Fantasy: The Experiencer and the Interpreter

LUCY BREGMAN I SYCHOLOGY of religion still has an "alien" status for many within the disciplines loosely organized as "Religious Studies." The associations which accompany the very phrase "psychology of religion" probably include "reductionism," the whole question of "scientific" vs. "humanistic" approaches to the study of man, and a genuine suspicion of the role psychologists have played in "adapting" man to technological society. Obviously, there are psychological thinkers who have themselves raised these same criticisms, or attempted to overcome what they believed to be limitations and biases in current psychological theory. There have also been students of religion who have been open to psychological approaches and theoretical categories, incorporating these into their understanding of religiousness. In this essay, we choose one such psychological category, the notion of fantasy, in order to highlight a key problem in the psychology of religion, and explore possible solutions. Why fantasy? And what is fantasy? As psychologists understand this concept, fantasy is a type of mental activity, a thought-process which is defined over against "goal-directed" practical thinking. The usual qualities assigned to fantastical thinking are: fanciful, dramatic, fulfilling, pictorial, effortless, and egocentric.' In some psychological writings these characteristics are disputed, but on the whole psychologists agree in describing fantasy as a special type of thinking, dominant in such activities as dreams, day-dreams, and some forms of play. Fantasy-processes also appear in Thematic Apperception Test stories and Rorshach responses, two sources of data much used by clinicians and researchers. Both Freud and Jung depended on fantasy to provide the "royal road" to the Unconscious, and to an understanding of the true nature and meaning of religion and mythology. The origins of these as products of human culture and human creative imagination lie in fantastical thought. Myths and religious beliefs' are, from the psychological viewpoint, fantasies writ large. However, fantasy is exactly the sort of category which made a generation of religionists squeamish about the psychological approach to religion. Even when writers on religion do wish to employ "fantasy" as a category themselves, they are likely to redefine it away from psychological usage, as we shall see. On the surface, 'Henry A Murray, Techniques for a Systematic Investigation of Fantasy," Journal of Psychology 3 (1937), pp. 115-43 LUCY BREGMAN (Ph D , University of Chicago) is Assistant Professor of Religion at Temple University in Philadelphia. She has published other articles on religion and imaginative processes in Journal of Religion and Review of Religious Research. 723 Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jaar/article/XLIII/4/723/714995 by AAR Member Access user on 17 December 2021 Fantasy: The Experiencer and the Interpreter 724 LUCY BREGMAN Freud did say that no dream could be interpreted without possessing the associations of the patient. But he said as well that associations are unnecessary when one can interpret the dream symbolically . . . So, too, Freud did insist that psychoanalytic interpretation can be properly administered only under the circumstances of therapy. Yet, even when he strikes the attitude of the fastidious therapist, his interpretive method inclines to a gluttonous absorption of all subjects, including those that have not given their consents.2 Thus, depth psychology becomes the "science of practically everything" (including religion) but at the expense of idiosyncratic associations provided by those creating the symbols and also at the expense of such reciprocity as that which 2 Philip Rieff, "Introduction" to Delusion and Dream, by Sigmund Freud (Boston Beacon Press, 1956), p. 3. Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jaar/article/XLIII/4/723/714995 by AAR Member Access user on 17 December 2021 "fantasy" would not be a very promising place to begin a reconciliation between the psychologist and the religionist. There are at least three objections to the use of "fantasy" as it has been applied to religion — three causes for squeamishness, if you like. 1. To say that religion is essentially fantasy means, or seems to mean, that myths and religious beliefs could not be a response to a reality "out there." This position, which associates fantasy with psychological reductionism, becomes plausible when the opposition between "fantastical" and "realistic" thinking becomes confused with ordinary, non-psychological opposition between "fantasy" and "reality." 2. The specific contents assigned to fantasies, what they are really about, seem determined by the theoretical bias of the psychologist. Monotonously, Freudian thought on religious symbols or-any other symbols discovers sexual organs and longed-for parents everywhere. Jungians, who see fantasies expressed through archetypes, guiding the person toward lndividuation, are equally monotonous in substituting "the Self for every religious symbol of divinity or totality. 3. An adequate interpretation of fantasy requires an "outside" stance; the fantasizer him/herself is immersed in his/her experiences, under the spell of the images through which fantasy works. A detachment from these images, an analysis and explanation of them, requires a break from the fantasy itself. In some cases, the fantasizer and the interpreter must be two completely separate individuals. Applied to religion, this means that a knowledgeable interpretation must come from the psychologist-observer, rather than the believer/participant who is enthralled by his/her own symbols. Of these three separate problems connected with "fantasy," we will focus on the third. The first problem, the "reductionist" position, has received a lion's share of the attention from critics of Freud in particular. In the newer psychological views of fantasy, the epistemological presupposition that fantasy and "reality" oppose each other disappears. Moreover, "fantasy" may be a useful way to describe an imaginative component in our experience of the world, but fantasy is in itself neither illusion nor hallucination. The dichotomy between "fantasy" and "reality" — however ingrained this may be in our normal thinking — should not bias us against the use of "fantasy" as a technical term to describe a certain type of thought process. The second problem and the third are clearly intertwined. Rieff, pondering how Freud was able "to make psychology the science of practically everything," comments: FANTASY 725 With a little moral imagination and intellectual self-discernment the sophisticated reader may see in [snake handling] some edifying parallels to his own existentialist predicament. One may feel pity and compassion, as one must in every contemplation of bewildered man, and yet know where one stands ethically and intellectually himself4 This is clearly already the interpreter speaking — the cultists themselves sound no more "bewildered" than La Barre. The cult leader, whose psychological portrait comprises the most vivid and memorable section of the book, does show some confusion about whether the snake itself is evil ("represents the Devil") or whether the evil is only in man.5 This parallels La Barre's own problem in insisting that "Symbols are never discovered in nature, but as humanly arbitrary associations they are always culturally invented"6 while at the same time implying that the snake has been the subject of enormous symbolic elaborations because of its shape 'For example, Robert Seidenberg, T h e Trauma of Eventlessness," in Jean Baker Miller, ed., Psychoanalysis and Women (Baltimore- Penguin Books, 1973), pp. 350-62. 4 Weston La Barre, They Shall Take Up Serpents. Psychology of the Southern SnakeHandling Cult (New York Schocken Books, 1969), p ix. 'Ibid., p 124 'Ibid., p. 66 Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jaar/article/XLIII/4/723/714995 by AAR Member Access user on 17 December 2021 hopefully exists between therapist and patient. Instead, the interpreter as expert can confidently discover the "real meanings" of myths, symbols, rituals, theological doctrines, etc., without any sort of feedback expected or received. Yet where therapists do have the benefit of idiosyncratic associations, and background data on the individual fantasizer, they have been willing to abandon traditional "Freudian" categories and come up with entirely different kinds of meanings, even for classic symptoms such as phobias.3 It appears, then, that the "monotony of interpretation" might in part be due to the lack of reciprocity which characterizes depth-psychological forays into interpretation of religious symbolism. This lack of reciprocity is extremely easy to illustrate; along with it goes the certitude (arrogance?) of the interpreter that he knows what the believer/experiencer is really after, is really doing, better than the latter individual does. Since dreams are decidedly the favorite paradigm of fantasy-activity for depth psychologists, we can think of the religious experiencer as undergoing a dream, enslaved to its images. The psychologist wakes him, records and analyzes the dream using the "symbolic" method, and announces the interpretation to a group of wide-awake colleagues or readers, meanwhile letting his subject return to sleep. It is always someone else's dream. Regardless of the "correctness" of the interpretation, the split between interpreter and experiencer is embedded in its logic. The interpreter and experiencer assume two social roles, without the chance for interaction which takes place in therapy. A good illustration of such an interpreter/experiencer split is found in Weston La Barre's They Shall Take Up Serpents: Psychology of the Southern SnakeHandling Cult. It is an excellent example of Freudian interpretation, with enough background information provided on the cult and its adherents to give the interpretation plausibility. However, La Barre has two decided factors in his favor: none of the cultists about whom the book was written are at all likely to read it, and snake-handling is sufficiently bizarre for middle-class educated people to demand that there be some "explanation" for it. At the book's beginning, La Barre states: 726 LUCY BREGMAN Barefoot is well a ware of the contingencies in symbolic masturbatory handling of the snake he may get greater magic gifts and miracles — or he may be killed Thus Barefoot's sexuality, in the technical analytic sense, is of a fearful "phallic"masturbatory kind that fears external punishment for pleasure; it is not a secure, self-possessed, mature "genital" sexuality.10 The final step is to focus on the culture which produced snake-handling, the religious rural South in which "naive hysteric denial still remains, since the Civil War at least, the prime defense mechanism."1' Whether La Barre's interpretation of snake-handling is correct or not, the snake-handlers' own views of what they do are — as "hysteric denials" — not considered relevant to the final evaluation. Another illustration of the interpreter's superior grasp of the experiencer's meanings can be found where the tone is appreciative rather than one of "pity and compassion." In Answer to Job, Carl Jung declared the dogma of the Assumption of Mary to be "the most important religious event since the Reformation."12 Since this is a rather unusual evaluation, as Jung himself admits, we are entitled to ask why he felt this doctrine to be so important. He offers two reasons: 1 The papal declarations leave Protestantism with the odium of being nothing but a man's religion which allows no metaphysical representation of women . . . Protestantism has obviously not given sufficient attention to the signs of the times which point to the equality of women |3 Current feminist theologians would agree with the sentiment, but wonder if the Virgin Mary is an adequate symbolic expression of women's equality.14 2. Current Protestant thought is obviously out of touch with the tremendous archetypal happenings in the psyche of the individual and the masses, and with the symbols which are intended to compensate the truly apocalyptic world situation today.15 Moreover, this criticism also applies to the Catholics, for Jung admits "the Pope is 'Ibid., p 75. Ibid , p. 74 'Ibid , p. 94 "•Ibid , p. 148 "Ibid., p. 161 l2 Carl G. Jung, "Answer to Job," Psychology and Religion West and East (Princeton. Princeton University Press, 1969), p 464 l3 Ibid , p 465 l4 See, for example, Mary Daly, Beyond God the Father (Boston Beacon Press, 1973) "Jung, "Answer to Job," p 463 8 Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jaar/article/XLIII/4/723/714995 by AAR Member Access user on 17 December 2021 and attributes.7 La Barre's survey of snake-symbolism leads him to the rhetorical question, "Where is the snake not a phallic symbol?'8 but it is clear that the symbolism he has examined is far more complex than this conclusion indicates. In fact, he allows that "Once selected as an unconscious body-image symbol, the snake expresses every psychosexual modality of the body."9 First phallus, then everything else; yet when it comes to a discussion of the psychology of the cult leader, the interpretation which emerges is clearly based on the "phallic" equivalence, and the leader's problems are described as follows: FANTASY 727 II Several years ago, a popular religious writer published a "Theological Essay on Festivity and Fantasy" which attempted to use fantasy as a category in "Ibid. "Ibid., p 468 18 In Holy Ghost People (Thistle Films), depicting a congregation in Scrabble Creek, West Virginia. "Jung, "Answer to Job," p 467 Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jaar/article/XLIII/4/723/714995 by AAR Member Access user on 17 December 2021 primarily concerned with the reality of metaphysical happenings. Owing to the undervaluation of the psyche that everywhere prevails. . ,"16 In other words, even those who support symbols do so without a full awareness of the "archetypal happenings" for which one needs a psychologist. Considering the subsequent discussion of the Assumption Dogma, Jung is much more concerned with Quaternity symbolism (the Trinity plus Mary) and corresponding imagery of wholeness and individuation17 than with either the equality of women or the Christian tradition supporting the doctrine. Here again, we have a dramatic split between the meanings perceived by the psychologist-interpreter ("archetypal happenings") and the perspective of those immersed in the symbols, which is in both cases given a shadowy treatment. These two examples of the interpreter/experiencer split are chosen because there is excellent reason to believe that the interpreter has seen something beyond what those involved immediately in the experiencing saw. Jung's discussion of feminine symbolism in Western mythology antedates contemporary feminist theology by about twenty years and probably served as one impetus for raising this issue. As for.the snake-handlers, there may be other non-sexual concerns which draw them to certain practices, and perhaps a more empathetic treatment of rural Southern life and religion might have discovered these. However, when a woman member of a snake-handling church described drinking strychnine as "the greatest thing in my life,"18 it is clear that she has revealed a good deal about the quality of her life without being aware of it. There are, however, limits to this kind of interpretation which these examples illustrate. What about the religious beliefs and practices of articulate, introspective people whose education includes psychology? If they do not accept the psychological framework, is it because they are ignorant of archetypal happenings, or undervalue the psyche? Furthermore, in both these cases one suspects that the subject for interpretation appeals to the interpreter because, in Jung's words, "The dogma of the Assumption is a slap in the face for the historical and rationalistic view of the world, and would remain so for all time if one were to insist obstinately on the arguments of reason and history."19 With the basic intention of examining the "irrational" dimension of the psyche, the interpreter turns to what is clearly a slap in the face to contemporary standards of rationality. Is religion — when it is not disguised in "rationalistic" and "historical" frameworks — really so irrational? Or, from the psychological ends of things, is fantasy to be equated with "irrationality"? Must adequate interpretation always imply a detached, and presumably rational, interpreter who can decipher the irrational, dream-like productions of the fantasizer/experiencer, while the latter remains unconscious of the meanings of his own creations? In the next sections of this essay, we will examine four separate attempts to overcome, abolish, or transfigure the split between the interpreter's stance and that of the experiencer. 728 LUCY BREGMAN Christianity, like most religions utilizes myth but it is founded on specific historical events. It springs from the lengthy story of the Israelites and the life of the Nazarene peasant. So in our terms, Christianity is and is not a "religion." It is anchored both in the world of fact and in the world of fantasy 26 "Harvey Cox, The Feast of Fools (New York Harper Colophon Books, 1969), pp 59-60 Ibid., p. 7 "Ibid., p. 15. "Ibid., p 68 "Ibid , p 64. "Ibid , p 68. "Ibid , p 80. 2l Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jaar/article/XLIII/4/723/714995 by AAR Member Access user on 17 December 2021 restating the nature of religious activity and truth. Harvey Cox's Feast of Fools concerns itself with "fantasy" for a reason echoing Jung's: to give a slap in the face to a strictly rational, historical interpretation of religion (in this case, as a corrective to Cox's earlier Secular City). The book stands as an attempt to capture "fantasy" away from the psychologist and integrate this category into the religionist's own vocabulary. For this reason, it can be used as a case study of some confusions which result when language appropriate to the interpreter's stance is appropriated by the experiencer/believer for describing his own activities. The first point we should make is that Cox's definition of fantasy is not that of the psychologist. He admits, as do many psychologists, that merely defining fantasy as "that which opposes 'reality'" is thoroughly inadequate because "Reality is not a fixed or changeless category."20 But his principle definition is that fantasy is "the faculty for envisioning radically alternative life situations."21 Now this does cover some of the activities which psychologists would describe as "fantasies," such as the fears of a neurotic person that he might be suffering from an undiagnosed cancer (not at all the kind of "radically alternative life situation" Cox had in mind!). But clearly there are fantasies which do not serve the purpose of Utopian visions, and there are ways of envisioning alternative life situations which involve few of the processes which psychologists call "fantasy" (for instance, feeding appropriate data to a computer in order to arrive at predicted fuel supplies for the year 2000). Cox is basically concerned with the link between fantasy-as-Utopian-vision, festivity (the capacity for celebration), and the function of both to enliven "Western man today [who] either frets in a dreary present with no exit or spends himself in the frenzied pursuit of goals that turn to ashes in his grasp."22 It is with this definition and purpose that Cox is able to repeat, up to a point, many of the tenets of the psychologist. For instance, Cox states that "religion is to a civilization what fantasy is to an individual,"23 a position which forms the ground for La Barre's analysis. Cox, earlier in his discussion, states that "fantasy thrives among the dissatisfied" (an extrapolation not really warranted by the evidence he cites),24 and insofar as religion too elaborates "impulses and ideas beyond the confines of empirical limitations,"25 it serves the function of providing hope and consolation. However, he is not willing to draw the psychologist's conclusion that the hopes and consolations provided by fantasy (and religion) need to be rigorously evaluated by some standard ("genital maturity") or can be destructive and confusing to those who believe in them. Moreover, what Cox as Protestant theologian is not willing to do is maintain his view of religion-as-fantasy when his own tradition is involved. Fantasy and religion are clearly good things for Cox, but they are not all there is. FANTASY 729 Ill The most impressive attempt to join interpreter to experiencer lies in that aspect of Jung's work on which his autobiography (Memories, Dreams, Reflections) focuses: the discovery and elucidation of a "personal myth." Here we have Jung, not primarily the lofty commentator on "archetypal happenings" and other people's symbols, but at work integrating his own fantasies, scientific achievements, and life-history into a personal myth. Minus La Barre's moral certainty, Jung reveals himself as in quest of a place to stand ethically, intellectually, and religiously; the book itself seems to have been one stage in that quest. In it, Jung shows the bridge built between his own dreams and fantasies, and a theoretical approach to personality and religion. From a critic's perspective, the bridge is a one-way street from psychological theory and world mythology back toward Jung's own case-history. The "personal myth" is Jung's dual anchoring between inner experience and the external world of work and culture, expressed as "my fable, my truth." "Adolf E Jensen, Myth and Cult Among Primitive Peoples (Chicago. University of Chicago Press, 1963), p 70 Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jaar/article/XLIII/4/723/714995 by AAR Member Access user on 17 December 2021 Here we have a peculiarly twentieth-century theological twist ("Christianity is and is not a religion") and the reintroduction of the very dichotomy which Cox's discussion of fantasy took pains to avoid. On the one hand we have the world of fact, the "historical" side of Christianity (and the "historical Jesus"?), on the other the mythological-fantastical element, which Cox is arguing has been underplayed by Western people. Thus, fact vs. fantasy translates into history vs. myth, and Christianity is saved from becoming just another myth-fantasy, just a "religion." This solution overlooks the fact that there is not a myth-system in the world which maintains no anchoring in "the world of fact." In Christianity, the "facts" might be historical, whereas in other systems the "fact" might refer to empirical experiences of individuals (the yogi, say). Even archaic and ahistorical myths, simple etiological tales, have such an anchoring, usually to phenomena in nature. To cite an example, a myth about how the rooster stole the fine clothes of the plain forest bird has as its "anchoring" the observed hostility between the wild and domestic fowls, and difference in plumage.27 One might say that the "evidence" for this kind of myth, i.e. the two kinds of birds, is much closer to the world of fact than is the dim figure of the Nazarene peasant, described in mythical language even in our earliest sources. By this route, we come once again to the opposition between experiencer and interpreter. No religious experiencer will deny that his symbols and beliefs have some anchoring in the world of fact, even if that world be ahistorical and not committed to our type of technical rationality. Perhaps the most obvious conclusion to draw is that "fantasy" will not bear the weight which Cox places on it, or that the concept itself is confusing. Let us recall that his definition is not that of psychologists. There is no rule that religious writers borrowing from "outside" cannot change the meanings of terms, but it might be helpful to find out just what psychologists themselves have done with the concept of fantasy before one redefines to suit one's own purpose. Therefore, in the next sections we will examine three attempts within psychology to overcome the interpreter/experiencer split, before prematurely meshing fantasy and religion. 730 LUCY BREGMAN What does the idea of "personal myth" imply, and what function does it serve in regard to the interpreter/experiencer split? Jung describes a point midway in his life when the need for some kind of clarification became pressing. There are three things (at least) to notice about this dialogue. First, that adequate interpretation of myth is no longer Jung's problem; he assumes that it is now possible to explain the myths of the past. Second, the adherence to one myth or no myth is raised as an individual problem, and it is as an individual that Jung resolved it by forming his own myth. The third point is that some myth is perceived as necessary, or rather that Jung chooses the word "myth" to maintain or suggest a link between the world of the past and his own present condition. Whether what Jung refers to as his "personal myth" really played the same role for him as "myth" did for whole cultures in the past is a major question For Freud, religion was a "universal obsessional neurosis" by analogy with observed clinical cases of neurosis.29 Is Jung's use of "myth" to describe his personal self-understanding also an analogy? Or is the personal myth a legitimate — and perhaps the most legitimate — way of maintaining continuity with a myth-formed past? Since the idea of an entirely individual religion is not likely to have much appeal or seem very plausible to many religious thinkers, we should stress that Jung insists throughout Memories, Dreams, Reflections that the ingredients of his personal myth are anything but personal and individual in the ordinary sense. They are "archetypal" in that their source is within neither the person-asindividual nor the surrounding culture. From earliest childhood Jung recalls dreams and visions of bizarre power, using imagery which needed years of research in religious symbolism before he could properly interpret it. The best example of this is a dream, experienced when he was about four, of an underground, immense "ritual phallus" on a golden throne. Jung, writing about this as an old man, sees in this dream a "subterranean God 'not to be named,'" and says of it: Through this childhood dream I was initiated into the secrets of the earth Today I know that it happened in order to bring the greatest possible amount of light into the darkness. It was an initiation into the realm of darkness My intellectual life had its unconscious beginnings at that time 30 Here we have Jung the fantasizer prefiguring Jung the interpreter of world mythology, and Jung the psychologist providing a "mythic" origin for his adult career. The rather prosaic possibility that, in the eighty or so years which elapsed between the dream and this account of it, some of Jung's later knowledge of mythology may have contributed to his memory of the dream does not intrude into his reflections. Jung intends to show his personal myth as something objective, impersonal, something which shaped him In Memories, Dreams, Reflections, the expenencer takes priority over the interpreter. 2 *Carl G Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections (New York Vintage Books, 1963), p 171 Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion (Garden City Anchor Books, 1964), p 71 "Uung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p 15 !9 Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jaar/article/XLIII/4/723/714995 by AAR Member Access user on 17 December 2021 I had explained the myths of peoples of the past, I had written a book about the hero, the myth in which man has always lived But in what myth does man live nowadays7 In the Christian myth, the answer might be "Do you live in it7" I asked myself To be honest, the answer was no "For me, it is not what I live by." "Then do we no longer have any myth7" "No, evidently we no longer have any myth " "But then what is your myth — the myth in which you live7"28 FANTASY 731 One of the most extraordinary elements in this case is the very early "choice" of the particular myth and the thoroughness with which the myth has been acted out in the subject's life He has shown a constant tendency to represent his life to himself in terms of symbolic analogues And he has long regarded the progression and details of his life as "a kind of 'art work', initiated by a fertile childish imagination and subsequently 'improved upon' by an older imagination armed with immense amounts of esoteric data "31 (The phrases in quotation came from the subject himself) We do not know if this subject, who was also a therapist, used Jung's psychological theories to interpret and "improve upon" his fantasies, or whether such a borrowing would be necessary at all. For such an individual, "personal myth" becomes an appropriate category, and it is possible that there may be many 31 R E L Masters and Jean Houston, The Varieties of Psychedelic Experience (New York Dell Publ C o . 1966), p 268 Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jaar/article/XLIII/4/723/714995 by AAR Member Access user on 17 December 2021 On the other hand, the interpretation is still necessary; Jung's own predicament about his myth came after (he has us believe) his explanation of past mythologies. The four-year-old's scary dream needs to be seen not only as prophetic of the dreamer's future preoccupations, but as an individual appearance of a universal symbol. However, the interpretation of this and other symbols is in service to the "personal myth," whatever the cultural or historical origin of the symbols involved. One's own fantasy-experiences are attended to in all seriousness, but what about the expenencers of the past, who have left us their mythologies? Are their experiencings, insofar as we can say anything about them, really given a hearing by the interpreter? Or is the interpreter's function that of selecting, drawing parallels, and collating for the ultimate purpose of personal self-completion' Are the criteria by which myths are "meaningful" strictly psychological, although not necessarily arbitrary? There are two answers to these questions. Jung clearly saw world mythology as unified, expressing over and over again the same basic themes. It is the interpreter's task to classify these themes and express their meaning in psychological language. Consequently, the personal myth of any one individual may be by all previous religious standards incredibly syncretistic, including in it elements discovered in a half-dozen separate traditions. On the other hand, Jung himself gave priority to symbol-systems which he felt the West had discredited. Gnostic mythology and alchemical imagery in particular. These, for Jung at least, provided symbols with a better psychological 'Tit" than the sterile, rationalized doctrines of Protestant Christianity. We have already seen how his dislike of the latter played a part in the evaluation of the role of Mary, and how psychological criteria made it unnecessary for Jung to examine the actual reasons used by the Roman Catholic theologians who formulated the Assumption dogma. On the positive side, syncretism allows the interpreter some sense of continuity with past expenencers of many cultures; the myths of past peoples can be explained but not discarded. How plausible are Jung's psychological criteria for the selection of myth and religious images into individual self-constructions? Some individuals undoubtedly do live myths in just the way Jung lived his "personal myth." Such a case appears in Masters and Houston's The Varieties of Psychedelic Experience, where it is included because it is so unusual. The myth involved here was that of Satan's rebellion against God, and the authors comment that: 732 LUCY BREGMAN Jung has somehow succeeded in persuading many people that his general symbols are of universal occurrence; but the probability is that they are nothing of the sort . . The earth-mother, the divine child, the anima and so on, simply do not occur often (or specifically) enough to make a general theory necessary or acceptable.33 At the same time it is clear that Jung's method of constructing a personal myth conforms closely to that modern style of identity-formation described by Thomas Luckmann as the "consumer orientation."34 The myths and religious images of the past become available for individual consumption; we need neither believe them literally nor care about their original anchoring to cultural conditions, so long as they fit our psychological context. If this is not quite what is happening in Memories, Dreams, Reflections, it is certainly the direction which Rieff, in a harsh criticism of Jung's reintroduction of "the language of faith" into psychology, derides: Jung's mania for antiquarian shopping in disused modes of thought . is directed to trimming down all specific beliefs, ending all creedal strife, so as to supply a language of faith that can serve the individual without compelling him to serve a creed. Psychological religion becomes a form of edifying self-examination . . This is a strictly personal faith. It cannot have any social consequence except as the therapeutic, satisfied inside his private myth, stirs no social trouble.35 In other words, "personal myth," as Jung conceived of it, is ideally suited to life within what Luckmann calls the "private sphere." Through his fantasies and their interpretation, the individual feels connected with the peoples of the past without having to go through institutional channels or be actively aware of the "public sphere" of his own society. Notice that, whereas for Cox "fantasy" was activist and socially disrupting, in Rieffs portrait of Jung the opposite qualities emerge. Preoccupied with experiencing and interpreting his own fantasies, the individual hopes for selfcompletion and internal order in a world indifferent to inner life. "Ibid , p. 272. 33 G. S Kirk, Myth Its Meaning and Functions in Ancient and Other Cultures (Berkeley University of California Press, 1970), p 276 "Thomas Luckmann, The Invisible Religion (New York Macmillan, 1967), p 98. "Philip Rieff, The Triumph of the Therapeutic Uses of Faith After Freud (New York Harper Torchbooks, 1966), pp. 138-39 Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jaar/article/XLIII/4/723/714995 by AAR Member Access user on 17 December 2021 more of these cases than Masters and Houston suppose. After all, the subject "was far too practiced and knowledgeable a veteran of dissimulation to reveal either in conversation or testing any information he preferred to withhold."32 On the other end of the bridge, however, the Jungian approach to myth runs into a serious problem. For the sake of their psychological 'Tit," symbols are interpreted thematically, but it is the Jungian claim that these themes appear in the data themselves. In other words, the "anima" is not merely a psychological construct, but a pattern in religious symbolism which can, as a pattern, be discovered in the "raw myths." One popular exposition of this approach is Joseph Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces, in which world religion (the 1000 faces) gets squeezed through one archetypal mold. Even where a plurality of themes is permitted, the fact remains that the same data, when examined by non-Jungians, do not reveal the same themes. As one scholar puts it, FANTASY 733 IV 36 J Varendonck, The Psychology of Day-Dreams (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd , 1921), pp 112-15. "Jerome Singer, Daydreaming: An Introduction to the Experimental Study of Inner Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jaar/article/XLIII/4/723/714995 by AAR Member Access user on 17 December 2021 The above two attempts to overcome the interpreter/experiencer dichotomy are basically linked to diagnoses and possible alleviation of certain modern conditions' mythlessness, boredom, disgust with too much rationality, and technology. The next two views on fantasy are innocent of such global dilemmas, or at least the issue of fantasy and its interpretation is not raised with these questions so directly in mind. For that reason, they have not received the attention of religious scholars to anywhere near the same degree. However, both are interesting for their abandonment of certain assumptions about the nature of "fantasy" and "interpretation." Before we examine them, it might help to restate these assumptions about fantasy which La Barre, Cox, and Jung all share: 1 Fantastical thought is best exemplified in dreams, vision, and bizarre imagery. It is the opposite of realistic — in the sense of ordinary, workday — perception. 2. For better or worse, fantasy can have an enormous impact on life. It can help restore modern man's lost sense of hope, wonder, and truth, or it can serve to divorce him from true self-knowledge, as La Barre holds. 3 Fantasy in this sense is not enough; some anchoring in "the world of fact," or some objective principles of interpretation are required. 4. Interpretation requires either a sustained detached cognitive approach, or enough erudition to establish mythological parallels — either of which depend on thought-processes separate from those of fantasy itself. Assumption 1 is abandoned by certain contemporary researchers who have reopened the study of fantasy in the context of experimental psychology. The two figures who have contributed most to this are Jerome Singer (Daydreaming) and Eric Klinger (The Structure and Functions of Fantasy), although a much earlier writer, Varendonck (Psychology of Day-Dreams), deserves mention. All three explicitly turn their backs on the dream as the paradigm for "fantasy" and focus instead on those spontaneous thought-processes which accompany waking or drowsy states of consciousness. How do they investigate such thought-processes? Varendonck used a kind of automatic writing, allowing himself to reconstruct elaborate chains of thought immediately after their termination. Singer and Klinger used questionnaires and self-reports. Klinger found subjects who under laboratory conditions could "think out loud." The advantage of these methods (questionnaires excepted) is that they allow for much closer access to the data than do methods of dream-interpretation based on patients' morning-after reports of dreams, the best that Freud and Jung could get. What is produced are chains of thoughts, some of which are accompanied by visualizations, some of which are not. Sometimes these thoughts can be bizarre, as in Varendonck's elaborate fantasy about losing both his legs,36 but mostly they are not. According to Singer, only one type of daydreamer enjoys the kind of "interior motion picture" made famous by Thurber's "Secret Life of Walter Mitty." There are other types of spontaneous thinking, and for some individuals "fantasy" is equivalent to selfrecrimination or worries about one's health.37 It is therefore not surprising that these thinkers do not make any global claims about the value of fantasy for modern men, since the functions and contents of fantasies vary so greatly. 