Autobiography and the psychological study of religious lives (International Series in the Psychology of Religion)

Autobiography and the psychological study of religious lives

International Series in the Psychology of Religion

15 Edited by

J.A. Belzen

Consulting Editors B. Beit-hallahmi (haifa) D.S. Browning (chicago) D.e. capps (Princeton) H. Grzymała-Moszczyńska (Cracow) n.g. holm (Åbo) r.W. hood Jr. (chattanooga) D. hutsebaut (leuven) J.M. Jaspard (Louvain-la-Neuve)

J.W. Jones (New Brunswick) W.W. Meissner (Boston) H. Müller-Pozzi (Zürich) H. Newton Malony (Pasadena) A. Uleyn (nijmegen) A. Vergote (leuven) O. Wikström (Uppsala) D.W. Wulff (norton)

Autobiography and the psychological study of religious lives

Edited by

Jacob A. Belzen & Antoon Geels

Amsterdam - New York, NY 2008

Cover Photo: © Harm Hollestelle, Sporen van draden The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO 9706: 1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents Requirements for permanence”. ISBN: 978-90-420-2568-4 © Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2008 Printed in The Netherlands

TABLE OF CONTENTS Modern Means, Classic Goals: By Way of Introduction Jacob A. Belzen, Amsterdam (Netherlands)

7

Theoretical and Methodological Approaches Lifetime and Eternity Jens Brockmeier, Berlin (Germany)

19

Life Stories and Philosophies of Life: A Perspective for Research in Psychology of Religion Ulrike Popp-Baier, Amsterdam (Netherlands)

39

Toward a Multidimensional Conception of Faith Development: Deconversion Narratives in Biographical Context Barbara Keller, Cologne (Germany)

75

The Night is the Mother of Day: Methodological Comments on Three Cases of Religious Visions as Suicide Prevention Antoon Geels, Lund (Sweden)

95

Past and Present Religious Stories Autobiography, Psychic Functioning and Mental Health: The Role of Religion in Personal Life Jacob A. Belzen, Amsterdam (Netherlands)

117

Methodist Ritual Mourning and the Resolution of Traumatic Grief: The Case of Richard Moss Keith Haartman, Toronto (Canada)

159

The Personal and Beyond: Simone Weil and the Necessity/Limits of Biography Mark Freeman, Worcester (USA)

187

From Paradise to Paradox: The Psychospiritual Journey of John Heider Jeffrey Kripal, Houston (USA)

209

Different Religions, Different Cultures, Different Stories The Place of Religion in the Experience of War-Orphans as Constructed in their Life Stories Amia Lieblich, Jerusalem (Israel)

239

6 Table of contents The Redemptive Self, Generativity, and American Christians at Midlife: Explorations of the Life Stories of Evangelical and Mainline Protestants Dan P. McAdams and Michelle Albaugh, Evanston (USA)

255

Spirituality, Narrative, and Character: Two Priests on Paths to Spiritual Maturity and Integrity in Late Life Melvin E. Miller, Montpelier (USA)

287

Acting as Missionaries: The Religious Self in Intercultural Practice: An Approach from Action Theory and Cultural Psychology Jürgen Straub and Maik Arnold, Chemnitz (Germany)

319

Afterword Reflections of a Narrative Researcher Ruthellen Josselson, Baltimore (USA)

369

Notes on contributors

377

Index

381

MODERN MEANS, CLASSIC GOALS BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION Jacob A. Belzen Life stories as sources for the psychology of religion The present volume has a simple purpose. It seeks to do something that many have endeavored since the birth of psychology as an independent science down to the present: use psychology – with all its limitations – to understand man and what she does. After all, the science of psychology ultimately is about human beings. This may sound simplistic, perhaps even noble or well-intentioned, but many – and not just psychologists – also know that things are not that simple. Understanding another human being is not a simple matter. Why someone acts or even “is” a particular way is not something psychology can easily discover and relate. What can psychology do? The answer to this question is not simple either. The previous century saw spectacular, tumultuous growth in “psychology”: the number of practitioners now runs into the hundreds of thousands and the discipline’s influence on western society and on our state of mind has been gigantic. Along the way psychology has tried its best to develop as a science and I shall here point out only two consequence of this. First, psychology has become increasingly aware of its own perspective and has articulated this more clearly. Specifically, the “psychological perspective” has disintegrated into many perspectives; psychology has become multiform. This is an understandable development: the desire to research, comprehend and interpret the human being and what is human is not psychology’s business alone. Psychology is one of many human sciences (like history, economics, literary theory, etc.). Psychology consequently limits itself to researching a single aspect of man and human reality: the psychic. The problem, however, is that nobody is able to definitively describe and define the “psychic.” There are good reasons to assume that what is meant by psychic, changes over time (not only during a single individual’s development, but also during the historical development of an entire population) and there have already been numerous studies – for example from cross-cultural psychology – which demonstrate that psychic functioning in various (contemporary) cultures is not the same. In other words, psychology’s object of study is variable and this naturally means that this is true for psychology in different times and places (Cushman, 1990; Danziger, 1990, 1997; Matsumoto, 1994 a,b, 1996; Peplau & Taylor, 1997).

8 Jacob A. Belzen Moreover, it has been shown that a number of factors play a role here, e.g., the biological-physiological substructure: psychic functioning is, of course, always sustained – but sometimes also determined – by it and this is what justifies biological and physiological psychology. Yet we need very different types of psychology in order to be attentive to different factors and investigate psychic functioning in different areas of human existence. Because individual psychic development is so embracing and complicated to investigate, a developmental psychology has been created which was initially subdivided into child psychology, adolescent psychology, and adult psychology, each of which has itself been further differentiated over time. Because classic psychological subjects such as cognition, emotion, self-image, personality and what have you are so complicated to conceptualize and investigate, psychologists have developed into specialists. Some are memory specialists, others know everything about perception, and still others everything regarding psychomotility, etc. When one considers just how mentally disturbed a person can become, the growth of subdisciplines such as psychopathology and clinical psychology into gigantic endeavors comes as no surprise. I need not expand further regarding psychology’s growth for her multiformity progresses apace. Second, another and in principle equally positive consequence of psychology’s efforts to develop as much as possible into a science, is much greater precision in research and theory. Wild ideas and audacious guesses rarely yield scientific gain. It is certainly the case that no science can be built or can progress without visionaries, who are sometimes even capable of engendering a paradigm change (in the sense of Kuhn, 1962). The work of the average, not so visionary scientist usually consists of very careful and precise investigation of what visionaries exactly said and meant, that is to say, it consists of empirically verifying what the visionary contends or suggests. To be engaged in scholarly research means, among other things, to develop procedures for the purpose of investigating whether something is indeed true by performing a critical test, to employ these procedures to analyze new data (newly generated and/or discovered data), and in this way to form, revise or reject theory. Science is a laborious process and in its quest for precision evidences a tendency – an understandable one and not necessarily to be condemned – to busy itself with increasingly smaller incipient aspects of the original questions. Evidently, these two consequences often appear together and reinforce one another: psychology has in the meantime become so multiform, expanded into so many different directions and subfields, and engages in research of often such limited scope that many observers (including many psychologists as well, when they look up for a moment from their own research) have asked themselves whether psychology has lost sight of its proper object... Is psychology still about people? Is psychology still striving for insight into the human being and in all what is human?

Modern means, classic goals 9 These sorts of questions and musings are not new. Throughout the (not terribly long) history of psychology prominent representatives have warned their colleagues time and again not to loose sight of the forest for all those trees. Some of them have also aspired to develop new perspectives in order to rediscover the human being in psychology, often inspired by initiatives by like-minded predecessors. Thus, even in this, more modest, sense psychology develops: attempts to make the human being psychology’s central object are ongoing and are supported by earlier work as well as by the current work of kindred spirits in other disciplines. Since psychology cannot avoid interdisciplinary collaboration in its study of human psychic functioning, we should recognize that it is not only biologists, neurologists and physiologists that are required but also sociologists, historians, anthropologists and many others. It is this perspective that is behind the present volume. It does not pretend in any way to present a new program, but rather it seeks to contribute to that which psychologists and others interested in psychology have always wanted to achieve: understand what is human. One of the inquiries of such a psychology has always been into religiosity. Religiosity is indisputably human, is and has been of eminent importance for many, and constitutes the individual correlate of diverse forms of religions, found in all ages and cultures. Please note, by this I mean neither that all people are or should be religious nor that man is religious by nature, or anything like that. (Quite the contrary, although delving into this theoretical and empirical psychological problem just now would lead us astray.) Taking religion and religiosity seriously as an object of scientific research also does not mean a defense of some kind; such a motive should not be assumed with any of our authors (just as one would not make such an assumption about scientists involved in investigations into subjects equally human, such as criminality). There is also nothing fundamentally new in the way in which this book gives form to the psychological interest in religion and religiosity. It has long been known that in order to understand people one must listen to their stories and take what they say about themselves seriously. (In the same breath, it is possibly – even probably – true that one should also listen to others than the person under scrutiny in order to understand something about her. This is, however, not a counterargument. Training in how to listen is also very likely a requirement, not a counterargument; the same goes for psychological training and the employment specially designed research methodologies, etc.) In order to understand people one must, quite literally, take them at their word, let them speak (or write, which can, of course, make quite a difference in as much as it is another form of articulation with various genres). In any event, psychology – including the psychology of religion – should also pay attention to the stories people tell. At the risk of repeating myself, I wish to once again emphasize that this volume has unpretentious aims: none of the authors claim that their approach is the

10 Jacob A. Belzen only correct one and certainly none of them claim that theirs is the only one. Our preference to work with autobiographies does not preclude other approaches. We seek only to plead for – or perhaps less modestly: we seek to demonstrate – that it is worth psychology’s effort to employ this source of information regarding concrete people, for it is people which we hold as psychology’s primary object of investigation. Yet, we try to employ modern goals to achieve these classic goals.

Theoretical and methodological approaches Working with ego documents and other autobiographical material has been part of the psychology of religion since the subdiscipline’s inception. It would take us too far from our current purposes to attempt to write the history of this endeavor. I shall mention merely the most famous example: The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902/2002) by William James (of which I am myself somewhat critical, but which I nevertheless consider one of the most splendid books to come out of the psychology of religion, Belzen, 2005, 2006). I should also immediately remind, though, that a great deal of the primary material that has been and continues to be employed in contemporary, prevailing psychological research is also of an autobiographical and/or narrative nature; think of information gathered from interviews, of diaries and logs (whether kept at the request of the researcher or otherwise), of other regular reports, and of answers to open survey questions. In other words, do not think that the psychologists in this volume have become literary theorists for we are not dealing here with belles-lettres, published autobiographies, or stories as such. The authors within this volume are true to psychology, but are open to new ideas from literary theory, history, philosophy and other disciplines which function in this case as auxiliary sciences for psychology. For this reason this book begins with a section in which a number of fairly reflexive pieces are brought together. The authors think out loud about the nature of the forms of psychology they employ when reading autobiographies and present methodological ideas which constitute a much needed subsequent step. In so doing they place this book’s entire purpose, as it were, in a broader framework. Jens Brockmeier argues that the culture of autobiography that has become pervasive in western societies is a radicalized version of an individualist culture. It imposes the imperatives of individualism on the domain of time, or more precisely, on the understanding of human time or a lifetime as it takes shape in our ongoing autobiographical identity constructions. As a consequence, a new kind of individualized temporality has emerged, an autobiographical temporality that has become the subject of personal concern or Sorge, care. In order to explore this personalized notion of time, Brockmeier proposes viewing it against the cultural-historical backdrop of one of Christianity’s central concepts: eternity.

Modern means, classic goals 11 Lifetime and eternity are mutually related; they exclude and depend on each other dialectically. And they continue doing so – within our autobiographical self constructions – even if the culturally binding forces of the religious universe in which they once were embedded have faded. In the following chapter Ulrike Popp-Baier takes her earlier work and that of her fellow authors as the basis from which to stake out a number of fundamental reflections. As McAdams (especially in 2001) has suggested, the life story model of identity is a useful concept to integrate and reconcile much recent theory and research on “self ” and “identity.” Another argument for the life story model relies on different philosophical, anthropological, sociological and psychological concepts of the storied nature of human experience and personal identity which culminate in the notion of a narrative identity. An empirical substrate for the concept of a narrative identity understood as a life story can be the life story interview or narrative-biographical interview. Popp-Baier argues that the philosophy of life concept could be valuable to this kind of research and analyzing life stories with regard to philosophies of life would be an interesting research perspective in the psychology of religion. McAdams distinguishes different features of a life story which include the “ideological setting” of a life story. Similar concepts are “life reflection” (Staudinger, 2001), “autobiographical reasoning” (Habermas & Bluck, 2000) and “personal ideology” (de St. Aubin et al., 2006). Popp-Baier prefers the concept of a philosophy of life and would like to understand a philosophy of life as a person’s implicit and explicit ideas or theories of a good life which emerge in the context of a life story. She regards the notion of happiness, the question “how I should live,” and the subject’s relation to religion, spirituality or an ultimate reality as key elements of a philosophy of life which can be analyzed for life stories. The third chapter in this section is by Barbara Keller and primarily deals with methodological questions. Drawing on the notion that different world views engender different conceptions of development, she offers a critique of structural models of faith development. A case is made for a more contextually oriented conception of faith development. Linking conceptions of development from the life span perspective in psychology and from the psychoanalytic relational perspective, Keller argues for a shift from stage-models to a multidimensional conception. This facilitates a fresh perspective on fundamentalism as it permits comprehension of different configurations of subjectively functional religious/ spiritual development trajectories. She uses deconversion narratives (biographical accounts of leaving one’s faith and/or faith community) as examples. Towards the end of her chapter Keller discusses the implications of the shift toward a contextual and functional orientation, calling for an integrative perspective and the appreciation of different voices in faith developmental discourse. Finally, Antoon Geels reflects on his own use of autobiographical data in earlier research. From a systemic point of view, his main purpose is to discuss

12 Jacob A. Belzen the relation between life crisis and visionary experience. Geels’ studies in that field produced a theoretical model for the psychological analysis of religious visions, which he regards as autosymbolic representations of intrapsychic conflicts, a primary process mechanism in the service of homeostasis. In his contribution to this volume he applies this model to three cases of attempted suicide. The first two are narratives by Ramakrishna (1836–1886) and Sadhu Sundar Singh (1889-c.1929). The third is a contemporary biographical narrative, solicited by Geels. Geels subsequently uses these three cases to discuss methodological issues pertaining to problems of reconstruction and interpretation, different types of bias (theoretical, apologetic, cultural, or a combination thereof ), and problems related to literary criticism of the sources involved. Finally he shows the dynamic relation between life crisis and vision, which he poetically describes as night being the mother of day.

Past and present religious stories The next section offers psychological analyses of select past and present religious stories. Jacob Belzen first presents a case study in one of the classic fields of psychology of religion: religion and mental health. Using results and insights from “modern” psychology to interpret the religious conversion and spiritual development of a Dutch woman from the past, he engages in a kind of psychobiographical endeavor. He draws on a variety of current theories about the self, using them to open interpretative perspectives and ask new questions of old material. He also provides a good deal of information about the historical context of the woman whose autobiography he analyzes and the spiritual traditions in and out of which she moved, thus presenting a piece of very interdisciplinary research. The next chapter also deals with spiritual autobiography, this one written by the 18th century Methodist lay preacher Richard Moss. Keith Haartman shows how systematic ritual mourning orchestrated the working through of a lifelong depression rooted in early, unresolved bereavement. Haartman maintains that religious symbols from the cultural sphere gave inchoate affects and convictions a coherent representation in consciousness (i.e., mentalization). A previously fixated and self-destructive grief could have resumed a therapeutic movement towards resolution. By the end of this chapter Haartman turns again to methodology by introducing two hermeneutic terms – recitation and appropriation – to reflect on the thorny problem of accessing the autobiographer’s elusive subjectivity. Autobiographies of more contemporary subjects can be found in contributions by Freeman and Kripal. Mark Freeman draws upon the life and work of the philosopher, political activist, and mystic Simone Weil in an attempt to work through an apparent contradiction: while biographical inquiry may be deemed the surest and most appropriate road to understanding the lived reality

Modern means, classic goals 13 of religious lives, it is considered by some to be of limited value for the task at hand. This is because religious experience arguably bears within it a movement that transcends the biographical realm. If this is so, a significant challenge for the study of religious lives, and of creative lives generally, is to psychologically explicate the dynamic process whereby the personal is transformed into the “essentially anonymous” and “impersonal” (as Weil puts it) such that the resultant product exceeds its own origins. A further challenge, linked to the biographical enterprise itself, is to tell the story of this transformation so that the transcendent dimension is preserved. This challenge, Freeman suggests, is a poetic one and indicates a different kind of knowing as well as a different kind of telling than is often employed in psychology. By rising to it, a valuable vehicle for expanding the reach of the discipline will emerge. After this bold challenge, Jeffrey Kripal investigates the private, theoretical, and fictional writings of John Heider, an American group therapist and theorist who played a central role at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California, during the height of the American counterculture. His essay explores the various ways gender and sexuality weave in and out of Heider’s writings as these encounter and process the American counterculture and human potential movement of the late 1960s and 70s.

Different religions, different cultures, different stories The third section of this volume demonstrates how different religions, each rooted and embedded in a different culture, give rise to different stories. The section opens with a chapter by Amia Lieblich who reports on a study based on life story interviews with 51 men and women who define themselves as “the children of Kfar Etzion” – an Israeli kibbutz which was destroyed during the War of Independence in 1948. The participants, most of them orphaned by the war in early childhood, do not see themselves as traumatized by their past and live normal, productive lives as adults. Lieblich attributes this finding to three interconnected factors in the participants’ lives, namely community, religion and patriotism, and details and analyzes their influence. Her chapter demonstrates the importance of religious belief and practices as a means for individual adjustment after being traumatized. The life stories of 200 mid-life American Protestants are being analyzed by Dan P. McAdams and Michelle Albaugh. Reporting preliminary findings, they focus on similarities and differences in two groups: evangelical and generally conservative Protestants on one hand and more moderate-to-liberal members of mainline Protestant denominations on the other. Participants in both groups tend to score high on measures of generativity, or the concern for having a positive impact on the next generation. Like many highly generative American adults at mid-life, participants in both groups constructed self-defining life stories that

14 Jacob A. Belzen tend to mirror what McAdams (2006) describes as the redemptive self: a story of a gifted protagonist who journeys forth into a dangerous world, equipped with simple and steadfast moral principles, turning bad experiences into positive outcomes (the central theme of redemption), and seeking to give back to society for blessings received. The two groups, however, tend to construct different variants of the redemptive self. Conservative evangelicals tell life stories that tend to emphasize how religious faith and strict rules for social conduct delivered them from a potentially conflicted and chaotic life. In contrast, more liberal/mainline Protestants tell life stories that tend to emphasize how religious faith and an ethic of empathy delivered them from a potentially empty and barren life. The two groups show sharply different discourses of redemption – a more conservative, quasi-Freudian story of overcoming conflict and a more liberal, humanistic story about filling an empty self. In the third contribution to this section, Melvin Miller explores the individual spiritual journey. He begins by introducing questions related to how various theorists have come to understand spirituality and related terms, e.g., spirit, maturity, and integrity. Miller’s subjects have been participants in a 25-year longitudinal research project that investigated world views, ego development, and personality variables, e.g., open and closed-mindedness. In addition to the use of standardized assessment measures, every participant was periodically subjected to 3 to 5 hour interviews that posed detailed questions related to specific features of their world views and how they were developed. Miller used this information to explore the spiritual/vocational development of two priests. He discusses formative influences and relationships from their early developmental years as well as how these early influences shaped the direction of their lives. Using a psychoanalytic perspective, he pays particular attention to how certain intrapsychic and interpersonal conflicts were set in motion by these early, formative conflicts – sometimes resulting in narcissistic injury and/or depression. Finally, Miller observes with admiration how these men fought to stay true to their religious callings – despite the aforementioned obstacles. He concludes his chapter by considering the degree to which personal integrity (as defined by Erikson) might be experienced by each participant in his twilight years. The final chapter focuses on how young Protestant believers thematize themselves and their lives in the mode of story-telling. Straub and Arnold are particularly interested in the psychologically relevant functions of story-telling. Following a tradition influenced by symbolic action theory and cultural psychology, they deal with narrative biographies to explain and analyze the actions of some individuals doing missionary work. In a culturally diverse world – liberated, pluralized, and open to very individualistic life-styles – the concept and reality of mission reveals an ambiguous picture of the existence and development of religions and world views. Straub and Arnold present some rather tentative results of their empirical research and end their chapter

Modern means, classic goals 15 with a discussion about the relationship between the possible meanings of experiences, actions, practices and symbolic representations on one hand and the concept of “intercultural competence” on the other. In an afterword Ruthellen Josselson reflects on what this volume intended. Together with Lieblich (and later joined by McAdams), Josselson has been an Editor of the Narrative Studies of Life series, an initiative very close to and in some respects even an example of what many authors in the present volume have tried to achieve. She thoughtfully comments on the essays in this volume and situates them within the broader “narrative turn” in the social sciences. She confirms and emphasizes that we can only learn from autobiographical accounts how people use culturally available notions of the transcendent to make meaning in their lives, thus urging psychologists of religion to turn to narrative and other hermeneutic approaches to understand how religion functions on the level of the human being.

References Belzen, J. A. (2005). The Varieties, the Principles and psychology of religion: Unremitting inspiration from a different source. In J. Carrette (Ed.), William James and The Varieties of Religious Experience: A centenary celebration (pp. 58–78). London/New York: Routledge. Belzen, J. A. (2006). The varieties of functions of religious experience. James’ Varieties reconsidered. Archives de Psychologie, 72, 49-65. Cushmann, Ph. (1990). Why the self is empty: Toward a historically situated psychology. American Psychologist, 45, 599–611. Danziger, K. (1990). Constructing the subject: Historical origins of psychological research. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Danziger, K. (1997). Naming the subject: How psychology found its language. London: Sage. De St. Aubin, E., Wandrei, M., Skerven, K. & Coppolillo, C. M. (2006). A narrative exploration of personal ideology and identity. In D. P. McAdams, R. Josselson, & A. Lieblich (Eds.), Identity and story: Creating self in narrative (pp. 223–248). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Habermas, T. & Bluck, S. (2000). Getting a life: The emergence of the life story in adolescence. Psychological Bulletin, 126, 748–769. James, W. (1902/2002). The varieties of religious experience: A study in human nature. London/New York: Routledge. Kuhn, T. S. (1962). The structure of scientific revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Matsumoto, D. (1994). Cultural influences on research methods and statistics. Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole. Matsumoto, D. (1994). People: Psychology from a cultural perspective. Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole. Matsumoto, D. (1996). Culture and psychology. Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole.

16 Jacob A. Belzen McAdams, D. P. (2006). The redemptive self: Stories Americans live by. New York: Oxford University Press. Peplau, L. A. & Taylor, S. E. (1997). Sociocultural perspectives in social psychology. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Staudinger, U. M. (2001). Life reflection: A social-cognitive analysis of life review. Review of General Psychology, 5, 148–160.

THEORETICAL AND METHODOLOGICAL APPROACHES

LIFETIME AND ETERNITY Jens Brockmeier

Western cultures have increasingly become autobiographical cultures, public arenas of personal confession and display of “inner life.” Never before have so many life stories, (auto)biographies and memoirs been written and produced in a such wide spectrum of literary and documentary genres and media. Never before have so many academic and professional discourses been concerned with human lives and life stories. And never before have practices of autobiography been so intimately connected with the idea of self-exploration and, in fact, of self-construction. Today, autobiographical identity construction is considered to be a common and elementary “practice of the self,” neither bound to a particular age, level of education or social habitus, nor to the act or linguistic mode of writing in the narrow sense. Rather it is in countless narrative forms of everyday discourse and reflection that we give a gestalt to our memories, intentions and self-evaluations and expose our hopes, desires, and fears in an autobiographical perspective. In a strong sense, we live in a culture of autobiography – socially, psychologically, and existentially. One can view a culture of autobiography as an advanced and radicalized version of an individualist culture. What makes it so advanced and radical? There are several developments involved, let me point out just one. The culture of autobiography extends the imperatives of individualism into the domain of time, more precisely, of lifetime. Turning the idea of lifetime into an individual subject, a subject of personal concern, a new kind of temporality emerges: autobiographical time. Autobiographical time is the time of my life, my time, the time I remember or, at least, I believe to remember (Brockmeier, 2000). It is this remembrance of my lifetime in all its individual particularity and idiosyncrasy that becomes essential for one’s personal identity – the idea and practice of one’s self as a being in time. I am what I remember, the narrative of my time past, and without this narrative I cease to exist, as Marcel Proust famously explained the maxim of his mnemotic imagination. What Proust described as his innermost angst would soon become a widely shared conviction of the culture of autobiography. It is this idea that I want to explore in this chapter, and to do so I use several maps drawn by psychologists, philosophers, anthropologists and other students of life and time. As has often been noticed, the trouble and the particular challenge of the study of time is that it falls into all and none of the existing disciplines.

20 Jens Brockmeier Self, time, and the culture of autobiography “Narrative identity” is a central point of reference on all maps that I found helpful. Today most authors of self and memory do not have any difficulty agreeing with the assumption that autobiographical narratives are pivotal for our identities. (It may suffice at this point to understand identity in a generic sense as the construction of one’s self in time, an understanding I will spell out later on in some detail.) But even if conceiving of personal identity as a narrative gestalt seems plausible to many, we should bear in mind that this is a recent view. And recent too is the historical phenomenon itself which this view tries to capture. If we think of language not only as reflecting but also creating reality, we may find it telling that the word autobiography, although a Greek term, did not exist in ancient Greece. As Robert Folkenflik (1993) pointed out, the term autobiography and its synonym self-biography had never been used in any historical period until it first appeared in the late eighteen century in both Germany and England. Within just a couple of years both terms were not only invented but repeatedly reinvented. This is not to say that people in earlier epochs did not tell stories about themselves or that they did not have individual identities. But what made up the fabric of a person’s identity in the first place was a highly typified pattern, a cultural definition of what a life was supposed to be according to the social registers of descent, class, gender, ethnic or national background, religion, and education. Since this cultural configuration claimed to be grounded in the nature of human life, it seemed only consistent that it also circumscribed the course and the moral weight of a life. Almost always, this was the setting of lifetime according to the sociocultural trajectory of one’s life laid down at birth, which then only grew and unfolded like the natural cycle of childhood, youth, adulthood, and age (Thomas, 1976). Deviation from the rule, that is, the given sociocultural trajectory, was a rare exception. Perhaps from time to time a frog could be kissed into a prince, but there was no kiss that ever turned the son of a cobbler into a prince or the daughter of a farm lass into a scholar or, say, a business woman. It is well known how the story went on – the dynamics of capitalism, modernity, and post-modernity overturned all of this and, in the process, brought a new issue to the limelight: the self-responsible creation or, at least, handling of one’s identity and one’s own and personal lifetime. To be sure, the project of exploring and redefining one’s inner life had been germinating already for centuries behind the thick walls of medieval cloisters and in silent castle libraries. It had been flourishing among Renaissance scholars, and in the worlds of poets, artists, philosophers, rebellious theologians, diarists, lovers, and suicides. But it was not until the onset of bourgeois modernity, with its hitherto unseen social dynamics and the erosion of universally binding religious and moral value systems, that the project of self-defined identity construction

Lifetime and eternity 21 was to become a socioculturally pervasive phenomenon. What we are witnessing here is, as it were, a shift in self-responsibility or, to use Michel Foucault’s term, in souci de soi, care of the self. In contemporary psychological, socialscientific, and cultural theorizing it has become common parlance that personal or individual identity is a “self-reflexive project,” a project that comes with specific self-practices and a worldview based on what some call an advanced version of ontological individualism: celebrating the autonomous self as the a priori of the social. As Charles Taylor (1989) has maintained, the modern self has become increasingly entangled into the “moral ontology” of the ego and the idea of a sovereign I. Yet it is not only the steady extension of the project of self-construction over the entire life-span that reflects the changes from classic modernist to late or post-modernist societies and their “reflexive models of time” (Nowotny, 1994). There also is a second temporal extension of the self-construction imperative, one that stretches out into the personal and autobiographical past of the individual. It is this temporal configuration of one’s life and self I am interested in. It seems that the openness and uncertainty of one’s future, the hallmark of late modernity, is complemented by a similar openness and uncertainly of one’s past. And perhaps even more than tackling one’s uncertain future, coping with one’s increasingly uncertain past is a never-ending enterprise. Rewriting the self, to borrow Mark Freeman’s (1993) expression, is not one act but a life-long undertaking; in fact, it is a form of life, a modern and late-modern form of life, to be precise. Particularly in this respect our views and knowledge of the autobiographical process have changed in fundamental ways. Unlike two or three decades ago, most research on memory today – be it in psychology or the neurosciences, be it in the social sciences or cultural studies – confirms the claim that what we remember and how we remember depends primarily on the present circumstances in which we remember. Although autobiographical narratives are typically seen as narratives about the past, they are at least as much about the present. Almost a century after Freud, Bartlett, Halbwachs, and Proust it is safe to say that autobiographical remembering, in one word, is not finding but making. It is a process of selecting, interpreting, and (re)inventing, and much of this follows the pathways of narrative imagination. As historians and autobiographers – the historians of their own past – have known for a long time, the construction side where the past is written is the very moment of the writing. However, the view of autobiographical memory as an imaginative and constructive narrative practice, held by many contemporary writers and theorists of the self, shares one important idea with the older view. In the older view the goal of autobiographical memory was to bring back to life one’s past as authentic and true as it was lived in the first place, or perhaps even more authentic and true. The idea common to both views is that autobiographical memory localizes

22 Jens Brockmeier the self in a particular temporal space. This temporal dimension of the autobiographical process – the idea of one’s lifetime as an individual and personal realm of time – is the focus of my paper. I try to understand what I believe is essential to the historical form and practice of autobiography, namely, that it marks out of the universe of temporality a personal space of time, my time. The qualification of a specific autobiographical time implies the qualification of another time as particular, a time or temporality that is located beyond the personal segment or, more exactly, the many personal segments of human time. In the western and, that is, especially, the Christian tradition, this time beyond my lifetime is called eternity. Although opposing each other, these two kinds of temporality ontologically refer to each other; in fact, they depend on each other. In what follows I will, first, examine the idea of an individual time or lifetime (as it takes form, for example, in autobiographical time); in the second part I will then, by confronting this vision of time with a non-western vision, offer some thoughts about the mutual exclusion and simultaneous interrelatedness of the notions of lifetime and eternity as it is constitutive in Christianity.

A very short history of (Western) time It is impossible to unravel the notion of autobiographical time and the practices of locating oneself in autobiographical time without recalling its historical background. This background is the world of Christianity. As Peter Abbs (2001, p. 211) states, “[t]o say that Christianity has been a shaping force in the development of western life writing and, particularly, in the development of deep subjective autobiography is an understatement. It has been the major inspiration of autobiographical utterance in the Western culture and the dominant matrix for its articulation over 2000 years.” What, then, is the temporal layout of Abbs’s “deep subjective autobiography”? In which time does a Christian live and conceive of himself or herself ? In the world of Christianity we live in two qualitatively different time horizons, lifetime and eternity. From a historical point of view, this opposition is not specifically Christian but part of the antique and Egyptian heritage upon which Christianity was built. The time in which a Christian lives emerges out of a view of temporality that is deeply embedded in pre-Christian antiquity. It therefore might also be easier to be approached from there. So let us bring to mind for a moment the way people in the Eastern Mediterranean might have understood the temporal dimension of their being about two and a half thousand years ago. In order to think about time you need a language that enables you to do so. The language of the ancient Greeks did not have a word for the time. There was neither a term nor a concept for time as an abstractum; instead there were – as in all languages – many words, expressions, and grammatical forms to specify

Lifetime and eternity 23 different temporal qualities, states, and events. Almost all of them were fused with concrete experiences. Still, from the very beginning, that is, the earliest Greek texts that we know of, most thinking and talking about the temporal aspects of things was characterized by the opposition of two ideas of time. One was associated with the noun chronos, the other with the noun aion.1 For Homer, chronos is the time that dominates us, a duration that makes us suffer, while aion is the time that refers to life, especially, to the power needed to live. This power is limited in the life of human beings, whereas it is limitless in the lives of the gods. In Presocratic philosophy and early literature chronos splits up into a world time and a god time, while aion extends into what we would call today historical time. In the Attic tragedies, for example, of Euripides, whose plots and characters have shaped all western theater, literature, psychology, and moral philosophy, the main meaning of aion – human life time – is powerlessness, the flipside of the power of chronos time. Yet it is not until Plato that we find the first explicit concept of eternity, giving the term aion a radically altered meaning. In contrast to an earlier unspecified understanding of eternity as endless duration (in terms of endless succession), Plato’s eternity is beyond any temporal succession and thus without any “earlier” or “later”: It is timeless. “Time” (chronos) is just a representation, a simile, of the timelessly unchanged eternity. Drawing on the Platonic idea of a timeless and always present eternity, Plotinus, Augustine, and Boethius will fuse the idea of eternity with the existence of an universal spiritual being, a supreme being whose years, in Augustine’s words, “because they do not fail, are one today.” In this way, eternity becomes primarily a qualitative predicate of complete fullness: an atemporal quality of the modus vivendi of the supreme “ruler of time.” He is the “creator of time” because he himself is larger than time, immutable, omnipresent, and without beginning, end, and duration. In a process of conceptual shaping that is often seen as completed with Aquinas, eternity becomes an essential part of the “grammar” of talking about God. For most people in the western world, religious or not, the distinction between lifetime and eternity is self-evident – or, at least, that’s the way it is referred to in countless language games in everyday, scientific, and philosophical discourse. We live simultaneously in two spheres of temporality, the spheres of limited human time and that of an infinite or “eternal” time beyond, even if this time “beyond” is, in modernity, not for everyone necessarily associated with the existence of a godly creator. Still, everyone tries in their way to come to grips with this dichotomy, aided by a broad spectrum of meaning-making options offered by culture.2 1

For what follows I draw on De Romilly (1958) and Theunissen (2000 and 2005). Systematically speaking, there is of course a third temporal domain beside lifetime and eternity, the domain of world time. World time embraces natural, physical, or cosmic time, on the one hand, and social and historical time, on the other. Individual lifetime is

2

24 Jens Brockmeier That being said, it might nevertheless be possible to imagine a point of view from which the assumption that there is such a thing as a personal or individual time at all is a somewhat strange and astonishing idea. Just step back and – with the intellectual distance, cultural curiosity, and moral impartiality of an anthropologist in the field – review the countless cultures and historical epochs in which it would be difficult if not impossible to understand the logic of such a construct that defines certain spaces of time in terms of personal belonging or even property. One soon starts to wonder how such an unusual, indeed, peculiar view – as Clifford Geertz (1983a) once famously described the western idea of the individual self, comparing it to ideas of what a person is in non-western cultures – could have become such an ubiquitous and hegemonic institution of the, at least culturally, ever expanding western world.

Time and narrative Before I go on to explore the distinction between lifetime and eternity by looking at them from a point of view outside the Christian tradition, let me briefly outline how I understand these difficult concepts – or perhaps better, how far my understand goes. If I had just one sentence, I would use the words of Jorge Luis Borges: “Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger which destroys me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire which consumes me, but I am the fire.” Borges’s river, tiger, and fire are metaphors for the power that we attribute to “time.” But then, if they are twisted a bit, they are also metaphors that demonstrate that it is us who bestow them upon life and mystery. To my mind – and this is the first point I want to make – all concepts of human time are such meaning constructions, constructions, as already indicated, that are made out of the cultural fabric of personal and historical meanings in which we are entangled. In fact, if we examine our concepts of what is our personal time and what is eternal time (and whether this is a “time” at all) in more detail, we find them entwined with multifarious narratives extending into an array of philosophical, theological, and other cultural discussions. This becomes particularly evident when we compare such time constructions to concepts of time based on

part of world time. But despite embodying significantly diverse configurations of time, lifetime and world time – viewed from the metaphysical vantage point of eternity (or timelessness) – ultimately share the same finite nature. In the face of a notion of transcendent temporality their differences disappear. But they do so to a different degree, for example, in Protestantism, with its emphasis on individual responsibility, and Catholicism, with the trans-individual and world-historical institution of the church playing a central role. The Phenomenologist Hans Blumenberg (1986) has provided an extensive account of the relationship between lifetime and world time in the European tradition against the cultural and philosophical-theological background of Christianity.

Lifetime and eternity 25 our sensory time perceptions, such as the perception of duration, succession, and simultaneity. These concepts, if we can call them concepts at all, refer to relatively elemental, typically linear phenomena processed mainly on a psycho-physiological level without being necessarily mediated by linguistic and conceptual reflection. The experimental study of time in psychology has been almost entirely restricted to this level. But, to be sure, this is not even half the story. As soon as our ideas and concepts of time become more complex and, that is, specifically human, language – most prominently, narrative – and other sign and symbol systems become pivotal. From a developmental point of view Katherine Nelson (2001) has argued that what enables the human individual to project him or herself in time – forward, backward, and ongoing – is the development from a merely “Experiencing I” to a “Continuing Me,” a development that first and foremost takes place in and through socially articulated autobiographical narratives. For Nelson, a Continuing Me is a temporally extended self whose construction “is largely a project of the imaginative capacities” of the self (p. 29). This temporally extended self, even if it might be conceived of as an individual self, is “a specifically human collaborative construction, facilitated by the capacities to verbalize aspects of experience and related attitudes and emotions and to receive the reflections of these from others about oneself, resulting in a continuous, differentiated, changeable self ” (p. 16). To understand how the little child or toddler who lives almost entirely in the timeless present develops a “self in time,” we need to understand how the child develops a self that locates itself not only in time but in different times (Brockmeier, 1991). In other words, we need to understand the emergence of a narrative self. For the emergence of a temporally extended or continuing self, the emergence of a narrative self and the emergence of an autobiographical self are different aspects of one developmental process (Nelson, 2003; Fivush, 1998). Second, concepts such as autobiographical memory, identity, time, and life, refer to meaning constructions of such complexity that they only exist in language, with narrative being the only linguistic and cognitive mode in which this meaning-making can be realized. That is to say, without narrative, concepts such as lifetime and eternity are neither thinkable nor even imaginable. Human time, as Ricoeur’s stated, is narrative time. And third, as the brief sketch of the “culture of autobiography” has demonstrated, our narrative constructions of lifetime are cultural constructions. They not only vary in different historical epochs, cultures, and languages, but are cultural creations in their very nature. I will have more to say on the stuff these creations are made of in a moment. Narrative, then, plays a central role in this picture. It is crucial for all aspects of time as meaning construction, including the relationships between the individual mind (or consciousness) and culture, as well as between everyday life

26 Jens Brockmeier and religious life. Whenever I endeavor to understand and talk about my life as a process in time, whenever I give meaning to my experiences in the interplay among past, present, future or, what is the same, make sense of them, I am involved in narrative operations. There has always been a tendency, especially, in psychology, to reduce these “operations” to mental or cognitive processes that take place in one’s mind. A second approach has examined them primarily as social and discursive practices. And a third tradition, without doubt the longest and by far most extensive tradition, has studied them in their literary expressions. In all three perspectives, however, the cultural nature of narrative becomes evident. We understand little of the narrative mind, the practices of narrative discourse, and the creations of fiction without being aware of the rich repertoire of linguistic devices shaping and evoking time, a repertoire offered by the cultural time discourses in which we live. As individualistic and unique we might consider ourselves to be, we cannot but use a given vocabulary, grammar and its tense system. In talking and thinking about time, we draw on well established narrative patterns and genres, scripted ideas of action and development, idioms, proverbs, metaphors, and many other tropes and rhetorical devices that shape and evoke temporality. We have been raised with them as with our native language. As far as we know, all cultures have developed rich, even if diverse repertoires of narrative models of life and time: hinges between history and the individual. Such cultural models are not limited to formal time grids and regulative systems of measurement and order like clock time and calendars, used by members of a culture as a general frame of reference within which they organize their social activities. Rather, narrative models of time, as I have argued (Brockmeier, 1995), embody accumulated human experiences of living with and in a temporal world. In a world that is fundamentally unstable and changing, they allow us to give shape and meaning to this experience – among others, by ordering it in terms such as “past,” “present,” and “future,” and “earlier/later/simultaneous.” We adapt these linguistic registers to our individual needs and imaginations and give them personal color; we make them our own. The ubiquity of narrative has led to the fact that many canonical models of life and time have become so taken-for-granted that their status seems to be reduced to that of a natural given: as if we were dealing with cosmological and biological phenomena. Norbert Elias (1992) pointed out the paradox that many of our ideas appear to be all the more natural the more they are fused with the practices of societal life. Elias views time experience and time consciousness as a case in point. For him this societal naturalisation explains the seemingly self-evident expectation of members of western societies that their time experience is shared universally by all humans, as well as their surprise when they encounter members of different societies whose ideas of time and life are not structured by the same narrative models. The same semblance of naturalization

Lifetime and eternity 27 may be behind the common sense assumption that our ideas of lifetime reflect primarily a biological phenomenon, rather than a semantic Gestalt, that they mirror an essentialist entity, rather than a cultural meaning construction that is carried out in every autobiographical narrative.

Western and eastern lifetimes To be sure, many seemingly self-evident facts lose their appearance of naturalness when they are viewed in light of a different cultural reality. This is what I want to do now, comparing narrative models of autobiographical memory and lifetime in two different cultural worlds. First, on a microlevel, I present a brief narrative analysis of two everyday stories, two little accounts of personal memories, one told by an American, the other by a Chinese. Then, on a macrolevel, I offer some observations and thoughts about the cultural, historical and philosophical background or, perhaps better, underground of these different autobiographical stories and their implicit concepts of time. The stories are from a corpus of autobiographical narratives collected in interviews in China and the United States. The first story is by a young American woman, a white undergraduate from Boston. Asked for her earliest childhood memory, she told about an event that happened when she was three years and six months old. I have a memory of being at my great aunt and uncle’s house. It was some kind of party; I remember I was wearing my purple-flowered party dress. There was a sort of crib on the floor, shaped kind of like this: [draws a crib] I don’t know if it was meant for me or for one of my younger cousins, but I crawled into it and lay there on my back. My feet stuck out, but I fit pretty well. I was trying to get the attention of people passing by. I was having fun and feeling slightly mischievous. When I picture the memory, I am lying down in the crib, looking at my party-shoed feet sticking out of the end of the crib. (Quoted from Wang & Brockmeier, 2002, p. 48)

When a Chinese student from Beijing of the same age and comparable social background was asked the same question, she told this story: I was five years old. Dad taught me ancient poems. It was always when he was washing vegetables that he explained a poem to me. It was very moving. I will never forget the poems such as Pi-Ba-Xing, one of the poems I learned then. (Quoted from Wang & Brockmeier, 2002, p. 49).

That the American student remembers an event that happened when she was three and a half years old while the Chinese student refers to a scene when she was five can be considered quite typical. As was confirmed in a number of studies, the first autobiographical childhood memories of Americans of European descent refer to events that occurred, on average, at about three and a half years, those of Chinese and Americans of Chinese descent about 6 months later;

28 Jens Brockmeier Koreans date the beginning of their first autobiographical memories even about one year later (Han, Leichtman & Wang, 2005; Leichtman, Wang, & Pillemer, 2003; Mullen, 1994; Wang, 2001). Apparently, the autobiographically relevant time of one’s life is differently gauged in different cultures. But the two quoted autobiographical narratives show still other, perhaps more important differences that can be seen as typical. In the center of the American childhood story is an individual I, the narrator who positions herself as a child already being an autonomous subject. Unmistakably she is the protagonist of the told event, she defines perspective, voice, and evaluation. The event itself is a particular episode precisely localized not only in time and space, but also in many details. There are, for instance, references to actions and objects as well as emotions and perceptions of the little girl. Other people show up only in the background or to redirect the attention to the main protagonist. In contrast, in the center of the much shorter narrative of the Chinese student we do not find a singular self but a relationship between a self and another. Remembered is a shared experience, a social interaction, something that is rather ordinary. The lead role in this story is not that of the narrator but of someone else, her father. He is the focus not only of the memorative attention, but he also plays the role of the protagonist in the narrative construction. (Note that the father is mentioned three times as an action subject, the daughter twice. In comparison, in the American story, we find ten times the personal pronoun “I,” while the narrative account refers to others only twice, and in both cases unspecifically: to the younger cousin [“I don’t know . . .”] and to the other guests [“people passing by . . .”]). Both examples illustrate the by now well-known view that the autobiographical memory of people in different cultures vary in respect to the beginning of one’s remembered lifetime. Moreover, there are significant cultural differences in the form, style, and content of autobiographical narratives. The upshot of many inquiries into these differences is that such stories and, more generally, the importance of and the attention given to personal memories depend on the local cultural notion of what we call self and identity. It thus is important to take into account not only that concepts of self and identity differ significantly in diverse cultures, but they can also fulfill quite different functions. Closely connected to the inner organization of a society and its legal, religious, moral, philosophical and literary traditions, they are interwoven with the entire material and symbolic makeup of a cultural system – a weave that has been described from many different points of view (e.g., Geertz, 1983b; Hall & Du Gay, 1996; Marsella, DeVos & Hsu, 1985; Shweder, 1991; Wang & Brockmeier, 2002, to name just a few). In order to trace some overarching qualities in the different forms self and culture are interwoven in the autobiographical process, Mark Freeman and I have argued that concepts of self and autobiographical identity stand for the answers given by a society in each historical epoch to questions about the

Lifetime and eternity 29 nature and purpose of the human condition; they reflect as well as shape the quest for the “good life” (Freeman & Brockmeier, 2002). But what is a “good life”? To single out just one feature of all culturally hegemonic answers to this question in the western tradition: the “good life”, be it within a religious or secular framework, is lived in view of two distinct temporal horizons, that of one’s individual lifetime and that of the time “beyond.” A good life is aware of its time and its beyond; it is lived with the consciousness of its finitude. That there is a world beyond one’s individual horizon is of course all but a Greco-Judeo-Christian conviction. But we have learnt from many historical and cross-cultural studies that there are profound cultural differences in people’s ideas of self, world, time, and beyond. Consider, for example, the culturalpsychological and anthropological research in the wake of Geertz’s classical studies about the idea of a person (or self ) in non-western societies. In a part of this research, we find the attempt to distinguish between the extent to which the individual is either integrated into the context of the community and its time, or (potentially) independent from it. The spectrum of possible options reaches from forms of individual “independence” to forms of social “interdependence.” Markus, Mullally, and Kitayama (1997) have dubbed the different options “selfways”: specific forms of interconnectedness between individual and society which are characteristic of certain cultures, even in otherwise different areas of social life and for otherwise different individuals. Viewed in this manner it seems plausible that ideas of individuality, autonomy, and personal freedom, which are wide-spread in western societies since Enlightenment, come along with certain concepts of self, life, and lifetime. These concepts are oriented towards a self-defining and self-contained ideal of individual existence. In Standard Average European languages there is ample evidence for these forms of life, to use the Wittgensteinian concept, as there is ample evidence in Asian languages such as Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese for different forms of life. Wittgenstein’s concept, which also embraces narrative language games, is all the more appropriate here because it brings to the fore two important aspects of temporal discourse: the intimate connection between language and thought, as well as between language and cultural practices. From this point of view, the dominant ideas of self, identity, and individual lifetime in East-Asian countries do not appear to be “less developed” or “less profiled” as those in western societies. They do not look like “Asian-collectivist,” as it has been maintained in a long tradition of western cultural stereotypes that can be traced back to early Modern Times. Instead they turn out to be complex, even if fundamentally different configurations of the person that give emphasis to the networks of social and temporal relations in which a person lives. The basic orientation of the person in these relations is not towards the pole of individual autonomy but toward the pole of intersubjectivity and social inclusion. What in western language is called the “self ” – an ontological concept that

30 Jens Brockmeier derived from the Greek and Latin soul (for Descartes it even became a substance, a mental, thinking res) – appears to be in many East-Asian language a fleeting, continuously emerging position, seamlessly moving within the weave of social micro-practices that constitute a person. In the Chinese tradition, especially, Confucian views and values loom wide into the notion of self and personal behavior, particularly in emphasizing social harmony, modesty, and acceptance of traditional hierarchies (including those due to age and life experience), and honoring of teachers, masters, and sages. The more someone appears to live according to such a codex of social behavior, the more he or she is a proper person (Wu, 1990; Appoldt, 1992).3 To be aware of the historically rooted differences in the cultural systems of self, life, and time in the European/North American and Chinese tradition is also important for understanding some further aspects of the idea of lifetime in either culture. Different cultural forms of life do not only underlie the way individuals conceive of themselves as moral subjects and behave correspondingly; they also have a strong impact on the way people perceive and interpret themselves and others in time and space, and how they hand down these patterns to their children. It is on all these levels that cultural forms of life structure the way life experiences and identity constructions are articulated in life stories. Again looking at what some have labeled the “Western canon” of self- and identity-narratives, there are many autobiographical genres in which the self of the narrator is the exclusive hub, irrespective of whether the story is about, say, an active and self-defined life or a passive and oppressed life. However the story goes, there always is a self in the center of an autobiographical account that, in the act of narration, looks into its past and its present (Bruner, 2001; Eakin, 1999); as if there were two partially overlapping circles, one of the past and one of the present, with the self in middle of both. What is interesting about the quoted childhood memory of the American student is that it strikingly demonstrates how the cultural constraints of defining herself as an individual self also organize the narrative outline of her memory account. The narrator positions the little girl as an “I” who is not only the protagonist of a plot – her own plot – but also localizes herself in a certain 3 Even if I cannot discuss it here in detail, I do not want to ignore the criticism, especially from social and cultural anthropologists and ethnographers, of the idea that entire societies, nations, or even continents can be characterized in terms of “typical” models of self, identity, and behavior, reducing the enormous inner-cultural variety and diversity to just one ideal-type, which most often reflects cultural prejudices and clichés. Rather, I agree – in principle, that is (Brockmeier, 2006; Brockmeier & Wang, 2000). Still, because language as a cultural system might be more crucial to my account of autobiographical identity than it is to the thought of most anthropologists, I tend to believe that it is possible to generalize some aspects of specific cultural forms of life, particularly, if they are bound to a linguistic tradition that is as homogenous and unique as Chinese.

Lifetime and eternity 31 space and a time. In a sense, she occupies her time and space. For the occupation of this time-space, the narrative offers a suggestive metaphor. The site is the crib whose precise contour is even specified by a little drawing: “I don’t know if it was meant for me or for one of my younger cousins, but I crawled into it and lay there on my back. My feet stuck out, but I fit pretty well.” If we consider that on that day in the house of the great aunt and uncle a “kind of a party” took place with many people attending, an event whose temporal micro-structure comprised several series of simultaneous occurrences at multiple scenes, and if we moreover consider that this is a first childhood memory, then it certainly is astonishing how directly and self-assuredly the little girl in this story claims her own space and time. Without dithering or hesitating or worrying very much about the claims of others (for example, those of her younger cousin), she appropriates what she sees as her time-space. Actually, we now can read the entire account as an autobiographical story about this very act of appropriation of time-space. In contrast, the little Chinese girl is positioned within the action space-time of her father. While he is washing vegetables and explains poems to her, she is listening. Rather than being a singular and outstanding event, this is one occurrence in a sequence of everyday routines: “It was always when he was washing vegetables that he explained a poem to me.” The beginning and end of each episode as well as of the entire sequence of action are defined by the father. In the account of the daughter this is reflected not only by the open narrative borders of her story (which, too, lacks a clear beginning and end of an action sequence), but also by the fuzzy borderlines between her self and that of her father. One could even see the gist of the entire story as reflecting these fleeting transitions, particularly, through the picture of teaching and learning of the poems. If we look at this picture just from a slightly different angle, it unfolds as a powerful metaphor connecting not only father and daughter but embedding both in a tradition of learning and teaching poetry. In the Chinese understanding, the value of poetry is closely intertwined with the value of historical memory. Reading, reciting, learning, and teaching poems are grounded in a notion of tradition as unchangeable preservation and continuity. Thus it is the shared knowledge of the poems and their moral and aesthetic values that allow the young woman to keep the connection with her father alive even later, in the act of remembrance, which is now carried out by the narrator – in her own time. Although this remembrance takes place independently and separately from the father, the very content of the memory evokes his imagined presence, his presence, if you want, in a poetic present.

