A Second Coming: Leonard Cohen on Real and False Religion in Dark Times

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PSYCHIATRIC VIEWS ON THE DAILY NEWS

“I Struggle with some demons

They were middle class and tame . . .

But it’s written in the scriptures

And it’s not some idle claim”

-Leonard Cohen, lyric from “You Want It Darker”

In continuing our look at the prophetic perspective of Leonard Cohen in the couple of decades before his death in 2016, back toward the end of the 1990s, he entered a Buddhist Zen monastery. Apparently, he felt that his depression was not amenable to formal psychiatric treatment at that time. He stayed there 5 years. There was no question that he found some comfort in both Buddhism and Judaism, a not uncommon combination in his time.

Over those 5 years, he wrote a bestseller book, which had this passage¹:

“We are moving into a period of bewilderment, a curious moment in which people find light in the midst of despair, and vertigo at the summit of their hopes. It is a religious moment also, and here is the danger . . . The public yearning for Order will invite many stubborn uncompromising persons to impose it. The sadness of the zoo will fall upon society.”

As Maria Popova discusses in her recent November 17, 2024, post, “Leonard Cohen on the Antidote to Anger,”² it is human nature to look to authority figures in times of helplessness and uncertainty. However, when the helping hand is metaphorically in a clenched fist, it is likely a false messiah. When it is the shape of an open hand, it is more likely to be a reflection of the love we find in the best of religion, spirituality, and community.

This antidote of love may not be obvious, but even paradoxical in the sense of our last column. So Cohen ends another poem in that book, “SOS 1995,” with the implication of the second coming of an emergency call for help that we now have a generation later¹:

“the Devil tempting me

To turn way from alarming you,

So I must say it quickly

Whoever is in your life,

Those who harm you,

Those who help you;

Those whom you know

And those whom you do not know -

Let them off the hook,

Help them off the hook.

You are listening to Radio Resistance.”

A similar message occurred in the directly connected second coming and reelection of President Lincoln, who was a moderate Republican of his time. He conveyed a related sacred liturgy in his Second Inaugural Address:

“With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us drive on to finish the work; . . . to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

I suppose that both Cohen’s and Lincoln’s connecting and compassionate statements might seem naive and quaint nowadays. Perhaps a paradox?

In psychiatry, and on the way to this second coming,³ we know that there has been a general increase in mental disorders and disturbances on all political and religious sides over years. There is a saying to “look for the helpers,” and we will do so in our next column. But we should also “look for the lovers” in our current time of major conflict. These are not the passionate sexually-drawn lovers and scandals, but as I tried to describe in our November 3, 2021, video “What About Love in the Workplace,” the kind of caring and humanitarian love in the spirit of connecting religion and psychiatry, and in the best of clinical and administrative psychiatric work.

Dr Moffic is an award-winning psychiatrist who specialized in the cultural and ethical aspects of psychiatry and is now in retirement and retirement as a private pro bono community psychiatrist. A prolific writer and speaker, he has done a weekday column titled “Psychiatric Views on the Daily News” and a weekly video, “Psychiatry & Society,” since the COVID-19 pandemic emerged. He was chosen to receive the 2024 Abraham Halpern Humanitarian Award from the American Association for Social Psychiatry. Previously, he received the Administrative Award in 2016 from the American Psychiatric Association, the one-time designation of being a Hero of Public Psychiatry from the Speaker of the Assembly of the APA in 2002, and the Exemplary Psychiatrist Award from the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill in 1991. He is an advocate and activist for mental health issues related to climate instability, physician burnout, and xenophobia. He is now editing the final book in a 4-volume series on religions and psychiatry for Springer: Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, Christianity, and now The Eastern Religions, and Spirituality. He serves on the Editorial Board of Psychiatric Times.

References

1. Cohen L. Book of Longing. Ecco; 2006.

2. Popova M. Leonard Cohen on the antidote to anger. The Marginalian. Accessed November 21, 2024. https://www.themarginalian.org/2024/07/18/leonard-cohen-anger-resistance/

3. O’Toole F. The second coming. The New York Review. 2024. Accessed November 21, 2024. https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2024/12/05/the-second-coming-fintan-otoole/?srsltid=AfmBOoou2L_P5K6YB0ofcxjeK-SGjM-sphTEChPymPY1Q8hXaUMNHjHD