Pastoral Psychology, Vol. 48, No.

1,1999

From Mystical Moment to Therapeutic Method:

Connections Between Psychology of Religion
and Pastoral Counseling
Donald Capps1

Argues for a connection between psychology of religion, represented by William

James, and pastoral counseling, especially as informed by the therapeutic methods
of the brief therapy centers in Palo Alto and Milwaukee. Ludwig Wittgenstein, the
philosopher, is seen as the key bridge figure between the two. Inspired by the film
Six Degrees of Separation, the proposal is made for connective links between the
philosophical and experimental interests of Benjamin Blood and William James
in the mystical experience, Ludwig Wittgenstein's philosophical method in the
Tractatus, and the therapeutic methods of Paul Watzlawick and Steve de Shazer.
This transmission process is considered similar to that which occurs in religion itself, as transcendent experiences are routinized through liturgical and sacramental
practices. The essay is viewed as an exercise in pastoral theological method.

In an earlier essay (Capps, 1997) I argued for the relevance of psychology of

religion to pastoral care based on their shared commitment to religiously-grounded
hope. I showed that William James' pragmatic method of truth provided the philosophical link between the two fields. In this essay I argue for a link between
psychology of religion and pastoral counseling. In Refraining: A New Method in
Pastoral Care (Capps, 1990) and Living Stories: Pastoral Counseling in Congregational Context (1998) I have contended for the usefulness of refraining methods
for pastoral care and counseling. In the former book, I focused on the work of
Paul Watzlawick and his coauthors John Weakland and Richard Fisch in their
book Change: Principles of Problem Formation and Problem Resolution (1974).
In the second book, I again focused on Watzlawick's work but I also made use of
1Donald

Capps is William Harte Felmeth Professor of Pastoral Theology at Princeton Theological

Seminary, Princeton, New Jersey. Address correspondence to Donald Capps, Princeton Theological
Seminary, Princeton, NJ 08542-0803.
23
O 1999 Humin Sciences Press, Inc.

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Steve de Shazer's work (1991,1994). As both Watzlawick and de Shazer have been
greatly influenced by philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, the key connecting link
between psychology of religion and pastoral counseling is Wittgenstein's philosophical viewpoint as developed in his first book Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
(1961). As in my earlier essay, William James is the psychologist of religion,
though here I will be emphasizing his interest in mysticism (1982).
On its face, psychology of religion seems to have little relevance to pastoral
counseling, especially pastoral counseling based on therapeutic methods spawned
by the family therapy movement of the 1960s. As defined by James, psychology of
religion is concerned with the religious experiences of individuals in their solitude
while pastoral counseling has largely been informed by family systems theory.
I will argue here, however, that the two fields share certain fundamental convictions in common and are not as irreconcilable as we may think. Inspired by the
film Six Degrees of Separation, which posits that we could discover a connection between ourselves and any other living person if we could identify the five
individuals who would constitute the intervening links, 1 propose that a similar
situation exists with respect to psychology of religion and pastoral counseling,
that there are six degrees of separation between them. The first five degrees are
Benjamin P. Blood, William James, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Paul Watzlawick, and
Steve de Shazer. As the author of the pastoral counseling text, Living Stories, I
become the sixth individual in this connective chain of influence, though I am certainly not alone in my advocacy of refraining methods for pastoral counseling (see
Lester, 1995; Dunlap, 1997; Wimberly, 1997). In the interests of brevity, I will not
discuss these pastoral counseling appropriations of the work of Watzlawick and
de Shazer. The other five connections will be sufficient to make my argument that
psychology of religion and pastoral counseling have much in common, and that
the "six degrees of separation" methodology is a viable methodology for pastoral
theology.
Admittedly, this six degrees of separation may appear to be a much tootenuous connection between the two fields. It recalls conversations we have all had
with a new acquaintance where an effort is made to find that we have something
in common. One of us asks: "Do you happen to know so-and-so? He's from
New York too." "No, I don't believe I do." "Well, then, how about so-and-so?"
"I think I may have heard of him, but I'm not sure. New York is a pretty big
place, you know." Such efforts to establish connections are often proof of how
tenuous they really are. For this reason, our preference in interdisciplinary studies
is for one degree of separation between the two fields; for example, the pastoral
theologian creates a "dialogue" between representatives of two disciplines (e.g.,
Ricoeur for theology and Kohut for psychology). This feels like a much stronger
link than the one presented here. On the other hand, this preference for one degree
of separation also serves to make the point that in the large majority of cases, the
"dialogue" does not occur in the real world. The theologian and the psychologist

Connections Between Psychology of Religion and Pastoral Counseling

25

do not actually carry on an enduring conversation such as occurs, for example, in

a marital relationship. Rather, the "dialogue" is constructed by a third person (the
pastoral theologian) who on the basis of reading the writings of the two "dialogue"
partners makes connections between them that they had not made themselves. In
this sense, the act of reading makes the "dialogue" possible.
So, too, in the example I offer here, the act of reading is what enables there
to be a "dialogue" between psychology of religion and pastoral counseling. The
individuals are related by virtue of the fact that they have read the work of the
individual who immediately precedes them in the transmission process. de Shazer
did not read Blood, but he read Watzlawick, who read Wittgenstein, who read
James, who did read Blood. The very fact that this transmission route is more
circuitous than a "dialogue" in which only one degree of separation obtains makes
it less, not more, contrived than a "dialogue" created by a third party, for the
transmission from one individual to the next is not manipulated by a third party
who stands outside the dialogue (as a sort of moderator) but rather flows quite
naturally from one individual reader to the next. Also, while the main connecting
link between the various participants in the "dialogue" is a single assertion (made
by Benjamin P. Blood), the context in which the assertion occursthe problem that
it addressesis what makes the process of serial "dialogue" a significant one. This
underlying context reveals a striking commonality of viewpoints that obtains in
spite of the fact that several of the participants seem to have very little in common.
This commonality is a desire to articulate the methodological implications of
mystical experience for their respective fields.
This desire to "methodize" experience is not very different from efforts in
religion to routinize the experience of the transcendent through liturgical and
sacramental practices. The dangers of idolatryof mistaking the methods for the
real thingare of course well known to us. I will show, however, that the benefits
of this procedure in the case at hand outweigh the negative. This is largely due
to the fact that for most of the participants in this "dialogue" there is little desire
to have firsthand mystical experience. Therefore, they do not feel that much has
been lost in the transfer from mystical experience to therapeutic method. They
would view this achievement as not unlike the harnessing of electricity for daily
use. If the choice is between awesome lightning storms and well-lit city streets,
the transmission process shows a distinct preference for the latter.
I conclude these prefatory comments with one admission. There is a weak link
in the transmission process from Blood to de Shazer. Some readersthe purists
among usmay view this as a fatal methodological flaw, while othersmore
generousmay excuse it on the grounds that no method, however rigorous, is
without some liability or weakness. This weak link is that, while Wittgenstein is
known to have read a great deal in William James, I cannot confirm that he read the
essay by James which is key to my argument. This does no harm to my argument
that the transmission process involves a "methodizing" of mysticism, but the six

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Capps

degrees of separation methodology would have been strengthened had I been able
to ascertain that Wittgenstein did read the essay. My hunch that he did read it is
based on the fact that where most of us claim to have read texts we have not read,
Wittgenstein had the opposite habit of claiming to have read much less than he actually did. (He made fun of a Methodist minister whose walls were lined with books
he never read [Monk, 1990, 463]). While this habit may appear to be a mark of
humility, it also served his desire to appear highly original, which of course he was.

FROM FIRST TO SECOND DEGREE: BENJAMIN P. BLOOD

TO WILLIAM JAMES
Were it not for William James' lifelong tendency to read and cite the works
of "crank" authors, often in glowing terms, we would today know nothing about
Benjamin P. Blood, a man whose name crops up in virtually every biography written
about William James. In her recent biography, Linda Simon (1998) introduces
Blood in this fashion:
Blood claimed that after breathing nitrous oxide gas and other anesthetics, he experienced
a kind of epiphany "in which the genius of being is revealed." He suggested that others
must have experienced the same kind of revelation, but since the moment of transition from
anesthesia to full consciousness was so transitory, the impact of the experience was lost.
James conceded that Blood's idea would be considered "crack-brained" by many readers,
but he urged an open mind (p. 142).

In The Varieties of Religious Experience James reports that his open-mindedness

extended to his own experiment with nitrous-oxide intoxication, an experiment
he describes at some length in his essay "On Some Hegelisms" (1956). Noting
that the experience afforded him a type of consciousness unlike normal waking
consciousness, he suggests that the problem is how such unusual consciousness is
to be regarded:
Looking back on my own experiences, they all converge towards a kind of insight to which
I cannot help ascribing some metaphysical significance. The keynote of it is invariably a
reconciliation. It is as if the opposites of the world, whose contradictoriness and conflict
make all our difficulties and troubles, were melted into unity [as though one party to the
conflict] and soaks up and absorbs its opposite into itself (1982, p. 388).

Since his account of his nitrous oxide experiment occurs in his mysticism chapter in
The Varieties, he shared Blood's view that the experience is similar to the mystical
experience itself, but one which may be contrived at will.
James' source for Blood's proposal was a pamphlet Blood wrote and published on his own entitled The Anesthetic Revelation and the Gist of Philosophy
(1874). James refers to it in his first major work, The Principles of Psychology
(1950), published in 1890, where he describes nitrous oxide intoxication as one
"in which a man's very soul will sweat with conviction, and he be all the while
unable to tell what he is convinced of at all" (2, p. 284). In The Varieties of Religious Experience, published twelve years later, he quotes Blood's description

Connections Between Psychology of Religion and Pastoral Counseling

27

of an "anesthetic revelation," and then adds a very extensive footnote where he

also quotes Blood's theories about the experience (pp. 389-391). An even earlier
reference to Blood's pamphlet (in 1879), however, is especially significant, for
this is where he quotes an assertion by Blood that becomes the connecting link
from Blood to James to Wittgenstein to the therapeutic community in Palo Alto.
This quotation occurs in an essay entitled "The Sentiment of Rationality," written
when James was 37 years old (Blood was about 40) and published in the British
journal Mind. A small portion of this essay was reprinted in James' The Will to
Believe, published in 1897, but the quotation from Benjamin Blood was not included in the shortened version. In this essay James refers to Mr. Blood's view
that "we may all grasp the secret of being if we only intoxicate ourselves often
enough with laughing-gas" (1992, p. 984). While this association of laughing-gas
with "the secret of being" may discredit anything else Blood might have to say,
James, as noted, recommends an open-mindedness. (Incidentally, doubts about the
basic sanity of Mr. Blood may not have been resisted by Mr. Blood himself, as
he described himself as an "Idle, indifferent and amateur fraud" [Simon, 1998,
p. 141]).
The assertion, which comes at the end of a long footnote quotation from
Blood's pamphlet, is the following: "The disease of Metaphysics vanishes in
the fading of the question and not in the coming of an answer" (1992, p. 984).
In The Principles of Psychology, James contrasted the effects of nitrous oxide
intoxication"in which a man's very soul will sweat with conviction"with the
"pathological state" of "the questioning mania," which
consists in the inability to rest in any conception. When in the grips of the questioning mania
(which the Germans call Grubelsucht) one is compelled to ask such questions as: "Why do
I stand here where I stand?" "Why is a glass a glass, a chair a chair?" "How is it that men
are only of the size they are? Why not as big as houses?," etc. etc. (1920, 2, p. 284).

By referring to this questioning mania as a "pathological state," James was challenging an extreme skepticism where evidence must be supplied for each and every
opinion, belief and conviction that we hold. Blood's assertion regarding "the disease of Metaphysics" makes a related but different point, namely, that a question
may fade away not because it has been satisfactorily answered but because it is
no longer fruitful to ask. The connection between the questioning mania and the
disease of metaphysics is that both are regarded as "pathological" as both are concerned with questions that either cannot or need not receive answers. In this sense,
metaphysics and the questioning mania have much in common. The pathology or
disease is in the expectation that an answer to the question is either worth having
or forthcoming.
Blood's assertion that "the disease of Metaphysics vanishes in the fading of
the question and not in the coming of an answer" occurs in the context of James'
discussion of mysticism, which he introduces toward the very end of his essay as
that to which we may have recourse when we reach the limits of rational thought.
Noting that two foremost contemporary philosophers (Renouvier and Hodgson)

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Capps

have said that "of experience as a whole no account can be given" because we
cannot gain a vantage point outside of experience, James suggests that
to religious persons of every shade of doctrine moments come when the world as it seems
so divinely orderly, and the acceptance of it by the heart so rapturously complete, that
intellectual questions vanish, nay the intellect itself is hushed to sleep.... Ontological
emotion so fills the soul that ontological speculation can no longer overlap it and put her
girdle of interrogation-marks around existence (1992, p. 983).

