Killing Moral Clarity While Trying to Save It
Confronting the psychology of abuse can seem complex. It needs to be.
Dear Reader,
Apologies for the lateness of this newsletter. I started it two weeks ago, anticipating that I’d be able to knock it out between about five other assignments that had me tied up. I was wrong. In part, due to the intensity of the assignments (can’t wait to share about one in particular) and in part due to the time I ended up needing to sort my thoughts on the issue. This one is long, so it’s kind of like I wrote a “double-issue” on this topic.
On to the issue at hand.
A couple weeks ago, someone forwarded me Samuel James' review of Chuck DeGroat's When Narcissism Comes to Church. A little later, I saw Justin Taylor tweet a link to the review with the caption "The Triumph of the Therapeutic." That got me interested. Since then, it's been republished at Mere Orthodoxy and shared quite a bit more.
I decided to read the review and found myself scratching my head over the enthusiasm. I'm sorry to say, it's a bad review, though I don't know if that's a result of bad reading or bad faith. For example, James accuses DeGroat of relying almost entirely on the “feelings”of therapist and victim to assess whether behavior is narcissistic. But DeGroat is very careful on this issue. He differentiates narcissism as a pathology from instances of narcissistic behavior, which is to say the difference between patterns and incidents. In addition, James’ own review describes the extensive definition of narcissism in the book, calling it “a little overwhelming” and “clinical.” Often, his criticisms would resolve themselves simply by reading the surrounding context of the passages he quotes. (More on that below.)
With that said, I’m not going to do a blow-by-blow defense of the book. While I think specific critiques don’t hold up, I think there are larger questions in the background, informing James’ argument, and they’re well worth addressing. Specifically, they relate to language, knowledge, and “the therapeutic.”
the language problem
Throughout the review, James argues that therapeutic language is insufficient to address the moral and ethical issues associated with narcissism. He writes:
[DeGroat] abandons the language of sin, repentance, and discipline in favor of therapeutic language like narcissism, vulnerability, and gaslighting. The problem is not that those words are fake or unreal. The problem is those words aren’t enough. They leave spiritual abuse in the realm of the psychological, not the moral.
First, if you only read James’ review, you will get the impression that DeGroat never addresses the question of sin. This simply isn’t true. From the introduction onward, DeGroat directly addresses sin. For example, in Chapter One, he writes:
At its most extreme, narcissism can manifest in violence, bullying, coercion and lawlessness…
We look beneath the waterline as a means of understanding, even empathizing, but never excusing narcissistic behavior — particularly in its most abusive forms.
Critics might wonder, “Why not keep things simple, calling narcissism “pride” and abusive behavior ‘sin?’” DeGroat explains:
…we need to recognize the complex psychological dynamics at work in the narcissist. In doing so we’re equipped with awareness, self-protection and — with wisdom and discernment — empathy.
In other words, what is on offer in When Narcissism Comes to Church is an account, via the language of psychology, for how and why one is inclined towards these sins.
This isn’t unprecedented in church history. The language of Neo-Platonism informed the work of Augustine, establishing “truth, beauty, and goodness” as a framework that remains central in Christian theology and philosophy. Spiritual warfare language that was developed within the Charismatic movements (as well as at Fuller Seminary) in the 1980’s has become part of the common nomenclature, including the language of “our identity in Christ.” The latter is a helpful way to summarize a broad biblical category, of course, and I’m sure defenders of Augustine’s “truth, beauty, goodness” paradigm would say the same.
This raises the question of whether psychological language offers value in a similar way. I believe that in many contexts (most in the West), it does. First, the language of shame and trauma help to account for the role of suffering in a person’s inclinations towards certain sinful behaviors. (This raises the question of “the therapeutic,” which I’ll address in a moment.) Second, it refers to knowledge — not only in the abstract (psychology as science) but in practice (therapy as practice).
the knowledge problem
Twice in the review of When Narcissism Comes to Church, James puts himself in the role of defense attorney on behalf of characters DeGroat uses as examples of narcissistic behavior. The first is a short anecdote from early in the book — one brief enough that I’m not interested in haggling over. The second is much more significant.
