Sports Psychology, Psychoanalysis, and the Garden of Eden

Please be warned before reading this post. It is filled with several loose ends and considerable amounts of theological conjecture inspired by History of Theories class today. This post draws from the field of Sports Psychology, psychoanalytic theory, and my personal experiences to eventually discuss the psychological implications of what went down in the Garden of Eden.

In the field of Sports Psychology, there is something called “flow” state. When an athlete experiences flow, his movements appear fluid and automated, as if he is so familiar with the movements that he does not even have to think about his performance. His mind and his body sync so perfectly that his performance far exceeds his typical level of performance. The peculiar thing is that most athletes describe these moments as completely involuntary. Why would this state be involuntary? Think about it. If the athlete attempted to will the flow state to happen, i.e., with conscious focus, the athlete is more likely to hinder the flow state from happening. In fact, when an athlete concentrates too much on his movements, he is more likely to increase the number of mistakes he makes.

Now, I believe this “flow” state occurs in every profession. Everyone has experienced this, or at least witnessed this happen. Sometimes, when I am working on a paper or project, this happens to me. Without warning, my thoughts seem to effortlessly flow out in complete sentences that form complete thoughts. Everything becomes fluid. In fact, it seems as though the sentences I’m writing come to my mind so fast that I don’t even have time to process them consciously before I type them. What if this is the way we were always meant to function?

The most exciting moments of social interaction in my life occur when I am not consciously thinking about the social interaction. If I concentrate too much on the social interaction, fear rises in my gut, either because I don’t want to look stupid to other people, or because I’m afraid of revealing something unpleasant about myself.  However, there are occasional moments in my life when my interactions and relationships with other people flow so naturally that, when looking back on those moments, it makes me feel like something supernatural happened in the way I connected with another human being. What if this is the way we were always meant to function?

In each of these three examples, too much consciousness hinders the person from functioning at optimal capacity. Could it be that we find more of our true selves when we think less of ourselves? Perhaps it is in the absence of consciousness when we act truly like ourselves. Is consciousness really a blessing, that is, an evolved function, or is consciousness just a hindrance? Why do we experience consciousness if it is such a hindrance? What if consciousness is a curse?

God told Adam and Eve not to eat from the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil or they would die. “You will not surely die,” the serpent said to the woman. “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:4). Whether you take this story to be literal or figurative, I think this story reveals something important about the mind of the human being. As a Christian, I believe that there was a rupture in the perfect relationship that once existed between God and man. According to the biblical account, Adam and Eve did not die immediately after eating the fruit, even though God said they would die from it. If God was not talking about physical death, what was he talking about? What if he was talking about the death of another element, the element that used to make us truly ourselves? If an element of the human being did die in that moment, it was not without gain. It was not a one-way deal. Adam and Eve did not make a sacrifice; they made a trade. They traded “something” so that their “eyes were opened”, whatever that means. I find two questions in this equation. What did they trade? And, what did they gain in return?

Our race is puzzled by the idea of consciousness. We are equally puzzled by the idea of the unconscious. We tend to see them as two separate things—as two separate pieces of each individual’s mind. Are they separate? Were they always separate? Is it possible that the two pieces used to function as one element? What if that is the element Adam and Eve traded? I suggest that they traded the “string” that held consciousness and unconsciousness together in one flawless form called the human mind. When they traded that binding element, they died—or at least their minds died.

So, if Adam and Eve traded away the “connecting” element, what did they gain in return? The biblical account says their eyes were opened so that they could discern good and evil. That sounds a lot like the psychological concept of the ego that Freud wrote about so many decades ago. According to Freud, a great deal of the anxiety we experience is a result of the tension between the id, ego, and superego. To run with Freudian ideas for a moment, what if what we call the id, ego, and superego were born out of that moment? In the moment Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, they were making a statement that they knew better than God. They were making a statement that they were capable of deciding right and wrong for themselves. And now, since that time, human beings have been forced to cope with a mind that carries burdens it was never intended to carry.

At one time, mankind was whole. The pieces we now call consciousness and unconsciousness functioned in perfect unity. Now, our minds are broken. The divine glue that once held them together is gone. What if every kind of disease, whether we perceive it to be physical or psychological, is a result of our body’s attempt to cope with broken minds? Schizophrenia is a word derived from two Greek words that mean, “split-mind”. Maybe those of us with “healthy” minds have more in common with Schizophrenics than we thought.

What if the “flow” states mentioned earlier are simply brief glimpses of the glory that man once was? These moments, when the mind and body sync flawlessly, are remnants of a time when these moments were a constant reality. We have no idea how far we have fallen.