Existential crises in two religious patients: Vicissitudes of faith and the emergence of the true self

The authors present two clinical cases involving an existential crisis which led the patients to lose what had been the foundation in their lives, their faith. Although the therapeutic settings differ – the first patient had a few psychotherapy sessions following a psychotic episode with a mystical background, while the second was in the final stage of analytic treatment – the authors highlight how in both clinical cases a loss of faith becomes a total and urgent crisis of the Self. The fracture which ensues seems to generate an intense engagement of the body which, paradoxically during a loss of faith, induces an experience of ecstasy of the kind that has traditionally been reported. In the first case the experience of ecstasy was lived first‐hand by the patient who thereafter redefined the psychotic breakdown as a “moment of truth”; whereas the second patient, through a deep projective identification, induces an eerie countertransferential feeling of ‘metaphysical’ shortfall in the agnostic psychoanalyst, triggering bewilderment, physical discomfort and awe in him. In both cases the authors believe that the notable somatic involvement may be correlated to a potentially profound and unprecedented contact with the True Self.     

Parapsychology and biblical religion

Pastoral Psychology -     

Psychoanalytic approaches to biblical religion

A brief look at four studies of biblical religion from a psychoanalytic point of view (spanning the time from Freud'sMoses and Monotheism to the present) alerts us to the many ways biblical religion both reflects and mediates the dawning realization that for the well-being of humanity it is of decisive importance that sons do (in spite of all emotional obstacles) identify with their fathers and fathers do find ways of loving and caring for their sons (the eldest son in particular).     

Suffering and faith

It is hypothesized that, under the impact of suffering or loss, some Christians not only grieve for what has been lost but also experience feelings of separation from their God and mourn that loss also. This spiritual mourning may take different forms and may lead to different outcomes in ways more or less analogous to those described for mourning and variants thereof by various workers. Drawing upon such work, the author describes certain possible forms of spiritual mourning.The preparation of this paper was supported in part by Grant HD-03110 from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and by Maternal and Child Health Training Grant No. MCT=000916A.     

Dialogue and faith

‘Dialogue’ between members of differing traditions is nowadays replacing polemics, debate, and monologue preaching of traditional missionary policy. Terms in which it can be conducted have not yet, however, been widely found. It will be illuminating to discover whether among diverse groups conversation in the terms propounded here could prove fruitful, or at least mutually intelligible. This will be a highly significant test of the theory, expecially in view of the possible importance of this activity for the world's future religious development.1 W. Cantwell Smith, The Meaning and End of Religion (Mentor ed. New York 1964), p. 177.      

Dialogue and faith

‘Dialogue’ between members of differing traditions is nowadays replacing polemics, debate, and monologue preaching of traditional missionary policy. Terms in which it can be conducted have not yet, however, been widely found. It will be illuminating to discover whether among diverse groups conversation in the terms propounded here could prove fruitful, or at least mutually intelligible. This will be a highly significant test of the theory, expecially in view of the possible importance of this activity for the world's future religious development.¹     

A biblical and historical study of homosexuality

This study is a synthesis of biblical and historical material regarding the place of homosexuality in the Christian churches. The author argues that all sexual activity, both heterosexual and homosexual in orientation, should be judged appropriate for Christians when it is a responsible, mutually respectful and loving act between adult persons that is intended to enhance the building and maintaining of whole persons. Therefore, if a person is in all other ways qualified for membership and its contingent responsibilities in the Christian community (or any other community), his or her sexual orientation and behavior should not be a barrier.This study was initially prepared for the Human Sexuality Task Force of the Diocese of Western North Carolina.     

Coleridge and the 'master-key' of biblical interpretation

Claude Welch, the distinguished historian of nineteenth‐century religious thought, once declared that Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) ‘may be seen as the real turning point into the theology of the nineteenth century’ and that he ‘was as important for British and American thought as were Schleiermacher and Hegel’.² Still, Coleridge remains largely marginalized in the annals of church history and theology despite his unwavering prominence throughout much of the nineteenth century. Perhaps it should come as no surprise, then, that Coleridge's posthumously published Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit (1840), with its rejection of the verbal infallibility of Scripture and elevation of the importance of the individual in rightly discerning the truths of the Christian faith, has often been misread as an attestation of the primacy of the individual subject over the biblical text. It has been treated alternately as a document that signals the emergence of German higher criticism in England,³ a Romantic appeal to the fundamental importance of the subjective in religion,⁴ and an early form of reader‐oriented literary criticism.⁵ In this article I suggest that the attention devoted to Coleridge's denial of the verbal inspiration of Scripture, epitomized by the phrase that biblical inspiration is constituted by ‘whatever finds me’, has overshadowed his equally significant attention to the authority of church tradition in that same document. More specifically, rather than arguing for subjectivism in biblical interpretation, Coleridge equally emphasizes the objective sources of revelation expressed in Scripture and the church traditions handed over from the apostles. Rather than proposing a model of biblical inspiration that is wholly individualistic, Coleridge maintains a vision of Christianity that affirms the vitality of both the authority of the church and that of the believer. Thus, Coleridge's theological contribution to religious history is not that of an aberrant, absent‐minded poet, but rather that of a central participant engaged in an ongoing and pivotal debate in the history of England: the relationship between Scripture and church traditions. In order to draw out this important, though neglected, strand of thought in those ‘Letters on the Scriptures’, the name by which the Confessions is sometimes identified,⁶ I begin by briefly clarifying the nature of the idea of tradition both in relation to Coleridge and English theology in the nineteenth century. I then summarize the argument of the Confessions as a whole and turn more particularly to those sections of the Confessions that suggest the role Coleridge assigns to church tradition in relation to Scripture. Finally, after assessing the authority of the church in relationship to the divine Word, I turn to Coleridge's earlier works and his notes on the Works of William Chillingworth (1602–1644) in order to demonstrate that his views on the respective authority of both the individual and the church were consistently held since near the time of his conversion to Trinitarian Christianity. I conclude that Coleridge's conception of the relationship between Scripture and church traditions calls for a reevaluation of his place in the history of religious thought in England.     

Existential Confrontation and Religiosity

Recent research suggests that religious intrinsicness should predict a failure to confront existential problems whereas an interactional orientation should promote the opposite influence. This study, however, demonstrated that intrinsicness is associated only with traditional religious resolutions of such difficulties and that the interactional approach is essentially unrelated to confrontation with existential realities. These data therefore failed to support claims that orthodox, intrinsic individuals are rigid in their approach to the basic existential questions of life; the data also illustrated the importance of differentiating thought content from thought process in analyzing religious influences on psychological functioning.     

Existential Assessment

Present day psychological assessment stems from a philosophy of sicence that values objectivity but fails to comprehend the existence of the person being evaluated. A humanistic-existential model shifts the focus from omnipotence to encounter and encourages client responsibility. The vehicle for this conceptualization is the nature and meaning of the encounter between clinician and client. New questions are posed for the assessor by altering the assessment goals, the stance toward interpretation, and the criterion for validation.