Psychoanalyzing Jesus

Some of Jesus of Nazareth's contemporaries undoubtedly thought he was crazy--the son of a humble carpenter who insisted that he was the Jewish Messiah. But a Brazilian psychiatrist, Augusto Cury, has studied the gospels carefully and written a series of best-selling books that conclude something radically different: Jesus was uniquely in tune with his own conscious and unconscious mind and the minds of others. Jesus was able, in times of crisis, to simultaneously process information both rationally and emotionally.

In exercising what Cury calls "multifocal intelligence," Jesus was a "master of masters" who broke every stereotype of how psychologists expect someone to react to situations that strain human endurance. Therefore, Cury argues, Jesus can teach others how to respond effectively to stress in their own lives.

As an example, Cury cites Jesus' failure to rebuke the apostle Peter after Peter denied him three times following his arrest. "Jesus, in pain and bleeding, tells Peter, 'You reject me, but that is okay because I love you and I believe in you,'" Cury explained during a lunchtime interview at a Sao Paolo hotel.

"When I read that, I thought: What kind of a man would react like this in his worst possible moment? It's impressive. Jesus changes the way Peter thinks. Peter doesn't feel rejected, even though he is rejecting Jesus. What happens as a result of this positive message overcoming negative emotions and reactions? Peter becomes one of the biggest promoters of Jesus' message and helps change the world, rather than forgetting he ever knew the man. What if Jesus screamed at him? We could say that Peter would have an easier time wishing the two had never met.

"When we're stressed out or in pain, we close off our conscious mind and react without thinking. These thought processes didn't happen with Jesus," Cury told a crowd of businessmen and women in Sao Paulo recently while soft, New Age-y music played in the background. "Instead, love opened the windows of his memory and allowed him to process his thoughts before he took action. Never has anyone been able to balance the emotional world with the rational world the way Jesus had. In moments when men react on instinct, Jesus acted intelligently."

During the interview, Cury provided additional insights into his provocative view of Jesus:

That's right. Like Nietzsche. That kind of atheism. But when I started looking at how great leaders handled themselves in times of crisis, I inevitably came upon Jesus and realized that no one could have made this man up because he didn't act the way men act, emotionally speaking.

What catches our attention in the gospels is that Jesus goes beyond concepts of human behavior; [it's] his capacity to consider the pain of others, even when faced with his own pain. His ideas were so surprising as to be historically unprecedented, really.

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