This aspect of Swedenborg's approach is also very important to religious psychology. We are given here a definition of religion that is independent of denomination, belief, or dogma. A universal or culture free religious psychotherapy is thus made possible since its operations and categories are tied to psycho-biology, not history or anthropology. Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, all have the same inner (or essential) relation to the Infinite Divine, based on a shared interior rational. Their differences are non-essential, external, cultural. The attainment of mental health in all cultures and times, past, present and future, is the same: the infusion of good into one's affections (or motives) and the parallel infusion of truth into one's cognitions (or beliefs). This infusion is from the Infinite Divine through the spiritual world.

To summarize Table 1, we can say that within every individual there are natural concerns (civics or Level 1), spiritual-rational concerns (ethics or Level 2), and spiritual-celestial concerns (religion or Level 3). Any particular event or quality is meaningless by itself; it is merely an external shell (Level 1). Meaning is a transcendent phenomenon since it infills from within (Level 2); thus, a particular instance is elevated to a general type. Finally, the general is elevated (redeemed) by being infilled with the universal (absolute, eternal) (Level 3). Existential dilemmas (Level 1) are infilled by humanistic perspectives (Level 2) which are made whole from within by inner religious guidance (Level 3). Each level of concern has its appropriate good and truth, hence mental health. The natural good of civics zone +A1), is grounded in the affections for self and its survival. This affective self- orientation is conjoined with natural truths obtained from knowledge in experience and schooling (+C1). Together (+A1 and +C1), natural good and natural truth engender natural mental health seen in human inventiveness and industriousness (+S1). This pattern is depicted as Level 1 in Table 1, that is, (+A1) and (+C1) = (+S1). Note that the inverted or negative state of concerns is also given, namely, (-A1) and (-C1) = (-S1), that is, adulterated good allied to falsified truth engenders dysfunctional behavior.

A deeper and more abstracted level of concern is based on the affection or love for truth (+A2), without which external knowledges (+C1) cannot be raised in abstractness or interiorness to form inner intelligence (+C2). Ethics (Level 2) shows itself in rational acts (+S2) engendered by the love of truth (+A2) married to interior intelligence (+C2). Whenever one holds truth in aversion (-A2), thoughts rigidify into dogma (-C2), and rational acts (+S2) give way to delusional acts (-S2), i.e., justifying falsehood as truth and evil as good. A still more internalized and abstracted level of concern (Level 3) is based on the love of good (+A3) without which intelligence and the understanding of doctrine (+C2) cannot be raised to wisdom in life (+C3). Inner religious concerns involve the individual's freedom to do good, that is, doing good by choice or preference, not by coercion, fear or habit. To love good (+A3) is to delight in good works and in uses +S3), brought about through the intermediary of wisdom (+C3). Delight in perverting good (-S3) comes from loving evil (-3) and results in compulsive behavior or slavery to irresistible cupidities (-S3).

The matrix in Table 1 is a model for understanding and exploring mental health phenomena. The model integrates phenomenological and behavioral aspects of mental health. It is a representation of the organization of the human mind. Its horizontal dimension corresponds to the simultaneous presence of behavior in three psychobiological domains: affective, cognitive and sensorimotor. These three correspond and are equivalent to the traditional philosophical trine of good, truth, and beauty; or love, wisdom, and use; or will, under standing, and act. These trines function as origin, cause, and effect.23 For example, the affection for winning a game (+A1) is the origin for trying hard; the mental know-how learned from experience with the game (+C1) is the cause of our actions in the game; and performance itself (+S1) is the effect or outcome from the marriage of the desire to win (+A1) and the plan by which to accomplish it (+C1). Affective behaviors, such as being guided by a motive or desire, are receptions of the good. Cognitive behaviors such as reasonings or imaginings, are receptions of the true. Mental health is the external, sensorimotor use of good in the affective domain conjoined to truth in the cognitive domain.24 Individual differences arise from the principle of uniqueness whereby every created object or organism is different from all others. Uniqueness of the affective organ of the will insures a reception of the good from the Divine which is different from that of any other individual, past, present, and future. Similarly with the unique reception of the truth in the understanding. Hence in every human being there is a unique version of mental health resulting from the marriage of the unique good and truth. As well, distortions in the reception of good and truth are unique, creating mental dysfunctions that are peculiar to each individual. As a correspondence to this uniqueness principle is the visible fact that there cannot be found two individuals that look alike in every respect.25

