Addictions as passions. Ancient wisdom for modern issues1
Sebastian Moldovan
PhD, Associated Professor at the 'Andrei Saguna' Orthodox Faculty of Theology, 'Lucian Blaga' University of Sibiu, Romania,
smoldova@yahoo.com
In order to theologically explain the concept of addictive (dependent) behavior as distorting processes of self-determination and will (sinful passion), the author analyzed the classic work of the Eastern Christian Orthodox traditional school represented by Maximus Confessor (VII th century CE). It is shown that the ancient model of submission of the human will in the passions fits into modern concepts of nonlinear conjugate cognitive and affective complexes within the self-determination process and the formation of addictiveness, and moreover this model is required now. The results show the failure of one-sided considerations of the voluntary/involuntary character of addiction, when neglecting the dialectic of consciousness and unconsciousness in human volition. Healing or purification of the soul takes place by refo-cusing one's love upon her unique original purpose — especially the real love for God. It seems that a careful pro-active attitude to the passions also performs important environmental function, while reconstructing the ontological meaning of love. The author summarizes his study as evidence that the cause of addictive behavior today as well as the recovery from it are the same phenomena as in ancient times.
Keywords: Eastern Christian spiritual tradition, addictive behavior, passion, love, self-determination, the will, the dialectic.
Addictive behaviors are one of the most spread and researched issues within ill mental health nowadays. In spite of all efforts made in the past decades, a unanimously accepted definition is still pending. The professionals vary even in labeling the phenomenon as 'addiction' (before 1980), 'dependence' (DSM-III), or 'addictive disorders' (DSM-V). The classification of the proposed theoretical models is in itself a difficult task. The most recent taxonomy identifies 17 models classified in 7 groups [19]. However, five of them seem to be the dominant ones, namely the medical model (addiction as a chronic brain disease), the moral model (a choice, strong preferences, excessive appetites), the psychodynamic model (a maladaptive coping strategy), the social model (learned behavior, maladaptive relationship strategy), and the bio-psycho-social model, integrating aspects of the other models. Taking into account all the previous
models, and what is known about the development of addiction and the recovery from it, Robert West defined addiction as 'a chronic condition involving a repeated powerful motivation to engage in a rewarding behavior, acquired as a result of engaging in that behavior, that has signi?cant potential for unintended harm [18].
Perhaps the most divisive issue in understanding addiction/dependence concerns its voluntary or non-voluntary character, or the capacity of the affected persons to control their behavior. Eitherwise, at stake is a sort of pathology of the volition. This is hardly a novel perspective. Aristotle, St. Paul, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, the whole ancient and mediaeval Christian tradition before Alcoholics Anonymous and Dr. Jellinek have seen drunkenness, for instance, as a weakening of the will, a result of the conflict between two disproportionate "laws" or powers of the inner self (see Rom. 7:19) [5; 6].
The research dedicated to the intellectual history of addiction dealt almost exclusively with Western tradition, while the Eastern Christian spiritual tradition (hereafter abbreviated as ECT), so rich in 'soul-therapeutic' approaches, has been investigated only recently and rather superficially. Noted authors, like Jean-Claude Larchet and Cristopher Cook) do addressed the processes of volition and the meaning of addiction but in a non-detailed manner [5; 10]. In the same time, the growing research of the connection between addictive behaviors and various forms of attachment [7; 14] stimulate more attention to the central role played by the power of love in ancient psychology. For the ECT authors, it is this power of love that is self-enslaving in the passions, a notion the very etymology of addiction and dependence alludes to.
In this paper, I propose a model of human action, and its addiction pathology and therapeutics, based on the ECT anthropology and spirituality, especially on the concepts of volition, passion and dispassion of one of its most representative authors, namely St Maximus Confessor (VIIth century CE)
My argument runs as follows:
First, I provide a sketch of Easten Christian anthropology in several points as a minimum ideational and terminological background.
Second, I present in slighter detail the central psychological issue within ECT, that is, the human power of love and its manifold dynamics.
In order to examine the alienation of love in the slavery of the vices, I thirdly pursue the task of clarifying the mechanisms and pathology of human volition according to the ECT in the writings of St. Maximus Confessor2. During this inquire we find out his definition of passions.
Then, I compare the drawn ECT model of volition with some modern psychological theories.
Fifth, I argue for the identification of addictive behaviors as passions and I consider some merits of this, before I address its therapeutic consequences.
Finally, I join the ECT model and attachment theory as both love-centered and increasingly important health gain promoters.
Principles of Patristic anthropology [6]
Eastern Christian anthropology is rich, but for the purpose of the present discussion, we can abstract these principles:
1. The 'image-likeness' of the Theanth-ropological Principle (theos + anthropos): "God and man are paradigms one of another, that as much as God is humanized to man through love for mankind, so much is man able to be deified to God through love." (Maximus Confessor, Ambiguum, 7)
2. The human being is a cosmic center, a complex adaptive/self-determining system interfacing between the Creator and the created, self and others, intelligible and sensible, freedom and determinism ("microcosm and mediator").