In such moments, "We feel as if there were something diseased and contemptible,
yea vile, in theoretic grubbing and brooding. To feel 'I am the truth' is to abolish the
opposition between knowing and being." In this sense, "The peace of rationality
may be sought through ectasy when logic fails" (1992, p. 983). Thus, when one
stands "outside oneself in this rapturous moment, the questions posed by our
rational mind vanish away, seeming no longer to matter. Moreover, the mystical
moment is one in which the individual does experience the whole and may in fact
be able to give an account of it because the heart is able to "wall out the ultimate
irrationality which the head ascertains" (p. 983).
For James, this raises the question whether such a transcendent viewpoint
could be developed into a "systematized method." If it could, this would be
"a philosophic achievement of first-rate importance" (p. 983). While various mystics have used this procedure, thus far it has been limited to a very few persons on
an occasional basis and has not been developed into "a true method" available to
ordinary persons. In his footnote reference to Benjamin Blood, however, he indicates that Blood's pamphlet is "a curious contribution" toward the construction of
just such a method. The problem is that it is based on the idea that we would all
intoxicate ourselves "often enough" with laughing-gas. While James, in his 1882
essay "On Some Hegelisms," suggests that the experiment with "pure gas is short
and harmless enough" (1956, p. 294), and also indicates that something similar
to this "immense emotional sense of reconciliation" may be experienced in the
"maudlin" stage of alcoholic drunkenness, such intoxicated states are hardly adequate "methods" for routinizing the achievements gained through the mystical moment. Moreover, Gerald E. Myers points out that James "worried about drugs and
alcohol" and their lasting effects on the psyche, noting that his brother Robertson
suffered from alcoholism (Myers, 1986, p. 372). So serious was Robertson's addiction that James, confronted with the task of having him placed in a hospital for
alcoholics, wrote to their brother Henry, "The only manly and moral thing for a
man in his plight is to kill himself." He marveled that Robertson's wife "sticks to
him like a burr, in spite of everything. I wish she wouldn't" (Simon, 1998, p. 219).
Clearly, a more "systemized method" than laughing gas or alcohol for routinizing
the experience of mystical onenessthe reconciliation of oppositeswas needed.
I suggest that this was precisely the task that Wittgenstein set for himself and that
Watzlawick and de Shazer in their own ways have sought to make more accessible
to the ordinary (i.e., non-mystical) person. Key to this formulation of a systemized

Connections Between Psychology of Religion and Pastoral Counseling

29

method is Blood's assertion that "the disease of Metaphysics vanishes in the fading
of the question and not in the coming of an answer."
FROM SECOND TO THIRD DEGREE: WILLIAM JAMES
TO LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN
Born in Vienna, Austria in 1889, Wittgenstein was James' junior by fortyseven years. He was an infant when James' first major book The Principles of
Psychology was published and was studying aeronautics in Manchester, England,
the year of James' death (1910). He became disenchanted with aeronautics, however, and despite the fact that this was the reason he left Austria to go to England,
he abandoned these studies and went to Cambridge in 1911 to study philosophy
with Bertrand Russell. A few months later he was deeply engrossed in reading
James' The Varieties of Religious Experience and telling Russell: "This book does
me a lot of good. I don't mean to say that I will be a saint soon, but I am not sure
that it does not improve me a little in a way in which I would like to improve very
much: namely, I think that it helps me to get rid of my Sorge [worry, anxiety]"
(Monk, 1990, p. 463). Thus began his lifelong attraction to the work of William
James. Even when he disagreed with James he held him in the highest regard. He
once recommended James' The Varieties to a friend, noting that what made James
such a "good philosopher" was that "he was a real human being" (Monk, 1990,
p. 478).
Wittgenstein also worked out his own views on the self by carefully examining what James had written on the self in The Principles. He makes extensive
references to James in his various writings, including, for example, his Remarks
on the Philosopy of Psychology (1988). Many of these raise questions concerning James' view that there is a correspondence between our language and our
emotions. Wittgenstein was not as assured that there is a direct correspondence
between what we say ("I feel sad") and what we feel at the time of saying this
("sadness") (2, pp. 51, 61). This discussion is picked up by Steve de Shazer who,
like Wittgenstein, distrusts the common linkage in therapy between language and
the emotional states the language is considered to represent or express. Another
issue that Wittgenstein derived from James was the question whether "thought
is possible without language." James had used the testimony of a Mr. Ballard, a
deaf-mute instructor, to show that this is perfectly possible (1950,1, p. 266). But
Wittgenstein disagreed, concluding that "Ballard's testimony (in James) cannot
convince me that it is possible to think without a language. ... Indeed, where no
language is used, why should one speak of 'thinking'? If this is done, it shows
something about the concept of thinking" that one is using, not about thinking
itself (Wittgenstein, 1988, 3, p. 41).
That Wittgenstein read and reread James' The Varieties and The Principles
of Psychology is beyond question. In fact, Michael Kober has recently noted that

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Capps

William James was one of three philosophers (the others being Bertrand Russell
and G.E. Moore) whom Wittgenstein read very carefully (Kober, 1996, p. 411). It
is also widely suggested that Wittgenstein, like James, was a pragmatist, a claim
usually based on the fact that he emphasized the uses of language (see Van Peursen,
1970). But his was not the "crude kind of pragmatism" that "both Wittgenstein and
William James have been accused of holding but which, in fact, both explicitly
repudiated" (Gerrard, 1996, p. 181). As Philip R. Shields writes:
Wittgenstein's tendency to view knowledge in terms of an ability to do things, and to replace
questions about the meaning of words with questions about their use, naturally leads to
comparisons with pragmatism. Wittgenstein saw this as a danger and he explicitly warns
against making this analogy: "So I am trying to say something that sounds like pragmatism.
Here I am being thwarted by a kind of Weltanschauung" (Shields, 1993, p. 103).

While Wittgenstein was very familiar with these major writings in which James
refers to Benjamin Blood, there is no direct evidence, however, that he read the
essay, "The Sentiment of Rationality," in which the quotation about the "disease of
Metaphysics" occurs. It is worth noting, though, that this essay was published in
an English journal, increasing the possibility that Wittgenstein was familiar with
it. Also, it is in this essay and only here that James calls for the "systematized
method" that if ever produced or formulated would be "a philosophic achievement of first-rate importance." Wittgenstein's earliest work, the Tractatus LogicoPhilosophicus, is a response to this call.
This book, published in 1921, was begun several years earlier when
Wittgenstein was with the Austria-Hungary army on the Russian front. His initial
failure to find a publisher "or even a single person who understood it" precipitated
suicidal thoughts during the autumn of 1919 (Monk, 1990, p. 173). But the book
was eventually published and Bertrand Russell wrote an introduction for it. It was
the only philosophical work that Wittgenstein published during his lifetime (the
others were published posthumously) and is considered perhaps the most important
work of philosophy written in the twentieth century.
The argument of the Tractatus is presented in the form of propositions, each
numbered for easy reference. In the preface Wittgenstein suggests that the "whole
sense of the book might be summed up in the following words: what can be
said at all can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk about we must pass over in
silence" (Wittgenstein, 1961, p. 3). In his introduction, Bertrand Russell comments
on the feature of the Tractatus that caused him "a certain sense of intellectual
discomfort," namely, "Mr. Wittgenstein's attitude toward the mystical." He notes
in his introduction to the Tractatus that Wittgenstein's
attitude upon this grows naturally out of his doctrine in pure logic, according to which the
logical proposition is a picture (true or false) of the fact, and has in common with the fact a
certain structure. It is this common structure which makes it capable of being a picture of the
fact, but the structure cannot itself be put into words, since it is a structure of words, as well
as of the facts to which they refer. Everything, therefore, which is involved in the very idea
of the expressiveness of language must remain incapable of being expressed in language,
and is, therefore, inexpressible in a perfectly precise sense. This inexpressible contains,
according to Mr. Wittgenstein, the whole of logic and philosophy (1961, pp. xx-xxi).