Figures of time – Lifetime, eternity and the right moment To better understand the dramaturgy of the self emerging in this story we can draw not only on recent cultural-psychological research on autobiographical

32 Jens Brockmeier memories and narrative self-practices, but also on historical studies of traditional Chinese literature, philosophy, and culture. They tell us that the volume of autobiographical writing in traditional China was miniscule compared to biographical writing, which was highly standardized and mostly historiographically oriented. Other genres of first-person narrative, such as travel writing, eyewitness accounts, and autobiographical fiction, did not exist in ancient China (Wu, 1990). Under the influence of western auto/biographical traditions, beginning at the end of the 19th century, modern forms of self-writing emerged and soon flourished. But with the victory of Mao Zedong’s revolution individual life writing was again despised and suppressed as bourgeois and decadent; in fact, it became a criminal act. Although this has changed since the 1980s and 1990s, and in present China auto/biographical writing seems to have become a burgeoning field, researchers agree that even today there are many cultural and, particularly, political factors that “contribute in part to a deep-rooted tradition of Confucianism that runs counter to the concept of individual independence” (Dongfang, 2001a, p. 211; see also Dongfang, 2001b, and Hegel, 1985). Against this background it is all but unusual to encounter an autobiographical dramaturgy in which the lead actor, director, and playwright is withdrawn and leaves the stage to others. Both the narrating self and the narrated self remain in the background, observing other persons and their intersubjective life. In doing so, not only the remembered self, the girl in the past, but also the remembering self, the young woman in the present, is positioned within a temporal field that is defined by the actions of, and interactions with, others. At this point a question emerges. Using terms such as “temporal field” or “temporal space” or “time-space” within a narrative-psychological inquiry makes one wonder about their meaning. Are we dealing with ontological concepts that denote an extratextual reality, or with metaphors, and if so, metaphors of what? In my own work on narrative time constructions I have come to use concepts like “temporal field” as referring to a narrative fabric of meaning. I also could speak of a discursive “grammar” of narrative within which certain linguistic forms and expressions are used as temporal indicators; put differently, they order our communication and meaning constructions in temporal terms. In doing so I draw on Wittgenstein’s analysis, for example, in the Brown book (1958, § 54–64), of the way we talk about time and temporal aspects of our actions and thoughts. This “grammar,” rather than reflecting a given order, the order of an entity or abstractum called “time,” creates its own order of temporal organization. We might name this the order of narrative time. My point is that all our autobiographical projects and visions of lifetime are configurations within this order (Brockmeier, 2001). Obviously this order is different from the one physicists have in mind when they talk about space-time, at least if we want to believe the realist philosopher of science who claims to have a “robust sense” of reality (e.g., Van Fraassen, 1991). But of what reality?

Lifetime and eternity 33 The narrative reality of time at stake here might be less robust than that of the atoms, stars, and stereoscopes a realist philosopher of science might think of. But it is perhaps exactly for this reason that narrative has proven to be supremely appropriate for capturing and, indeed, explaining the historical reality of human being. Understanding our world and self as historical and, that is, temporal processes is an undertaking that falls into a different epistemic order, the order of interpretive understanding. Narrative time is a paradigm case of interpretive understanding. Many authors in the hermeneutic tradition have pointed out that there is an intrinsic relationship between narrativity and the human sense of temporality, an argument that can be qualified for a broad spectrum of different cultural-historical forms of time, including mythical, literary, and historical time (Freeman, 1998; Lloyd, 1993; White, 1987). On this account, an autobiographical life story cannot be reduced to a narrative that gives order to a particular process in time, to a story, that is, about events in chronological or historical time. Rather, it is a narrative genre that, in combining forms of historical, mythical, and literary time defines a new and unique kind of time: my own time, my lifetime. Ricœur’s (1984–1991) investigations of narrative thought have opened up a new way of thinking about the entire issue of historical time and autobiographical time. In more than one respect Ricœur’s thoughts are based on Heidegger. In the wake of Heidegger’s existential philosophy, Ricœur has suggested narrative as a human Existential, a fundamental way of being-in-the-world (Kaul, 2003). But the French hermeneutician was not particularly interested in the enormous cultural variety of human time constructions or, more specifically, in the diversity of culturally distinct forms of discourse in which time and temporality are narrated and human lives are lived. In some of these forms narrative time is implicit: embedded in particular discourses, experiences, and actions, without being specifically marked. In other forms it is an explicit subject of individual efforts at construction and reflection. Yet in either case it becomes evident how narrative construals of time are enmeshed with general cultural background assumptions regarding the nature of time and temporality and the meaning of life and transcendence. As we have seen in the autobiographical stories of the two young women, even most personal experiences are articulated within the horizon of a historical configuration of time. In other words, there is no understanding of the temporal microcosmos of an individual without an understanding of the temporal macrocosmos of his or her culture. Let us turn again to the Chinese tradition of thought about time. Here the individual construction of time as my time seems not to have been viewed as a particular problem. In fact, it hardly attracted any attention at all. But this was not due to a special blindness regarding issues of time and temporality, as attributed to China in a long history of European stereotypes that goes back at least to Enlightenment. Decisive for the different understanding of time and,

34 Jens Brockmeier especially, the question of lifetime seems to have been something else. This is the Confucian notion of an evolutionary coming into existence of the world. This view did without any assumption of a personalized creator, a supreme being – characteristic of monotheistic traditions – necessarily existing before and beyond of time or in a different kind of temporality. Sinologists studying Chinese time thought have pointed out that the idea of a beginning of all things and, with that, of time, set by a godly “Creator of Heaven and Earth” was as foreign to the Chinese as the notion of eternity.4 While eternity – the temporal sphere of godliness – was, in western metaphysical and religious discourse, a polar point of reference for the mortality of human beings and the finitude of their lifetime, thinking about time in China revolved around different concerns. One of the many qualitative and concrete meanings of the sign for time, shi, has been the idea that one must go along “with time.” This idea was pivotal in Confucian ethics: an imperative that lend itself to the task of identifying and recognizing the good and right moment, the favorable occasion, the proper here and now. In this way the quality of time, or the temporal quality of life, could be increased. Another implication of the same idea led, on a more general plane, to questions regarding cosmic temporal correspondence and, again on a practical level, to issues of how to live and organize one’s life in harmony. If we consider the generally inner-worldly and immanent orientation of religious and philosophical thinking in China and the only peripheral concern about transcendence and otherworldliness – there is a more than a two-thousand-year long tradition of the idea “Heaven and Earth are one” – it makes sense that the category of eternity is without any significance for the understanding of individual lifetime. With this in mind, I have tried in this chapter to sharpen the awareness that the western conception of lifetime, as it underlies our ideas of autobiographical identity, is quite different, if not peculiar, to use Geertz’s expression. There is, of course, nothing new and surprising in the claim that the opposition between eternity and finitude – and that is, between “outer” and endless (or “timeless”) time and “inner” and finite time and being – is at the heart of the European discourse of time. Well, one could object that it was not always like that. And this is true. As sketched above, Pre-Socratic, Platonic, and Aristotelian philosophy start off by posing the ontological question of the being of time. Yet already with Augustine’s shift towards the theological question of the creator of world and time – raised in the context of his autobiographical reflections on the soul – this tradition becomes increasingly subjectified and, in modernity, through Kant and Husserl, reformulated in terms of the transcendental-philosophical

4

I draw, especially, on Appoldt (1992); Hegel & Hessney (1985); Huang & Zürcher (1995); and Mittag (1997).

Lifetime and eternity 35 question of the inner conditions of the constitution of time and time experience. This constitution exclusively takes place within human consciousness. As Schopenhauer aptly put it, before Kant we were in time, and since Kant time is in us. Even the twentieth century, revolving around Heidegger’s philosophy of time as the specific temporality of Dasein, our being-in-the-world, articulates its concerns, albeit antithetically, still within this framework of thought. For Heidegger the existential hallmark of human life is the finitude of lifetime. Human beings are not just finite beings but human being is, as he put it, Sein zum Tode, “being towards death” (Heidegger, 1927/1962, § 51), with death’s existential function to end one’s own time. As a consequence, all emphasis in human being is given to Sorge, care, for time, my time. This idea also reverberates in Foucault’s souci de soi, the care of the self, as in much of existential thinking in the wake of Heidegger. It therefore might not be a coincidence that Heidegger’s momentous philosophy looms large in what I have described as the culture of autobiography, with all its self-reflexive philosophical elaborations. I started this essay by arguing that a culture of autobiography, as it has become pervasive in western societies, is an advanced and radicalized version of an individualist culture because it imposes the imperatives of individualism onto the domain of time, or more precisely, lifetime. One result of this is the individualized formats of autobiographical time and, in this way, a new kind of temporality that has become the subject of personal concern or Sorge, care. To better understand this personalized notion of time, I have proposed viewing it against the cultural-historical backdrop of a central concept in Christianity, that of eternity. Lifetime and eternity are mutually related; they exclude and depend on each other dialectically. And they continue doing so even if the culturally binding forces of the religious universe in which they once were embedded have faded – at least, we might add, in Europe. In order to explicate this thought, I have examined two short autobiographical narratives, offering a reading that paid particular attention to the specific models of autobiographical memory and lifetime in different cultural worlds. In both cultural worlds these models are closely interwoven with philosophical, literary, and religious traditions. In the case of western autobiographical culture we can say that the dual Christian ontology and metaphysics of lifetime and eternity has left its mark on individuals’ meaning constructions even after the end of the socio-cultural hegemony of Christianity. In the case of the Chinese tradition of Confucianism, comparably far-ranging observations about their ongoing impact on ideas of self and time in contemporary China are much more difficult because the entire country seems to be in the midst of an unparalleled economic, social, and cultural change. Still, it might not be very bold after all to suspect that Heaven and Earth after they have been one for two thousand years will not break up any time soon.

36 Jens Brockmeier References Abbs, P. (2001). Christianity and life writing. In M. Jolly (Ed.), Encyclopedia of life writing: Autobiographical and biographical forms. Vol. 1 (pp. 211–213). London & Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn. Appoldt, G. (1992). Zeit und Lebenszeitkonzepte in China [Concepts of time and lifetime in China]. Frankfurt & New York: Lang. Brockmeier, J. (1991). The construction of time, language, and self. The Quarterly Newsletter of the Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition, 3, 42–52. Brockmeier, J. (1995). The language of human temporality: Narrative schemes and cultural meanings of time. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 2, 102–118. (Also Collegium Budapest – Institute for Advanced Studies, Public Lecture Series, 2001, Vol. 4.: http://www.colbud.hu/publications/ discussionpaper.shtml) Brockmeier, J. (2000). Autobiographical time. Narrative Inquiry, 10 (1) (Special Issue on “Narrative Identity”), 51–73. Brockmeier, J. (2001). Time. In Encyclopedia of life writing: Autobiographical and biographical forms. Vol. 2 (pp. 876–878). London: Fitzroy Dearborn. Brockmeier, J. (2006). Erzählen und kulturelles Verstehen [Narrative and cultural understanding]. Journal für Psychologie, 14 (1), 12–34. Brockmeier, J. & Wang, Qi. (2000). Where does my past begin?: Lessons from recent cross-cultural studies of autobiographical memory. In A. L. Smolka (Ed.), Proceedings of the III Conference for Sociocultural Research, Campinas/São Paulo: University of Campinas Press (http://www.fae.unicamp.br/ br2000/) Bruner, J. S. (2001). Self-making and world-making. In J. Brockmeier & D. Carbaugh (Eds.), Narrative and identity: Studies in autobiography, self, and culture (pp. 25–37). Amsterdam & Philadelphia: Benjamins. De Romilly, J. (1958). Time in Greek tragedy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Dongfang, S. (2001a). China: 1949 to the present. In M. Jolly (Ed.), Encyclopedia of life writing: Autobiographical and biographical forms. Vol. 1 (pp. 210–211). London & Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn. Dongfang, S. (2001b). China: 19th century to the 1949. In M. Jolly (Ed.), Encyclopedia of life writing: Autobiographical and biographical forms. Vol. 1 (pp. 208–210). London & Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn. Eakin, P. J. (1999). How our lives become stories: Making selves. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Elias, N. (1992). Time: An essay. Oxford: Blackwell. Fivush, R. (1998). The stories we tell: How language shapes autobiography. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 12, 483–487. Folkenflik, R. (1993). Introduction: The institution of autobiography. In R. Folkenflik (Ed.), The culture of autobiography (pp. 1–20). Stanford, CA.: Stanford University Press. Freeman, M. (1993). Rewriting the self: History, memory, narrative. London: Routledge. Freeman, M. (1998). Mythical time, historical time, and the narrative fabric of the self. Narrative Inquiry, 8, 27–50. Freeman, M. & Brockmeier, J. (2002). Narrative integrity: Autobiographical identity and the meaning of the “good life”. In J. Brockmeier & D. Carbaugh (Eds.), Narrative

Lifetime and eternity 37 and identity: Studies in autobiography, self and culture (pp. 75–99). Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Geertz, C. (1983a). “From the native’s point of view”: On the nature of anthropological understanding. In C. Geertz, Local knowledge: Further essays in interpretive anthropology (pp. 55–70). New York: Basic Books. Geertz, C. (1983b). Local knowledge: Further essays in interpretive anthropology. New York: Basic Books. Hall, S. & Du Gay, P. (Eds.) (1996). Questions of cultural identity. London: Sage. Han, J., Leichtman, M. D. & Wang, Q. (1998). Autobiographical memory in Korean, Chinese, and American children. Developmental Psychology, 34, 701–713. Hegel, R. E. (1985). An exploration of the Chinese literary self. In R. E. Hegel & R. C. Hessney (Eds.), Expressions of self in Chinese literature (pp. 3–30). New York: Columbia University Press. Hegel, R. E. & Hessney, R. C. (Eds.) (1985). Expressions of self in Chinese literature. New York: Columbia University Press. Heidegger, M. (1927/1962). Being and time (Translated by J. Macquarrie & E. Robinson). New York: Harper & Row. Huang, C. & Zürcher, E. (Eds.) (1995). Time and space in Chinese culture. Leiden & New York: Brill. Kaul, S. (2003). Narratio. Hermeneutik nach Heidegger und Ricœur. Munich: Fink. Leichtman, M. D. & Wang, Q. (2005). Autobiographical memory in the developmental niche: A cross-cultural perspective. In B. D. Homer & C. Tamis-LeMonda (Eds.), The development of social cognition and communication (pp. 337–360). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Leichtman, M. D., Wang, Q. & Pillemer, D. B. (2003). Cultural variations in interdependence and autobiographical memory: Lessons from Korea, China, India, and the United States. In R. Fivush & C. Haden (Eds.), Autobiographical memory and the construction of a narrative self. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Lloyd, G. (1993). Being in time: Selves and narrators in philosophy and literature. London: Routledge. Markus, H. R., Mullally, P. R. & Kitayama, S. (1997). Selfways: Diversity in modes of cultural participation. In U. Neisser & D. A. Jopling (Eds.), The conceptual self in context: Culture, experience, self-understanding (pp. 13–61). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Marsella, A. J., DeVos, G. & Hsu, F. L. K. (Eds.) (1985). Culture and self: Asian and Western perspectives. New York: Tavistock. Mittag, A. (1997). Zeitkonzepte in China [Concepts of time in China]. In K. E. Müller & J. Rüsen (Eds.), Historische Sinnbildung [The constitution of historical meaning] (pp. 251–276). Reinbek: Rowohlt. Mullen, M. K. (1994). Earliest recollections of childhood: A demographic analysis. Cognition, 52 (1), 55–79. Nelson, K. (2001). Language and the self: From the “experiencing self ” to the “continuing self.” In C. Moore & K. Lemmon (Eds.), The self in time: Developmental perspectives (pp. 15–33). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

38 Jens Brockmeier Nelson, K. (2003). Narrative and the emergence of a consciousness of self. In G. Fireman, T. McVay & O. Flanagan (Eds.), Narrative and consciousness: Literature, psychology, and the brain (pp. 17–36). New York: Oxford University Press. Nowotny, H. (1994). Time: The modern and the postmodern experience. Cambridge: Polity Press. Ricœur, P. (1984–1991). Narrative and time. Vols. 1–3. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Shweder, R. A. (1991). Does the concept of the person vary cross-culturally? In R. A. Shweder, Thinking through cultures: Expeditions in cultural psychology (pp. 113–155). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Taylor, C. (1989). Sources of the self: The making of the modern identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Theunissen, M. (2000). Pindar: Menschenlos und Wende der Zeit. Munchen: Beck. Theunissen, M. (2005). Zeit [Time] (II. Antike. A. Griechenland, vor Platon). In Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, Vol. 10. Basel-Stuttgart: Schwabe, 1189–1196. Thomas, K. (1976). Age and authority in early modern England. Proceedings of the British Academy, 62, 205–248. Van Fraassen, B. C. (1991). Time in physical and in narrative structure. In J. Bender & D. E. Wellbery (Eds.), Chronotypes: The construction of time (pp. 19–37). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Wang, Q. (2001). Cultural effects on adults’ earliest childhood recollection and selfdescription: Implications for the relation between memory and the self. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81 (2), 220–233. Wang, Q. & Brockmeier, J. (2002). Autobiographical remembering as cultural practice: Understanding the interplay between memory, self, and culture. Culture & Psychology, 8 (1), 45–64. White, H. (1987). The content of the form: Narrative discourse and historical representation. Baltimore & London: John Hopkins University Press. Wittgenstein, L. (1958). Preliminary studies for the “Philosophical investigations,” generally known as “The blue and brown books” (1934/35). Oxford: Blackwells. Wu, P.-Y. (1990). The Confucian’s progress: Autobiographical writings in traditional China. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

LIFE STORIES AND PHILOSOPHIES OF LIFE A PERSPECTIVE FOR RESEARCH IN PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION Ulrike Popp-Baier Life’s but a walking shadow; a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more: it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing. Macbeth, Act V. 24–28

1. Introduction – Telling personal stories in conversations Do you remember, my dear reader, when you told the story of your life for the last time? To be honest, I can not and I can not even imagine that I would do something like that in the near future. But I remember very well, when I have told stories from my life for the last time. That happens quite often, and usually I feel comfortable doing so, and I am sure I will keep doing so in future. There are several opportunities that might encourage me to tell something about myself. For example, meeting people I have never met before: if I like them and am trying to get to know them a little bit better, I like to have a conversation in which we share stories about ourselves, about our lives until now. Seeing friends or family members is another opportunity for remembering and re-telling old stories about the times we have spent together, but also to inform each other about what we have done in the time we haven’t seen each other. I also tell personal stories to myself, when I have to make an important life decision which requires considering what I really want to do and which kind of person I want to be. Or when I have lost a loved one, and in the process of mourning stories come to my mind in which he or she plays a part. And there are lots of other occasions where I would tell personal stories in the context of conversations with other people or with myself. Reflecting on these kinds of opportunities for personal story-telling already shows that this kind of activity may be very usual and also quite important in everyday life (at least in some parts of the world). The interesting question in this context is whether referring to this kind of well-known practice can justify a so-called biographical approach in psychology, which relies on oral life stories. In this paper I would like to argue that (a) this kind of biographical research

40 Ulrike Popp-Baier in psychology is worthwhile, (b) philosophy of life could be a valuable analytical concept in this kind of research, and (c) analysing life stories with regard to philosophies of life would be an interesting research perspective in psychology of religion.

2. Life story, self and identity in psychological research A life story is a story that a person chooses to tell about himself or herself as someone who has a history, as someone who has been involved in some more or less remarkable events, has had some more or less remarkable personal experiences, and has made some more or less important decisions in the past, as someone who has become the one he or she is at the present with his or her particular expectations, options and possibilities for the future. At least in Europe and North America the concept of life is intimately linked to the concept of narration as we speak of the story of a life to characterize the interval between the birth and death of a person (cf. Ricoeur, 1991). Usually we think of ourselves as being basically able to relate our life story. Our actual narrations of this kind of stories follow the cultural models of biographies, autobiographies and other kinds of personal narratives we are acquainted with via modern media (like movies, TV productions etc.) and (popular) literature.1 In history of psychology biographical material has always been of some interest for theory and research in clinical psychology, developmental psychology and personality psychology – as for example in the work of Sigmund Freud, Charlotte Bühler, Erik H. Erikson, Gordon Allport and Henry Murray. In recent years interest in life stories has surged, obviously in connection with fresh impulses from narrative psychology and an increasing interest in research and debates concerning the concepts of “self ” and “identity” (cf. for example Ashmore & Jussim, 1997; Bruner, 1987; Hermans & Kempen, 1993; Gergen, 1991; Gergen, 1992; Gergen & Gergen, 1988; Harré, 1983; McAdams, 1993, 1996, 1997, 2001; Straub, 1989, 2000). Especially with regard to the work of Dan McAdams, research on and with life stories no longer needs to be justified, as McAdams’ life story model is now well-established in psychology. With regard to the multitude of approaches, concepts, methods etc. related to a so-called biographical perspective in psychology, as well as in other social sciences, however, I would like to clarify my own stance in the context of these debates concerning the relations between “self ,” “identity” and “life story” – although the whole discussion might seem a bit dated at the moment. 1

For the cultural-historical background and development of the concept of (auto)biography and the related concepts of a self, an inner life etc. the following works are especially interesting: Auerbach (1946/1977), Elias (1969), Foucault (1984), Gay (1995), Mascuch (1997), Pfotenhauer (1987), Snell (1948), Taylor (1989), Wuthnow (1974).

Life stories and philosophies of life 41 a) Let’s start with William James’ terminology, which still inspires current debates, and which I would like to follow – at least to a certain degree. James (1890/1950) introduced the classic distinction between “I” and “Me” in psychology by discerning two perspectives on the self: the self as knower, as pure Ego, and the self as known, as empirical self, and by making clear that only the empirical self can be described and analysed by psychology. According to James “a man’s Self is the sum total of all that he CAN call his, not only his body and his psychic powers, but his clothes and his house, his wife and children, his ancestors and friends, his reputation and works, his lands and horses, and yacht and bank-account” (p. 291). In addition, James (pp. 292 ff.) distinguishes between the different constituents of this empirical self or “me,” which are the material self (body, clothes, relatives, home, properties etc.), the social self (recognition from one’s mates which implies that every man has several [social] selves) and the spiritual self (a man’s inner or subjective being, his psychic faculties or dispositions), and he discusses the feelings and emotions they arouse (self-feelings) and the actions to which they prompt (self-seeking and self-preservation). The sense of personal identity concerning our empirical self, our “me,” is, according to James, “like any one of our other perceptions of sameness among phenomena. It is a conclusion grounded either on the resemblance in a fundamental respect, or on the continuity before the mind, of the phenomena compared” (p. 334). After discussing various possible philosophical interpretations of the so-called pure Ego, James renounces a conceptualization of the “thinking part” of personality and suggests “us[ing] the words ME and I for the empirical person and the judging Thought” (p. 371). And using this terminology, James (p. 372 f.) adds that the identity “found by the I in its me is only a loosely construed thing, an identity ‘on the whole’, just like that which an outside observer might find in the same assemblage of facts.” And the “changes in the me, recognized by the I, or by outside observers, may be grave or slight.” Omitting the discussion of the obvious problems related to James’ concepts (human being as male human being, “possessive” metaphors, counting “others” only to the material self etc.), I would like to follow James in understanding the self as an I-me-relation, in which “I” am referring to “me” in processes of self-awareness, self-feeling, self-narration, self-reflection, self-evaluation, self-management etc. When stressing the processes, it makes sense to follow McAdams (e.g., 1997) and to speak about “selfing” instead of “self.” b) I shall try to emphasize 3 levels of identity constructing self-processes. A kind of basic self-awareness accompanies all my conscious movements, feelings, perceptions, thoughts and activities. It constitutes the “me-ness” of my body and its parts, of all my conscious movements, feelings, perceptions, activities and relationships on a pre-reflexive level. It is the pre-requisite for the constitution of the so-called first person perspective concerning

42 Ulrike Popp-Baier one’s world inclusively one’s own person (cf. Metzinger, 2003). The second level is the level of self-narration. It consists of self-narratives related to the concept of a life story for creating consistency and continuity to a certain degree (cf. McAdams, for example, 1993, 1996, 1997, 2001). And the third level is the level of self-reflection on which ideas, concepts or theories of the self are constructed. This resonates with Epstein’s “self as theory” in his dynamic-cognitive approach (cf. Epstein, 1973) and with the suggestion that Rom Harré and Luk van Langenhove (1999) have made in the context of their positioning approach to understand the “self ” as a theory people have about themselves: “according to this point of view, that theoretical concept organizes knowledge and action, but has no independent referent other than the person him or herself ” (p. 71).2 c) Several theorists have identified several basic dimensions along which selves may vary (cf. McAdams, 1997), and others have suggested using these dimensions as a taxonomical framework for a first orientation in an exuberant area of research (cf. for example Staudinger & Greve, 1997). These suggestions enable us to distinguish between a temporal dimension and an evaluative dimension with regard to self-narrations and especially with regard to self-reflections. In this context we can situate the different concepts and empirical studies concerning past selves, present selves, future selves, real selves, true selves, possible selves, ideal selves, ought selves, desired selves, undesired selves etc. on a temporal and/or evaluative dimension (cf. for example Brandtstädter & Greve, 1992; Higgins, 1997; Markus & Nurius, 1986; Rogers, 1951; Ogilvie, 1987). Another possible structure for current research would be to classify different concepts and studies according to their relation to classic contrasts like “one self versus many selves” and “personal identity versus social identity” (cf. Ashmore & Jussim, 1997). d) The Archimedian point to address all these issues and questions related to the notions of “self ” and “identity” in psychology could be the notion of a life story. As McAdams (especially in 2001) has suggested, the life story model of identity is a useful concept in order for integrating and reconciling a lot of recent theory and research on “self ” and “identity.” Relying on the assumption that people living in a so-called welfare state are required to construct and constantly revise life stories in order to exist in the social world with a comfortable sense of being a good functioning member of this kind of society,3 I would like to follow Linde (1993) and her understanding 2

Quite a few well-described psychopathologies can be understood and phenomenologically re-formulated as disturbances on one of the three levels of self-processes. 3 Defenders of the life story model often speak of “modern societies,” but I think we can make this vague characterization a bit more concrete by starting with people living in a welfare state, because it could be demonstrated that this kind of political and economic

Life stories and philosophies of life 43 of the life story as a “discontinuous unit” (p. 4) consisting of all the stories told by an individual during the course of his or her lifetime, in which he or she makes an important point concerning him or herself, his or her experiences, his or her world view.4 According to this understanding “life story” is on the one hand a kind of “regulative idea” or “horizon of meaning” to which individuals are oriented when they are telling stories from their lives or – at rare opportunities – actual stories covering a life-span perspective. On the other hand “a life story” also denotes these factual life stories, told in some contexts. e) Another argument for the life story model derives from different philosophical, anthropological, sociological and psychological concepts of the storied nature of human experience and personal identity which culminate in the notion of a narrative identity (cf. for example Mattingly, 1998; Meuter, 1995; Straub, 1989). James’ (1890/1950, p. 372) “loosely construed thing,” which the “I” has found in the “me,” has been elaborated into a quite complex structure that depends on notions of constructivity, heterogeneity, culturality and sociality. In short, identities are thought to be constructed over time, space and through relationality (Somers, 1994, p. 629), which means that cultural images, models and vocabularies, linguistic conventions, social structures and practices, actions and perspectives of others are constitutive rather than external to personal identity. This heterogeneity of identity formations has in some approaches – relating especially to Buber’ s dialogical philosophy, Mead’s social philosophy, Vygotsky’s cultural psychology and Bakhtin’s literary theory – also been articulated as a “dialogical self ” (Hermans & Kempen, 1993) or “multivoiced self ” (cf. Hermans, for example, 1996), in which consonant and dissonant voices of “real” and “imaginary” reconstructed others are in constant dialogue. Instead of Hermans’ “landscape of the mind” and “society of mind” (cf. Hermans, 2002), I would prefer the model of the story to give the multi-voices a place to talk (cf. also McAdams, 1997). In the first-person perspective stories in which someone wants or has to present him or herself, or in which someone wants to gain some self-understanding, “narrative identities” are (re-)constructed by telling stories that guarantee a certain degree of consistency and continuity while at the same time nurturing discontinuities and inconsistencies. organization of social worlds requires people with biographies. Of course I do not want to argue that people living in other societies or states do not create life stories. It may be also interesting in this context that Rawls (2001) recognized how important it is to understand the cooperating participants in a society as persons with biographies, if we want to interpret the notions of justice and equality adequately. 4 The constant use of both the male and the female forms with regard to pronouns may appear a bit tedious in this context, but there are several reasons why I prefer this manner of avoiding gender bias, and I am not afraid of political correctness.

44 Ulrike Popp-Baier More precisely, stories are the adequate places to reveal discontinuities and inconsistencies by relating different events, motives, activities, situations etc to one another by telling a story. As Ricoeur (1991) has put forward, the decisive character of a story, the plot, can best be understood as a “synthesis of the heterogeneous.”5 f ) The life story model of identity also has the capacity to reconcile our postmodern notions and experiences with fragmentation, plurality, multiplicity etc with the normative concept of a person that we need, if we are to understand human beings also as individuals who can make far-reaching decisions and act according to these decisions, who can make promises and keep them, who can be made responsible at least for some of their deeds and decisions, and who are principally able to analyse and solve problems and conflicts in a rational way. Holding on to the suggestion of Sarbin (1986) to understand the “I” as the story-teller and the “me” as the “ the protagonist,” as the “I” in the story, we can pluralize the “me” and assume the “I” as the centre that cannot be analyzed or psychologized further – as James (1890/1950) has already suggested. Everything that can be (psychologically) analyzed belongs to (or is becoming part of) the “material,” the “spiritual” and the “social” me. When the “I” is conceptualized only as a constant producer of the me, every “I” in every spoken sentence already belongs to the me, which also always transcends the actual position it has taken. By telling a story, we thus get both multiple “imagoes” (cf. McAdams, for example 1993) and voices and a kind of continuous and consistent “place-holder” of the “I” between the lines, so to speak, the hermeneutical correlate of the unity of the story. Although there are a lot of open questions concerning this particular understanding of the “I-me relation” and the possible relation between the concepts “human being,” “person” and “self,” the advantage of the suggested terminology is that the related psychological concept of personal identity is not principally incompatible with the normative concept of a person that we need with regard to at least some issues in moral and political contexts. g) An empirical substrate for the concept of a narrative identity understood as a life story can be the life story interview (Atkinson, 1998; McAdams, 1993) or the narrative-biographical interview (Schütze, 1983).6 And the 5

Even if we did not agree with Ricoeur that every story has to have a plot, the telling of a story has to be understood as the unfolding or constructing of a “whole,” in which the different elements can be characterized as harmonious or disharmonius, heterogeneous, unrelated etc. and thus relate to one another as elements of one story. It is relative to a “whole” that something is related or not related, harmonious or disharmonious etc. 6 Lucius-Hoene and Depperman (2000) prefer the label “autobiographical research interview.” In the context of this paper I establish no rigid terminological distinction between “narrative” and “story.” In most cases, I shall use “narrative” when I want to stress the structure of a meaningful configuration and “story” when I want to relate to a told or written narrative.

Life stories and philosophies of life 45 special methodological task consists of turning the “dialogical” principles of the constitution of the life story into analytical resources for its reconstruction (cf. Lucius-Hoene & Deppermann, 2000, p. 220). Or, to put it in another way, the pre-eminent methodological task is to relate empirical research on autobiographical stories to the theoretical concept of narrative identity, so as to consider all the conceptual decisive elements of “narrative identity” and translate them into or at least relate them to empirical “observables.” And relying on the difference between the referential and the performative or constitutive function of language, analyses of narrative- biographical interviews must refer to both functions and analyzing “representations” and “constructions” within an interactional approach to narrative-biographical interviews (cf. for example Bamberg, 1997; Popp-Baier, 1998; Wortham, 2000). Interesting studies have shown that the heterogeneity produced by the performance of story-telling can best be analyzed by using the concept of “positioning” (cf. Bamberg, 1997; Davies & Harré, 1990; Lucius-Hoene & Deppermann, 2000; Wortham, 2000). Davies & Harré (1990) defined “positioning” as a discursive practice whereby people locate themselves and others in conversations as “coherent participants in jointly produced story lines” (p. 48). This approach enables us to analyze very different processes of positioning in autobiographical narratives. Bamberg (1997), for example, suggests analyzing three levels of positioning in storytelling: 1. How are the characters positioned in relation to one another within the reported events? 2. How does the speaker position him or herself to the audience? 3. How do narrators position themselves to themselves? (p. 337)7 In short, the art of interpreting narrative-biographical interviews lies in recognizing the different processes of situated co-construction of narrative identity without neglecting the “synthesis of the heterogeneous,” related to possible “transcending” processes or transcending dimensions of processes of individual orientation to oneself and to the world, which are assumed to influence individual functioning in a social world continuously and consistently.

3. Philosophies of life as dimensions of life stories 3.1 The ideological setting of life stories In his life story model of identity McAdams (1997) understands “life story” as result of the selfing process of making a patterned identity out of a scattered and pluralistic “me” by constructing a narrative of the self “that synthezises the synchronic and diachronic elements of the me to suggest that (1) despite its many facets the me is coherent and unified, and (2) despite the many changes that attend the passage of time, the me of the past led up to or set the stage for 7

For the concept of a very detailed analysis of narrative interviews in order to reconstruct narrative identity see Lucius-Hoene & Deppermann (2004).

46 Ulrike Popp-Baier the me of the present, which in turn will lead up to or set the stage for the me of the future” (p. 63). Therefore, his analytical perspective on autobiographical narratives also focuses on features which are assumed to exhibit and to create some coherence and consistency in first-person stories.8 These features also include the so-called “ideological setting” of a life story. In this context McAdams (1997) relies on MacIntyre and Taylor, who “argue that the creation of identity through narrative typically involves adopting some sort of moral stance – an implicit perspective on the good – from which the individual can judge the quality of his or her own life and the lives of others. In keeping with these ideas, most modern life stories may be viewed as suggesting an ideological setting or a particular backdrop of fundamental beliefs and values. The ideological setting, then, refers to the person’s religious, political and ethical beliefs and values as they are instantiated in the story including the individual’s accounts of how those values and beliefs came to be” (p. 67). The interesting aspect of this feature is in my opinion that it stresses the more intellectual aspects of the “selfing” processes (i.e., the ideas, arguments, beliefs and values) that also emerge in our life stories.9 With respect to the 3 levels of self-processes I distinguished above, these aspects or dimensions belong to the second level of self-narration (implicit values, beliefs etc.) and to the third level of self-reflection, which can – according to the life story model – best be studied empirically in autobiographical narrations. But I have one objection to McAdams’ understanding of the ideological setting of a life story. In my opinion he overemphasizes moral, religious and political deliberations, to the extent that he risks overlooking all the other beliefs, ideas and values, which also belong to practical or other kinds of “ideological” reasoning and may find their way in individual orienting towards the world including oneself.10 From a more social-cognitive perspective, Staudinger (2001) uses the concept of life reflection, in which she postulates that people combine an idea of life in general with an idea concerning their own lives. Life reflection according to Staudinger (2001) is a kind of life review: the reconstruction of life events plus further analysis of the materials. But the relation between “ideas of life” and life narratives may be even more variable. People may see life as a “poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage,” as “a tale told by an idiot” (as Macbeth did in Shakespeare’s play, see above) or as an adventure or a journey full of marvellous discoveries, surprises and even miracles. This general 8

For a short description, cf. for example McAdams (1997). Marianne Gullestad’s anthropological study (1996) about modernity, morality and autobiography in Norway stresses this aspect of life stories already in the title of her study, which is “Everyday Life Philosophers.” 10 For example Frankfurt (2004) reminds us that practical reasoning can not be limited to morality. 9

Life stories and philosophies of life 47 view of life may be connected in different manners to one’s own life. In the case of Macbeth it is a kind of résumé relying on personal life experiences (the quotation above appears near the end of the play). Alternatively, such a view of life can be the principle gained from cultural resources for far-reaching life decisions, or it can be a part of ironic play with possible life maxims etc. Habermas and Bluck (2000) distinguish two major manifestations of the life story: life narratives and autobiographical reasoning. “Autobiographical reasoning” denotes a process of self-reflective thinking about the past that involves producing links between elements of one’s life and the self. The authors also distinguish four types of coherence which are linked to autobiographical reasoning and in which adults organize their views of life. Although the authors are interested only in the formal aspects of different types of coherence used to form a basic life narrative, the type of implicit or explicit thematic coherence includes meaning units that could be labelled as ideas of life or elements of a philosophy of life. But Habermas and Bluck (2000) are not dealing explicitly with these content elements. De St. Aubin, Wandrei, Skerven & Coppolillo (2006), however, are interested in the content of what they call “personal ideology” and in describing this concept they even refer to the notion of a philosophy of life. But the authors, guided by the central question of how individual differences in personal ideology are revealed in one’s self-defining life story preconceptualize their research by relying on Silvan Tomkins’s script theory of personality including his polarity theory of personal ideology (cf. de St. Aubin et al., 2006, pp. 225–229). In this context the authors follow Tomkins’s assertion “that an individual’s ideological script is best understood in terms of its placement along the two orthogonal dimensions of humanism and normativism” (p. 226) and dedicate the analysis of life stories to discern the differences between the life stories told by ideological humanists and normatives. Although I would like to avoid this kind of pre-classification of life stories or storytellers in my own research and to work with sensitizing concepts instead, my own research interests come very close to the project of these authors. In resonance with the perspectives of all the authors mentioned above, perhaps we should remind ourselves explicitly that the narrative approach in psychology derives from the cognitive approach or the so-called cognitive revolution in psychology (cf. Bruner, 1990). And perhaps we should take one step “back” and look for some fresh ideas in research studies more inclined to cognitive psychology.11 11

When looking for sketches of the history of psychology that focus on cognitivsm or cognitive psychology, one might easily get the impression that psychology has always been a domain permeated by rumours: different scholars discover different revolutions. Most agree about a first cognitive revolution in psychology linked to the work of Jerome Bruner and George Miller in the 1950s (cf. for example Gardner, 1985; Miller, 2003).

48 Ulrike Popp-Baier Looking at cognitive psychology, we can detect at least two different research approaches. The first can be described as the information-processing approach, which addresses universal principles of cognitive processing based heavily on the computer model of the human mind and which include the Others describe the “received view” as that in psychology the so-called cognitive revolution occured sometime during the late 1940s and early 1950s (O’Donohue & Ferguson, 2003, p. 85). Harré (1992, p. 5) refers to the 1960s as the time when the first cognitive revolution was “publicly initiated,” possibly because the Center for Cognitive Studies at Harvard was established in 1960 by Jerome Bruner and George Miller, not only bringing “mind” back to human science but also establishing the “new look” as an interdisciplinary endeavour. Miller (2003) stresses that the cognitive revolution was a counter-revolution. Interpretations of the content of this first cognitive revolution vary more. Although most psychologists agree about the (re-)introduction of the mind into psychological research contrary to the credo of the behaviourists, one of the revolutionists, Jerome Bruner (1990) formulated a different view in connection with his critique of the results of this revolution. In his view, the aim of the first cognitive revolution was to investigate how people construct meaning, and this programme has been doomed by being reduced to the study of information processing. According to Bruner (1990), the first revolution has failed, and he sees a new cognitive revolution in the interpretive embrace of cognition connected to the work of – among others – Clifford Geertz, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Nelson Goodman and Kenneth Gergen. Others who are very positive about the first cognitive revolution and associate it with the rise of cognitive sciences already envision a second cognitive revolution in the development of “connectionist” challenges to traditional “rules and representations” theories of cognition in the 1980s (cf. Rumelhart & McClelland, 1986; Schneider, 1987). Harré (1992) and Harré and Gillett (1994) regard Bruner’s approach as a second cognitive revolution in what they call the “discursive turn” in psychology in the late 1980s and early 1990s. According to these authors, the development of computer-oriented “cognitive science” fell short of expectations: “[t]he technical sophistication of the programming model was not matched by a coherent theory of the relation between formal computation and real-life human thought. Pressure from within cognitive psychology to achieve ecological validity led to an examination of human functioning in actual social and cultural settings” (p. viii). According to Harré and Gillett (p. viii), discursive psychology is the culmination of a number of independent developments, dating as far back as the work of G.H. Mead and L. Vygotsky and incorporating contemporary movements such as ethnomethodology, social constructionsm and ethnogenics. Some even postulate that there will be more than two revolutions in psychology: Matson, for example, sees in humanistic theory the third revolution in psychology (cf. Sperry, 1993). More convincing than the postulation of different “revolutions” as kind of “paradigm shifts” (Kuhn) is perhaps Greenwood’s (1999) attempt to understand the “cognitive revolution” as a move from behaviourism to cognitivism, which is best represented in terms of the replacement of (operationally defined) “intervening variables” by genuine “hypothetical constructs” possessing cognitive “surplus meaning.” According to Greenwood (1999), the “cognitive revolution” of the 1950s continue[s] a cognitive tradition that can be traced back to the 1920s and – as I would like to add – still develops and differentiates into quite different perspectives linked to the shared question: How should we conceptualize and study human thought?

Life stories and philosophies of life 49 representation/computation theory of mind and the connectionist theory of mind. The second research approach revolves more around content than around processes, more around the unique psychological meaning that individuals find in their experiences and interactions (cf. for example Molden & Dweck, 2006). Rooted in research on social cognition, this approach dates back at least to Heider and Kelley. It is in general more focused or at least not less focused on the substance of human thinking than on the processes of human thinking. This second research approach addresses “naive psychology” or “naive theories,” “lay beliefs or lay theories or lay epistemology,” “intuitive theories or intuitive psychology,” “implicit theories or implicit psychology,” “indigenous psychology,” “common sense psychology,” “folk-psychology,” “everyday understanding” or “everyday accounts,” “subjective theories” and even “subjective metaphysics” etc. Although most scholars following this approach usually prefer methods other than autobiographical stories, life-story interviews could provide perfect material for discovering something like “intuitive theories” or “subjective metaphysics.” On the other hand, narrative psychologists interested in narrative identities could benefit from taking note of research about these subjects.12 This kind of contrast or even animosity between the realm of the cognitive and the realm of the narrative has a kind of 19th-century precedent. The “spiritual me” went along with the concept of an “inner life” which has been especially en vogue in the 19th century, popular not only in novels (such as those by Henry James, the brother of William James), but also among the normal population, who cultivated feelings and inner musings written down in letters, diaries, confessions, conversion reports etc. But this focus on an inner life has also been harshly criticized, for example by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who dismissed the “Know thyself ” from the Delphic Oracle as nonsense, because a human being can know himself or herself only if he or she knows the world (cf. Gay, 1995). And there we have already formulated in nuce the argument of philosophical hermeneutics against subject philosophy as Martin Heidegger formulated it at the beginning of the 20th century, and which later inspired the position of a philosophy of sign against a philosophy of consciousness. Influences from philosophical hermeneutics and later from structuralism as well have led to the so-called decentralization of the subject or even – as Foucault has formulated – to the “death of the subject” and the focus on the human being as “being-in-the-world,” where “I” am not the actor of my actions but merely participate in my actions. Heidegger did not even characterize the “I-self ” via consciousness but as a “self-world.” According to Heidegger (1920–21/2004, p. 10) 12

See for example the interesting cross-cultural and developmental research on folk biology which obviously sustains the notion that cognitive universality does not preclude cultural diversity and that the ways people deal with the world affect the ways they cognize it (cf. Medin & Atran, 2004).

50 Ulrike Popp-Baier “I experience myself in factual life (...) in that which I perform, suffer, what I encounter, in my conditions of depression and elevation, and the like. I myself experience not even my ego in separateness, but I am as such always attached to the surrounding world.” Therefore, this “experiencing-oneself ” is not inner perception, but is self-worldly experience. With any experiential activity, I experience the world and myself as part of this world at the same time. Methodically, there is no introspection required but understanding and interpretation. This kind of philosophical hermeneutics forms implicitly or sometimes explicitly the philosophical background for narrativism in psychology, whereas cognitivism and also neuropsychology are related to a philosophy of consciousness or a philosophy of the mind. If, as outlined above, we are also interested in the practical reasoning person who may devise ideas about life, about a good life, his or her own happy or unhappy life, and who struggles with questions of meaning, who exhibits in any case cognitive activities which are very likely influencing his or her practical decisions in everyday life, then perhaps the question arises as to how we could stress the “spiritual me” without falling into the pitfalls of a psychology of the “mind”? In other words, how can we valuate stories without de-evaluating reflections, arguments, ideas, theories, philosophies etc.?

3.2 Philosophy of life as sensitizing concept for the analysis of life story interviews/narrative-biographical interviews Is a life not examined not worth living, as Socrates has said, or could we even say that it can hardly be lived without being examined (questions which by now Carrie Bradshaw was also pondering in The New York Star)? It might be plausible that most normal gifted adults (living in a welfare state) engage repeatedly in life reviews. Some events, especially annual rituals such as New Year’s Eve or birthdays, even encourage us to do so. But what are we doing when we perform life reviews or ponder life in general? As already mentioned above, we are involved in processes of self-narration and self-reflection and in order to repeat the decisive features of this kind of identity construction I would like to follow Harré (1983, p. 20) in his assumption “that the fundamental human reality is a conversation, effectively without beginning or end, to which, from time to time, individuals may contribute. All that is personal in our mental and emotional lives is individually appropriated from the conversation going on around us and perhaps idiosyncratically transformed. The structure of our thinking and feeling will reflect, in various ways, the form and content of that conversation.” And that means that mind in this function cannot be conceptualized as a sort of entity, but as “a system of beliefs structured by a cluster of grammatical models.” Not only are the acts that we as individuals perform and the interpretations

Life stories and philosophies of life 51 we create of the social, individual and physical world “prefigured in collective actions and social representations,” but “that very structure of our minds (and perhaps the fact that we have minds at all) is drawn from those social representations.” According to Rom Harré (1983, p. 20) a person is, above all, a being who has learned a “theory,” in terms of which his or her experience is ordered. I would prefer a slightly modified perspective in saying that an individual’s relation to the world consists partly of more or less complex theories that structure much of his or her experience. And I would suggest calling these theories philosophies of life. The presupposition of this paper is that every autobiographical telling or writing constructs not only a life story but also a “philosophy of life,” an art-of-life ethic that emerges in the context of telling one’s life. The philosophical sources for this concept are Simone de Beauvoir, Michel Foucault, Martha Nussbaum and German Lebensphilosophie. Simone de Beauvoir wrote a voluminous autobiography to develop and reveal an individual art of living, her particular philosophical position (cf. for example Beauvoir, 1960; also Vintges, 1996). Michel Foucault (1984) referred in his final work to concepts such as “aesthetics of existence” and “self-practices” to describe and to advocate a certain kind of ethic, which can be described as a special art of living. Martha Nussbaum (1986) has shown that literary tradition is ideally suited for dealing with ethical decisions, because such decisions concern concrete human existence, a level that Nussbaum believes can be met only through literary narratives. And Ferdinand Fellmann (1993) characterizes a particular tradition of thinking in German philosophy as a type of philosophy “die aus dem Leben heraus denkt” (which starts with its reflections in life itself) as Lebensphilosophie, a philosophy which combines a theory of experience connected to a theory of the self based on the conviction that a human being can experience oneself only in the medium of life itself. If we want to introduce the “philosophy of life” concept as a sensitizing concept for the analysis of life stories, we need not define it in advance. Elaborating it a bit to refine our analytical interpretive perspective on life stories, however, would be helpful. To this end I would like to attribute a person’s implicit and explicit ideas or theories with regard to a good life which are emerging in the context of a life story to philosophy of life. I would like to regard the notion of “happiness” and the question “how should I live” as key elements in this analytical concept and will explore these notions a little bit more.

3.2.1. Pursuit of happiness According to Kant (as well as Aristotle) every human being strives for happiness, although Kant considers the concept of happiness too empirical to be regarded as a general maxim in ethics.13 13

See Kant, Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, and Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics.

52 Ulrike Popp-Baier Aside from this scepticism concerning happiness as a philosophical notion, many philosophers defend the possibility of an objective theory of human happiness. Examples of philosophical teachings concerning an ethic of happiness include the Stoa, the Epicureism, the Hedonism and the different kinds of (also modern) utilitarianisms (cf. Birnbacher, 2006; also Kingwell, 1999). Birnbacher (2006) defends the so-called double subjectivism of happiness: happiness as a subjective quality or state of consciousness independent from objective events, but dependent on subjective standards of evaluation.14 Even defenders of a more or less radical subjectivism of happiness, however, concede that it is nevertheless possible to share views about different formal and structural aspects of the concept of happiness or about some typical dimensions of or questions concerning human pursuit of happiness. Such a formal statement in the philosophy of happiness is, for example, the so-called theorem of the paradox of happiness, which maintains that reaching 14

Defenders of this subjectivism of happiness often refer to the well-known German fairy-tale Hans im Glück (Hans in Luck), about a boy who starts with a piece of gold big as his head, which he exchanges for something else and after some more exchanges is ultimately left with nothing at the end of the story but is nevertheless happy and calls himself a very fortunate man. A more cynical perspective on this subjectivism of happiness is expressed in the final scene of Monty Python’s movie Life of the Brian, a satirical movie about the life of Jesus, where Brian’s efforts to save his life and get rid of the cross at the end of the movie are answered by the chorus of other people also hanging at crosses with the song: “Always look on the bright side of life. . .” There is also a close relation to the continuous subjectivization of criteria for “quality of life” in medical research. This is partly a response to the “paradoxical” results with regard to the “objective results” of particular medical surgeries and the patients’ subjective well-being. For example, patients who had undergone a successful bypass operation sometimes did not feel better afterwards and could not regain their physical strength, whereas patients who achieved no physiological improvement following the operation, felt an amazing improvement and resumed their usual activities in eveyday life. But there is also a lot of critical discussion with regard to this kind of research stressing the economic interests that might influence gathering and interpreting the data. In pain research there have also been efforts to distinguish the physical sensation of pain from the cultural and phenomenological experience of suffering, and a considerable amount of research has in the meantime examined the different possible relations between the two. Efforts to objectify “quality of life” may in some cases even appear a bit far-fetched to us. Kingwell (1999), for example, refers to a study by the social psychologist Ruut Veenhoven, who devised the “happy life expectancy” quality-of-life index, which was intended to give social scientists the precise means for deciding which country on earth was the happiest. “If one multiplies the average life expectancy in a country by the percentage of people who declare themselves to be happy in opinion polls,” the study concluded, “the happiest country is Iceland” (reported in The Globe and Mail (22 May 1997), p. A26 quoted according to Kingwell, 1999, p. 277). In a recent study based on similar methods, Denmark was identified as the happiest country (cf. www.rheinzeitung.de/a/ magazin/ t/rzo267492.html [27.07.2006]).

Life stories and philosophies of life 53 happiness by striving directly for happiness is impossible. In all cases, happiness is only a “by-product” of reaching other goals, it cannot be the intentional outcome. A widely discussed question is the relation between happiness and morality. Some scholars see a convergence between the two, but others argue convincingly that although morality may be closely related to happiness, they are not identical. The problem lies in connecting the orientation toward a good life with acknowledgement of the conditions of a good life for all other people.15 In addition, a common formal distinction is the distinction between episodical happiness and periodical happiness (cf. for example Birnbacher, 2006). According to Birnbacher (2006) episodical happiness can be characterized as a kind of acute “feeling,” which can be experienced in two forms: a kind of euphoria about something and a kind of deep “immersion” in a particular activity. The last one has been elaborated in Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of flowexperience (cf. for example 1990) and is exemplified by a state in which one loses oneself. By contrast, periodical happiness is characterized not as a “feeling” but as an “evaluation” of a particular period in one’s life or in some cases even of one’s entire life as “happy.”16 These evaluations can be very fragile and often change. For example, someone can assess an earlier evaluation as totally wrong, because he or she was in a state of illusionary nostalgia and therefore evaluated a certain period in his or her life as “happy,” or, because he or she was in a depressive mood, he or she evaluated a certain period as unhappy (cf. Birnbacher, 2006, p. 10). In attempting to formulate general theories of happiness in philosophy, at least three different types of theories are identifiable.17 The first type is the theory of the “goods” of happiness, which aims to list the goods that someone needs to be happy. These goods include good health, security, social integration, self-esteem, self-determination, welfare etc. The second hedonistic type stresses the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain as general human pursuits and postulates that the more pleasure someone gains, the happier he or she will be. The “hedonist” is devoted to the pursuit of pleasurable physical 15

For an extensive discussion of this very interesting question, see Seel (1995). I will not elaborate on this discussion here but will only sensitize for possible themes in life stories. 16 . . .tell them it was a very good life . . . being passed as the last words of Ludwig Wittgenstein, which Birnbacher (2006, p. 10) quotes as an example of “periodical happiness.” In psychological research the important influence of social comparism on this kind of evaluations has been stressed (cf. Argyle, 1987). 17 On this and similar distinctions and short descriptions and critics of the different theories of happiness, see for example Birnbacher (2006), Kingwell (1999), Seel (1999),Wolf (1998).