It's the story of a couple whose marriage was struggling in the midst of the wife’s battle with cancer. Whenever she expressed feeling abandoned by God, her husband talked about how "God has a plan" and "healing is on the way." Chuck describes this husband’s behavior as “spiritual bypassing,” a narcissistic way of managing one's own anxiety, using cliches and platitudes as a shield that deflects the emotional needs of others, leaving the narcissist with no responsibility for bearing another person’s burdens. It can have profound emotional and relational consequences.
James defends the husband, writing:
It stretches the limits of charitable reading to contemplate that [the husband’s] response in this scenario can easily and obviously be chalked up to spiritual abuse." It could be, but isn't "automatically true."
… DeGroat has left the reader with the near impossible task of resisting spiritual abuse with nothing more than impressions."
First, it’s notable that this critique ignores more than 400 words of context and explanation of this story that clarify why one would call this narcissistic abuse. Much of the rest of the chapter (and for that matter, the rest of the book) provides the kind of nuance James implies is lacking here. This brings me back to something I noted before — James’ failure to acknowledge the ways DeGroat differentiates between patterns and incidents.
Second, this raises an epistemic question. What can a psychologist, a therapist, a counselor, or a pastor know in any given situation? What can be learned through training? What can we cultivate that deepens our capacity for discernment?
There’s a complex connection between body and mind that informs all sorts of human behavior and decision-making. In King of the World, David Remnick describes how Muhammad Ali “knew” he was going to beat Sonny Liston for his first championship belt. You hear this sort of thing all the time in sports: a quarterback knowing where the linebackers are headed, a batter knowing what pitches are coming, F1 drivers knowing when they had their moment to make a move on a track.
Some of that knowledge is cognitive and rational; much of it is not. It’s intuitive, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t knowledge. There’s a reason that therapists are required to get a certain number of hours under supervision before they can be licensed, and for similar reasons, there’s wisdom in pastors who are doing soul care to have supervision for a season. The practice itself provides a different kind of knowledge — sensitivity to body language, breathing, movements of the eyes, recognizing when a person has been pushed too far, or when they’re starting to disassociate.
This is itself a kind of knowledge, and it comes from a combination of intuition, pattern recognition, and cognitive, rational thinking. Chuck’s framework — which is very much about pattern recognition via behavior, story, and the impact of a narcissist on others — relies on this kind of knowledge, and James dismisses all of it by saying that he leaves nothing but feelings by which to discern what is and isn’t narcissism.
the therapeutic problem
Lastly, James’ critiques raise the broader idea, common among those concerned about modernity’s effects on the human condition (including me!), that psychology since Freud has eroded our capacity to make moral and ethical judgments. This is why Justin Taylor shared the link with the caption, “The Triumph of the Therapeutic.”
In his concluding paragraph, James writes:
[T]his book makes a monumental decision… to put the Bible’s moral language to the side, to call a disorder what the Bible calls sin, to call self-actualization what the Bible calls repentance.
I’ve already spoken to some of the language questions here, but I’ll reiterate: I don’t think the idea that DeGroat puts the Bible’s moral language to the side holds up under a good faith reading of the text. It is the last two charges that are worth delving a little deeper into. They both imply the same idea — that DeGroat is shifting moral and ethical questions into the territory of self-help.
Not that such a critique doesn’t have its place. Philip Rieff, in his 1966 work The Triumph of the Therapeutic (referenced by Taylor), speaks to the way these shifts have become pervasive in modern life, and that work remains highly relevant and influential in philosophy, social theory, and public theology today. To put it way too simply, Rieff argues that in the absence of a religious framework for morality or meaning, modern man’s search for purpose (his “telos”) can land only on his own narrow interests and pursuit of pleasure.
If you want to read a somewhat deeper dive into these ideas without committing to his whole tome, this article by Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn is a great place to start. (She also wrote the preface to a recent edition of the book.) She cites James Nolan Jr’s. description of the characteristics of the therapeutic:
(1) a pronounced cultural preoccupation with the individual self
(2) a notable concern with the place of emotions in making sense of oneself and one’s place in the world
(3) the emergence of a new class of counselors, psychologists, and therapists who have been socially recognized as those most qualified to guide the emotion-laden self through the complexities of modern social life
(4) the reinterpretation of a growing number of behaviors through the pathologically determined heuristic of addiction, disorder, and dysfunction
(5) the unique cultural salience of the “language of victimhood.”
I imagine most readers would recognize these as features of our cultural milieu. Many Christians' wariness of modern psychology reflects an understandable desire to reject this moral framework. I’m very sympathetic to Rieff’s argument and think it could be an important part of a discussion about the crisis of leadership in the church. But I don’t think James correctly maps his critiques of DeGroat onto Rieff's framework.
I recently heard someone provide a helpful (if slightly contrived) differentiation between rationality and reason. Rationality is about internal logic — ideas must relate properly and consistently to one another (think “ratio). Reason, on the other hand, requires logic but employs it within a larger framework, rooted in something more substantive than any idea within the system (think “we have a reason to believe”). Rationality, then, is the modus operandi of modernity; reason, of more traditional frames of thought like Christianity, other world religions, or the transcendent frameworks of antiquity.
The “triumph of the therapeutic” is the result of rationality. Pathologizing evil and making self-actualization a kind of telos for our lives is entirely consistent within the framework provided by modernity.
But the misuse of psychological language and knowledge doesn’t compel its total rejection any more than abuse within the church compels the rejection of Christianity. If we’re employing reason with a fundamental moral framework rooted in the Bible, then employing psychological language and categories can be entirely valid. We hold up new ideas against the truth we trust, and we reason as to whether they might be true on their own terms (i.e., not in terms of their potential or actual abuses).
This is not the triumph of the therapeutic, as the ends aren’t about self-actualization and pleasure. The end sought, as DeGroat articulates again and again, is to be made whole in Jesus.
the pastoral theology problem
One thing that DeGroat doesn’t get credit for — both in this review and more broadly — is the degree to which he expresses compassion for the narcissists themselves. A significant part of his project is to help those who are inclined to narcissistic abuse become self-aware and seek the help they need in order to heal.
While James argues that DeGroat’s framework makes it more difficult to address the church abuse problem, I disagree entirely. Most narcissists have a deep lack of awareness of their sins and the impact they have on others, and the kind of confrontations that tend to happen within the framework James suggests are rarely effective.
If you confront a narcissist and say, “You’re prideful, abusive, and manipulative of others,” you’ll likely get one of two responses. You might hear them say, “That’s simply not true — I’m deeply insecure and I’m surrounded by people who tell me they don’t think I’m abusive and confront me when they think I’m wrong.” In this case, that’s likely all true! The confrontation fails to consider the way the individual’s pathology makes them profoundly blind to their own sins and motivations, and it fails to account for the way modern society incentivizes others to attach themselves to narcissists. The outcome is often a mealy-mouthed, “I’m sorry for the way my behavior made you feel” apology.
On the other hand, you might hear them address the accusation directly, saying, “I struggle deeply with pride, tell me who I’ve sinned against and I’ll apologize.” In this case if there is a kind of narcissistic pathology at work, they can easily perform these tasks again and again. Critics might continue to say, “They’re abusive,” but co-leaders can point to the acts of repentance and attempts at reconciliation as evidence of a malleable heart. That’s all the more likely within a system that’s benefitting from a narcissist’s charisma and energy.
DeGroat’s framework challenges us to consider the more complex interaction between sin and suffering at the heart of the behavior. By understanding narcissism as a psychological defense, a built-in response to internalized trauma and grief, we see a different kind of inroad for caring for the soul of a narcissist. They can be confronted with their sin and its impact on a community while also being shown connections between that behavior and their deeper wounds. It does nothing to diminish the power of sin and the need for the cross to do so. In fact, it expands the way we can see its power — addressing not only the sins that we might have committed, but the power of sin to malform us.
It also doesn’t let them off the hook. Rather, it clarifies that their future in ministry requires them dealing with the brokenness in their own life and story. Failure to do so will only extend the pattern and make certain that they will end up disqualified from ministry.
modernity, wisdom traditions, and narcissism
Here’s a valid question: “If you’re right, and the language of psychology and the therapeutic framework are so helpful (necessary even) for understanding narcissism, then what were Christians supposed to do before Freud?”
First, I think there are important questions to ask about the degree to which pathological narcissism is a product of modernity. Christopher Lasch’s work is especially important here, as is (ironically enough) Philip Rieff’s. In other words, to what degree is pathological narcissism a matter of spiritual malformation and a uniquely modern expression of age-old problems?
