The Church and Psychology: A Lesson from History

Early 20^th century Vienna was bustling. A young physician named Sigmund Freud, after experimenting with hypnosis, began gathering what he came to call the Wednesday Psychological Society. The small group of interested intellectuals met under Freud’s guidance. Over time they birthed what became the talk therapies. The meetings, held Wednesday evenings, grew to include names now as recognizable as that of their leader. These are names like Carl Jung and Alfred Adler. But there was another not too often discussed: a little-known Swiss Lutheran minister by the name of Oskar Pfister.

A pastor’s son himself, Pfister spent his entire adult life in parish ministry even as his involvement with Freud’s movement grew. He partook in many interests ranging from biblical scholarship and theology to education and psychology. And as a member of Freud’s inner psychoanalytic circle, Pfister enjoyed a lengthy and loving correspondence with the famed physician from 1909 until Freud’s death in 1939. The two had very little in common. Freud was Jewish, but he held religion in militant contempt. He was a medical doctor and a proud man of empirical science. Pfister was a devout Protestant with an earnest and enduring passion for pastoral care. He spent his days either serving a parish or steeped in the humanities. And yet, when reading their collected correspondences, one cannot help but feel touched by what appears to be a rigorous, playful and deeply affectionate bond. Sigmund sent pained letters to Pfister at the passing of Oskar’s wife. Freud’s son later recalled that Pfister was always unique among his father’s visitors, never neglecting to say hello to the children too. Freud’s relationships with the more famous Jung and Adler frayed. His friendship with Pfister endured until death.

The two conversed frequently, exchanging a rich dialogue about the young therapy’s role in society at large and its limitations as a healing exercise. Pfister’s influence challenged Freud, ever the self-proclaimed empiricist, to think beyond materialism to the ethereal mysteries of the psyche (or, translated from the Greek: the soul).

“It seems to me,” Pfister wrote to Freud in 1929, “that not only children but adults very frequently have an inner need of positive values of a spiritual nature, of ethics and a philosophy of life, and these … psychoanalysis cannot supply.” Pfister knew then of the ways scientism was limited as it drifted into the less measurable realms of human experience. Freud, almost as if sighing in some acquiescence, later replied, “For the present I put up with doctors, so why not the priests too?”

Their exchanges illustrate many things, the whole value of a good friendship not least among them. But it is worth highlighting two others. The mental health apparatus and the church do, in fact, make for productive bedfellows. Each is so uniquely situated to aid the suffering, to coordinate efforts and exchange gathered wisdom. For example, mental health care so often unfolds in private rooms, nestled under the protective blankets of confidentiality laws. Church—especially Anglican church—acts out. It is public, communal and so unbounded. These specializations alone set the stage for some kind of synergy. The oncoming wave of American mental health need is reaching full swell, corresponding too with the long-documented paucities in institutional participation and social capital. And even though the relationship between these two trends would require another 750 words to expound, it is easy to imagine how the current situation demands collaboration between the private and public helpers, the individual and the institutional. The mental health apparatus and the church do well to integrate.

And this brings us to the second Freud-Pfister lesson. I borrow words from psychologist Dr. Steven Sandage and biblical scholar Dr. Jeannine K. Brown: Institutions do not integrate; people integrate. If church and mental health are to cooperate, they will only do so through real-life, flesh-and-blood networks. Pfister and Freud engaged in integrative efforts when they exchanged letters, when they broke bread with one another’s families and when they challenged one another with playful pointedness. When we gather the psychological and the theological, we do not only engage in abstract discussions, but we also forge trusted relationships that network our community efforts. So, for the sake of individual and our collective wellbeing, may we live into Freud’s begrudging words. Doctors, priests, patients, deacons, counselors, congregants: Put up with one another.