54 Ulrike Popp-Baier sensations, whether in gastronomic, aesthetic, sexual or other forms. And the third type of theory of happiness sees the fulfilment of one’s wishes as a condition for happiness. Although these theories can be understood as an alternative to the double subjectivism of happiness, they are still quite “subjective” because to this day, no universally agreed list of goods of happiness exists. And obviously people can gain pleasure or have their wishes fulfilled in a wide variety of ways. Because of the assumed individual varieties with regard to “happiness” and also because of the often vague and intra-individual discontinuous and inconsistently formulated ideas and judgements concerning “happiness,” this notion may therefore qualify for inclusion as an element in an analytical concept of philosophy of life.18 The analytical questions for analyzing life stories could then be: how does the storyteller articulate ideas or ideals with regard to happiness? Does he or she evaluate his or her entire life or particular life events with regard for a notion of happiness? Do different notions of happiness figure in the life-story interview? In which way are they linked to life goals, experiences or events in the course of one’s life? Do they relate to concepts about the self, morality and ultimate reality?

3.2.2. How should I live? The question “how should I live” can also be related to the question of what kind of person I would like to be. For a lot of people, this question is equivalent to the question of how can I be myself. Related to the discussion about the work of Harry Frankfurt which has had quite an impact on the more theoretical discussions concerning “self ” and “identity,” two “model answers” are available to this question. The first is that being oneself requires self-reflection or even self-control (cf. Frankfurt 1988, 1999, 2004), and the second is that being oneself involves expressing one’s nature (cf. for example Friedman, 1986). The first answer suggests the following picture, as Frankfurt has described in several publications: human beings do not only desire, want, being motivated, having passions etc.; they can also want or not want to desire what they desire, being motivated in the way they are, having the passions they have etc. In short, people develop attitudes towards the desires and motivations they experience in daily life; they care about something.

18

According to Birnbacher (2006), the dimensions of religion and religiosity have lost their importance for personal happiness in modern Europe compared to other centuries, whereas they have become more important in other parts of the world. I have some doubts as to whether this statement can be verified. In psychology of religion Argyle (cf. 2000) examined possible relations between religiosity and happiness.

Life stories and philosophies of life 55 When a person cares about something, he or she willingly commits to his or her desire: [t]he desire does not move him either against his will or without his endorsement. He is not its victim; nor is he passively indifferent to it. On the contrary, he himself desires that it move him. He is therefore prepared to intervene, should that be necessary, in order to ensure that it continues. If the desire tends to fade or to falter, he is disposed to refresh it and to reinforce whatever degree of influence he wishes it to exert upon his attitudes and upon his behavior. (Frankfurt, 2004, p. 16)

And: “[i]t is a salient characteristic of human beings, one which affects our lives in deep and innumerable ways, that we care about what we are” (p. 163). In this case, Frankfurt also uses the word “identification.” When we want a desire to be sustained, we identify with it and accept it as expressing our interests and aims, as expressing what we really want. According to Frankfurt (2004, p. 17) caring manifests and depends upon our distinctive capacity to have thoughts, desires and attitudes that are about our own attitudes, desires and thoughts. It depends upon the fact that the human mind is reflexive – self-aware and self-critical. By this way caring bears upon and exhibits the basic structure of a person’s life. By caring, people provide themselves with volitional continuity, with stable ambitions and concerns and thus constitute and participate in their own agency. People’s attitudes and actions are shaped by their continuing interest in things they care about. “This is as close to freedom of the will as finite beings, who do not create themselves, can intelligibly hope to come” (p. 20). In the terms that Frankfurt uses, the importance that our caring creates for us defines the framework of standards and aims in terms for us to conduct our lives and to specify our answer to the question of how to live our lives. According to Frankfurt (2004, p. 26) the normative question of how we should live our lives can be asked sensibly based only on a prior answer to the factual question of what we actually care about. Moreover, the two questions are intertwined for everybody, and dealing with one of the questions without mentioning the other in a life story would already be exceptional. The second answer to the original question at the beginning of this subchapter (what does it mean to be oneself ?) is that we have to abandon self-control as an impediment to being ourselves. In this case we define ourselves not in terms of identification or self-control but in repudiated desires which persist despite a person’s struggles against them. It is a question of self-suppression and liberation. A lot of images relate to this answer, and even the one of abandoning the concept of a “self ” completely and to enjoy plurality and multiplicity belongs to this alternative. The more traditional recurrent theme, which has inspired not only a lot of psychotherapeutic concepts but also a lot of literature from popular and elite culture as well, is the “coming out” of a person who has a relatively coherent, persistent and longstanding set of desires that he or she rejects as improper or distasteful

56 Ulrike Popp-Baier because of internalized social and societal norms and rules and therefore actively suppresses. The breakthrough is the triumph of spontaneity over rigidity, of unconventional behaviour over conventions, of emotions over reason etc. According to Schechtman (2005, p. 50), the basic idea is that the self 19 “is comprised of a set of natural inclinations and traits. When we express these in action we are being ourselves, and when we try to hide them in favor of others which are less natural, we are not.” The meaning of “natural” in this context is another question. It can denote, for example, spontaneous but also habitual but not pathological, belonging to a kind of human nature instead of belonging to special cultural requirements, emotional instead of rational, etc. Our concept of temptation relies on this kind of distinction, as well as on concepts of alienation or emptiness, frustration or anxiety, which result from suppressing one’s true nature. Nietzsche and Freud and – in quite another manner – Jung portray this kind of unhappiness as stemming not only from the failure to satisfy desires, but from a denial of one’s own nature (cf. p. 55). Schechtman (p. 56) calls the two answers the self-control and the selfexpressing view and states that while they “capture different senses of what it is to be oneself – senses which typically apply in different domains – they do have an important point of contact. In both cases there is an underlying presupposition that being oneself is an essential part of living a meaningful or fulfilling life.”20 Of course there are a lot of shadows and versions of the two accounts of the “selves,” which cannot be discussed in this context. And Schechtman (2005) reconciles the two accounts, concluding with the idea that we need, activity, unity and continuous concerns on the one side, as well as a certain amount of passivity, acceptance of incoherence and ability to engage in self-discovery by simply letting go and being receptive to what will happen “in” us and to us: “[l]iving a human life thus involves a certain amount of experimentation” (p. 61). Still this normative solution is not what we are looking for here. In this context we need sensitizing concepts that allow us to see the “solutions” people will find in their lives with regard to questions about what to care about, how to live and how to be oneself – perfect and less perfect or complete disasters.

4. Psychology of religion enters the picture. . . At the 3rd symposium for psychologists of religion in 1985 Antoon Vergote and Jan van der Lans organized a plenary debate about the object of the 19

Perhaps we should remind ourselves that related to the terminology in the first part of this paper, the “self ” denotes the “me.” 20 That may seem like a paradox with regard to the idea of having no self, but it is actually compatible with the account of self-expression. The recommendation of at least some pluralists is eventually not having one self, but enjoying multiple selves, a recommandation that also relates to a narrative about suppression and liberation. In this case the “true, non-oppressed self ” consists of many different selves.

Life stories and philosophies of life 57 psychology of religion. While Vergote emphasized the “existential specificity” of religion and opposed the “broadening” of the object of psychology of religion to a “meaning system,” “worldview” or “ideology,” Jan van der Lans suggested that psychology of religion should take more distance from concrete, cultural-historical phenomena of religiosity and should define its objects more in terms of general psychological structures and functions, of which concrete religious systems are heterogeneous manifestations (Vergote & Lans, 1986, p. 77). About 20 years later, although the debate continues, some arguments and questions are no longer current. On the one hand, I can hardly imagine that many psychologists of religion would still like to limit the object of psychology of religion to “revelational systems,” as Vergote suggested in 1985. On the other hand, I suppose that Jan van der Lans’ question as to whether Lerner’s study of belief in a just world belongs to the psychology of religion would be answered by most psychologists of religion with a resounding “yes.”21 But the debate continues about the advantages and disadvantages of “substantial” and “functional” definitions of religion, and many scholars in psychology of religion still have reservations about concepts like “civil religion,” “invisible religion,” “implicit religion,” self-religion or “spiritualities of life.” Instead of joining this debate, I would like to recall some “insights” from religious studies in general. First, the concept of religion as a distinct and universal category is more or less the invention of scholars of religion in the 19th century (cf. Smith, 1998; Dubuisson, 2003). The Latin label religio and its subsequent translations into other European languages have had other meanings in earlier centuries. To this day, several languages lack a word for “religion” in the sense used in contemporary debates (cf. McKinnon, 2002). In the meantime, this concept of religion as a universal category has been seriously challenged. Relying on the oppositions “unity/diversity” and “insider/outsider,” a lot of religious studies scholars question the use of the noun “religion” and its plural form “religions.” Critics argue that it subsumes dynamic traditions and cultural diversities under an inadequate, unifying concept by outsiders that does not fit, or even distorts, the self-understanding of the insiders, of people who share certain traditions, practices and life forms. Instead of meeting the “other,” researchers perceive only what fits their pre-formulated concepts and related research methods (Matthes, 1992; Asad, 1993; Wulff, 1997).22 Globalization processes have made the situation somewhat more complex because “religion” has become part of the

21

In the meantime, this belief in a just world has been included into the so-called Münchner Motivationspsychologisches Religiositäts-Inventar, MMRI (cf. Grom et al., 1998). 22 For the problems related to notions such as a “Japanese religion” or to the concept of “Hinduism,” see for example Fitzgerald (2000).

58 Ulrike Popp-Baier global political-economic discourse, and even adherents to traditions that did not originally include a concept of religion have begun to use it – for certain purposes (McKinnon, 2002). Second, with regard to all the debates, discussions and disputes concerning the concept of religion and a possible definition of religion thus far, it has been suggested that religion be accepted as a discursive concept, i.e. as a brief descriptive term for a discourse in which various participants take different positions with regard to the questions about what religion is, what a religious phenomenon constitutes, and what the relevant distinctions are between “religion” and other issues like “politics” or “medicine” etc. (cf. for example Asad, 1993). With regard to psychology of religion, I would like to follow this suggestion and understand psychology of religion as a particular perspective within or connected to this discourse about religion. This understanding of psychology of religion as a background would allow us to study “meaning systems,” “ideology,” “implicit religion”, “self-religion,” “spiritualities of life” etc. and particular cultural-historical phenomena such as Calvinists and Catholics in the Netherlands, religious migrants in Great Britain, conversion to Islam in Germany or Evangelicals in North America as well. But that is not the end of all debates. Questions remain as to which psychological structures and/or functions can be studied in this context, or which elements constitute the subjective side of “religions” as particular cultural-historical phenomena. This last question has been answered in different ways in the history of the philosophical and scientific study of religion. Immanuel Kant, for example, stressed “morality” and located religion above all in the context of practical reasoning.23 Friedrich Schleiermacher defined authentic religion as a “feeling of absolute dependence” (cf. Schleiermacher, 1799/1969). According to William James, genuine religion consists of individual experience (cf. James, 1902/1985), while modern neuro-psychologists see religion above all as a phenomenon of consciousness or of the mind linked to particular brain functions (cf. Andresen, 2001), whereas anthropologists are especially interested in religious performances and religious practices (cf. Bell, 1997; Turner, 1982), and some sociologists remind us that in Western societies beliefs are heavily emphasized (cf. McGuire, 1997).24 23

Cf. for example Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, and Kant, Kritik der praktischen Vernunft. 24 In a psychology-of-religion perspective, we could accept all these different approaches and try to elaborate the psychological aspects of these approaches in more detail. For example, what it means when someone says that he or she believes in something or someone remains an interesting question. What are the differences between believing and, for example, knowing, thinking or assuming? What does it mean, to believe in God? Are there only different images or concepts of God, or are there also differences in a kind of belief structure? Is there perhaps a psychological difference between believing in God and believing in ghosts?

Life stories and philosophies of life 59 My own interest in psychology of religion concerns individual religiosity or individual spirituality, which means how individuals fashion religion according to their own needs and understanding or do not fashion any “religion” but instead devise their own system of meaning. In short, I am interested in modern forms of individual religiosity or spirituality, of which Thomas Paine’s “my mind is my church” and Thomas Jefferson’s “I am a sect myself ” are paradigmatic “high culture” expressions. And “Sheilaism” is the name Robert Bellah et al. have given to the contemporary expression of individual religiosity, after one of the people they interviewed actually named her own “faith” after herself (cf. Casanova, 1994).25 I do not want to start with a pre-conception of religion or with a pre-conception of the subjective side of “religiosity” or “spirituality” or whatever. I am interested in how people relate to whatever they or other people call religion or give meaning to their lives or find meaningful in their lives. In my view, the life-story approach provides the best methodology to this end, and within this approach I would like to stress the philosophy of life concept as an analytical perspective. Although narrative approaches in psychology of religion are not new, and some studies have also addressed the “intellectual” aspects of religiosity, the theoretical concepts in this research have stressed “experience” and in the process have underestimated the cognitive aspects of human experience (cf. for example Sundén,1966; Popp-Baier, 2002, 2003). To boost my argument, I will refer to a text that is a fairly classical text in religious studies, which is Geertz’s outline of a programme for religious studies in his article “Religion As a Cultural System” from 1966 (cf. Geertz, 1966/1993). Geertz’s project consists of a paradigm, which he “reduces” to a definition and its explication. According to this definition, a religion unites a way of life with a comprehensive world view or, to put it in other words, an ethos with a metaphysics (cf. also Schilbrack, 2005).26 And, according to Geertz (1966/1993), this particular connection is a defining feature of religion, which distinguishes this “cultural system” from others. Although this unifying perspective runs counter to all postmodern notions of heterogeneity, diversity and fragmentations in the “religious 25

In a widely quoted passage from the “Habits of the heart,” Sheila Larson, a young nurse, describes her faith as “Sheilaism”: “I believe in God. I’m not a religious fanatic. I can’t remember the last time I went to church. My faith has carried me a long way. It’s Sheilaism. Just my own little voice.” (Bellah et al., 1985, p. 220). And in defining “my own Sheilaism,” she said: “It’s just try to love yourself and be gentle with yourself. You know, I guess, take care of each other. I think He would want us to take care of each other.” 26 Without further ado, then, a religion is: (1) a system of symbols which acts to (2) establish powerful, pervasive and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by (3) formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and (4) clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that (5) the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic (Geertz, 1993, p. 90).

60 Ulrike Popp-Baier field,” an interpretation of religion like Geertz’s is valuable to the extent that Geertz offers an analytical perspective for religious studies. Relying on his definition in social scientific studies of religion implies in the first place studying not only a way of life but also the connected world view, studying not only religious practices, performances, narratives etc. but also the interpretations of these practices, performances, narratives by the religious practitioners, the performing and narrating subjects. According to Geertz (1966/1993), “worldview” and “way of life” are distinguishable but not separable, implying therefore that metaphysical claims do matter in directing actions. In his famous criticism of a concept of religion as the concept of a transhistorical essence, Talal Asad (1993) takes Geertz’s definition as a starting point and examines the different features of the concept. Although Asad’s argumentation that an anthropological or universal definition of religion is impossible is convincing, and although he is able to point out additional shortcomings in Geertz’s project, some of his critical remarks clearly depend on a misreading of Geertz’s article (cf. also Schilbrack, 2005, pp. 435 ff.). According to Asad, Geertz defines religion as “essentially cognitive” in keeping with an implicit post-Enlightenment Christian agenda in which religion is privatized to an individual belief and therefore reduced to “inner mental states.” But this reading of Geertz’s article is clearly a misrepresentation. Interestingly, “belief ” does not even figure in Geertz’s definition of religion (cf. also Schilbrack, 2005, p. 437). Geertz makes several efforts to distinguish his own approach from that of “cognitive anthropology” and to criticize attempts to understand culture as “mental stuff,” to be approached through empathy or introspection (cf. Geertz, 1973/1993, 1974/1983). In connecting “way of life” with “world view,” Geertz in the first place relates “action” to “interpretation” – a context that leaves no place for something like “inner mental states.” Another point of criticism closely related to this point is Asad’s allegation that Geertz’s definition confuses two levels of religious discourse. Quoting Geertz’s claim that religious symbols both induce religious moods and motivations and place them in a cosmic or metaphysical framework, Asad objects that these two processes are distinct, that the “theological discourse” has to be distinguished from the “liturgical discourse,” which is involved in different kinds of religious practices. Theological discourse does not necessarily induce religious dispositions, and (. . .) conversely, having religious dispositions does not necessarily depend on a clear-cut conception of the cosmic framework on the part of a religious actor. Discourse involved in practice is not the same as that involved in speaking about practice. It is a modern idea that a practitioner cannot know how to live religiously without being able to articulate that knowledge (Asad, 1993, p. 36).

Asad is certainly right that the so-called theological discourse of an elite can be distinguished from the discourse associated with other kinds of religious

Life stories and philosophies of life 61 practices, but Geertz does not confuse them. The “world view” of Geertz is not identical to theological discourse. It need not even always consist of “reasoned articulateness,” as Geertz stated in his essay “Ethos, World View and the Analysis of Sacred Symbols” (1957/1993), and can also consist of socially shared views directing “religious” actions in a way that implicates a certain conception of a “general order of existence.” In addition, such discourse may and usually will consist of articulated ideas as well. But how the individual participates in this world view and which aspects of this world view the religious practitioner can articulate, reflect, reconstruct and perhaps create at which opportunities is an open and empirical question, although Geertz sees ritual as the most important practice in religion. Contrary to Asad, I believe it is a specific “modern” idea to think that people can know how to live religiously without being able to articulate at least some of the ideas, notions, rules etc. connected to this life. Geertz, in any case, stresses the importance of the “implicit metaphysics” in religious practices, which is socially shared and may be articulated only in a social discourse when unusual events call for interpretation. And perhaps Geertz underestimates the articulateness of the “average religious practitioner,” who has his or her own interpretations of and reflections on what he or she is doing and these interpretations and reflections, this “subjective metaphysics,” can be quite different from the official theological discourse and from the “assumed” world view as well (cf. for example Shore, 1995). For a psychology-of-religion perspective, I would like to repeat and to conclude that the concept of a philosophy of life may be fruitful and can perhaps best be studied in the context of a narrative-biographical interview. It might be possible to retain the sensitizing concept of a philosophy of life as already formulated above (cf. 3.2) and to enlarge the concept with regard to its possible key elements: in addition to a notion of “happiness” and the question “how should I live?” it might be also interesting to include the question in which way people relate to “religion,” “spirituality” or an “ultimate reality.”27

5. Instead of a conclusion – An illustration In the last part of my paper I would like to illustrate the utility of the concept of “philosophy of life” as an analytical perspective for interpreting life stories. I have selected the transcript of a narrative interview published in an Internet journal some years ago to illustrate this analytical approach. In 2003 a special issue of the internet journal Forum: Qualitative Social Research was dedicated to “Doing Biographical Research.” This issue featured 27

This resonates with the project of de St. Aubin et al. (2006), who assert that religion/spirituality is the aspect of identity that most squarely fits into personal ideology. In Miller’s “worldview project” questions belonging to the realm of spirituality and religion are pivotal in his analytical perspective on life stories (cf. e.g., Miller, 1996).

62 Ulrike Popp-Baier the transcript of a narrative interview with a Turkish migrant woman living in Germany. This interview had been conducted in 1986 – in a research project on the biographical experiences of migrant women in Germany. In addition to an introduction to the project in this issue and especially to the method of narrative interview by Gerhard Riemann, all the other articles provided interpretations of the interview transcript from different perspectives. Forum Qualitative Social Research is a so-called Open Access Journal, which means that everybody can read the transcript of the interview in German and in English translation, as well as the different interpretations of the interview.28 And Gerhard Riemann explicitly invited everybody to “join the club” and to comment on the interpretations of the interview and contribute his or her own analysis of the interview. I was most impressed by the article from Neval Gültekin, Lena Inowlocki & Helma Lutz (2003), entitled “Quest and Query: Interpreting a Biographical Interview with a Turkish Woman Laborer in Germany,” and my own analysis may be perceived as a complement to the analysis of these authors.29 In the narrative interview Hülya, a young woman who went to Germany from Turkey at 17 as a “guest worker” looks back at age 31.30 The interview was conducted by two female student researchers in 1986.31 In general, Hülya’s account can be characterized as a testimony – personal experiences provided with a social commentary concerning exploitation and discrimination. Hülya opens her narrative with her childhood and youth in Turkey, her decision to go to Germany when she was fourteen and all the difficult preparations for this step. At seventeen she manages to change her official age to eighteen and obtains permission to move to Germany for work. After an extensive and humiliating medical examination at the Istanbul recruitment office, she is among the successful candidates who get a contract of employment at a chicken factory in Germany. The accommodations were bad: she had to share one room with four young Turkish women in an old village school building. The work was extremely hard and filthy, lasting up to eleven hours per day, four days a week, and overtime was hardly paid. She wanted to go back to Turkey but was afraid that people at home would not believe her and would think that it was her fault, and that she had done something wrong and was therefore being sent back. During the year she stayed at the chicken factory, 28

Riemann (2003) originally translated this interview for Anselm Strauss who refers to Hülya’s story in his book “Continual Permutations of Action” on page 67 (cf. Strauss, 1993). 29 Before performing this analysis I participated in 2005 in a biography group at the Faculty of Theology at Utrecht University, where we discussed the interview transcript and different articles from the FQS issue. 30 The transcript of the interview and its English translation appear as an appendix to Riemann (2003). 31 For more details about the context of the interview, see Riemann (2003).

Life stories and philosophies of life 63 labour regulations were repeatedly violated and injuries not properly treated. When her one-year contract ended, distant relatives in Germany helped her find a new job as a shift worker at a metal factory near Hamburg. Her accommodations were worse than the previous year, as she now had one room with 3 women who were much older than she was. Hülya developed health problems. In 1974 she went back to Turkey for the first time for some weeks. In 1976 a marriage was arranged, and Hülya married her mother’s nephew, a post-office clerk. Nevertheless, Hülya wanted to return to Germany for one or two years to earn more money to purchase some household appliances. Her husband and his family agreed to let her go for one year. On her return to Germany her health deteriorated, and she had three serious operations within the following five months. She received hardly any information about the nature of her disease or about the operations and still knew very little German. Still exhausted and feeling ill, Hülya went to Turkey and visited first her mother and then her husband after a while. Her relationship with her husband deteriorated. Because of her extended illness, Hülya was given notice by her employer in 1978. She sued him and achieved a partial victory in the Labour Court and received some compensation. She had begun to learn German via TV and was therefore able to handle things like that. After six months of unemployment and a brief stint in a restaurant kitchen, she found work at a metal-processing factory again, doing the same work as her German colleagues with formal qualifications but earning far less. In 1980 Hülya filed for and was granted a divorce from her husband. In 1986 Hülya was still working at the metal-processing factory, where her work was greatly appreciated. She now has her own apartment and has invited the two interviewers for a Turkish meal. Looking for Hülya’s philosophy of life emerging in this interview I would start by asking what kind of person she wants to be, in relation to the question of what she cares about. Let us start with the passage of the interview transcript where she describes her motivation for moving to Germany as a guest worker. Hülya started the interview by telling about her childhood as the youngest of five siblings and the problems her family experienced when her father became ill and could no longer work. Without any sick benefits or pension, they had to rely on an older sister and an older brother, who were already married and could support them. From the perspective of the past Hülya says: I always imagined those people in the village. (. . .) Poor people who had become old. Dependent on their children and not much to eat and just a few clothes and not being able at all to see a doctor and so on. . . Then in the early or mid 1960s I got to know or saw the ones who came from Germany with beautiful cars and had everything. Well, I was just thirteen maybe and I always thought I would also go to Germany some time, but I did not want to drive big cars or buy an apartment and real estate. My dream was that my parents would be better off later on than most older people. And my brother could have – he did

64 Ulrike Popp-Baier quite well in school – he could have gone on to College, but we didn’t have money. My dream was that my brother could continue his studies and could assist my parents financially. For my mother it was very difficult to be dependent on children, she practically didn’t have her own money and or a household of her own when my father became ill. . . (line 141–154 of the transcript of the interview)

In this passage Hülya presents various possible motivations for going to Germany and clearly embraces the motivation by which she positions herself as a responsible daughter sustaining her family and not as a woman in pursuit of material goods. From later passages of her interview, however, we know that she eventually bought herself an apartment in Turkey. And in the second part of the interview, when the interviewers asked her something about her relationship with her family, she also tells the interviewers how difficult she would find it to be dependent on other people like her brother: “that was already a reason for me to go to Germany (. . .) because I was dependent on my brother. Just because of a few Lira” (888–890). From a philosophy of life perspective, we can say Hülya presents two kinds of motivations to go to Germany and two different attitudes toward these motivations. In the interview text she presents herself with regard to her migration to Germany as willingly committed to the motivation to sustain her family but not to her motivation to get something for herself like material goods and independence.32 Other passages in the interview sustain this interpretation. When Hülya found work at a metal-processing firm in a small town close to Hamburg, she also lived in a dormitory there in the first years. But she had more problems with her roommates there: And (. . .), you know, I was quite different. They had already been (. . .) in Germany for some more years, they had already become somewhat different. (. . .) I act more emotionally, and I just cannot simply ignore people either. And that made me very sad because (. . .) material things were always more important for people and they constantly grumbled over trivial matters. I always cried. I didn’t want to hurt anybody. I was totally different from how I am today. I am still sentimental, sensible today and I tend to act emotionally. I am not able to avoid looking straight at someone sitting across from me (. . .) nor do I – I don’t like superficial people either. But in former days I was even (. . .) even more sensitive. I have [it] from home. Human things and love and comfort were important for us, while only machines were important here. The humans were not important. And then we were just people practically who did the work, we didn’t count as something else. But that made me so sad because our people had also become like that. Those who had already been here for a couple of years, just money, nothing else, you know. They just wanted to have money. (510–527) 32

If we want to relate this terminology to positioning theory we could say that Hülya positioned herself as conscientious daughter in some passages of the interview and as a woman aiming for independence in some other passages.

Life stories and philosophies of life 65 In this passage Hülya presents herself not only as not being a “material girl” but also positions herself with regard to herself in former times, to the Germans and to “our people,” as she says. On the one hand, she describes herself as different from how she was in former days. This difference is more a quantitative difference than a qualitative difference. But there is also a qualitative difference with respect to the Germans. They are the capitalist and materialist guys, even compared to the Turkish people. Unfortunately, the Turkish people who have lived in Germany for some years have become like them. And Hülya explains all these differences by relating them to a different “ethos” in Turkey and in Germany. In other passages Hülya also presents own materialist motivations for particular actions (e.g., going back to Germany when she was married) but nevertheless continues to present herself as the “non-material woman” and as “not superficial.” For example, by explaining why she wanted a divorce, the negative evaluation of her husband is based on his “superficiality”: “I read life [in] lower-case letters, he reads [in] capital letters. For him everything was so superficial and different, totally different and (. . .) we were as different as day and night.” (715–717) Presenting herself as someone who was always caring toward others remains a strong motive throughout the interview text. In later passages, however, she takes a negative view of this attitude and calls herself a victim. When she speaks about her marriage and her divorce, she uses the word “victim” for the first time: . . .in 1980 we got divorced (. . .) Well, I/he wasn’t in Germany, I was alone all the time. It didn’t matter to me, but I was just sad that I was [left over] as a divorced woman, you know, and that’s not so nice. If I had benefited from my marriage I wouldn’t have been so sad. Had just married in vain – just to be married, to be a housewife. Only my mother and my parents, well, actually I was a victim. [Hadn’t been constrained], but my mother or my parents. Always, always, I sacrificed myself for other people. (726–731)

The final sentence presents a powerful evaluation of her life until now, and one can get the impression she eventually found the right label for everything she did until now: moving to Germany as a guest worker, working under basically unbearable conditions without going back to Turkey, getting married, not opposing the other people in her dormitory: all these activities have been sacrifices. But then, the reader of the interview text will immediately remember other narratives within the text that will certainly do not fit to this label: Hülya’s efforts to go to Germany, her somewhat successful lawsuit against her employer in 1978, filing for and being granted a divorce in 1980 and learning German successfully since about 1977 from TV – without any language course. In their interpretation of Hülya’s story, Gültekin, Inowlocki and Lutz (2003) devise the “twofold perspectivity” concept, which is also related to other

66 Ulrike Popp-Baier research on immigrants from Turkey to Germany and allows a non-dichotomous analytical view comprehending “migration in one’s own interest” and “migration in the interest of others” as well and addressing how “suffering” and “pursuing one’s potential” are negotiated in biographical quests and queries. Using “philosophy of life” as an analytical concept, it is possible to “detect” still greater coherence in the life story of Hülya than Gültekin and others did. At first, in the whole interview Hülya presents herself as a person who is active, makes her own decisions, plans her activities and evaluates the results of her activities. Distinguishing between “victim” and “sacrifice” is not possible in the German language, for both concepts translate simply as “Opfer.” But Hülya always speaks about “sich opfern,” about “sacrificing herself ” as an active deed. She never says that she has become a victim, she always says that she has sacrificed herself, and therefore it was her own decision. At the end of the interview she makes clear that she has changed her mind: in the future she will not longer sacrifice herself, it has been enough, she has abandoned enough. In this manner she introduces a time perspective: in the past she has sacrificed herself, she has lived for other people, in the future she wants to live her own life. But in both cases she is speaking about her decisions and her activities and not about having been a victim in the past and wanting to overcome this “passivity” in the future or something like that. Second, considering the way in which she tells about her different places of employment and her health problems and the sometimes inadequate medical care she received, she never presents herself as a passive sufferer but always tries to improve and change things, with varying degrees of success. With regard to the way in which she relates the problems she has experienced to her own activities and to the evaluations of the outcomes of her activities, the word “enduring” might be far more appropriate than the word “suffering.” And at the end of the interview Hülya presents herself as someone who will gain much more control over the circumstances of her life in the present and in the future and will “endure” far less than she has done in the past. Although we can conclude from the interview that Hülya is a Muslim, she never refers explicitly to Islam in the interview and alludes to the Islamic religion only three times. The first is when she tells about receiving a call from a doctor at the hospital to go return for a third operation immediately: “And (. . .) I said I was home the doorman said: ‘a call for you. You have to go to the hospital!’ I said I wouldn’t go. I said: ‘I will go after Easter. Now I want to celebrate Easter!’ Actually, we don’t have Easter, but that was just a lame excuse. I just didn’t want to [go]” (649–652). The second instance is when she tells how she had to learn how to go to a labour court: . . .well, in any case I found a lawyer, and you see, I wasn’t a member of the union because I was not as optimistic as in the beginning. I asked: ‘what did they ever do for me when I was distressed? Nothing!’ I say, ‘this amount of money I am supposed to pay for the union, I’d rather give it to a poor person. He will even thank me. [Even

Life stories and philosophies of life 67 though I don’t ask for it] maybe he will pray for me.’ But at that moment, I (she laughs) needed the union (she and the interviewers laugh) . . . (750–755)

The third instance is when she is asked by one of the interviewers whether she could live in Turkey as a single and divorced woman. Of course that would be worse for us than in Germany, but in Germany it’s no different. Women here are also blamed when they get divorced. Thank God, though, there are more women or maybe men, too, who don’t always approach divorced women with great prejudices (who regard them as social outcasts). But in Turkey it’s worse. You don’t get accepted (. . .) as a decent human being. If someone is living alone, they always say . . . our religion is different, too, and our /eh/ whole customs are different. For example, the boys do what they want, but girls have to stay virgins until their wedding or wedding night. And if it stays like this, then (nothing) will change. (985–992)

In her allusions, Hülya presents herself as someone who believes in an ultimate reality, otherwise she would not be interested in the fact that someone might pray for her. She also presents herself as someone who still identifies herself as a Muslim. Otherwise she would not say that “we” have no Easter. In this passage, however, it also becomes clear that she presents herself also as someone who can talk about religious questions with a certain sense of humour, and that she presents herself as someone who admits that “their” religion plays a negative role in the lives of women, although at the same time she distinguishes between customs and religion. Hülya never alludes or refers to Islam when reflecting on life in general or on her own life in particular. Instead of invoking an ultimate reality that might influence what happens to someone in one’s life, she uses the notions “good luck” and “bad luck” in the early part of the interview. When she tells about her first serious accident at her first workplace, she starts with the general evaluation: “actually I have always had bad luck (she starts laughing, and the interviewers laugh, too) in my life” (348). In the second part of the interview when Hülya has been asked by the interviewers to think about her future life and to tell something about her projects and whether she would like to stay in Germany or go back to Turkey, Hülya presents in a long answer to these questions highly complex considerations with regard to her life in Germany and her life in Turkey, the “realities” and the “possibilities,” the “good people” and the “bad people” “here” and “there.” And at the end of the interview she says the following: It might be that I will find someone when I am forty, you know, who also thinks like me, a man. There are still good men, not all of them (she laughs) are bad, otherwise one couldn’t bear it. (She and the interviewers laugh.) But (. . .) no, not like that, not at any cost. Not just so that people should accept me: ‘she is married to a good man.’ That’s unimportant. I don’t want to live for other people, I want to live my life. I have given enough of myself. I have abandoned enough. I have sacrificed myself sufficiently. I don’t want it anymore. If I find someone who meets my expectations and thinks

68 Ulrike Popp-Baier like me, I don’t say that I am good – maybe I am bad, but the one I find should be bad, too. You have to understand each other. (For) maybe (she laughs) maybe I’ll go back, some time, but it’s not sure when. (end of the tape recording; 1054–1063)

Thinking about possibilities in the future she presents a kind of “autonomy project”: She wants to live her own life and a partner will be accepted only if he is like her. In the past she has always cared for others, but now she has done enough, in future she will care for herself. In a certain sense this change in her life orientation is connected to a change in her notion of a “true self,” of the person she wants to be. It is no longer the “self-oriented-to-others,” the self who cares for others and needs approval from others but the “self-oriented-toherself ” who cares for oneself and does not depend on others. And moral evaluations are not important on the first place. Much more could be said about the “life philosophy” in Hülya’s life story, but I think I will stop short of a more detailed analysis of the whole interview. Again, my purpose has been primarily illustrative. The purpose of the analysis of Hülya’s story was only to suggest the potential of “life philosophy” as an analytical concept or perspective rather than claiming to substantiate it via a detailed analysis of evidence. Empirical and conceptual work on this concept will follow.

References Andresen, J. (Ed.) (2001). Religion in mind: Cognitive perspectives on religious belief, ritual, and experience. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Argyle, M. (1987). The psychology of happiness. London: Methuen. Argyle, M. (2000). Psychology and religion: An introduction. London-New York: Routledge. Aristotle (1985). Nicomachean ethics (trans. Terence Irwin). Indianapolis: Hackett. Asad, T. (1993). Genealogies of religion: Discipline and reasons of power in Christianity and Islam. Baltimore-London: Johns Hopkins University Press. Ashmore, R. D. & Jussim, L. (1997). Introduction: Toward a second century of the scientific analysis of self and identity. In R. D. Ashmore & L. Jussim (Eds.), Self and identity: Fundamental issues (pp. 3–19). New York-Oxford: Oxford University Press. Atkinson, R. (1998). The life story interview. Thousand Oaks-London-New Delhi: Sage. (Qualitative Research Methods 44). Auerbach, E. (1946/1977). Mimesis: Dargestellte Wirklichkeit in der abendländischen Literatur [Mimesis. The representation of reality in Western literature]. Bern: Francke Verlag. Bamberg, M. (1997). Positioning between structure and performance. Journal of Narrative and Life History, 7, 335–342. Beauvoir, S. de (1960). La force de l’âge [The prime of life]. Paris: Gallimard. Bell, C. (1997). Ritual: Perspectives and dimensions. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bellah, R. N., Madsen, R., Sullivan, W. M., Swidler, A. & Tipton, S. M. (1985). Habits of the heart: Individualism and commitment in American life. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Life stories and philosophies of life 69 Birnbacher, D. (2006). Philosophie des Glücks [Philosophy of happiness]. Information Philosophie,1, 7–22. Brandtstädter, J. & Greve, W. (1992). Das Selbst im Alter: Adaptive und protektive Mechanismen [The self in old age: Adaptive and protective mechanisms]. Zeitschrift für Entwicklungspsychologie und Pädagogische Psychologie, 23, 269–297. Bruner, J. (1987). Life as narrative. Social Research, 54, 11–34. Bruner, J. (1990). Acts of meaning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Casanova, J. (1994). Public religions in the modern world. Chicago-London: University of Chicago Press. Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The psychology of optimal experience. New York: Harper Collins. Davies, B. & Harré, R. (1990). Positioning: The social construction of selves. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 20, 43–63. De St. Aubin, E., Wandrei, M., Skerven, K. & Coppolillo, C. M. (2006). A narrative exploration of personal ideology and identity. In D. P. McAdams, R. Josselson & A. Lieblich (Eds.), Identity and story: Creating self in narrative (pp. 223–248). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Dubuisson, D. (2003). The Western construction of religion: Myths, knowledge, and ideology. Baltimore-London: Johns Hopkins University Press. Elias, N. (1969). Die höfische Gesellschaft. Untersuchungen zur Soziologie des Königtums und der höfischen Aristokratie mit einer Einleitung: Soziologie und Geschichtswissenschaft [The court society. Investigations in the sociology of royalty and court aristocracy with an introduction: Sociology and historiography]. NeuwiedBerlin: Luchterhand. Epstein, S. (1973). The self-concept revisited or a theory of a theory. American Psychologist, 28, 404–416. Fellmann, F. (1993). Lebensphilosophie: Elemente einer Theorie der Selbsterfahrung. [Life philosophy: Elements of a theory of self-experience] Reinbek b. Hamburg: Rowohlt. Fitzgerald, T. (2000). The ideology of religious studies. New York-Oxford: Oxford University Press. Foucault, M. (1984). Le souci de soi [The care of the self ]. Paris: Gallimard. Frankfurt, H. (1988). The importance of what we care about. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Frankfurt, H. (1999). Necessity, volition, and love. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Frankfurt, H. (2004). The reasons of love. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Friedman, M. (1986). Autonomy and the split-level self. Southern Journal of Philosophy, 24, 19–35. Gardner, H. (1985). The mind’s new science: A history of the cognitive revolution. New York: Basic Books. Gay, P. (1995). The naked heart. New York: W.W. Norton. Geertz, C. (1957/1993). Ethos, world view and the analysis of sacred symbols. In C. Geertz, The interpretation of cultures (pp. 126–141). Hammersmith-London: Fontana Press.

70 Ulrike Popp-Baier Geertz, C. (1966/1993). Religion as a cultural system. In C. Geertz, The interpretation of cultures (pp. 87–125). Hammersmith-London: Fontana Press. Geertz, C. (1973/1993). The interpretation of cultures. Hammersmith-London: Fontana Press. Geertz , C. (1974/1983). “From the native’s point of view”: On the nature of anthropological understanding. In C. Geertz, Local knowledge: Further essays in interpretive anthropology (pp. 55–70). New York: Basic Books,. Gergen, K. (1991). The saturated self: Dilemmas of identity in contemporary life. New York: Basic Books. Gergen, M. (1992). Life stories: Pieces of a dream. In G. Rosenwald & R. Ochberg (Eds.), Storied lives (pp. 127–144). New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Gergen, M. & Gergen, K. (1988). Narrative and the self in relationship. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 21, 17–56. Greenwood, J. D. (1999). Understanding the “cognitive revolution” in psychology. Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 35, 1–22. Grom, B., Hellmeister, G. & Zwingmann, C. (1998). Münchner Motivations psychologisches Religiositäts-Inventar (MMRI). Entwicklung eines neuen Messinstruments für die religionspsychologische Forschung [Munich Motivational-Psychology Religiosity-Inventory (MMRI). Development of a new measurement instrument for research in psychology of religion]. In E. Nestler & C. Henning (Eds.), Religion und Religiosität zwischen Theologie und Psychologie (pp. 181–203). Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Gültekin, N., Inowlocki, L. & Lutz, H. (2003). Quest and query: Interpreting a biographical interview with a Turkish woman laborer in Germany. Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 4 http://www.qualitative-research.net/fqs-texte/3-03/3-03gueltekinetale– htm [11.11.2005] Gullestad, M. (1996) Everyday life philosophers: Modernity, morality, and autobiography in Norway. Oslo: Scandinavian University Press. Habermas, T. & Bluck, S. (2000). Getting a life: The emergence of the life story in adolescence. Psychological Bulletin, 126, 748–769. Harré, R. (1983). Personal being. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Harré, R. (1992). Introduction: The second cognitive revolution. American Behavioral Scientist, 36, 5–7. Harré, R. & Gillett, G. (1994). The discursive mind. Thousand Oaks: Sage. Harré, R. & Langenhove, L. van (1999). Reflexive positioning. In R. Harré & L. van Langenhove (Eds.), Positioning theory (pp. 60–73). Oxford: Blackwell. Heidegger, M. (1920–21/2004). Phenomenology of religious life (trans. Matthias Fritsch & Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei). Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Heider, F. (1958). The psychology of interpersonal relations. New York: Wiley. Hermans, H. J. M. (1996). Voicing the self: From information processing to dialogical interchange. Psychological Bulletin, 119, 31–50. Hermans, H. J. M. (2001). The dialogical self as a subject of mind: Introduction. Theory & Psychology, 12, 147–160. Hermans, H. J. M. & Kempen, H. J. G. (1993) The dialogical self: Meaning as movement. San Diego: Academic Press.

Life stories and philosophies of life 71 Higgins, T. E. (1997). Beyond pleasure and pain. American Psychologist, 52, 1280–1300. James, W. (1890/1950). The principles of psychology. Volume I. New York: Dover Publications. James, W. (1902/1985). The varieties of religious experience: A study in human nature. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Kant, I. (1781[A1]/1787[A2]/1968). Kritik der reinen Vernunft [Critique of pure reason]. Berlin: de Gruyter. (Akademie Textausgabe. Bd. IV und Bd. III.) Kant, I. (1785/1968). Grundlegung der Metaphysik der Sitten [Foundations of the metaphysics of morals]. Berlin: de Gruyter. (Akademie Textausgabe. Bd. IV.) Kant, I. (1788/1968). Kritik der praktischen Vernunft [Critique of Practical Reason]. Berlin: de Gruyter. (Akademie Textausgabe.) Kingwell, M. (1999). Better living: In pursuit of happiness from Plato to Prozac. Toronto: Penguin. Linde, C. (1993). Life stories: The creation of coherence. New York-Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lucius-Hoene, G. & Deppermann, A. (2000). Narrative identity empiricized: A dialogical and positioning approach to autobiographical research interviews. Narrative Inquiry, 10, 199–222. Lucius-Hoene, G. & Deppermann, A. (2004). Rekonstruktion narrativer Identität: Ein Arbeitsbuch zur Analyse narrativer Interviews [Reconstruction of narrative identity: A work-book for the analysis of narrative interviews], 2nd ed. Wiesbaden: Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. Markus, H. & Nurius, P. S. (1986). Possible selves. American Psychologist, 41, 954–969. Mascuch, M. (1997). Origins of the individual self: Autobiography and self-identity in England, 1591–1791. Cambridge: Polity. Matthes, J. (1992). Auf der Suche nach dem “Religiösen” [The quest for the “religious”]. Sociologica Internationalis, 2, 129–142. Mattingly, C. (1998). Healing dramas and clinical plots: The narrative structure of experience. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McAdams, D. P. (1993). The stories we live by: Personal myths and the making of the self. New York: Morrow. McAdams, D. P. (1996). Personality, modernity, and the storied self: A contemporary framework for studying persons. Psychological Inquiry, 7, 295–321. McAdams, D. P. (1997). The case for unity in the (post)modern self: A modest proposal. In R. D. Ashmore & L. Jussim (Eds.), Self and identity: Fundamental issues (pp. 46–78). New York-Oxford: Oxford University Press. McAdams, D. P. (2001). The psychology of life stories. Review of General Psychology, 5, 100–122. McGuire, M. (1997). Religion: The social context (4th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. McKinnon, A. (2002). Sociological definitions, language games, and the “essence” of religion. Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, 14, 61–83. Medin, D. L. & Atran, S. (2004). The native mind: Biological categorization and reasoning in development and across cultures. Psychological Review, 111, 960–983.

72 Ulrike Popp-Baier Metzinger, T. (2003). Being no one: The self-model theory of subjectivity. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Meuter, N. (1995). Narrative Identität: Das Problem der personalen Idenntität im Anschluß an Ernst Tugenhat, Niklas Luhmann und Paul Ricoeur [Narrative identity: The problem of personal identity in keeping with Ernst Tugendhat, Niklas Luhmann and Paul Ricoeur]. Stuttgart: Verlag für Wissenschaft und Forschung. Miller, G. (2003). The cognitive revolution: A historical perspective. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7, 141–144. Miller, M. E. (1996). Ethics and understanding through interrelationship: I and Thou in dialogue. The Narrative Studies of Lives, 4, 129–147. Molden, D. C. & Dweck, C. S. (2006). Finding “meaning” in psychology: A lay theories approach to self-regulation, social perception, and social development. American Psychologist, 61, 192–203. Nussbaum, M. (1986). The fragility of goodness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. O’Donohue, W. & Ferguson, K. E. (2003).The structure of the cognitive revolution: An examination from the philosophy of science. The Behavior Analyst, 26, 85–110. Ogilvie, D. M. (1987). The undesired self: A neglected variable in personality research. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52, 379–385. Pfotenhauer, H. (1987). Literarische Anthropologie: Selbstbiographien und ihre Geschichte – am Leitfaden des Leibes [Literary anthropology: Self-biographies and their history – Guided by the body]. Stuttgart: Metzler. Popp-Baier, U. (1998). Das Heilige im Profanen: Religiöse Orientierungen im Alltag. Eine qualitative Studie zu religiösen Orientierungen von Frauen aus der charismatischevangelikalen Bewegung [The holy in the profane. Religious orientations in everyday life. A qualitative study of religious orientations among women from the charismaticevangelical movement]. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Popp-Baier, U. (2002): Conversion as social construction. A narrative approach to conversion research. In C. A. M. Hermans, G. Immink, A. de Jong & J. M. van der Lans (Eds.), Social constructionism and theology (pp. 41–61). Leiden-Boston-Cologne: Brill. Popp-Baier, U. (2003). Der biographische Ansatz in der Religionspsychologie und seine Beziehung zur abduktiven Korrelation in der Religionspädagogik [The biographical approach in psychology of religion and its relation to the abductive correlation in pedagogy of religion]. In H.-G. Ziebertz, S. Heil & A. Prokopf (Eds.), Abduktive Korrelation: Religionspädagogische Konzeption, Methodologie und Professionalität im interdisziplinären Dialog (pp. 169–184). Münster: LIT. Rawls, J. (2001). Justice as fairness: A restatement. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Ricoeur, P. (1991). Life: A story in search of a narrator. In M. J. Valdés (Ed.), A Ricoeur reader: Reflection and imagination (pp. 425–437). New York: Wheatsheaf. Riemann, G. (2003). A joint project against the backdrop of a research tradition: An introduction to “doing biographical research.” Forum: Qualitative Research, 4 http://www.qualitative-research.net/fqs-texte/3-03/3-03hrsg [13.9.2005] Rogers, C. R. (1951). Client-centered therapy. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin. Rumelhart, D. E. & McClelland, J. L.(1986). Explorations in the microstructure of cognition. Volume 1: Foundations. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Life stories and philosophies of life 73 Sarbin, T. (Ed.) (1986). Narrative psychology: The storied nature of human conduct. New York: Praeger. Schechtman, M. (2005). Self-expression and self-control. In G. Strawson (Ed.), The self ? (pp. 45–62). Malden, MA: Blackwell. Schilbrack, K. (2005). Religion, models of, and reality: Are we through with Geertz? Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 73, 429–452. Schleiermacher, F. (1799/1969). Über die Religion: Rede an die Gebildeten unter den Verächtern [On religion: Speeches to its learned detractors]. Stuttgart: Reclam. Schneider, W. (1987). Connectionism: Is a paradigm shift taking place? Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, and Computers, 19, 73–83. Schütze, F. (1983). Biographieforschung und narratives Interview [Biographical research and narrative interview]. Neue Praxis, 13, 283–292. Seel, M. (1999). Versuch über die Form des Glücks [Essay on the versions of happiness]. Frankfurt a. Main: Suhrkamp. Shore, B. (1995). Culture in mind: Cognition, culture, and the problem of meaning. New York: Oxford University Press. Smith, J. Z. (1998). Religion, religions, religious. In M. Taylor (Ed.), Critical terms for religious studies (pp. 269–284). Chicago: University Press of Chicago. Snell, B. (1975). Die Entdeckung des Geistes: Studien zur Entstehung des europäischen Denkens bei den Griechen [Discovery of the mind: The Greek origins of European thought]. 4., revised edition. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht. Somers, M. R. (1994). The narrative constitution of identity: A relational and network approach. Theory and Society, 23, 605–649. Sperry, R. W. (1993). The impact and promise of the cognitive revolution. American Psychologist, 48, 878–885. Staudinger, U. M. (2001). Life reflection: A social-cognitive analysis of life review. Review of General Psychology, 5, 148–160. Staudinger, U. M. & Greve, W. (1997). Das Selbst im Lebenslauf: Brückenschläge und Perspektivenwechsel zwischen entwicklungs- und sozialpsychologischen Ansätzen [The self in the life course: Bridging and changing perspectives between developmental and social psychology]. Zeitschrift für Sozialpsychologie, 28, 3–18. Straub, J. (1989). Historisch-psychologische Biographieforschung: Theoretische, methodologische und methodische Argumentationen in systematischer Absicht [Historical-psychological biographical research: Theoretical, methodological and methodical argumentations]. Heidelberg: Asanger. Straub, J. (1991). Identitätstheorie im Übergang? Über Identitätsforschung, den Begriff der Identität und die zunehmende Beachtung des Nicht-Identischen in subjekttheoretischen Diskursen [Identity theory in transition? About identity research, the concept of identity and the increasing recognition of the non-identical in subject-theory discourse]. Sozialwissenschaftliche Literatur Rundschau, 14, 49–71. Straub, J. (1998). Personale und kollektive Identität: Zur Analyse eines theoretischen Begriffs [Personal and Collective Identity. About the Analysis of a Theoretical Concept]. In A. Assmann & H. Friese (Eds.), Identitäten (pp. 73–104). Frankfurt a. Main: Suhrkamp. Straub, J. (2000). Identitätstheorie, Identitätsforschung und die postmoderne armchair psychology [Identity theory, identity research and postmodern armchair psychology]. Zeitschrift für Qualitative Bildungs-, Beratungs- und Sozialforschung, 1, 167–194.

