Well, well. Let's see your evidence of this "harsh strictness." Let's see what you're chirping about.
So far as I know, I've been in no way "harsh" or "strict" with you, at least not beyond the levels I've gotten from you. But go ahead...
As someone commenting on the assertions of Phillip Rieff pointed out:Freud transformed the way Man is understood and the way men understand themselves.If the dominant character type of the twentieth century is really what Rieff calls 'psychological man', the consequences for western society are quite incalculable.
This is a bit antiquated. What we know today is that Freud was very often wrong, for which reason, current psychology rejects him as a lead character and relegates him the the ranks of "somewhat mistaken forefathers." Current psychotherapists and psychologists, you will find, object immediately and quite strenuously if you ever characterize their discipline as "Freudian."
But Freud did mess with Western suppostions. And one of Freud's various mistakes is what Rieff is talking about. Freud treated subjective feelings and interpretations (which he made personally, based on only the neuroses of a handful of subjects, all female) the touchstone of truth in psychological matters. Of course, put that way, it's exposed as both ridiculous and unscientific -- as mere speculation, not data. However, Reiff is quite right that Freud was taken far too seriously by Western psychology, and then eventually, in poorly-understood, popularized reductions, by the culture as a whole.
Rieff points out that this has been a disaster. And he's right. It's issued in what has been called, by multiple sociologists, a "culture of therapy," (Reiff et al.) a "culture of interpretation," (Lundin et al.) or "a culture of narcissism." (Lasch et al.)
But if you'll look, you'll find that none of these indicts the previous culture for its eventuality. It was not narcissistic, not subjectivist, and not therapeutic in orientation at all. Rather, the fault for this lands at the feet of the Nietzsches, the Freuds and Jungs of the world, the pretentious secular speculators, not in the culture that therapeutic culture supplanted.
It is 'incalculable' what it has done to theology.
It's debased any theology it has touched. It has not done anything actually to disprove theology, but has corrupted the understanding of the masses in incalculable ways. One of those ways is that the public has come to see theology, like everything else, as therapeutic: namely, to imagine that religion exists not in order to speak truth but in order to help people become "better," or even just to make them "feel good."
And you see the results in every Liberal denomination around the globe. They're all shrinking and dying: because nobody takes up theology for the mere "feel goods" of it, for mere therapy. They take it up only if they think there's at least a chance of it being true, instructive, moral, and realistic. Therapeutic thinking denies that truth, morality, and even instruction have any purpose but the therapeutic.
What does this mean?
The above. You're living in an age in which truth is exchanged for therapy. That's what Reiff is saying.
By your own explanation, you were a nominalist in both Judaism and Catholicism. Not surprisingly, the credibility of these things has vanished, for you. But you've not yet considered that a thoughtful commitment to Judaism or Christianity might prove much more informative. You've bounced off the surface of the issue, having experienced a kind of religiosity which, by your own account, if not merely reduced to the therapeutic, was at most nominal, superficial, cultural, occasional, routine, highly ritualistic and uncommitted. And not surprisingly, you find yourself not drawn to that.In my own case it is still coming into focus. Yet a few things can be said. One is that whatever we perceive and experience is experienced through a sort of solitariness. If at one time -- say by being an incorporated member of a Catholic Church congregation -- our participation was on all levels, from the shared ritual of Mass to those years spent in school with one's peers, through marriage and child-raising, to shared events and activities outside of Church but in communal association -- now all of this has disappeared, vanished into thin air (for most). If such community exists it is a shadow or a mere trace of what it once was. And for most it is still dissolving, often right in front of our eyes. (And few can understand why so they observe the dissolution in mute silence).
I wouldn't be either.
That won't help. That's what the therapeutic invites you to do: to center your consciousness in yourself, yourself only, and insist that you are, yourself the measure of all things. It's utterly solipsistic, egocentric and vapid.We are thrown back onto and into our own selves.
But salvation (even if we only understand that term as "rescue from deception") lies not in that direction. And one of the things we need to be saved from is ourselves. Because manifestly, when we examine ourselves honestly, we are not what we should be, nor are we inclined to think according to truth, especially when the therapeutic imperative is invoked; and the delusion that we are personally the center of the universe will not stand up to any logic, nor to the existence of a single other person who believes the same.
That much is obvious, if we will open our eyes. Rieff saw it.