The vertical dimension of the model in Table 1 represents the elevation of human life from merely external involvement in things to inner concerns involving rationality and internal freedom. The 3 X 3 matrix (or ennead) forms a classification system capable of categorizing the various psychophilosophical aspects of mental health. The 9 psychodynamic zones are labeled in accordance with the definition of the intersection of the marginals. Thus, Affective Good has three levels (+A1, +A2, and +A3); likewise Cognitive Truth (+C1, +C2, and +C3) and as well, Sensorimotor Mental Health (+S1, +S2, and +S3). Titles for each of the nine ones are shown in Table 1. These descriptors are expressed in natural language, and therefore there are many ways in which the titles can be paraphrased or additionally qualified. The matrix is dynamic, productive, and explanatory and may be useful for integrating a variety of philosophical systems and psychological theories.

Biological Theology

In Swedenborg's system the mind is a microcosm of the universe. In fact, every single object or entity has the same threefold organization.26 A model of the mind (as in Table 1) is therefore a model of the universe. The organization of the universe is the same as the organization of the mind. This relation is by Divine Creation.27 The purpose of Creation is a heaven composed of the entire human race.28 Therefore the physical world is a seminary to heaven, and the objects of nature exist only in their relation to this human purpose. The arts and the natural sciences lead to knowledge of natural representatives of spiritual purposes and functions. Throughout his writings, which run to over 5O volumes in English translation, Swedenborg presents a wealth of these correspondences between spiritual and natural items. According to him, these correspondences are from Divine Creation and were known to the most ancient peoples as the "Science of Correspondences." over the ages, with the downfall of the spiritual society and its replacement by the materialistic societies, the knowledge of correspondences was lost or perverted. Some of this knowledge was still known in Egypt at the time the hieroglyphics were in use.29 Today many survive in our language as metaphor from which we know that birds correspond to thoughts (as in "flight of thoughts"), light to truth as "seeing the light"), heat to love (as in "I warm up to you"), hand to power (as in "he was heavy handed"), vision to understanding (as in "I see what you mean"), and many others.

The Science of Correspondences is thus an explanation of the origin of metaphor and symbolism. Swedenborg applied this approach to his extensive works on Bible exegesis in which he endeavors to show that the Bible has an inner spiritual meaning unrelated to the literal except through correspondences.30 The Swedenborgian system is a wonderful integration of the spiritual, the natural, the Bible, the human anatomy, and the mind. Mental health, or wholeness, can be approached from any of these directions or specialties.

Swedenborg asserts that function and form cannot exist without substance.31 Since mental health is a function of the mind (or spirit), this rule implies that mental wholeness has a correspondential substance or structure. That is, mental heath relates to the structure of the mind, its organizational character. Substance, in the Swedenborgian system, is the essence ("esse" or origin) of a thing, that is, its origin. Form or structure is the intermediate or instrumental of a thing (its "existere"), that is, its instrumental cause. Function is the resultant ultimate effect as it is manifested in its uses and appearances (or characteristics). These three -- substance, form, and function, or, origin, cause, and effect -- correspond exactly to good, truth, and mental health uses (or powers and abilities). Good is then the essential ("esse") or primary substance. It is the origin of mental health or spiritual wholeness.32 Next comes truth, which is the intermediate or existential substance ("existere"). Finally, the resultant consequence or ultimate external effect is use (mental health, beauty, altruism, productivity).

We thus have the formula
GOOD + TRUTH = MENTAL HEALTH
as depicted in Table 1. This theological definition of mental health exactly corresponds to our contemporary understanding of the psychological definition of mental health, namely
GOOD AFFECTIVE BEHAVIOR + APPROPRIATE COGNITIVE BEHAVIOR
= MENTAL HEALTH.
In the view of strict behaviorists like Skinner, or of medical psychoanalysts like Freud, affective and cognitive behaviors are reduced to the physical or natural substances that constitute biochemical and neuronal functions. This is a monistic or materialistic bias which regards feelings and thoughts, or the mind and the spirit, as pseudo-phenomena or epiphenomena. From this perspective, the brain is more real than the mind. Such a positivistic position is not tenable however since it is obvious that if I thought of something I really did do something, namely thought of something. Thus, having a thought is as real as having a meal. The solution offered by Skinner and Freud to the problem of cognitive processes is to equate thinking with brain activity. William James, however, had already seen the solution to this problem, as will be discussed below. The brain is indeed necessary, but not sufficient. Presumably, when the brain dies, the cognitive and affective substances that order and constitute the self within the limbus, are housed in new externals, other than physical. Swedenborg's phenomenological claims about his experiences in the spiritual world are therefore important because they constitute empirical evidence for the dualist approach in theology and psychology. It is interesting to note in this connection that arguments for dualism in science have been increasing, as documented in a recent paper by Wright, who makes it into a major issue for library education: "The future of librarianship and library education is intimately bound up with the complex interrelationships of the physical symbol and its symbolic referent. But the physical symbol is always a sensible datum functioning as the means of communication to or from the intellect; thus, it belongs to a different order of being than the symbolic referent, which always constitutes an ideative reality. This ... means... that the relationship of symbol to referent is inherently dualistic and psychophysical." 33 To illustrate the point, Wright quotes Eccles discussing one of Popper's analogies: "You are not your brain...; you are the programmer of your brain."34

Swedenborg's solution may be characterized as a form of biological theology. Since the affections in the will correspond to the influx of good, he identifies good as the universal essential substance ("esse"). Good is the inmost substance of every thing. The inmost of the human mind or self, are the affections in the will: feelings, strivings, impulses, urges, attractions, aversions, loves, cupidities. The remarkable conclusion is inevitable: good is the affective substance of feelings. It inflows from the Divine into the will (or affective domain), which therefore must be a "receptor," that is, a biological organ. Similarly, truth is the intermediate substance, that is, the existential phase of externalization (in which good is the esse). once again, since thinking is a function, it is a real thing, and therefore a real function. Function, Swedenborg insists, must have a substance within which to subsist and operate (as in a medium or manifold). Truth is the cognitive substance or medium within which thinking phenomena can take form, can appear, can proceed.

William James used this approach to justify the concept of immortality from the point of view of scientific or physiological psychology, calling it the "transmission" model of the brain as opposed to the "production" model: "My thesis now is this: that, when we think of the law that thought is a function of the brain, we are not required to think of productive function only; we are entitled also to consider permissive or transmissive function. And this the ordinary psychologist leaves out of his account." (italics in original).35 James refers to "idealistic philosophy" as confirming common sense notions of the existence of a supernatural world behind 'the veil' of the natural. According to James, a dualistic model would posit that the brain acts as a receptor to incoming vibrations or rays of consciousness from the transcendent world "according to the state in which the brain finds itself, the barrier of its obstructiveness may also be supposed to rise or fall. ... The brain would be the independent variable, the mind would vary dependently on it. But such dependence on the brain for this natural life would in no wise make immortal life impossible, - it might be quite compatible with supernatural life behind the veil hereafter."36

To a strict monist or materialist, the concept of rational or spiritual substance may appear fanciful. Not so to the rationalist, who can admit a dualism in the universe such as can be found in the duality of the self as body and mind. In Rational Psychology, and other works, Swedenborg discusses the "intercourse" between the natural and the spiritual within the body. The specific locus of correspondence between the two is the thin and pure liquid inside each cortical cell. The mind or "spirit" itself is enclosed in a very thin skin made of a "purified" natural substance called the "limbus" spread throughout the body (not just the brain).37