74 Ulrike Popp-Baier Strauss, A. L. (1993). Continual permutations of action. New York: Aldine de Gruyter. Sundén, H. (1966). Die Religion und die Rollen. Eine psychologische Untersuchung der Frömmigkeit [Religion and the roles. A psychological investigation of devotion]. Berlin: Töpelmann. Taylor, C. (1989). Sources of the self: The making of the modern identity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Turner, V. (1982). From ritual to theatre: The human seriousness of play. New York: PAJ Publications. Vergote, A. & Lans, J. M. van der (1986). Two opposed viewpoints concerning the object of the psychology of religion: Introductory statements to the plenary debate. In J. A. Belzen & J. M. van der Lans (Eds.), Current issues in the psychology of religion. Proceedings of the Third Symposium on the Psychology of Religion in Europe (pp. 67–81). Amsterdam: Rodopi. Vintges, K. (1996). Philosophy as passion: The thinking of Simone de Beauvoir. Bloomington-Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Wolf, S. (1998). Glück und Sinn: Zwei Aspekte des guten Lebens [Happiness and meaning: Two aspects of the good life]. In H. Steinfath (Ed.), Was ist ein gutes Leben? Philosophische Reflexionen (pp. 167–195). Frankfurt a. Main: Suhrkamp. Wortham, S. (2000). Interactional positioning and narrative self-construction. Narrative Inquiry, 10, 157–184. Wuthnow, R.-R. (1974). Das erinnerte Ich: Europäische Autobiographie und Selbstdarstellung im 18. Jahrhundert [The remembered self: European autobiography and self-representation in the 18th century]. Munich: Beck. Wulff, D. M. (1997). Psychology of religion: Classic and contemporary. (2nd ed.). New York: John Wiley & Sons.

TOWARD A MULTIDIMENSIONAL CONCEPTION OF FAITH DEVELOPMENT DECONVERSION NARRATIVES IN BIOGRAPHICAL CONTEXT Barbara Keller

Introduction – Different (world-)views on (faith-)development What do we mean when we talk about faith development? Some kind of growth of faith? Quantitative or qualitative progress? The unfolding of a structure? Or do we imagine a process involving gains as well as losses and would development then refer to some kind of adaptive balance? By what criteria can we assess development? What makes development happen? All this depends on our understanding of the concepts and the methods implied. Different world views or meta-models suggest different answers. For a placement of models of faith development according to world views I use the metamodels identified by Pepper1 (1942) and the synopsis of their key assumptions presented by Webster (1999). I use Webster’s admittedly pointed characterizations of the organismic and the contextualistic world view and their “root metaphors,” that is, schemata or formula that guide our understanding of the world. Current conceptions of faith development like Fowlers’s “Stages of Faith” (Fowler, 1981), like Rizzuto’s psychodynamic account of the development of the God image (Rizzuto, 1979), and, though less so, Streib’s faith styles perspective (Streib, 2001) have been more or less guided by structuralist conceptions, by stage theories. Thus, they can be described more or less as corresponding to an organismic world view. Outlined 1

The mechanistic view also belongs to the world views discussed by Pepper and Webster: The root metaphor of the mechanistic perspective is the machine. Machines are set in motion by external forces, not by internal or inherent drives. “Change from one time to another is incremental, quantitative, and potentially multidirectional. Applied to biological systems, these assumptions suggest that organisms remain relatively passive until a dynamic context provides pressures which serve to change behavioral states” (Webster, 1999, p. 32). Behavioral approaches and learning theories are derived from this perspective. This perspective has not played a major role in conceptualizing faith development. It seems to be engaged, rather, in the conceptualization of troublesome aspects of faith-related change. A specific type of account of former members of faith communities in high tension with general society and its institutions claiming to have been “brain-washed” stresses the influence of environmental stimuli on passive organisms.

76 Barbara Keller are options offered by a transition from a dominant organismic to a more contextualistic2 view suggested by the life span perspective in developmental psychology and the relational perspective in psychoanalysis – which I regard as promising, among other things, for the understanding of different faith developmental trajectories, of turning points like deconversions, of orientations like religious fundamentalism.

The organismic world view and current models of faith development The root metaphor of the organismic model is the plant. “Organisms have internal, genetic blueprints for growth and these biological instructions dictate the direction, end state, and order of development. (. . .) Environmental conditions serve as a relatively stable and passive background against which inherent biological processes unfold in a sequential, qualitative manner” (Webster, 1999, p. 32). With its emphasis on structured growth toward maturity, this perspective has dominated the traditional conceptualization of development, which means “unfolding,” referring to growing differentiation according to a predetermined sequence of phases or stages and leading to an expectable outcome or advanced final stage.3 Stage theories, e.g. Piaget’s, Kohlberg’s and Erikson’s, are inspired by this world view – and these theories have been incorporated in Fowler’s Stages of Faith (1981), a sequence of stages, loosely related to age. Fowler presented an integration of structural accounts of cognitive and emotional development across the life span toward a theory of faith development, spanning 7 aspects drawn from Piaget (cognitive development), Selman (role taking), Kohlberg (moral reasoning), adding bounds of social awareness, locus of authority, forms of world coherence, and level of symbolic functioning. These seven aspects of faith are assumed to develop across six stages: Intuitive-projective (⬍6 years): The person at this stage is assumed to be unable to distinguish readily between fantasy and reality, or to differentiate between the object and the way it appears to him or her. The world is comprised in part by numinous projections and fantasy, it is magical and unpredictable. There is little ability to take the perspective of the other. During the next stage, mythic-literal (7–12 years), the person is a young empiricist, interested in concrete links between things and events. He/she has become more concrete and realistic and projects him/herself into myths and stories. There is little notion of the interiority of the other. The third, the synthetic-conventional stage (adolescence, 2

As human beings are organisms and, in some respect, susceptible to mechanistic interventions, I argue for the inclusion of a contextual perspective, using the world views as heuristics. 3 The German word “Entwicklung” (unfolding, unwrapping) also implies sequential growth and differentiation.

Toward a multidimensional conception of faith development 77 adulthood) is characterized by concrete others and interpersonal harmony. There is a felt sense of the attitudes and opinions of others, a more abstract valuing of relationship for its own sake. The self is not apt to differentiate itself from the relationships in which it is engaged. Its identity is a derived identity. Individuative-reflective faith, stage 4 (adulthood) is described as autonomous, the self at this stage as distinct and self-conscious entity. Drawing on Erikson, stage 4 faith is characteristically ideological, a time of attempting to work out one’s philosophy of life, of concern with self-definition and boundary maintenance. Stage 5, conjunctive faith is dialogical, there is an increased emphasis on human subjectivity and the need for individual decision-making in the face of an ambiguous reality, an increased awareness of the historical and temporal nature of understanding, while claims of self, family and one’s own group can still exert a powerful influence upon the individual. This is less important for universalizing faith, the last stage 6, which is related to an all-encompassing ideal or vision of the good that is indicative of a sense of relationship to and participation in the whole of our totality of being. It has rarely been identified in practice and is based on a teleological and eschatological extension of the theory. In fact, most adults do not make it beyond stage 3 (synthetic-conventional) or stage 4, (individuative-reflective) (see e.g., the data in Fowler, 1981, p. 320). The analyst Ana María Rizzuto has offered a psychodynamic account of the development of the God representation, mapping the emerging and developing representations on Freud’s phases, Erikson’s stages and the developmental course suggested by current object relations theory, thus also suggesting a common developmental trajectory (Rizzuto, 1979, pp. 206–207). In terms of method both Fowler and Rizzuto have relied on explorations of faith as well as (short) biographical retrospectives on faith development. Streib has taken up their conceptions in the integrative and more flexible framework of the religious styles perspective, which, putting more emphasis on personal biography and allowing for complete or partial regressions, departs from a strictly structural conception and takes context into account (Streib, 2001). What makes the organismic model conducive for conceptions of faith development? We might speculate that in this view the organism is an active agent, development has a direction and a goal, thus there might be an affinity to theological conceptions of destiny or purpose, for the individual life as well as for human existence. Qualitative change from one stage to the next might correspond to or at least be connected with religious transformation and conversion. A historical (or genealogical) explanation of the observed affinity is offered by the argument, that developmental psychology itself has been influenced by ( judeo-christian) theological heritage, stating that there are certain assumptions about the direction and ends of change from infancy to adulthood that are derived from the story of mankind’s history and destiny as told

78 Barbara Keller in the Bible: First, Biblical history is prospectivist. It is infused with the Salvationist assumption that the best is yet to be, that man is destined for a future of moral and material well-being. Second, the Biblical narrative evinces an eschatological orientation. In other words, there is a belief that the historical process necessarily moves toward this ameliorated end. (Kirschner, 1996a, p. 194, see also Kirschner, 1996b)

Kirschner contends that this has been translated and secularized into Enlightenment beliefs and evolution theory – and found its way from there into psychological conceptions of development, including psychoanalytic theories with its specific progression and ends: Individual development traditionally comes in the familiar stages and moves toward genitality, in post-Freudian theories toward individuation. And phylogeny as well as ontogeny are supposed to move into the direction of greater rationality and civilization (Kirschner, 1996a, p. 195). Albeit from a different framework, the relational perspective in psychoanalysis, Stephen A. Mitchell offers a similar view: He sees, embedded in Freuds “hierarchical ordering” of early instinctual phantasy and later and more mature perceptions of reality, a Darwinian metaphor. “Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny; the individual psyche begins with lower life forms (the id) and, mirroring the evolution of species, generates higher life forms (the ego and the superego)” (Mitchell, 2000, p. 18). We find these expectations also in faith development theory and research, be it dominated by cognitive structuralism or by object relations theory.

Challenges to strictly structuralist conceptions of ( faith) development The hierarchical progression, the invariant and irreversible succession of stages of increasing complexity, implied by the organismic view has been criticized from the life span perspective in developmental psychology. The structural models of Piaget and Kohlberg have been revised: Piaget’s claims of qualitative change across domains from one stage to the next have been challenged by more recent observations of domain-specific expertise in children and of continuous change. This, as well as new evidence of even young children’s foundational theories of how the world works and on their naïve psychologies or theories of mind is offered as standard knowledge by current textbooks’ discussion of current evaluations of Piaget’s theory (e.g. Zimbardo & Gerrig, 1999, pp. 470f., Myers, 2004, pp. 152f ). For a summary of criticisms of Kohlberg’s cognitive-developmental paradigm for the study of moral development see Narvaez (2005, pp. 120f ), who, among other points, highlights that Kohlberg underestimated children’s moral capabilities, that his hard stage model is too strict, and that he focuses on only one piece of morality in terms of justice, neglecting thus the morality of care.

Toward a multidimensional conception of faith development 79 The optimistic modern view of individual and historical progress has been debated recently (Streib, 2005, p. 114). The religious styles perspective, emerging from the critical appreciation of structural models of faith development, also stresses that cognition is not the only motor of development. From this perspective it has been noted, that the assumption of a “structural whole” is not supported by empirical examples of persons who function cognitively on a high level e.g. in their professional field, but not so in matters of faith (Streib, 2001). From a feminist perspective the neglect of a moral of care has been noted (Ray & McFadden, 2001). Criticisms from life span developmental perspectives stressing multidimensionality and multidirectionality have also been directed against traditional conceptions of faith development (McFadden, 1999, p. 1083). Some psychological views on theories of faith development go even further, calling them “unnecessarily hierarchical, sequential, and artificial” (Seifert, 2002, p. 63), offering (individual) functionality as criterion of successful faith-development and stressing a contextual view.

The contextual world view The root metaphor of the contextual model is the ongoing historical event. Accordingly development from the life span perspective or contextual metamodel is seen as age-related change in adaptive capacity (Baltes, Lindenberger & Staudinger, 1998). Having no fixed course, “development” means that individuals strive to maximize their adaptive capacities, go through live as good as they can, changing their environmental conditions according to their needs as well as adapting their needs to their environmental conditions. Thus, development is characterized by multidimensionality, multidirectionality, gainloss-dynamic, plasticity, historicity, context-dependency. Multidimensionality and multidirectionality mean that individuals may function on one (cognitive, moral or else) level in one area and on a different level in another area, depending on what they perceive as adaptive at a certain point in time. The gainloss-dynamic refers to the complex interplay of gains, losses, and maintenance, depending on the investments individuals make concerning time and energy, depending on age, and social, cultural and historical context. The turn to a more contextual perspective implies a necessary challenge to traditional models of (faith-)development.4 How can (faith-)development be understood beyond the familiar, uni-directional roadmaps?

4

This implies a relativization of the spiral model used in Fowler’ s conception of faith development – and invites the possibility of different configurations.

80 Barbara Keller Successful development from a contextual perspective Successful development in this view no longer means the attainment of a specified high stage, but rather a functional balance: “. . .when considering the complex and changing nature of the criteria involved in everyday contexts of adaptation (. . .) the capacity to move between levels of knowledge and skills rather than to operate at one specific developmental level of functioning appeared crucial for effective individual development” (Baltes, Lindenberger & Staudinger, 1998, p. 1046). In my view this resonates with “maturity” as conceptualized from the emerging relational perspective in psychoanalysis, which makes use of Hans Loewald’s writing: “Maturity for Loewald is not the customary advanced position along a linear developmental scale; for him, maturity is the capacity to navigate among and bridge different organizational and developmental levels” (Mitchell, 2000, p. 50, quoting Loewald, 1949/1980, p. 20). This involves a different status for and a new appreciation of modes of experience traditionally regarded as being less mature. In (mainstream) analytical reasoning development starts with something illusory and undifferentiated like primary narcissism to be succeeded by something more social and differentiated. Accordingly, faith development is assumed to start with a lower stage, characterized, e.g. by magical thinking, to be followed by greater appreciation of reality and more reflective stages. Mitchell, drawing again on Loewald, states: “It is crucial to grasp that Loewald did not regard the experience of undifferentiation as illusory or less real. It is just as real as the differentiating distinctions essential to living adaptively in conventional reality. These are not just developmental phases; they are coterminous modes of experience” (Mitchell, 2000, p. 19). Regarding maturity Mitchell refers to Loewald (1978/1980, p. 31) who suggested that “The richer a person’s mental life is, the more he experiences on several levels of mentation, the more translation occurs back and forth between unconscious and conscious experience. To make the unconscious conscious is one-sided. It is the transference between them that makes a human life, that makes life human” (Mitchell, 2000, p. 152, endnote 7 to chapter 2).

From a sequence of stages to a hierarchy of modes Mitchell suggests a hierarchy of different modes of interaction according to their complexity, assuming, that the modes acquired early are somewhat less complex than the later acquisitions. Thus, there are three ways in which development can be conceptualized: First – and this corresponds to the organismic view, the different modes of relationality emerge sequentially. Thus, they can be aligned to current models of faith development (see the table below). Second, once established, they operate and continue to develop in dialectical tension with each other throughout the life span (Mitchell, 2000, 58). Third, this leads to different degrees of integration of the different modes. Mitchell

Toward a multidimensional conception of faith development 81 characterizes these modes as follows: Mode 1 refers to nonreflective behaviour, to patterns of reciprocal influence, “to what people do with each other” (p. 58). In Mode 1 others participate in recurrent, often stabilizing, patterns of interaction that are neither symbolized nor reflected upon. Mode 2 is concerned with affective permeability, that is, with direct affect resonances between people, with empathy. “Mode 2 is shared experience of intense affect across permeable boundaries” ( p. 58). In Mode 2, others participate in affective connections. Mode 3 is “experience organized into self-other-configurations” ( p. 58), the self is shaped by different relationships and in relation to different others. In Mode 3, distinct others are symbolized, but play specific functional roles. Mode 4 means intersubjectivity, that is, mutual recognition as subjects; self-reflective intentionality and dependency. In Mode 4 others are organized as distinct subjects (Mitchell, 2000, pp. 58–62).5

Implications for conceptions of faith development Faith development research has relied basically on the organismic perspective. The modes of interaction introduced above share this perspective regarding the sequence of their onset. Therefore, it is possible to align them to the models of faith development discussed here:6 They may, in this context, be thought of as ways of being in relation – including relations to one’s ultimate concerns. On a continuum of models of development that also includes a contextual perspective they can be placed at the most contextual pole. 5

The diagnostic system widely used in clinical and therapeutic settings in Germany, Operationalized Psychodynamic Diagnostic (OPD, Operationalisierte psychodynamische Diagnostik) is based on a synopsis of developmental trajectories of motivations, sorted into four successive components, which can be aligned to Mitchell’s conception: First there are basic needs for self-preservation and regulation. These are followed and complemented by attachment needs. Thirdly, these are followed by needs for selfevaluation and self-esteem, while self-esteem and appreciation of the object complement each other, and the appreciation of the object results from positive experience with objects, that is, relationships. Finally, identity, along with social competence, selfawareness, and self-confidence (Arbeitskreis OPD, 2006, p. 106) starts to develop. With its sophisticated descriptions of pathology, which can be understood as developmental failure, this system might be a useful heuristic for the conceptualization of mature as well as of failed faith development. 6 For this synopsis I have used the stages 2–5 (Fowler) and styles 2–5 (Streib), which are most prevalent in empirical studies covering the life span, omitting the pre-school characterizations of faith of Fowler’s stage 1 (Intuitive-projective faith) as well as the corresponding Subjective religious style from Streib’s model. The egocentricity ascribed to this stage or style is not supported by new infancy research that emphasizes the interaction of self and mutual regulatory processes (e.g. Beebe & Lachman, 2002). I have also omitted stage 6 (Universalizing faith) the highest stage possible in Fowler’s model and rarely achieved in reality.

82 Barbara Keller Organismic

Contextual

Fowler: Rizzuto: Stages of Faith God Representation

Streib: Religious Styles

Mitchell: Modes of Interaction

Mythic-literal Aggrandized parental faith images

Instrumentalreciprocal or “do-ut-des” religious style

Nonreflective behavior: behavioral patterns of interaction, reciprocal influence

Syntheticconventional

Mutual religious style

Affective permeability: direct affect resonances between people

God as a personal partner

Individuative- Emotional distance reflective faith from representations, critical assessment, relatedness and trust in deeper layers of the psyche

Individuative-systemic Self-Otherreligious style configurations: organized co-constructed interactions

Conjunctive faith

Dialogical religious style

Uncertainty about and questioning of God representations, presentiment of presence of trustworthy other, emergence of basic trust

Intersubjectivity: mutual recognition as subjects; selfreflective intentionality and dependency

While there are parallels in terms of the ways of believing they describe, stages, styles, images of God and modes of interaction have a different status within the models they belong to. In Fowler’s and Rizzuto’s conception faith development takes its predictable course through the suggested stages – characterized by qualitative difference and invariant and irreversible succession. Maturity would mean reaching the highest stage possible for a person, given cognitive (Fowler) or psychodynamic (Rizzuto) constraints. In Streib’s view mature faith would also be characterized by achieving the most advanced style, however, while staying grounded in or travelling back to preceding styles according to one’s biographical trajectory. The presence of more than one style is thought possible as is regression to earlier forms (see Streib, 2001). Going further, the conception of maturity introduced above in Mitchell’s model implies a turn toward functionality as criterion and would refer to the growth in adaptivity of one’s integration of all modes as one goes through life. Thus, in terms of

Toward a multidimensional conception of faith development 83 meta-models, Fowler’s and Rizzuto’s stage conceptions can be described as basically organismic, while – at least regarding some of its propositions – Streib’s religious styles perspective and more so Mitchell’s conception can be described as also contextually oriented. How can this help our understanding of faith developmental trajectories? As an example I focus on deconversion as turning point in matters of faith. When does turning away from one’s faith community involve faith development? This depends on the model structuring the evaluation.

Faith development and (de-)conversion With deconversion as research program the focus of the study of change of religious affiliation has shifted from the movement toward a faith community to the movement away (see Streib & Keller, 2004). In James Fowler’s line of faith development research structural conversions involve change to a higher stage, while lateral conversions refer to change of affiliation without change of stage, thus, no faith development. A turn to a lower stage is not to be expected according to this model. Conceptualized as a turn away from a more sophisticated and allegiant (Bromley, 1998) to a less accepted or subversive religious community – thus transferring individual faith development to the social level of groups and group ideology – it would be regarded as extreme or idiosynchratic – or somewhat pathological (Fowler, 2001). Strictly structural conceptions of development, stage conceptions of faith or religious development do not allow regressions nor domain-specific levels of performance. From the religious styles perspective (Streib, 2001), the sequence of stages is more complex and open, the assumption of their homogeneity (“structural whole”) is called into question, while differences of levels are acknowledged. From this perspective, a change of affiliation involving a turn to less refined religious experiences and practices might be understood as revival, partial or complete, of earlier, perhaps more fundamental ways, of being religious. Thus, a move “backward” is possible, while its evaluation in terms of development depends on the specific individual configuration and how this measures in regard to the styles postulated by the model. To psychoanalytic reasoning regression is familiar, its potentially benevolent function is appreciated in the “regression in the service of the Ego,” its function for art and religion acknowledged e.g. by Winnicott’s concept of the “transitional space.” In her psychoanalytic account of the origin of the God representation in the transitional space Rizzuto relies on Winnicott. In Winnicott’s theory as well as in Rizzuto’s adaptation of it in her theoretical and clinical work, the illusional character of this is not to be debated with the child nor the truth of contents of faith with the patient – it has, however, a lower epistemological status (Rizzuto, 1979, pp. 177–180). Mitchell offers a different perspective by appreciating the enduring importance of all his 4 modes of interaction. Drawing again on Loewald’s

84 Barbara Keller writing, Mitchell states that conventional7 reality and conscious cognitive processing and communicating of information is but one way of relating to the world – and one that we construct and develop in interaction with other, traditionally regarded as less advanced, modes (Mitchell, 2000, pp. 19–21). From this view, to assess any deconversion regarding development it would need to be analyzed in terms of the individual’s perspective and in the context of her or his biography in order to decide if it is a step toward development, that is, if it helps a person to function more fully in her life, ideally using all 4 modes specified above.8 Autobiographical narratives offer an apt approach, as they “reveal and define the developmental and affective challenges of adult life” (Singer, 1996, p. 443). These thoughts are illustrated below by examples from the Bielefeld Deconversion Studies9 for each of the stages, styles, and modes.

Stages of faith, faith styles and modes of organization of experiences in deconversion narratives Mythic-literal faith, do ut des-religious style, and nonreflective behavior “Franz,” 58 year old German, has left Jehova’s Witnesses – a group which does not invite critical reflection but rather encourages behaviour according to the word of God, thus regulating relations. Franz has left after 30 years of membership and after having achieved the status of someone who is trusted with tasks of pastoral care. Leaving Jehova’s Witnesses was precipitated by a conflict 7

Note the qualification! This view does also put a caveat on categorizations of religious groups as less developed than others. Rather than lining them up on a developmental continuum, as the organismic view suggests, they might also be seen as focussing on different modes or dimensions of faith while perhaps also covering different ranges of modes. 9 The study was begun in 2002 under the title “Deconverts from Fundamentalist New Religious Groups in the Federal Republic of Germany and the United States of America: Biographical Trajectories, Transformation Processes and the Need for Intervention” and successfully expanded to the “International Studies of Deconversion” (Director: H. Streib, Bielefeld, Germany). Biographical interviews (N) and faith development interviews (FDI) were conducted with more than 100 deconverts, first from new religious and fundamentalist, then with more accommodating and integrated groups, e.g. mainline denominations (about 50% in the United States, 50% in Germany). Sampling followed the rules of maximal contrast and saturation of a typological field of deconversion narratives. For each deconvert interviewed questionnaire data from about ten members and faith development interviews with three members of the respective group were planned. Having met this goal (with some exceptions however), these data amount to N ⫽ 1,148 and are used for qualitative and quantitative analyses in cross-cultural comparison. Here, I use material from the narrative interview on the deconversion experience (N) and the faith development interview (FDI). Numbers refer to the lines of the transcripts. 8

Toward a multidimensional conception of faith development 85 with an elder who visited for an inspection of the parish’s activities and criticized him. Franz’ efforts to clarify his position and to defend himself culminated in his (and also his wife’s) exit. His deconversion seems to have been more an issue of rejection of specific prescriptions (or rather their interpretation by authority) than the application of a new level of reasoning in religious matters, which might indicate an advanced level of development by the standards of the models mentioned. Franz was looking for reliable answers as well as predictable authorities. Born in 1944 to a mother who had lost her other children and whose husband was not to return from the second World War he grew up in post-war West Germany. A recurrent theme in his narrative is that his questions – concerning the War and his father’s involvement, concerning general moral and religious issues where not answered. He joins the witnesses because there he finds solid answers – and leaves when he finds out that here also his questions are turned down and authorities do not live up to his expectations. Franz is very disappointed, not only by the unexpected reaction of the elder, but also by the unwillingness of the organization to respond to his efforts at clarifying his position. His deconversion narrative renders resentment and regrets, he somehow feels cheated by the witnesses and disappointed as he has kept his part, but they have let him down: “I was striving to help people, to solve problems, to go their way according to God’s will” (N 36).10 In terms of Rizzuto’s model his image of God corresponds to a powerful parental (father-)figure, whose commands he has to obey in order to be accepted – Streib describes this as instrumental-reciprocal style. After leaving he continues to take the guidelines for a Christian life literally from the Bible and he is beginning to suspect, that the witnesses do not teach truly what the Bible says. In his faith development interview he states that he would place important decisions on the Bible’s commandments in the first place and then consider if the decision is reasonable and also feasible (FDI 103).11 He also says that human beings should not debate or change these commandments, thus displaying what in Fowler’s terms is mythic-literal faith, according to Hood, Hill, & Williamson (2005) an intratextual understanding of the Bible. Asked how religious conflicts might be resolved, he states that: “you can build your argument only on the Bible. That is, I cannot say I have read this in the Bible and Pope such and such has said something about it in fourteenhundred-something, and then some latin author has, these are only commentators, this is not the fundament which is in the Bible” (FDI 184). From a Fowlerian viewpoint this is a lateral deconversion, Rizzuto and Streib might also see deconversion, but neither change of faith style nor change in his god image. 10 11

Quote from the transcript of the biographical interview, line 36. Quote from the transcript of the Faith Development Interview, line 103.

86 Barbara Keller What does Mitchell’s hierarchy of interactions offer for his understanding? In this view we might – in line with the synopsis presented above – understand his religious search as being mainly concerned with the regulation of interactions, mode 1 – reciprocal influence – and a search for guidance in what to do to elicit the right kind of response. Franz is, at the time of the interview, thinking about others with whom he can get together – not for the sake of enjoying each others’ company, but to follow Jesus’ words. However, he is also affiliated with a support-group of other ex-witnesses, with whom he can share feelings and experiences (mode 2, affective permeability), positioning himself in the group and his experience against theirs (mode 3, self-other configurations), starting to reflect his story which might open up functioning on mode 4, intersubjectivity, eventually. Thus, a comprehensive description makes use of all 4 modes, conceding that mode 4 – intersubjectivity – is, at best, rather rudimentary, which can be traced back to his upbringing: According to his narrative his caretakers were not really mirroring his experiences nor being open about theirs. Using the four modes makes development visible – and this corresponds to Franz’ perspective as displayed in his narrative: He sees himself, after having left the witnesses, as having gained experience and being on a quest again.

Synthetic conventional faith, mutual religious style and affective permeability “Melina” is a 23 year old student from Greece, born into the Greek Orthodox Church. Her family immigrated to Germany when she was four years old. She left the Greek Orthodox church at the age of 21 because she felt emptiness in her tradition and has explored various religious traditions in her search for meaning. Introduced by a friend she joined a protestant non-denominational church – a somewhat less integrated group, living in higher tension with society than the church she left. She gained a new interest to read the Bible and there she found new meaning and access to a personal God: “I really have felt that God is speaking to me, through the Bible. And for the first time I perceived an authority above me. (. . .) Now I’m at the stage where I think, one must not deny one’s personal faith, not of one who has a deep faith, as well. . . .” (N 112) She claims that she can live now according to her idea of relationship and Christian community. She finds meaning in a faith community with clear and definite morals and images. The emphasis on the aspect of community and personal relationship within her new group adds to her ideal of an authentic faith. She has been on missionary trips to Greece because she wants to introduce others to the authentic faith that she has found. In terms of faith development, her interview would be rated Syntheticconventional faith. She relates to God as a personal partner, her religious style could be described as (mainly) mutual.

Toward a multidimensional conception of faith development 87 We may also – drawing on Streib’s Faith Styles Perspective – recognize in her developmental trajectory a revival of – supposedly – earlier layers and, in terms of a linear faith developmental perspective, of less sophisticated and desirable ways of being religious. Asked to describe her image of God she claims to have regained the basic trust she had as a pre-adolescent child. Today, that is, at the time of the interview, she says that, as then she accepts God, accepts Jesus as the one who has died for her. She sees God as a loving, but also strict father. This would be rated as instrumental-reciprocal – and, according to her narrative, as reaching back to an earlier way of believing – a partial regression? However, finding what she claims to have missed, may support her future development. This implies that faith development can proceed other than linear. In Melina’s narrative we can trace a search for a personal relationship with God to her family background and the often absent father, whom she missed, thus demonstrating the potential of another proposition of the religious styles perspective, the inclusion of life history. From a relational perspective we can support and elaborate this argument: reliable interaction may still be an issue, and Melina might use support in the development of mode 1. We might also welcome her decision, at this point in her life, to invest into a mode or dimension of relating to others which she has been missing so far (mode 2). She can position herself vis a vis others (mode 3). She sees her involvement with her current faith and her community as progress, and the deepening of her faith as development. It is difficult for her to appreciate different subjectivities in terms of different ways of believing (mode 4).

Individuative-reflective faith, individuative-systemic style and self-otherconfigurations “Tom” from the American Sample is 57 years old at the time of the interview and has deconverted from Jehova’s Witnesses after 32 years of membership. The biographical narrative which Tom presents shows him looking for structure and emotional embeddedness. Tom grew up with a mother whom he describes as “emotionally in bad condition.” She not only frequently changed partners, moved to different places and countries, but finally withdrew herself into a state which Tom describes as “totally numb” (N 16–18). Tom understands this as her survival strategy. It can be assumed that Tom was missing a caring mother and that he has a hidden, but unsatisfied desire for a father and for stable structures. He tells that his goal as a young person was happiness, but also an intellectual, even educational project: to study and find the right principles for human conduct in order to teach them. This intellectual approach toward the challenges of life has colored his conversion as well as his deconversion. He describes his openness to study the Bible with Jehova’s Witnesses and his conversion as overcoming his unfair atheist prejudice against Jehova’s Witnesses Bible reading. Precipitating his deconversion, Tom reports a change

88 Barbara Keller of emphasis from an intellectual to an experiential dimension of faith, combining his search for emotional embeddedness with intellectual scrutiny: His autonomous Bible study lead to critique and, finally, to disaffiliation. More than 30 years of membership of this church shrink retrospectively to a “transitional stage” (N 122). Tom does not report any harsh feelings toward the witnesses. It seems that he left without regrets when it became apparent that his views and his needs had changed when he looked for less “left-brained” ways of being religious. While he still concedes that the witnesses gave him opportunities of bible study and “structure,” he seems to have found that his story was taking a turn that could not be reconciled with their grand narrative. Stage 4 reflection (individuative-reflective according to Fowler), in which Tom was persistent, eventually lead him out of his community. His reliance on scripture which is fundamentalist or intratextual, in Ralph Hood’s terms (Hood, Hill & Williamson, 2005), keeps his seeking, his reflections and explorations strictly within the Christian realm. His narrative is thus difficult to rate in terms of Fowler’s model. Rizzuto might find him developing relatedness and trust, while questioning long accepted and shared representations. From the faith styles perspective we might assume heterodyning – the joint presence of stage 2 and stage 4 as Streib has discussed recently (Streib, 2006). From a relational perspective heterodyning might be constructed as the joint and dominant presence of mode 1 (nonreflective behavior, reciprocal influence) and 3 (self-other configurations) – indicating, according to his narrative, longstanding concern with these particular modes and challenges toward integration with the other modes of interaction. Thus, reliability in interactions might still be an issue for Tom, as well as relationships. In his faith development interview, he describes his relationship with God as major concern, when asked what he would like to change about himself: “That’s an ongoing process. Uhm. . . the measure of intimacy that I have with God. That relationship. . .,” and, when probed further: “Are there any beliefs, values, or commitments that seem important to your life right now?,” he responds: “Yep. Doing all of the growing in power and in wisdom and faith that is necessary to accomplish this” (F 202–206), displaying his outlook on his faith development. That he is looking for intimacy may refer to mode 2, the shared affective experience, which has not played a major role in his life so far, and further, to intersubjectivity – a mode, according to his narrative not cultivated by his early caretakers as his needs and his personality seem to have been of little importance to them.

Conjunctive faith, dialogical religious style and intersubjectivity The mutual recognition as subjects, self-reflective intentionality and dependency is, in Mitchell’s hierarchy the most complex mode. The corresponding high stages or advanced styles of faith and God representations are rarely found in empirical

Toward a multidimensional conception of faith development 89 research. However, “Pia”s’ narrative seemed to display some of the features involved, therefore her story can be used to illustrate this stage/style/mode. “Pia” is a 44-year-old German woman who at age 41 has deconverted from a new religious Hinduist guru group she had been affiliated with for twenty years. Pia reports having reacted to her difficult family situation with depression when she was an adolescent. Her mother had developed a psychosis when Pia was two or three years old, was hospitalized in psychiatric care, and finally has committed suicide when Pia was thirteen years old. The Guru and the group provided, at least in part and for some time, what she had missed in her traumatized childhood and adolescence: a holding and caring social environment. That sexuality was banned was, in the beginning, a relief to her and had a protective function. This changed, however, as Pia gained more stability. The official repression of sexuality and relationships, the hidden relationships Pia had later and the indiscretion about them finally brought about Pia’s conflict with the guru. First she found herself removed from the inner circle and in the end was excluded from the group. On the peak of the conflict, Pia heavily reacted with depression, alcohol abuse, suicidal tendencies and somatic symptoms. She had to be hospitalized and received professional therapeutic support. Also, the support of other ex-members helped her to rely on her critical reflection, finally overcome her ambivalent attraction to the guru and disaffiliate from the group. Her story is one of lost years in a group which she is relieved to have left. At the same time she presents herself as a religious or spiritual seeker who always was striving for and achieving greater self-efficacy. Her niveau of faith development embraces the Individuative-reflective and the Conjunctive style, and might be read as transition from a Fowlerian perspective. In terms of faith styles it can be understood as heterodyning – the presence of characteristics of more than one style, in this case, the individuative-systemic and the dialogical faith style (Streib). While she is critical of specific prescribed God representations, she is interested in “spiritual” experience, trusting that there is something perhaps not completely accessible to human understanding. Her narrative demonstrates a mature and integrated use of all four modes of relating, when she reflects on her feelings, admitting “the anger and this hatred against the guru (laughing). Well, I could have killed him just like that, yes, and his people with him (laughing), ah, this is a typical development, this, suddenly when they see what has happened or what they themselves have done, they get angry at themselves and of course, at best at the guru. Let’s kill him off!” She shows awareness of her impulses to act and react (mode 1), is in touch with her feelings (mode 2), can place herself in relation to others (mode 3) – and reflect on others as subjects in their own right (mode 4). These cases illustrate the differently complex modes of interaction, first aligned to stages of faith development as they are assumed to emerge sequentially and hierarchically ordered in complexity. But other than stages these modes are sequentially appearing dimensions which continue to develop across

90 Barbara Keller the life span – in interaction with each other and in the context of a person’s life. Faith development understood from this perspective is not confined to reaching a next stage. Rather, it means the optimization of adaptivity of the configuration of all modes once they are all available.

Taking it further – Contextualistic perspectives on faith development, deconversion, and fundamentalism Deconversion is about change. When is it also about development? The different models of faith development have suggested different answers. The inclusion of a more context-oriented perspective offers a framework for a more differentiated description of inter- and intraindividual variety, of subjective gains and losses. That means that each mode deserves attention when trying to understand religious and/spiritual change. Faith development can be conceptualized in a multi-dimensional and multidirectional way: For different persons cultivating different modes or dimensions may be a developmental step, depending on what is adaptive for them in a given context. Thus, to use these modes for the interpretation of individual accounts of their deconversion makes development visible as it is rendered in persons’ perspectives. Also, it is possible to appreciate mature versions of early aquired basic modes of relating, thus making a distinction between adults’ and childrens’ ways of using these modes. This is not only crucial for the study of faith development across the life span. With the implied rehabilitation of more basic and less complex modes cognitivist bias and bias in favour of individualism and independence can be overcome. Earlier and more “basic” modes of interaction are not regarded as something to be discarded but appreciated as dimensions of relating to matters religious in this perspective. We might thus gain a better understanding of the supposedly less complex ways of believing easily lumped together with violent activities under the label “fundamentalist.” For an illustration for a mature mode 1 in matters of faith we might imagine Bonhoeffer waiting for his death in prison and writing his powerful poem on the benevolent powers holding us. Rather than as temporary regression to some early form of experience from which we trust that he would find back to adult cognitive functioning we might see this as an adaptive use of a basic mode of experience, of its mature version, refined in its own right and by its continued interaction with the other modes.12 12

Perhaps the different modes also come into play in the way sacred texts are read and used: Mode 1 reading may involve search for basic reassurance, mode 2 search for relationship with God, sharing one’s experience directly with a community, mode 3 include positioning one’s own faith against others, and mode 4 to looking for dialogue – which might imply to draw on additional literature to add additional perspectives to the discourse one is striving to enter. Reading sacred texts intratextually might be related to basic needs to relate to something reliable in an often unpredictable world. This must not lead to violence, but might foreclose openness.

Toward a multidimensional conception of faith development 91 Remaining tensions, remaining questions The organismic model offers a roadmap and an endpoint of development, thus criteria for evaluation – which is perfectly adequate for biologically based human abilities, e.g. the fluid component of intelligence. For a complex construct referring to complex experience like faith development a more contextual perspective and a broader conceptualization is called for. Development then has to take three processes into account: the successive appearance of different modes of relating, their change across time, and their integration. What about a definition of mature faith? The contextual world view suggests adaptivity. Can adaptivity be a sufficient criterion? What about transcending the possibly shortlived subjective functionality in given contexts? From life span developmental research on wisdom a new quasi-evolutionary conceptualization of an ever-emerging adaptive alignment of phylogenesis and ontogenesis has been proposed, based on “primary virtues.” “Primary virtues” are described as “cognitive and motivational dispositions that in themselves designate not only adaptive fitness for individuals’ achievements but also the idea of convergence of individual goal achievement with becoming a good person from a communal and social-ethical point of view” (Baltes, Glück, & Kunzmann, 2002, p. 328). However, that tension between individual and social strivings can also be expected is an important lesson from the sociology of religion: In Kaufmann’s list13 of functions of religion (Kaufmann, 1989), we find, among others, the distanceation from the established social state of affairs – leading to resistance and protest – in other words, tension with the mainstream of society, rendering any assumption of an easily identifiable harmony of social and individual adaptivity less than convincing. Clearly, not only disciplined interdisciplinary reflection is called for, but also differentiated empirical research on the development of dimensions of faith and meaning making throughout the life span and in different contexts. Mitchell’s analytical approach, based on Loewald’s insights, offers an integrative perspective, inviting the appreciation of different voices in faith developmental discourse.

References Arbeitskreis OPD (Ed.) (2006). Operationalisierte Psychodynamische Diagnostik OPD-2. Das Manual für diagnostik und Therapieplanung. Bern: Huber.

13

The list consists of six problem zones in which religion has a stake and plays an active role: Binding of affect and coping with anxiety, conduct in the non-everyday realm in form of ritual and moral praxis, processing of contingencies, legitimation of community building and social integration, cosmization of the world or the construction of frames of meaning, distanceation from the established social state of affairs (Kaufmann, 1989).

92 Barbara Keller Baltes, P. B., Glück, J. & Kunzmann, U. (2002). Wisdom: Its structure and function in regulating successful life span development. In C. R. Snyder & S. J. Lopez (Eds.), Handbook of positive psychology (pp. 327–347). New York: Oxford University Press. Baltes, P. B., Lindenberger, U. & Staudinger, U. M. (1998). Life-span-theory in developmental psychology. In R. M. Lerner (Ed.), Handbook of child psychology, Vol.!: Theoretical models of human development (pp. 1029–1143). New York: Wiley. Beebe, B. & Lachmann, F. M. (2002), Infant research and adult treatment: Co-constructing interactions. Hillsdale, NJ: Analytic Press. Bromley, D. G. (1998). Linking social structure and the exit process in religions organizations: Defectors, whistle-blowers, and apostates. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 37, 145–160. Fowler, J. W. (1981). Stages of faith: The psychology of human development and the quest for meaning. San Francisco: Harper & Row. Fowler, J. W. (2001). Faith, development theory and the postmodern challenges. International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 11, 159–172. Hood, R. W., Hill, P. C. & Williamson, W. P. (2005). The psychology of religious fundamentalism. New York: The Guilford Press. Kaufmann, F.-X. (1989). Religion und Modernität. Tübingen: J.C.B.Mohr. Keller, E. F. (1985). Reflections on gender and science. New Haven: Yale University Press. Kirschner, S. R. (1996a). Sources of redemption in psychoanalytic developmental psychology. In C. F. Graumann & K. J. Gergen (Eds.), Historical dimensions of psychological discourse (pp. 193–203). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kirschner, S. R. (1996b). The religious and romantic origins of psychoanalysis: Individuation and integration in post-Freudian theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Loewald, H. (1949/1980). The Ego and reality. In Papers on Psychoanalysis. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Loewald, H. (1978/1980). Psychoanalysis and the history of the individual. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. McFadden, S. H. (1999). Religion, personality, and aging: A life span perspective. Journal of Personality, 67, 1081–1104. Mitchell, S. A. (2000). Relationality: From attachment to intersubjectivity. Hillsdale, NJ-London: The Analytic Press. Myers, D. G. (2004) Psychologie. Heidelberg: Springer. Narvaez, D. (2005). The neo-Kohlbergian tradition and beyond: Schemas, expertise, and character. In G. Carlo & C. P. Edwards (Eds.), Moral motivation through the life span (pp. 119–163). Lincoln-London: University of Nebraska Press. Pepper, S. C. (1942). World hypotheses. Berkeley: University of California Press. Ray, R. E. & McFadden, S. H. (2001). The web and the quilt: Alternatives to the heroic journey toward spiritual development. Journal of Adult Development, 8, 201–211. Rizzuto, A. M. (1979). The birth of the living god. A psychoanalytic study. Chicago, London: University of Chicago Press. Seifert, L. S. (2002). Toward a psychology of religion, spirituality, meaning-search, and aging: Past research and a practical application. Journal of Adult Development, 9, 61–70.

Toward a multidimensional conception of faith development 93 Singer, J. A. (1996). The story of life: A process perspective on narrative and emotion on adult development. In C. Magai & S. McFadden (Eds.), Handbook of emotion, adult development, and aging (pp. 443–463). San Diego: Academic Press. Streib, H. (2001). Faith development theory revisited: The religious styles perspective. International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 11, 143–158. Streib, H. (2005). Faith development research revisited: Accounting for diversity in structure, content, and narrativity of faith. International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 15, 99–121. Streib, H. (2006). Faith development: A way beyond fundamentalism. In C. Timmerman, D. Hutsebaut, W. van Herck & W. Nonneman (Eds.), Faith-based radicalism: Christianity, Islam and Judaism between constructive activism and destructive fanaticism (pp. in press). Peter Lang. Streib, H. & Keller, B. (2004). The variety of deconversion experiences: Contours of a concept in respect to empirical research. Archiv für Religionspsychologie, 26, 181–200. Webster. J. D. (1999). World views and narrative gerontology: Situating reminiscence behaviour within a life span perspective. Journal of Aging Studies, 13 (1), 29–42. Zimbardo, P. G. & Gerrig, R. J. (1999). Psychologie. Heidelberg: Springer.

THE NIGHT IS THE MOTHER OF DAY METHODOLOGICAL COMMENTS ON THREE CASES OF RELIGIOUS VISIONS AS SUICIDE PREVENTION Antoon Geels During my thirty years in the academic field I have always been interested in biographical studies. The focus has been on significant experiences in the individual’s life, so-called turning points, peak experiences or other decisive and unforgettable moments. Was there a crisis of some kind? And, if this is the case, how did the person in question cope with this low point in his or her life? I learned that there appears to be a relation between life crisis and intensive religious experience, especially visionary and/or auditive impressions. In this paper I will present three short case studies of persons coming from different cultures and living in different times. The common denominator is that they all were on the verge of committing suicide. Only seconds prior to the selfdestructive act they were all saved by an all-absorbing vision, when time seemed to stand still. The main question I wish to answer is whether these visions can be regarded as similar at a process level, psychologically speaking. Persons and products usually do differ, while processes might be similar. Before presenting the three case studies I would like to give you some background to my earlier studies of religious lives. The chapter will be finished with a comment on some simple methodological principles I have learnt from them.

Earlier biographical studies After my dissertation about the Swedish mystic Hjalmar Ekström (1885–1962) I became anxious to differentiate between what I would call the reconstruction of his life and the psychological interpretation of it. There are, of course, no sharp dividing lines. I am well aware of the fact that every reconstruction is already a kind of interpretation. However, for my dissertation I decided that the task should be to present Ekström’s life in such a way that his two daughters, his siblings, as well as his friends would recognise him. Biographical reconstruction can be compared to the work of publishing critical editions of religious texts, done by philologically trained scholars. Critical editions have a lasting value. What would an historian of religion do without having access to texts? In a similar way we could ask: What would a psychologist of religion do without a proper life story?

96 Antoon Geels The data on which the reconstruction of Ekström’s life was based consisted of different kinds. Following in his footsteps, so to speak, I searched for archival data in all places where he lived and worked. In addition I searched for personal documents, primarily letters, by contacting friends and acquaintances who were still living, or their relatives. Ekström turned out to be a prolific letter writer. I was fortunate to be able to work with no less than about five thousand letter pages of his hand. When writing the thesis I tried to integrate all data available and to reconstruct the childhood, adolescence, and adult life of a person who has been characterised as a “wash proof Lutheran mystic.” Which turning points can we unveil in his life? His earliest spiritual experience was at the age of four, at night in bed. Hjalmar mentioned a being of light, slowly approaching him. He stretched out his arm toward this being and obtained a numb spot on his thumb, reminding him of this event for the rest of his life. Slightly more than a decade later the young Ekström had another important spiritual experience, at Christmas time 1901. It was then that: God’s radiance suddenly broke through and revealed to me that I was in a totally new and previously merely imagined kind of existence (. . .) when God’s kingdom sprouted forth and flowered right through stone and timber; everything came alive, yes, full of life, and everything and all came to me as messengers (angels) from the transcendental. (. . .) And I rejoiced with fear. (Geels, 1980, p. 55, 262)

In the spring of 1916, after eight years of disharmony, Ekström had his most decisive experience, later defined as “mystical death.” The visionary and auditive aspects of this experience are clearly described in a secondary text, written down by a younger friend following Ekström’s own account: He went wandering in the woods alone. The path led up to a hill. Then it was as if God’s eternal love and God’s eternal wrath had met in one place, like a ball of lightning, “which flamed down and to the sides like a cross, filling all the heavens and the whole earth, consuming everything.” At the same time, he heard a voice which said: “Hereafter the path becomes pathless.” And he was cast into nothingness. Heaven was empty and the earth was empty and Hell as well. At first he hardly knew whether he saw or heard even with his outer senses. He dimly recalled that it was as if the Day of Judgment had arrived. But he came to his senses again and continued on his way, tremulously. It was as if the sun had stopped shining forever. During a period of ten days the darkness was deepest, or more correctly, he suffered the most, for the darkness was equally deep later on. (. . .) Gradually a new life began to move in him, something completely new. He also developed a completely new relationship to people. (Geels, 1980, pp. 157f, 247, note 18, 273f )

Sixteen years after my dissertation I decided to publish it as a biography, the dramatic story, without any psychological interpretative theory. After all,

The night is the mother of day 97 several volumes of his letters still found their way to readers.1 And they, I guessed, wanted to know about Ekström’s life history. The above mentioned spiritual experiences are fragments of a biographical reconstruction covering several hundred of pages. My next example of earlier studies in this genre is a limited case study of a Swedish contemporary artist. Her name is Violet Tengberg (b. 1920). I focused on twelve years in her life, years during which she had numerous visions. My main question concerned the relation between these experiences and her artistic creation. Critics had observed a mystical dimension in her symbolic expression, but they could not point at any specific subjective influence. I contacted the artist and she agreed to cooperate with me. During a period of about six years she supplied me with all kind of data: her correspondence, notes, diaries, as well as her personal archives containing reviews of exhibitions, articles about her, and so on. In a first, purely descriptive part, I alternated between describing the artist’s “outer” and “inner” world, i.e. a world possible to study for anybody who bothers to dig up published data, and her inner world of reflections, associations, and intense religious experiences. During the twelve years of her life that were carefully studied (1965–1976) she struggled with intense problem of meaning, both with artistic creation and life in general. “Life,” she wrote in a letter to a well-known literary historian, “is meaningless if it doesn’t aim at something higher and bigger than that which man can bring about. If this didn’t exist, than everything would be as a soap-bubble, which easily can be punctured, and life would be one great roar of laughter” (Geels, 1989, pp. 61, 287). The most important of her religious visionary and auditive experiences happened to her in Paris. In one of her visions she saw two small crosses unite together. Out of them grew a taller cross, uniting with her. She heard the words “riveted to the cross.” This vision and a number of other religious visions completely changed Violet Tengberg’s world. She started to compose poems in great number, a result of a sort of automatic writing. Her life and artistic work was suddenly imbued with meaning. But at the same time she felt a great need to integrate the visionary experience in an all-embracing world-view. One of the consequences of her intense religious experiences was that Violet Tengberg felt the urge to reveal glimpses of Divine Reality through the medium of her brush and pencil. After this study I knew more about religious visions. The time was ripe to search for a new theoretical perspective on religious visions, an area in great need of renewal. I conducted a more comprehensive nomothetic study of about a hundred persons having visions in contemporary Sweden. Thirty five cases were described on six to eight pages, integrating data from letters, interviews 1

The two volumes are Den fördolda verkstaden (The Hidden Workshop), first published in 1963, the 7th edition is from 2003; and Den stilla kammaren (The Quiet Chamber), first published 1988, the latest edition is from 2006.

98 Antoon Geels and questionnaires. The comparative analysis also showed that the most striking common denominator of the visionaries was a life-crisis, not primarily during childhood, but shortly prior to the religious vision. My earlier empirical studies of contemporary religious visions resulted in a new theory as to the psychological conditions of such experiences. This theory was then applied to historical cases, including Hjalmar Ekström (Geels, 2003). There is no room for a full presentation of the theory in question. The reader is referred to an earlier study (Geels, 1991). The theory is based on psychoanalytic theorizing and object-relations theory. One important aspect is related to a synthetic function, which is an “organ for equilibrium,” striving for balance in a constantly shifting psyche. This synthetic function, as it is called, “assimilates alien elements (both from within and from without), and it mediates between opposing elements and even reconciles opposites and sets mental productivity in train” (Nunberg, 1961, p. 122). The most important synthetic functions, according to Nunberg, can be summarized with the following concepts: assimilation, simplification, generalization, unification. Nunberg emphasizes, however, that the synthetic function can use whatever psychic process in order to achieve its goal: equilibrium, order, balance (Nunberg, 1961, p. 125). Even “hierarchies of values” can have a synthetic function. In this context Hartmann points at the psychological importance of religion as an integrating factor (Hartmann, 1958, pp. 75ff). One way of creating homeostasis is the activation of so-called “autosymbolic representations of intrapsychic conflicts” (Leuner, 1977 and 1978). According to Leuner, this psychological process is often activated in situations of extreme emotional stress. From a psychoanalytical perspective it belongs to the category of primary process activity, characterized for instance of a free flow of imagery and thoughts (Leuner, 1977, p. 74f.). My earlier studies convinced me that a religious vision can have a double function: it shapes the crisis – and solves it. It is striking that the content of the reported visions fit so well into the life situations of the informer. The religious visions immediately establish order in chaos. In other words, religious visions, or object representations like Jesus, Muhammad, the Goddess Kali, or Angels are symbolic representations of order, as against chaos. I will now use this theoretical model in order to comment upon three cases of planned but not realized suicide. In all cases the religious visions functioned as a preventive. We will first acquaint ourselves with the three cases and then apply the theoretical model.