Connections Between Psychology of Religion and Pastoral Counseling

31

Russell does not question that Wittgenstein has made "very powerful arguments"
that the task of philosophy is to show that assertions which go beyond the propositions of the sciences are meaningless, but he worries that Wittgenstein "manages
to say a good deal about what cannot be said, thus suggesting to the sceptical
reader that possibly there may be some loophole through a hierarchy of languages,
or by some other exit. The whole subject of ethics, for example, is placed by
Mr. Wittgenstein in the mystical, inexpressible region. Nevertheless he is capable
of conveying his ethical opinions" (p. xxi). He notes that Wittgenstein's defense
against this apparent contradiction "would be that what he calls the mystical can
be shown, although it cannot be said." While acknowledging that this defense may
be adequate, this is precisely what caused Russell his "intellectual discomfort."
Aside from this disagreement, however, Russell's comments reveal the degree to
which Wittgenstein's system is informed by his "attitude toward the mystical."
While science imposes certain constraints on philosophy by requiring that it not
say more than the facts allow, mystical awareness cautions philosophy that one
cannot talk about the whole because it is inexpressible. It also teaches us, however,
that the whole can be shown, i.e., as the limit beyond which rational thought cannot
go. As Newton Garver puts it, the message of the Tractatus is that "Philosophy is
possible only because of its limits, and philosophers become confused and fraudulent when they deliberately or even inadvertently cross over those limits" (Garver,
1996, p. 166).
Given our interest in Blood's statement about the "disease of Metaphysics"
and his and James' location of this assertion within a mystical framework, the
concluding propositions in the Tractatus are especially significant. In the following, I have chosen from among these concluding propositions those that show
that Wittgenstein has provided a "systematized method" for thinking about the
relationship between rational thought and the mystical:
6.44
6.45

It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists.
To view the world sub specie aeterni is to view it as a wholea limited
whole. Feeling the world as a limited whole-it is this that is mystical.
6.5 When the answer cannot be put into words, neither can the question be
put into words. The riddle does not exist. If a question can be framed
at all, it is also possible to answer it.
6.51 Scepticism is not irrefutable, but obviously nonsensical, when it tries
to raise doubts where no questions can be asked. For doubt can exist
only where a question exists, a question only where an answer exists,
and an answer only where something can be said.
6.521 The solution of the problem of life is seen in the vanishing of the
problem. (Is not this the reason why those who have found after a long
period of doubt that the sense of life became clear to them have then
been unable to say what constituted that sense?)
6.522 There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make
themselves manifest. They are what is mystical.

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6.54

My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone

who understands me eventually recognizes them as nonsensical, when
he has used themas stepsto climb up beyond them. (He must, so
to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it.) He must
transcend these propositions, and then he will see the world aright.
What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.

(Incidentally, proposition 6.45 concerning the view afforded by looking at reality sub specie aeterni may recall Wittgenstein's earlier, but abandoned, career in
aeronautics.)
In his commentary on the Tractatus as a whole, but especially these concluding
propositions, C.A. Van Peursen notes that
Wittgenstein believes that, whereas one cannot alter the course of things in the universe, one
can change one's view of it. This idea is also to be found in Spinoza, and, in some respects,
goes back to the Stoic view of life. But Wittgenstein draws out a further implication: if one
considers just how the questions of life make themselves manifest outside the sphere of time
and of logical relations it becomes clear that there is nothing more to be said about them.
The mystical is a "solution," but not in the ordinary sense of a solution to a riddle, for this
can only be given in terms of the logical space of meaningful language. "The solution of
the riddle of life in space and time lies outside space and time" (6.4312). So again, it is not
a solution in the ordinary sense, for, as Wittgenstein says, when all meaningful, scientific
questions have been answered, the problems of life remain completely untouched; of course
there are then no questions left, and this itself is the answer (Van Peursen, 1970, p. 68).

Van Peursen goes on to ask: "Does Wittgenstein mean all this to be negative, in
that the mystical is to be understood as a bewitchment by meaningless language
and therefore in essence non-existent? No, for while it cannot be made intelligible
as a problem, it is there nonetheless; 'The inexpressible does indeed exist. It
shows itself, it is the mystical'" (6.522) (p. 68). Where Wittgenstein differs from
other philosophers like Spinoza, Schopenhauer and even from Kant is that for
him thinking is not a separate activity from languagerecall his objection to
Mr. Ballard's contrary viewand therefore the mystical "is not something that
could be thought about apart from language. It is not something in addition to
other things, but merely the limitedness of thought and language as setting bounds
as to what cannot be thought" (p. 69). It can, however, be "shown" to exist because
it marks these very limits.
I am especially interested here in proposition 6.521, "The solution of the
problem of life is seen in the vanishing of the problem." This is remarkably similar
to Benjamin Blood's "The disease of Metaphysics vanishes in the fading of the
question and not in the coming of an answer." In the context in which it occurs,
this proposition is also consistent with James' observation that under nitrous oxide
intoxication "a man's very soul will sweat with conviction, and he be all the while
unable to tell what he is convinced of at all." In Wittgenstein's terms, a person
is unable to "say" what he knows because in this moment language fails him,
and yet there is a kind of "showing" of something, if only the "showing" of the

Connections Between Psychology of Religion and Pastoral Counseling

33

limits to which his thinking is able to go. Wittgenstein also affirms that one may
stand or take a position outside the limits of ordinary time and logical relations
and view reality "sub sped aeterni." From this viewpoint, one is able to declare,
"The world is my world" (5.641). As Ray Monk explains in his biography of
Wittgenstein:
The 'deep grounds' for idealism which Wittgenstein perceived are undoubtedly connected
with the account of the world which he gives in propositions 5.6-5.641 of the Tractatus.
"The world is my world." "I am my world (The microcosm.)," and yet I am not in my world:
"The subject does not belong to the world; rather it is a limit of the world" (Monk, 1990,
p. 190).

