Whole-Hearted Living: Psychology and Christianity in Paul Tournier’s A Place for You

If you’re like me, when it comes to counseling, you’re aware of a certain stigma related to folks who receive counseling services. This phenomenon is especially present in the church, as it seems that many in the church curate a certain suspicion for, or an ambivalence to, the field of psychology. With this in mind, I must tell you of the book I’ve finished reading. It’s by a French-speaking Swiss psychiatrist who was trained as a physician but later turned to counseling as a profession. Practicing in Geneva, Paul Tournier wrote prolifically on the intersection of psychology and spirituality. Tournier, who was a devout Christian, wrote works that received overwhelming reception due to their pastoral nature, and many of his books were translated into English and German.

First published in French in 1966, his book A Place for You attempts to bring together the seemingly separate worlds of psychology and Christianity. He explains how nonbelievers and Christians alike (while they may not have language to express it) seem to “know” the Two Gospels of both worlds, which seem in opposition to each other. The gospel of psychology, as he calls it, is one of “self-fulfillment” and “self-assertion,” while the Biblical gospel is “self-denial” and “renunciation.” (Tournier is careful to point out that this particular conception of the Biblical gospel is just that: a (g)ospel, not the Gospel, but it is nevertheless a gospel which Christian communities immediately recognize.) If, then, we recognize the strain between these two seemingly separate entities, we must ask the question: is there any “place” in which they merge?

Tournier argues that there is. He contends that both movements are necessary for whole-hearted living, but that they must be enacted in a particular progression. He sees the necessity for self-actualization and self-fulfillment to come before renunciation, and the former movement can only occur when children experience attachment in their family of origin – when they have a sense of place within their family. It is out of this sense of place that attachment forms, which is the starting point for young people to develop a healthy sense of self and self-assertion. It is this personhood, this self, which then interacts with a spiritual movement as an adult, when they, as fully formed adults, make true commitments of faith and willingly give themselves up to appropriate renunciation and self-denial.

We are all aware of Christian communities that legislate conformity in behavior and attitude (and dare I say, dress). Further, we are all familiar with Christian communities that deem unacceptable such language as “self-assertion” and “self-fulfillment.” Yet Tournier argues that untold damage is done in Christian communities by curating “premature renunciation” before the member has experienced the appropriate “free expansion” of self, which occurs mostly after having experienced attachment love in the home, when the person felt a place in their family of origin. Without this sense of place, the church’s language of renunciation, to “deny oneself,” becomes painful and confusing. Tournier narrates the progression of a child who does not experience a sense of place in the family, how he begins to imagine that he is not accepted, and he becomes prey to a martyr complex (whether real or imagined), and how he can drift from place to place as an adult, always seeking something he never had, torn by a nostalgia for a place he never knew. It is to this person that the church says, “Give yourself to the service of others, for in the service of others you will find yourself.” Tournier responds in a resounding, “No!” for he understands that since the client “has not been loved, or not loved well, he can neither love nor believe in and accept love.” 

This is the place where psychologists and the Church can work together, if they can understand their respective roles – that is, the psychologist and the counselor attending to the needs for a sense of place (in the consulting room), and the Church rightly interacting with whole-hearted adults who understand the call of Jesus, who says, “Come, follow me.” It is interesting, Tournier notes, the type of person it was who God “called” in Scripture; Tournier notes that those who were called demonstrated a well-formed sense of place. Abraham was well-established in Ur of the Chaldees when God called him. Moses was asked to leave Midian, where he was tending his father-in-law’s flocks. Jesus called Simon and Andrew to leave their well-established fishing profession. The rich young ruler was just that: a rich young ruler, seemingly self-actualized and well-situated in society. Yet we note that perhaps the Church preaches this self-denial a bit too hastily to all persons before (as Tournier argues) the necessary self-assertion movement occurs.

The actual three best quotes from Tournier’s book:

“We have all seen so many of those men and women who have never grown up because they have been repressed by a religious upbringing, and have been trained since infancy in systemic renunciation.”

“To how many generations of miserable exploited people has the Church preached resignation, acceptance of one’s lot, surrender, and submission?”

“How many mediocre personalities are there in our churches – people who have not the courage to live full lives, to assert themselves and make the most of themselves, and who look upon this stifling of themselves as a Christian virtue, whereas faith ought to create powerful personalities?”