Vision of the Divine Mother There are probably a number of reasons why the Hindu mystic Ramakrishna (1836–1886) has attracted the attention of Western (and Eastern) scholars. One reason is that Ramakrishna had a striking personality, sometimes leading to an odd behaviour, a kind of divine madness. Another reason is that his religiosity,

The night is the mother of day 99 although deeply rooted in the Hindu tradition, included a great interest in other religious traditions. A third reason is that the Ramakrishna Mission has spread the message of its master and his most important pupil Vivekananda throughout the world. Its message appealed to well-known Western authors such as Aldous Huxley and Christopher Isherwood. The French writer Romain Rolland wrote a biography of the saint, as did the German scholar Max Müller. Shorter and more extensive psychological studies of Ramakrishna include pioneers as J.B. Pratt (1920), H. Sundén (1966), and contemporary scholars such as D. Wulff (1997), S. Kakar (1991), N.P. Sil (1991), and J.J. Kripal (1998). My biographical outline of Ramakrishna’s life will naturally be focused on his most decisive experience – the vision of the Divine Mother. However, we do need a minimum of biographical background. Ramakrishna was born in 1836 in a West Bengal village named Kamarpukur. His father Kshudiram Catterjee was a devout Vaishnava Brahmin, who chose the name Gadadhar for his newborn, one of the names of Vishnu. This was his way to show respect to Vishnu, who appeared to him in a dream in 1835. Gadadhara translates as “to carry a mace,” an attribute of Vishnu representing the power of knowledge. The mace has also been identified with the Divine Mother Kali, as this line from the Krishna Upanishad illustrates: “The mace is Kali, the power of time. It destroys all that opposes it” (quoted in Daniélou, 1964, p. 157). When Gadadhara’s father died in 1843 his mother became the central figure in his life. Ramakrishnas “paternal loss” was compensated by a “maternal gain.”2 He assisted her in all kinds of daily tasks, including puja directed to the divinities of their home. When Ramakrishna entered his teens he exhibited great talents to identify with different mythical and living figures. One example is his identification with a gopi, a cow herding girl and her longing for Krishna. He also has been seen singing and dancing as a sadhu, rubbing his body with ashes. Biographers emphasize his artistic talent, his sensitivity, and strong empathic ability. Considering all these characteristics, it is perhaps not surprising that he at a very early age, 10–11 years old, had his first vision of “a line of milk-white cranes flying across dark-blue clouds in the sky.” It was a beautiful sight, leading to the extinction of external consciousness (Choudhary, 1981, p. 87; Neevel, 1976, p. 69). While tradition has it that Ramakrishnas ecstatic experiences were related to the death of his father, his mother regarded them as signs of serious illness (Kripal, 1998, p. 58). From now on visionary experiences appear to have been a commonplace in the life of Ramakrishna. The above mentioned talents, I think, strongly contributed to their genesis. In addition, the young Ramakrishna is likely to have been a person with a strong allocentric kind of perception, an ability to be

2

This is how Jensen puts it, quoted in Kripal, 1998, p. 57.

100 Antoon Geels absorbed by the event at hand (Schachtel, 1959/2001). It also seems reasonable to assume that he was an eidetic. After twelve years at school, between the age of five and seventeen, the young Ramakrishna moved to Calcutta, where he assisted his older brother Ramkumar, who was a house-priest to a number of Brahmin families. Three years later, in 1855, Ramakrishna joined his brother to a newly built large temple in Dakshineshvar, along the Ganges River, close to Calcutta. The temple was devoted to Kali and Ramkumar was appointed as high priest. The temple also created room for devotion to Radha and Krishna, with the aim to attract attention from Vaishnavas. Only a year later Ramakrishnas beloved brother died. If the death of his father was a first severe parental loss, then the move to Calcutta can be understood as a second loss – of his mother’s presence – and the decease of his brother can be seen as a third loss. After all, the considerably older Ramkumar was like a father to the young Gadadar. This third loss, Kripal comments, was soon to be compensated by a more drastic gain – a vision of the Divine Mother. Ramakrishna now became high priest in the Temple. According to Neevel, this is the time when Ramakrishna’s spiritual discipline, his sadhana, started. From now on he felt a strong longing after a vision of Kali, the divine mother. “Mother,” Ramakrishna exclaimed, “you showed yourself to Ramprasad [a famous Bengali singer of devotional songs, living in the 18th century in West Bengal] and other devotees in the past. Why won’t you show yourself tome? Why won’t you grant my prayer? I have been praying to you so long!” Ramakrishna’s behaviour in the temple became increasingly bizarre. Visitors regarded him as insane. During a ritual he could suddenly stop and stare for hours. Ramakrishna’s longing for a vision of Kali eventually came to a point of utter despair. One day, when he saw the huge sacrificial sword in the temple, he decided to use it to take his life. When the outer world disappeared, his inner world became all the more alive. Then it happened: [S]uddenly I had the wonderful vision of the Mother and fell down unconscious – in my heart of hearts, there was a current of intense bliss, never experienced before, and I had the immediate knowledge of the light that was Mother – a boundless infinite conscious sea of light – a continuous succession of effulgent waves. (quoted in Neevel, 1976, p. 72)

There are other biographical texts referring to the same event. One of the most often quoted life stories is the one compiled by Nikhilananda. The element of light is not emphasized as much as in the quote above: Suddenly the blessed Mother revealed Herself. The buildings with their different parts, the temple, and everything else vanished from my sight, leaving no trace whatsoever, and in their stead I saw a limitless, infinite, effulgent Ocean of Consciousness. As far as the eye could see, the shining billows were madly rushing at me from all sides with

The night is the mother of day 101 a terrific noise, to swallow me up! I was panting for breath. I was caught in the rush and collapsed, unconscious. What was happening in the outside world I did not know; but within me there was a steady flow of undiluted bliss, altogether new, and I felt the presence of the Divine Mother. (Nikhilananda, 1942/1984, p. 14; italics mine)

Let’s pause for a while and reflect on this decisive visionary experience. Before we start interpreting the psychological meaning of this vision we need to reach a reasonable understanding of it. Did Ramakrishna really see the Mother? This question has been debated. When he returned to his ordinary consciousness he is supposes to have murmured “Mother, Mother.” But as far as I can see Ramakrishna, in the first quote, is referring to a vision of light, or rather a “sea of light,” momentarily interpreted as an experience of the Divine Mother. The perceptual quality of the experience is obvious; the second text includes sound. But what did he see? The element of light is not as obvious in the latter quote, although the text mentions “the shining bullows,” probably equivalent to the expressions “sea of light” and “effulgent waves” in the second text. In yet another biography, “The Life of Shri Ramakrishna Compiled from Various Authentic Sources” from 1925 the text uses similar words: “a limitless, infinite, effulgent ocean of Consciousness or Spirit” (quoted in Choudhary, 1981, p. 90). The most reasonable conclusion is that Ramakrishna had a visual and auditive experience of the ocean’s “shining billows,” the ocean as light and, psychologically speaking, the ocean as a visual metaphor for cosmic consciousness. The question whether a vision of light can be regarded as a vision of the Divine Mother can thus be answered in the following way: Kali can choose to reveal herself as light. Light is a manifestation of the Mother as Pure Consciousness. This view can be supported by a short quote from “The Gospel of Shri Ramakrishna,” where Ramakrishna describes a few characteristics of what is called the God-vision. “One sees light, feels joy, and experiences the upsurge of a great current in one’s chest, like the bursting of a rocket” (p. 161). In another cultural context it would be highly unlikely that a female deity can reveal herself as “shining billows.” I am thinking of apparitions of the Virgin Mary, so common in catholic countries. However, among more philosophically inclined Christian mystics it is rather common that references to light or other abstract categories as peace and quiet are interpreted in terms of Divine Grace or otherwise. The wording then is like “what is this light, if it be not. . .” etc.3 In a Hindu context the concept of light as a metaphor for consciousness is a commonplace. Consciousness illuminates itself and everything in the universe. The Upanishads, as an early example of Hindu religious literature, are replete with statements in this direction. In the Maitri Upanishad the Absolute or Brahman is actually described as “the ocean of light” (see Indich, 1980, pp. 37ff). 3

Seuse, Tauler, Ruusbroec, John of the Cross. See Laurentin (1980).

102 Antoon Geels After this overwhelming and suicide-preventing experience of the Divine Mother, Ramakrishna, like many other mystics, suffered from divine absence. And like other mystics he felt a need of confirmation that his vision really was a revelation of the Mother. He now entered a long period of spiritual experimentation, a time of “divine madness.” One example of this madness is his identification with the ape-God Hanuman. Ramakrishna behaved like an ape, climbing in trees and attaching a tale to his backside. He neglected his body and his friends thought it good for him to spend some time in his native village. There he married a five year old girl, Sharadami Devi, in 1859, who remained with her family. The next year Ramakrishna returned to Dakshineshvar, where he met a female ascetic, well trained in tantric discipline. This lady, called Bhairavi Brahmani, regarded Ramakrishna as an avatara. She trained Ramakrishna in tantric spiritual disciplines for six years. According to Neevel, the tantric training prevented Ramakrishna from turning into a self-destructive lunatic. Instead he became a relatively self-controlled although eccentric and ecstatic teacher (Neevel, 1976, p. 78). After his tantric period Ramakrishna met yet another teacher. His name is Totapuri, who represented advaita Vedanta, particularly the teaching of 8th century philosopher and mystic Shankara. His spiritual experimentation also led to a short devotion of both Allah and Christ. In both cases it resulted in visions. These experiments heavily contributed to his conviction that all world religions represent different roads to the same goal, a conviction later presented at the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago (1893) by Ramakrishna’s disciple Vivekananda. However, Ramakrishna never was in doubt where the centre of gravity of religiosity was positioned – the Divine Mother. With his own words: “No matter where my mind wandered, it would come back to the Divine Mother” (Nikhilananda, 1984, p. 779).

“How long will you persecute me?” – Vision of Jesus Christ Three years after the death of Ramakrishna, in a village called Rampur in northern Punjab, a child named Sundar Singh saw the light of day. He was born in a relatively well-off Sikh-Hindu family. Later in his life he became known as a Sadhu, an ascetic or holy person. Although we know the exact date (September 3, 1889) and place of his birth, we know nothing about where or how Sundar Singh died. The probable year of his death is 1929 (see Sharpe, 2004, pp. 27ff). Sundar Singh’s case is well-known in the West. Among numerous texts written about this Indian Sadhu, a kind of model for the “Oriental Christ” (Sharpe, 2004, p. 20), I can mention just a few. The German scholar Friedrich Heiler wrote a book about him (Heiler, 1925), and in Sweden the internationally known archbishop Nathan Söderblom devoted a chapter to Sundar Singh in one of his books. The common interest was, of course, the fact that an Indian boy converted to Christianity.

The night is the mother of day 103 It is clear that Sundar’s mother was more Hindu than Sikh. In his own words: “I was born in a family that was commonly considered Sikh, but in which the teaching of Hinduism was considered most essential. . .” (quoted in Sharpe, 2004, p. 29). It was also his mother who stimulated the young Sundar’s religious education, wanting him to get acquainted with other religions as well. At the age of seven he already had learned to memorize the Bhagavadgita, containing a dialogue between the warrior Arjuna and his charioteer, who turned out to be no less than Krishna, an incarnation of Vishnu. In his early teens Sundar Singh had studied not only the Vedas but also the Koran. This interest in other religions was probably stimulated by Sundar Singh’s mother, who was a devotee of the Sikh guru Nanak Chand, who also spent much time studying other religions. However, Sundar Singh’s rather fanatic interest in religious literature – Hinduism, Islam, and Sikhism – worried his father. But as long as his mother lived she often took him to Hindu Sadhus, holy men devoting their entire life to religion, forsaking worldly pleasure. When entering a Christian school, run by missionaries, the young Sundar Singh became familiar with the Bible, but without any real interest. His zeal was directed to Hinduism and yogic practices. With the death of his beloved mother the fourteen year old Sundar Singh became extremely unhappy and aggressive. His aggressions were directed to the local missionaries and to the teachings of Jesus, which he now felt were totally wrong. One day, when in a state of rage, he tore the Bible in pieces and then burnt it. But he also had strong positive feelings towards the Scripture. Didn’t Jesus say: “Come unto me, all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28)? This promise reminded him of course of his mother’s continuous speech about searching peace. The young Sundar Singh thought, however, that the Bible gave false promises. Again he burnt the Bible. Immediately after this event he regretted what he just had done, leaving a sticking thorn in his life (see Heiler, 1925, p. 27). According to Sharpe, the “Bible burning” episode, presumably restricted to a page or two from the New Testament, should rather be regarded as a kind of symbolic act, mirroring a probable crisis of allegiance. The Western Evangelical interpretation of this act, Sharpe asserts, was that the heathen Sundar was desperate and that the burning act immediately preceded his unconditional surrender (Sharpe, 2004, p. 31). Only three days after this event, Singh writes in his few autobiographical pages in “With and Without Christ,” he had a vision of Christ, leading to his conversion to Christianity. There are several versions of this narrative. According to Sharpe, the outlines are consistent. He rose before dawn, took a bath, and made a wager with God that either He would send a sign or he would throw himself in front of the wheels of the early morning train. In Sundar’s own account he mentions an expectation to receive a revelation from a Hindu avatara, reassuring him that he would not fear an act of retaliation from

104 Antoon Geels the Christian God for burning the pages from the Bible. This is what Sundar wrote to Mrs. Rebecca Parker, a missionary, in October 1920: . . .after burning the Bible my mind started getting very restless, and for two days I was in a very miserable condition indeed, and when I derived no solace from Hinduism, three days after burning the Bible I decided to commit suicide because living in such a miserable condition was of no use. One day getting up at 3 a.m. and bathing in cold water I began to pray that if there be a God, let him show me the path to salvation. If not, by the 5 a.m. train I would commit suicide. . . (quoted in Sharpe, 2004, p. 32)

At about four-thirty in the morning Sundar Singh had his vision, not of an avatar, but of Jesus, who spoke to him: . . .A bright radiance entered my room and flooded it. In that radiance the Messiah’s beloved and luminous face was visible, and showing me the wounded hands, where scars were clearly visible, he said, “Why do you persecute me? Behold, for your sake I gave my life on the cross, so that you and the world might win salvation.” As soon as I heard these words, they sank into my heart like an electric current, and my heart was filled with joy, and my entire life was transformed forever. . . (quoted in ibid., loc.cit.).

A similar story can be found in the biography of Heiler: At 4.30 a.m. I saw something of which I had no idea at all previously. In the room where I was praying I saw a great light. I thought the place was on fire. I looked around, but could find nothing. Then the thought came to me that this might be an answer that God had sent me. Then as I prayed and looked into the light, I saw the form of the Lord Jesus Christ. It had such an appearance of glory and love. If it had been some Hindu incarnation I would have prostrated myself before it. But it was the Lord Jesus Christ whom I had been insulting a few days before. I felt that a vision like this could not come out of my own imagination. I heard a voice saying in Hindustani, “How long will you persecute me? I have come to save you; you were praying to know the right way. Why do you not take it? – When I got up, the vision had all disappeared; but although the vision disappeared the Peace and Joy have remained with me ever since. (italics not in the original)

The vision dissolved, but his joy remained ever since. Sundar Singh now knew that Jesus was alive and he decided to follow in his footsteps. From now on his life was transformed, as he mentioned. On his sixteenth birthday he was baptized. Sundar’s conversion naturally created a considerable tension in his family. It was one thing to express admiration for Jesus Christ, quite another to actually convert and be baptised. A few years later, between December 1909 and July 1910 he studied theology at St. John’s Divinity School in Lahore. During that time he learnt to know about the Christian mystical tradition, including Swedenborg, not via the college curriculum but rather through the mediation of a friend. It seems that the young Sundar never felt at ease at the Divinity School. It “could hardly have appealed to one of his temperament and experience,” some of his biographers wrote (Streeter & Appasamy, quoted in Sharpe, 2004, p. 44). He did not complete one year of academic studies. Sharpe comments that the

The night is the mother of day 105 kind of Anglicanism that was dominant in Lahore “knew nothing of ecstasies, trances and altered states of consciousness” (Sharpe, 2004, p. 49). A few years thereafter Sundar Singh started to travel. He travelled to India and Tibet and to many other countries in the world. He visited Europe twice (1920 and 1922), attracting the attention of Western theologians and scholars. Sundar Singh mysteriously disappeared in 1929, somewhere on the way to Tibet. Again, let’s reflect on Sundar Singh’s overwhelming visionary experience of Jesus Christ. Initially he is referring to a vision of light, just as in the case of Ramakrishna. The quote from Heiler tells us that Sundar Singh, while experiencing this light, thought that the vision might be a God-sent answer. This means that there is cognitive activity during the experience. Influenced by his earlier preoccupation with the New Testament the vision is now supplemented by the figure of Jesus Christ. The psychological process involved will be discussed below. Let us at this stage just note that in the case of Sundar Singh there appears to be continuous interpretation, moving from light – the perfect metaphor for the divine – to a thought that this light might be a God-sent answer and the vision of Jesus Christ.

Encounter with Jesus on the top of a bridge Reidar Amundsen has told his own life story in an autobiographical publication entitled “The Tiger from Oslo – Notorious Prisoner who became a prison-missionary.” His story is an excellent illustration of a life in utter chaos, instantaneously transformed into a life of order after an overwhelming visionary and auditive experience of Jesus. Reidar was born in Norway in 1930, the seventh child of a family living in poverty and starvation. His father was a woodcutter, often away from home. His mother was working as a maid at nearby estates. “The happy message of Christianity,” Reidar wrote in his book, “was unknown in the world where I grew up.” His parents were indifferent as far as religion was concerned. Since his older brothers and sisters spent most of the day at school, Reidar was often alone, wandering around on the farm with the sole company of his cat. Life was becoming more difficult for everybody when the Germans occupied the country during the Second World War. In the year 1944, when Reidar was fourteen years old, the Germans put him in a concentration camp just outside Oslo. When the war ended he stole a bicycle in order to return home to his parents about a hundred miles to the north. On returning home he was confronted with a policeman and his mother, who repudiated him. He was brought back to Oslo and was sentenced to one year in prison and a ten year loss of civil rights. During his time in prison he learnt how to crack safes and came in touch with drugs. A short time after his release from prison he blew his first safe. He then organized a small gang, became its leader and as such known as the “Oslo tiger.” The years went by.

106 Antoon Geels “I went in and out of jail during these years. As soon as I was released I committed new burglaries and was caught again. Feelings of hate and revenge burned as fire in me. I wanted to see blood. But deep inside me I longed for peace. During many occasions I thought that there must be a better life to live.” During the 60s he became more involved in drugs, and became a heroin addict. In 1965, when Reidar was in prison, a group of young Christians visited the place on Christmas Eve. They sang and played music to the prisoners. To the surprise of most people Reidar wished to talk with somebody in the group of youngsters. One of them read from the Bible, about the sinner who received a second chance in life. The message appealed to Reidar. “I did not become a decided Christian that Christmas Eve, but something changed inside me.” A few years later Reidar moved to Sweden. Eventually he settled down in Gothenburg, in an area where many buildings were scheduled to be demolished, in the middle of dope nests. When he met an old friend from prison, his name was Jalle, he felt some consolation. Jalle had been saved inside jail. He told Reidar: “Do you know that Jesus loves you? He can save you too.” During the summer of 1970 he reached the absolute bottom of his life. “The craving for heroin burnt in my body. I had blood in my urine and feces, and when I vomited there was blood.” He finally came to a doctor who gave him one more month to live. Why do you drug addicts always come too late, the doctor wondered. Reidar then decided to inject a final dose of heroin and climbed up on the highest bridge in Gothenburg, ready to jump. How long had he been standing there? Hundreds of cars stopped in order to see what was going on. A police officer tried to talk to him, using a megaphone, while simultaneously trying to reach for Reidar. At this desperate moment he both heard and saw Jesus: In front of me I saw the outline of a face. Was I hallucinating again? But the outline became clearer. I did not see clear features, but I saw that there was a crown of thorns on top of the head and that the hair was curly and shining gold. It sort of radiated light from it, and I saw two hands, the palms of which were wounded, stretched out to me. And I heard a voice, so soft and fatherly loving, as I have never heard before. “Reidar, Reidar,” I heard. “You have tried everything in life. You have lost everything. There is nothing more left. The only thing you look forward to is to take your life. If you decide to do that, you will be lost eternally and there will be no memory of you. But you have forgotten to count with me. Put what is left of your life in my hands and I will heal and save you. I died for you. Your sin is redeemed. – I cannot describe the feelings that passed through my body. I felt that I was healed.”4

Reidar does not know how he managed to climb down from the bridge. From that moment on his life became organized. About eighteen months later he married and eventually the couple had two children. Reidar still visits prisons, but now as a pastor, preaching the gospel of Jesus. 4

Quoted in Geels, 1981.

The night is the mother of day 107 Methodological reflections – Reconstruction and interpretation Let’s get back to the problem of reconstruction and interpretation. As mentioned above, every reconstruction is already a kind of interpretation. When we reconstruct we use different types of data. In biographical studies the scholar primarily relies on personal documents, but also on interviews. The latter will be transcribed and then also turn into documents. We do end up in an abundance of data. So we do have to choose among them. And choosing is interpreting. However, there is a limit to the presentation of data. A few years ago one of our doctoral students finished a thesis on experiences of Zen. The dissertation comprised more than twelve hundred pages. The author was anxious to present as much detail as possible. But you can always be even more detailed in your description. This means that reconstruction is limitation. It is a hermeneutical process. An important question is whether the object of the study or the persons related to it, be it a biographical presentation or a description of a religious ritual, recognize the text of the scholar. Within religious studies this is not always the case, generally speaking. During my travels in Asia and the Middle East I often came across statements illustrating the discrepancy between the scholarly study of religion and living religion. When I studied repetitive prayer in Istanbul, Turkey, a few dervishes took me on a walk through Old Istanbul, showing me a number of Sufi premises which since the time of Kemal Atatürk, in the twenties, function as museums. We came to talk about Western, scholarly studies of Sufism. “That’s not us,” one of the dervishes exclaimed. This remark reminded me once again that academic interpretations not always manage to be confronted with the type of religion they are supposed to study. The religion of books often has very little to do with practised religion. From one perspective this is, of course, not at all surprising. Scholars specialised in religious studies usually study texts. This category of textual oriented specialists, working with philological methods, do not have the habit of asking questions like “What kind of people read this text?” or “How is this text used in the context of religious practice?” The distance between these learned scholars and the religion they study is about just as far as the distance between the basement of the university library where they found the text and the geographical area where this type of religion is a living reality. An example could be an indologist who translated and edited an obscure Hindu text – a kind of work I certainly do admire! – and Hindus in one of the numerous villages, covering some sixty-five percent of the Indian population, Hindus who are more interested in their crop or their own digestion. When I finished my biography of Hjalmar Ekström it was of course exciting to hear the reactions from his two daughters, siblings, and friends. Although there was some surprise – after all they did not have access to that amount of data that I had at my disposal – they certainly did recognize their father, brother,

108 Antoon Geels or friend! Hearing that, I felt pleased. Further reflection, however, made it clear that this is not necessarily a criterion that the scholar has been successful. I am sure that the inner visionary world of the contemporary artist Violet Tengberg, presented in the introduction of this chapter, came to an almost total surprise to her husband and children. Some of her friends were familiar with her inner world, her revelations as she chooses to label them. Those friends, however, were theologians with a higher degree of readiness for understanding as compared to those belonging to a more private sphere of life. Another problem in biographical studies is that the hermeneutically working scholar might be interested to find support for a favourite theory, which in turn might reflect the theoretically “correct” spirit of the scientific community. This is what I would call a procrustes-technique, i.e. to adapt the interpretation to the chosen theory, leaving out an unknown number of data. I am afraid that this approach is rather common. Instead of presenting all the evidence, the case functions as an illustration to the theory. A second type of bias has to do with apologetics and with the cultural climate, the Zeitgeist. A good example of this kind of bias is the different biographies of Sundar Singh. Since Sundar Singh wrote almost nothing of an autobiographical kind – there are only a few pages in his last book “With and Without Christ” and most of it was already known – we can only rely on a critical evaluation of the numerous biographies that have been produced since 1917 (see appendix I in Sharpe, 2004). Eric J. Sharpe has convincingly shown that early biographies of the sadhu vary in significant ways, especially when it comes to his conversion to Christianity. “When in the spring of 1920 an Oxford don and his young Indian tutee conceived the idea of writing a book about Sadhu Sundar Singh, it was in their minds to interpret him to the West in terms that the West could grasp and according to a scale of values that the West could affirm” (Sharpe, 2004). Sharpe also showed that significant details in the life of Sundar Singh were omitted by their evangelical biographers. A good example is that they kept quiet about the influence of Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1782) and Swedenborgian authors had on Sundar Singh. Most evangelical writers reject the theology of Swedenborg. Nevertheless Sundar Singh claimed that he had visionary contact with Swedenborg. Evangelical biographers such as Cyril J. Davey (1963) and Phyllis Thompson (1992) preferred not to go into this “embarrassing” visionary contact, Sharpe continues. He concludes that Western biographers have presented the Indian Sadhu in contradictory ways: evangelical missionary, ecstatic visionary and ascetic pilgrim. “It is time to rescue his memory from oblivion on the one hand and romantic adulation on the other, to protect him from a few of his patrons, and give him his rightful place among those of whom he himself wrote” (Sharpe, 2004). Apologetic tendencies are also obvious in biographies of Ramakrishna. One example is the ambition of authors confessing themselves to the Advaita Vedanta tradition to interpret their master’s development in terms of a straight line to what

The night is the mother of day 109 they regard as the pinnacle of the Hindu tradition – Advaita Vedanta a teaching transmitted by the earlier mentioned teacher Totapuri (see Neevel, 1976). Biographic distortion, however, is not limited to hidden theoretical and/or apologetic and/or cultural agendas. There are additional reasons for authors to present the object of their study in a more advantageous light. I am thinking especially of hagiographic tendencies. In the case of Hjalmar Ekström I can mention that a Catholic information centre in Uppsala published a number of pamphlet-like biographies, including the life of Ekström. In the very last sentence of this text, the unknown author mentions that Ekström with the words “The Lord is thanked and praised” gave up his breath. According to his oldest daughter, who was there, he did not utter a word. Viewpoints of the kind as mentioned above are close to literary criticism of the sources involved. Reconstruction requires evaluation of the data. In the case of Ramakrishna this work has been done by Neevel (1976). He reminds us of the fact that Ramakrishna never wrote anything himself. All we know has been taken down by his disciples, who regarded him as an avatara, an incarnation of the divine world. During the final four years of Ramakrishna’s life (1882–1886) his devoted disciple Mahendranath Gupta, a teacher from Calcutta, gifted with a strong memory, took down what he heard the master say after every appearance. According to Nikhilananda (1942/1984), who wrote a biographic introduction to “The Gospel of Shri Ramakrishna,” the notes of this disciple had “the value of almost stenographic records” (p. vii). What we need to do, so Neevel writes, is to compare the different biographies with the anecdotic comments that Ramakrishna himself communicated to his disciples (Neevel, 1976, p. 62). The three short case studies as presented above do exhibit different degrees of credibility. In the case of Reidar we do have his autobiographical account, which can, of course, contains elements of idealisation of his own development. Since we are working with a now living person there is always the possibility to conduct additional interviews. In that case we do stand on firm ground as far as reconstruction is concerned. In the other two cases we do need to devote considerable time to the critical evaluation of the sources. Let’s now turn to the problem of interpretation, leaving aside the comments already put forward stating that every reconstruction in a sense already is an interpretation, with the above mentioned risks and dangers involved. I would like to make a distinction between internal and external interpretation. The former makes use only of the critically evaluated data, while the latter is the next level, so to speak, building on internal interpretation but adding a new dimension. This new dimension can either be to test a theory, or elements of it, or to develop a new theory. The latter was the case in my nomothetic study on visions in contemporary Sweden. An example of internal presentation in this chapter is my discussion of the problem whether Ramakrishna actually did have a vision of the goddess Kali. We

110 Antoon Geels have to know what happened with a reasonable degree of certainty. Linguistic problems also add to the problems of both reconstruction and interpretation. Sundar Singh spoke Urdu and the native language of Ramakrishna was Bengali; both were translated into English. When the sources are assessed to be weak, and the linguistic problems are considerable, then there is the danger that the subject is lost not only in translation but also in interpretation.

Psychology: A third level interpretation – Life crisis and religious experience If we agree that the reconstruction phase already is a kind of interpretation, and that internal interpretation of the critically evaluated data is a second level, then analysis with the aid of a psychological perspective can be regarded as a third level interpretation. This is what I am going to do now, using the new theoretical model hinted at above. Earlier studies pointing at a close relation between life crisis or stress and religious experience can be traced back to the “Varieties” of William James. Eighty years later David Hay, in his study of intense religious experience, mentioned stress as a major triggering factor (Hay, 1982, pp. 203ff). In his now classic study of religious conversion Lewis R. Rambo includes crisis in his sequential stage model of this process. “Some form of crisis usually precedes conversion; that is acknowledged by most scholars of conversion” (1993, p. 44). In an earlier study the Israelian psychologist Chana Ullman (1989) had convincingly shown that there is a relation between stress or traumata and intense conversion experiences. “About 80 percent of the religious converts in my study were judged as describing considerable distress during the two-year period prior to their conversion. They described their preconversion absorption in anxiety, anger, or desperation and cited the release from the upheavals of their emotional life as the most important consequence of their change of heart” (Ullman, 1989, p. 18). There is no need to present additional examples of the relation between stress or crisis and religious experience. The human psyche knows many ways in order to counteract crisis. One way is a major shift in interest. A good example is the Swedish scientist and visionary Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772). His spiritual crisis, expressed in his “The Journal of Dreams,” (1743–44) is well-known. It resulted in a massive production of theological texts, including “Arcana Coelestia” in twelve volumes. Another example is William Blake (1757–1827). According to his biographer, Blake’s interest in spiritual matters increased considerably after the death of his beloved brother Robert in 1776. Blake sat up for a whole fortnight with Robert during his last illness, explaining the many deathbed scenes in Blake’s art. As a matter of fact Blake, among other things, devoted himself to a close study of the writings of Swedenborg (Ackroyd, 1999, p. 98f).

The night is the mother of day 111 William James pointed at another way a crisis can be solved: the overpowering of “an opposite affection” (1902, p. 212). A visionary experience belongs to this category. Most of the time a vision contains a strong emotional element, be it ecstatic joy, peace, or even fear. Ekström was certainly frightened when he experienced “mystical death.” When “he came to his senses again” he was trembling. Ramakrishna mentions an intense feeling of “bliss” when he sensed the presence of the Divine Mother. Sundar Singh mentions feelings of “Peace and Joy” when encountering Jesus. Reidar could not describe the intense feeling he had when he saw Jesus, crowned with thorns. In many cases the crisis consists of a severe loss. In the case of Ramakrishna we have noticed three significant parental losses, all of considerable importance for his visionary activity. Sundar Singh suffered the death of his mother prior to his vision. Reidar lost his health. Especially parental loss seems to be overrepresented in the life of the mystics. Let’s return now to the cases mentioned in this chapter. In all examples mentioned above, including the visionary and auditory experience of Ekström, we can clearly observe that the contents of the vision relate both to the individual’s biography and to his or her actual life situation. Let’s use Ekström as an example. My understanding, based on earlier studies of religious visions, of Ekström’s crucial experience is as follows. His break with the deacon service, where he had spent eight hard years, must have given rise to the question – conscious or not – of whether or not he was still being guided by God. After all, this motif dominated his discourse during the years preceding his “mystical death.” Was God still on his side? Was there still divine guidance, now that he had resigned from the vocation of deacon? Or, had his strong, and on occasion aggressive, criticism of Christianity turned him into a fallen soul? From the above mentioned doubt perspective it is hardly surprising that Ekström’s transforming moment came exactly during this phase in his dramatic life. The decision to take a few days holiday was made after he, his wife and their two year old child had settled down in a shoemaker’s workshop in his home town. This probably felt like a great sigh of relief, after eight years of dissonance. Alone in the woods there was relaxation for him. The visionary and auditive experience rendered a solution to the assumed conflict. Conviction replaced doubt – there was divine guidance after all. The lightning bolt, shaped as a cross, and the words that from now on “the path would be pathless” can clearly be described as autosymbolic representations of his need to receive an answer to his fundamental question. The vision of the lightning cross tells him that he has not been left alone; the auditory message is a verbal metaphor for his present life situation, when he broke most relations with those who took part in his earlier social environment. Even if the path would be pathless, Ekström now knew there was still guidance.

112 Antoon Geels I will now turn to a short comment on the three cases as presented above. The theoretical model can easily be applied to the story of Reidar. In his case we can observe a childhood characterized by loneliness and an often absent father. His longing for peace and harmony attracted him to the small group of young Christians, full of energy. Shortly prior to the vision he met his old prison-friend Jalle, who told him about the forgiving Christ. It is therefore not surprising that it is Christ that Reidar encounters in a vision. Christ spoke to him in a soft and fatherly voice, most probably related to the absent father. The vision and its auditive feature is naturally also related to his need of peace and harmony in his life. This harmony was established in a few transforming and integrating seconds, when the synthetic function used autosymbolic representations as a means to obtain homeostasis. Suicide was prevented. The cases of Ramakrishna and Sundar Singh are similar. Both were on the verge of committing suicide (just like Reidar). Can there be greater crisis? It is reasonable to assume that the decision to take your own life leads to a kind of relaxation. I think that this process is close to what James and Starbuck labelled as the psychology of self-surrender, “the vital turning-point of the religious life” (James, 1902, p. 210). A more developed description of this process has been presented in the 1990s. Using a creativity analogy the authors differ between four stages that can be found in many religious experiences: existential crisis, self-surrender, new vision, and new life. “We may say,” the authors write, “that religious experience involves cognitive restructuring in an attempt to deal with one or more existential questions” (Batson, et al., 1993, p. 106). Can there be greater surrender than when a human being has decided to commit suicide? Surrender or relaxation makes room, so to speak, for other psychological processes. Relaxation promotes primary process cognition. According to the model outlined above, autosymbolic representations of intrapsychic conflicts are an aspect of primary process cognition (see also Geels, 2006). The synthetic function of the complex ego structure “chooses” a representation that not only fits into their present life situation but also solves it. In other words, religious visions can be understood psychologically as autosymbolic representations of intrapsychic conflicts. Ramakrishna interpreted the “effulgent waves,” “the shining billows,” as a manifestation of the Divine Mother Kali. Sundar Singh also refers to a vision of light, in which he eventually discerned the figure of Jesus Christ, the object of both hate and love in his present life situation. In both cases, suicide was prevented. Other examples of how the theoretical model can be applied to contemporary and historical cases can be found in my earlier work. In any case, all these studies taught me that there is some truth in the words of the Swedish poet Erik Johan Stagnelius (1793–1823), who in a poem with the headline “Friend, in moments of devastation,” wrote: “Therefore rejoice, o friend, and sing in the darkness of sorrow: The night is the mother of day, Chaos lives next to God.”

The night is the mother of day 113 References Ackroyd, P. (1999). Blake. London: Vintage. Batson, C. D., Schoenrade, P. & Ventis, W. L. (1993). Religion and the individual: A social-psychological perspective. New York-Oxford: Oxford University Press. Choudhary, K. P. S. (1981). Modern Indian mysticism. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. Daniélou, A. (1964). Hindu polytheism. New York: Pantheon Books. Davey, C. J. (1963). The story of Sadhu Sundar Singh. Chicago: Moody Press. Reprinted as Sadhu Sundar Singh. Bromley: STL Books, 1980. Geels, A. (1980). Mystikern Hjalmar Ekström (1885–1962): En religionspsykologisk studie av hans religiösa utveckling [The mystic Hjalmar Ekström (1885–1962): A study of his religious development from the perspective of the psychology of religion]. Malmö: Doxa. Geels, A. (1989). Skapande mystik: En psykologisk studie av Violet Tengbergs religiösa visioner och konstnärliga skapande [Creative mysticism: A psychological study of Violet Tengberg’s religious visions and artistic creation]. Löberöd: Plus Ultra. Geels, A. (1991). Att möta Gud i kaos [Encounter with God in chaos]. Stockholm: Norstedts. Geels, A. (2003). Transforming moments: A psychological perspective on religious visions: Contemporary and historical cases. In J. A. Belzen & A. Geels (Eds.), Mysticism: A variety of psychological perspectives (pp. 235–261). AmsterdamNew York: Rodopi. Geels, A. (2006). The marriage between ego and id: Cognitive integration and its relation to mystical experience. Archiv für Religionspsychologie/Archive for the Psychology of Religion, 28, 219–252. Hartmann, H. (1958). Ego psychology and the problem of adaptation. New York: International Universities Press. Hay, D, (1982). Exploring inner space. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Heiler, F. (1989). The Gospel of Sadhu Sundar Singh. New Delhi: ISPCK. Indich, W. M. (1980). Consciousness in Advaita Ved¯anta. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. James, W. (1902). The varieties of religious experience: A study in human nature. New York: Longmans, Green & Co. Kakar, S. (1991). The analyst and the mystic. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kripal, J. J. (1998). Kali’s child: The mystical and the erotic in the life and teachings of Ramakrishna. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Laurentin, R. (1980). Vie de Catherine Labouré. Paris: Desclée de Brouwer. Leuner, H. (1977). Guided affective imagery: An account of its development. Journal of Mental Imagery, 1, 73–91. Leuner, H. (1978). Basic principles and therapeutic efficacy of guided affective imagery (GAI). In J. L. Singer & K. S. Pope (Eds.), The power of human imagination (pp. 125–166). New York: Plenum. Life of Shri Ramakrishna compiled from various authentic sources. 2nd rev. edition. Calcuta: Advaita Ashrama. ´ R¯amakrishna. In B. L. Smith (Ed.), Neevel, W. G. (1976). The transformation of Srí Hinduism: New essays in the history of religions (pp. 53–97). Leiden: E.J. Brill.

114 Antoon Geels ´ R¯amakrishna: At play in his mother’s mansion. In Neevel, W. G. (1997). Srí K. R. Sundarajan & B. Mukerji (Eds.), Hindu spirituality: Postclassical and modern (pp. 283–298). New York: Crossroad. Nikhilananda, Swami (1942/1984). Introduction. In The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, Originally recorded in Bengali by M., a disciple of the master. New York: Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center. Nunberg, H. (1961). Practice and theory of psychoanalysis. New York: International Universities Press. Pratt, J. B. (1920). The religious consciousness: A psychological study. New York: Macmillan. Rambo, L. R. (1993). Understanding religious conversion. New Haven-London: Yale University Press. Schachtel, E. (1959/2001). Metamorphosis. New York: Basic Books. Sharpe, E. J. (2004). The riddle of Sadhu Sundar Singh. New Delhi: Intercultural Publication. Sil, N. P. (1991). Ramakrishna Paramahamsa: A psychological profile. Leiden: E.J. Brill. Sundén, H. (1966). Religionen och rollerna. Stockholm: Svenska diakonistyrelses bokförlag. Thompson, P. (1992). Sadhu Sundar Singh. Carlisle: Operation Mobilisation. The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, Originally recorded in Bengali by M., a disciple of the master (Translated into English with an Introduction by Swami Nikhilananda). New York: Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center. Ullman, C. (1989). The transformed self: The psychology of religious conversion. New York: Plenum Press. Wulff, D. M. (1997). Psychology of religion: Classic and contemporary (2nd ed.). New York: Wiley.

PAST AND PRESENT RELIGIOUS STORIES

AUTOBIOGRAPHY, PSYCHIC FUNCTIONING AND MENTAL HEALTH THE ROLE OF RELIGION IN PERSONAL LIFE Jacob A. Belzen

The role of autobiography in psychology When psychology turns to autobiographies, it does not do so to examine the situations described in them or to reconstruct particular events or points in time; such research, interesting as it may be, is usually left to historians. Nor does psychology delve into the existent or nonexistent literary qualities of an autobiography, or into the genre of autobiography as such; this is the realm of literary theorists. When psychology avails itself of autobiographies, it does so by asking psychological questions and from a psychological perspective. The most important argument for doing this is usually that working with autobiographical texts, in whatever form (they certainly need not be limited to published auto-biographies but may include texts written at the explicit request of the researcher, diaries and many other forms of autobiographical data; cf. Bruner, 1990, for example), is the most effective way of gathering information for certain kinds of questioning. If the researcher is interested in studying the development of someone’s identity, for example, hardly a better method can be devised than to ask the research participant to provide at regular intervals a text that is as subjective and personal as possible. Even when psychologists look at existing autobiographies, published or not, they do so in order to find answers to systematic psychological questions concerning such factors as psycho-social development, parent-child binding and social relationships in general, guilt and shame, experience of sexuality, mental disorder and many others. For the psychologist who is interested in religion, autobiographies may provide a great deal of information concerning the development of individual religiosity and the influence that certain forms of religion can have on the development of the personality. Autobiographies can also serve as an important source of information for research on that which psychologists call “the self,” since it is in an autobiography that an author presents herself. He presents himself in a certain way, telling us a story about himself and his life. In doing so the author usually draws an ideal picture of herself. Although the story itself need not be ideal in any way (and the author may be reporting it with quite a bit of shame), he paints a picture of himself which he hopes the reader will endorse. In this paper I will attempt

118 Jacob A. Belzen to employ several forms of psychology in order to interpret one particular autobiography, with a view to a theme that is relevant to the psychology of religion: the relationship between religion and mental health. Before introducing the autobiography, I would first like to summon up a bit of theoretical background. Often the first reaction to the idea mentioned above – the autobiography as presentation of the self, the self as a narrative construction – is that of shock. Does this mean that a person’s self or identity is “only” a story? Wouldn’t it be possible for someone to tell any manner of story about herself? People tell many different stories throughout their lives, and they also tell different versions to different listeners. If all those stories are what the self, or the selves, of a particular person are, where is the unity of that person? Let’s deal briefly with these questions, mainly in order to avoid or rectify a number of misunderstandings. The self is fundamentally characterised, even constituted, by language and story. For the development and functioning of human self-awareness – regarded by many theoreticians, in line with Hegel, as precisely that which distinguishes the human being from the animal – language is of vital importance. Self-awareness, says Kojève (1947, pp. 163–168), presupposes that the human being, by using the personal pronoun “I,” is able to locate himself as distinct from the world of objects and even from himself. So according to Kojève there is an intrinsic connection between self-awareness and language: in fact, there can be no selfawareness without language. The psychoanalyst Lacan (1966) would later speak of the “birth of the subject,” referring to the process by which the child enters the symbolic order and in particular learns to handle and to conform to the language he encounters in his subculture. In order to speak about himself, a person must have developed the ability to objectify, which he does thanks to language. So language is a precondition that makes subjectivity possible, and not the other way round. There is not an essential subject who desires to make use of language; rather, the constitution of the subject presupposes language (Haute, 1993, pp. 165–167). When the subject, once constituted by language, wants to know something or share something about herself, she must avail himself of language if she is to tell herself or others who she is; she must make an announcement concerning who she has become up to that point. “Up to that point” – for the human being is an historical creature: her life, between birth and death, is a history. That history can be expressed in different places and different ways. It can be imparted in the form of a story. If people are asked to indicate who they are, they will answer with some kind of life history. Indeed, human transience can only be expressed linguistically. To specify this linguistic structure, Ricoeur (1981, pp. 169–172) uses the term “narrativity.” Man has a narrative structure by virtue of his historicity: he must relate history, especially his own history (Zwaal, 1997, p. 100). This makes the self not only a product of the past but also an interpretation of the past.

Autobiography, psychic functioning and mental health 119 In developing her own notion of herself, woman must rely on the stories that are passed on to her and that are absorbed by her, as it were, during socialisation. Each story about ourselves is always already embedded in the continuing story of a particular cultural history. The possibilities for self-comprehension that we acquire and develop are themselves always products of a particular historical tradition that makes us its product (Heidegger, 1927). Such stories, which inhabit and form our lives and make them possible, are first of all the stories that constitute the background of every notion within a certain culture. They are embodied not only in our views of humankind, the world and life itself but also in art forms and rituals that are shared by all the participants in that particular culture. They are the archetypal stories from every culture, and we run across them in metaphors and expressions, films and plays, but also in functional symbols such as a cross or crucifix, the V-for-victory sign, in monuments and in symbols that are associated with commemorations as well as with holidays and festivals (Guignon, 1998, p. 569). These are the stories that impart structure to the ordinary, mundane stories we experience and indulge in every day and give them meaning by making available a certain horizon of comprehension. Naturally such archetypal stories differ from culture to culture (and subculture to subculture). The optimistic stories about the redemptive self from the United States (McAdams, 2006) are very different from those about sacrifice and suffering that the Russians grow up with, and both are quite distinct from the archetypal stories about ritual suicide such as those making the rounds in Japan. Such fundamental differences can make the life patterns of one culture or subculture seem pointless in the eyes of another ( just think of how the forms of Roman Catholic monastic life are perceived by certain Protestants). Second, the impact of stories can be found in the ordinary, everyday way that people communicate with each other. Whenever we engage in an ordinary conversation, we structure our stories according to the storytelling standard that is or is becoming generally accepted within our culture. In doing so, we often use narrative cues that inform the listener as to the kind of story she is about to hear. (An opening sentence such as “Once upon a time” calls for an entirely different kind of comprehension than “What rotten luck I had yesterday.”) So we are very far from being able to tell any random story about ourselves (or even to consciously construct such a story); indeed, the ways in which the self can be articulated is subject to strict limitations that usually remain implicit. While language and story make the self possible, they also determine its limits. In narrative psychology, such as that introduced by Sarbin and others (Sarbin, 1986a, 1986b, 1993; Sarbin & Kitsuse, 1994; Sarbin & Scheibe, 1983), these notions are expanded to cover broader parts of psychic functioning than the self alone. In one programmatic text, “The narrative as a root metaphor for psychology,” Sarbin (1986a) introduces the “narratory principle”: “human beings think, perceive, imagine and make moral choices according to narrative structures”

120 Jacob A. Belzen (p. 8). He sees emotions, for example, as inextricable from their social context. In his analysis he uses the image of a scene with many individuals in which the action of one participant functions as the focus for the following actions that are carried out by the person himself as well as by the other participants. (So emotions should never be studied as events that happen within a single individual.) According to narrative psychologists, however, it is not only emotions that are led by narrative plots; actions are, too. In listening to and telling stories there is an involvement in the actors and their adventures. Action is not only present in the story, however; it also follows from the story. The so-called Don Quixote principle states that people act in order to extend the plot of a particular story, especially when they imagine themselves to be the protagonist of that story. The Don Quixote principle refers to the practice of shaping one’s identity by emulating stories. The central idea is that the narratives with which the cultural participants have become acquainted go on to determine their actions: they provide the characters, ideas, settings, instruments and procedures that individuals and groups can use to give shape to their own activities. The narrative approach directs attention to the interface between individual and collective functioning. It is an attempt to understand human functioning as culturally located: no matter what emotion or form of activity a person is about to display, it is seen as dependent on the stories, the plots and the roles from the culture or subculture in which the person grew up and in which she now happens to be functioning. Because there are always others present in the current situation, real or imagined, every act is an interactive occurrence, always directed at one or more others. And at different times and places the person will present versions of himself that deviate from each other to a greater or lesser extent. (Thus a life companion will be shown a self that is different and probably more private than a colleague, etc.) But no matter what stories are told about the self, they will all follow existing plots. For this reason, Hermans and Kempen (1993) – by analogy with Bakhtin (1929/1973) and using the terminology of James (1890) and Mead (1934) – present the self as a polyphonic novel: a person standing in a multiplicity of worlds in which a story about a “me” with an accompanying “I” can and must be told, over and over again. Those stories can be relatively independent of each other (and sometimes even contrary to each other) and the I’s of the different stories can even communicate with each other within the same self. There are different worlds with different stories told by different I’s, but there is no overarching I that organises and/or coordinates the different me’s. So the self is not one and undivided, not always and everywhere the same; it is plural and context-dependent, a decentralised multiplicity of I positions that function in dialogue like relatively independent authors. That is: they tell each other stories about their respective me’s as actors. According to an even older tenet of literary theory, every text – and therefore also the articulation of a self at a particular time and place – is a result of

Autobiography, psychic functioning and mental health 121 relations between texts, a product of intertextuality, a membrane into which elements are woven that had already been produced elsewhere in discontinuous form (cf. Sprinker, 1980). So the dialogicity of the self presupposes much more than a conversation with whomever is present in the here and now, whether through direct eye contact or not. The articulation of the self, as it emerges at a certain time and place, does not sound like just one single voice; in such an articulation the resonances of other voices can be heard: the voices of the parents and significant others as well as the voices of collectives such as a social class, a professional group or a religious tradition. It is especially the social voices, such as those alluded to by Bakhtin (1929/1973), that have influence on what a person says, that determine what she can say in the first place, usually without being conscious of the fact. There are many personal, unique voices in the self, but there are also a number – perhaps a far greater number – of collective voices. So to repeat: people cannot tell any random story they choose in order to articulate who they are. The stories they tell, the meanings they construct and the sense they impart are dependent on the interplay of various voices. Still other forms of psychology that are quite different from the possibly obvious narrative psychology offer other points of view that might be relevant in a study of a person’s own life story. In this chapter I shall try to combine quite diverse forms of psychology to interpret a particular autobiography. Psychology at large is a very heterogeneous enterprise, with many differing approaches, that sometimes even seem to contradict one another. In my opinion, this is no problem at all: reality, also the life of one particular individual, will always be richer than what any form of scholarship will have to say about it. To understand an other person, psychologists will, by necessity, have to employ very diverse forms of insights and research techniques. Complications one will meet all along the way: recent psychological research shows that memories are not simply mirror reflections of the past. Rather they are reproductions, and furthermore they are changeable (which of course does not apply to the past to which the memory refers). So notions about memory that regard it as something like a series of photographs or video recordings are incorrect: a remembrance is not stored in one place in the memory as if it were in a safe (in which all you would have to do to remember something would be to call the right photo or video to mind). In the words of a well-known memory psychologist, “memory is a process, not a depository” (Cermak, 1989, p. 121). In addition, memories refer not only to the things that actually happened but also to fantasies, imaginings, stories, etc. So our remembrances are not only about an event that once took place but also about stories pertaining to that event and about stories pertaining to similar events. It is quite possible to think you are remembering an external event when in fact what you are remembering is a story. The autobiographical memory is not fixed but in motion (Kotre, 1995). It also has to do with the present and not only with the past. Yet once again we must

122 Jacob A. Belzen beware of drawing incorrect conclusions: the process in question is not arbitrary, nor do individuals have it within their grasp. People do not consciously make or form their own memories to enable them to tell a certain story. Life experiences, etc., are not simply registered and stored but are selectively recorded (or forgotten) according to certain frameworks, only to be woven later on into the stories of who we are (cf. Scheibe, 1998, p. 142). It will be important to remember this when studying an autobiography. In any case it should be borne in mind that the general characteristics of the autobiographic subgenre of which the author is availing herself not only were involved in determining the shape of the story but also were active in the operation of the author’s memory and in the selection, application and interpretation of her memories.

The spiritual autobiography as source for the psychology of religion Yet before making the impression that all we are interested in is abstract theorising, let us turn our attention to an actual autobiography. We might wonder whether and to what extent someone’s autobiography could provide insight into a possible relationship between religion and psychic functioning. With this question in mind, we take up one of the oldest research traditions in the psychology of religion. The more specific question concerning the relationship between religion and mental health has always been a prominent one, and not only because of its presumed social relevance. Even the founding fathers of the field of psychology dealt with religion in terms of “healthy mindedness,” “the sick soul” and “the divided self ” (James, 1902/2002) and made methodical comparisons between religious rituals and obsessional neurosis (Freud, 1907/ 1941). The animosity between psychologists and representatives of religions organisations has sometimes been bitter, but after more than a century of research and the formulation of theories a consensus seems to have been arrived at: it is almost impossible to make general statements. Religion may be 1. an expression of mental disorder, 2. a socializing and oppressive force, helping people cope with their life stresses and mental aberrations, 3. a protective agent for some mentally disturbed persons, 4. a therapy, 5. a hazard (Spilka et al., 2003). The relationship between religion and mental health can thus be structured in a variety of ways, and in any individual case it is good to consider what type of connection is at work. One interesting example is the case of an autobiography in which the “I” person tells how she was cured of a serious depression thanks to “religion” (a term that is far too broad and requires a more detailed explanation) but who, despite the book’s clearly propagandistic intentions, was turned away by the very religious communities she wished to serve. The reasons for this rejection are certainly relevant but are not fundamental for the psychologist: her primary interest will be what motivated the author to write an autobiography and what psychic functions were involved, and among

Autobiography, psychic functioning and mental health 123 her questions will be those concerning the connection between religiosity and psychic functioning. Let us first take a brief glance at the contents of the autobiography of Mrs Reinsberg (1898). The title page states the following: The conversion story of a fifty-year-old mortal, afterwards possessed by the devil at Veldwijk for two and a half years and now redeemed and reborn in Jesus Christ, her Redeemer and Saviour, Who will fulfil his purpose for her, now and forever. By Mrs Reinsberg, widow. Published for the benefit of Veldwijk and for poor unfortunate patients. At the expense of the author. The Hague. 1898.1

The author, Doetje Reinsberg-Ypes (1840–1900), was a woman from Amsterdam who had been institutionalised in the Veldwijk Christian Psychiatric Hospital in Ermelo from 1890 to 1892 with a diagnosis of “melancholia agitans” (which more or less corresponds to today’s diagnosis of depression). Her document was of considerable length: 470 pages. She divided her publication into four “books” – or three, actually, since most of the fourth book consists of correspondence, some of it with more or less well-known Dutch theologians, and followed it with a Postscript and a Conclusion. The period of her stay at Veldwijk provides the structure for the history that Mrs Reinsberg relates: the first book deals with her life before her stay at Veldwijk, the second has to do with her period in Ermelo, and in the third she talks about her life since leaving Veldwijk. The number of pages devoted to her period in Ermelo is the largest of the three narrative books. In the first book she says she was born in Leeuwarden, that she lost her father at an early age, and that after the death of her mother when she was over 17 years old she was taken in by her uncle. At the age of 20 she was more or less forced to go out on her own. She went to Amsterdam, where one of her sisters was already living. She had trouble finding her way in this city, but with the help of charitable Christians from diverse Protestant persuasions, and after a number of failed attempts, she finally found a position. She married a waiter, and after some time they opened their own café-restaurant-hotel. Although business was good, they were not able to escape 1

I will not weary the reader with too many quotes from her book, certainly not in a text that has been translated into English, which would fail to capture Mrs Reinsberg’s original language. When it is obvious that I am referring to her book, I will not keep repeating “Reinsberg, 1898” where a simple page number will suffice.

124 Jacob A. Belzen adversity in another part of their lives: she tells of the sickness and death of a few of their children. Some time after her husband died she sold the hotel and apparently began living from the proceeds, enjoying a life of relative prosperity in Amsterdam with her three daughters. Yet things did not go well with her for long. For quite some time she had had little to do with religion and the church, but once again she began attending services. During one service she became ill. A process seems to have been set in motion which ultimately led to her being admitted to the Veldwijk “insane asylum” in Ermelo. In the second book, Mrs Reinsberg provides an elaborate account how she was brought to Veldwijk and how she was received there. She recounts her daily life in the institution in great detail, describing how she was moved from one ward to another and finally how she left Veldwijk and Ermelo. In the third book she talks about going to live with her children in Baarn and later in The Hague. She describes making a journey, as it were, through various Christian church groups (almost all of them belonging to the Calvinist – gereformeerde – denomination). This third book is not exclusively narrative, however. More than half its pages are devoted to “reflections” of one sort or another with chapter titles such as “On false teachers in general” and “Concerning the just.” It ends with an “Epilogue.” In her autobiography, Mrs Reinsberg faithfully follows the structure of the “conversion story,” a subgenre of the spiritual autobiography, which emerged in the Netherlands among the followers of the so-called Nadere Reformatie or Further Reformation. What follows is a brief discussion of these ideas. Very few conversion stories are autobiographies. A large portion of them were written after the death of the protagonist and follow a tradition that goes back to the mediaeval “vitae.” Those works contain a highly stylised story about the life of someone regarded as holy. “Religious autobiographies” have become popular mainly within certain Protestant circles. There is nothing strange in this: the Reformation put the individual faith experience in the foreground, and the question of salvation became a personal and individual one. (Compare Luther’s famous question “wie krieg’ ich einen gnädigen Gott?”; also compare Calvin’s self-analysis in his Institutes.) With the elimination of confession there arose a need for another form of religious reflection on one’s life. According to Delany, who was one of the first to focus attention on the conversion story as a subgenre of the autobiography, the seventeenth-century religious autobiographies written by Protestants were much more introspective than the objective accounts being written by Roman Catholic and Anglicans (Delany, 1969, p. 4). The “spiritual autobiography” is a type of writing in which women are heavily represented, far more than in other types of writing. On the other hand, it is true that among the first general autobiographies, women were more likely to write about religious stirrings of the soul than men were. This was probably because religion was one of the domains in which women could write more or less freely (Pomerleau, 1980, p. 28).

Autobiography, psychic functioning and mental health 125 Recording one’s personal conversion story is a phenomenon that occurred in the Netherlands mainly in the eighteenth century within the so-called conventicle system (Lieburg, 1991). The conventicle system is usually associated with the Nadere Reformatie, a movement within Dutch Calvinism that took place in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries under the influence of Scottish, English and, to a lesser degree, German Puritans and that strove to keep personal behaviour and experiences within the norms of religious doctrine. “Nadere” – “further” – suggests that people had chosen not to content themselves with the external Reformation of the sixteenth century, the re-formation (reorganisation) of the church as an institution, but felt that one’s conduct and inner life should conform to the spiritual norm: the individual herself needed to be re-formed, changed, converted. That conversion would have to be internal as well as external: the believer would have to start living from a different orientation altogether and not simply adapt her outer behaviour. Correct behaviour as such does not provide a definite explanation of one’s inner state; even an unconverted person can live a life that is outwardly exemplary. In the Nadere Reformatie of the Netherlands, the self-examination that can be found in almost all spiritual traditions increasingly came to be focused on whether one was “converted” or not. According to Calvinist doctrine, being converted was an indication of being elected by God: “from eternity,” before the foundations of the world, He was supposed to have determined who would be accepted by Him and who would be condemned, doomed. Because only a small number of persons were destined for election, the question of conversion was one of the most important in the life of the Nadere Reformatie believer – the most important, in fact, because the answer was decisive for one’s eternal salvation or eternal damnation. The believers of the Nadere Reformatie tradition were intensely preoccupied with this question, and some still are up to the present day (cf. Meiden, 1981), not only during Sunday religious services but also at various private religious gatherings. These gatherings were called conventicles, where people spoke together about personal religious experiences and where such experiences were tested against the group norm, which was expressed in the books written by the so-called “old writers” – theologians from the time of the Nadere Reformatie. Within the circles influenced by the Nadere Reformatie there was a custom of reading conversion stories that were regarded as authentic and were accepted within the group tradition. Gradually these writings began functioning as a norm, of course, with which the individual faith experience had to comply and on which many people modelled their personal religious behaviour and inner life. Almost all such conversion stories have a comparable structure. Although the authors of the spiritual autobiographies of the seventeenth, eighteenth and particularly the nineteenth centuries will not have read Augustine’s Confessions as a rule, almost all of them follow the outline it provides. This runs as follows: the

126 Jacob A. Belzen author first paints a picture of his own life up to his conversion. This period will have been spent inside or outside Christian circles, when one was still “separated from God.” A great deal of attention is then given to the moment (or the process: it may have been a journey lasting a number of years) and the circumstances of the “conversion” (or to be more theologically correct, the fact of having been converted by God’s intervention in one’s life). The story is concluded by an account, sometimes lengthy, sometimes not, of the period since the conversion: the “new” life, devoted to the service of God, that may have its own problems and temptations but nevertheless takes place in His sight. If it is not an autobiographical conversion story, this is often followed by an extensive description of the “pious” death of the protagonist. As in the case of Augustine, the religious biography or autobiography may sometimes end with one or more reflections of a general theological nature. This basic narrative occurs in almost every conversion story. The writings belonging to the Nadere Reformatie tradition, however, exhibition a number of features that are present to a lesser degree in conversion stories from other Protestant circles. In fact, it should be possible to indicate what the most or least frequently occurring features are for each tradition and subtradition, and on the basis of this to determine the religious tradition behind every conversion story. Like any autobiography, the conversion story is not just an account of experiences and events but it is also a self-presentation: the author presents himself in a certain way and tries to induce the reader to accept that presentation as truthful. The image of himself that the author chooses to evoke in others thus forms a second aim of the story in addition to the basic narrative: he or she wants to be acknowledged as the person whom the reader will be apt to recognise from his knowledge of the master narrative. In doing so the author will be inclined to omit, or even forget, whatever is at variance with the basic narrative she is using, and will shape the information she conveys to conform with that narrative’s pre-existing structure. Sometimes the author will even supply information from the basis narrative that may otherwise be missing. There is certainly no need to accuse such an author of lying, secrecy, hypocrisy or embellishment – as Freud did in reproaching the biographer (rather ungraciously, particularly for the father of psychoanalysis; letter to Arnold Zweig dated 31 May 1935, in: Freud, 1960, p. 423). Human actions simply have manifold causes, as he himself taught us. In addition, the fact that we allow ourselves to be led by narratives is usually not a consciously pursued strategy but a consequence of socialisation processes, most of which have not been subjected to reflection. The human being is guided not only by conscious and unconscious personal intentions in the psychoanalytical sense, which only concern the individual life in the short term, but he is also guided by unconscious long- and medium-term factors such as genetic and historical-social factors. Among the latter are language and stories; they structure human subjectivity,

Autobiography, psychic functioning and mental health 127 and without them human subjectivity would neither exist nor be able to articulate itself. The very title of Mrs Reinsberg’s book has all the earmarks of conversion stories from the realm of Dutch Protestantism. The division of the work into four books also fully corresponds with the basic narrative that applies to the whole genre. She calls her life prior to her stay at Ermelo that of “a mortal without God.” The second phase of her life comprises the conversion as it took place during her psychiatric period; the second and most extensive part of her writing is devoted to this account. In the third book she discusses the more than four years that she had been allowed to live “someone redeemed by Christ Jesus,” and in the fourth book she ends with a series of reflections of a more general nature. The structural similarity with pietistic conversion stories could not be greater. Orienting ourselves to this genre also helps us understand the incongruities in Mrs Reinsberg’s story. For example, she says several times that before her conversion she did not have or was not aware of any religious life, and that she had “nothing to do with religion.” This is strongly formulated on the very first page of the “preface” to her book: “Although I did not know any passages from the Bible before the age of four, the Spirit of God now lets me speak from God’s Word,” etc. For an empiricist like a historian or a psychologist it is impossible to tell whether the Spirit of God did or did not let her speak from God’s word. The first half of the sentence, however, might evoke some surprise: as we learn from her own book, Mrs Reinsberg had by no means been without a religious upbringing, religious contacts or religious habits. Yet her statement – with all respect to Freud – cannot be regarded as distorting, misleading or anything else. This is where we see the themes from the present section being illustrated: it is entirely in keeping with the basic narrative of the pietistic conversion story that the author presents herself and experiences herself as someone who before her conversion was not at all religious or was even averse to religion. This does not mean that life had been entirely devoid of religion, but rather that the true “sanctifying” way of being religious had been absent up to that point. She probably had been baptised and may even have been more or less faithful in church attendance and in many other religious practices, but according to the pietistic tradition, especially the tradition inspired by the Nadere Reformatie in the Netherlands, that was not enough. Among these circles, as was explained earlier, it was emphasised that in addition to a correct outward way of living there also had to be a correct interior condition and conviction. One had to be “converted,” someone whose first and primary inclination, from the depth of her heart and mind, was turned towards God, and whose entire life had become a witness to this new, converted state. This will have to suffice for what is a very inadequate discussion of the “conversion story” genre.

128 Jacob A. Belzen The narrative construction of the self The human self is a dynamic and complex entity, full of contradiction and tension. The highly diverse types of psychology that have attempted to present this in terms of a concept place their emphasis in different areas. In modern theories, the self and identity – as parts of the more inclusive personality – are sometimes presented as a polymorphous and dialogical narrative. McAdams (1993) even speaks of a personal myth that each individual constructs in order to indicate who she or he is. Yet even this “myth” is not static. First and foremost, it is subject to change over time; and second, the told story is dependent on the context in which it is told. Not only is the storyteller dependent on the possibilities supplied to him by the context as he constructs his story, but the presented self may also differ according to the “listeners” to whom it is told. Depending on the storyteller’s situation, her perspective on her own past and anticipated future will produce a certain story. To paraphrase Hermans and Kempen (1993): the self is a text that is constantly being edited, not by a sovereign, central “I” authority but from a multitude of “I”-positions, positions that can even interact with each other and with others. From this perspective, the question of the Mrs Reinsberg’s “self ” can be interpreted as: from which of her possible “I” positions is she speaking to her readers? What version of her “self ” is being presented to them? Mrs Reinsberg talks about her life from the “I”-position of someone who reached a point of conversion at a certain moment in mid-life. That position renders that life visible in a particular way – as every position does in its own manner. It allows a certain light to shine on the life and presents the “facts” from a particular perspective. But let us see whether her “I”-position can be even more closely specified. Whereas in principle many “I”-positions can be distinguished in each self (one of the meanings of the notion of the “multivoiced self ”), each individual “I”-position can also be investigated in terms of multiplicity of voices. This may mean trying to discover to what extent the story exhibits internal contradictions, lacunae, Fehlleistungen and other characteristics. But because each person is a product of her own culture and history, “multiplicity of voices” can also refer to the sounds of other voices, such as the voice of a group, that can be heard in a particular individual voice (cf. Wertsch, 1991). At first glance, this closer definition of the “I”-position from which Mrs Reinsberg speaks to us in her book seems simple enough. After all, she describes herself in the title of her book as “now redeemed and reborn,” and she calls her book a conversion story. So apparently she is speaking from the position and from the perspective of a converted person. True enough, except the designation is too simple and it does not go far enough in revealing the multiplicity of voices in Mrs Reinsberg’s spirituality, one of the aspects that make

Autobiography, psychic functioning and mental health 129 her story so interesting. For what (or who) is a converted person, and what is a conversion? There is considerable disagreement on this point, even in related religious circles. It is clear that in the case of Mrs Reinsberg we are not dealing with conversion in the sense of switching to another religion, nor are we dealing primarily in the sense of switching to another community within the same religious tradition. In her case we are dealing with a form which Rambo (1993), in a commendable attempt to develop a non-theological typology, calls “intensification”: “the revitalized commitment to a faith with which the convert had had previous affiliation, formal or informal.”2 For despite Mrs Reinsberg’s repeated written claims, she certainly did not grow up without religious socialisation. On the contrary, during her early Amsterdam years she became intensively involved in the kinds of religious experiences being practised within the Réveil movement and other pietistic circles. As indicated earlier, in constructing her life story she follows the rhetorical strategies that are usually found in the published conversion stories of the bevindelijke circle of Calvinists, although her approach is perhaps too extreme and not very wise (for example, she denies having had any knowledge of the Bible at all). Besides this general structure there are many other structural features from the bevindelijke Calvinist conversion stories that can be found in her account. One consists of the “pulsations” or “impressions” that she reports: the warnings and “voices” of God that urge the yet unconverted person to abandon the sinful path she has been following up until now. Mrs Reinsberg clearly says that she interprets several of the events in her life before the Ermelo period as God’s intervention in her life. She has something that appears to have been a nervous breakdown after a small fire in the hotel and calls it “a serious warning,” and she regards the sickness and death of her children as “God’s voice for good or ill.” She reports the death of her husband August Reinsberg in the chapter entitled “The Lord takes away my husband.” Such incidents form a fixed part of the standard conversion discourse that pietists used to orient themselves when describing their conversions (Groenendijk, 1993, p. 75). Their purpose was to show that there were indications that God was indeed “busy” with the narrator, that God was involved in the sinner’s life – even those sinners who were not originally from pietistic circles. May we then conclude that the “I”-position from which she wrote her book reverberates with the Calvinistic-pietistic tradition? Without ever being able to respond with total certainty in a study such as this one, the answer must certainly be in the affirmative, although it should immediately be noted that this is not the

2

The other categories classified by Rambo (1993) are: apostasy or defection (becoming a nonbeliever), affiliation (when a previously unbelieving person joins a religious group), institutional transition (switching to another group within a particular religion) and tradition transition (switching to another religion) (pp. 12–14).

130 Jacob A. Belzen last word on the subject. To substantiate the positive answer, it can also be pointed out that not only did she align herself with this tradition but she also wanted to be recognised as a converted person. This is evident from the fact that she brought her book to the attention of a number of prominent Calvinist theologians. Starting with her introduction to the Volten family, with whom Doetje received private nursing care in Ermelo during a transitional period between her stay in the insane asylum and her full discharge, Doetje gradually begins moving in a spiritually charismatic direction. This is the other collective tradition that can be heard in her individual voice, and the second spiritual qualification that we can apply to her “I”-position: “charismatic.” The content of this kind of spirituality is even more difficult to describe than that of Calvinistic pietism. Charismatic spirituality, far more than bevindelijke spirituality, was not tied to any particular church community – and certainly not during the time period we are dealing with here – although it was more likely to be found in some communities than others. It clearly overlapped with the forerunners of today’s evangelical movement in the Netherlands, although a distinction should be made already – after the emergence of the Pentecostal movement in the stricter sense – at the beginning of the twentieth century. As in the case of the later evangelical “movement,” and unlike the Calvinistic-pietistic tradition, it involved believers who did not seek spiritual nourishment exclusively in the church communities of which they were members, but who also attended (and provided financial support for) gatherings of other religious groups, read materials from many different circles and participated in parachurch conferences and other activities. Theologically, the charismatic tradition shares most of the notions of mainstream conservative-orthodox Protestantism in the Netherlands (both the Calvinisticpietistic and the Calvinistic-evangelical wings). It places its emphasis, however, on the functioning of the Holy Spirit in the life of the church and the individual believer, and maintains that the so-called charismata – the gifts of the Spirit – should function in the here and now just as they did in biblical times (this refers in particular to the more “spectacular” phenomena such as healings, glossolalia and “miracles” of every variety). The other religious voice that can be heard in the “I”-position that Mrs Reinsberg occupies as author is a charismatic-evangelical voice. This means at least two religious traditions can be identified in her presentation of herself, traditions that certainly have a great deal in common but are nevertheless interesting to differentiate in a detailed study like this one. The entwining of these traditions can be seen throughout Mrs Reinsberg’s book, even in the rhetorical structures and techniques. The personal conversion testimonies that are typical of those brought forward in charismatic circles differ somewhat from the published bevindelijke conversion stories, and the construction of the identity as a converted person is undertaken with slightly different rhetorical techniques. In the bevindelijke, Calvinistic-pietistic conversion story a clear time distinction

Autobiography, psychic functioning and mental health 131 is also made between “pre-” and “post-conversion,” and the time and attendant circumstances of the conversion are delineated in great detail (while the decades occurring before the conversion are summarily dealt with, which is also the case with Mrs Reinsberg). In the charismatic-evangelical testimonies, however, the contrast between life before and life after the conversion is depicted as much as possible in terms of a “non-religious” life versus a “religious” life. While bevindelijke conversion stories will speak of how a person, despite faithful church attendance, etc., was tormented by uncertainty about his own “condition” and did not dare take part in the Lord’s Supper or pray a prayer such as the Lord’s Prayer (all religious matters which betray pre-conversional familiarity), charismaticevangelical testimonies will tell of how a person lived totally without God, without church and without religion (or began living this way after having had a “Christian upbringing”). “Harlots and publicans” are the standard paradigms: people who are totally lost to sin to all intents and purposes, and then suddenly – preferably as forcefully as possible – converted, as if by a miracle. In Mrs Reinsberg’s story we see her working with this construction as well: she denies any knowledge of religious matters (although her own story sometimes contradicts this) and she discusses things as if she had never had anything to do with religion. For example, the title of the very last chapter in her book (“Decision”) is “Prayer from the Holy Spirit, by grace, from someone who had never prayer before.” It is precisely because her own account contradicts this that we can wonder whether an “average” charismatic-evangelical believer would have chosen such wording to tell her story. It’s just a bit too extreme, and prompt us to further analysis. After examining the constructivist aspect of Mrs Reinsberg’s conversion story in this section (among other points) we will begin a more functionalist analysis, for which we shall have to use quite different forms psychological reasoning. For although the “how” of the construction of Mrs Reinsberg’s identity as a converted person is now clear to us, we are far from understanding the “why.” Nor did the concepts of identity and self as they are used in this chapter give us sufficient reason to ask such a question. After reading Mrs Reinsberg’s conversion account as a story in this section – a narrative construction of her self – we can now start asking questions based on psychological theories that work with other approaches and that may help us understand why she wrote this book and why she wrote it in this way. In the voice that her “I”-position, as author of her book, makes audible to us we can distinguish qualities such as tone or timbre in addition to the various collective positions and traditions. To give an obvious and probably recognizable example: Mrs Reinsberg clearly paints herself as someone “special,” someone who, after a difficult childhood, managed by dint of hard work to become a successful businesswoman, and who, while still quite young, retired from her business to live from her private means like a woman of rank, moving in the better circles. She paints herself as

132 Jacob A. Belzen someone who, after undergoing the requisite hardships in life, is blessed by God, someone who has special experiences with God and has been chosen by him to be his instrument in this world. She presents herself as someone who has a story to tell, a story that is so worthwhile that it should be heard by as many people as possible because they stand to profit from it. We may rightly ask ourselves what this tone means, what it refers to or what caused it. The identity presented by Mrs Reinsberg is – as with every presentation of the self – a desired identity, and it exhibits all the standard problems that are part of the concept of identity. Identity as a narrative given is a text that obscures its own meaning, a meaning of longings that the author does not and usually cannot recognise (Ricoeur, 1970). So psychoanalysts such as Lacan point to the problematic status of the identity. According to Lacan, identity is a construct realised in the realm of reality that he called the “imaginary” and is followed by doubt and by suspicions concerning one’s own understanding of self, while at the same time it is also the desperate antidote against internal fragmentation, conflictual longing and threatening chaos (Rosenberg, Rosenberg and Farrell, 1992, pp. 41–42). Let us then briefly see whether there may have been inner needs in Doetje’s life that caused her to write, and to write as she did.

Doetje’s psychic energy – Self psychological reflections Psychoanalytical perspectives can be worthwhile when used as heuristics and I shall try to use some of them as a complement to insights gained from working with approaches like narrative psychology employed so far. In a more extensive study it has been shown that the self psychology developed by Kohut in particular is useful for a closer exploration of Doetje’s psychic energy (Belzen, 2004). Before discussing a few empirical facts, let us introduce some of Kohut’s ideas, especially his reflections on narcissism as a form of psychic energy. Freud identified a primary and a secondary narcissism. Primary narcissism develops after a brief period of autoeroticism. Initially the libidinal impulses do not focus on anything or anyone specific. The desire that the child experiences by sucking on its mother’s breast is the same as the desire it experiences by sucking on its own hand. The child still experiences its mother’s breast as part of the child itself (autoeroticism). The Ich marks the emergence of an object on which the libido can concentrate and attach itself: the beginning of narcissism (Freud, 1914/1975, p. 377). So the term narcissism denoted the primary phase in which the child itself is the object of libidinal cathexis. Only after this does the phase develop in which the child is able to concentrate on an object outside and separate from itself; in this phase it becomes possible for the libido to attach itself to an object in the outside world. Freud saw a contrast between the Ich-libido and the later Objekt-libido. One emerges at the cost of the other. The more the libido attaches itself to objects in the outside world, the less energy

Autobiography, psychic functioning and mental health 133 will remain for the subject to focus on itself (Freud, 1914/1975, p. 43). Even though narcissism, according to Freud, is never fully dissolved by the Objektwahl phase, he thinks the ideal is for the person to turn away from herself as much as possible and focus on the outside world.3 When in a later phase the libido once again concentrates itself on the subject (and thereby withdraws its attention from objects in the outside world), the condition is known as regression, which Freud speaks of as secondary narcissism (Freud, 1914/1975). Kohut disagrees with Freud. He maintains that the Ich-libido (or narcissistic libido) and the Objekt-libido develop along separate but parallel lines. They should not be regarded as the extreme ends of the same continuum; rather, they both develop along separate continua from archaic to adult forms. So narcissism – including its manifestations after earliest infancy – should not necessarily be judged negatively. On the contrary, according to Kohut, narcissism (apart from pathological destruction) enables actions that are to be valued positively: it provides the energy that allows a person to be creative, to take pleasure in his work, to enjoy the achievements of himself and others, to pursue and realise ideals, etc. So narcissism is not to be defeated but transformed into an adult form. Ich-libido and Objekt-libido can go hand in hand, according to Kohut; they can focus on the same object (such as a possibly ideal love relationship). But narcissistic libido can also make possible the highest achievements in the artistic or humanitarian realm, such as those of Albert Schweitzer (Kohut in Moss, 1977, p. 55). On the basis of an empathic analysis of patient transfer, Kohut maintained that besides the problems (standard in classical psychoanalysis) that are rooted in the Oedipal phase (when the child is faced with the task of forsaking his narcissistic desires and joining the existing whole, the culture that surrounds him), it is important to distinguish problems that have their roots in an earlier phase: in the phase of narcissism in which the “sense of self ” develops. According to Kohut, the self (for which he provides no unambiguous definition) comes into being through the sufficient, empathic mirroring of the child by the mother (or another primary caregiver; for the sake of convenience, however, we will continue to speak of the mother). The process by which the neonate becomes conscious of the separation from the mother is by its very nature difficult: the child must begin to realise that an outside world exists which is not subject to his wishes, and that the mother is not always available to him. For the neonate, who must rely on others for his survival, there is something lifethreatening about this situation: if no one were to respond to his need for care, 3

Freud’s reflections here are more or less consistent with the dominant religious reflections in the West that preach love of neighbour and regard attention paid to the self as sinful. Narcissism usually has a negative tone: it seems like a vogue word for selfishness. It should be pointed out, however, that this was not the meaning expressed in Freud’s technical explanation.

134 Jacob A. Belzen he would die. The child responds to this frustrating perception with the development of a certain hallucinatory desire, by which he tries to preserve the unity and completeness that have been lost. On the one hand he develops a grandiose image of himself (based on what has now become an aphorism: “I am perfect”), and on the other hand he forms the image of an almighty other, an idealised parent imago who is assigned to serve as guarantor of care and protection (“you are perfect, but I am part of you,” Kohut, 1971, p. 27). (According to Kohut this takes place among children between the ages of about eight months and three years.) If the parent relates to the child with empathy, she thereby fulfils two functions that are necessary for the child: on the one hand by accepting the child’s grandiose image of itself, by admiring the child and making him feel that he is indeed very special, and on the other hand by making herself available as an object of admiration. (In this way parents fulfil the so-called self-object function: they function as the first self-objects for the child.) What matters is not so much what the parents do as how they are: it is the quality of the interaction with the parents that is internalised by the child. If the parents fall short in this regard, the child will not be able to develop a normal, healthy “sense of self.” He will continue to have doubts about himself and his self-worth, precisely because he was not mirrored, or not enough. He will have to go through life without a sufficiently crystallised sense of being “allowed to exist,” of being “good enough,” a feeling he can fall back on when he meets with adversity in life and from which he can continue to derive self-worth even in the face of failure. It is inevitable, however, that parents will not always respond fully to the needs of the child. According to Kohut that is neither necessary nor even desirable. By means of all sorts of small but non-traumatic frustrations, what he calls “transmuting internalisation” can take place by which both necessary functions are gradually disconnected from the parents and absorbed into the self. The grandiose image of the self thereby becomes more realistic: from exhibitionistic narcissism it becomes the “fuel for our ego-syntonic ambitions and purposes, for the enjoyment of our activities, and for important aspects of our self-esteem” (Kohut, 1971, pp. 27–28). In the same way, the idealized parent imago is transformed into ideals to be pursued. The “grandiose self,” the image of the self as grandiose,4 is the first to become part of the nuclear self. This takes place between about the second and fourth years (Kohut, 1977, p. 178). This self is mainly derived from the relationship with the mother. The “idealised parent imago” forms between the fourth and sixth years, during the Oedipal phase, and is derived from the relationship with both parents.

4

This is an example of Kohut’s often inconsistent use of language: he uses the same word to refer to the image of the self as grandiose (“self ”) as to the self of which this image is a part.

Autobiography, psychic functioning and mental health 135 If the development of the child involves more than the “normal” traumatisation (too difficult or too frequent experiences of a lack of empathic response, for example, or of divorce, disappointment and the like), the transformation of the two images (the self and the parent) will not occur; in such a situation they do not become integrated but continue to exist independently. If the grandiose self is traumatised in the midst of its development, the exhibitionistic narcissistic energy will not be able to reinvest itself in the grandiose self in modified form and the subject will ultimately be bereft of an adequate sense of selfesteem. If the idealising narcissistic energy is traumatically disappointed in experiences with the idealised object it will revert to the idealised parent imago, thus depriving the subject’s ideals of an adequate energy supply. Both images then retain psychic energy in repressed form or in a form that is separated from more realistic images; they will distort the development of the subject and prevent the later adult from acting and/or experiencing in a realistic way. The adult – each in his own way, of course, and to varying degrees – will remain tied to his (unconscious) delusions of grandeur and will act as if he were the centre of the universe or will withdraw from everything because he is afraid that his extreme expectations will be disappointed. Or he will remain tied to the idealised parent imago and may spend his whole life looking for a parent substitute to which he can submit and with which he can identify, thereby sharing in the substitute’s greatness but unable to stand on his own two feet. And if the expectations of such non-integrated self and object images are too badly disappointed, the adult may simply withdraw into the very early subrepresentatives of self and object. His self and his world will then fall apart and fragment and the person will go insane (Pietzcker, 1983, pp. 45–46). Usually things do not go this far, however. In most cases such a psychic decompensation does not occur, and the narcissistically vulnerable person is still able to do an excellent job of presenting an image of himself to the outside world as adjusted and even successful, although often at great psychic expense. And here it should be noted once again that narcissism and its expressions need not be pathological as such. If transformed, the pole of the self known as the “grandiose self ” will supply the energy that the Ich needs for its activities. And the idealising narcissism, in its transformed form, will make possible such socially valued faculties as creativity, empathy, the ability to face one’s own finiteness, humour and wisdom (Kohut, 1966/1985, p. 111). There are at least three indications that in the case of Mrs Reinsberg we are dealing with a person who was narcissistically vulnerable or even suffered from a narcissistic personality disorder in Kohut’s sense. I will briefly touch on the first two and discuss the third in greater detail. First of all, if a diagnosis of Doetje is attempted based on a modern psychopathological set of instruments such as the DSM (which is quite possible and has been tested by different raters, cf. Belzen, 2004), a narcissistic personality disorder can be confirmed.

136 Jacob A. Belzen Second, counter-transference usually develops with readers of her book, which is an indication of such a disorder. Through her book, Mrs Reinsberg somehow evokes feelings of boredom and resentment among those who seriously want to probe her story more deeply; we feel inclined to shut the book and stop reading. Kohut regards these kinds of feelings from a psychotherapeutic point of view (“counter-transference”) as an important indication that we are dealing with a patient with narcissistic problems (Kohut, 1971, p. 273). Third, the narcissistic personality disorder, which Kohut ranks fifth in his list of primary disorders,5 seems plainly applicable to Doetje (Kohut, 1977; Kohut & Wolf, 1978). This disorder does not manifest itself in deviant behavior; the symptoms are rather hypochondria, a deeply rooted sense of emptiness and depression, a general feeling of unease, boredom and emotional dullness. The ability to get any work done is often seriously inhibited. There is also an oversensitivity to personal offences, and the response to a suggested lack of empathy is fierce, often excessive rage (cf. Laan, 1994). From the daily entries in her medical file we can deduce that in Doetje’s case at the time of her admission to Veldwijk there was indeed evidence of a preoccupation with her self-esteem. She experienced that self-esteem as nil: she was deeply sinful, it was “too late” for her, she felt “unworthy of everything; everyone is good but me” (Medical Dossier Veldwijk (MDV) 416, entry of 16-4-1890). These anxieties seem pre-oedipal in nature, since oedipal anxieties are experienced as attacks on the body or on physical integrity from some exterior source. They involve metaphors concerning external harm being done to cherished body parts (such as the eyes or the genitals); the most common example is perhaps castration anxiety. Pre-oedipal anxieties, on the other hand, manifest themselves as attacks on the self from within, sometimes committed by a persecutor (such as voices Doetje reports hearing), or by unbearable feelings of worthlessness (Gay, 1989, p. 82). Pre-oedipal anxieties are often symbolised by an attack on the human face, that of the patient himself or of another person (Kohut, 1979). Relevant in this regard is the very frequent mention in Doetje’s medical file of the apparent aversion she had to her own face; she did not want anyone to see it and even kept it covered with a handkerchief. One entry states that “flying into a temper, (. . .) she gave one patient, who was talking excitedly, an unexpected slap in the face” (MDV 416, 4-10-1890). Mrs Reinsberg herself writes many times of how she tried to hide her face as much as possible at the beginning of her stay at Veldwijk, sometimes by standing in a corner of the room. As noted, Kohut makes a sharp distinction between problems that have their roots in the oedipal phase and problems that are rooted in the earlier 5

In the secondary disorders, as opposed to the primary disorders, such reactions are regarded as responses by an in principle structurally undamaged self to the trials and tribulations of life.

Autobiography, psychic functioning and mental health 137 narcissistic phase. (Freud also made this distinction, but he maintained that narcissistic problems could not be treated, which Kohut sees otherwise.) Kohut’s differential diagnostics is based on the distinction he makes between the various kinds of transference that patients develop. Classical (neurotic) transference has to do with the problematic conflict concerning incestuous longings with regard to an object from one’s childhood. The accompanying anxiety is related to threats of punishment or even physical neglect. The objects here are differentiated, however, and the problem is not situated in the self, which in this case already exhibits a fair amount of cohesion. In a person with a disorder that is rooted in the narcissistic phase, on the other hand, the anxiety is related to the self’s awareness of its own vulnerability and tendency towards fragmentation. In these disorders the central problem is situated in the disturbed development of the narcissistic configurations, so that the self is deprived of narcissism’s energy sources, causing an incapacity to maintain and regulate one’s self-esteem (cf. Siegel, 1996, p. 65). Thus the fear of disintegration is different in nature from the oedipal fear of loss of love, and according to Kohut it more closely resembles fear of death. Doetje’s frequent looking in the mirror could also be interpreted as fear of fragmentation. This could be dismissed as trivial, of course: she was ashamed of her face, after all, which was supposed to have been “too ugly, too thin.” Perhaps she looked in the mirror because she wanted to make sure the face was still the same as before and needed to be covered by a handkerchief? This explanation is undeniable, although we may easily wonder why Doetje kept casting this self-tormenting glance in the mirror. Was something else being manifested there? With this in mind, let us briefly consult the reflections that the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan devoted to the narcissistic phase. Lacan establishes an explicit relationship with the mythological figure from which the phenomenon derives its name. As in Ovid’s story, narcissism supposedly has to do with being attracted to one’s own mirror reflection (cf. Evans, 1996, p. 120). Lacan therefore calls the phase in which this takes place (from about six to eighteen months) the mirror phase (“stade du miroir,” Lacan, 1949/ 1977), a term that not only denotes an historical phase in the development of the child but also refers to the child’s essentially libidinal relationship with the image of its own body (Lacan, 1953, p. 14). The mirror phase has both an erotic and an aggressive element. Once the child begins consciously observing itself in the mirror, a double reaction is evoked. On the one hand the image demonstrates a unity that the child has not yet experienced as such; it is as it were the promise of the future experience of fullness and unity. On the other hand, the image of unity confronts the feelings of fragmentation which until that moment are all the child has been able to experience; it still has no control over its limbs and its movements are still uncoordinated, and it becomes conscious of this by means of the image of unity with which it is confronted. This contrast between

138 Jacob A. Belzen the experience of the fragmented body and the unity provided by the mirror image results in anxiety, an anxiety which the child resolves by identifying with the image of itself in the mirror, which is the first step in the formation of the Ich. But this identification is also the beginning of alienation and doubt with regard to the child’s own identity, something that will follow the subject throughout its entire life. After all, the child is identifying with something it is not; it is not the image in the mirror. So identifying with the image of oneself is the paradigm of the so-called imaginary order which the subject-in-progress has entered into. The imaginary order will continue to exist, to be sure, but to keep from remaining imprisoned in it permanently the child must take the additional step of entering into the symbolic order by identifying with the identity that already exists in the world of symbols, cultural norms and values, and principally of language. The fear of fragmentation of the body – which can express itself in dreams and associations – manifests itself in a variety of images: castration, mutilation, being torn apart, disturbance, deterioration, debilitation, being devoured, bursting open and the like (Lacan, 1949/1977, p. 11). By combining Kohut and Lacan, we can come to an understanding of the mirror phase as that in which the mother, as a reflecting surface, turns to the child, thereby making possible the emergence of the self. So when it was noted at Veldwijk that Doetje “frequently looks at her face in the mirror” (MDV 416, 17-4-1890), this could be an indication of the fragmentation anxiety she was experiencing, an anxiety which she resolved by constantly looking in the mirror to make sure she was still unified and not fragmented. This means the function served by Doetje’s glance in the mirror may have been quite different from the function served by covering her face with a handkerchief, and should not too quickly be aligned with it. The glance in the mirror was reassuring for her. The mirror image met her deep wish to be complete, not to be fragmented. The function thus served by her mirror image would have been that of a self-object, as it is for most people (cf. Gay, 1989, p. 152). In a great many places in her book Mrs Reinsberg describes emotions that can be unequivocally interpreted as “narcissistic rage” in the sense of Kohut’s theory. This is a rage that is characterised by excessiveness: for people who are narcissistically vulnerable, a seemingly minor provocation can result in fierce outbursts of anger. Narcissistic rage always follows a narcissistic injury. It is the consequence of “the failure of the self-object environment to meet the child’s need for optimal – not maximal, it should be stressed – empathic responses” (Kohut, 1977, p. 116). The narcissistic injury goes hand in hand with feelings of humiliation on the part of the patient. He reacts to an actual or an anticipated injury by withdrawing in shame or responding with narcissistic rage. The rage arises because the self-object has been inadequate; it has failed to meet the expectations. Such narcissistic rage is characterised by the absence of any kind of empathy with regard to the person who has caused the injury.

Autobiography, psychic functioning and mental health 139 Ich-functions will then only serve as means and as rationalization in order to take revenge. Doetje shows this pattern quite frequently, yet we will have to limit ourselves to a single example. After Doetje had already been living for quite some time with the Volten family things began going much better for her, both generally and according to her own gradually developing religious criteria. In terms of the structure that Mrs Reinsberg used in her book, the event quoted below occurred when she had already been converted and had received the Holy Spirit. Although she was still frequently tormented by anxiety attacks and sometimes heard voices in her head, she had – according to her own insight – really begun to get somewhere. On a certain evening I put my sewing down and went downstairs to have a cup of coffee. That evening I spoke as the Spirit of God gave me utterance, and with fire, so that someone who was there told me, “Please, madam, be careful you are not sent back to Veldwijk.”6 (p. 159)

That was exactly the reaction Doetje could not tolerate: instead of winning admiration for her religious ardour and being recognised as someone blessed by God, she was reminded of her own fear of decompensating once again, the fear of losing the battle with her voices and having to be readmitted to an insane asylum, where the patients – at least as she came to see it – were in the clutches of the devil. The comment, well intended perhaps but utterly lacking in empathy, had been made by one of the family visitors (the Volten family, as the entire book attests, were much more cautious in their dealings with Doetje), and her reaction shows how hurt she felt and how much energy that hurt mobilised within her. The story continues: But suddenly I felt a wondrous power within me, and picking up the Bible and holding it aloft, I said, “As truly as this Bible is true, so assuredly will I never go back to Veldwijk.” A holy tremor shook me when I said this. (p. 159)

Her frequently reported psychosomatic disorders, her unmanageable, attentiondemanding behaviour and her hypochondria – certainly when taken together – are also indications of a narcissistic personality disorder in Kohut’s sense. They are indications of the fundamental weakness of the nuclear self, which can only preserve itself by means of a relationship with external self-objects in order to be reassured or admired. Let us attempt a closer examination of Doetje’s self and any possible weaknesses it may have. An important instrument in this effort might be an analysis of the transfer Doetje establishes with her environment. 6

That is, to be taken from foster care and admitted to the asylum once again.

140 Jacob A. Belzen As already noted, Kohut recognised a so-called narcissistic transfer (later called a self-object transfer) in addition to the form of transfer already described by Freud. In narcissistic transfer, the patient does not respond to the psychotherapist as to persons from the oedipal phase (in such a case, the conflicts over power and authority are played out once again with the therapist), but treats the therapist as the self-object from an earlier phase, the narcissistic phase (here the patient experiences the therapist as part of himself, or himself as part of a greater whole). The problems that arise in this pre-oedipal phase have to do with the development of the self, with being one and being whole, with cohesion and self-esteem. Within this self-object transfer Kohut distinguished various forms that would also recur as elements in his theory of the self: if the patient treats the therapist as someone by whom she wants to be accepted, regarded as worthwhile or even admired, it is an indication of a reactivation of the untransformed or insufficiently transformed grandiose self from childhood. The grandiose self extends itself, as it were, to enclose the therapist, who then only exists to mirror the greatness of the patient’s self. For this reason, this form of transfer is also called mirror transfer. If, on the other hand, the patient admires the therapist and ascribes to him all sorts of knowledge, skill and power, the idealised parent imago is being reactivated. In this case we are speaking of idealising transfer. If the patient approaches the therapist as an equal to himself, as someone who is no different and in particular should be no different than the patient, the condition is called alter-ego transfer. For the patient it is apparently too threatening for the therapist to be a real other, but a “doubling” of himself is acceptable because this confirms and strengthens the desired fundamental unity (Uleyn, 1986, pp. 55–56). These forms of transfer do not occur solely in therapeutic situations, however; they also function within all sorts of other relationships that are deemed important. Due to spatial limitations we will only examine the first and, in Doetje’s case, most obvious form of transfer. We have seen that Doetje wanted to be recognised as a special person by people whom she regarded as important, as someone who had been blessed by God and vigorously snatched from the hand of the devil, and who now had a mission to fulfil in the world. To be thus accepted was very important for her. Her book is full of examples of her desire to be affirmed and admired, but it also reveals the other side of the coin: her fear of failure and criticism. These characteristics can be found not only in her account of her stay in Ermelo and the years that followed, but they are also evident in the little she shares about the previous years. For example, she says that in her youth she had a great fondness for beautiful clothes, and that she supposedly had “a terribly proud heart” (p. 9). But no matter how beautiful the clothes were, they did not assure her of being beautiful enough: “the more beautiful I was, the unhappier I felt” (p. 3). Writing about the period in the hotel, she says that she worked her knuckles to the bone “so no one would complain. For as I always said, I’m more afraid of

Autobiography, psychic functioning and mental health 141 complaints than of death” (p. 21). Doetje makes the impression that she is very attached to things that will show her in a positive light, but her hunger seems insatiable. We see this pattern again in the religious “battle” she waged at Veldwijk: even though she was treated positively there by the personnel and by the chaplain, the Rev. Notten, and even though she was told many positive things from Christian doctrine (about mercy and love, that surely there is forgiveness for her, etc.), it was always difficult for her to appropriate it all personally. She continued to hear critical “voices.” Something in her made it impossible for her to believe that the message of Christian salvation might also apply to her. She was still afraid of being lost forever. She listened to biblical texts about hell with nothing but fear or tried not to hear them at all, etc. Apparently she had had an enormous, enduring and unquenchable need for empathic responses from mirroring self-objects. Never able to believe in her own worth, she was driven to achieve that worth, and with it positive treatment by others, in another way: by earning it. From this pattern, now sufficiently well known, only one conclusion can be drawn in the light of self psychology: Doetje’s grandiose self as part of her nuclear self was underdeveloped. Her normal need to be positively mirrored must have been traumatised in early childhood, so that the narcissistic grandiose self was never transformed into a self-object function that the subject could fulfil for herself but was split off and never integrated. Doetje must have suffered from a fundamental absence of faith in her own worth. She could only believe she was acceptable and worthwhile (and even then she could never fully believe it) if she could earn that recognition. Her share in what Kohut calls the “gleam in the eye of the mother” must have been quite inadequate.

Psychological hypotheses and empirical historical research The historical facts available to us concerning Doetje’s childhood corroborate the hypothesis, developed from psychology, that in Doetje there was clear evidence of a traumatised development of the grandiose self (and to a lesser degree of the development of the idealised parent imago). At the age when the grandiose self takes shape, Doetje must have had to endure disturbances in her need for empathic responses that were more serious than those at a slightly later age (when the parent imago develops). A great many diverse facts make it more than likely that Doetje’s mother, Johanna Catharina (1806–1858), had not been able to give Doetje optimal attention during the childhood years that are so formative for psychic development. When Doetje was born her mother already had four small children to care for, and shortly before her birth she had lost a little daughter. When Doetje was just one year old Johanna Catharina became pregnant again, and nine months later she had to begin nursing this new child. Only fifteen months after that, when Doetje was just three years old, the next infant required attention. Two years later came the shock caused by the death of

142 Jacob A. Belzen Mr and Mrs Ypes-Santée’s youngest child, an event that, like the illness of sister Egbertina and the pregnancy that preceded it, must have prevented Johanna Catharina from being able to function as an optimal self-object for Doetje. Mrs Reinsberg’s description of her childhood years is also in close agreement with the picture painted here. The first persons she mentions are not her mother and father; these do not come up until she talks about going to live with her uncle. The person in whom she apparently sought refuge was not her mother but the nanny. She sat with her in “a corner” and had a good cry when, at age three and a half, she came back from the nursery school for the first time, and it was the nanny who comforted her with fairy tales and other stories (p. 1). Had the little child already found it necessary to search for another hiding place and to seek solace in a fantasy world? Even though Mrs Reinsberg stylises the description of her childhood for the sake of her plan to write a conversion story, and naturally presents it as a period of wickedness and unhappiness, it is still striking to read on some pages the repeated announcement that she felt so unhappy as a child. Through the loss of important others such as a big brother and sister, and even her father (cf. later), the well-known feelings of guilt will not have been lacking. Greater than the problem of guilt, however, was that of shame (Mrs Reinsberg writes often about feelings of shame and almost never about guilt), another indication of a selfpsychological problem. The fact that she had been given the name of a little girl who had only recently died will also have had its consequences. Even though many children died in childbirth in the nineteenth century and the connection with a child may have been less intense than it is a hundred fifty years later, the death of the first Doetje must have had an impact on the parents. After all, she was already two years old when she died. In such circumstances, parents suffer psychological loss for which they will try to find a replacement, often feeling compelled to prove to themselves and to the rest of the world that they are indeed able to bear a child and keep it alive (Agger, 1988). Often the dead child becomes the representative of the parents’ idealised hopes and fantasies, which are then imposed as expectations on the replacement. Not infrequently this leads to borderline or narcissistic disorders (Agger, 1988, p. 24).7 The next child can never fulfil the idealised image of the one who died, however, and inevitably becomes a disappointment for the parents (Kernberg and Richards, 1988). The mother in particular is often tormented by anxiety fantasies of the death of the “replacement child,” which can leave the child with deep feelings of vulnerability and inadequacy. On the first pages of her book, 7

This is a well-known problem. Meissner (1997, p. 259) speaks of “the replacementchild syndrome” and cites a considerable amount of literature, from which it has been be shown that the syndrome played a role in the lives of such famous persons as Schliemann, Atatürk and Stendhal.

Autobiography, psychic functioning and mental health 143 Mrs Reinsberg does indeed paint just such a picture of a child who is a constant disappointment, fails to meet expectations and therefore develops the corresponding feeling about herself. The narcissistic injury that arises from the chronic failure to satisfy the parents’ expectations and live up to the idealised standard of the image of the deceased child leaves irrevocable traces: no attempt is adequate, no achievement satisfactory, no effort sufficient to compensate for the loss suffered by the parents. And we have seen how Doetje lived out this pattern in the way she diligently applied herself in the hotel and later applied herself “for the Lord.” The burden of a replacement child also leaves a mark on her nuclear “sense of self.” As a child, Doetje was not given the feeling that she was allowed to exist, that she was good enough and that she was accepted as she was. We will never know how the situation actually played itself out, but it cannot be doubted that the environment that was so important to her was less than optimal in meeting her rightful childish need to be mirrored. In her case, the traumatisation of her sense of being someone, being a self (and being allowed to be a self) led to a gnawing doubt about her own self-worth, to a narcissistic disorder that expressed itself later in her life in an enormous need to be admired by others whom she deemed important. The formation of the idealised parent imago, usually with a great deal of impact from the father, takes place from the fourth to the sixth year of life. In Doetje’s case it seems to have been much less traumatised than the early formation of the grandiose self. Her father disappeared without a trace when she was twelve, but at least until that time he was present (Belzen, 2004). An indication of the hypothesis that Doetje’s formation of a grandiose self suffered much greater traumatisation than that of the idealised parent imago can be taken from Kohut’s comment that recovery from a narcissistic personality disorder is usually sought and found in the need and pole of the self that has been least traumatised and that has been able to compensate, as it were, for the defects on the other pole. Whether and to what extent Doetje recovered is a question that cannot be answered directly. Of course she was declared “recovered” when she was released from Veldwijk, but all we can deduce from this is that the reasons for her admission had been eliminated: Doetje was once again able to function in society, she could resume responsibility for her own life, live on her own, care for herself and occupy herself with her own affairs (such as the leasing and letting of buildings). When she left Veldwijk she no longer suffered from “melancholia agitans”: she was no longer depressed. But what about her narcissistic personality disorder? Had that disappeared as well, or at least been transformed? It’s not likely. On the one hand it is clear that she had drawn strength from the idealising transfer relationship that she had entered into with God. Thanks to what for her had become a living faith, she had acquired a perspective into which she could place her life and what had happened to her, including what had happened during her illness. The idealising transfer relationship that she

144 Jacob A. Belzen built with Rev. Notten at Veldwijk gradually disappeared. In contemporary psychoanalysis, the development and gradual disappearance of such transfer relationships are usually seen as a good sign. According to Kohut, treatment involves the therapist making himself available to fulfil the self-object functions that were insufficiently performed by the parents. Thanks to the empathy that the therapist brings to the patient, a process of “transmuting internalisation” can still begin and the patient can be helped to develop his own psychological structures, which makes continuous empathic availability of a self-object less necessary. But did this occur in the case of Doetje’s relationship with Notten? It seems more likely that Notten, in functioning as a self-object (which he certainly did for Doetje), was simply substituted by God: Doetje found a “better” self-object and exchanged that for Notten. She continued to have great respect for Notten, but after she left Ermelo he became just another person with whom she was involved in a mirroring transfer relationship: he, too, was expected to admire her for all the great things she was doing. It looks very much as if Doetje’s need to be admired did not decline but only increased, or at least became more apparent. Her need for idealised transference had already diminished in any case, as we have supposed, and apparently could be sufficiently fulfilled by the only object as such that we can find for the period in which she wrote her book. If it was indeed so – that God served as a self-object for Mrs Reinsberg in an idealising transfer relationship – we may take it as attesting to the plausibility of the supposition that the development of an idealised parent imago was apparently less traumatised. To have found God as self-object helped her reach a certain level in compensating for the defects in her grandiose self. The research on which this section is based made use of psycho- and psychopathological instruments, even more so than in the previous section. After gaining insight into Doetje’s illness and undertaking a preliminary exploration of her person on the basis of a modern classification system, we discovered it was mostly psychoanalytical theories and points of view that paved the way to a deeper understanding of the nature and context of and possible reasons for her psychic problems. Psychoanalysis posed questions concerning relationships in her childhood and youth and prompted a closer exploration of certain points in Doetje’s biography (points we may not have brought up had we not been looking through psychoanalytical “glasses,” at least not in this way) and urged to do additional historical research. This psychological viewpoint therefore made two major contributions: first, it made it possible to place the scarce and sometimes disparate facts in a theoretically grounded connection, second, it functioned as a heuristic to empirical research. Whether all the proposed interpretations that resulted are equally correct, or even plausible, remains to be seen, of course; we have indicated the methodological problems. Without the help of psychology and psychopathology, however, we would never have been able to develop a more nuanced story about Doetje Reinsberg-Ypes and

Autobiography, psychic functioning and mental health 145 about the different factors in her illness and recovery. Now we are approaching the moment at which we can answer the question why she wrote and published her autobiography, and what that may have had to do with her mental health, also as far as religion is concerned.

