In the Shadow Side of Hope: Charisma and Mutuality in the Pastoral Care of Men with Tendencies Toward Affective Disturbance

Abstract

This paper explores dialectical relationships between affective mental disturbance and religious development in men. It then proposes a form of pastoral engagementthe mutual encounter-with men so afflicted. In care giving, the pastor may draw on his or her own charismatic endowment to solicit the recognition of the same within the care seeker, all the while respecting a man's attenuating psychosocial need for communicative boundaries and privacy. Both pastor and care seeker may engage the care process as a mutual, continuing, and dialogic quest for authentic Christian relationship, charisma, and selfhood where each serves as "guide" and "messenger."

Dialectical Displacement and Redeployment of Attachments in the Kenotic Mode of Conversion: The Leaving Behind of Anton Boisen in Psychosis

“…The "kenotic" theory of conversion 2 expands upon my earlier presentation of the dialectical phenomenology of mental stress (Olds 2008). Kenosis is developmental and evolutionary, the sequential, episodic, and fitful involvement of consolidation and stasis-or rejectionthrough learning and religious, moral choice.…”

“…After reading these living theological texts, Boisen's care giving process was not at its foundation based primarily on reciprocity; rather, it is based on mutual encounter, harmonic (counter-) transference and the gradual, coordinate reduction of distance between persons: the care giver and the care seeker and their gifts are [equal] in the eyes of God (cf. Olds 2008).…”

“…In an earlier paper (Olds 2008), I proposed that acute psychotic distress may result from a dialectical (dis-)engagement from the divine that is initially pathological but ultimately productive of religious maturation and growth. In this sense, I find support in those mystics and theologians who have proposed that God's prerogatives include the temporary and partial withdrawal of God's living presence that is then adapted by the self to separate out what is from God from that which is from "not-God.…”