Monk suggests that this "is a view that gives a philosophical underpinning to
the religious individualism adopted by Wittgenstein." Wittgenstein is saying that
"I am my world, so if I am unhappy about the world, the only way in which I can
do anything decisive about it is to change myself. 'The world of the happy man
is a different one from that of the unhappy man'" (190; Monk is quoting from
prop. 6.43). This "sub speci aeterni" perspective is similar to James' comment that
in moments of ecstasy one is released from "grubbing" and "brooding" over the
question "What is truth?" and simply declares, "I am the truth." As Wittgenstein
puts it, this is to view the world "as a wholea limited whole." One does not see
everything, but what one sees is seen holistically, or as James says, as "reconciled."
In light of James' observation that in the mystical perspectivethe world
viewed from outside of itself"We feel as if there were something diseased and
contemptible, yea vile, in theoretic grubbing and brooding," Wittgenstein's reported response to a question posed by Bertrand Russell is especially noteworthy.
Russell was fond of recounting the following story about Wittgenstein when he
was a student at Cambridge:
He was not, however, altogether easy to deal with. He used to come to my rooms at midnight
and, for hours, he would walk backwards and forwards like a caged tiger. On arrival, he
would announce that when he left my rooms he would commit suicide. So in spite of getting
sleepy, I did not like to turn him out. On one such evening, after an hour or two of dead
silence, I said to him, "Wittgenstein, are you thinking about logic or about your sins?"
"Both," he said, and then reverted to silence (Shields, 1993, p. 3).

In Logic and Sin in the Writings of Ludwig Wittgenstein Philip R. Shields argues that for Wittgenstein there was "an intimate connection" between logic and
sin, noting that Wittgenstein "repeatedly speaks of being 'seduced' by logic" and
"'misled' by grammar" (Shields, 1993, p. 5). Drawing on James' comment in
The Varieties that "the solution" religion offers is "a sense that we are saved from
the wrongness [in which we naturally stand] by making proper connection with
the higher powers" (James, 1982, p. 508), Shields points out that Wittgenstein's
recognition of the limits of logical reasoning was not merely an intellectual matter
for him but a moral and religious one as well. His own propositions in Tractatus
came under a similar indictment, as he suggests in 6.54 that they are a ladder to
climb up and beyond and then, like the ladder, to be thrown away.

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As I have noted, the question whether Wittgenstein read James' essay, "The
Sentiment of Rationality," cannot be answered (at least on the basis of the evidence provided in his own writings; he does not cite the essay). But the Tractatus
reflects what James called for in the essay, namely, the formulation of a "systematized method" for accounting for and justifying the mystical process by which
"the heart can thus wall out the ultimate irrationality which the head ascertains,"
thus making a case for what James called the "dark sayings" which violate "common logic" but from whose authority he could not "wholly escape." Specifically,
Wittgenstein's distinction between "saying" and "showing" is designed to afford
such a "systematized method," and his propositions set forth the rules whereby
one may clearly differentiate between those things which may be said and those
about which one must remain silent. A central feature of this method is its question and answer format, wherein a question may be asked only where an answer
exists, which means that one does not ask concerning any matter where an answer
will not be forthcoming. When this question and answer format is redefined in
terms of problems and solutions, we have proposition 6.521 "The solution of the
problem of life is seen in the vanishing of the problem." I suggest that Benjamin
P. Blood anticipates this very differentiation between those matters that may be
handled within scientific (empirical) and logical frames and those that transcend
these frames with his seemingly hopeless but actually liberating assertion that "the
disease of Metaphysics vanishes in the fading of the question and not in the coming
of an answer." Of course, I am not suggesting that Benjamin P. Blood was as great
a philosopher as Ludwig Wittgenstein. After all, he wrote Anesthetic Revelation
and the Gist of Philosophy, not Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. But the germ
of Wittgenstein's project can be seen in Blood's insight, and James to his credit
recognized its powerful implications for philosophy.

FROM THIRD TO FOURTH DEGREE: LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN

TO PAUL WATZLAWICK
I now want to turn our attention to the therapeutic methods inaugurated at
the Brief Therapy Center in Palo Alto and specifically to the writings of Paul
Watzlawick and his colleagues. Like Wittgenstein, Watzlawick was born in Austria.
He became a research associate at the Mental Research Institute in 1960 and a
clinical associate professor in psychiatry at Stanford University Medical Center in
1976. His Pragmatics of Human Communication (1967), coauthored with Janet
Beavin Bavelas and Don D. Jackson (1967) concludes with a brief discussion of
Wittgenstein's Tractatus, noting that Wittgenstein shows "that we could only know
something about the world in its totality if we could step outside of it; but if this
were possible, the world would no longer be the whole world" (270). Because "our
logic knows of nothing outside of it; the limits of the world are also its limits,"
this means that "within the limits of the world, meaningful questions can be asked

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and answered," but this also means that "nothing inside a frame can state or even
ask anything about that frame," as the frame is outside and therefore unknowable
according to ordinary logical thinking: "The world, then, is finite and at the same
time limitless, limitless precisely because there is nothing outside that together
with the inside could form a boundary" (pp. 270-271). This is why Wittgenstein
can claim that "The world and life are one. I am my world" and "the world is my
world" (5.63,6.641).
Watzlawick and coauthors introduce this brief discussion of Wittgenstein to
express "the ultimate paradox of man's existence," which is that he "is ultimately
subject and object of his quest" (p. 270). Their discussion concludes with several
of the propositions that also conclude the Tractatus Logico-Philosophus, which
are prefaced by their comment that "nothing inside a frame can state, or even ask,
anything about that frame. The solution, then, is not the finding of an answer to
the riddle of existence, but the realization there is no riddle. This is the essence of
the beautiful, almost Zen Buddhist closing sentences of the Tractatus" (p. 270).
Among the propositions that he quotes is the one that states, "The solution of the
problem of life is seen in the vanishing of this problem."
Watzlawick returns to this proposition in subsequent writings. In Change
(1974), coauthored with John Weakland and Richard Fisch, it is cited in the chapter on second-order change to suggest that there are times when the attempted
solution is the problem. As long as solutions are attempted the problem itself
remains. Therapeutic interventions in such cases may include helping the counselee to arrive at the conviction that no problem exists, or the introduction of the
distinction between a difficulty and a problem, the former being an uncomfortable or even painful state of affairs that is not susceptible to change (i.e., must
simply be lived with), the latter being a situation where change is possible (pp. 3839). There are also difficulties that are amenable to change by means of ordinary
common sense solutions; these do not require the special problem-solving skills
of a therapist. Supporting this very distinction between difficulties and problems
is Wittgenstein's point that a question can exist only where an answer also exists. Problems are situations where an answer does exist, if only it can be found
or identified as such, whereas difficulties are situations where there is no answer.
Watzlawick et al. note that many problems in life develop because problem-solving
efforts are applied to difficulties, thereby making the difficulty worse. Thus, they
employ Wittgenstein's proposition that "for an answer which cannot be expressed
the question too cannot be expressed," using it to support their view that a counselee's bewilderment may not be due to not having found an answer to her problem
but to having operated on the assumption that she already knows what the right
question is (pp. 112-113). They do not take for granted that the counselee already
knows what her problem is when she comes for counseling. In fact, they are likely
to help her reformulate the problem so that it becomes amenable to a solution.
In a sense, therapy becomes a process of finding a problem for which a solution
exists!

