This essay addresses the problem of finding a theologically and psychologically adequate "listening perspective" from which to interpret religious imagery in counseling contexts. The essay proposes that the revision of psychoanalytic theory broadly termed "object relations theory", with its attention to the distinctive inner representational world of each individual, may provide just such a resource. This perspective adopts Freud's basic insights on the genetic origins of the individual's God representation in the family romance, but avoids the reductionism of the Freudian position by positing a different understanding of fundamental human motivation, namely that it involves the creation and maintenance of a sense of being a self-in-relationship. The essay considers how the psychic representation of God may therefore be understood to function in this life of the self and illustrates this by reference to a clinical case from the work of D.W. Winnicott and a case from pastoral work.One of my favorite observations these days is one made by the late comedian Gracie Allen: "I learn everything I know listening to myself talk about things I don't understand." While that may seem like the perfect statement of the closed interpretive circle, it is in fact a fair description of how we come to insight as scholars and researchers--if we are honest with ourselves. We try to articulate that which we are still struggling unsuccessfully to fully understand and in that very process we discover what it is we need to know. As I listen to secular clinicians and therapists, but also those who identify themselves as pastoral counselors and spiritual directors, talk about case material, I realize that one area in which we must continue to expose our unknowing in efforts at new theorizing is around how to find an integrated psychological and theological perspective on the meaning of religious selfcommunication. While this is ultimately an issue that leads us into the whole area of theological anthropology, it is one that is focused in contexts where it appears first as a very practical and clinical question, and that is the way in which I want initially to raise the problem.For the last ten years I have been trying to understand something like this: What are human beings communicating about themselves and about their own inner experience when they use the word-symbol "God" in common speech and especially in that common-uncommon
This article explores modern psychoanalytic object relations theory as a potential resource for Christian spirituality in the development of an integrated theological and psychological model of the self. The necessity for such a model is first suggested by considering some potential dangers within the current revival of modes of “imageless” prayer. A suggestive effort that has already been made to construct a “spectrum” model of self development that combines psychoanalytic insight with the psychology of Theravada Buddhism is then examined. The final section assesses the interpretive power of a similar model worked out for the distinctive religious vision of Christian spirituality.
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