3. A three-dimensional constitution, consisting in person, nature, and powers or faculties.
4. A dual nature, intelligible (soul, psyche) and sensible (body, soma).
5. The faculties belong to the nature in a hierarchical continuum and have differentiated, intelligible or sensible, forms according to the various dimensions of the human interface.
6. A 'state space': Each faculty has a divinely predetermined set of actualizing possibilities and a divinely predetermined teleology (raison d'e^tre, logos tes physeos), defined by the Theanthropological Principle.
7. Self-determination: The person activates her faculties, selecting (opting-in/-out) by her modes of being (tropos tes hyparxeos) a subset in the 'state space' of her possibilities. The successively selected subsets generate a "phase space", path-dependent trajectory, which is the inner evolution of the person, from birth to death.
The major human faculties recognized by the Eastern tradition are the intellect or mind (logos, nous, to logistikon), whose functions are cognitive (perception, rational analysis, reflection, contemplation, prayer, etc.); the appetitive faculty (epithymia, to epithymetikon), which orientates the person through aspirations; the incensive faculty (thymos, to thymetikon), which provide the energy to mobilize the person in attaining what she aspires for or keeping what has been already attained. While all of them are original, after 'the original sin' they function defectively, in a condition deeply affected by mortality, called the passible character (to patheton). In this highly weakened situation, Intellect is mostly occupied by ignorance, doubtful knowledge, disordered thoughts; the appetitive and incensive faculties, which I futher designate together as the affective disposition, are agitated by numerous emotions (pleasure, desire, pain, fear, anger, sadness, etc.).
The dynamics of the power of love
According to the ECT, all the powers of the human being are teleologically construed such that they should function united in pursuing the communion with the Creator and the Source of Life, and for that ontological aim the humans are endowed with a most deep, irrepressible aspiration towards fulfillment, meaning, and life everlasting, which is called love (see the Theanthropological Principle above). The proper or improper function of the power of this aspiration generates and embraces the whole Theoanthropological drama of falling, salvation, and restoration. In St Maximus words:
"The rational and intellectual soul given to man is made in the image of its Maker so that through desire and intense love (eros) to
hold fast to God and [...] become godlike through divinization; then, by caring for what is lower and because of the command to love one's neighbor, to make prudently use of the body and gain for it familiarity with God like a fellow servant. [...] Our forefather Adam, however, used his freedom to direct his desire away from what had been permitted to what was forbidden [...] Out of wisdom and love for mankind, God who works out our salvation, fixed as a suitable punishment to the irrational movement of our intellectual faculty the death of what our capacity of love turned onto. As a result, when we have been taught by suffering that we love non-being, we return the capacity to love towards what is." (Ambiguum, 7).
Here, as in other several places, St Maximus recognizes an ontological passibility (pathos) of humankind (ho pathos means the one who suffer), which means the non-voluntarily movement or destination (like a throwing) from 'being' to 'eternal well-being'. We can also say humankind is ontologically dependent upon its Source of Life and Fulfillment. However, each person is free to respond to and really fulfill its aspiration by actual love towards God, in communion with Him and the others, or not to do that (see first row in Fig. 1).
Failing to respond to the loving initiative of God and attempting to live one?s own life autonomously, without communication with God, so to say 'on my own' engages humans in a life-depriving, necrotic life, characterized by a new kind of 'natural' (because also universal, unavoidable, yet post-lapsarian) dependence, and therefore a new passibility expressed by the non-voluntary attraction and voluntary attachment towards everything seems to bring fulfillment to the needs of survival, defense, and validation (see Maslow's hierarchy), through consumption of various goods, and relationships with the self and the others (see second row in Fig. 1).
However, it is a matter of experience that fulfilling these acquired, secondary needs provides in the best cases provisory substitutions to the ontological fulfillment, but generally proves to be highly unsatisfactory. All too often what follows are attempts to compensate and 'self-medicate' the deep and painful dissatisfaction through satiation and/or escape by possessing a large variety of surrogates (substances, behaviors, activities, events, situations, people). The power of love narcissistically concentrates on oneself (philautia) and on the would be possessed entities, which are quasiidolatrized in compulsive-obsessive attachments which are the passions (see third row in Fig. 1).
Summarily, the power of love has a manifold dynamics expressing three possibilities of dependence and their corresponding voluntary attachments (ontological, natural, and pathological). Although there are three different stages from a logical and historical point of view, these are rather coexisting paradoxically as both concurrent and mutual supportive, in various degrees of actualization during our life. St. Maximus refers to these three forms of love in the following passage:
"Men love one another, commendably or reprehensibly, for the following five reasons: either for the sake of God, as the virtuous man loves everyone [...]; or by nature, as parents love their children and children their parents; or because of self-esteem, as he who is praised loves the man who praises him; or because of avarice [...]; or because of self-indulgence [...]. The first of these is commendable, the second is of an intermediate kind, the rest are dominated by passion" (Capita de charitate, hereafter CC, II, 9].
