevenesi and was commented upon, in 1956, by Gaston Fessard. Fessard shows how the formula has eventually been reworded stating: “Trust in God from whom everything depends on the supernatural level; but on the natural level, act as if you did everything and God nothing”.
Fessard explains that the primitive and most authentic wording of this Ignatian principle, far from opposing divine and human action as two realities, integrates them dialectically. He suggests that St. Ignatius maintains a distinction, but not a separation, between the natural and the supernatural. Applying this principle to the use of psychology, one might say that as regards the Exercises one cannot think in terms of an opposition between the Exercises and psychology. Rather, within both one must make place for a dialectical encounter between height and depth. Spiritual experience is of the concrete person; it cannot be abstract, and so it cannot be located at some great height that does not descend at the same time into those depths of the person which psychology helps us to discover and address in action.
At the same time, psychological experience cannot be lowered and levelled to a horizon that is not open to the heights. The point of departure for the psychologist must be the person who is orientated toward that which is transcendent, supernatural, divine.
From the point of view of a modern confrontation between psychology and spirituality, the comments of Fessard help us toward a conclusion. Only through a constant effort at dialogue, and if possible at synthesis, between the pedagogical approaches of spiritual theology (which is a theological anthropology) and that of a psychological anthropology, will it be possible to deal adequately with, and perhaps overcome, a series of polarities.
Meissner identifies the following polarities that need to be integrated dialectically rather than considered mutually exclusive: the polarity between the conscious and the unconscious; determinism and freedom; teleology and efficient causality; epigenesis and reductionism; morality and instinct; natural and supernatural[4].
John Haught[5] speaks about a philosophical polarity which is related to the above polarities and which also needs integrating: that between meaning and reality. Indeed, one recognizes that in many of these tensions lies the tension about which Jesuits such as Ignatius and Nadal reflected often: between action and contemplation.
Arguably, a tendency to separate psychological pedagogies from spiritual pedagogies is also found within the Society of Jesus.
It is regrettable to note that there is a remarkable consistency in the complaint that undergoing the Spiritual Exercises does not always make Jesuits either more obedient or more apostolically available! One example is found in the first Decree of the Thirty-Sixth General Congregation of the Society of Jesus, held in 2016:
The question that confronts the Society today is why the Exercises do not change us as deeply as we would hope. What elements in our lives, works, or lifestyles hinder our ability to let God’s gracious mercy transform us? This Congregation is deeply convinced that God is calling the entire Society to a profound spiritual renewal. Ignatius reminds us that each Jesuit must “take care, as long as he lives, first of all to keep before his eyes God’” (GC. 36, Decree 1, 18).
On this topic, the General Congregation echoed comments made frequently by Adolfo Nicholas. In 2012 he had stated, after first praising those Jesuits who demonstrate apostolic zeal:
There is also a group of Jesuits, (smaller than the previous group but more than we would like or expect to have), who fulfil their obligations reasonably well (at times they are very competent professionally), but, for some reason, lack the freedom and generosity our Ignatian Magis demands, and so, cannot be counted upon for any initiative of renewal, any creative work at the frontiers, any emergency that needs persons who love the Gospel more than themselves … many reports speak of the difficulty of finding good spiritual directors and wise spiritual masters among us. This is due, not only to lack of sufficient Jesuits formed deeply in our history and spiritual heritage, but, in some places, also to a lack of interest in Ignatian spirituality among young Jesuits … A third concern might be called a weakening of the transformative and integrative power of our spirituality. What is called “spiritual life” is limited by some to an individual’s private religious practices and spiritual exercises. These exercises, for some reason, do not change the Jesuits; are not integrated with his life and work; do not help him become part of an apostolic body[6].
In truth, Fr. Nicholas was reiterating a theme that Fr. Kolvenbach had also often treated. This theme is evident in a letter written to the whole Society of Jesus in 1989, “Jesuit Life in the Spirit”[7]. In one section, Fr. Kolvenbach, reflects on the annual letters sent to him by local superiors from around the world. He speaks of the good news many have to report, but adds that there is also evident “a shadow around the edges of the bright picture”. He writes, “A number of men ask themselves about a contrast which they find between the recognition of the Exercises as a ‘privileged place’ of our experience of Christ, and a fairly frequent lack of apostolic availability”. He adds, “The Exercises can only tend toward the Magis of service if they are lived by persons who are spiritually free and mature, and who bridge the dichotomies between contemplation and action, between desire and practice”.
