Spiritually, awe is experiencing a sense of the Divine Being while being swept into inspiration, feeling reverent, and being left with a sense of sacred mystery. Mortimer Ostow showed us that the pathways to experiencing awe are grounded psychoanalytically and neurologically in the preverbal experience of being in the presence of the all-powerful mother/God. Later in life this phenomenon is activated when the mind is receptive and open as one encounters an extraordinary experience. Feelings of being moved, stirred with a feeling of belonging accompany the moment.
In a particularly evocative display of awe, The Sundance Film Festival documentary, In the Shadow of the Moon, captured the Apollo astronauts' intensely personal feelings evoked by their traveling through space to the moon. The overriding feelings they expressed were related not to the memory of the dusty, barren moon as one “giant leap for mankind” but feelings about “home.”
Astronaut Eugene Cernan: “Science and technology had no answers for how I was feeling. I felt the creator, but a creator above religions we create on earth to govern our lives.”
Alan Bean: “We're living in the Garden of Eden.”
Scott Carpenter: “Being on the moon doesn't change you. It reveals you; it makes you more so.”
Viewing the earth from the moon was a real event and had to be an extraordinary moment. Awe, then, is not (necessarily) an illusion or a wish fulfillment as Freud proclaimed.
Image courtesy of the Image Science & Analysis Laboratory, NASA Johnson Space Center
The astronauts' awesome heavenly achievements have contributed tremendously to the technology of today's world, capturing the public's awe and respect within the NASA community. This year challenged this perception when both the public and the NASA community confronted an event that showed what it means to be vulnerable earthlings living “down to earth,” fragile emotional lives. One of their own was featured for days across the national news. With her beautiful head bowed and hands clasped—not in prayerful reverence, but in handcuffs—banner headlines screamed “With Discipline Honed by Training, Police Say, Astronaut Set Out to Kill.”
Lisa Nowak came back from a Discovery mission, not with an inspirational message but with an awful splat. She had been charged with attempted kidnapping, burglary, and assault and battery. The previously adoring public then threw stones on the fallen star by making her the butt of jokes on the late night talk shows. The media's reaction to this desperately ill woman was like that of two-year-olds who, when they discover the imperfections of their all-good powerful mother/God, turn her into the devil. Eventually, NASA summarily dismissed Nowak from the astronaut corps. Awe gave way to awful revulsion. There was no room for understanding or forgiveness.
Initially, in the face of violent loss we are revolted and unforgiving. The process of forgiveness ranges along a continuum from compassion, the most mature response, to a regression to impulsive retaliation, Freud's understanding of infantile aggression. When we see a person intentionally and authentically engaging in forgiveness, as opposed to pseudo-forgiveness, a reaction formation, we are awestruck. The self is transformed in new emotional/spiritual directions.
In October 2006, newspapers reported that five young Amish girls in Nickel Mine, Pennsylvania, were shot dead and five more were seriously injured by a heavily armed milk-truck driver who then took his own life. The reaction of the earthbound, yet spirit filled, Amish to the murders of their children stands as a beacon of light in a world filled with daily acts of terrorism. With a perspective that is fostered within a deeply spiritual people, the Amish sent the world an enduring example of community, compassion, and forgiveness in an hour of sorrow: They invited the wife of the assailant to participate in the funeral services. The widow of the killer said, “I was overwhelmed by the forgiveness, grace, and mercy.”
Following the April 16, 2007, massacre of 32 college students at Virginia Tech, a student organization placed stones in a semicircle as a memorial. Another student, Katelynn L. Johnson emerged and added a 33rd stone for Cho, the assailant. The stone was removed the next day but Johnson came forward and said, “I believe his life had value no matter what he did.” The stone was replaced, but outside of the semicircle.
Forgiveness does not enable bad behavior or deny tragic events, and pseudo-forgiveness does not nurture personal and relational healing. Forgiveness means to “set free.” Spiritually speaking, forgiveness is a soul-searching act of love, an ideal which comes forth in the discipline of quiet listening in prayer and silent meditation. Freud's scholarly psychoanalytic writings never mention the word “forgiveness,” a word which has a religious connotation.
Paula J. Hamm, L.P.C., is a full-time psychoanalyst in private practice in McLean, Virginia. She is the chairperson for the ongoing discussion group, “The Psychodynamics of Spirituality,” held at the American Psychoanalytic meetings. She resides in Centreville, Virginia.
Forgiveness, like the experience of awe, as understood in the psychoanalytic contribution made by Phyllis Greenacre, represents an important developmental milestone towards psychological maturity. It relates to the separation/individuation phase when one recognizes oneself as a separately functioning being. The psychoanalytic relationship opens the pathway for forgiveness, allowing the discovery of one's limitations as a human being, including one's innate capacity to harm another through words or actions. Without forgiveness a person is bound in the hell of bitterness. When we stand in the face of mature forgiveness, we also stand in awe of divine love in humankind.