Page 30 - EMCAPP-Journal No. 4

Comment

on the conversation
with Roland Mahler

Robert Robertson

In English we say, “Everybody wants to be somebody.” healthy end-state that it aims at, its “perfection,” as the
Nobody wants to be just a cifer, just another member of medieval Christian psychologists would say — is signifi-
the crowd, a zero, a nonentity, a nobody. But this healthy cantly different from what the secular world would pro-
desire, with which each of us is created, can be elaborated pose. The Christian teaching is that each of us is “special”
and made concrete in various ways, and many of these before God, who loves each of us in our particularity.
ways are not healthy. Often, the desire to be somebody Our desire to be somebody finds its ultimate satisfaction
develops andtransforms intoa desireto dominateothers, in our belonging to God, and consciously and intenti-
to stand out from the crowd by our superiority — our in- onally and worshipfully recognizing God as our Father
telligence, our skills, our money, our social connections, and Creator and Lord. Thus our desire to be special cul-
our “position.” As Mahler points out, we are constantly minates in gratitude, the happy recognition that we have
evaluating ourselves: How am I doing in this competition not created ourselves, but owe our existence and our
for being somebody? If we find ourselves falling short, we wellbeing to God. This is the first and great fulfillment.
become anxious and depressed. And if we feel that we’re And a second is like it: to recognize that each and every
making the grade, we take pleasure in our superiority, fellow human being is equally someone perfectly special
and are especially happy when we can compare ourselves to God, and to be simply happy in not domineering over
with someone in our circle who is doing less well — until our fellows, in not being superior to them, but in serving
we run into somebody who’s doing even better, and the them and fellowshipping with them in love.
self-doubt and emptiness returns.
According to Mahler, this double fulfillment of our drive
to be special is basic psychological wellbeing, in the view
Roland Mahler proposes that a Christian psychology and of Christian psychology.
psychotherapy will affirm and approve our basic desire to
be somebody “special.” But the Christian understanding
of the teleology of that basic desire — the mature and

Robert C. Robertson,
USA. Distinguished
Professor of Ethics
Baylor University, Are-
as of Interest: Ethics
(especially virtues),
Kierkegaard, Emotion
Theory, Moral Psycho-
logy, Epistemology

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