Each of the above citations insists on one thing, practice is the measure of our sincerity in espousing high ideals. This, of course, echoes the dictum of Ignatius in the Spiritual Exercises: “Love is shown more in deeds than in words.” The question arises: what is inhibiting many of us from responding to the Exercises in a more wholehearted way?
On these issues a survey conducted at the Institute of Psychology of the Gregorian of 200 young religious, evaluated the motivations and the related maturity/immaturity that prompted these to both enter and to persevere or leave training for the diocesan priesthood and religious life. A considerable number of these subjects had gone through the month of Spiritual Exercises. The survey was based on interviewing candidates three times. First, as they were entering seminaries and novitiates; and second, two-three years and then 4-5 years later. The survey employed a scientific methodology for measuring motivation and maturity. The notion of maturity employed concerned the ability to integrate espoused ideals with lived reality. The survey produced results some of which were predictable and some of which were surprising.
Predictably, the survey found that only a minority of candidates entered religious life with problems that could be describe as “pathological.” Unsurprisingly, many of them departed from their seminaries and religious communities during the succeeding four years. Those who remained did not show significant signs of growth in maturity. Similarly, the survey identified another minority at the other end of the spectrum. Here, a group of young people were judged to be more than averagely mature upon entering, and, four/five years later they showed signs of appropriate maturing.
A more surprising result regarded a middle category. This category represented a large majority of those entering seminaries and religious life. It was formed by those who exhibited characteristics of immaturity which were judged to be non-pathological. The expectation here was that these individuals would benefit from religious formation of the succeeding four years and would exhibit a growth in maturity. However, to a remarkable extent, individuals in this category showed signs of not having matured, and in some cases, of having regressed! In total, 70% of the young people surveyed were part of this category.
This is not the place to enter into a detailed discussion of the work of the Institute of Psychology at the Gregorian. Suffice it to say that the 70% just described could be expected to show major benefits from a deeper active consideration of the psychological dimension.
We may conclude or at least suggest that once an intervention of this kind is provided, the candidates will have an increased opportunity to benefit more radically from the pedagogical process of the religious formation and also therefore the Spiritual Exercises. In this sense, while members of the 70% could eventually be helped, in fact, do not receive this help. What results is that some abandon this state of life, not being able to live up to the ideals by which they promised to live. Others, exhibit a characteristic of “nesting”. The description of this behaviour resembles to a remarkable degree the one used by Adolfo Nicholas of the group of Jesuits who lack the freedom and generosity to live up to the Magis proposed by Ignatius.
Part 2: The Need for a Psychological Anthropology
Having tried to identify a problem/challenge in Part 1 of this talk, I would like now turn to the question of how to seek/find possible solutions to it. I am not ambitious in what I propose, indeed, we look to other talks in this conference to elaborate on issues presented here and other ones.
What I would like to propose is first and foremost this: the problem we are facing requires that we think carefully about questions of anthropology. The importance of turning to anthropology is well identified by Harvey Egan in his book The Spiritual Exercises and the Ignatian Mystical Horizon[8]. In this work, Egan (representing a wider cultural vision) concentrates not only on the presence of the mystical horizon of Ignatius, but also the way Ignatius concentrates on questions of “consolation without preceding cause” as a basic paradigm of the meeting of God and man.
Harvey is influenced by the thought of Karl Rahner as he explains that the dynamics of the Exercises must be understood in the context of a fundamental horizon that characterizes all human beings, what he calls an “anthropocentric horizon”:
Essential to the inner rhythms and dynamics of the Exercises is the exercitant’s radical return to himself as the subject, the active disposition of his entire person, his creative self-presence, his presence to his own deepest mystery as a person, a self-presence which sums up, concentrates and fulfils the expectations of his own created self-transcendence to surrender itself to loving Mystery in Jesus Christ”[9].
To be considered as areas involved in this anthropocentric aspect of the process are inordinate affections, the role of the intellect, the will, emotions, memory, and imagination, then the role of the prelude in which one asks for the id quod volo, or “what I want and desire”; the role of consolation and desolation, and of the application of the senses.
Thus, as Egan rightly insists, the Exercises are not a process of indoctrination (however sublime), but a mystagogy in which one not only grasps a posteriori the truths of the history of salvation as givens (this being the objective pole), but involving also the a priori reality of the supernatural horizon to which the exercitant is called (this being the subjective pole). In this sense, he states: “the Ignatian method is a mystagogy into what is already hidden in the human heart, into what the exercitant continuously experiences on the fringe or as the undercurrent of all his experiences”.