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Underlying these and several other applications of Wittgenstein's propositions

from Tractatus is the assumption that the solution to the problem lies in getting
outside the frame in which the counselee has thus far perceived the problem.
Viewed from outside this frame, the solution is either self-evident or the problem
is no longer considered a problem. In effect, what Watzlawick and his coauthors
offer is a methodized form of the mystical moment, i.e., of viewing the situation
"sub speci aeterni." By standing outside the frame, one may ask about the frame
itself. While they use Wittgenstein's later writings, drawing especially on his later
concept of "language games" and the "rules" that pertain thereto, the germ of the
refraining (or second-order change) approach to counseling is already evident in
this use of Wittgenstein's view of the mystical, especially as expressed in 6.45 "To
view the world sub speci aeterni is to view it as a wholea limited whole" and
6.54 "He must transcend these propositions, and then he will see the world aright."
Watzlawick's The Language of Change (1978) has a single reference to
Wittgenstein. It occurs in the context of Watzlawick's discussion of the refraining
technique of encouraging a mother who has been pampering and overprotecting
her son to do more not less pampering so that he will fail at school and thereby be
forced to learn an important lesson regarding self-reliance: "This refraining creates the preconditions for change of which Wittgenstein once said that we cannot
continue to play a game after somebody has taught us a new game instead of the
old one" (124).
In Munchhausen's Pigtail (1990), he again makes extensive references to
Wittgenstein. In the chapter, "Munchhausen's Pigtail and Wittgenstein's Ladder:
On the Problem of Self-Reference," he quotes propositions 6.521 of the Tractatus
"The solution of the problem of life is seen in the vanishing of the problem"and
6.54 concerning the need to throw away the ladder once one has climbed beyond
it. He links the latter to the mythical tale of Baron von Munchhausen who is said
to have saved himself and his horse from drowning by hoisting himself up on
his pigtail. To explain why Wittgenstein ends the Tractatus with such a negative
view of his own propositions, Watzlawick cites proposition 4.442 which states,
"It is quite impossible for a proposition to state that it itself is true." Watzlawick
points out: "The trouble is that this proposition is itself a proposition that says
something about itself.... Level and metalevel, communication and metacommunication paradoxically intermingle, and one is forever reminded of the dog chasing
its tail, or of the joker who said: 'How happy am I that I can't stand spinach, for if
I liked it I would eat itand I can't stand the stuff!'" (p. 103).
In the chapter entitled "Psychiatry's Changing Image of Man," Watzlawick
draws on Wittgenstein's propositions in Tractatus concerning the erasure of boundaries between "I" and "world", suggesting that a new view is emerging in which
"man and world are complementary. The world is no longer something that stands
in opposition to us," adding:
The almost mystical nature of this outlook adds to our reluctance to embrace it. For until now
the immediate experience of the unity of subject and object in rare and unusual moments

Connections Between Psychology of Religion and Pastoral Counseling

37

was left to the mystics, who then tried to describe this experience in the inadequate language
of the very world which they had transcended. And yet, from Wittgenstein's Tractatus to
Varela's Calculusthere exists now a whole spectrum of new conceptualizations which
will enter the language of psychiatry and thereby shape its image of man (p. 70).

He concludes this chapter with the following quotation from T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets: "We shall not cease from exploration/and the end of all our exploring/will
be to arrive where we started/and know the place for the first time" (p. 70). This
insight is already prefigured in Benjamin Blood's observation quoted in James'
The Varieties that
at the moment of recovery from anesthesia, just then, before starting on life, I catch, so to
speak, a glimpse of my heels, a glimpse of the eternal process just in the act of starting.
The truth is that we travel on a journey that was accomplished before we set out; and the
real end of philosophy is accomplished, not when we arrive at, but when we remain in, our
destination (being already there) (p. 390. his emphasis).

In noting that this "glimpse" of things occurs as one is just awakening from anesthesia, Blood also anticipates Wittgenstein's observation in a letter to his friend
Paul Englemann and quoted by Watzlawick that "In our better hours we wake up
just enough to realize that we are dreaming" (in Watzlawick, 1990, p. 151).
Clearly, a major contribution of Paul Watzlawick is his introduction of
Wittgenstein's thought to the therapeutic community. He (and his coauthors) have
developed numerous therapeutic concepts and techniques from Wittgenstein's
Tractatus and other later works. The proposition that most concerns us here"The
solution of the problem of life is seen in the vanishing of the problem"figures
the most prominently in Change where it provides the philosophical underpinning
for the authors' views on how change is effected, and supports their distinction between first-order change (which occurs within a given system which itself remains
unchanged) and second-order change (whose occurrence changes the system itself) (p. 10). Relevant to this distinction is their observation that "for the later
Wittgenstein, what becomes questionable is the question itself; this is an idea that
has great affinity with our investigations into change, and one that he had touched
upon in his most important early work, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus"
(p. 84). As we have seen, this is precisely the issue that Benjamin Blood addressed
when he sought to diagnoseand cure"the disease of Metaphysics."

FROM FOURTH TO FIFTH DEGREE: PAUL WATZLAWICK

TO STEVE DE SHAZER
The fifth individual in the transmission process is Steve de Shazer, the cofounder with Insoo Kim Berg and senior research associate of the Brief Family
Therapy Center in Milwaukee, the home of "solution-focused brief therapy." His
books have been written to explicate the theories and techniques of solutionfocused therapy. His appropriation of the philosophical views of Wittgenstein has

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Capps

direct bearing on this solution-focused approach. Among the younger generation

of therapists trained at the Brief Therapy Center in Palo Alto his writings are the
most reflective of Wittgenstein's philosophical approach.
In Words Were Originally Magic (1994, p. 18), de Shazer credits his conversations with John Weakland with having been a major influence on the development of his own therapeutic ideas. But in his earlier book Putting Difference to
Work (1991, pp. 43ff.), he cites Paul Watzlawick more frequently as a stimulus
with respect to the philosophical underpinnings of these ideas, noting for example
Watzlawick's and his own commitments to constructivism. It is a fair assumption
that Watzlawick introduced him to Wittgenstein. Unlike Watzlawick, de Shazer
does not cite Wittgenstein's Tractatus in either of these texts but instead focuses on
several of his later writings. The key arguments of the Tractatus reappear in these
later writings, however, and de Shazer makes substantial use of them in developing
his own therapeutic methods.
In Putting Difference to Work de Shazer, like Watzlawick, appropriates
Wittgenstein's concept of the "language game" in his theorizing about therapeutic
practice. He suggests that "One way of conceptualizing and describing the system
involved in doing therapy is to use a framework developed by Ludwig Wittgenstein
and to look at doing therapy as an example of an activity involving a set of related,
but distinct 'language games'" (p. 72). Citing Wittgenstein's statement in The Blue
and Brown Books that "the speaking of language is part of an activity, a form of
life," de Shazer notes that
A language game is an activity seen as a language complete in itself, a complete system
of human communication. Language games are complete in the sense that you've got what
you've got and that's all there is. There is no need to look behind or beneath since everything
you need is readily available and open to view. Nothing is hidden (pp. 72-73).