It is astonishing how accurate Tournier’s vision of the church is, considering he lived in French-speaking Switzerland (and over fifty years ago!).

I must tell you that reading Tournier was as worldview-shifting for me as reading N.T. Wright, G.K. Chesterton, and C.S. Lewis. There is something in the writing that rings so true. I’m most struck by the stories of his clients who struggled to fit in as young children, along with his clear vision of the way that the church is experienced in almost a heartless way by its many calls for renunciation. (Interestingly, he has many comments about single women and their journey to detaching from their parents, whether in healthy or unhealthy ways. In one chapter about “place,” he indicates that he could not stress enough how important it is for a woman to move out and have her own home.) I appreciate how he clearly highlights the distinctions between the work of psychologists and the work of pastors, and how he offers a Biblical framework for understanding a sense of place and a sense of self in the context of mature Christianity (hence the title, A Place for You).

A bit more personally, his work is teaching me to have grace with myself as I attend to the Two Movements, perhaps at rates different from my peers. Additionally, I’m learning to have grace with others who use language of attachment with God that I used to think was unbelievably hypocritical or even ignorant, for I boasted, “You cannot possibly feel that way about God,” when in fact, perhaps I did not feel that way about God, but yet somehow, by some grace, those persons had experienced some sort of spiritual ascension which I had not yet found. There is a sense, then, in which reading the book improves your own self-knowledge.  

Like Tournier, I, too, am Swiss!

Indeed, I developed my own little attachment to Tournier because I, too, am Swiss, but more than that, there is something about reading his work which makes one feel seen. And that is one of the best feelings in the world.

If you’re curious to read countless stories of his clients from years in the consulting room (to include single women learning to detach and self-actualize in healthy ways), you simply must read this book. A word to the wise: the book is out of print, so scrounging around Amazon is the best way to go. A few copies show up on Amazon for $20 every few weeks; other than that, original copies sit around $600 for sale (!).

Fun fact: I begged three friends to buy their own dusty copies, made them read it, and forced them to attend my own little book club. I cooked Herbed Artichoke Cheese Tortellini and baked (what I call) somewhat edible gluten-free garlic muffins, and we discussed the following book club questions (written by yours truly) for three hours! Let me know if you want to come next time. 😊  

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1. How do you interact with Tournier’s discussion of children knowing a sense of place? Did you experience a strong sense of place within your family as a child? Why or why not? (See p. 12.) If you struggled with attachment as a child, do you connect with the “increasing and unsatisfied nostalgia” he mentions? Further, did that lack of attachment produce in you “real and imagined persecutions” (18)?

2. Choose one of the following quotes and discuss it:

• “It is readily understandable that to be denied a place is to suffer a serious moral trauma. It is a sort of denial of one’s humanity” (26).
  
• “It is true that [man] has a remarkable capacity for adaptation… Nevertheless his capacity to adapt himself has its limits, and if the evolution in his environment becomes too rapid, it may demand a rate of transformation in man which is beyond his capabilities” (53).
  
• [many quotes from 55-57 about how our sense of place as humans is being majorly disrupted by advances in science, travel, communication, etc.] “Time was when each man lived shut up in his own little garden. How the world is swept by one tidal wave after another. How can you ask young people to hammer out a personal spiritual place for themselves in the midst of such a maelstrom?” (57)
  
• “[The woman] feels more strongly than the man the importance of places… Having a home of her own is particularly important for a woman… it means she has become a person… what a difference it made in their lives. They could have visitors, they had a place of their own” (59).
  
• “It is often very difficult for a patient who has been cured, or at least undergone an improvement in his condition, to feel at home in the Church, even if he wants to. He finds it so impersonal, so cold and conventional, after the stirring experiences he has had in the psychotherapist’s consulting-room” (79).

3. Tournier’s argument begins with his concept of the Two Gospels. Define each gospel, and describe how premature renunciation is problematic (91-93).

4. Explain Tournier’s concept of the Two Movements, and give examples of hindrances to this linear movement (98, 101, 108).

5. Father Teilhard de Chardin wrote, “Develop yourself first” (100). Do you agree or disagree? Where might some disagree theologically?

6. Why does Tournier takes issue with the following statement: “Give yourself to the service of others. It is in giving oneself that one finds oneself” (105)?

7. Delineate the movement of Tournier’s female client that begins with a silent girl with quarreling parents and ends with parents shocked by the adult woman literally “coming to blows” with them (109-110). Discuss the “religious blackmail” in the life of this client, and also in the context of, oh I don’t know, Mennonite women everywhere.