The function of the autobiography for Mrs Reinsberg Doetje seems to have been searching for a self-object. In her search for acceptance, affirmation and admiration, she tried to obtain from others what was denied to her earlier in life. It is here that the deepest reason for writing her book may be sought. With the previous discussion in mind, we should no longer find it difficult to realise that because of a defect in the development of her grandiose self Doetje was searching for admiration from mirroring selfobjects. It is by no means certain, however, that her environment was able to meet her need in the way she so hoped. We have already noted that Doetje had been involved in a fair amount of church conflict in Baarn. She certainly will not have received the kind of appreciation she was yearning for there, and this may have been one of the motives (unconscious, of course) for switching church communities and finally leaving for The Hague. And it is quite conceivable that when empathic mirroring failed to materialise there too, Doetje came up with the idea of convincing her unwilling listeners by means of a powerful, voluminous witness: a book. If the people of The Hague did not want to believe her oral testimony, would not something spectacular like a book – written by a person who “used to be so ignorant,” who “did not know God’s Word” and “never read books herself ” – serve to convince them? In any case, Mrs Reinsberg does tell us that in The Hague it was “revealed” to her “by the Spirit of God (. . .) that it was God’s will that this book be written” (p. 217). She, who had not been mirrored enough, found a – temporary? – strategy by mirroring herself: by writing a book that would become increasingly important for her, that she herself admired and that she would gradually even come to identify with the word of God, as she had also done with her testimony and her letters. The book would occupy more and more of her time. In the end she worked on it day and night. The last week before Pentecost 1897, was to her a battle “with Christ against Satan and his powers” (p. 433). In the long run the book would function for her as the self-object with which she had had too few encounters in the outside world. By identifying with the self-made entity of her book she could still find the “wholeness” that she had not been able to experience within herself. The deficient inner completeness, the absence of a “sense of self,” was symbolically compensated for in this way by the “perfect” book, desired and inspired by God (cf. Schönau, 1991, pp. 12–14). So there was nothing accidental – indeed, it was a golden opportunity – about grabbing hold of the more or less socially accepted genre of conversion stories

146 Jacob A. Belzen as a subgenre of the “autobiography,” a genre in which narcissistic overtones have so often been demonstrated (Wysling, 1982; Hansen-Löve, 1986). The writing itself became important for Doetje. It was the means by which she came to feel that she actually was somebody, by which she kept the threat of fragmentation at a distance and tried to give herself what she had found deficient in others. For this reason the writing could not stop. When the book was finally finished, at least when she had related the story of her life up to the present moment so there was nothing left to tell, she continued to write a series of doctrinal chapters followed by an “epilogue.” At the end of her “book IV” (containing the letters) she added a “postscript,” relating what had happened with the manuscript of the book, and ending with a “conclusion.” Even after the book had gone to press she kept on writing. And now one of these days the book will be published, eighteen sheets of which have already been printed. The rest is ready for the press, and right now I am adding the finishing touches so that the book, which I was directed to write by Almighty God, compelled by the love of Jesus Christ and filled with His Holy Spirit, will presently be ready. (p. 442)

As she came closer to the end of her book her verbal eruptions became longer and longer. The passages that no longer imparted any information but were simply a written form of “spiritual language” became more and more numerous; it is as if her nervousness was only increasing the longer she continued. That nervousness probably had to do with her fear that the book would be negatively received. After all, she had already had to accept the mildly worded rejection of the manuscript by the theologians Notten and De Savornin Lohman. In the long run she was prepared to give almost anything for the book – the presentation of herself – including her own financial resources. With great difficulty she had been able to find a printer, but not a publisher. The printer then told her that he would be happy to print the book if she would pay for the publishing herself, but that the manuscript first had to be made ready for the press (pp. 438–439). A person skilled in this area was then engaged, and in order to pay for the entire project Doetje even went so far as to sell her buildings in Amsterdam!

Religiosity in relation to mental health The book certainly did not bring Doetje what she had expected. It was not well received. An extensive study of its reception has shown that it was given no media coverage whatsoever (Belzen, 2004). Of the few copies found in Dutch libraries the pages are sometimes still uncut. There are several reasons for this lack of coverage for her book. One of them is the language, style and form, which did not fully comply within the Calvinist “conversion story” genre. Other reasons are her lack of authority to find acceptance for her story as well as the

Autobiography, psychic functioning and mental health 147 stigma of her psychiatric past (anyone who had been released from a psychiatric asylum – which was definitely a rare occurrence at the end of the nineteenth century! – had little chance of being taken seriously. . .).8 There may also have been a factor in the explanation why the book was so badly received that the psychology of religion may shed light on: the psychic make-up of Mrs Reinsberg’s religiosity. Religiosity, as the personal-subjective correlate of a particular form of religion, is part of a person’s life, so naturally it shares in the person’s ups and downs. Thus – to mention just one example from this extensive category – an image of God, the concept of God that an individual might have, is primarily dependent on his religious tradition and on the culturally and historically defined version that has been handed down to him, but it is also dependent on scores of factors in the individual’s own life story. The image of God changes as the person grows older (or it doesn’t, or it hardly changes at all, and this stagnation is also very significant). It can change under the influence of so-called “critical life incidents.” It is dependent on important others such as parents or primary caregivers, figures of authority, mentors and other role models. Religiosity shares the dynamics – also the psychodynamics – of full life, whether it is the dynamics of groups or individuals. It is thus a function of what is referred to as personality or psychic make-up, or whatever we care to call it. In assessment or diagnosis it is quite possible to choose religiosity as a point of access for further exploration (provided one has sufficient knowledge of the form of religion to which the person belongs) and to obtain meaningful results. An analysis of the religiosity of an individual should, therefore, always take place against the background of a more comprehensive exploration of his psychic life, including the question of the person’s so-called mental health. As we know, the criteria for mental health, or for the normal psychic life, are extremely difficult to determine. And even if they could be described as being ideal-typically, the question is still how to arrive at an assessment in an individual case. So how should we assess Doetje’s mental health, including her religious functioning, at the time she was writing her book? In a certain sense it seems simple enough: she was declared “recovered” upon her release, she no longer suffered from “melancholia agitans,” she could once again behave in an entirely “appropriate” way, could live on her own, etc. In that sense she was psychiatrically “normal.” This does not tell us very much, however. In fact, at that time all it meant was that a person was no longer being institutionalised (and also nowadays it does not mean much more than that a person is not undergoing any other kind of psychiatric treatment). So let us try using

8

The psychiatric stigma will also have been the reason why the autobiography was “hushed up” in intimate circles and why the memory of Doetje herself has barely survived.

148 Jacob A. Belzen yet another criterion – not in an effort to still declare Doetje “unhealthy,” but to explore her psychic health. Let us consider the most famous of all descriptions of mental health, that of Sigmund Freud. He maintained that a person is mentally healthy if he is fit to work and to love. Vergote (1978/1988) added “to enjoy and to communicate” to these criteria, for use in religious psychopathology. Working, in the sense of making a living, is something Doetje never did again, but there was no financial necessity to do so. Would she have been fit to work? It’s hard to say, simply because so many necessary data are missing. There do not seem to be many reasons to doubt that she would have been fit enough to do some work. Of course we do not know what the role of the daughters was in the move to The Hague (although we may well wonder whether the children had much of a say at all), but in any case it was an undertaking that she was able to perform quite well. She still travelled a bit and seemed to have been able to maintain several personal relationships. The writing and publishing of the book must also be regarded as a considerable achievement. But it is striking that she reports so little “enjoyment” in all this: whether she was able to derive very much pleasure or satisfaction from her restless activity is by no means certain. All her activities seem to have been inspired by the wish to convince her acquaintances, as well as herself, of her own “importance.” The entire project seems to have been inspired by a need to be mirrored as an extraordinary person with extraordinary experiences, and suggests an unfulfilled passion. Was she able to love again? She certainly developed a form of love, for God and the church (in the general sense, not for any concrete congregation). Perhaps she was able to love her children again as well. Mrs Reinsberg impresses us as someone who did not maintain cordial relations with the people around her. Even though genre of the conversion story genre more or less “allows” an author to be chiefly preoccupied with herself and not to paint portraits of others, it is still striking that Mrs Reinsberg’s book contains no articulation of warm feelings towards her children. Mrs Reinsberg writes that while she was living in Baarn, and later in The Hague, she noticed a cooling within herself: despite the occasional improvement, the joy and “fire” had disappeared, and her main occupation was to fight a bitter battle “with the devil.” According to Pietzcker (1983, p. 52), we can see this as an indication of the problem of the grandiose self: because of the fear that the outside world will react coldly and with rejection, the subject withdraws his psychic energy from the object and redirects it on himself. We can read that Mrs Reinsberg writes of being “scared to death” of criticism, even before her period as a maid and hotelier. If we are indeed correct in our supposition that her grandiose self was not transformed, we may see further evidence of this in the insensitive, loveless way she related to her acquaintances. This also says something about her way of communicating. It is obvious that she was able to communicate. Her book is full of evidence to that effect, and her letters and the book itself provide as many

Autobiography, psychic functioning and mental health 149 examples of her communication skills. On the other hand, her form of “communication” was always very one-sided: other people served mainly as witnesses to whom she could tell her story, they served to be addressed. She wanted to speak to them, not with them. When she wrote to relations in Veldwijk it was mainly to show what great deeds she was supposed to have done. When she wrote to her brother it was to show off her faith; when she corresponded with Wisse and Kuyper it was to tell them how matters were to be viewed; and even when she answered a letter from Notten, she may indeed have responded to his comments but it was only to convince him that she was right. This is not the kind of communication that Vergote (1978/1988) had in mind. Vergote also comments, by the way, that “objective” criteria, or “objective” handling of the criteria, is impossible. Mental health is not something that can be determined precisely, as if one were measuring it to within a few decimal points: “it is the style of how one relates to reality and society that is important. And that style represents the qualitative surplus value that eludes any objective rules” (Vergote, 1978/1988, p. 29). It is precisely on this point of style, so difficult to quantify, that Mrs Reinsberg raises questions regarding her psychic health, which includes her religiosity. Indeed, it is striking that she reports so few expressions of approval from Ermelo: the believers in Ermelo seem mainly to have been those who, clearly without premeditation or any systematic approach, introduced her to a new form of religious experience, or who have reawakened the evangelical religiosity she may have been acquainted with during her first years in Amsterdam. For these Calvinist and evangelically-minded people in Ermelo, Doetje’s religiosity as it developed during her period of home nursing must have seemed overwrought, something that reminded them too much of the psychiatric patient. They listened to Doetje as she became religious and (wisely?) did not contradict her, but neither did they react positively to some of her remarks, which were all too exaggerated for Calvinist ears. For example, when Doetje wrote a letter to her children for the first time a letter herself, she ended it with the comment “these letters are not only written with ink but are the true and living words of God,” she showed it “to Miss Volten and Miss Juch [a friend of Mrs Volten]. Miss Juch, that good, deaf lady, just sat there nodding her head as she read the letter, but she didn’t say anything” (p. 157). Of course not, one would almost say. They must have been pleased that Doetje was apparently recovering, was undertaking positive activities such as re-establishing contact with her children and was gradually becoming more independent, but they certainly will not have supported her claim to have written “words of God.” The Calvinist reverence for the “word of God” is well known: this honorary title is reserved exclusively for the Bible as written text (and for the sermon in a church service as the spoken word). Despite all their esteem for the “old writers,” no Calvinist would ever refer to a book by such an author from the Nadere Reformatie as the “word of God” or to an oral confession of faith as the “living words of God.”

150 Jacob A. Belzen In view of the style of Doetje’s behaviour and in view of the nature of her conversion story, it is fair to wonder who would have agreed with her. Mrs Reinsberg herself assures us that it did happen in the case of a single conversation during an accidental encounter (in which the reader must wait and see whether the impression she apparently made on her listeners as she describes it, and that either made them listen or silenced them, was always a positive one). That is, her work of witness did sometimes bear fruit. But insofar as she herself writes about it, it seems that in relationships of any duration she definitely did not receive much affirmation of her faith, her story, her convictions or her zeal. Perhaps this was the also the reason why she left every congregation she ever joined, only to ultimately make a connection with unestablished groups such as the Salvation Army and the Geloofsvereeniging der Volheid van Christus (Religious Society of the Fullness of Christ), which themselves were marked by a style that was quite rapturous, certainly to the churches in the Netherlands at that time. Movements and groups that yet have to put down roots are usually not very selective with respect to their adherents; there is often a considerable turnover, and people and finances are needed to realise their often grandiose plans. Doetje, who clearly adopted elements from the spirituality of these groups, will certainly have felt at home there. But will the members, especially the leaders, have confirmed her in her religiosity, particularly in her religious claims? Because of its differently disposed pneumatological and ecclesiological views, the Religious Society, with its charismatic milieu, will probably not have denied that a believer could speak or write “true and living words of God.” Doetje’s insistence on being released from demonic possession, her view that healing comes by prayer alone, and her decision to present herself as a converted person are all elements to be found there, which she probably adopted from this milieu. Nevertheless, there is a suspicion that her relationship Religious Society did not remain optimal either. Even in these circles she may have come across as too exaggerated. Her way of associating with others was too aggressive, too deeply rooted in her need for self-assurance. There is a striking absence in her autobiography of names from these circles, and an absence of any mention of approval for writing her book. The content of Doetje’s religiosity does seem to agree in many respects with the form of Christianity advocated by these groups (aggressive witnessing, biblically fundamentalist views, fighting with established churches, rejection of doctrinal authority, experience as spiritual criterion, etc.), but somewhere there was a lingering difference. It is definitely not implausible that, in view of the psychiatric stigma (which may on the other hand have been less significant to the Religious Society than to members of established churches), she will have struck the members of this group as a “duplicate,” to use an image from Rümke (1956/1981, p. 215) with respect to the phenomenological difference between psychic health and illness.

Autobiography, psychic functioning and mental health 151 It might be supposed that Mrs Reinsberg’s religiosity was too dominated by her need as detected by self psychology. In the previous section we came to the conclusion that she must have had an enormous need for empathic responses from mirroring self-objects. Because she was not able to believe in her own worth, she was compelled to earn that worth, as it were, by way of effort and hard work. As is usually the case, we see this pattern pervade in her religious functioning as well. Of course she would have endorsed the message of grace, but rejoicing in grace and salvation was not what stood at the forefront of Doetje’s religiosity. She worked herself to the bone, just as she did during her earlier period as a hotelier, restlessly active in her “fight” for God. It was not gratitude and joy but work and zeal – even doggedness – that were the hallmarks of her way of being religious. She was thus of the opinion (partly influenced by the ideas from the healing ideologies she had learned about, of course) that under no circumstances was she to call in medical help, but that “Christ alone sufficeth.” It is evident from that story, from the account of the sale of the hotel, and from so many other passages that Mrs Reinsberg’s relationship with God was not one of gratefully receiving unearned love but of wresting answers to her prayers.

Religion and the transformation of the self In the case of Doetje we can legitimately wonder to what extent her personality was transformed by, or under the influence of, religion. It is evident that she was changed by her conversion, that she had become “another person.” Once again, whether and to what degree this was so in the religious-spiritual sense is something that science cannot judge. But we can wonder in what psychological sense she was changed. In that case, however, we need to be fully aware of the psychological theory within whose framework we are asking this question. Even a general term like personality change can point to very diverse things, such as a cognitive restructuring in the way information is processed, a modification of dynamic structures in the psychoanalytical sense or a demonstration of different behaviours according to the notion inspired by behaviourism. Religions usually demand change when conversion takes place. It is beyond doubt that Doetje was different after her stay at Ermelo. But is there also evidence of a personality change? By resorting to an increasingly popular personality model we can make differentiated assessments (McAdams, 1994a, 1994b, 2005). This model distinguishes three levels: 1. dispositions that are thought to be highly independent of context; the Big Five model from modern trait psychology9 is situated here, but so is much of psychoanalysis; 2. personal “concerns” like contextual 9

These five are known by the acronym “OCEAN”: openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism.

152 Jacob A. Belzen strategies, plans, goals; 3. identity, the life story from which people derive significance and meaning (and that, in addition to the related experiences, demonstrates an integration of the information from levels one and two). In terms of the third level it will be clear that Doetje changed dramatically: after her conversion, her identity, her self-presentation and the story she told about herself were completely different than they had been before. In terms of a humanisticpsychologically inspired meaning of the word “personality,” in which a great deal of attention is paid to self-definition and the experience of meaning – including the various views of the self, from James (1890) to Hermans and Kempen (1993) – there is clear evidence of a personality change in Doetje’s case. This is also true with regard to the second level of the model. Doetje’s behaviour after her conversion exhibited a different orientation: her areas of interest changed, and the things she devoted herself to were entirely different from what she was doing when she lived in Amsterdam. Her life had taken on completely different contours. As for the first level of the model, dispositions and psychoanalytically conceptualised structures, including the self, this is where we see the least change in the sense of personality psychology. The “self ” found in psychoanalytical theories such as Kohut’s means something different from the “self ” in the tradition of psychology inaugurated by James. So let us look here as well, and in continuation of the reflections on Kohutian self psychology, for an answer to the question about Doetje’s possible personality change: to what extent were her undeveloped narcissistic needs changed by her conversion? We already made note of something in this regard when we saw that Doetje’s grandiose self had not undergone any transformation. But what about her idealised parent imago? After all, she did take God as her self-object. Establishing an idealised transfer relationship with God probably did have a certain restorative effect on the defects that existed at the other, grandiose, pole of her self, and the idealising transfer helped her to keep going psychically. Whether the effect was lasting and sufficient is something we do not know. We did comment earlier that at the time of her move from Baarn to The Hague, Mrs Reinsberg reported increasing symptoms and made a more and more agitated impression. She also appeared to have arrived at the edge of the next psychic decompensation, which she was able to avoid only by means of retreating into herself, by herself (the writing of an autobiography being a textbook example). This is reason to express “concern” about how she will have fared after the publication of her book, certainly when it appeared not to have been enthusiastically received. The way she talks about the sale of her hotel shows that she was also relating to God in an highly imperative fashion: he had to listen to her prayers, he had to cure her when she became ill, the “miracle of the sale of the hotel” had to take place so the book could be paid for. Seen in this way, we can ask ourselves whether taking God as a self-object will have contributed very much to the

Autobiography, psychic functioning and mental health 153 transformation of Doetje’s self. The answer is probably not all that positive, since God as self-object does not initiate the process of “transmuting internalisation” that is so necessary for transformation. This process is set off by the nontraumatic shortcomings of those who serve as self-objects, whether a parent now or a therapist later on. By means of these non-traumatic shortcomings, the subject switches over to adopt and internalise the functions that the self-object had been fulfilling for him, and thus becomes less dependent on the empathic self-object. But in the faith experience of a believer like Mrs Reinsberg, God does not fall short, does not “traumatise,” so the relationship with him does not spark a process of the internalisation of self-object functions. Whether religion in general can fulfil this function or not is the wrong question because it is too generally formulated. It has been noted enough that as a concept “religion” is actually too inclusive; too much can be classified within it to be able to work with it analytically. The same is also true concerning the question just asked. Narcissism that has remained childlike can express itself in “religion,” but transformed forms of narcissism can just as easily manifest themselves in religious activity. Religion as such, or a specific form of religion such as a Christian denomination or sub-denomination, does not “do” anything and bears no relation to psychic development or to something like mental health. It is religious symbols, especially practices, or better yet: it is persons involved in religion who sort out the effects. Doetje did not learn about any “new” religion (new for her) in Ermelo. Calvinism and evangelical Protestantism were not foreign to her; she had already come to know them in her childhood and early adolescence. So it was not the Calvinist doctrine, transformed into organizational structures at Veldwijk, that brought about the positive development within her; it was Calvinist and evangelically-minded people like the nursing staff, the Rev. Notten and the Volten family who, with patience that may or may not have been inspired or motivated by their Christian faith, came to Doetje with the empathy she needed in order to recover psychically. In the same way, charismatic movements such as the Salvation Army and the Religious Society of the Fullness of Christ, with their emotional style that was still unusual in those days, also met Doetje’s need for outward show. Her spirituality was not considered deviant in these circles; at least it was not out of the ordinary. The charismatic, freer spirituality that was advocated in the healing movement was the climate within which Doetje’s narcissism may have been able to manifest itself more easily than in the more regulated church life of the Reformed Protestants and the Calvinists, just as forms of deviance are still more quickly interpreted spiritually in these circles than in the more mainstream churches. But this reasoning cannot be turned around; it cannot be said that these kinds of movements obstruct or reverse the development of narcissism, or that they induce deviance. Only members of such movements can do this, if at all.

154 Jacob A. Belzen The relationship between religion and mental health is a complicated one, and this is also true in the case of Mrs Reinsberg. Schematic classifications can be useful, but they do not do justice to the richness of a full life. In the widely esteemed classification of possible relations presented by Spilka et al. (2003), a religious phenomenon can often be placed in several of the proposed categories. Religious expressions such as glossolalia, entering a monastic order, fasting, praying and what not may be the forms within which a psychic disorder manifests itself, but they may also be socialising and restraining factors with regard to mental disturbance. They may constitute a refuge and a therapeutic factor, but they may also represent a danger for a person’s mental health. It is always important to check how individual religiosity is related to the cultural and subcultural “world” in which the person lives her life, and how it is structured within the person’s broader psychic life. Now that we have travelled this long path with a single historical case, the relationship proves to be just as complicated as ever. Religion did play a role (albeit most likely a modest one) in the onset of Mrs Reinsberg’s illness, even if it was just as a vehicle by which she articulated her problems. Religion certainly played a role in her recovery as well. It provided a frame of reference that helped Doetje interpret her situation and symptoms and gradually to gain control over them again, and that enabled her to take up a new, independent life outside psychiatry. By developing faith in a loving and accessible God, Mrs Reinsberg was given the opportunity to suppress her psychic problems and to socialise; on the other hand, her defect psychic health continued to manifest itself in her religiosity. Mrs Reinsberg can be fit into every category of the classification proposed by Spilka et al. (2003). This makes the value of such classifications relative, but in principal heuristically useful. To understand something about a person’s religiosity and its possible relationship with her mental health, no matter how structured, it is important to focus attention on the individual and to immerse oneself in her personal life story, as articulated in her autobiography.

References Agger, E. M. (1988). Psychoanalytic perspectives on sibling relationships. Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 8, 3–30. Bakhtin, M. (1929/1973). Problems of Dostoevsky’s poetics. Ann Arbor, MI: Ardis. Belzen, J. A. (2004). Religie, melancholie en zelf: Een historische en psychologische studie [Religion, melancholy and self: A. historical and psychological study]. Kok: Kampen. Bruner, J. (1990). Acts of meaning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Cermak, L. S. (1989). Synergistic ecphory and the amnestic patient. In H. L. Roediger & I. M. Craik (Eds.), Varieties of memory and consciousness (pp. 121–131). Hillsdale: Erlbaum. Delany, P. (1969). British autobiography in the seventeenth century. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Autobiography, psychic functioning and mental health 155 Evans, D. (1996). An introductory dictionary of Lacanian psychoanalysis. London/ New York: Routledge. Freud, S. (1907/1941). Zwangshandlungen und Religionsübungen. In Gesammelte Werke: chronologisch geordnet. Band VII: Werke aus den Jahren 1906–1909 (Eds. A. Freud et al.) (pp. 129–139). London: Imago. Freud, S. (1914/1975). Zur Einführung des Narzißmus. In Freud – Studienausgabe, Band III (Eds. A. Mitscherlich, A. Richards & J. Strachey) (pp. 37–68). Frankfurt: Fischer. Freud, S. (1960). Briefe 1873–1939 (Ed. E.L. Freud). Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer. Gay, V. P. (1989). Understanding the Occult: Fragmentation and repair of the Self. Minneapolis: Fortress Press. Groenendijk, L. F. (1993). De spirituele autobiografie als bron voor onze kennis van de religieuze opvoeding en ontwikkeling van Nederlandse piëtisten [The spiritual autobiography as source for our knowledge of the religious upbringing and development of Dutch pietists]. In L. F. Groenendijk & J. C. Sturm (Eds.), Leren geloven in de lage landen: Facetten van de geschiedenis van de religieuze opvoeding [Learning belief in the low countries: Facets of the history of religious education] (pp. 57–90). Amsterdam: Vrije Universiteit (Department of Historical Pedagogy). Guignon, C. (1998). Narrative explanation in psychotherapy. American Behavioral Scientist, 41, 558–577. Hansen-Löve, A. (1986). Der Diskurs der Konfessionen. In F. Dostojewski, Der Jüngling (pp. 874–910). Munich: Piper. Haute, P. van (1993). Zijn en zelf [Being and self]. In J. M. Broekman, H. Feldmann & P. van Haute, Ziektebeelden [Images of illness] (pp. 151–179). Leuven: Peeters. Heidegger, M. (1927). Sein und Zeit. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Hermans, H. J. M. & Kempen, H. J. G. (1993). The dialogical self: Meaning as movement. San Diego, CA: Academic Press. James, W. (1890). The principles of psychology. London: MacMillan. James, W. (1902/2002). The varieties of religious experience: A study in human nature. London/New York: Routledge. Kernberg, P. F. & Richards, A. K. (1988). Siblings of preadolescents: Their role in the development. Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 8, 51–65. Kohut, H. (1966/1985). Forms and transformations of narcissism. In Self psychology and the humanities: Reflections on a new psychoanalytic approach (pp. 97–123). New York: Norton. Kohut, H. (1971). The analysis of the self: A systematic approach to the psychoanalytic treatment of narcissistic personality disorders. New York: International Universities Press. Kohut, H. (1977). The restoration of the self. New York: International Universities Press. Kohut, H. (1979). The two analyses of Mr. Z. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 60, 3–27. Kohut, H. & Wolf, E. (1978). The disorders of the self and their treatment: An outline. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 59, 413–425. Kojève, A. (1947). Introduction à la lecture de Hegel: Leçons sur la phénoménologie de l’esprit. Paris: Gallimard.

156 Jacob A. Belzen Kotre, J. (1995). White gloves: How we create ourselves through memory. New York: Free Press. Laan, M. C. van der (1994). Kohuts zelfpsychologie en de problematiek van tweedegeneratie-oorlogsgetroffenen [Kohut’s self psychology and the problem of second generation war victims]. Tijdschrift voor Psychotherapie [Journal for psychotherapy], 20 (5), 279–292. Lacan, J. (1949/1977). The mirror stage as formative of the function of the I. In Écrits: A selection (pp. 1–7). London: Tavistock. Lacan, J. (1953). Some reflections on the ego. International Journal for Psycho-Analysis, 34, 11–17. Lacan, J. (1966). Écrits. Paris: Seuil. Lieburg, F. A. van (1991). Levens van vromen: Gereformeerd piëtisme in de achttiende eeuw [Lives of the pious: Calvinist pietism in the eighteenth century]. Kampen: De Groot Goudriaan. McAdams, D. P. (1993). The stories we live by: Personal myths and the making of the self. New York: Morrow. McAdams, D. P. (1994a). Can personality change? Levels of stability and growth in personality across the lifespan. In T. F. Heatherton & J. L. Weinberger (Eds.), Can personality change? (pp. 299–313). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. McAdams, D. P. (1994b). The person: An introduction to personality psychology. (2nd ed.) Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace. McAdams, D. P. (2005). What psychobiographers might learn from personality psychology. In William Todd Schultz (Ed.), Handbook of psychobiography (pp. 64–73). New York: Oxford University Press. McAdams, D. P. (2006). The redemptive self: Stories Americans live by. New York: Oxford University Press. Mead, G. H. (1934). Mind, self, and society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Meiden, A. van der (1981). Welzalig is het volk: Een bijgewerkt en aangevuld portret van de zwarte-kousen kerken [Blessed are the people: An edited and enlarged portrait of the Black Stocking churches]. Baarn: Ten Have. Meissner, W. W. (1997). Vincent’s religion: The search for meaning. New York: Lang. Moss, D. M. (1977). Narzißmus, Empathie und die Fragmentierung des Selbst: Ein Gespräch mit Heinz Kohut. Wege zum Menschen, 29, 49–68. Pietzcker, C. (1983). Einführung in die Psychoanalyse des literarischen Kunstwerks. Würzburg: Köninghausen & Neumann. Pomerleau, C. S. (1980). The emergence of women’s autobiography in England. In E. C. Jelinek (Ed.), Women’s autobiography: Essays in criticism (pp. 21–38). Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Rambo, L. R. (1993). Understanding religious conversion. New Haven/London: Yale University Press. Reinsberg, A. R. (1898). De bekeeringsgeschiedenis van eene vijftigjarige wereldlinge, daarna eene twee en een halfjarige bezetene des duivels op Veldwijk en nu eene verloste en wedergeborene in Jezus Christus, haar Verlosser en Zaligmaker, Die het voor haar zal voleinden nu en tot in der eeuwigheid [The conversion story of a fifty-year-old mortal, afterwards possessed by the devil at Veldwijk for two and a half years and

Autobiography, psychic functioning and mental health 157 now redeemed and reborn in Jesus Christ, her Redeemer and Saviour, Who will accomplish all things for her, now and forever]. The Hague: s.n. Ricoeur, P. (1970). Freud and philosophy. New Haven: Yale University Press. Ricoeur, P. (1981). Hermeneutics & the human sciences. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rosenberg, S. D., Rosenberg, H. J. & Farrell, M. P. (1992). In the name of the Father. In G. C. Rosenwald & R. L. Ochberg (Eds.), Storied lives: The cultural politics of selfunderstanding (pp. 41–59). New Haven: Yale University Press. Rümke, H. C. (1956/1981). De neurotische doublures van het menselijk lijden [The neurotic duplicates of human suffering]. In Vorm en inhoud: Een keuze uit de essays van H.C. Rümke [Form and content: A selection from the essays of H.E. Rümke] (pp. 209–217). Utrecht: Bohn, Scheltema & Holkema. Sarbin, T. R. (1986a). The narrative as a root metaphor for psychology. In T. R. Sarbin (Ed.), Narrative psychology: The storied nature of human conduct. New York: Praeger. Sarbin, T. R. (1986b). Emotion and act: Roles and rhetoric. In R. Harré (Ed.), The social construction of emotions (pp. 83–97). Oxford: Blackwell. Sarbin, T. R. (1993). The narrative as the root metaphor for contextualism. In S. C. Hayes, L. J. Hayes, H. W. Reese & T. R. Sarbin (Eds.), Varieties of scientific contextualism (pp. 51–65). Reno, NV: Context Press. Sarbin, T. R. & Kitsuse, J. I. (Eds.) (1994). Constructing the social. London: Sage. Sarbin, T. R. & Scheibe, K. E. (Eds.) (1983). Studies in social identity. New York: Praeger. Scheibe, K. E. (1998). Self studies: The psychology of self and identity. Westport, CT: Praeger. Schönau, W. (1991). Einführung in die psychoanalytische Literaturwissenschaft. Stuttgart: Metzger. Siegel, A. M. (1996). Heinz Kohut and the psychology of the self. London/New York: Routledge. Spilka, B., Hood, R. W., Hunsberger, B. & Gorsuch, R. L. (2003). The psychology of religion: An empirical approach. (3rd ed.) New York: Guilford. Sprinker, M. (1980). Fictions of the self: The end of autobiography. In J. Olney (Ed.), Autobiography: Essays theoretical and critical (pp. 321–342). Princeton: Princeton University Press. Uleyn, A. J. R. (1986). Zingevingsvragen en overdrachtsproblemen in de psychotherapie [Questions of meaning and transfer problems in psychotherapy]. In M. Kuilman & A. Uleyn, Hulpverlener en zingevingsvragen [Caregiver and questions of meaning] (pp. 35–67). Baarn: Ambo. Vergote, A. (1978/1988). Guilt and desire: Religious attitudes and their pathological derivatives (transl. M.H. Wood). New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Wertsch, J. V. (1991). Voices of the mind: A sociocultural approach to mediated action. London: Harvester Wheatsheaf. Wysling, H. (1982). Narzißmus und illusionäre Existenzform: Zu den Bekenntnissen des Hochstaplers Felix Krull. Bern: Francke. Zwaal, P. van der (1997). De achtste vrije kunst: Psychoanalyse als retorica [The eighth liberal art: Psychoanalysis as rhetoric]. Meppel: Boom.

METHODIST RITUAL MOURNING AND THE RESOLUTION OF TRAUMATIC GRIEF THE CASE OF RICHARD MOSS Keith Haartman In a recent study, Watching and Praying: Personality Transformation in 18th Century British Methodism (Haartman, 2004), I argued that John Wesley’s view of spiritual growth was both therapeutic and transformative as measured by contemporary psychoanalytic standards. Wesley’s approach – the actual “method” of Methodism – involved a series of phases each associated with contemplative techniques that cultivated “sanctification,” the perfection of holiness and altruism. I defined sanctification as a cognitive-affective transformation based on the integration of healthy conscience. Couched in a theological idiom, the method helped individuals heal long-standing conflicts created by the modal traumata of middle class infancy and childhood. I found in much of the Methodist material (Wesley’s sermon’s, treatises, correspondences, and memoirs and the autobiographical narratives of his followers) a confirmation of the idea that religio-cultural symbols can, like secular psychotherapies, effect emotional change, resolve neurotic conflict, and heal psychological suffering (cf. Pfister, 1932; Obeyesekere 1981, 1990). Following Wesley himself (Wesley & Wesley, 1981, pp. 112–113), we can divide his ordu salutis (order of salvation) into four main phases. In the first phase of repentance, Methodists “ritually mourned” (Merkur, 1989) – voluntarily lamented, fasted, and hid themselves away in solitude – so as to induce a depression that verified experientially the reality of sin and the stringency of God’s law (Haartman, 2004, pp. 70–80). Ideally, the dark night of repentance climaxed in justification, a unitive ecstasy that imparted “the witness of the spirit” (a subjective sense of forgiveness), “spiritual senses” (an immediate apprehension of God’s omnipresence), and the “fruits of the spirit” (a set of affects that vitalized perception, promoted happiness, and strengthened the will) (pp. 89–131). The third phase typically began with an “inflated,” that is, mistaken conviction that one had already become sanctified (no longer subject to “war,” or sinful temptations). The inflation, often accompanied by manic symptoms of hyperactivity, insomnia, and loss of appetite, evaporated when old temptations returned, triggering a second dark night. Now, Methodists doubted whether God had genuinely bestowed his pardon. By calmly enduring doubt and exercising faith, the witness of pardon returned and remained as a permanent disposition

160 Keith Haartman (pp. 133–154). In the fourth phase, “watching and praying,” Methodists combined two meditation techniques – the practice of the presence and systematic introspection – to more thoroughly acquaint themselves with the “hidden depths. . .of pride, self-will, and hell” (Wesley & Wesley, 1981, p. 113), and to eradicate the very desire to commit sin (Haartman, 2004, pp. 171–210). Throughout Watching and Praying I claimed that Wesley’s method healed the long-term adverse effects of three traumas regularly experienced by middle class children in eighteenth century Britain: autocratic parenting (sometimes deemed “evangelical nurture”; Greven, 1991; Rubin, 1994), loss and bereavement, and precocious ruminations on death and damnation. I argued that the psychological stresses of each of these items complicated emotional development and ruptured the vital link between the ego and the “positive superego” (Lederer, 1964). While historically psychoanalysts singled out the harsh, censuring features of the superego, those who detail its positive dimensions invariably stress the adaptive role of ideal values (Schafer, 1960; Jacobson, 1964; Lederer, 1964; Kohut, 1971; Schecter, 1979; Josephs, 1989; Merkur, 2001; Jones, 2002). Ego ideals are abstract representations derived from loved and admired aspects of parents. According to Pruyser (1974, p. 254), metaphors associated with abstracted ideals like justice and integrity reveal the underlying emotional tie to concrete parental representations. Ideals are “cherished,” “loved,” “defended” and “clung to”; they inspire “loyalty” and “commitment.” Consequently, ideals instill motivation as well as standards for the ego’s achievements in reality (Laplanche & Pontalis, 1988, p. 144): They generate aspirations and measures for critical self-evaluation. Because they are a source of admiration, the ability to pursue and realize ideal standards lays the basis for self-esteem. Ideals promote sublimation and imbue the personality with conviction and determination. The ego’s sense of acceptance by the ideal engenders feelings of ontological security. The combined effects of the three traumas mentioned above impacted negatively on the internalization of ego-enhancing representations of parents. Rage, grief and anxiety sponsored disintegrative splits and repressions and, in turn, diminished the resilience of the positive superego. This paper focuses on the autobiography of Richard Moss (1798, pp. 3–8, 53–59) an itinerant Methodist preacher hand picked by Wesley. I intend mainly to illustrate how deliberate religious mourning, one of the means of grace, helped Moss work through a profound, life-long depression that tragically shaped the course of his life. I omit discussion of approximately the last quarter of Moss’s narrative, which describes how he came to preach, and the vagaries of his itinerancy. Instead, I prioritize his childhood, teen and early adult years, as well as the experiences that led him to join the Methodist society in London. My analysis highlights the dialogical balance between social discourse and individual psychology, that is, between religious symbols and unconscious processes of integration, as well as between the textual norms of Methodist autobiography and the encoded (Smith, 1991, p. 134) expressions of the author’s personal psychodynamics.

Methodist ritual mourning and the resolution of traumatic grief 161 Recitation, appropriation, and autobiographical subjectivity In the autobiographies of Methodist lay preachers, the balance between public and personal spheres relates directly to the tension between Wesley’s editorial authoritarianism and the radical personalization of scripture. Such tension raises a methodological question: how and to what extent can we make legitimate psychological claims about the autobiographies? On the one hand, Wesley kept a jealous eye on his preachers’ activities, conduct, and literary output (Rivers, 1978). He dictated their entire course of study and closely supervised the composition of their narratives. By imposing a hefty regimen of daily reading, and by commissioning, supervising, and even sometimes revising his preachers’ work, Wesley took “disciplinary, educational and editorial control of his preacher’s lives, reading habits, attitudes and style” (p. 195). Wesley’s demanding curriculum and his power of veto fostered a “unique literary subculture” (p. 192). His preachers constituted something of a tightly guarded “guild” whose narratives expressed a “strong group identity and discipline” (Hindmarsh, 2005, p. 241). Editorial censure and the pressure to conform to theological standards and literary conventions stand in the way of psychohistorical approaches that typically search for evidence of “psycho-social development, parent-child bonding and social relationships in general, guilt and shame, experiences of sexuality, [and] mental disorder. . .” (Belzen, this volume, p. XYZ). In other words, with these external constraints, a great deal of data that illuminates the author’s psychological subjectivity either failed to appear in the narratives or underwent stylistic modification. On the other hand, in addressing an increasingly “mobile, more voluntaristic society” (Hindmarsh, 2005, p. 78), Wesley singled out the individual and accentuated issues of conscience and spiritual self-scrutiny. New levels of personal choice “introduced by changing patterns of consumption” meant that 18th century religion was “far less a matter of custom and givenness” (p. 79). The Methodist drama of repentance “allowed believers to negotiate an identity that could no longer be merely assumed” (p. 79). Personalization of biblical discourse – the voluntary selection of scriptural metaphors used to make sense of one’s life, and especially, one’s conversion experiences – typified this new spirituality, making it attractive to large numbers. As Wesleyans wrote their stories and reflected on the course of their lives, they availed themselves of biblical tropes, analogies and discursive conventions, refashioning them to articulate their individual identities and to produce a definitive image of themselves as genuine Christians. Hindmarsh writes, “Whatever the formal and generic elements were as they knew it, their individuality was far from being overpowered by a series of universal tropes or standard tropoi. . .their experiences called out a down to earth verisimilitude that compares with the narrative techniques being explored by Danniel Defoe [and] Samuel Richardson. . .” ( p. 146).

162 Keith Haartman In his essay “Autobiography and Historical Consciousness” (1975), Weintraub reflects on culturally defined personality ideals (e.g., the Homeric Hero, the Roman pater familias, the Stoic Wise Man, the truly committed monk and saint, the Imitatio Christi) and their documentation in autobiographical works. He states, Insofar as no such model can ever be completely “filled out” or be prescriptive for each and every aspect of existence, the individual will always find room for his idiosyncrasies in the interstitial spaces of the basic components of his model. Granted: no two knights in pursuit of the ideal knight lost their specific identity, no two Stoic wise men were ever the same, and no imitator of Christ’s life ever duplicated that life. Within the confines of the same type there always is room for idiosyncratic variation. (p. 837)

If Wesley’s authoritarian stance and the pressure to comply with theological and literary norms worked as a constraint that veiled or entirely obscured the author’s subjectivity, the personalization of scripture had the opposite effect in clearing a space for creative expression. I suggest that the dialogical middle between these two positions affords us a place to work psychologically. To use Weintraub’s language, the middle position represents an “interstitial space” of “idiosyncratic variation.” How do we locate this space? I introduce two terms – appropriation and recitation – as hermeneutic tools to gauge either the accessibility or opacity of an author’s subjectivity. Authors recite discourse when they simply employ tropes and conventions in a static, unelaborated way, leaving psycho-historians with scant material to work with. In other instances, authors involve themselves in a richer enterprise by appropriating discourse. They exploit the malleability of tropes and conventions to express something personal, a move that offers the reader greater access to the author’s psyche. Appropriation includes original elaborations, associations, combinations, embellishments and interpretations of public symbols, or the idiosyncratic repetition of themes. My analysis of Moss’s text highlights two discrete levels of appropriation: the use of religious metaphors to achieve emotional integration; and the use of autobiographical conventions as an unconscious metaphoric expression of psychodynamics.

Childhood bereavement and encoded grief “The Life and Experience of Mr. Richard Moss, one of the First Methodist Preachers” appeared in the Methodist Magazine in January 1798. A bracketed subheading underneath the title reads “written by himself.” In three short introductory paragraphs, Moss tersely summarizes his childhood (p. 3). Since they were written two centuries before the psychological revolution that linked early development to personality formation, most of the itinerant preachers’

Methodist ritual mourning and the resolution of traumatic grief 163 autobiographies exclude the miscellaneous details of infancy and childhood. Narrative convention favored the perfunctory mention of birthplace, a passing description of parents (commonly their religious background and the father’s vocation), and sparsely detailed accounts of extraordinary events – often traumatic – such as illnesses, or familial deaths. Thematically, these clipped depictions of childhood allude to a spiritual ignorance, a pre-conversion naiveté that signals the necessity of crisis and renewal. Certainly, this stylistic economy limits our ability to identify the complex emotional and developmental strands that shaped the author’s personality. Yet the sheer compactness of the overview often served as a projective lightning rod. As a constraint, brevity became an affordance that unconsciously distilled, through epitomizing images, the author’s fundamental conflicts, attachment style, and defenses. The opening passages of Moss’s narrative figuratively portray core psychological themes echoed throughout the text. Richard Moss was born in 1718 at Hurlston in the county of Chester. At three, his mother died. Moss’s maternal grandfather adopted the boy and raised him “as his own child” (p. 3). In the fifth line of the opening paragraph, Moss reveals the evangelical agenda that filters his selection of memory. At five, he heard a man “take the name of God in vain.” Oblivious to the seriousness of the offence, Moss used the expression “among [his] playfellows.” One day one of Moss’s friends said, “That is swearing: If you swear you will go to hell.” Suddenly “struck with great fear and shame,” Moss permanently stopped cursing; “terror and trembling” seized him whenever he heard others swear (p. 3). The second paragraph commences with another reference to Moss’s deceased mother: “About two years after my mother died, my father married again” (p. 3). Moss then describes an event that occurred in his fifth year. The stepmother asked his grandfather to let Moss run an errand to a nearby bakery. Finding himself in a dark lane, he grew frightened and turned around. Perhaps ashamed or fearful of reprimand, Moss, when he returned, lied to his stepmother as to why he came back empty-handed – the baker had been confused about the order. The stepmother eventually forced an admission of truth and informed her husband of his son’s errant ways. Moss writes, “He whipped me severely, telling me, ‘I was in the way to hell, for lying was as bad as swearing’” (p. 3). “I was greatly terrified,” Moss states at the start of the third paragraph, “and from that time for near three years, once or twice a week I had such frightful dreams, as made me afraid to go to bed” (p. 3). By screaming in his sleep, Moss awoke his family at night. Reminiscent of older converts who wasted away brooding about damnation, Moss’s night terrors drained him physically and emotionally: “This quite took away my bodily strength, and at the same time made me so serious and thoughtful, that I did not care for play, nor could take pleasure in anything, during the four or five years I went to school” (p. 3). With these few anecdotes and images – brief yet eerily evocative – Moss crisply sums up his first decade. The text abides by the conventions of the genre. The

164 Keith Haartman treatment of childhood is short. Typically, writers emphasize the unscrupled follies of youth to anticipate and justify the centerpiece of the narrative: conversion and spiritual rehabilitation. But as well as conforming to textual norms, the material simultaneously expresses an emotional coherence that reveals important unconscious trends about the author. Moss only offers the bare fact of his mother’s death and no recollections about his reaction. In stating that his grandfather regarded him as his son, Moss underscores his awareness that his grandfather, although closely related, was not his real parent. Moss therefore also suffered the partial loss of his father who did not remain as a primary caretaker. The displaced child presumably grappled with questions as to where he belonged and his identity within the family. How did Moss take to these massive disruptions? The contiguity of the swearing story that follows immediately suggests that we can read it as part of a whole, that is, as unconscious metaphoric commentary. The swearing story unfolds in a sequence of original innocence, unencumbered play, sudden shock, and then, hyper-vigilance and terror. The shock and immediate collapse of play substitutes for the unelaborated trauma of maternal loss. The threat of damnation as punishment for an unwitting sin alludes to a set of feelings that often complicate early bereavement – a confusing mixture of anger, guilt, and personal responsibility (Bowlby, 1980, pp. 361–63). With the second mention of Moss’s deceased mother comes another punitive reminiscence. This story centers on an ambiguous parental couple: a new stepmother and an erstwhile father. Though Moss makes no mention of how he felt about them, the unsettling tone of the bakery story offers commentary. The image of young Moss sent alone into darkness evokes a death theme, a terrifying loneliness in mourning his loss. Did his caretakers comprehend and contain his grief? While the text does not say, the child’s decision to flee the dark passage is telling, as is his awareness that revealing the truth would fail to secure his stepmother’s sympathies. When Moss finally confessed to his anxiety, the response confirmed his initial hunch. Fear was no excuse. The couple dismissed Moss’s vulnerability, viewing the affair instead as a moral failing requiring discipline. What began as an evasion of terror culminated in a “severe” whipping. Moss’s third paragraph conveys an awareness of the cumulatively traumatic effects of unresolved grief, the fear of hell, and the physical brutality of a father who, in some measure, abandoned his son. The whipping exacerbated Moss’s grief, lending it a persecutory quality that inspired bad dreams. Moss’s dissociated screams – night terrors that awakened his family – betray conflicted needs for parental attention and soothing. As exhaustion replaced the comforts of rest, normal play gave way to a stifling self-consciousness, a “serious thoughtfulness” that prevented Moss from taking pleasure in anything. As a textual device, the paragraph deliberately foreshadows conversion. Anxiety, exhaustion, and dysphoria aptly characterize the climate of repentance,

Methodist ritual mourning and the resolution of traumatic grief 165 the first stage of Wesley’s ordo salutis, in which believers awaken to the dire stringency of the law. By depicting analogous circumstances in his childhood and by framing these circumstances within the recognizable lexicon of repentance (losing bodily strength; becoming “serious” and “thoughtful”; not “taking pleasure in anything”) the author legitimates Wesley’s teleology. But we trivialize the paragraph if we reduce it to a mere function, to nothing more than a conventional maneuver that reinforces theology. Literary coherence mirrors psychological coherence. While the material works as a foreshadowing technique, it also authentically portrays the psychological impact of several traumatic events. Moss appropriates the public discourse of repentance to express the personal agony of his loss. The use of autobiographical conventions – one of two discrete levels of appropriation mentioned above – can be further clarified by viewing narrative conventions themselves as transference objects in the psychoanalytic sense. I suggest that for Methodist autobiographers, conventions triggered unconscious resonances and meanings; the formal literary characteristics of the genre – typical themes, images, devices and strategies – evoked emotionally rich memories and fantasies. Once internalized by a writer, narrative conventions worked as “releasing mechanisms” that attracted psychodynamic material in encoded form (Smith, 1991, p. 134). The writer’s unconscious thoughts collaborated with literary conventions in the same way that in the dream work, repressed signifiers collaborate with the closest possible analogues in order to find expression in the manifest content (Freud, 1900/1974). Let us see how this idea applies to Moss’s text. Within the Methodist genre of preacher autobiographies, conventions governing the representation of childhood include (1) brevity, (2) object lessons on sin, and (3) extraordinary life altering or life threatening events. The loss of Moss’s mother is clearly the most “extraordinary” event in his early life. While he does not explicitly dwell on the emotional effects of the loss, they find encoded expression through the convention of category two. The moral didacticisms of the swearing and the bakery stories serve as metaphors that express a conspicuous absence: the primary story of Moss’s grief. While the manifest content accomplishes important literary ends by buttressing the ideology of sin and redemption, it also, in the same breath, obliquely and imagistically articulates the author’s emotional conflicts. Category one, brevity, also plays a significant role in shaping the implicit story. Because briefness constrains the manifest content, it also constrains expression of the latent content. As mentioned, brevity epitomizes. Finally, note that as Moss’s childhood came to a close, he had endured some variation of all three traumas mentioned above: bereavement, severe authoritarian parenting, and a preoccupation with damnation (i.e., “serious thoughtfulness”). We also see a particular distortion of the ego ideal. Grief, guilt, anger and anxiety, exacerbated by corporeal punishment, produced a religiously inspired dread of conscience.