We have thus also identified three kinds of passibilities: the ontological one (to
Fig. 1. Forms of dependence and love and their transformations
pathon), the passible character (to patheton) and the passions (ta pathe, ta pathemata) or vices (ta kakia) as such. It is by focusing on the last ones that we can find out more about love and its manifestation as passion, which seems to imply pathological dependence, that is addiction. We turn now to them to complete our understanding of the emergence and function of the third stage in the dynamics of love, and of the human volition, into the bargain.
The ECT model for human volition and its pathology
To start with, let us consider the following description of another stage-based process, namely getting evil thoughts, deciding to do bad deeds and then realizing them.
"Povocation (probole) is simply a suggestion coming from the enemy, like 'do this' or 'do that' [... and] it is not within our power to prevent provocations. Coupling (syndiasmos) is the acceptance of the thought suggested by the enemy. It means dwelling on the thought and choosing deliberately to dally with it in pleasurable manner. Passion (pathos) is the state resulting from coupling with the thought [...]; it means letting the imagination brood on the thought continually. Wrestling/struggle (pale) is the resistance offered to the impassioned thought. It may result either in our destroying the passion in the thought [...] or in our assenting to it. [...] Captivity (aichmalosia) is the forcible and compulsive abduction of the heart already dominated by prepossession (prolepsis) and long habit (hexis). Assent (synkatathesis) is giving approval to the passion inherent in the thought. Actualization (energeia) is putting the impassioned thought into effect once it has received our assent..." (On the virtues and vices, ascribed to St. John Damascene).
We can find a very similar text, but with some notable differences, is St. Maximus:
"First the memory brings some passion-free thought into the intellect. By its lingering there, passion is aroused. When passion is not eradicated, it persuades the intellect to assent to it. Once assent is given, the actual sin is then committed. Therefore, when writing to converts from paganism, St Paul in his wisdom orders them to first eliminate the actual sin and then systematically to work back to the cause. The cause, as we have already said, is greed, which generates and promotes passion."
At a first glance the difference concerns the number of the stages, eight versus six. In another context, dealing with the human volitional process, St. Maximus enumerates no less than ten stages, starting with the natural 'volitional capacity' (thelesis, thelema), through 'determined will' or 'wish' (boulesis), 'inquiry' (zetesis), 'consideration' (skepsis), 'deliberation' (boule or bouleusis), 'judgment' (krisis), 'disposition' (diathesis), 'choice/ decision' (prohairesis), 'impules' (orme), to the completed action or 'use' (chresis). These stages are usually not very carefully addressed in the literature, and most of the authors seem to suppose linear causal relationships between them, although St Maximus and other sources offer variations not only in the number of the stages but also in their ordering. A closer reading and comparison of the impassioned volitional processes, the strategies aiming at dispassioning volition and the general descriptions of volitional stages suggest also some parallel and circular connections. Using a few passages from St Maximus, we illustrate here the following psychological connections: 1) the thought — action/action — thought connection; 2) the thoughts-affectivity connection; 3) the passion — thoughts connection. On this occasion, we shall find the definition of the passion in St. Maximus? view:
1) The outward action comes from the inner process thinking and is also reflected back in it.
"Things are outside the intellect, but the conceptual images (noemata) of them are formed within it. It is consequently in the intellect's power to make good or bad use of these conceptual images. Their wrong use is followed by the misuse of the things themselves." (CC, II, 73)
"As the world of the body consists of things, so the world of the intellect consists of conceptual images. [...] For what the body acts out in the world of things, the intellect also acts out in the world of conceptual images." (CC, III, 53)
We can interpret the bivalent link between conceptual images and the things or realities they represent, as a cognitive circuitry connecting the inner and the outer volitional stages of the action process (circuit C1 in Figures 2, 3, 4).
2) The thoughts are either simple or impassioned representations of realities
"A thing, a conceptual image and a passion are all quite different from the other. [...]; a conceptual image is a passion-free thought of one of these things; a passion is a mindless affection or indiscriminate hatred for one of these same things." (CC, III, 42)
"Some thoughts are simple, others are composite. Thoughts which are not impassioned are simple. Passion-charged thoughts are composite, consisting as they do of a conceptual image combined with passion..." (CC, II, 84)
Here, St. Maximus distinguishes between outward reality, its cognitive projection, and an affective attitude towards that reality he calls passion, and whose definition I will address below. What can we infer now is that thoughts are always affectively charged, either with passionate or unpassionate