8. Do you feel that your own parents in any way inhibited your “free expansion of youth” (115)? Do you, or do you not, agree that there is a tendency by Christian parents to dampen ambition?

9. Discuss premature renunciation. For example, Tournier writes, “The great risk, if one tries to urge someone to be loving and forgiving is that he will pretend to love and forgive” (120). Note, too, the example of the young married man on 129 & 130. With this as a context, how comfortable are you with waiting “to urge self denial on a man” (141)? Discuss your own experience of “false forgiveness, false loves, and false renunciations” (142).

10a. In section III “Supports,” Tournier discusses a kind of anxiety that clients must overcome as they leave the first movement of self-actualization (and its accompanying supports) and enter authentic renunciation. (This anxiety may also be experienced in a preliminary stage of self-actualization, wherein a client may realize their false renunciations and exchange them for authentic self-actualization). Situate yourself within these movements, especially in the context of this comment by Tournier: “The person who has had the benefit of a solid support in childhood from which to launch out into life, will have no difficulty in letting go of that support, and in finding fresh support somewhere else” (163).

10b. Lastly, let’s discuss “infantile regression,” this tendency in both psychology and Christianity for people to remain satisfied right at the point when they should be marching forward (186). Where have you seen folks “fossilized in their satisfaction”? And how does Tournier see this phenomenon in relation to the impulse for basically all of his work (see p 222)?

Junge Frau: A Story about Growing up Female

There was no warning when she came to live with us. I came down the dark brown carpeted steps one morning and stopped short – a young woman in sleeveless floral pajamas was ironing a blouse, her soft brown hair about her shoulders. I whispered to my sisters, “Who is that?” Mama looked at me and said, “This is Rosie. She’s from Germany. She’s going to stay with us.”

I had a vague memory of talk of a visitor last week, but clearly it had not stuck, for I was quite startled to see this stranger drying her hair and ironing clothes in the dining room. Uncharacteristically, I stood back, lingering behind my sisters.

After breakfast, Papa took the girls to school in his unmarked white box truck, and Mama and I drove with Rosie in our wood-paneled minivan all the way to Rosedale. Mama told me that Rosie was going to attend Rosedale Bible Institute. German words dropped here and there as Mama asked about Rosie’s parents back in Berlin. See, Mama and Papa had lived in Berlin in the 80s. They worked at the Hafen. Papa “worked with the guys from the streets,” and Mama did housework. Rosie’s parents had been Papa and Mama’s house parents. The Hafen, of course, was in West Berlin; the Berlin wall surrounded the city, at the time, separating it from communist East Germany.

Rosie asked, “And the girls? They have school?”

“Yes, Lester drove them this morning.”

“And Esther?”

I sat up a little straighter and tried to look important.

“Esther is in Kindergarten, and she only goes three days a week. She does not have school today.”

I remember thinking that it was in fact nice to have a day off with these ladies.

Kindergarten was a German word that I knew – it meant “child garden.” Papa also sometimes called us “Kinder!” to beckon us inside. I knew other German words, like all the words to Gott Ist Die Liebe. (Papa made me sing it for Walter Beachy every Sunday that Walter preached, when Papa carried me out through the receiving line.) Vorsichtig is what Papa says to you when you need to pay attention to what you’re doing. Mama and Papa say “Tschuss!” to each other every morning and kiss each other on the lips. I used to think tschuss means “kiss,” but I think it means goodbye. At the table, you said bitte and danke and it was usually all right to get the butter then.

Culottes, Cut Flowers, & Me, 1996

Rosie spent a few days at our house before moving into the dorms at Rosedale, and she came to our house occasionally after that. How much did we learn about being a woman!

There were Victoria magazines, skirts with buttons down the front, fashionable European shoes with chunky heels (Mom called them “clodhoppers”), German coffees, and tea parties. Rosie took one look at our hair brush and said, “No, no!” She promptly bought us a brand-new brush (the right kind!), and introduced us to Herbal Essences shampoo. She’d weave our long hair into intricate braids – French, inside-out, and fish braids – and choose a French twist for herself, or even better, she’d style her hair with a red velvety accessory called a “turd.” (How we laughed at the name!)

