Braided Selves

Collected Essays on Multiplicity, God, and Persons

Cooper-White

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781621890171
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

What if we are more multiple as persons than traditional psychology has taught us to believe? And what if our multiplicity is a part of how we are made in the very image of a loving, relational, multiple God? How have modern, Western notions of Oneness caused harm--to both individuals and society? And how can an appreciation of our multiplicity help liberate the voices of those who live at the margins, both of society and within our own complex selves? Braided Selves explores these questions from the perspectives of postmodern pastoral psychology and Trinitarian theology, with implications for the practice of spiritual care, counseling, and psychotherapy. This volume gathers ten years of essays on this theme by preeminent pastoral theologian Pamela Cooper-White, whose writings bring into dialogue postmodern, feminist, and psychoanalytic theory and constructive theology.

one

Thick Theory

Psychology, Theoretical Models, and the Formation of Pastoral Counselors

The head of music at my daughter’s school e-mailed me with a request: “As the chair of the performing arts committee, could you find me a volunteer to accompany the middle school select chorus? And actually, I was hoping it would be you.” Daunted, I replied, “I’m a singer, not a pianist. How hard is the repertoire?” She wrote back within the hour, “You’re on! Hey, it’s middle school, how hard can it be?” My daughter brought the music home to me a week later, and my worst fears were realized. There was one piece in particular that snagged me every time I attempted it. A wonderful “Gospel swing” piece with a heavy stride base and large chords in the right hand, this song featured a sudden key change midstream from G (one sharp) to A-flat (four flats). It was like rafting down a calm river and suddenly hitting the rapids!

Feeling dutiful, and being somewhat obsessional in character, I had no choice but to soldier on. Chord sequences in the second half of the piece kept tripping me up every day. Finally, I took a mental step back from my finger fumbling and growing panic, and put on my musicology “hat” to think about the piece. What was its history: who would have performed it originally? What was the theoretical analysis: what were the harmonic progressions, and why did certain chords change as they did? The answers helped me immediately. The piece was, of course, never meant originally to be learned or performed from a written page. It would have been improvised at first, and then handed on from performer to performer by ear. A Gospel pianist would know instinctively how to move from chord to chord, because the harmonies followed certain formal patterns, and the creative departures from those patterns still belonged within the tonal universe of the style of music being presented. I needed to get my nose away from the sheet music in order to begin to feel my own way almost improvisationally, guided by the theory, into the movements of the melody, the chords, and the song’s rolling rhythms.

Why We Need Theory in Pastoral Care and Counseling

Some students and some experienced therapists resist the need for theory, stating that they do not want to force individual patients with their unique issues into some kind of artificial or preconceived framework. Some pastoral colleagues believe that theory is too abstract, too removed from the flesh-and-blood realities of human thought, feeling, and behavior. While it may be true that some practitioners seem to treat their theoretical models like a procrustean bed, forcing every patient to fit their theory, and disregarding aspects of patients’ lives that are not explained by their conceptual frame, this is not the fault of theory per se, but rather a faulty use of it. As Patrick Casement has warned from his psychoanalytic framework, “There is a temptation, rooted in the acquired knowledge of psychoanalytic theory, for analysts and therapists to try to mastermind the analytic process rather than to follow it.”1 This applies to all counselors’ premature or overzealous applications of theory. But as Casement continues, “Patients will . . . often resist a therapist’s premature application of theoretical knowledge, and preconceived ideas about them in order to reinstate the necessary ‘period of hesitation’ [citing Winnicott]. Without the space created by this hesitation there can be no room for analytic discovery or play. With it there is room, in every analysis and therapy treatment, for theory to be rediscovered and renewed.”2

Rather than resisting theory as the culprit, then, it is perhaps more accurate to recognize that in fact every practitioner has a theory, whether it is articulated or not. The Greek word theoría literally means “a looking at, viewing, or contemplation,” as well as “speculation” or theory in the sense we understand it. Our theory is, at its most basic meaning, our viewpoint as we enter into the work we do with patients.

Theory is classically defined as follows: “A scheme or system of ideas or statements held as an explanation or account of a group of facts or phenomena; a hypothesis that has been confirmed or established by observation or experience, and is propounded or accepted as accounting for the known facts; a statement of what are held to be the general laws, principles, or causes of something known or observed.”3 As it functions in the context of pastoral care, counseling, and psychotherapy, theory encompasses two domains. It represents a set of governing concepts about human behavior (“psychological theory”)—encompassing explanations for human motivation, personality formation, emotional and cognitive development, and causes of pathology. And it also represents a framework for practice (“practice theory”)—a rationale for using certain methods for both diagnosis and treatment. Various schools of thought within the vast range of contemporary counseling practice may place more emphasis on either the psychological or the practice domain. The most comprehensive theoretical frameworks encompass both, since a particular conceptualization of the human psyche would be expected to have implications for approaches to care.

Unarticulated theories, I would argue, can be as harmful to parishioners and patients as rigidly guarded conscious formulations. An unarticulated practice theory might be an unconscious conviction that “it is my job to be nice to everyone.” Under the powerful sway of this unarticulated conviction, a therapist might end up avoiding exploring painful material with a patient, steering away from conflicts arising in the therapeutic relationship, fostering emotional dependency, and even crossing boundaries under the rubric of being a “special carer.”4 A corollary psychological theory might be that “all people are essentially good,” and if given sufficient nurture, will naturally grow toward their highest potential. The pitfalls of this general theory include a failure to examine culturally and socially laden assumptions (including racial and gender constructions) about what constitutes “goodness,” resulting in an empathic failure to recognize aspects of the patient’s aggression, sexual desire, greed, hunger, fear, or hate.

Here, of course, I am already showing my own theoretical cards. Even one’s approach to theory is already theory laden. My theoretical home is, broadly speaking, psychoanalytic, and within the ever-expanding range of psychoanalytic models, I have pitched my tent with the “relational” school5—a contemporary movement within psychoanalysis that follows postmodern, constructivist concepts of psychological reality as socially or interpersonally constructed, and regards “self” as a more multiply constituted subject than a unified or integrated core of identity or being. Its corresponding practice theory emphasizes the fluid interplay of self and other, and attention to countertransference as a primary tool for empathically identifying the thoughts, feelings, sensations, and enactments that continually bubble up in the “intersubjective”6 or shared area of consciousness/unconsciousness between therapist and patient.7 Because this school of thought has evolved out of earlier object-relations models, I also continue to find guidance and wisdom in its forebears, for example, the writings of D. W. Winnicott,8 Harry Guntrip,9 Melanie Klein,10 and of Sigmund Freud himself11—whose multiply layered and ever-developing thought continues to be a rich resource.12

Given my own theoretical biases about theory, then, I am prone to believe that we are drawn to our favored psychological and practice theories (conscious and unconscious) by our own personal histories, experiences with people we are close to, and professional experiences
—in other words, our countertransference. For example, I am gravitationally pulled toward Guntrip’s and André Green’s writings about the dead (depressive) mother;13 Freud’s explanations of neurotic symptoms as an outbreaking of repressed sexual and aggressive desires;14 Klein’s unflinching descriptions of biting, guilt, and reparation;15 and Jane Flax’s and Jodie Messler Davies’s theories about the emancipatory qualities of multiplicity,16 because they resonate symphonically with my own personal and clinical experience. I am dr...

Table of contents

• Braided Selves
• Permissions and Credits
• Introduction
• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2
• Chapter 3
• Chapter 4
• Chapter 5
• Chapter 6
• Chapter 7
• Chapter 8
• Chapter 9
• Bibliography