Wednesday, April 23, 2003

The Judas Complex

Most mental health researchers I know believe strongly (a) that there are more psychological disorders out there than diagnostic manuals currently define, and (b) that the next revisions of their manuals will lift up more rather than fewer ways to get and stay distressed. (B) is a sure thing. (A) is less certain, although I for one have an addition to propose, should any of the editors ever be of a mind to listen.

My proposed addition to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders ---offered with tongue slightly in cheek, I call a "Judas Complex." The source of the name is not the infamous Judas Iscariot, but rather all those in the Christian tradition who have contributed to making him so. St. Augustine, for example, characterized the biblical Judas as the embodiment of everything reprehensible about the Jewish people as a people. By contrast, to the very end Jesus embraced Judas as one of his chosen Twelve. Clearly, Augustine suffered from my newly discovered disorder. Judas himself, and Jesus, did not.

For the sake of enhancing my respectability in the mental health community, I will describe the Judas Complex after the fashion of approved diagnostic manuals. The defining characteristics of this complex are: (1) An unassailable conviction of being part of a noble plan for making everyone else's life better; (2) Acute moral outrage over the failure of others either to appreciate the wisdom of the plan, to support the plan vigorously, or both; (3) Relentless blaming of someone else for even the smallest failure(s) of the noble plan; (4) Consistently describing the party or parties blamed in the worst possible light, most frequently for the purpose of inciting retaliation by the plan's remaining advocates; (5) Evoking the name of Satan in the interest of explaining the offensive behavior of the blamed party or parties; and (6) Exhibiting intense negative reactions to considering that there might be some likeness between the subject of the disorder and Judas Iscariot himself, e.g.: "Surely you do not mean me!"(Mark 14:19).

Analogous with the relatively high incidence of sickle cell anemia in the black population, the relatively prominent presentation of the Judas Complex among Christians has led some theologians to suggest something along the lines of a genetic predisposition to the disorder. Generally, theologians who find this suggestion fruitful also exhibit a strong interest in some form of the doctrine of original sin. Along with vehement denial of the disorder altogether, a particularly strong indicator of its presence in practicing Christians is the disclaiming of responsibility for it on the ground that is part of the unalterable order of nature itself.

Analogous with the resistance to treatment prominent in the major personality disorders, the Judas Complex is more easily adjusted to than it is resolved or dissolved. What seems to offer the most consistent palliative help is a ready supply of people to denigrate, oppress, and in extreme forms, even to exterminate. Virulent Christian anti-Semitism seems to be an especially cogent illustration of how people afflicted with the disorder can assuage guilt feelings by projecting personal wrongdoings on others.

This is about the best that I can do to get my new idea about a mental disorder heard in the therapeutic community. And I have no illusions about what is likely to happen there: we are going to be told about a number of new mental disorders, but the one I have just defined probably will not be among them. That's okay. It is the Christian community that most needs to hear about it anyway.

Within our churches, the most evident feature of this complex is scapegoating: If it weren't for…everything would be all right. On this score, the real Judas got a bum rap from the very start. Caiaphas' henchmen wouldn't have been able to find Jesus without Judas' help? Are you kidding me? What really gets interesting about what happened to this man is who put the finger on him in the first place. Actually, it had to be quite an assortment of people: former followers who joined the procession up the Mount of Olives to arrest him; the Eleven companions who barely woke up in time to see the Lord hauled off for trial; the crowds who were supposed to riot over the Messiah's being put to death and never did. How convenient a money-grubbing Judas turned out for all of them.

And for us, too? Perhaps --- if the guilt we feel for failing our Lord in our own lives becomes too much for us either to bear or to accept responsibility for. If Matthew has it right, Judas couldn't handle his own guilt feelings, and hanged himself to be freed from them. Sometimes I think that his death was in its own way as tragic as Jesus' was. For even at the moment of his being given over, Jesus still could call his betrayer "Friend." (Matthew 26:50) Only a few hours later, Jesus would die for Judas, too. When I "survey the wondrous cross, on which the Prince of Glory died," I just can't keep holding onto my own Judas Complex. Thanks be to God.