One is therefore not concerned to identify the "emotional states" that lie behind
the language. Since language games "are culturally shared and structured activities
that center on people's uses of language to describe, explain, and justify," they are
activities through which social relations and relationships are constructed and maintained
Since this is a system complete in itself, any particular sign can only be understood within
the context of the pattern of activities involved. Thus, the meaning of any one word depends
entirely on how the participants in the language game use that word (p. 73).

In the course of therapy with a woman who originally defined her problem as
"nymphomania," a redefinition of "insomnia" emerged instead. This was a much
less emotionally freighted term but one that took account of the facts as well as
or better than the term "nymphomania," and also lent itself more readily to brief
therapeutic procedures (pp. 63-70; see also Capps, 1998, pp. 128-132). In this
case, the therapeutic intervention followed Wittgenstein's precept that "we can only
know what a word means by how the participants in the conversation use it" (p. 69).
While our earlier discussion of Wittgenstein's views in the Tractatus may
seem to have little relationship to this "language game" approach to therapy, this is

Connections Between Psychology of Religion and Pastoral Counseling

39

not in fact the case. This is because several of Wittgenstein's earlier propositions
inform his concept of the language game. Significantly, de Shazer's discussion
of the therapeutic implications of Wittgenstein's views reflect the importance of
Wittgenstein's early formulations. For example, de Shazer views his therapeutic approach as one that is not "problem" but "solution-focused." He supports
this emphasis on solutions with this quotation from Wittgenstein's Philosophical
Remarks:
Where you can't look for an answer, you can't ask either, and that means: Where there's no
logical method for finding a solution, the question does not make sense either. Only where
there's a method of solution is there a problem (of course that doesn't mean "Only when the
solution has been found is there a problem"). That is, where we can only expect the solution
from some sort of revelation, there isn't even a problem. A revelation doesn't correspond to
any question (p. 130; note Wittgenstein's use of the word "revelation" here and Benjamin
Blood's use of it in the title of his pamphlet).

This Wittgensteinian view supports de Shazer's argument that rather than

giving the "problem" a privileged status, therapy should give such status to the
"solution." Focus should not be placed on trying to figure out what the problem
is but should instead involve identifying what would constitute a "solution," i.e.,
what would the counselee view as a satisfactory achievement or accomplishment
such that therapy would no longer be required. This means that the therapist not
only does not privilege the client's original view of what the problem is but also
questions whether the eventual solution will necessarily bear a close relationship
to any prior therapeutic definition of the problem. A solution will be constructed
in the course of therapy and this solution will determine, retroactively, what the
problem was. In this reversal of our usual way of viewing solutions and problems,
de Shazer is drawing in effect on Wittgenstein's original formulation in Tractatus
6.5 that "When the answer cannot be put into words, neither can the question be
put into words." As Wittgenstein restates this in Philosophical Remarks: "Only
when there's a method of solution is there a problem." Or, as de Shazer puts it,
"You never know what problem you are solving when you develop a solution"
(p. 118). This statement about what therapy involves certainly qualifies for what
James termed "a dark saying" when "expressed in terms of common logic," but
one which carries an odd "authority." We recognize its authority when we consider
those times when we felt our life situation had improved, but the improvement was
not directly related to why things had seemed "not so good" before.
Another use of Wittgenstein's earlier work occurs in de Shazer's view that
there are times when the counselee's "not knowing what the problem is" can actually be used to help construct a solution. While this runs counter to the commonsensical view that one needs to know what the problem is before one can begin to
define what the solution is, he notes that clients are often unable to articulate what
is bothering or troubling them and efforts by the therapist to get them to describe or
define it (i.e., put it in the form of a problem statement) are of no avail. To address
this common occurrence, he draws on Wittgenstein's discussion in The Blue and

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Capps

Brown Books of an experiment, which is any action or process undertaken to discover something not yet known. In light of our earlier discussion of Wittgenstein's
distinction between "saying" (the factual and logical frames of reference) and
"showing" (the mystical), the fact that de Shazer, following Wittgenstein himself,
views such experiments as "showings" is especially noteworthy. If, for example,
one wanted to communicate to another person or even oneself what "being afraid"
means to him, he (in Wittgenstein's words) could "define it at a single showing" by
"play-acting" fear (p. 119). Applying this "showing" to therapy, de Shazer suggests
that one may "play-act" the solution, thereby constructing it, as it were, before the
fact. In many cases, "it is enough for the client to show what the goal is," that is, it
need not be defined in advance. By experimenting with the solution (i.e., acting as
though the "solution" is already in place) the client experiences "what the solution
is going to look like, feel like, and be perceived like by others" (p. 119). This has
resulted in the "technique" of having clients choose certain days of the week when
they will act as if the solution is already in place, and then report to the therapist what difference this made in their lives, especially in their interactions with
others.
A related de Shazerian technique, that of "identifying exceptions," was also
inspired by Wittgenstein, specifically in his discussion of "randomness" in Philosophical Remarks (1975, prop. 145). De Shazer discusses the technique in Putting
Difference to Work (pp. 81-94) and Words Were Originally Magic (pp. 116-127,
192-199, 154-256; see also Capps, 1998, pp. 139-141).
In these and several other instances in Putting Difference to Work, de Shazer
draws on Wittgenstein's concluding propositions in the Tractatus. By implication,
his whole therapeutic program is based on the proposition that "The solution of
the problem of life is seen in the vanishing of the problem." In fact, to underscore
this fact he uses the grammatical device of striking through the word "problem"
rendering it problemto make the point that since the word is inaccurate or inadequate it is crossed out, but since it is necessary it remains legible. This is itself a
way of indicating that what cannot be said may nevertheless be shown.
In Words Were Originally Magic, de Shazer continues to draw on Wittgenstein's
later work, again emphasizing that therapy involves language games. As in other
language games, the task is to determine how words are being used within the
context of the game itself. He discusses Wittgenstein's criticism of Freud for his
assumption (shared with James) that words communicate internal feeling states.
He also discusses his therapeutic use of the "scaling question," which has bearing
on the issue of "saying" and "showing," and also on the "inexpressibility" of some
of the things that we "know" to be real. In effect, Wittgenstein's distinction between logic and the mystical in Tractatus is the philosophical underpinning for this
particular therapeutic method. Briefly stated, the scaling question asks the client
to indicate on a scale of 1-10 her perception of "where she is now" and what it
would take to be higher on the scale. As de Shazer explains, "Since you cannot
be absolutely certain what another person means by his or her use of a word or

Connections Between Psychology of Religion and Pastoral Counseling

41

concept, scaling questions allow both therapist and client to jointly construct a
bridge, a way of talking about things that are hard to describeincluding progress
toward the client's solution" (p. 92; see also Capps, 1998, pp. 144-146).
Following Wittgenstein, de Shazer notes that the meaning of the number is its
use in the specific language game involving therapist and client. But what makes
this use unique is that the number stands for something that is inexpressible in
words. As John Weakland points out, the scaling question defies logic:
By inventing one of these scales, you can take a whole amorphous thing and reduce it to a
number; now it's real and concrete. In a logical sense, that's an impossible task. But you do
it, and now it's real....[Thus] when it's global, general, amorphous, and vagueyou give
it a number (in de Shazer, 1994, p. 92).