Inside the limbus are organized forms of spiritual substances which are entirely spiritual and have no natural components. At death, when the corpse is completely cold, the mind in its limbus separates and emerges in the spiritual world, as witnessed by Swedenborg during his phenomenological journeys.38 To those present in the spiritual world, a person who has just died appears to wake up and is then ministered to and prepared for the new world. Before the death of the physical body the individual appears in the spiritual world as a sleeping person from whom emanates a certain distinctive odor and is avoided by those in the spiritual world. Upon "awakening" in the spiritual world shortly after death occurs, the mind in its limbus cover now appears in a spirit body which is a replica of the natural body, and in which the mind senses, feels, and thinks seemingly just as before, but more perfectly and vividly.39 Swedenborg reports that many whom he saw entering the spiritual world at that time (eighteenth century), were such naturalists or agnostics that they at first denied having died, and supposed themselves still alive on earth and, inexplicably, in some strange place. However, they were soon convinced when they saw strange phenomena such as appearing and disappearing people, or when they met people they knew had died.

Swedenborg's scientific dualism is thus a biological theology as well as a behavioristic religious psychology. Since all phenomena originate from the marriage of Good and Truth, psychology becomes a branch of theological biology. The human being lives simultaneously in two worlds and is immortal, and developing eternally. The will is the receptor organ for the inner influx of good from the spiritual world. The will is the character of the individual, both inherited and acquired. Behaviorally, the will can be viewed as made of affections. Thus, affections, or loves and cupidities, are organized spiritual substances within the limbus. For example, when we adopt a new commitment such as the desire to be more punctual, and then confirm it in practice to the extent that we now love to be punctual, then this new element in our character has a structural and substantive existence within the limbus. Were it not for this psychobiological reality, character traits could not exist in permanent form but would flow out and away from the individual. The permanence or stability in one's character or personality traits is organically based.4O

Sensorimotor phenomena such as the sensation of warmth or the tracing of a letter with one's finger, are externalized products of inner behavioral phenomena whose origin is the influx of good and truth. The external gesture, or act, contains within it the thought or idea, and within this lies the feeling. The feeling is the first end, origin, or essence, and the inmost substance or quality of the individual. Surrounding the feeling is the thought, plan or rationale. Surrounding the thought is the sensorimotor substance which is totally external, natural, and physical. These three do- mains of behavior constitute all human affairs and capacities. Good is called the spiritual-celestial substance, hence affections or feelings are celestial (or infernal, when inverted). Truth is called the spiritual-rational substance, hence thoughts, justifications, doctrines, or dreams are cognitive phenomena based within a spiritual or rational reality. Mental health refers to the sum total of all human affairs, activities, or accomplishments. These are the pro- ducts engendered by the marriage of good and truth within each individual. Similarly with their inversions or opposites (see Table 1).

Swedenborg's biological theology encompasses a threefold nomenclature that unifies ordinarily disparate topics and solutions in philosophy and in the history of ideas. Swedenborg considered himself a scientist. Indeed, all encyclopedia articles about him document his voluminous contributions in metallurgy, crystallography, mining and smelting, anatomy, psychology, government, legislation, and theology. His careful and systematic approach in all things coupled with his deep striving for unifying all explanations, led him to identify what is universal to all things. He thus constructed a unified philosophical system based on rational recognition rather than on speculation or theoretical rationales. His is the scientist's philosophy, the scientist's theology. Both his theology and his psychology are unified in biology and in psychobiology. Swedenborg's threefold nomenclature is apparent in all of his writings. By way of illustration, Table 2 is organized into themes or topics from Swedenborg's works that relate to mental health. The Table shows the interconnections between psychological and theological concepts in Swedenborg's system. Since he saw in the Bible a coded spiritual language, I include some of the correspondences to show their relation to psychological concepts. The relationship of Biblical imagery to the marriage of good and truth may be seen in the following quotation:

