A Psycho-Analytical Study of Prayer⤒🔗

In the editorial, "Praying in the U.S.A.," in the previous issue, I quoted extensively from an article in Newsweek of January 6, 1992. After some consideration, I omitted one specific paragraph dealing with a psycho-analytical study about praying. It deserves separate attention for two reasons, of which one is positive and the other negative. The positive reason is that we can learn from such an analysis things that go on in the mind of people, in particular of children. We shall see that this is important with respect to situations of abuse. The negative reason is that the analysis falls short in the fact that it does not reckon with the living God and His Word. Here follows first the part that was left out: Unlike Buddhist and other meditative practices, prayer presupposes a God who can be addressed. Since no one has seen God, people who pray inevitably draw on their own imagination and experience. Thus, Sigmund Freud [called the founder of psycho-analysis, J.G.] dismissed the idea of God as a figment of the unconscious mind confected out of a child's early relations with powerful parents. Today, however, some psychoanalysts believe the issue is much more subtle than Freud imagined.

According to Dr. Ana-Maria Rizzuto, a training and supervisory analyst at the Psychoanalytic Institute of New England East, Freud was only partly right. "Like everything else in life," says Rizzuto, "our internal representation of God is unconsciously organized by the mind" based on personal relations with other people. For example, a child who feels neglected by one or both parents may pray to God to prove she has a powerful ally and to numb the pain of not being understood. In some cases, people never get beyond the image of God they developed in the infantile state. Hence Freud's dismissal of God.

I insert here the remark that Freud's dismissal of God cannot just have been caused by this psycho-analysis of prayer. His entire approach was that of a non-believer with his presuppositions of unbelief. The article continues:

But from her own ongoing study of 120 cases, Rizzuto has found that in psychologically healthy people, this internal representation of God changes throughout the life cycle in response to other significant people and events. At the onset of puberty, Rizzuto reports, many children experience terrible doubts about God's existence as they try to reconcile inconsistencies between a benign childhood deity and human suffering. Again, at the close of adolescence, which she notes may extend well past 30, internal images of God change. Finding a loving spouse or holding a newborn child, Rizzuto says, 'may alter an earlier, more negative representation of God.' (In other words, there is reason to be grateful.) In short, says Rizzuto, 'the God we pray to is the complex outcome of our personal relations with other people.' But this does not mean that there is no God outside of this unconscious internal process. Rather, says Rizzuto, it means that this mental process is the psychological medium everyone uses 'for searching out that mysterious being we call God.'

Some Comments←⤒🔗

One could ask, should we not just dismiss such a psychological analysis of praying, because it is a purely humanistic approach? Although in the end the existence of God is not denied, He is not acknowledged as the true God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who revealed Himself in His Word, but He is presented only as "that mysterious being that we call God." Further, no place is given to the Holy Spirit and His regenerating work. Nor is there any place given to God's Word. There is only a human "mental process" functioning as a "psychological medium" through which not just some but "everyone [emphasis added, J.G.] search[es] that mysterious being that we call God."

I would like to suggest that we do not just dismiss this psychological analysis. Aspects of what is said in the paragraphs which I quoted here are important and instructive. It makes us think about what is going on in our human mind when we pray. We are all human beings who can think and who go through a development, both physically and mentally. We form images and ideas about things and people in our lives, and also about God. With "image" I do not mean an idol, but one's perception of God. According to the Scriptures, such images or perceptions of God can be true or false.

Further, it cannot be denied that these images and ideas about God differ in accordance with what we are taught. A Christian, who lives by the Word of God, will not have the same image of God as those who are taught in the ways of Buddha or as those brought up with the teaching of Mohammed. According to the Scriptures, the one will have the true knowledge of God, the others will not. However, the point is that we all do form images and ideas about God, who He is and what He does.

Moreover, this forming of images and ideas about God happens in a growing and changing process. The apostle Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 13:11,

When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up the things that pertain to a child.

Children learn about many things, also about God, from their parents (although not from them only). In their young minds, children form images about things in their life through what their parents say (teach) and do. If the parents live by and speak according to God's Word, the child's image of God will be in accordance with the picture which God gives of Himself in Scripture. Of course, a child's picture of God remains in accordance with his ability to understand things. The knowledge of whom God is, what He does, and what He means for His people grows with the age and knowledge of the child. However, if parents have ideas and act contrary to God's Word, the ideas about God, formed in the mind of the child will be different.

Therefore, it is not strange that Dr. Rizzuto observes that a child's image of God is formed under the influence of people and events that play an important role in that child's life. The awareness of these things should make parents very careful in what they teach and how they act with regard to their children.

Talking with an adult who, as a child, has been mentally, physically or, in particular, sexually abused by a parent, reveals that it can be very difficult, if not almost impossible, for such a person to pray with love and trusting confidence to "our Father who art in heaven." The Father image has become an image of horror. Even the word Father brings to mind the frightening experiences of youth. In all abuse, in particular in sexual abuse, the spirit or mind (which means the entire person or the whole personality of a child) is broken into pieces and crushed by the abusing parent. Self-worth is shattered; the child feels totally worthless. The child has great difficulties functioning in a normal way in his relationships with other people. This feeling remains when a child grows and becomes an adult. Even though each victim reacts differently, this is common among the abused.

