My years in my Grande École - fighting for inner freedom.
B. Opening to psychology and the domain of religion
In my first year of engineering school, aware of my very weak people skills, I went to search for books on psychology, in hope to find help.
I discovered with much interest the psychology of Palo Alto, grounded on the works of Gregory Bateson and Milton Erikson, who played a key part in the development of short-term therapies. I read avidly, and even considered doing a Bachelor in psychology at the Sorbonne University (about 200 meters away from my school in Paris), in parallel to my engineering degree. Yet, as I studied their programs then, the only psychology bachelor they offered was in clinical psychology, with no influence of the Palo Alto school that interested me. I therefore forgot about it.
Through my reading of books on psychology I began to discover a field of human knowledge that would passionate me for the following years, with the hope of learning to develop good relationship with other people.
Between the first and second year of my engineering school, we were required to have a 2-3 months of internship in another country.
My uncle Gilles helped me find such an internship at the company TransManche Link, helping to build the channel tunnel between France and the UK. It was the summer 1991, as France and the UK wanted to strengthen their ties as members of the European Union. As I write today, in February 2017, it is strange for me to see the separation of the UK from the European Union, ‘Brexit’ as we call it.
My role was to develop tests for the signalization system helping trains go through the tunnel. It was a very interesting task. I was for two months in Folkestone, England, with the French team of engineers. In very large proportion, the British employees were lawyers preparing for legal disputes concerning their contract with the company Eurotunnel, because there was delays in the digging and building the tunnel. So, the engineers were mostly the French, and the lawyers were mostly the English. This meant that my international internship ended up being a time working with French engineers in England, thus speaking very little English.
Through the years, I came to realize that this emphasis in Anglo-Saxon culture on Law, while the French rather emphasized Engineering and science, reflects deep elements of our mutual cultures. In France, critical thinking and scientific knowledge is very renowned. In the UK or the US, I found that it is rather the ability to speak well and to convincingly advocate a position in debate which is highly respected.
During this internship, the person my uncle contacted took some time with me. He shared with me his interest with psychology, and more specifically in the writings of Carl Gustav Jung. I began to be interested myself in this psychologist, and ended up reading most of his books in the next two years. Jung’s writings led me to become very interested in astrology and also in Taoism. I studied the Tao Te Ching (attributed to Laozi), the possible connexions between Taoism and modern physics. Through Taoism, I became interested in Eastern spiritualities. I began to read books on Buddhism, in its various forms (Zen, Chan, Tibetan, Hinayana and Mahayana).
I also read books on Sufism (a branch of Islam), Hinduism, and many Western adaptations of these Oriental spiritualities - sometimes associated with what is called the New Age.
The challenge with Jung’s writings is that it led me to even more introspection and introversion, while what I really needed was to develop better relationships with other people.
My awareness of the limits of science opened me to the possibility of spirituality. In this period of my life, I became interested in some forms of religion. Yet, I was definitely not interested in Judaism or Christianity, which I then considered as ‘dead spiritualities.’
It would still take quite a few steps for the Lord to lead me to discover that what I really was looking for was the Christian faith.
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