We visited her dorm room at Rosedale, and we met her roommate Carol. They gushed, professing undying love for each other: “We even have nicknames for each other – sometimes I call her Honey Bee, and she calls me Sweetie Pie!” Carol had the most beautiful mane of thick black curls (she looked like Diana Barry), and in my 5-year-old mind, Carol and Rose were the most elegant women on earth. They’d come to our house for Sunday dinner sometimes and occasionally bring friends.

Rosie loved fresh flowers, and she wore silver rings on her fingers. She also liked “laying out,” and we’d lie on the lawn on a blanket beside her lawn chair while she tanned. Laying out took forever. One Sunday we were “laying out,” and Rosie started giggling.

“Why are you laughing?” my sister asked.

“Ettie can’t sit still. She runs inside to get a pillow. She runs inside to get a drink. She runs back in to get a book.”

After that, I tried very hard to lie still and Not Move. But it was just very rather boring to lie in the grass!

One time we asked what Germany is like and she said it’s a place where rats come up the toilet and bite you on the bum. I immediately listed Germany among countries not worth visiting.

Some time later Mama and Rosie were reminiscing about Germany days. “We’ll have to take the girls sometime!” Mama said.

I piped up, very serious, “I do not want to go to Germany!”

“What?” Rosie asked, “Why not?”

“There are RATS in the pots!” I wailed.

Mama and Rosie erupted into laughter.

“I was only joking,” Rosie said, “They don’t bite you on the bum in the bathroom.”

Still. It seemed like a place not to go.

Occasionally, Rosie invited her many friends to our house. She once hosted an entire dinner party – all guys. The table was immaculately set with all the place settings, but not with china – only Mama’s plain cream-colored dishes. There can be no doubt that strong coffee and German kuchen (like Erdbeer-Sahne-Torte or Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte) were for dessert. Our phone with a cord rang at the last minute.

“All right! A girl’s coming!” Rosie cried, as she hung up the phone. “Gotta change the plates!”

She had set the entire table in Mama’s plain cream dishes, with all the matching place settings. With the presence of just one other woman at the table, it was worth it to change the place settings to Mama’s best china. We quickly reset the entire table.

Once Mama and Papa went to ministers and elders meeting, and we had a babysitter. The babysitter was also attending Rosedale Bible Institute at the time, and she called beforehand asking if she could take us to the talent show. I didn’t know what a talent show was, but it was like church, except like when the youth group did it, at night. People sang songs and did skits, and it was all right to laugh. Afterward, our babysitter greeted all of her friends. We saw Rosie, and she poked each of us in the stomach and squeezed our cheeks so hard that we almost cried, were it not for all the smiling.

Rosie had male friends who occasioned our house – one in particular was Bill. He came quite frequently, he and his long blonde hair. He was what I think Mama calls “ruggedly handsome.” From the very beginning, I did not like Bill. He took up a lot of my new friend’s time – I developed an aversion to him. He tried to speak to me while I emptied the dishwasher.

“Do you know my name?”

“Yes,” I said without looking at him, “It’s Billy Goat’s Butt.”

Bill didn’t say anything and went back out to the patio. At some point that evening, Mama found me.

“Esther, I want you to be nice to Bill. You are being very RUDE.”

“I only called him Billy Goat’s Butt,” I fumed.

“That is rude. You do not call anyone by that name.”

Weeks later, Bill came through the door for the cream-colored-dish-turned-fine-china dinner party.

“Hi, Esther,” Bill winked. “Do you know my name?”

“Yes,” I said quietly. “It’s Bill.” 

“Aren’t you going to call me Billy Goat’s Butt?”

“No,” I said, and went out and sat on the porch swing by myself.

Rosie knew how to sew, and once she made a sailor-style shirt for Bill. It featured corded lacing in the front. Mama raised her eyebrows: “I guess that will show some chest.”

Rosie folded the shirt, “Probably.”

Rosie surprised us in other ways, like her penchant for thunderstorms. She would even SIT on the PORCH… during the storms!

“You’re crazy!” Mom hollered, as cracks of lightning flitted across the pitch-black fields, followed by cacophonous booms.

“Thunderstorms are the best!” she’d say, and disappear onto the porch with a letter to write.

For her first car, Rosie bought a tiny blue Ford Escort, and one sunny day, she washed it outside on the concrete slab while singing along to songs on the radio we’d never heard before.

“How do you know all these songs?” we asked, incredulous.

