The communion of saints as a paradigm for pastoral counseling: a revised look at an ancient symbol

The Christian symbol of the Communion of Saints has stood for centuries as a call to celebrate relationships. From the ancient doctrine of calling out those honored among the faithful for their holiness, the symbol evolved into a more formal ecclesial process involving procedures and miraculous proof. Reaching back to the early roots, the author draws on theologian Elizabeth Johnson's revisioning of saints as "friends and prophets" to explore a paradigm for the pastoral counselor. Such pastoral characteristics as presence, transforming vision, and creative hope are explored for the richness of growth within the counseling relationship for all who enter into it.     

A tract on psychology: agency and communion in human mentation

Listed are 117 propositions, generated as beginning notes for development of theoretical understanding of agency and communion in human mentation.     

Churches in transforming mission: A story of Lutheran communion in Africa

The argument of this paper is that the legacy of “ecclesia semper reformanda” (churches in a continued reformation and renewal) in Africa should not only transform the theological perspective of the Lutheran communion, but also take stock of the diaconal, social, economic and political realities of its members. In other words, a theology done in Africa needs tools and methodologies that are more comprehensive.     

Perceiving communion in the dyadic relationship of others

The present research took an ecological approach to explore a relational issue in social perception ? are the perceived personality characteristics of dyad members and their perceived behavioural exchanges related to perceptions of that dyad’s perceived level of friendship? To this end, observers reported on a dyad they knew well using an indigenous measure of personality perception and the Dyadic Behavioural Exchange Scale, combined with an adapted version of Hays’ Friendship Observation Checklist. Perceived similarity of personality on the dimensions of application, emotional stability (negative) and helpfulness (negative) along with the perceived level of dyadic behaviour exchange were found to be additive predictors of perceived communion or friendship strength. This interplay of personal and interpersonal processes has demonstrated the application of methodological relationalism in the social domain, and broadened the ambit of social cognition to include knowledge of relationship units of which the observer is not a member, but which plays a part in his or her social world.     

Agency and communion in the structure of parental representations

We administered the revised Assessment of Qualitative and Structural Dimensions of Object Representations (Blatt, Chevron, Quinlan, Schaffer, & Wein, 1992) to 279 male and female undergraduate students and carried out independent principal components analyses of maternal and paternal ratings. Three stable factors, Agency, Communion, and Structure, were found in both sets of ratings. This factor structure differed from that reported by Quinlan, Blatt, Chevron, and Wein (1992). Results found here are consistent with contemporary interpersonal personality theory.     

Links between unmitigated communion,interpersonal behaviors and well-being: A daily diary approach

We examined the links between unmitigated communion, interpersonal behavior, and well-being on a daily basis with 79 college students. After completing a baseline questionnaire, participants completed brief on-line questionnaires at the end of the day to assess support interactions, interpersonal behavior, and well-being for 10 consecutive days. We used multi-level modeling to examine whether unmitigated communion was connected to support and interpersonal behavior, whether support and interpersonal behavior were connected to well-being, and whether unmitigated communion moderated the latter relations. Unmitigated communion was related to increased support provision and a host of interpersonal difficulties. Daily support provision and being overly nurturant were positively related to well-being, but these relations were limited to individuals characterized by low unmitigated communion.     

I am ... , I have ... , I suffer from ... : A Linguist Reflects on the Language of Illness and Disease

Part personal documentary, part exercise in medical semantics, this essay brings the analytical tools of a linguist and the human perspective of a patient receiving treatment in the American health care system to bear on the language we use—for the most part unconsciously—to talk about illness and disease. Topics to be explored include linguistic ramifications of the illness/disease distinction; referring expressions for health disorders; the “linguistic construction” of disease (what's in a name?); the “translation” of biomedical information from the specialists' dialect into everyday idiom; and the metaphoric/symbolic dimension of body-parts and their afflictions.     

Ecclesial communion: The letters of St Basil the great revisited

Abstract

The German word Kirchengemeinschaft, translated as ‘ecclesial communion’ or ‘communion of churches’, is a term frequently used in contemporary ecumenical discourse. Are ‘communion of churches’ or ‘ecclesial communion’ leading concepts for future ecumenism? Starting from the fact that modern ecumenism and ecclesiology often refer to communio/κo?vωvíα in the Early Church as their model or ideal, this article investigates more closely how κo?vωvíα worked in that period. Basil the Great's letters serve as an example to show not so much the theoretical but the practical impact of κo?vωvíα on everyday church life. They also demonstrate how Basil applied κo?vωvíα on different levels and indicate what is required to facilitate it. Finally, they give some indication of what this could mean for ecumenism today.     

