Spirituality, secularism and religion

The controversial claim of French philosopher André Comte-Sponville that spirituality is quite compatible with atheism could provide vital insights to continued discussion on the relevance of religion to psychiatry which began in The Psychiatrist with the article by Dein et al. ^1,2

Handling debates about the existence or otherwise of God can be difficult, unless one is a trained philosopher. Comte-Sponville summarises it best when he tells us that at the age of 18 he wrote: ‘If God exists then nothing follows; if God does not exist then nothing follows.’ However, a few years later he wrote: ‘If God exists everything follows; if God does not exist then everything follows.’

Religious systems depending on God as their pivotal point are in essence only relying on what human beings regard as the relevance of the Divine in human life. Those who have abandoned a belief in God also create what they think are the principles of life without God. They are all human creations.

Today we are surrounded by a variety of religions and ideologies and each of us as individuals makes our own evaluation of life and develops the values by which we live.

Many seem unwilling to take a serious part in any further discussion on the subject and seek only to abide by the law, live on good terms with others and follow the mores of the workplace. Many, like me, see the world as best understood in humanist terms. This means that we start and finish with ourselves. However, this does not prevent us from reaching out to others and beyond to the principles on which life is built.

There was an older humanism that seemed determined to negate all religion and to attempt to rebuild the world on a new atheistic agenda, but there can also be a humanism that seeks to understand the beliefs that are part of human evolution, both individually and collectively, and to reapply them to current needs.

The new great interest in the spirituality of patients is to be welcomed but there is a risk that it will become just another part of service provision without fully regarding its complexity. Nevertheless, to see conviction - and it does not necessarily need to be religious conviction - as part and parcel of someone's life is important. It can form a crucial part of how they evaluate themselves and their world and it is hard to see how one can support them without taking it into account.

Thus a person's personal conviction system is part of their personal history and identity. When George Kelly ³ developed the personal construct theory he demonstrated that everyone has a personal template by which they evaluate life. If we seek to understand and respect this, we discover that we will need also to look at our own understanding because we in turn evaluate others on the basis of our own templates.

Historically, people seem to have regarded psychological processes as coming from the world outside themselves. Mental illness could be ‘the work of devils’ and even sexual feelings were sometimes perceived as some form of karma that entered people. Today, we have reached the opposite extreme and see that ethics, politics, law and finally religion were not delivered to us by some external agency but were created by ourselves.

With this in mind we can explore the spiritual pilgrimage of our patients with them without imposing on them preconceptions of our own. It is an interesting journey because everyone's pilgrimage is different, and without knowing their story you will not understand where they are in the present, nor what will be the next step in their future.

Those who study religious and ideological traditions will find nuggets of great wisdom in all of them and this understanding is enhanced the more one knows the cultural and historical background in which they originated. We are all on a learning curve but I hope that it will not be long before there are consultants who have a vivid knowledge of religion and ideology from a psychological perspective and who will enhance our ability to understand the individual patients in our care more completely.

The more one tries to understand the depths of other people, the more one deepens one's own understanding and this may help alleviate that hidden isolation, loneliness and even despair that comes from never being properly listened to, or at any rate to find someone who at least tries to understand.