“It’s called pop! They played it on the radio every day in Germany when I rode the bus to school!” she said, before belting out another tune. We helped spray down her hubcaps before retreating to play with a ball we found. When she practiced for her driver’s test in our driveway, we rode in the back seat and listened to more “pop” while she maneuvered a stick shift in our short lane.

Her brothers came to visit her once, and our house was filled with laughter as Papa and Mama retold countless stories of life at the Hafen when Rose and her brothers were young. I finally met the infamous young man Angie, who in Papa’s slides was a boy who would sleepily say each morning, “Honig, bitte.”

We went to house fellowship on Sunday evening, and Rose and her brothers stayed home. When we drove home under a full moon, we were not prepared for the scene we found. They were lying in the middle of the road.

Mom was in hysterics in the van, and Papa turned into our lane. “They’re crazy,” he muttered. Papa parked the van, and we all ran out to the road.

“What in the world are you doing?” Mama shrieked.

They laughed. “We’re sitting on the road! What does it look like we’re doing?”

“Do you have any idea how fast people drive on this road?!” Mom was referring to the extremely flat, extremely straight country road, bordered on both sides by corn fields and bean fields and the occasional Midwestern house.

“We’re learning!” Angie grinned.

“What do you do if a car comes?” I gasped.

“We roll to the other side of the road. Like this!” They rolled over. “And if a car comes on the other side, we roll like this!” They rolled back.

One time, after being away for some time, Rosie returned to visit us, and she showed us a painting she had done of some cherries. I stared at it, wide-eyed.

“How did you do that?” I breathed, incredulous. For it had the look of actual cherries. Real cherries! If you looked closely, she had used colors not associated with cherries to get the actual look of cherries. One of the colors she used was peach.

“You like to draw, don’t you, Esther?” she asked.

I said, dumbfounded, “I will never be able to paint like that.”

“You will,” she said, and meant it. “You will paint like that someday.” I hardly believed her. How could a person learn to paint so that it looked real?

At some point she transferred to a college, I suppose, for soon we were traveling to Wilmore, Kentucky to attend her college graduation. It was an incredible thing to be invited to a college. We stayed in a bed & breakfast with very thin walls and a bathroom in the hallway.

Part of the festivities in the almost Southern town was a final chorale program in which Rosie sang in a choir. The concert was in a large white church, with tall white ceilings and dark wood railings at the front. We had very good seats. An African American woman sang a solo, after which many people clapped, and during one piece I was shocked for the director to seat himself and for a woman to direct the choir for a performance. She was a student director, he said, and I never knew in my life that a woman could direct music.

When we left the concert, my sisters and I immediately began whispering about the soloist.

“Her voice was so weird!” we said. We tried to imitate her voice using shrill-like trills. Mama overheard us.

“Oh no,” Mama said matter-of-factly, “She was an excellent soprano with an incredible vibrato. I’m sure her director loves the fact that she can sing that high. She was an excellent soloist!”

I sat back, again surprised. I clearly had much to learn about singing soprano. How could anybody enjoy that kind of singing? But Mama knew. She was one of the best sopranos in church. In fact, she herself had sung in the Rosedale Chorale for many years.

During the graduation visit, we took an evening walk through campus, past tall white columns and under Southern trees to a church where sometimes Rosie and her friends played for worship. They walked to the front of the church, past the dark railings for kneeling, and in the near dark played and sang songs for our little entourage. After the first piece, someone clapped.

“Oh, no, don’t clap,” one of the them said haltingly. “We always play in the context of worship, so there isn’t clapping.”

Again, I was surprised. So we just sat quietly in the dimly-lit sanctuary, listening to their music.

The next day was graduation. We hiked to the balcony of a grand old auditorium for the baccalaureate service and giggled and giggled as the procession began – for the outfits! The outfits! Oh, they must be prof – prof – professors! Look at their heads! Their heads! My mother laughed out loud at the colorful regalia.

“Did you like their outfits?” Rosie asked me later. I giggled.

We craned our necks from the balcony as the graduates processed in, in long lines of black caps and gowns. Far below, and halfway up the aisle, Rosie turned around, looked up, and winked at us. This, too, surprised me.      

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If you would like to support Shasta’s Fog, you can now do so through my “Buy Me a Coffee” button! By clicking on this button, you can support Shasta’s Fog with a small Paypal donation. If you hope to see this writing continue, I invite you to click the button and drop me a line if you wish. Your support means everything to me.