734 LUCY BREGMAN strivings. The adolescent with a greater breadth ofanterests and a capacity for fantasied selfstimulation may experience a comparable excitement and urge to drive but it becomes only one of a variety of interests or can be internalized into a more complex daydream pattern. The youth lacking such alternatives moves more directly to the involvement with cars, often with positive benefits in the development of mechanical skills . . He may also risk the ire of adults and endanger his own life because his awareness of the dangers of driving does not match his already mature motihty skills.39 The fantasizer may also have familiarized himself (in imagination) with the dangers of driving. Needless to say, this is a very far cry from the Messianic role in which Cox and Jung cast "fantasy," but it is even further from the approach La Barre takes. What finally emerges from this research is a view of fantasy defined as: All mentation whose ideational products are not evaluated by the subject in terms of their usefulness in advancing some immediate goal extrinsic to the mentation itself . . mentation other than orienting response to, or scanning of, external stimuli or operant activity such as problem-solving in a test situation.40 Fantasy is effortless, "ballistic rather than guided."41 This is not to say that fantasy can serve no goal, or have no consequences for external behavior. But taking the experiencer's own perspective, while engaged in fantasizing he is indifferent to external stimuli (which serve primarily as interrupters of fantasy). Fantasy segments (Varendonck's "chains") have their own sequencing and source of feedback. Fantasy leaves the environment unchanged . . . fantasy responses produce changes in stimulation only insofar as their content instigates further ideational content or arouses affect If segments are governed internally by plans, meaningcomplexes . then the effects of fantasy on feedback occur at the end of segments, rather than continuously as in the case of continuously monitored, directed verbal or other motor activity. Fantasy may thus be considered directed by feedback but not corrected by i t . . . its aim is blind and unintentional.42 Nevertheless, some of the samples of such fantasies appear to include running commentary on the thought-processes themselves, or perhaps the "segments" are frequently interrupted with evaluations and reflections. In Varendonck's language, Experience (New York Random House, 1966), pp 76-77 38 Ibid., p 176 *>Ibid., p 177 •"'Eric Klinger, Structure and Functions of Faniasv (New York 10 •"Ibid , p 211 4 -lbid , p 181 Wiley-Interscience, 1 9 7 l ) , p Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jaar/article/XLIII/4/723/714995 by AAR Member Access user on 17 December 2021 What impacts, then, can fantasy in this sense have on life at all? Singer especially sees that some people get so little out of their own interior life that it is simply distracting to them. These are also the people who, as children and adolescents, will be forced into direct involvement with aggressive and sexual situations which their more introspective companions can rehearse or prepare for through fantasy.38 For instance, adolescents often use cars to express a variety of FANTASY 735 There occur in most day-dreams risings and fallings, the upward moments have for consequence the introduction into the concatenations of elements proper to conscious thought, namely elements of critical thought-activity. 43 "Varendonck, The Psychology of Day-Dreams, p. "See Klinger, Structure and Functions of Fantasy, "Varendonck, The Psychology of Day- Dreams, p 46 Klinger, Structure and Functions of Fantasy, pp 176 chaps 8 and 9 172 219-20 Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jaar/article/XLIII/4/723/714995 by AAR Member Access user on 17 December 2021 Spontaneous fantasy may be an effortless and unguided activity, but it is generally punctuated by interruptions of a critical and evaluative sort, or else by strictly external factors requiring the attention of the person. In this perspective, then, "interpretation" really begins with the individual's shifting attitude toward his own mental productions, and the sequence of fantasy segments — critical activity can be one of rapid shifts and shdings. Since in Klinger's view the appearance of most fantasy content can be explained by "current concerns" more easily than by long-term motives and needs,44 there is no warrant for seeing in fantasy the "royal road" to hidden aspects of the personality, although an individual's daydreams will obviously tell us something about him. Interpretation — reflection on one's own thought-processes — is also determined by current concerns. Most of Varendonck's comments on his own musings take the form of reminding himself to record the thoughts for use in his book.45 Another more dramatic transition is when Walter Mitty, the star witness in a murder trial, calls the D.A. a "cur"; Walter Mitty the shopper immediately remembers that he was supposed to buy puppy biscuits (in this case, daydreams are clearly tied to long-term motivations as well as current concerns!). Fantasy and interpretation, although remaining two distinct forms of mental activity, are performed in rapid alternation by all of us. A psychologicallyinformed interpreter may have more to say about some aspects of his fantasy, but these two types of activity are never as separate as traditional depth psychology made them appear. As for the link between fantasy and "Utopian vision," Klinger's discussion of fantasy-process and creativity provides an interesting contrast to both Cox and Jung Fantasy still has some positive role to play in creative work, but there are several criteria to be met before fantasy can be a resource for the creator: 1 His stream of thought — his "respondent-sequence formulation of fantasy" — must be sufficiently rich and articulate to make it worth his while to notice it. 2. It must be "at least occasionally" relevant to a problem, although the creative act itself involves a juxtaposition, a "making relevant" of one set of ideas to a new context. 3 This implies that his problem requires a creative solution. There are people who paint only with numbered-pencil kits, and there are others who seek out complex and open-ended problems. 4 "Fantasy must be received hospitably," and this includes both the inclination to attend to it and the disposition to exploit it in one's actions (the second would be Jung's distinctive quality).46 From this, one might draw the conclusion that even if "inner life" were not devalued, no transformation of the modern world could be forthcoming unless a lot of other conditions were met. Hardly a radical conclusion, but one might 736 LUCY BREGMAN extrapolate from Klinger's list to suggest that both how the problems of "modern man" are defined by different factions within society and how much social welcome and support exists for creative solutions would be relevant factors. It is not always possible to introduce visualization immediately with certain overly extraverted, rigidly compulsive or hyper-intellectual types47 but even these can sooner or later participate. Keeping Singer's findings on different types of day-dreamers in mind, it is highly unlikely that a thoroughly unimaginative person with no interest in inner life would be drawn to psychosynthesis or the Esalen Institute. If Klinger and Singer transform the defining qualities of "fantastical thought" away from the bizarre, the schools of therapy under discussion seem to have turned the tables on traditional ideas of what constitutes interpretation. In Crampton's work as a therapist, a variety of "visualization techniques" ("mental imagery") is employed to help the patient gain access to his/her feelings. This is far more "directed" than the free-flowing spontaneous fantasies which Klinger studied. For instance, a woman with a domineering husband is asked "to visualize the way