However, further study of Egan suggests that there exists a regrettable irony. While Egan is impressive in inviting us to attend to the foundational horizon of the individual who presents himself or herself to undergo the Exercises, he seems to be less than lucid in describing just what that foundational horizon is.
At first he seems to exhibit an awareness of the role unconscious motivations play in how we respond. Speaking of the offer of self-communication by God made to every individual he adds the realistic comment, “We can ignore, repress or deny this haunting experience”. He adds, “The Exercises are a form of psychiatric therapy in which the exercitant comes to realize more explicitly and freely what he had always known and experienced in some way”.
However, statements he makes later, indicate that he does not have a firm grasp of some basic insights deriving from a psychological process/therapy. Concerning the prelude of Ignatian prayer, the prayer “for what I desire” (the id quod volo) he states: “The clear, simple and explicitly conscious desire of what one really wants, especially when this flows from the salvific effects of each meditation, purifies the exercitant of his inordinate affections by awakening him to the deepest desires of his true self”[10]. He adds that the same declaration of the id quod volo “coaxes the exercitant into line with the deepest desires of his true self, eliminates inordinate affections and subjective deformities, reduces subjective static conditions and promotes his greatest growth”[11]. This seems to suggest that the simple act of praying for what we desire during the Exercises precludes the need for a more explicit kind of psychological assistance that can help overcome those unconscious fragilities that distort our desire.
It is difficult to reconcile the optimism of Egan about the effect of the Exercises with the statements of Jesuit superiors general, quoted above, or with results of the psychological data of young religious also mentioned.
What is needed, then, is a vision of the human person – and a consequential action – that is more adequate, and which can help directors identify who is more authentically ready to undertake the Exercises and who is not (especially in the light of the expected goals).
Such an anthropology could also help directors of the Exercises, without pretending to be psychologists, in the technical sense, to recognize when a retreatant is struggling to relate his or her personal woundedness to the kind of encounter with the risen Lord, that is the objective of the Exercises.
In what follows, I would evoke six conditions that should be realised if we are to develop an account of our own subjectivity that might do more justice to the contributions of both psychology and spirituality.
Part 3: Conditions for an Adequate Anthropology
The first condition for an adequate vision of the human person involves a concrete conception of the person, which must, accordingly, be existential and historical. No doubt, a theoretic conception of the human being can provide abstract ontological and ethical bases, and principles from which one can deduce doctrines, norms and criteria. However, a conception of the person that is concrete and historical provides bases, grounded on the operations of the subject, which are also concrete. The concrete subject is called to make choices of the good, and the good has to be recognized before being chosen. A large part of this process originates from within a concrete matrix of lived experiences, and for recognizing and understanding this matrix, psychological observations are of great value. So, it is essential to provide for an inductive approach to the person as well as a deductive one.
The second condition is that of a dynamic conception of the person. Since the person is not only a knower, but also must make free choices of the good, then an adequate psychological anthropology must take account of teleology and motivation. Not all of the psychological theories to be found in our culture include a teleology that is compatible with a religious or Christian anthropology. At times their horizons are focused on the self, or are bounded by values that are merely humanistic or social. In this connection, the contribution of Browning[12] is of interest. A dynamic conception of the person should be able to give expression to the mystery which the human being is, in his or her “height and breadth and depth”; or at least it should be open to this mystery. It should be in a position to take account of the person’s basic antinomy, pulled between the infinite of the all and that of nothingness, between a vocation that is sublime and the experience of mystery (Gaudium et Spes, nos. 10-13)[13], between a self that is transcendent, and a self that is transcending and reaches out to the most transcendent of realities, God made man.
One of the most moving experiences that one has when offering vocational guidance in a fairly thorough and deep way, is that one often meets, especially in the young, a great desire to commit their life to an ideal that is valid and also very high, together with notable fragility.
Rarely does the person appear to be “bad”; but weakness or fragility is often met. At the same time, the dynamic notion of the person should be able to express and to explore inductively through a concrete observation, which we might call psychological, the concrete forms that the person’s basic antinomy, or dialectic, takes in each individual case and at each moment of concrete daily living. This dynamic conception of the person should thus permit a detailed understanding of the person’s basic motivation; and this understanding should take into account both an ideal self, able to incarnate the transcending self, as well as an actual self, able to incarnate the self which is being transcended.
Man does not live by ideals alone! Nor do men and women live by plans and intentions alone, but by all those forces which make up their anthropological reality. This includes needs, emotions, habits, and the memories which summarize the complexity of the development and the phases that represents the unique history of each individual.
