God, mother and me: An object relational perspective on religious material

Abstract

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

The relationship of spiritual maturity to level of object relations development and God image

“…In addition, through her elaborations of Winnicott's (1971) concept of transitional objects, she asserted that God is a personalized representational transitional object who is increasingly cathectod, as opposed to decathected, throughout development. McDargh (1983McDargh ( , 1986 has further contributed to theory and research in the area of God image and object relations. In an attempt to investigate the relationship between psychological and religious development in light of object relations theory, he studied 12 individuals in depth through interviews, autobiographies, and projective instruments.…”

Sacred Objects, Healing Prayer: The Use of Transitional Phenomena in a Client's Recovery from Incest

“…Incest, with its concomitant violations of boundaries, betrayal of trust, and blatant disregard for the personhood of the child, can-and does-profoundly alter the spiritual worldview of the survivor. If the object relations theorists (McDargh, 1986;Randour, 1993;Rizzuto, 1981Rizzuto, , 1993 are correct in positing that our earliest images of God are formed out of the matrix of our relationships with our primary caregivers, incest is likely to have a negative affect on the child's earliest relationship with her or his God. Drawing specifically on the work of Donald Winnicott, it is my hope that this case study will illustrate the intersections of object relations theory, trauma theory, and the client's embedded and deliberative theologies (see below).…”

“…Likewise, the internalized representations of self that are formed out of relationships are reflective of our internalized sense of how we are met by the other and how we experience ourselves in relation to the other. A number of object relations theorists (McDargh, 1986;Randour, 1993;Rizzuto, 1981Rizzuto, , 1993 argue that an individual's earliest internalized object representations of God are formed out of the matrix of one's relationships with primary caregivers, usually the child's parents. Rizzuto (1993) object representation of God, "created as a transitional representation in the process of psychic separation from mother and father, soon acquires a powerfully convincing reality, a sense of unseen presence, capable of caring relatedness, painful indifference or frightful punishments" (p. 18).…”

Readings of Winnicott III

“…Those questions are, for the most part, immediate, narrow, local, and particular, and the answers promote survival and adaptation, the going-onbeing of the self, for example, BWhat is happening?^In the midst of these activities, the infant 1 For other commentary on Winnicott's corpus, the reader may turn to any of the following: Abram 1996Abram , 2008Caldwell 2007;Caldwell and Joyce 2011a, b;Clancier and Kalmanovitch 1987;Davis and Wallbridge 1981;Flanagan 2011;Fulgencio 2007;Gargiulo 1998;Girard 2010;Goldman 1993a, b;Greenberg and Mitchell 1983;Grolnick 1990;Grolnick and Barkin 1978;Hernandez 1998;Hughes 1989;Khan 1958Khan /1975Khan , 1972Khan /1986Ogden 1986Ogden , 1989Ogden , 1994Ogden , 1997Ogden , 2001aOgden , b, 2002Ogden , 2004Ogden /2007Phillips 1989a, b;Rodman 1987a, b;Rudnytsky 1991;Sutherland 1980. There may be some benefit to considering this and the other articles in the series in conjunction with commentary on Winnicott in the general area of psychology and religion, for example : Black 2006;Gay 1983;Jones 1991aJones , b, 1996Jones , 1997Jones , 2002LaMothe 2014;McDargh 1983McDargh , 1986McDargh , 19...…”