Second, almost every pre-modern society had an understanding of phases of life. You may have heard this referred to as something like “wildman, warrior, king, sage.” The concept is that in different phases of life, we relate to the world in different ways. In adolescence, there’s an untamed and wild energy, looking for purpose. As warriors, we’re directed, making our way in the world and establishing ourselves. As kings, we have built our little kingdoms and we try to rule them justly. As sages, our kingdom has begun to fade or we’ve given it away, and we seek to give ourselves away as a source of wisdom for others.
In one sense, these transitions are recognizable. In another, we can see how culture tends to value the earlier stages — the warriors especially. Many, including Dan Allender and Richard Rohr, have noted that much of the dysfunction in our society is due to the failure of our leaders to embrace those transitions. One reason the transition is hard is because it often means going to the desert or wilderness (real or metaphorical) to address our wounds. To what extent, then, is a narcissistic culture the product of unaddressed wounds?
Third, there’s a poverty of teaching and practice on the inner life in the evangelical tradition. Psychology has provided language for that in ways that have had resonance with many Christians trying to make sense of their own conflicted and contradictory thoughts and emotions, but it actually isn’t the first discipline to do so. The Christian contemplative tradition has done so for centuries, but often in language and through sources evangelicals have found suspect. Starting with Augustine, there’s a rich history of inner examination, wrestling with contradiction, and accepting mystery and ambiguity about the soul. It’s no surprise to me that DeGroat currently has a series available about St. Theresa Avila’s Interior Castle, a work whose language might differ greatly from contemporary psychology, but whose subject does not. Psychology is the tool at hand in modernity to ask many of these questions, but it’s far from the only tool available to us.
Many of the critiques leveled at DeGroat come from a genuine love for the church and I’m sure that’s true for Samuel James. But I also believe that a simplistic understanding of sin has contributed to much of the damage we’ve witnessed in the past few years, ironically letting narcissistic abusers off the hook by providing superficial categories of understanding and pathways of restoration. We need a framework that allows for the complexity of the inner life, is compassionate for the suffering of others, but nonetheless holds individuals accountable.
Maybe the most significant distinction between James and DeGroat boils down to this: James sees repentance as acknowledging and turning away from sins. DeGroat, without denying that definition, recognizes that the work of repentance often requires addressing our wounds and our shame. This is deep inner work that the church’s contemplative tradition accounted for in ways that evangelicalism struggles to do
At the end of the day, I’m not arguing that we need psychological or therapeutic language to care for souls or address abuses. I am, however, entirely convinced that a language that lacks proper nuance and fails to account for the complex intersection of sin and suffering will only extend the impact of narcissism in the church. We have decades of evidence to prove it.
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A big thank you to those of you who’ve signed up as patrons for paid subscriptions. I have a couple of ideas for subscriber-only content in the new year, and I’ll be sharing that soon. Zero pressure on anyone to subscribe otherwise — thank you for reading and sharing.
Next week, I’ll likely dig into some of what I spoke about last week at the Hannah Arendt Center on social media and contemporary spirituality, as well as a few thoughts it provoked in me. The time at Bard was fantastic, and I left even more impressed with Roger Berkowitz’s commitment to independent, ideologically unbound thought.
I’ll also be able to share a little preview of an upcoming project. Stay tuned.
I re-read much of Mary Karr’s The Art of Memoir last week as part of a larger project (news soon on that). A terrific read, even if you don’t ever intend to write a memoir.
The October 21st episode of The Bulwark Podcast is worth a listen. It’s a live interview with Michael Fanone, a D.C. cop who was assaulted at the January 6th riot, suffered significant injuries, and testified before the January 6th Committee. It’s bracing, and as Fanone gets worked up, the language gets righteously rough.
The October 20th episode of The Remnant is a fantastic conversation between Jonah Goldberg and Yuval Levin, with some especially good stuff on virtue and cynicism.
I’ve gone on long enough… see you next week.
Hi Mike, thank you for your this thoughtful response to Samuel James. I didn’t read yours until after I wrote mine but thought I’d share it with you since we make some similar points. I’m very concerned that Christians are being influenced by these kinds of critiques and dismissing wise voices like DeGroat et al. Thanks for being one of those wise voices.
https://onceaweek.substack.com/p/theologians-call-things-what-they