The third condition is that we recognize the importance of the subconscious. A basic part of the notion of a dynamic pedagogy based on an adequate psychological anthropology is its component of “depth-psychology” dealing with subconscious motivations. The existence of the subconscious has been widely recognized not only since the work of Freud, although it may be accepted quite independently of Freud’s own philosophical framework. Indeed, one finds it already described by St. Augustine (Confessions, Book X.) Subconscious motivation is hidden in the sense of not being open to introspection. Though it is hidden, it is far from inactive. It is discovered by inference; considerable efforts and appropriate techniques are often needed to raise it to full acceptance on the conscious level and so to bring it under the control of freedom. Maritain[14] has stated that Freud’s discovery of the unconscious is a heavy blow to rationalism and pharisaic pride, to false self-awareness, to the denial of concupiscence and to the cult of self-worship. It is clearly with reference to the unconscious that Ricoeur writes: “A Freudian critique of infantile distress is hereafter the new vision through which any kind of mediation of faith must pass” and “this atheism concerning the gods of men, pertains hereafter to any possible faith” (1978, p. 219).
A fourth condition comes from another insight, offered by Ricoeur, and fundamentally touches the affective area It alerts us to the fact that attending to the subconscious not only helps us bring hidden hurts to the light of healing grace, but can also plays a more constructive role in helping the individual toward self-transcendent decision-making. The insight of Ricoeur is concisely captured in the phrase, “the symbol gives rise to thought”[15]. Ricoeur expands on Freud by explaining that dream symbols have a teleological function. He agrees with Freud that dream analysis can help deconstruct the unhelpful symbols and feelings occurring in dreams and that are the result of childhood victimization. What he adds is the insight that there can also exist a subsequent, constructive, moment where we recognize how attentiveness to our dream-life can orient us in a world of meaning and value. Recalling that the dream world of each individual is unique, attending to the constructive role of dreams can help the individual make personal life-decisions. This is what Ricoeur means when he states “the true task is to grasp symbols in their creative moment”[16].
Lonergan, draws on this aspect of the thought of Ricoeur to speak of the role of unconscious factors in helping the flourishing of authentic self-transcendence. He states that our decision making is related to an affective response to the values or dis-values implicit in the situations we encounter. He accepts the insight that such affectivity is influenced by unconscious realities. He describes our daily living as requiring acts of knowing and decision-making that can be more or less authentic. He adds that behaving authentically involves a creativity that involves a kind of artistic intuition about what kind of people we want to become, stating, “not only, then, is man capable of aesthetic liberation and artistic creativity, but his first work of art is his own living”[17]. He adds that this kind of creativity draws on intuitions and orientations that emerge from the subconscious.
Here we can recognize links to Ignatian spirituality. Robert Doran, a Jesuit disciple of Lonergan, suggests that Ignatian consolation can be understood as resulting from a mind that enjoys a serene cooperation between the unconscious and a conscious process of self-transcendence[18]. Similarly, Doran explains the Ignatian notion of election in terms of the individual deciding just what kind of work of art he or she wants his or her life to represent[19].
A fifth condition involves the notion of development. The pedagogy of the Exercises seeks to catalyse a process which might be understood as the presentation of laws to be respected on the journey of human and spiritual development. We know that grace builds on nature, and natural growth has its own laws of development. Development might also be considered as the history of those forms, which the human psyche assumes in the course of its growth, in terms of the basic questions posed by the person, and the history of the responses which the person has learned to give. Often the question has not been able to emerge fully and with all its power. This may be due to the fact that the individual needed the kind of pedagogical or psychological help that would have helped him or her name what the real question is, that is, the real id quod volo. Sometimes/often it is only with such assistance that the individual can discover a new existential interpretation of the question so as to come to a reformulation of the question itself.
Development may also be viewed as the person’s characteristic way of structuring of “defences”, a way that is concrete, existential, and characteristic of this person; defences being the person’s basic style of meeting reality in the dialogue between the subject and the environment (including God). The notion of development relates to the characteristic of a growing openness on the part of an individual to a horizon that is ever wider and more transcendent.
The notion of a failure of development relates to an approach in the individual that is essentially defensive and based on prejudice. It is the concrete person who begins the Exercises, and this person may be capable or incapable of the needed equilibrium. The equilibrium which represents a sufficient base to be open to further challenges to a sometimes disturbing growth. The Exercises, when experienced radically, invite one to allow oneself to be called into question and to open oneself to a shift of horizon that can be initiated only by the grace of God[20].
