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

This paper introduces a kenotic theory of conversion that builds from simple attachment to childhood experience of peak states to encompass dialectical stages of development: Priming, Decentering, Reflection, Encounter, Denucleation, Emplacement and Discipline. Thereafter, the dialectical mode gives rise to the mature phase of conversion—the continuing integration of the religious worldview through Metamorphosis and Embassy. The conversion theory is illustrated by an interpretation of a dialectical set of experiences of Anton Boisen. I interpret Anton Boisen’s conversion from a 19th Century Christianity that was wedded to religious and racial manifest destiny to that of a reborn Christian living with the 20th Century’s experience of evangelical and evolutionary universalism. Boisen’s clinical desolations (“psychosis”) and adoption of vocation (“change of allegiance”) suggest his conversion counterposed the instinctual with the higher order ideals he struggled to embody—a dialectical negation of his younger static and triumphalist Christian cultural identity that developed into a more integrated, expansive, and inclusive view of the human family and deepening allegiance to the ordinary, underserved, and growing population of the mentally suffering.

Douglas B. OldsEmail: