Postcards of Memory - from Debrecen (5)
5. The University Church
It was 20 years ago, in June 1980 when I graduated at Debrecen University as a psychology major. Though our department was located in the main building, most of our classes were held in two little rooms in the university protestant church that had been put out of its function a long time ago.
We liked it here, it was our own separate world. "I'm going to the church" - we joked. It felt quite ironical that psychology classes shoul be held in a church, and that it was only us, students dealing with the "mind" who studied here. Time seemed to stand still; we believed the present political system would go on till eternity. There was no freedom of religion. At philosophy classes they still insisted on marxist dogmas, but since a few years it had become possible to learn psychology at the university. They even put up with me writing my graduation thesis about psychotherapy and a strange Eastern religion: Zen Buddhism. In lack of actual Zen meditation experience my thesis consisted of reviews of literature - of authors who wrote about it in English and of the related fields of contemporary psychology.
Thus, while at university, I went to church every day. It was just right, I realized with a smile, as both psychology and buddhism served as steps to find something that could be called my own personal religion. Today, in the new era of freedom of religion, the music library and the magazine-reading room are placed in the university church building. One of the main Gods of our time also moved in to live here: information. The central computer of the university.
It was 20 years ago, in June 1980 when I graduated at Debrecen University as a psychology major. Though our department was located in the main building, most of our classes were held in two little rooms in the university protestant church that had been put out of its function a long time ago.
We liked it here, it was our own separate world. "I'm going to the church" - we joked. It felt quite ironical that psychology classes shoul be held in a church, and that it was only us, students dealing with the "mind" who studied here. Time seemed to stand still; we believed the present political system would go on till eternity. There was no freedom of religion. At philosophy classes they still insisted on marxist dogmas, but since a few years it had become possible to learn psychology at the university. They even put up with me writing my graduation thesis about psychotherapy and a strange Eastern religion: Zen Buddhism. In lack of actual Zen meditation experience my thesis consisted of reviews of literature - of authors who wrote about it in English and of the related fields of contemporary psychology.
Thus, while at university, I went to church every day. It was just right, I realized with a smile, as both psychology and buddhism served as steps to find something that could be called my own personal religion. Today, in the new era of freedom of religion, the music library and the magazine-reading room are placed in the university church building. One of the main Gods of our time also moved in to live here: information. The central computer of the university.
posted by bm at 3:21 PM
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