The sixth condition is that we must concern ourselves with what constitutes genuine human freedom. Prescinding from the finer nuances, the Exercises are surely the encounter of human freedom, of “ordering one’s life”, in a free response to the call of God. What notion of freedom, then, derived from a more or less explicit psychological anthropology, do we have in mind in approaching and guiding an exercitant? We should acknowledge that every “guide”/formator has and practices a certain “pedagogy of freedom”.
As already mentioned, there are A.) some psychological theories, – and consequent practices – marked by a strong determinism (such as the more orthodox forms of psychoanalysis and the various forms of behaviourism). They consider freedom as a limit-concept, and practically as an illusion, so that every human action is interpreted as the product of determining forces rooted perhaps in the person’s past, which can “explain” the present. Such approaches provoke the question, “Does responsibility, then, exist any longer (at least in certain areas)?” These are theories which have aroused most objections and fears on the part of formators and spiritual guides, because they seem to — and often really do — deny the existence of personal responsibility. But they might be in fact partially accepted.
Other theories, B.) like those of the humanistic existential kind, hold to a vision of the person that is less materialistic and more spiritualist, but they tend to consider freedom as a subjective spontaneity which takes on a quality of absoluteness, prescinding from, or reducing to a minimum, the role of objective values. Their optimism seems to imply that any and every choice is possible, and is also good if the person really desires it.
Only a psychology C.) which takes serious account of the person’s capacity for freedom, and at the same time remembers and can concretely identify the power of the conscious and unconscious forces that condition freedom itself, can provide a proper basis for a psycho-pedagogy of religious experience.
On this issue, it might be helpful to invoke a distinction made by Lonergan between essential freedom and effective freedom[21]. Essential freedom, as a basic capacity for self-determination towards the good, is one thing; but another thing is the effective freedom by which one is or is not committed to the good. Essential freedom is only a potency until, by a laborious process on our part, it becomes realised in action. As Lonergan states, “Effective freedom itself has to be won”[22].
On this issue, one can note that one does not have to submit to extreme subjectivism or extreme objectivism to make mistakes in the work of pedagogy that is involved in directing the Exercises. We can fall, into a misguided “via media” that amounts to a facile combination of both defects. One begins by supposing that essential freedom exists, and that is certainly true; one assumes then that there must also be effective freedom; but, when the real obstacles and difficulties emerge, they are hastily classed as determinisms, or limitations, or residues of the past such as affective deprivation (and so on), with which one can do little or nothing save accept them with resignation. When effective freedom is lacking, one may too easily infer a lack of essential freedom.
The mistake just outlined represents an excessive pessimism regarding the ability of an individual to mature once certain unconscious obstacles to growth are present. What is needed is a different kind of “via media,” one that stands between such pessimism and the excessive optimism of Egan, also described above. With an adequate amount of psychological awareness, and with much patience, directors can accompany a process whereby retreatants, whose fragility does not run too deep, enjoy the transformative effects of grace mediated by the Exercises. It is often possible to respond in depth to the grace of the Lord even when this involves coming to recognize previously unknown weaknesses that were leading one to close oneself off to the possibility of such grace. We do well to recall the statement of Victor Frankl, which may be paraphrased thus: “We are not free and so not responsible for certain symptoms, but we are free and responsible as to what we do about these symptoms”[23].
Conclusion
In concluding this paper, we can recall that the Spiritual Exercises are oriented to mission. They involve a pedagogy which helps individuals identify the state of life to which God is calling them and to decide to respond to this. This pedagogy involves cultivating the capacity for development in individuals that brings them to a point of effective freedom where following their vocation in a wholehearted way becomes possible.
One can understand ministry of the Exercises in terms of helping people to move on from a relatively good level of security, balance, and self-control, towards further transcendence, a transformation in the direction of the self-giving and of self-sacrifice understood in terms of the Latin words “sacrum facere”, to make holy, or to consecrate. Just as the “First Principle and Foundation” of the Exercises (no. 23)[24] cannot be fully lived except in the context of the “Contemplation to Attain Love of God” (no.s 230-237), so too the person cannot accept his or her deepest and most hidden tendencies, and allow them to be redirected, without a deep confidence in the unconditional love of God.