she felt about this relationship." She began a sequence in which she saw herself as a bird held in a clenched hand, but by developing the images she discovered that the bird was actually too timid to fly away; it was a "sugar bird" which could not find its own food. "At this point she was asked to try to see the bird eating the kind of food that wild birds normally eat.'" She was able to do this, and "This session alone led to a marked improvement in the patient's relationship to her husband who was delighted, as it turned out, to have her assume more responsibility and independence."48 This sample of fantasy-imagery is interesting because it shows the therapist interrupting the "ballistic" flow of fantasy, but allowing the subject to remain within the overall mode of visualized mentation. Left to herself, the subject might simply have repeated the "sugar bird" helpless-motif, until the effect became too unpleasant or until some outside distraction cut off the sequence. Even when the imagery is "spontaneous" rather than "directed," the therapist's presence provides "Martha Crampton, "The Use of Mental Imagery in Psychosynthesis" (New York: Psychosynthesis Research Foundation, Inc., 1970), p. 2. «Ibid., pp. 2-3. Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jaar/article/XLIII/4/723/714995 by AAR Member Access user on 17 December 2021 Within contemporary psychology, ideologically far away from Klinger, exists another very drastic revision in the interpreter/experiencer split. Although movements like Psychosynthesis and Gestalt therapy borrowed techniques and ideas from Jung, they have translated these techniques into a different social setting, away from the long-term one-to-one analysis in which Jung worked. Jung's perspective was shaped by his battle against "rationalism and histoncism," against a mentality he presumed to be typical of the average educated person of his day. His derogatory view of "Western rationality" may account for the appeal of Jung to practitioners of newer therapies, although the "resistance" to fantasy and the unconscious among their patient-participants does not seem a major factor. Martha Crampton, who uses a Jungian fantasy-technique in therapy, remarks that FANTASY 737 "Ibid , p. 8. X C Scott Moss, Dreams, Images and Fantasy. A Semantic Differential Casebook (Urbana University of Illinois Press, 1970), pp 16-17. 51 Masters and Houston, Varieties of Psychedelic Experience, p 233. Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jaar/article/XLIII/4/723/714995 by AAR Member Access user on 17 December 2021 reassurance that, if needed, help is available. Moreover, the fantasizers here are highly conscious that any images they produce and relate to are significant to their current concerns. The principal question arising from this example, however, is that no "interpretation" was necessary; the fantasy alone proved effective in changing the woman's self-perception and behavior. Crampton herself states that although "interpretations" (by which she means "intellectual formulations") may be helpful, whether or not to offer them is "really a matter of technology and hence of secondary importance to the more basic science of how and to what end the varied techniques are used."49 Fantasy techniques of this sort are grounded in a basic process, which may or may not be facilitated by abstract formulations drawn from psychological theory. The process in the very simple case referred to involves the following sequence: 1. Woman perceives interpersonal problem, requiring creative solution (domineering husband) 2. Transfers problem to the level of imagery: visualizes bird in hand 3. Through the sort of feedback peculiar to fantasy-activity, the "sugar bird" image emerges, suggesting to the therapist that dependence on her husband plays a major role in the woman's life 4. Therapist suggests that the woman "practice" in fantasy a mode of living which allows her more freedom (feed herself). This practice-function of fantasy was already highlighted by Singer. 5. The woman was able to juxtapose the "fantasy solution" against her own behavior, and the application of one to the other corresponds to Klinger's description of the "creative act." This description leaves out many of the dynamic concepts — the unconscious origin of fantasy, in particular — which Jung and perhaps Crampton too would use. On the other hand, in this case the imagery seems so "non-archetypal," and in fact so easy to fit to the person's own experiences, that it is hardly surprising no interpretation of the traditional sort was required. However, when the fantasy-material is genuinely bizarre or confusing — "dreamlike" — is an intellectual formulation by the therapist always the answer? Obviously no, given Crampton's statement on interpretation. What does seem to be crucial is to provide some bridges from the bizarre imagery to the less-bizarre, or more familiar, so that the process described above can occur even when the initial fantasy is alien to ordinary thought. The types of "bridges" vary. For instance, the person may be placed in an'altered state of some kind, in which his usual everyday mental processes are unlikely to help him. Some people can apparently interpret their own dreams — or provide associations to them — under hypnosis far better than they can otherwise.50 One of Masters and Houston's LSD subjects produced a full-dress fairytale allegory and immediately afterwards "sat up and with great intensity began to interpret the eidetically imaged sequence."51 Where these methods do not work or are not possible, a sufficiently extraordinary social setting can serve the bridge function by allowing the imagery to become "public property," the current concern of a social group. 738 LUCY BREGMAN Some of you are probably thinking, but what about the meaning of dreams, the symbolism of dreams7 You want to understand In gestalt therapy we don't worry about understanding, we concentrate on experience. The experience becomes discovery." This is misleading on one level: the experience of dreaming does not in itself demand the kind of dramatization which Downing guides, nor is he simply continuing the dream as an individual half-awake would do. However, the ideology which this statement presents and the presence of a sympathetic group of people are ways of promising that the dreamer's productions and experiences will be taken seriously. In this context, it would be "bizarre" and "unrealistic" to ask for intellectual formulations (although Downing provides some in his book). In this sort of dream therapy, "interpretation" collapses into fantasy, so to speak The rapid shifts from fantasy-processes to "task-oriented" or critical thought which characterized Klinger's spontaneous fantasizers here become shifts between one set of images and another, or an impersonation and a direct bodyinvolvement which carries the image further. It is a focus of Downing's practice that fantasy-dreams involve "all of you, not just your brain"54 and can be interpreted through physical action and gesture more fully than by words alone. Here he departs from all of the theorists save La Barre, for whom the snakecultists' fantasies clearly became real only through activity (ritual handling of snakes). For Singer particularly, the whole point of fantasy is that it is private and in one's head, an alternative to unthinking physical engagement with the world. Some more critical readers may think that from snake-cultists to the Esalon sessions we have come full circle. Both the cultists and the participants in Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jaar/article/XLIII/4/723/714995 by AAR Member Access user on 17 December 2021 The process which occurred when the therapist suggested a "trial solution" which would send the fantasy in an unexpected direction is now in the hands of a group, and the images are "lived out" for the group to transform. One of the most striking features of such a procedure is that it uncovers the prejudices which are embedded in language like "fanciful," "bizarre," "unrealistic," etc. The assumption was that "fantasy" could be categorized only from the standpoint of "normal" waking consciousness, which was the form of consciousness suited for ordinary social reality. But for sheer "bizarreness" — abandonment of certain social coventions, reliance on imagery, and the exploitation of the dramatic and egocentric possibilities of fantasy — the Gestalt therapy dream-sessions presented in Downing and Marmorstein's Dreams and Nightmares perhaps exceed most dreams. In these sessions "interpretation" becomes a retelling and re-enactment of the dream, with the dreamer playing the parts of figures in the dream, objects in the dream ("Be the building") and figures which emerge through the dreamer's verbalized associations ("Be your mother on the toilet". . . "So play your mother's asshole").52 The "interpretation" concludes when the dreamer, the group, and the group-leader all feel that the "dream-work" has been completed. "Dream-work" in Freudian theory is the thought-process involved in the dream itself (condensation, etc.), but it is quite appropriate that this term be used for the sessions which Downing leads. "Jack Downing and Robert Marmorstein, eds , Dreams and Nightmares A Book of Gestalt Therapy Sessions (New York Harper & Row, 1973), p 164. silbid , p 11 Ibid , p 10 S4 FANTASY 739 By providing a mixture of individual, group and three-to-six day residential workshops, nearly any type of middle-class problem can be reasonably well handled" is not presented as a scientific conclusion derived from long-term follow-up studies VI We have so far reserved applying our findings on patterns of fantasy and interpretation to "religion" or religious subjects. Since it is well known that there is no one way to define religion to everyone's satisfaction, we have tried to show that "fantasy" is also a dubious and confused concept unless it is carefully defined and certain recognizable activities are used as paradigms (dreams, daydreams, etc.). We have also examined the traditional notion of fantasy requiring a psychologist fully to "interpret" it. The global labeling of religion as "fantasy," and the psychology of religion as interpretation of such fantasy, oversimplifies enormously. Were we to stick with Cox's view that religion is to culture what fantasy is to the individual, there is obviously a variety of functions and roles for fantasies in each individual, and diversity among individuals. Were we to agree with Downing that experience has a truth lost when "intellectual formulations" are the goal, we would still be interested in the social context and technique used to bring out the depth of fantasy experience. Jung's development of "personal myth" presupposes a rich inner life and a continuity in symbolis'm with the myths of the past, but to the extent that the myth is idiosyncratic it will heighten the individual's isolation, and remove him from those public symbols and actions which might still be living realities for others. Moreover, the "practice" function which Singer describes — which is an anticipation of reality more than "substitute gratification" — suggests that fantasy, although less "numinous" than in Jung's visions, may be more easily integrated into the individual's total life-history. Still another direction in which one could take the experimental work on fantasy would be to compare KJinger's proposed structure of fantasy-sequences with accounts of devotional practices in which image, traditional phrases, and the devotee's associations are all bound together in sequences. Finally, the bodydimension of fantasy, exalted by Downing but assumed to be negligible by other thinkers, deserves consideration; a person inactive, contemplating, or daydreaming, is still never disembodied. For this writer, whose interest is in contemporary culture and forms of "invisible religion," the variety of ways in which the interpreter/expenencer "Ibid , p 98 Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jaar/article/XLIII/4/723/714995 by AAR Member Access user on 17 December 2021 Downing's groups prefer "fantasy" to the exclusion of traditional forms of interpretation, and both groups have created a social reality in which they are free to do this, and from which wider society is perceived as repressive and evil. The problems of how this mini-reality is maintained are outside our topic; their leaders seemed to have solved this by living in a near-continuous state of religious excitement and therapy sessions, respectively. On the other hand, for both these, "fantasy" is an important ingredient in their lives and influences behavior, in a way that it is not and does not for many people. The validity of their practices, by ordinary theological or psychological criteria, is also outside our concern, although it should be noted that Downing's conviction that 740 LUCY BREGMAN may be related to a social situation in which there is such a complexity in the fabric of roles and institutions that the individual is no longer capable of perceiving his society in its totality.57 Perhaps this is why theories of fantasy such as Klinger's, which do not rely on the notion of the Unconscious, are unlikely to be popularized, and why Jung's approach to mythology has managed to convince even without adequate support from the data. At the other extreme from the "psychologist as expert" view lies the vision of Philip Rieff at the close of Freud: The Mind of the Moralist: Think of a whole society dominated by psychotherapeutic ideas . . psychoanalysis is an expression of a popular tyranny such as not even deTocqueville adequately imagined . In the emergent democracy of the sick, everyone can to some extent play doctor to others, and none is allowed the temerity to claim that he can definitely cure or be cured.58 This vision diffuses expertise among all; the special training required to cure or interpret is replaced by a universal re-education. Rieff s vision is more applicable to the new views of fantasy and its interpretation, which we explored, than it is to the opposite vision of psychological authority and expertise. On other questions and issues, his vision is ^fantasy" in the ordinary, non-psychological sense. If all the materials on fantasy and its functions do not directly demand that each of us get busy constructing and discovering his or her "personal myth," they do suggest that as imaginative beings we are also interpretive beings, and that if inner life is at all important, it is too important to be left to experts. 56 For a discussion of psychiatrists as "mad scientists," see Robert Plank, The Emotional Significance of Imaginary Beings (Springfield, 111 Charles C Thomas, 1968), pp. 156ff. "Peter Berger, "Towards a Sociological Understanding of Psychoanalysis," Social Research 32(1965), p. 39. "Philip Rieff, Freud. The Mind of the Moralist (Garden City: Anchor Books, 1961), p. 390. Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jaar/article/XLIII/4/723/714995 by AAR Member Access user on 17 December 2021 dichotomy appears in theories about fantasy suggests a reflection on the social function of psychology itself. Psychiatrists as "experts" have been denounced as oppressors by "Anti-psychiatrists" and radical thinkers, Feminist or otherwise. The psychologist as "mad scientist" is a common science-fiction figure (even if he is not "mad," he is bent on intellectual control and technical manipulation of others' minds, as in Ursula LeGuin's The Lathe of Heaven). This is, so to speak, the revenge of the snake-cultist on La Barre.56 And yet, Peter Berger suggested in an early essay that Americans need psychological theory, especially the concept of the Unconscious. This