"Readers of the Word, who pay attention to the matter can see that there are pairs of expressions in it that appear like repetitions of the same thing, such as 'brother' and 'needy,' 'waste' and 'solitude,' 'vacuity' and 'emptiness, 'foe' and 'enemy,' 'sin' and 'iniquity,' 'anger' and 'wrath,' 'nation' and 'people,' 'joy' and 'gladness' ... etc. These expressions appear synonymous, but are not so, for 'brother,' 'waste,' 'foe,' 'sin,' 'anger,' 'nation,' and 'joy' ... are predicated of good, and in the opposite sense, of evil; whereas 'needy,' 'solitude,' 'emptiness,' 'enemy,' 'iniquity,' wrath,' 'people,' and 'gladness' ... are predicated of truth, and in the opposite sense of falsity.41 From this perspective, the Bible frequently refers to the conditions in the mind that must come about in order to achieve the regenerated state, that is, spiritual wholeness.
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insert Table 2 about here
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Applications

Extensions of Swedenborg's threefold nomenclature to contemporary concepts in the social and behavioral sciences are presented in Table 3. The domain of good, or affective behavior, may be explored by looking up and down the first column. Similarly, the cognitive domain, or truth, and the sensorimotor domain, or uses, may be studied. The list may of course be extended by including the entire contemporary literature in psychology. By exploring the Table horizontally one gains a better understanding of the triadic relation that exists between the three behavioral domains.
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insert Table 3 about here
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A particular application to mental health symptoms and psychotherapy is worked out in Table 4. This is a 3x3 matrix using the same marginal dynamics as described earlier in connection with Table 1. The individual items in the 9 cells are theoretically generated by the intersection between level and domain of behavior. Research will determine the extent to which the relations indicated in the Table are indeed as indicated. The model has also been successfully applied to health psychology, driving behavior, and to information seeking behavior.42 It is clear that the overall system is potentially quite broad and future psychotheological work may show its usefulness in applications such as phenomenology, ethics, and religiously oriented or transpersonal psychotherapies.
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insert Table 4 about here
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The distinction between levels of good and truth is of particular importance. External good (+Al in able 1) has entirely different properties than good of a more interior nature (+A2 or +A3). For example, external rewards (+Al) obtained through candy or praise (+Sl) are less effective motivators in more advanced stages of learning; instead, we find higher and deeper sources of reward in self- esteem (or, feeling of accomplishment) (+A2) or in the feeling of solidarity (+A3). Similarly, outer truth is less universal than interior truth (+C2 or C.3 so that concepts from which temporal and local qualities have been abstracted out have a more interior function. These new higher order concepts are more interior because nearer to the essential, hence more universal. This relation ma be seen in the progressive elevation of the intellect as we consider its relation to knowledge (+Cl), intelligence (+C2) and wisdom (+C3). Knowledge in the memory is a lower function of the intellect consisting in the accumulation and classification of external facts within experience (+Cl). When these facts are accessed in series and processed according to a purpose, the function of intelligence is operating within the external facts and yields a superior product visible as normative evaluation and critical judgment (+C2). Still more interior and essential operations are attained when intelligent functioning is introjected from within (or from above) with spiritual significance, such as the religious implication of a decision or its symbolic value (+C3). For example, thinking that criminal behavior isn't worth the risk is to operate with external, purely natural concepts (+Cl), while reasoning that to commit a criminal act is also unfair and destabilizing is to operate with more interior concepts (~C2). Finally, we operate in wisdom when we intuit that a criminal act corrupts the essential within us (+C3). For moral education programs to be successful they need to communicate progressively more interior and universal concepts. A similar analysis applies to the minus regions implied in Table 1, as may be seen in the levels of dysfunctions explored in Table 4.

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