A vocation is a response to a call toward mission. However, a vocation that is not grounded on an acceptance of one’s deepest tendencies, and on the inclusion of these tendencies within the range of one’s responsibility, runs the risk of being like the statue with a head of gold and feet of clay, like a contemplation in love that does not continually sink new roots into humility. What is involved here is a principle lying at the basis of Christian love: “The highest does not stand without the lowest”[25] as C.S. Lewis recalled, citing The Imitation of Christ. And as we may also call this principle an Ignatian one. Not only has its psychological implications, but it calls for a dynamic and psychodynamic implementation. It is found in the epitaph or “Elogium Sepulcrale” of Ignatius as given in the “Imago Primi saeculi”: “Not to be confined by the greatest, yet to be contained within the smallest, is truly divine”[26].
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The article presented here is the text of the opening conference of the International Symposium on Psychology and the Spiritual Exercises held in Loyola, Spain, 20-24 June 2019. The conference was delivered in English, which is made available here. A Spanish translation of the conference has already been published in the proceedings of the symposium – José García de Castro Valdés et al., eds. “Psicología y Espiritualidad Ignaciana: Estado de La Cuestión,” in Psicología y Ejercicios Espirituales: Sentir y Conocer Las Varias Mociones [Ej 313] (Bilbao: Mensajero, 2021), 65-86. ↑
Francis, Apostolic Exhortation Gaudete et Exsultate, Available at https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/apost_exhortations/documents/papa-francesco_esortazione-ap_20180319_gaudete-et-exsultate.html. ↑
In Latin: “Haec sit prima agendorum regula: sic Deo fide, quasi rerun successus omnia a te, nihil a Deo penderet; ita tamen ilis operam omnem admove, quasi tu nibil, Deus omnis solus sit facturus. Formula A, cited from Gaston Fessard, La Dialectique des Exercices spirituels de saint Ignace de Loyola (Paris: Aubier, 1956), 306, who takes it from Havenesi. My translation. ↑
Cf. William W. Meissner, Psychoanalysis and Religious Experience (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1984). ↑
Cf. John Haught, “Narrative Truth and Illusion,” in Religious Studies and Theology (Alberta: University Press, 1985), 69-78. ↑
Adolfo Nicolás, De Statu Societatis Iesu (Nairobi: Congregation of Procurators 70, 2012). ↑
Available at https://kolvenbach.jesuitgeneral.org/uploads/jesuit-life-in-the-spirit/Jesuit%20Life%20in%20the%20Spirit.pdf. Access 04.11.2023. ↑
Cf. Harvey D. Egan, The Spiritual Exercises and the Ignatian Mystical Horizon (St. Louis, MO: The Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1976). ↑
Egan, The Spiritual Exercises, 66. ↑
Egan, The Spiritual Exercises, 73. ↑
Egan, The Spiritual Exercises, 74. ↑
Cf. Don S. Browning, Religious Thought and the Modern Psychologies (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987). ↑
Vatican II, Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes, Available at https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19651207_gaudium-et-spes_en.html. ↑
Cf. Jacques Maritain, “Freudianism and Psychoanalysis: A Thomist View,” in Freud and the 20th Century, ed. Benjamin Nelson (London: Allen & Unwin, 1958), 226-254. ↑
Paul Ricoeur, The Symbolism of Evil, trans. Emerson Buchanan (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969), 347-57, taken from Robert M. Doran, Theology and the Dialectics of History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992), 124. ↑
Paul Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation, trans. Denis Savage (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1970), 170, taken from Doran, Theology and the Dialectics of History, 300. ↑
Bernard J. F. Lonergan, Insight, A Study of Human Understanding (London-New York-Toronto: Longmans, Green and Co., 1992), 210. ↑
Cf. Doran, Theology and the Dialectics of History, 87-88. ↑
Cf. Doran, Theology and the Dialectics of History, 47. ↑
Cf. Gaston Fessard, La Dialectique des Exercices spirituels de saint Ignace de Loyola; see also the Directory of the Spiritual Exercises, of P. Victoria which is briefly discussed in PP. Luigi M. Rulla, Joyce Ridick, and Franco Imoda, Anthropology of the Christian Vocation: Existential Confirmation, vol. II (Rome: Gregorian University Press, 1989), 151-162. ↑
Cf. Lonergan, Insight, 643-645. ↑
Lonergan, Insight, 646. ↑
Viktor Frankl, Psychotherapy and Existentialism: Selected Papers on Logotherapy (New York: Washington Square Press, 1967). ↑
Louis J. Puhl, The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Based on Studies in the Language of the Autograph (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1952). ↑
Clive Staples Lewis, The Four Loves (London: Bles, 1960), 14. ↑
“Non coerceri a maximo, contineri tamen a minimo, divinum est.” ↑