Psychoanalysis, when analyzing what happens in and with the disturbed mind of a child, searches for and discovers these problems. It also teaches us that we have to be very careful in counseling victims of abuse. Let me mention one point. As Christians, we speak of our Christian calling to forgive each other, and that, therefore also a victim of abuse has to forgive the perpetrator. That is true. It is the calling of the gospel of Christ. However, it is not sufficient simply to tell a victim of abuse to forgive. A comparison with a broken leg can make this clear. Nobody tells a person with a badly broken, almost crushed leg to stand up and walk. The leg has to heal first, and then, slowly, a person can learn to walk again. The victim of (sexual) abuse has a badly broken mind and a crushed spirit. One cannot tell such a person just to act as a healthy person and to forgive. Like a leg has to heal, so a mind has to heal. This can take a long time. It is much easier to heal a broken leg than to restore a crushed mind. When healing takes place, the scars remain forever.

At the same time, there remains the calling of the Lord that we, as Christian believers, forgive one another. On this point I would like to stress the antithesis between the message of the gospel of Christ Jesus as the great healing Physician and modern humanistic psychoanalysis, which brings across to us the great need for biblically based Reformed, Christian, psychoanalysts. Modern humanistic psychoanalysis places the human person in the center and works basically with the ideas of human self-fulfillment and human self-realization. It will not give specific directives, but rather build up in the mind of the abused victim a new and restored feeling of self-worth. The victim has to learn to feel good about her/himself. I can acknowledge the psychological need of a victim of abuse to build up such a feeling positive about her/himself. But the question is, on what basis and in what manner? Here our Lord gives us His healing directives in His Word.

The Healing Gospel of Christ←⤒🔗

God's Word tells us that God so loved the world, which was lost in sin and its consequences, that He gave His Son as Savior. Therefore, the message of the gospel is that we, lost sinners, are of such great value to God that He gave His only Son for us, to place our sins and guilt and His wrath against it upon Christ, and so to reconcile us to Himself and restore to us the position of being God's beloved children. The gospel says that we, in our misery, are of such great value to God's Son that He became a human being for us to take upon Himself our guilt, our sins, our condemnation, our illnesses and diseases, our miseries, in order to purchase us through atoning death that we might become His own precious possession, leading us out of darkness into His light. We are of such great value to God, the Holy Spirit that He will dwell in us and make us holy temples for God to dwell in. Here we may find the basis and source of our self-worth. It rests in our triune God.

Further, it says in Proverbs 3:1- 8 that listening to the teaching of the Lord and acknowledging Him "will be healing to your flesh and refreshment to your bones." For "psychologically healthy" Christians, Christ said in the Sermon on the Mount that they have to forgive and even love their enemies. Hating people and keeping a grudge against them because they have caused harm is a normal human reaction. However, hatred does not only harm its objects: the person hated, it also harms the subject: the one who hates and keeps a grudge. Love and forgiveness are beneficial not only for the one who receives them, but primarily brings joy and healing to the one who gives them. Living with hatred in the heart is living in darkness, but he who loves through Christ lives in God's light (cf. 1 John 2:9ff).

Keeping in mind what is said above about the need of a slow and long healing process, we maintain that the directive of love also is there as a healing commandment for the abused. It can help an abused person when the perpetrator is punished, and when so justice is done. The victim then sees that (s)he is not worthless, and that others cannot just do with her/him as they please. However, for the sake of both, there should be a place for love and forgiveness, too. Christian love, rooted in the love of God in Christ, means light and healing for both the one who receives and for the one who gives. Also here there is forgiveness with God for a contrite heart that comes to Him. Then the consequences of sin can remain, but the guilt of sin is covered by the blood of Christ. It gives gratitude, light, joy to receive this forgiving love from the Father through Christ Jesus. It gives gratitude, light, and joy also when God, through His Spirit and Word, brings us to the point that we, for Christ's sake, can give this forgiving love to those who have hurt us so much. This means healing. Dr. Rizzuto found through her psychoanalytical study that the image of God in the mind of a child is influenced greatly by important persons in the child's life. We have found that it is very hard for an abused child, even as an adult, to have a positive image of "our Father in heaven," as hearing the word "father" brings back memories of horror. Can this awful result ever be taken away? Can a wrong image be corrected, even when the impression is so awfully strong and deep?

We may say that it can.

God is not,

'a figment of the unconscious mind confected out of a child's early relations with powerful parents', as Freud asserted.

God is really there as a good, helping Father, saving us through His Son, Jesus Christ. He is especially the Helper of those who feel lost, and robbed of their dignity. How do we know Him? God gives us a true picture of Himself in His Word. This Word is His Self-revelation. Therefore, this Word of God, this gospel of Christ, can replace the wrong ideas about God in the minds of those who were never taught the truth of the Bible. It can also correct the thwarted images which we received in our youth through the sins of others. God Himself can correct the dark images and turn them into light. Blessed are all those who receive the true picture of God from His Word, and so pray to the true God of the Scriptures. They will not be ashamed.