Psychic Conversion

PSYCHIC CONVERSION 1 IN A RECENT book symptomatic and expressive of the contemporary drama of existential and religious subjectivity , psychiatrist Claudio Naranjo speaks of creating " a unified science of human development," 2 " a unified science and art of human change." 3 He attempts to disengage from the diverse techniques, exercises, and procedures of education, psychotherapy , and religion, an experimental meeting ground based on a unity of concern and a commonalty of method. The various ways of growth which he examines-ranging from behavior therapy to Sufism-are, he says, contributions to a single process of human transformation involving: (1) shift in identity; (2) increased contact with reality; (3) simultaneous increase in both participation and detachment; (4) simultaneous increase in freedom and the ability to surrender ; (5) unification-intrapersonal, interpersonal, between body and mind, subject and object, man and God; (6) increased self-acceptance; and (7) increase in consciousness.4 He concludes his book with the following summary of his position: The end-state sought by the various traditions, schools, or systems under discussion is one that is characterized by the experience of 1 I wish to acknowledge with gratitude that the term " psychic conversion " was suggested to me by Rev. Vernon Gregson, 8. J. My original term was "affective conversion." That Fr. Gregson's suggestion hits things off better should be obvious from the descripfion given in this paper of the transformation referred to by this term. 2 Claudio Naranjo, The One Quest (New York: Ballantine, 197~), p. 15. 3 Ibid., p. ~8. • Ibid., p. I~~. ~00 PSYCHIC CONVERSION 201 openness to the reality of every moment, freedom from mechanical ties to the past, and surrender to the laws of man's being, one of living in the body and yet in control of the body, in the world and yet in control of circumstances by means of the power of both awareness and independence. It is also an experience of selfacceptance , where " self " does not stand for a preconceived notion or image but is the experiential self-reality moment after moment. Above all, it is an experience of experiencing. For this is what consciousness means, what openness means, what surrendering leads into, what remains after the veils of conditioned perception are raised, and what the aim of acceptance is.5 My argument in this paper is twofold: first, that Bernard Lonergan's analysis of conscious intentionality not only constitutes an essential contribution to the foundational quest of a unified science and art of human change, but also provides the most embracing overall framework offered to date for the development of such a theory-praxis; and second, that the exigence for self-appropriation recognized and heeded by Lonergan , when it extends to the existential subject, to what Lonergan would regard as the fourth level of intentional consciousness , becomes an exigence for psychic self-appropriation, calling for the release of what C. G. Jung calls the transcendent function , the mediation of psyche with intentionality in an intrasubjective collaboration heading toward individuation. The release of the transcendent function is a fourth conversion, beyond the religious, moral, and intellectual conversions specified by Lonergan. I call it psychic conversion. It aids the sublation of intellectually self-appropriating consciousness by moral and religious subjectivity, and thus is an intrinsic dimension of the foundational reality whose objectification constitutes the foundations of theology. The seven characteristics of human transformation listed by Naranjo may be considered as potential effects of psychic conversion . But its immanent intelligibility is something different. It is the gaining of a capacity on the part of the existential subject to disengage the symbolic and archetypal constitution of 0 Ibid., p. 224, ROBERT M. DORAN moral and religious subjectivity. At a given stage in the selfappropriation of intentional consciousness, the intention of value or of the human good must come to participate in an ongoing conspiracy with the psychosymbolic dimensions of human subjectivity. The attempt to objectify this conspiracy will result in a position complementary and compensatory to that of Lonergan and compensatory to that of Jung. First, the kind of psychotherapy inspired can and must be moved into the epochal movement of the human spirit disengaged in Lonergan's transcendental method. Only such a...