Wednesday, April 09, 2003

A Better Way To Deal With Sadness

In Love Among the Ruins, a novel set in the aftermath of the Kennedy era, Robert Clark depicts a conversation between Edward, a pharmaceuticals representative, and a favorite client, Dr. Fields. They are talking about a highly promising new drug for treating depression. "I think that's the coming thing…," the wise old doctor says. "Stress followed by despair…feeings of worthlessness, torpor, anomie, flat-out nothingness." Edward then asks, "So the Age of…what, Anxiety's over?" Dr. Fields replies, "Superceded. At least some time soon. By the Age of Black Bile, of Acedia…spiritual sloth…despair."

Dr. Fields was prophetic. For the first half of the 20th century --- as poets, philosophers, psychoanalysts, and even politicians all knew well --- the big life-issues revolved around coping with a cascade of fears. Sexual repression, wars (hot and cold), economic collapse, genocide, and a nuclear arms race will do that to you. And the Age of Anxiety isn't completely over. Enron, WorldCom, orange alerts, ineffective antibiotics, and duct tape shortages are making sure. "Superceded," though? A good way of putting it. The "coming thing" has indeed come, and dwelling just on our fears won't help us very much to cope with it.

The signs? For one thing, the failed hopes that underlie collapsed marriages. Our country enjoys the dubious honor of sustaining one of the highest divorce rates in the history of civilization; some experts say it's the highest. For another, the rising tide of suicide among kids in their teens and even younger. And then there's all that cacophony that attempts to pass for music, pounding the last vestiges of sensibility and understanding out of traumatized ears and brains. Not enough? Then, add the desperate efforts to escape despair that are at the root of our society's alcohol and drug problems, as well as of our impossible-to-win "War on Drugs." (Maybe we shouldn't get too distraught over the latter; after all, we didn't win the war on poverty either.)

What Bunyan famously referred to as "the slough of despond," Dr. Fields might have described as a deep and abiding sadness over losses too numerous to enumerate, too important to discount, and too searing fully to heal. For this kind of sadness, it will make little difference whether the relief sought comes from bars, the street, or chem labs. And this is what is really sad about sadness: how easy it is to confuse curing it with medicating it.

A great deal of human sadness, rooted in what Judith Viorst once called "necessary losses," is in fact curable in very ordinary ways. For the losses that give rise to it are themselves very ordinary, even if painful, losses. They have to do with basic human needs, e.g., for food, clothing, shelter, companionship, emotional support, and credible reassurance that things can and do get better. Mapping how to get these needs met is not like mapping the genome. What we do, to get enough of what we need, or recover enough of what we have lost, is put up a fuss (hungry newborns are especially adept at this), and work together to overcome our mutual frustrations (newborns are not very good at this, which is why it is a good thing to grow up.)

It is hard to get through life without at least some sadness, because putting up a fuss sometimes falls on deaf ears, or merely provokes whoever we hope will help us to put up a fuss of their own. This is the kind of sadness that Freud called "ordinary human unhappiness" (in contrast with "neurotic misery"). I like this way of putting it, and I imagine that Dr. Fields did too. When the frustrations go deep enough, and last long enough, medicating the sadness might help temporarily. Sooner or later, though, we will still have to summon the resources within us to get angry again, to be hopeful that help is available, and to make ourselves available to be of help to someone else. Caring about ourselves and others is still the best Rx for sadness around.

There is a kind of sadness, though, that is hard to treat this way. Medicating it doesn't work very well either. It's the sadness that comes from discovering the aw(e)ful gap between our aspirations and our accomplishments, our noble ideals and our petulant actions, our promises and our delivery --- between what we ought to make so, can make so, and actually do make so. Here's something really to be sad about. We will never get through this particular slough just by howling, snorting, sipping, or doing-for. The only thing that will really help is forgiveness.