Contemporaneity and communion: Kierkegaard on the personal presence of Christ

Søren Kierkegaard’s claim that having faith requires being contemporary with Christ is one of the most important, yet difficult to interpret claims across his entire authorship. How can one be contemporary with a figure who existed more than two millennia ago? A prominent answer to this question is that contemporaneity with Christ is achieved through a kind of imaginative co-presence made possible by reading Scripture. However, I argue, this ignores what Kierkegaard thinks about Christ as a living agent, and not a merely historical agent. By drawing on Kierkegaard’s discussion of Christ’s true presence in the sacrament of Communion, I argue that contemporaneity with Christ should be understood in the same way as any other intersubjective relation. That is, I argue, that just as relating to any living person as contemporary requires a kind of two-way attention-sharing, relating to Christ as contemporary, on Kierkegaard’s account, requires a kind of two-way attention-sharing with Christ.     

Hierarchical integration of agency and communion: a study of influential moral figures

The purpose of this research is to (a) identify which of recent history's influential figures did and which did not personify moral excellence, and (b) to examine the motives that drove these individuals along such divergent paths. In Study 1, 102 social scientists evaluated the moral qualities of influential figures from Time Magazine's lists. In Study 2, we selected the 15 top ranking of these figures to comprise a moral exemplar group and the bottom 15 to comprise a comparison group of similarly influential people. We measured the motivational aspects of their personality (agency and communion) by content-analyzing extant speeches and interviews. Moral exemplars exhibited the hierarchical integration of agency and communion by treating agentic motives as a means to an end of communal motives. Comparison subjects, by contrast, personified unmitigated agency by treating motives of agency as both a means to an end and an end unto itself. These results imply that both the strength and structure of a person's motives account for moral behavior.     

The implications of unmitigated agency and unmitigated communion for domains of problem behavior

Agency and communion are broad dimensions of personality that reflect a focus on the self and a focus on others, respectively. In this article, we distinguish unmitigated agency, a focus on the self to the exclusion of others, flom agency, and we distinguish unmitigated communion, a focus on others to the exclusion of self, from communion. We argue that it is unmitigated agency and unmitigated communion that are linked to domains of problem behavior, in particular relationship difficulties and poor health behavior. Unmitigated agency and unmitigated communion are associated with a lack of support from others, a reluctance to ask others for help, and a range of poor health behaviors. The reasons for these links differ. The links to problem behavior for unmitigated communion individuals stem from their tendency to subjugate their own needs to the needs of others and their dependence on others for esteem. The links to problem behavior for unmitigated agency individuals stem from their unwillingness to attend to relationships and their negative view of others.     

'Divinity expresses the self ...' An investigation.

The self is more than conscious identity and location (i.e., the ego) because it includes and expresses the full range of the psyche, all conscious and unconscious elements included, and it is responsible for the unity of the psyche as a whole. Beyond this, the self concept sets up the basis for the linkage between analytical psychology and religious doctrines of transcendence. It has been stated by critics and sympathizers that Jung was a 'mystic', or a throwback to pre-Enlightenment medievalism, who equated the self with God, mixed up categories of transcendence and immanence, and put the psyche on a symbolic par with Divinity. While this does contain a kernel of truth about his late views, it is not quite as straightforward as it sounds. This essay(1) explores the complex relation of the self to the transcendent (Divinity), as Jung understood these terms and employed them, focusing especially on a critical passage from his last major work, Mysterium Coniunctionis. The notion of self as imago Dei grasps the paradoxical nature of the self, a coincidentia oppositorum that is at once personal and impersonal, embodying a pattern of Divinity that also is revealed as a coincidentia oppositorum, immanent and transcendent. Jung posits, moreover, a dynamic interactive relation between the self and the transcendence it mirrors. Altogether, this combination of features regarding the self sets Jung's psychology apart from humanistic and personalistic psychologies and secular depth psychologies such as those descended from Freud on the one side, and on the other side it also separates it from pre-Enlightenment dogmatic psychologies such as those belonging to religious fundamentalisms. This essay attempts to explore and to explicate the subtle space between purely secular and religious doctrines and to make the case that Jung's depth psychology represents a post-Enlightenment, post-secular, post-humanistic vision of the human as a material/spiritual being whose psyche links earth and heaven, the here and the beyond, the finite and the infinite. It is a radical attempt to break out of modernity without regressing to medievalism.