In Wittgenstein's sense, the number is precisely not a "saying" (as it really says
nothing) but it is a "showing," i.e., a "showing" of something that "exists" but
cannot be expressed because it is "amorphous" and "vague." In support of his use of
the scaling question, de Shazer quotes the following statement from Wittgenstein's
Philosophical Investigations:
Compare knowing and saying: how many feet high Mont Blanc ishow the word "game"
is usedhow a clarinet soundsif you are surprised that one can know something and not
be able to say it, you are perhaps thinking of a case like the first. Certainly not one like the
third (in de Shazer, 1994, p. 185).

This implies that most of the complaints that clients bring to therapy and for
which solutions are sought have the form of a "knowing" that is "unsayable."
Attempts to "say" it (i.e., to "problematize" it) tend to be inaccurate and misleading.
This is precisely what Watzlawick says about mystics who have tried to describe
their experiences "in the inadequate language of the very world which they had
transcended." What de Shazer's scaling question adds, however, is the use of a
numerical sign for the inexpressible, thus introducing into therapy the age-old
practice of mystical numbers. We might say that de Shazer's scaling question adds
a caveat to Wittgenstein's final proposition in the Tractatus: "what we cannot speak
about we must pass over in silence"or assign it a number.

HENRY JAMES SR. TO BENJAMIN BLOOD: ON COMING

FULL CIRCLE
In my prefatory comments, I indicated that I would not discuss the sixth
step in the transmission process, i.e., from de Shazer to applications of his and
Watzlawick's therapeutic methods specifically to pastoral counseling. As indicated, these are developed in texts readily available to readers of this journal.
I would instead like to conclude this experiment in pastoral theological method
with the following historical fact: As Linda Simon points out, Benjamin Blood
attended a lecture in Amsterdam, New York, by William James' father, Henry

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Capps

James Senior, many years before he wrote his The Anesthetic Revelation. She
suspects that since William James had no literary reputation at the time Blood was
circulating his pamphlet to "literary men" (James was 32 years old at the time;
his first major text, The Principles of Psychology, was published 16 years later), it
is most likely that Blood sent the pamphlet to James' father or possibly to William's
brother Henry, "the most notable literary man of the James family" (Simon, 1998,
p. 141). Since Henry Junior was writing his first novel the very year that Blood
circulated his pamphlet and was residing in England at the time (Kaplan, 1992,
pp. 152ff.), and since Henry Senior was an established author in his own right, I
assume that Blood intended it for William's father. This assumption is supported by
Blood's own tribute, years later, to William James. As Simon writes, Blood "saw
in [William] 'the presence of that transcendent which we call genius,' a quality he
first had noticed in Henry Sr." (Simon, 1998, 381).
Whether Henry Senior drew William's attention to Blood's pamphlet, or simply left it lying around the house where William might encounter it, "as soon as
William read it, he took it up with enthusiasm" (Simon, 1998, p. 141). This enthusiasm never waned. In fact, his last published work prior to his death was a lengthy
tribute to Benjamin Blood published in The Hibbert Journal, a British publication.
He ended this last work of his pen with the enigmatic words of Blood himself:
Let my last word, then, speaking in the name of intellectual philosophy, be his [i.e., Blood's]
word: "There is no conclusion. What has been concluded, that we might conclude in regard
to it? There are no fortunes to be told, and there is no advice to be givenfarewell!" (in
Simon, 1996, pp. 248).

Assuming that Henry James Senior was the intended recipient of Blood's
pamphlet, we may view him as the progenitor of the whole transmission process
under discussion here. It may also be noted that Henry James Senior attended
Princeton Theological Seminary for a year but did not return the second year. He
later recalled "Princeton people" as "Virtuous, agreeable people up to a certain
pitch," but then as "insufferable in their commitment to religious dogma" (in
Simon, 1998, p. 13). As I sit here in my Princeton Seminary office, three thoughts
occur to me: One is that as far as institutions go, the more they change the more
they remain the same (first-order change). A second is that had Henry Senior
completed his seminary training, he probably would not have been out lecturing
in Amsterdam, New York, and may therefore not have impressed Benjamin Blood
to such a degree that Blood was inspired to send him his pamphlet. The third is the
rather awesome, even frightening thought that the process of transmission explored
here was instigated by Blood's encounter with laughing gas. This last thought is
enough to transport any sane person right out of any logical frame imaginable,
without stopping to use Wittgenstein's ladder!
In short, I would argue that psychotherapy as developed by the Brief Therapy
Center in Palo Alto and the Brief Family Therapy Center in Milwaukee reflect a
successful effort to "methodize" the mystical moment, thus taking it out of the

Connections Between Psychology of Religion and Pastoral Counseling

43

realm of the occasional, transcendental experience and relocating it in a routine,

systematic attention to the problems of ordinary living. I would also argue for a
"degrees of separation" method for doing pastoral theology. This methodology is
perhaps illustrative of what William James, in his 1908-09 Hibbert Lectures at
Oxford entitled A Pluralistic Universe, describes as the "strung-along and flowing
reality which we finite beings swim in" (1996, p. 213, my emphasis).
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Capps, D. (1997). The letting loose of hope: Where psychology of religion and pastoral care converge.
The Journal of Pastoral Care, 51,139-149.
Capps, D. (1990). Reframing: A new method in pastoral care. Minneapolis: Fortress.
Capps, D. (1998). Living stories: Pastoral counseling in congregational context. Minneapolis:
Fortress.
de Shazer, S. (1991). Putting difference to work. New York: Norton,
de Shazer, S. (1994). Words were originally magic. New York: Norton.
Dunlap, S.J. (1997). Counseling depressed women. Louisville: Westminster John Knox.
Garver, N. (1996). Philosophy as grammar. In H. Sluga and D.G. Stern (Eds.). The Cambridge companion to Wittgenstein (pp. 139-170). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Gerrard, S. (1996). A philosophy of mathematics between two camps. In H. Sluga and D.G. Stem (Eds.).
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James, W. (1950). The principles of psychology, 2 vols. New York: Dover.
James, W. (1956). On some Hegelisms. The will to believe and other essays in popular philosophy
(pp. 263-296). New York: Dover.
James, W. (1982). The varieties of religious experience. New York: Penguin.
James, W. (1992). The sentiment of rationality. In G.E. Myers (Ed.). William James: Writings 18781899 (pp. 950-985). New York: The Library of America.
James, W. (1996). A pluralistic universe. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
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