166 Keith Haartman Excursus – Encoded psychodynamics in John Haime’s autobiography I want to depart briefly from Moss’s text to further demonstrate the idea that childhood sequences and closely related opening passages of Methodist autobiographies often contain a great deal of encoded psychodynamic material. Again, this holds true even in the absence of more obvious forms of psychohistorical information. Like musical overtures, the encoded materials in opening passages tend to offer succinct and condensed representations of the most central psychological issues taken up in the rest of the work. In his spiritual autobiography, Methodist lay preacher John Haime (1865) devotes even less space than Moss to describing his childhood. He provides almost no information about his family situation or his upbringing. Aside from mentioning his birth date, Haime offers no time line for the reader. We can only guess the author’s age at the start of the story. Born in 1710 in Shaftesbury, Haime states off the bat that his father “followed gardening” and for several years brought him up in “the same employment” (p. 269). But Haime “did not like it” and “longed for some business that would allow [him] more liberty.” He disobeyed his parents, swore, lied, and broke the Sabbath. “I was not easy in these ungodly practices,” Haime writes, “being often afraid that the devil would carry me away.” In the second paragraph Haime states that he was placed with his uncle to learn the button trade: “I liked this well at first, but was soon tired of it” (p. 269). After a year, when the uncle departed for Blandford, Haime “wrought in many places, but stayed in none; being like the troubled sea, that cannot rest.” Later he rejoined his uncle for a few months, “finding no satisfaction in anything, neither in working, eating, drinking, nor sleeping” (p. 270). In paragraph three Haime states that while working alone “the devil broke in” with “reasonings” about “the being of God.” Yielding to a strong urge to “blaspheme God,” and then fearing damnation, Haime fell into despair. Paragraph four lingers over the quality of his despair: a sense of painful, lonely exclusion. He writes, “I now began to wander about at the river-side, and through woods and solitary places, looking up to heaven with many times a heart ready to break, thinking I had no part there. I thought everyone happy but myself.” Haime, who by Wesleyan standards had now entered into the first throes of repentance, “stifled” his despair by “drinking, swearing, card-playing, lewdness, and the like works of darkness.” Yet guilt, as Haime explains in paragraph five, plagued him with such force that he had “no rest day or night.” I was afraid to go to bed lest the devil should fetch me away before morning. I was afraid to shut my eyes lest I should awake in hell. I was terrified when asleep, sometimes dreaming that many devils where in the room, ready to take me away. (p. 271). Paragraphs six and seven mirror each other thematically. In the former Haime makes much of his anguish: his wish to “destroy” himself, his thoughts

Methodist ritual mourning and the resolution of traumatic grief 167 of death and judgment, his weeping and his physical exhaustion. While at home one day, Haime’s mother noticed her son’s “pale look” and “low voice,” and asked him what the matter was. Haime writes, “I durst not tell her; so I turned it off.” After excluding his mother, Haime, in paragraph seven, boldly excludes God. One night he “durst not” go to bed before praying. But he soon concluded that he had “neither the will nor the power to do anything good.” “Then,” he writes, “it darted into my mind, ‘I will not pray, neither will I be beholden to God for mercy’.” But Haime’s omission soon caught up with him: “I never had such a night before. I was as if my very body had been in a fire. . .I was thoroughly persuaded the devil was in the room. . .I judged myself to be one of the worst creatures that God ever made” (pp. 271–272). So far we have traversed only the very beginnings of the seventy-two paragraphs that make up Haime’s epic account. Taking the reader on a voyage across Europe, Haime chronicles his experiences as a soldier enlisted in the queen’s regiment of dragoons; he describes his marches on the continent, his gory, carnage-ridden encounters with the French forces during battle, his seemingly endless bouts of melancholia (surely worsened by war trauma), and finally, after leaving the military, his travels as an itinerant preacher devoted to the Methodist cause. Haime’s text is complex and rich. Suffice it to say that two themes stand out repeatedly and conspicuously from start to finish. Haime, like the troubled sea that cannot rest, wandered incessantly, possessing little ability to sustain relationships and intimate contact – even when those relationships brought relief and solace. Secondly, viewing himself as a perennial outsider, Haime constantly grappled with the anguish of exclusion. These opening paragraphs swiftly pass over Haime’s childhood, blending almost precociously into his teen years and early adulthood. The passages employ several standard conventions: brevity; identification of the father’s vocation and some details concerning the author’s vocational training; object lessons on sin (disobedience, lying, swearing and the like); typical repentance themes spanning back to Puritanism (lonely wanderings in solitude, lamentation, malaise, and the fear of hell); and fear of the devil. Even with the paucity of psycho-historical data, clear indications of Haime’s object relations, conflicts and attachment style – patterns repeatedly depicted as the story unfolds – emerge in the author’s distinctive appropriation of these literary conventions. The first hint of Haime’s dismissive character, chronic dissatisfaction and need to flee appears already in the second sentence when he makes use of the vocational convention to show his impatience with his father and with gardening, along with his desire for a kind of work that offered greater “liberty.” The next sentence, an object lesson on sin, links Haime’s disobedience and the ensuing threat of punishment (the fear of being carried away by the devil), back to his rejection of his father’s vocation and the wish to be liberated. Psychologically, the entire sequence coheres into a whole. The first paragraph neatly encodes

168 Keith Haartman the author’s basic conflict: the rejection of his primary objects followed in turn by guilt and anxiety. Haime’s dissatisfaction with his uncle’s profession and his inability to commit to any stable employment is further evidence of the conflict. Haime’s dismissive character may also account for the virtual absence of information concerning his childhood. It is certainly consistent with the brief mention of his mother. When she expressed concern about his distress, Haime avoided sharing the intimacies of his sullen mood. Instead, he shut his mother out by “turning it off.” The repentance motif reveals another dimension related to the same issue. Turning active defiance into passive suffering, and oscillating between aggressor and victim, Haime’s rejection of God, his blaspheming and his refusal to pray, unconsciously brought on his experiences of rejection. As Haime wandered alone in solitary places, he felt himself beyond the reach of heaven and banished from the company of happy folk. Note that Haime favors a particular variation or shade of repentance. His appropriation of the convention stresses the theme of exclusion, the psychological outcome of the author’s dismissive style. Finally, Haime’s depiction of the devil also points to an appropriation involving an unconscious displacement. At some unknown point in his development, Haime’s inclination towards attachment, affiliation, and intimacy had become too painful for him to integrate without enormous conflict. The desire for attachment shows through in two places – in his lamentations of exclusion, and in his portrayal of the devil. In three out of five instances mentioned above, the devil, as well as demons in the plural, inspire fear by intending to “carry” or “fetch” the author away. While obviously punitive in nature, the image also portrays Haime’s split-off dependency needs, his shunned urges to cling. In both Haime’s and Moss’s texts, the literary conventions in the opening passages – in the very first paragraph even – remind readers of inbred sin and subtly direct attention towards the crowning event of conversion. Yet as transference objects, the conventions also encode the authors’ essential psychodynamics in a fashion that resembles Freudian dream work. As with dreams, the images that depict the conflicts surrounding Haime’s dismissiveness contain implicit or disguised insights: the devil as a traumatic symbol of repressed attachment emotions, or the link between active rejection and passive exclusion. These images might best be described as poetic renderings that precisely and concisely formulate the most critical and most fateful psychological issue in the author’s life.

Spiritual decline – The repetition of loss and the futility of the will In these narratives, adolescence, teenhood, and early adulthood represent a time of “spiritual decline” (Hindmarsh, 2005, p. 242). Individuals struggled to live up to ambivalently held parental and religious ideals. Characterized by conflict, we see in this period oscillation between “revelry” and “mirth” (horse

Methodist ritual mourning and the resolution of traumatic grief 169 races, card playing, drinking, dancing, sexual experiences), and resolutions to withstand temptation (Haartman, 2004, pp. 24–25). Since neither position brought relief, individuals lost resolve and compulsively surrendered to “evil passions.” This phase was fraught with shame, depression and futility. Because conflict and unresolved mourning injected ego ideals with unconscious aggression, they were regularly resisted. Rebelliousness and rage left many vulnerable to temptation and sin. Let us now return to Richard Moss’s narrative. At eleven, Moss apprenticed to his grandfather, a tailor. A “fellow apprentice,” whose age goes unmentioned, was “given to women” and regailed Moss with his exploits (1779, p. 3). On hearing these stories, Moss, still a pre-teen, was “filled (. . .) with the same desires” (p. 4). Already, the conflict between profanity and spirituality was underway; Moss constantly attended church, prayed morning and evening, “and had some fear of God. . .” (p. 4). When Moss turned fifteen, his Grandfather’s business declined. Now uprooted, for three years Moss worked under several masters to “perfect” his trade. Deprived of his home and its emotional comforts, his conflict intensified. He “fell into much ill company,” attended “horses races” and took up with “loose women.” Moss “seldom went to church, and had little thought of God.” Left with “no peace” and a heavy conscience, he grew ashamed of seeing his former friends (p. 4). When his father retired to a farm, Moss, at eighteen, inherited his father’s house. He rented the premises and lived as a journeyman in the nearby town of Faddaly. While he chose not to reside in the house, his close proximity, along with the emotional significance of the inheritance, strengthened his convictions. He writes, “I now began to reflect. I broke off my loose company, and kept from drinking and foolish diversions. I again went constantly to church. I set myself to recover my reading, which I had entirely lost” (p. 4). After a year, Moss’s “good resolutions” faded. Meeting “an acquaintance with some other men in the town,” he “fell again into drinking, diversions, and the company of loose women” (p. 4). For six months he “seldom lay in [his] master’s house.” Broke and “bare of clothes,” the shock of near destitution marshaled his will. Returning to the bible, he “felt more and more selfcondemnation” and pondered his “grievous” offenses in the light of God’s “attributes.” He again “broke off from outward sin” and strove to “avoid evil and do good, to the uttermost of [his] power” (p. 4). To clinch his resolve Moss “believed it might be an help (. . .) to marry a serious woman” (p. 4). He knew of a farmer with two daughters who lived in the vicinity. The younger daughter, writes Moss, “was such a one as I could like, and one that would confirm me in my good resolutions.” Moss received permission from her parents to marry, but they advised him to first go to London before settling in the country. In London, Moss took up with William Wright, a master tailor who years earlier apprenticed with Moss’ grandfather. The jarring atmosphere of urban

170 Keith Haartman London presumably triggered a sharp sense of displacement that sent taproots back to the loss of his mother and the disruption of his family life. Sure enough, “in a few days,” he met “John Pugh,” a “thoroughly vicious man” who, Moss writes, “soon brought me off all my resolutions; so that we went together most nights to ill houses, and spent great part of the night in drunkenness, reveling, and all manner of wickedness” (p. 5). Several months later, Moss received a letter from his “intended wife,” “exhorting [him] to a religious life” (p. 5). Here again, contact with his wife-tobe, a woman who would soon become family and who may have served as consoling mother-substitute helped Moss to “form some short lived resolutions.” Around this time, Moss and Pugh went to Kennington-Common to attend the open-air preaching of George Whitefield. A “multitude” prevented the two from getting close enough to hear the sermon. Nevertheless, the event made a lasting impression. “But as I was standing,” writes Moss, “a man who stood at my side, dropt down dead.” Shaken, Moss began ruminating: “I thought, ‘What if I had been in his place?’” (p. 5). The incident led Moss “once more” to resolve to “serve God” (p. 5). Certain of the impossibility of remaining steadfast in London, he returned to the country and “had thoughts of marrying right away.” But Moss delayed his plans, deciding first to establish a business and to acquire the “wherewith to maintain [his] wife.” He employed several journeymen and “was now beloved and wellspoken of.” The combined influences of familiar surroundings, contact with his fiancée, and the respect of others clearly raised Moss’ self-esteem and bolstered his will. He lived a “sober life” and attended church. But Moss’s conflict, although subdued, slowly reappeared. He refused to receive the Lord’s Supper, fearing that if he later fall prey to temptation, he would “eat and drink [his] own damnation.” Also, after fixing a date for the wedding, Moss’s ambivalence got the better of him. He writes, “. . .I fell again into acquaintance with wicked men, who prevailed upon me (. . .) to give into gaming, drinking and lewdness, whereby in a few months I consumed all the money I had saved, and grew more hardened in sin, particularly drunkenness and lewdness, than I had been before” (p. 5). As the time of the wedding approached, Moss confessed to his betrothed “that being bare of everything, [he] could not think of marrying then, to make her miserable as well as [himself]” (p. 5). Because the woman “laid it much to heart” and “seemed inclined to melancholy,” Moss’s guilt compelled him further into sin. “Nay,” he writes, “I grew worse and worse, seeking out all the ill women that I could hear of anywhere” (p. 5). A year later, Moss was “informed of a widow at Hurdstone” and visited her at a public house where she lived (p. 6). When she “opened the window and beckoned,” Moss went in and spent the night. Here the text inserts a footnote, a biblical passage (Providence 3:5) summing up the unholy import of the affair: “The lips of a strange woman drop as a honey-comb, and her mouth is smoother

Methodist ritual mourning and the resolution of traumatic grief 171 than oil: But her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword: Her feet go down to death; her steps take hold on hell” (p. 6). In a fortnight, the widow sent word that she was with child, and threatened to take her life if Moss refused marriage. When Moss reminded the widow of his previous engagement, she dispatched another letter in which she threatened to either drown or poison herself. “More distressed than ever,” Moss “accordingly” married the woman (p. 6). As the couple rode away after the ceremony, the bride confessed that she had “taken something to make her miscarry” and that she had done so before. . .”. Although the attempt failed, a horrified Moss deposited his new wife on the doorstep of one of her relatives. He soon after bequeathed to her the house he had inherited from his father so “that she might have it to bring up the child” (p. 6). Guilty and exhausted, Moss succumbed to an unspecified illness that he regarded as divine punishment. He writes, “it pleased the Lord to afflict me with sickness” (p. 6). During his three-week convalescence in London, Moss received a visit from John Pugh, who, apparently converted, asked Moss if he had made his peace with God and whether he “was not afraid to die.” The inquiry dismayed the ailing Moss, who grudgingly agreed to sing a hymn with Pugh before he took his leave (p. 6). Upon returning to health, Moss successfully reassembled his business, saved his money, went “constantly” to church, and “took no pleasure, but that of getting money and dressing as fine as [he] could” (p. 6). Moss was now twenty-three. Here again, textual norms seamlessly blend with individual psychodynamics. Moss’s “spiritual decline” is a standard motif legitimating Wesley’s critique of works and personal righteousness (Wesley, 1984–87, I: pp. 225–227; pp. 255–260). Life stories provide living proof of theological tenets. Thanks to innate sinfulness, any attempt to atone on one’s own must necessarily fail. Only through an experiential confirmation of divine forgiveness (justification) and a subjectively perceived infusion of holiness (the fruits of the spirit) can believers acquire genuine righteousness and persistent joy (I: p. 274). In this sense, Moss’s story resembles others of its kind. The steady rhythm with which good intentions and stern resolutions prevail and then fail confirms the futility of the will. Wesley’s theological insistence on a depraved will forever spoiled by “corruption” (I: p. 225) and “enmity against God” (IV: p. 155) dovetails psychologically with the behavior of individuals who harbor unresolved aggression and who perpetually reject the very ideals they seek to achieve (Haartman, 2004, pp. 56–61). Moss’s account demonstrates how chronic ambivalence impairs the self-regulating function of ideals. Moss’s spiritual decline highlights the effects of an incompletely internalized ego ideal. Lingering conflict, rage, and grief blocked the transformation of concrete parental images into an abstract self-regulating ideal. When

172 Keith Haartman developmental components of the ideal remain unintegrated, psychological functions essential to identity, self-esteem, and affect regulation, fail to materialize. For Moss, three trends indicate the failure of the ideal: sexualization and “revelry” as a defense against intermittent bouts of depression, a primary reliance on self-objects, and the chronic “loss” and “recovery” of holiness. We see the first hint of a compromised ideal in the precocious eruption of erotic desire. Moss alludes to his sexual feelings as an eleven year old. His phrasing stresses their intensity: he was filled with desire. Was the eleven year old truly overcome by sexual longings or is this a textually driven exaggeration meant to underscore the terrible fact of carnal temptation? Given the strict economy of the narrative, the very mention of these feelings suggests that they stood out in Moss’s memory because of their urgency, and were, for that reason, real. Yet this alone is not a sufficiently convincing argument. The narrative offers further evidence of the authenticity of Moss’s feelings in numerous references to sexual encounters – “loose women” and “lewdness” – that, along with “diversions” of drunkenness and “revelry” betray an underlying struggle with depression. From a self-psychological perspective, traumatic disappointments in childhood impede the “transmutation” (Kohut, 1971, p. 50) of the “idealized parental imago” into a mature ideal capable of soothing the self and maintaining self-esteem (p. 28). In lieu of a properly internalized ideal, erotic stimulation temporarily mollifies anxiety, despair, and emptiness (pp. 70–72; Siegel, 1996, pp. 73–75). Note that Moss’s sexual yearnings flared up when his fellow apprentice bragged about his exploits. The text shows that whenever Moss ditched his spiritual regimen, he had almost invariably succumbed to the influence of others – he fell into “ill company” and made “acquaintances” whose unwholesome habits cut short his sobriety. This strong susceptibility to external influence was frequently heightened by the loss of familiar surroundings – leaving his grandfather’s home as a teen, or later, departing for London. Similarly, when familial self-objects rekindled the emotional force of Moss’s ideal, he promptly sobered up, followed his conscience and felt better about himself. When he inherited his father’s house (a symbolic confirmation of kinship), or received permission to marry the farmer’s daughter (a mother substitute whose serious disposition, Moss hoped, would reinforce his convictions), he returned to church and eagerly resumed his daily round of bible study and prayer. The external presence of self-objects substituted for an incompletely internalized ideal (Kohut, 1971, pp. 48–51). The most formidable obstacle delaying the consolidation of Moss’s ideal was the traumatic repetition of loss. The theme of loss (and recovery) appears as a leitmotif throughout the text. His mother’s death, the central trauma of Moss’s life, not only fueled a conflict that shattered the stability of his teen and early adult years; it also dictated, as we will see, his appropriation of Wesleyan spirituality.

Methodist ritual mourning and the resolution of traumatic grief 173 In this portion of text each event is drawn into the tidal swells of disappearances and reappearances, of loses and recoveries. Moss lost his resolve and sobriety. He “entirely lost” his bible study, and “set” himself to “recover” his reading. Moss lost his fiancée, and later, his wife and child. He lost his house and, in a manner that poignantly captures the helpless despair of the bereaved child, Moss twice found himself “bare of everything,” virtually bereft of clothes and money. Sinister reminders of mortality surface repeatedly: the sudden death during Whitefield’s sermon, the infanticidal widow grimly rendered as an emissary of mortality and hell, John Pugh’s suggestion that Moss’s illness might be fatal. In line with the developmental link between love objects and abstract ideals (Pruyser, 1974, p. 254), Moss’s relationship to the farmer’s daughter mirrored his ambivalent relationship to his religious aspirations. In both cases, Moss pursued and rejected, and then experienced a guilt-ridden loss. Moss himself accentuates the link when he states baldly that he chose the woman to help him “avoid evil and do good” and to “confirm” him in his “good resolutions” (1798, p. 5). He offers no description of her other than her status as an auxiliary function – a will-strengthener – a trait otherwise accomplished by an internalized ideal. Directly after Moss settled on a wedding date, he met up with “wicked men, who prevailed upon [him]. . .to give into gaming, drinking and lewdness. . .” (p. 5). Deeply conflicted about the marriage, Moss within a few months spent his savings and “grew more hardened in sin, particularly drunkenness and lewdness, than [he] ever had been before.” Left with no choice but to reveal his condition to his fiancée, Moss’s immense guilt over his partner’s disappointment, along with his own grief, thrust him further into sin. Moss writes, “I was grieved for her, and condemned myself, but yet went on in sin. Nay, I grew worse and worse, seeking out all the ill women that I could hear of anywhere” (p. 5). Why did Moss wreck the wedding? Did he unconsciously wish to reverse the passivity of the original loss by actively sabotaging the marriage? Did he preemptively disqualify himself because he believed that wives abandon husbands the way mothers abandon sons? Did Moss wind up poverty-stricken to convey the agony of his grief to his fiancée? Was it a displaced cry for help like his dissociated night-screams as a child? While the text does not permit an exact formulation, it clearly depicts a fundamental dynamic associated with loss. By orchestrating a symbolic repetition of his mother’s death, Moss revived his grief and his guilt. As an epilogue to the incident, Moss plunged himself into sexual oblivion, a move that speaks to the enormity of the conflict. Moss’s hunger for physical intimacy and attachment compelled him into adulterous liaisons that only worsened his guilt and his estrangement from his partner. The “Hurdstone widow” sequence follows directly on the heels of the cancelled wedding. No new paragraph intervenes. The contiguity suggests an

174 Keith Haartman unbroken thread, a continuation of the same psychological theme. Moss was “informed of a widow,” and visited her “on purpose” (p. 6). Moss’s repetition compulsion – incessant and tragically disruptive – permits us to question the potentially overdetermined “purpose” of his visit. When Moss states that he visited “on purpose,” he means simply that the woman was un-partnered and sexually available. But as a widow, she too was a bereaved sufferer, a fellow traveler, who, by signifying loss, may have sparked a deeper interest in Moss than he was aware of. How interesting that with Moss’s help, the widow turned into a nightmare mother who tried to abort, or, abandon her baby. In response, Moss abandoned both his wife and the unborn child, losing his house in the bargain. The short-lived marriage also spelled the permanent rupture of another relationship – his first fiancée. Might this epic array of loses betray a wider range of “purposes” or unconscious motives in what became for Moss a momentous visitation? Throughout Methodist autobiographies, the sequence of spiritual decline illustrating the futility of works occurs usually between adolescence and early adulthood. The tedium of formal similarities reproduced in narrative after narrative – a recursive measure meant to inculcate approved theology – is offset by the charisma of personal narrative (Whitehouse, 2004, p. 100). As in Moss’s text, the day-to-day ordinariness of life, woven together with tragedy and scandal, gains its appeal, unlike abstract doctrine, by evoking the reader’s empathy and fascination. This ensures a more effective transmission of religious knowledge. The success of these works as ideological tools relied on the personalization of theology through story. In turn, personalization inevitably brings with it traces of the author’s conscious and unconscious desires and conflicts. The tragic outcomes of Moss’s ambivalence, his loss of love, family, and home, are far too tangible for us to dismiss as textual exaggerations designed to maximize the theme of sin. The situation is more complex. The author deliberately clarified his neurotic behavior and made it intelligible by framing it within a familiar literary strategy: the motif of spiritual decline. Situated within this plot line, recurring loss and depressive helplessness find a coherent rationale that elegantly drives home a key theological point: the futility of the will. Moss actively appropriated the public discourse by tailoring it to encompass his grief. His text transforms the perplexing contradictions of his emotions into a decipherable, spiritually meaningful, and even necessary sequence that, in the end, propelled him into the hands of God. The legacy of his bereavement not only marked his uniqueness as a Methodist writer. Moss’s appropriation also accomplished an important “work of culture” (Obeyesekere, 1990), one that linked religious discourse to mental health. Because Moss made productive sense of his bewildering actions by elucidating them through religious categories, he implicitly invited readers with comparable struggles to do likewise.

Methodist ritual mourning and the resolution of traumatic grief 175 Ritual mourning and appropriation: to Working through grief Around Easter of 1741, Mr. Wright invited Moss to attend a sermon given by Wesley at the London Foundery. Moss writes, When Mr. Wesley came out of the kitchen door, I rose up to look at him. I felt something I had never felt before. I thought, ‘I have read or heard of saints: Surely this is one.’ He went up into the pulpit, but I could not keep my eyes off him. He prayed, and I thought, ‘Well, this is such a prayer as I never heard in my life.’ Then he gave out a verse of a hymn. Immediately I felt such love in my heart, and such joy, that I could not refrain from tears. I was ashamed anyone should see this, and leaned my face against the boards. But then I wanted to see him: So I could not help looking up again. Now I was happy: Now I was in heaven: The hymn, the singing, all was heavenly round about me. And I knew, that till this hour, I had never known what happiness meant (. . .) I found all my prejudice vanish away, and I had such love, both to the preachers and all the people, as I cannot express. (1798, p. 7)

Walking home after the service, Moss “did not keep a distance” from the other Methodists as he “used to do,” but “got in the midst of them, and was greedy of hearing all [he] could” (p. 7). Soon after, his acquaintances mocked him for attending Methodist sermons. But Moss “felt all fear and shame were taken away.” He writes, “Wherever, and with what company soever I was, I could talk only of the things of God. And I continually reproved my companions, if they swore, and talked foolishly (. . .) So that they were all afraid of me (. . .) shunning me as much as they could” (pp. 7–8). Moss then describes his repentance in two brief paragraphs (p. 8). He grew momentarily suspicious of the joy that had persisted since he first saw Wesley. The intensity and the effects – confidence, determination, passion – seemed so remarkable that Moss doubted whether the change “was from the devil” (p. 8). He decided finally that the devil could not contrive such happiness. Moss writes “. . .for all my joy, I was without Christ. I felt my lost estate more and more everyday, and knew that I deserved hell (. . .) I found much sorrow of heart. . .”. Moss “continued mourning after God for several months”; he read scripture, communicated “constantly,” and sometimes skipped dinner to pray. On Fridays, Moss fasted. “Still,” he writes, “I felt, that I was under condemnation, and had no rest by reason of my sin” (p. 8). This sentence rounds off Moss’s repentance. Soon after he received a vision that sealed his justification. Moss’s reaction to Wesley at the Foundery was dramatic, but by no means extraordinary. Wesley cultivated a gentrified look that garnered deference and love from his plebian admirers. Along with his oratorical gifts, Wesley’s natural shoulder-length hair, clerical robes, and immaculate grooming led many Methodists, men and women both, to develop erotized crushes for him as well as his brother Charles (Abelove, 1990, pp. 24–39). “It is not fanciful,” writes John Kent, “to see in the Wesleys and Whitefield in the early part of their

176 Keith Haartman careers men who were, unconsciously, playing something similar to the role of the saint who served his faithful petitioners” (2002, p. 50). Indeed, this is precisely how Moss viewed Wesley – he must surely be a saint. As Wesley approached the pulpit, Moss was suddenly overtaken by an idealizing transference (Kohut, 1971, pp. 37–101) that reduced him blissfully to tears. An otherworldliness, at once profoundly joyful and strangely unfamiliar, permeates Moss’s account: “I felt something I had never felt before (. . .) this is such a prayer that I have never heard in my life (. . .) I was as in Heaven (. . .) all was heavenly round about me (. . .) till this hour, I had never known what happiness meant.” The tears, the euphoria, the incomparability, the heavenliness, all suggest that Moss’s transference signified a re-union with his lost mother (cf. Zales, 1978; Aberbach, 1987; Nixon, 1995, 1996a, 1996b). (Where was Moss’s mother, other than in Heaven?) Put differently, the experience marked the emergence not only of a positive maternal image, but also of hitherto repressed attachment affects – what Bowlby deems the “bonds of affection” (Bowlby, 1988, p. 73). Moss rationally interpreted his recovered emotions within the cognitive context of their occurrence. His creative choice of religious metaphors logically stressed the qualities of transcendence and newness. Tropes centering on the “otherworldly” and the “unfamiliar” provide a good analogical fit for newly unearthed, long-forgotten attachment feelings (cf. Ostow, 2004). Moss “could not keep his eyes off [Wesley].” Later, ashamed of his tears, Moss leaned his face against the board. “But then,” he writes, “I wanted to see him: So I could not help looking up again” (1798, p.7). Seeing and looking away reveal the exquisite and overwhelming intensity of Moss’s idealization. The ecstatic eruption of a repressed maternal image and the intense attachment emotions that came with it – the developmental bedrock of moral ideals – prompted significant positive change. For example, instead of lagging behind, Moss, after the service, got in the midst of the Methodists and listened “greedily” (p. 7). Since the tight relations between Methodists offered consolation to individuals separated from family by economic necessity, and since fellow Methodists regarded each other as beloved siblings (Hindmarsh, 2005, pp. 157–344), we see in Moss’s sudden gregariousness an unhindered expression of familial affiliation. Also, in the ensuing days and weeks, Moss joyfully overcame shame, courageously endured mockery, actively proselytized, and easily maintained his regimen of prayer, reading and worship. Later in the text, Moss points out that his power over outward sin (the ability to resist temptation) materialized on the eve he first heard Wesley – the night he “first tasted that God was love” (1798, p. 53). Developmentally, particular images of idealized love objects undergo a synthetic process of abstraction before becoming a moral ideal with universal application. A simple example: the wish not to bite or hit mummy because it

Methodist ritual mourning and the resolution of traumatic grief 177 hurts her gradually develops, under the right circumstances, into a generalized humanitarian value (cf. Merkur, 2001, pp. 80–81). We see evidence of this process in that fact that by the end of the service, the idealized infatuation focused singularly upon Wesley had blossomed into affection for the other preachers, as well as everybody else present at the assembly. I suggest that the enlarged scope of Moss’s feelings – the beginning stages of a generalizing ideal – coincided directly with the conspicuous changes in his personality (what Wesley deemed “the fruits of the spirit”; 1984–87, I: p. 274). Finally, Moss’s portrayal of his repentance invites methodological commentary. Moss’s pithiness (two meager paragraphs) is matched by his exclusive employment of standard scriptural passages: he “was under condemnation,” “felt his lost estate,” “mourned after God,” and so on (1798, p. 8). This string of generic biblical references used regularly to describe repentance by both Wesley and his Puritan predecessors conceals rather than reveals the unique qualities of the writer’s depression (King, 1983). Here, the balance between textual norms and individual psychology collapses. Because the author simply recites biblical metaphors, his subjectivity becomes opaque. When later in the text Moss again describes a depression, he offers more idiosyncratic elaboration; textual and religious norms remain but the author employs them as instruments to articulate an irreducibly personal grief. So why does Moss here rely on recitation only? In the usual chronology of Wesley’s method, individuals resorted to ritual mourning techniques during the repentance phase (Haartman, 2004, pp. 70–80). The techniques produced a depression that persuasively validated doctrinal notions of sin and divine displeasure. Because Moss joined the Methodists after his justification, his introduction to mourning techniques and therefore his spiritual melancholy occurred later than the traditional schedule stipulated. As Moss makes clear, the character of his repentance was primarily joyous! It contradicted traditional expectations. The discrepancy meant that Moss had minimal leeway to appropriate the somber discourse, other than to simply plug in the official language. Moss’s repentance lasted several months. On an autumn Sunday, after attending services at the Foundery, St. Martin’s, and Short’s-Gardens, Moss, in the evening, retired to pray. “[His] eyes being shut,” he beheld a vision that signified his justification (1798, p. 53). Moss writes, I saw Christ by faith, as if he was standing by me, and I saw plainly the prints of his nails in his hands. All my burden dropt off. My fears and doubts and sense of guilt vanished away (. . .) I knew that God (. . .) had blotted out all my sins. I was filled with such a love to God, and such a joy as cannot be uttered. All the love and joy I had felt before were nothing in comparison to this (. . .) I had a clear sight of the Love of God in Christ Jesus. (p. 53)

For the next three days Moss “walked as one out of the body, in the broad light of God’s countenance” (p. 53). The text suggests that he experienced a partial

178 Keith Haartman inflation in believing he had already been sanctified (delivered from even the temptation of sin): “And I then said in my heart, ‘I shall never be moved: Neither shall I see war anymore’.” As he offers no further details, we cannot say whether Moss’s official rhetoric reflects an actual state of manic inflation (identified by Wesley as a common occurrence following justification; Haartman, 2004, pp. 133–140) or simply a rote application or recitation of scripture. But when Moss awoke on the fourth day, “all was dark” (1798, p. 53). His comfort and his sense of presence (i.e., God’s “countenance”) had disappeared. While he had “no fear of death” and “continual power over all outward sin,” Moss could not “see” God or Christ, and “was in sorrow and heaviness.” By praying, reading, and “hearing God’s word,” Moss “tried every means of recovering the Light” but “could not find God.” Doubting the veracity of his justification, Moss felt moved to formally join the Methodists and was admitted into the society (p. 53). “I resolved,” he writes, “to leave nothing undone that was in my power. I used all the ordinances of God” (p. 53). Moss began seriously fasting. He never ate a full meal and “tasted no food at all” between Thursdays and Saturdays: “I was quite worn away, and grown so weak, that I could scarcely walk.” Moss was “prest down to earth. . .by a sense of absence of divine comfort” and by “inward sins and temptations of every kind” (p. 54). “Peevish” and “discontent,” he could not meditate on God as before, nor feel love for God or, for that matter, anyone else. “I wished,” writes Moss, “I never had been born or, that my soul and body might die together. I was weary of life, and would have starved to death; only for offending God” (p. 54). Sometimes “a strange horror,” a demonic sense of presence, “suddenly fell” on Moss when he prayed ( p. 54). It seemed as if the enemy were just by me, ready to swallow me up. Sometimes I imagined he leapt on my shoulders, till my flesh crept upon my bones. Sometimes when I was in bed he seemed to be upon me, with a vast weight. (p. 54)

As forlorn as he was, Moss, throughout the ordeal, received temporary relief in prayer and mustered the discipline to abstain from sin. “For the thought of [offending God],” he writes, “I could less bear than any other. I had rather have suffered all things. . .than to commit sin, or omit even the least outward duty” (p. 54). Moss’s depression finally broke while listening to Wesley preach at WestStreet. “In the middle of the sermon,” he writes, “I felt my soul united to the Lord” (p. 54). From here forward the “witness of pardon,” the certainty of God’s forgiveness, remained steadfast. I had a closer communion with him than ever. I found his spirit witnessing with my spirit, not only that I was a child of God, but that he would depart from me no more, that he would abide with me for ever. All sorrow and doubt and fear fled away. I was filled with light and peace. I had such a solid, settled peace in the Holy Ghost, as I was a stranger to, till that hour. I felt a fuller and stronger love to God than ever,

Methodist ritual mourning and the resolution of traumatic grief 179 as well as all mankind. And from that time I never lost for a moment the Light of God’s countenance. (p. 54)

The sequence beginning with Moss’s vision of Christ and ending with the ecstatic return of the witness of pardon represents a significant working through of traumatic conflict and the simultaneous consolidation of a robust ego ideal. The process relied on an idiosyncratic appropriation of public symbols that gave a healing voice to Moss’s unresolved grief. The most frequently documented vision in early Methodism is that of Christ crucified, an interior image “commonly associated with some crucial phase in the conversion crisis” (Rack, 1987, p. 38). Such visions occurred in a state of hypnagogic reverie (Merkur, 1993, p. 34). Because Methodists understood that imagination “furnished the material” for their visions (Dimond, 1926, pp. 184–185), they appreciated the “subjective character of the hallucination” while simultaneously entertaining its supernatural essence. The “autonomy” (Merkur, 1993, pp. 12–13) of ecstatic visions (the fact that, like nocturnal dreams, they unfolded independently of willed volition), along with the heightened sensory realism of hypnagogia (Mavromatis, 1987), confirmed their divine origin. For individuals like Moss whose justification involved a hallucination, autonomous features strengthened the belief that they had indeed been reborn and granted a new set of spiritual senses. When Moss claims that he “saw Christ by faith,” he uses a codified shorthand for “the eyes of faith” or spiritual senses (Mathews, 1985; Haartman, 2004, pp. 100–104). When he writes that he “saw plainly the prints of the nails in [Jesus’s] hands” he draws attention to the autonomy of the vision in order to indicate its supernatural character and vouchsafe its legitimacy. (Plus, in singling out the scarred incisions, the holes in Christ’s hands, Moss unconsciously alludes to his own woundednes). Why did Moss’s vision occur when it did? Technically, the fact that Moss “retired” to pray at night and beheld the vision “with [his] eyes being shut” suggests that he possessed some basic knowledge of ritual mourning and the ecstatic effects of sensory deprivation. Methodists actively sought secluded low-stimulus settings such as private chambers, stables and barns, and many describe mourning under the cover of night or praying in dark places (Haartman, 2004, pp. 73–76). Psychodynamically, after living in such vigorous accord with his religious values, the vision, probably cultivated in quiet darkness, represented, in the generic manner of dream symbolism, Moss’s feeling of self acceptance in having consistently and joyfully abided by the dictates of his ideal. The depression that followed shortly thereafter represented the core of Moss’s early traumatic loss, the veritable root of an ambivalence that had brought enormous upheaval into his life. In this case, the resurgence of depression moved beyond the static repetitions of his teen and early adult years. Nor is this description of depression a recitation, that is, an opaque screen of generic discourse.

180 Keith Haartman With the input of Christian metaphors filtered through Wesleyanism, Moss’s trauma transposed itself into a new symbolic medium. As the inchoate fixation to maternal loss received a coherent voice through metaphors of divine loss, the unformulated pain of trauma became thinkable (cf. Bion, 1983) and subject to progressive, therapeutic change. Following his justification, Moss for three days basked (“walked as one out of the body”) in the “countenance” or felt presence of God. Yet on the fourth morning “all was dark. My comfort and my God were gone.” Moss could now neither “see” nor “find” God (1798, p. 53). Darkness harkens back to the beginning of the text when Moss first articulates the effects of his loss via the encoded story of the dark lane. Also, Moss’s language evinces a personifying quality that concretely highlights God’s presence and absence as an object. Yet despite his melancholic turn, certain functions connected to Moss’s recently strengthened ideal had grown more durable. He experienced no fear of death or damnation; he retained power over outward sin and desired fiercely to please God. He found solace in prayer, and, most importantly, he refused to slide back into “sin” to alleviate his despair. Directly after Moss states that he formally joined the Methodist society, he writes that he left “nothing undone that was in [his] power.” Moss then describes a severe regimen of fasting that left him so “worn away” and “weak,” that he could “scarcely walk” (p. 53). In all likelihood, when he became a Methodist proper, his mandatory placement in a “band” – a small supervised group of justified members who heartily oversaw each other’s spiritual development (Rack, 1989, pp. 238–239; Heitzenrater, 1995, pp. 123–124) – familiarized Moss more thoroughly with “methods” of ritual mourning, one of which was fasting (Haartman, 2004, pp. 70–73). The physical weakness that the fasting induced re-invoked the depressive symptoms he endured as a child when his night terrors and serious thoughtfulness “quite took away [his] bodily strength,” his playfulness, and his ability to “take pleasure in anything” (1798, p. 3). Moss was “. . .prest down to the earth (. . .) by a sense of absence of divine comfort (. . .) and (. . .) by a sense of [his] inward sins and temptations of everykind. . .”; he felt “peevishness and discontent,” could neither love nor “meditate on God,” “lost every good temper,” and, “weary of life,” imagined starving himself to death (p. 54). As with his vision of Christ, a hypnagogic alternate state triggered by prayer probably produced the sense of demonic presence that interrupted Moss’s devotions and, while he lay in bed, “seemed to be upon [him] with a vast weight” (p. 54). The devil’s disruption of a pious activity symbolizes the rage that previously spoiled Moss’s efforts to remain on track spiritually. The nocturnal visitations not only bring to mind Moss’s childhood night terrors; the devil’s “vast weight” points to an anger painfully infused with grief. We see in this constellation – absence, pining, grief, physical and mental exhaustion, guilt, rage, morbid ruminations, hopelessness, and a total loss of

Methodist ritual mourning and the resolution of traumatic grief 181 exuberance – the core symptoms of Moss’s unresolved bereavement. In contrast to the previous instance of “depression,” Moss’s language, while borrowing from traditional sources, now conveys an individualized agony consistent with personal appropriation. Elaborated metaphors capture beautifully the essential contours of his traumatic past; the distinctiveness of Moss’s grief shows through in his selection of a particular mourning technique best suited to his psychological and temperamental preference – fasting. The text here becomes an “interstitial space” between the public discourses of the bible, the Methodist gloss, and spiritual practice, and the author’s revealed subjectivity. Unfortunately Moss does not state how long he “continued with no settled peace or comfort” (p. 54). But on the morning of the ecstasy that finally expelled his depression, Moss “found [his] mind intent upon God, longing after him more than ever (. . .) In this temper [he] came to the chapel.” In short, the unitive ecstasy, occurring in the midst of Wesley’s sermon, emphasized Moss’s mystical sense of communion with God, and marked the beginning of a permanent feeling of forgiveness and divine acceptance. Note the heavy use of reunion language: “I felt my soul united to the Lord. I had a closer communion with him than ever [I knew] he would depart from me no more, that he would abide with me forever (. . .) from that time I never lost for a moment the light of God’s countenance” (p. 54). Here, reunion symbolism is not just a product of fantasy alone; it reflects an adaptive, structural change in the relation between the ego and the ego ideal. In short, Moss acquired a “good conscience” – one that measured by ordinary human standards, remained unfaltering and steady. How specifically can we account for this considerable developmental shift? Following the first ecstasy at the Foundery, the emergence of the maternal object image and the attachment emotions prompted a “growth spurt” in Moss’s ideal. Significant emotional and behavioral changes (so exceptional that Moss briefly suspected a devilish trick) triggered a justifying vision, and later, secured his conviction and equanimity during the depression. It was precisely these changes – a dramatic increase in faith – that gave Moss the psychological strength to confront more fully the traumatic core of his unresolved bereavement grief. With a strengthened ideal and greater faith, Moss now allowed himself to lucidly endure grief and rage without falling back into sin. By coherently encoding and making sense of the pain via religious metaphors, Moss signified or “mentalized” (Fonagy et al., 2002) a previously inchoate, vaguely articulated wound – the dark lane, or “black hole” of loss. By patiently suffering through the depression instead of bypassing it with sex, alcohol and manic revelry, Moss established structures of impulse control that coincided with the criteria of the ego ideal. Thanks to his abstinence and patience, as these structures grew stable, Moss acquired more and more self-acceptance in staying true to, that is, “unifying” with, his ideal. The communion imagery in Moss’s third ecstasy at West-Street confirmed the transformation. Again, this symbolism transcends

182 Keith Haartman the simple fantasy of re-finding the absent mother. It expresses Moss’s own intuition of “object-constancy” (McDevitt & Mahler, 1989), the permanent, structural integration of the ideal. Moss says as much in theological terms: the witness of God’s spirit abided and he “never lost for a moment the Light of God’s countenance.” The remainder of the text testifies to the permanence of the change (1798, pp. 54–59): he experienced no further major depressions and never again regressed into old habits; he continued to find great satisfaction proselytizing and tending to the sick and poor; in accordance with Wesley’s method, he sharpened his ability to systematically scrutinize his motives; and he eventually became an itinerant preacher, bravely enduring all the considerable hardships that came with the job. A final bit of theory. The termination of Moss’s depression, the consolidation of the ideal and the permanent acquisition of the witness of pardon, coincided with an increasing abstraction that ensued over the course of three ecstatic experiences. Recall that in the first ecstasy, Moss’s idealization of Wesley expanded into a love for the preachers and the entire congregation. During the third ecstasy, the abstraction was maximally extended: “I felt a fuller and stronger love to God than ever, as well as to all mankind” (p. 54). Jacobson (1964), who introduced the notion of superego autonomy, holds that with the development of ideals comes a decrease in emotional vacillations, and the stabilization of a basic mood. This change is associated with an abstraction, a generalized uniformity of inner standards. Building on Jacobson’s work, Kernberg (1966, 1976) states that the depersonification and abstraction of superego components compliment the increasing synthesis of self and object images. At first concrete and polarized in terms of “good” and “bad,” the images gradually shift by blending together. In this way, their raw affective intensity eventually attenuates, giving way to more stable and balanced emotional images and moods. In theological terms, the latter is expressed in Methodism as an abiding witness of pardon. Moss’s faith enabled him to tolerate an otherwise intolerable onslaught of psychic pain. His patience was rewarded as the archaic quality of his internal object images diminished. The depersonification and integration of concrete, polarized objects – the idealized Wesley versus the horrifying demon – culminated in an abstracted superego value: “I [and others] are worthy of love.”

Conclusion Moss’s story demonstrates that, in principal, Wesley’s method went beyond mere indoctrination. The promise of radical behavioral change that lay at the heart of Methodism – Wesley’s letters boast of reformed drunkards, fornicators and thieves (Lee, 1936, pp. 141–142) – presupposed, psychologically, real structural transformation. In personalizing the metaphors provided by the public discourse of Methodism, that is, in appropriating and engaging the metaphors

Methodist ritual mourning and the resolution of traumatic grief 183 whole-heartedly, and in acting out the traumas of childhood via the play of ritual, under-signified symptoms became meaningful over-determined symbols. Anthropologist Gananath Obeyesekere’s notion of the personal symbol (1981, 1990) applies well in this context. Personal symbols are culturally transformed symptoms. Predicated on cultural symbols, they create a space for active selfreflection in an idiom readily understandable by others. Personal symbols replace the compulsive rigidity of symptoms whose limited meanings are by definition inaccessible to consciousness. “A progressive movement of unconscious thought,” writes Obeyesekere (1990, p. 17), “involves the transformation of the archaic motivations of childhood into symbols that look forward to the resolution of conflict and beyond into the nature of the sacred or numinous.” In combining ritual mourning and biblical metaphors of loss, the blind “stuckness” of Moss’s repetition compulsion gave way to genuine mourning and working through, and to a genuinely meaningful spirituality embodied in his work as a lay preacher. Similarly, Methodist autobiographies functioned not only as testimonies that simply reinforced religious and theological tenets (as discursive reproductions of ideology). Reflecting on the hand-in-glove relation between literary conventions and individual experience in Methodism, Hindmarsh writes, Thus, ultimately, these conventions were lived out. In expectation of conversion, evangelical discourse acted like a map, identifying the sort of terrain one might cross and the sort of destination one might arrive at if one to chose to venture out, waiting upon God in the means of grace. (p. 2005, p. 157)

Indeed, Methodist autobiographies were, in a manner of speaking, instruction manuals on how to properly mourn and acquire the spirit. The narratives revealed the individual vicissitudes of spiritual transformation. They bore witness to variations and complications, allowing readers to better understand and negotiate their own experiences.

References Abelove, H. (1990). The evangelist of desire: John Wesley and the Methodists. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Aberbach, D. (1987). Grief and mysticism. International Review of Psychoanalysis, 14, 509–526. Belzen, J. A. (this volume). Autobiography, psychic functioning and mental health: Religion and the transformation of the self. Bion, W. R. (1983). Learning from experience. Northvale: Jason Aronson. Bowlby, J. (1980). Attachment and loss, Vol. 3: Loss, sadness and depression. London: Hogarth Press. Bowlby, J. (1988). A secure base: Parent-child attachment and healthy human development. New York: Basic Books.

184 Keith Haartman Dimond, S. G. (1926). The psychology of the Methodist revival: An empirical and descriptive study. London: Oxford University Press. Fonagy, P., Gergeley, G., Jurist, E. L. & Target, M. (2002). Affect regulation, mentalization, and the development of the self. New York: Other Press. Freud, S. (1900/1974). The interpretation of dreams (1900). Standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud. Vols. 4+5 (translated and edited by James Strachey). London: Hogarth/ New York: Macmillan. (first publ. 1953) Greven, P. (1991). Spare the child: The religious roots of punishment and the psychological impact of physical abuse. New York: Knopf. Haartman, K. (2004). Watching and praying: Personality transformation in eighteenth century British Methodism. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Haime, J. (1865). The life of John Haime. In T. Jackson (Ed.), The lives of the early Methodist preachers. Vol. I (pp. 269–309). London: Wesleyan Conference Office. Heitzenrater, R. P. (1995). Wesley and the people called Methodists. Nashville: Abingdon Press. Hindmarsh, B. D. (2005). The Evangelical conversion narrative: Spiritual autobiography in early modern England. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jacobson, E. (1964). The self and the object world. New York: International Universities Press. Jones, J. (2002). Terror and transformation: The ambiguity of religion in psychoanalytic perspective. East Sussex: Brunner-Routledge. Josephs, L. (1989). Self psychology and the analysis of the superego. Psychoanalytic Psychology, 6 (1), 73–86. Kent, J. (2002). Wesley and the Wesleyans: Religion in eighteenth-century Britain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kernberg, O. (1966). Structural derivatives of object relations. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 47, 236–253. Kernberg, O. (1976). Object relations and clinical psychoanalysis. New York: Jason Aronson. King, J. O. (1983). The iron of melancholy: Structures of spiritual conversion in America from the Puritan conscience to Victorian neurosis. Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press. Kohut, H. (1971). The analysis of the self: A systematic approach to the psychoanalytic treatment of narcissistic personality disorders. New York: International Universities Press. Laplanche, J. & Pontalis J. B. (1988). The language of psychoanalysis. London: Karnac Books. Lederer, W. (1964). Dragons, delinquents, and destiny: An essay on positive superego functions. New York: International Universities Press. Lee, U. (1936). John Wesley and modern religion. Nashville: Cokesbury Press. Mathews, R. D. (1985). ‘With the eyes of faith’: Spiritual experience and the knowledge of God in the theology. In T. Bunyan (Ed.), Wesleyan theology today: A bicentennial theological consultation (pp. 406–415). Nashville: Kingswood Books. Mavromatis, A. (1987). Hypnagogia: The unique state of consciousness between wakefulness and sleep. New York: Routledge.

Methodist ritual mourning and the resolution of traumatic grief 185 McDevitt, J. B. & Mahler, M. S. (1989). Object constancy, individuality and internalization. In S. I. Greenspan & G. H. Pollock (Eds.), The course of life. Vol. II: Early childhood (pp. 37–60). Madison: International Universities Press. Merkur, D. (1989). The visionary practices of Jewish apocalyptists. Psychoanalytic Study of Society, 14, 119–148. Merkur, D. (1993). Gnosis: An esoteric tradition of mystical visions and unions. Albany: State University of New York Press. Merkur, D. (2001). Mystical moments and unitive thinking. Albany: State University of New York Press. Moss, R. (1798). The life experiences of Richard Moss, one of the first Methodist preachers. The Methodist Magazine, 3–8; 53–59. Nixon, L. (1995). Personal loss and emotional support in the lives of four Hindu mystics. (Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the South Asia Council of the Canadian Asian Studies Association, Montreal, Quebec.) Nixon, L. (1996a). The mystical quest as a transformed search for a lost caregiver: The case of Paramahansa Yoganda. (Paper presented at the American Academy of Religion Upper Midwest Regional Meeting, St. Paul, Minnesota.) Nixon, L. (1996b). The origins of creativity and mysticism: A comparative study of Charles Darwin and Therese of Lisieux. Advanced Development, 7, 81–100. Obeyesekere, G. (1981). Medusa’s hair: An essay on personal symbols and religious experience. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Obeyesekere, G. (1990). The work of culture: Symbolic transformation in psychoanalysis and anthropology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Ostow, M. (2004). Psychodynamics of spirituality. International Journal of Applied Psychoanalysis, 1 (1), 47–60. Pfister, O. (1932). Instinctive psychoanalysis among the Navahos. Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases, 76, 234–254. Pruyser, P. W. (1974). Between belief and unbelief. New York: Harper and Row. Rack, H. D. (1987). Early methodist visions of the Trinity. Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society, 46, 38–44; 57–69. Rack, H. D. (1989). Reasonable enthusiast: John Wesley and the rise of methodism. London: Epworth Press. Rivers, I. (1978). ‘Strangers and pilgrims’: Sources and patterns of Methodist narratives. In J. D. Hilson, M. M. B. Jones & J. R. Watson (Eds.), Augustinian worlds (pp. 189–203). Leicester: Leicester University Press. Rubin, J. H. (1994). Religious melancholy and Protestant experience in America. New York: Oxford University Press. Schafer, R. (1960). The loving and beloved superego in Freud’s structural theory. Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, 15, 163–188. Schecter, D. E. (1979). The loving and persecuting superego. Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 15, 163–188. Siegel, A. M. (1996). Heinz Kohut and the psychology of the self. New York: Routledge. Smith, D. L. (1991). Hidden conversations: An introduction to communicative psychoanalysis. New York: Routledge.

186 Keith Haartman Weintraub, K. J. (1975). Autobiography and historical consciousness. Critical Inquiry, 1 (4), 821–848. Wesley, J. (1984–1987). Sermons. (The bicentennial edition of the works of John Wesley. Vols. 1–4, ed. Albert Outler). Nashville: Abingdon Press. Wesley, J. & Wesley, C. (1981). John and Charles Wesley: Selected writings and hymns (ed. Frank Whaling). Toronto: Paulist Press. (The Classics of Western Spirituality) Whitehouse, H. (2004). Modes of religiosity: A cognitive theory of religious transmission. Toronto: Altamira Press. Zales, M. R. (1978). Mysticism: Psychodynamics and relationship to psychopathology. In A. A. Sugarman & R. E. Tarter (Eds.). Expanding dimensions of consciousness (pp. 253–272). New York: Springer.

THE PERSONAL AND BEYOND SIMONE WEIL AND THE NECESSITY/LIMITS OF BIOGRAPHY Mark Freeman Drawing on both the life and work of the philosopher, political activist, and mystic Simone Weil, this essay is an attempt to work through what appears to be a contradiction. On the one hand, following William James especially, I want to underscore the idea that biographies and autobiographies – i.e., personal narratives – represent a privileged inroad into the study of religious experience and religious lives more generally. Along these lines, I will be arguing in the first section of the paper for the necessity of turning to narrative in fashioning a psychology of religion adequate to the reality of the religious. On the other hand, I also want to underscore the idea that biographies and autobiographies, while necessary in the fashioning of such a psychology, are, at one and the same time, inadequate to the task at hand. After exploring in some detail a trio of Weil’s own mystical experiences in the second section of the paper, I will therefore move on in the third section to address the limits of biography in fashioning a psychology of religion adequate to the reality of the religious. Following Weil, among others, this is because what is – arguably – essential to authentic religious experience is precisely what is impersonal, i.e., what transcends the human personality. A significant challenge for the exploration of religious lives, and creative lives more generally, thus concerns the dynamic process wherein the personal is “moved beyond itself,” transformed in such a way that the resultant product – in this case, a remarkable life as well as a remarkable body of imaginative thought about religion, politics, the human condition, and much more – exceeds its own origins. I will not be making a claim for divine intervention in this context. Nor would Simone Weil; even when she speaks of “genius,” she resists elevating it to some place on high, beyond the vicissitudes of messy life. And yet, as she well knew, there can be no denying the special capacity, on the part of some, to somehow lift themselves beyond those very life conditions without which there would be nothing at all. How is this possible? In the fourth and final section of this paper, I hope to provide some clues. There is another way in which I will address the limits of autobiography as well. As we observe in the life and work of Simone Weil – but not only Simone Weil – the commitment to religious life can bring forth a mode of being-in-theworld that runs positively counter to biographical, or more specifically autobiographical, knowing. As we shall see, she does engage in some significant

188 Mark Freeman autobiographical reflection in her own “Spiritual Autobiography,” a brief and somewhat schematic attempt to trace the trajectory of her spiritual awakening, but the very last thing she would want to do is “explain” this awakening – or any other truly creative endeavor – via her biography. By way of presenting but a taste of her view on this issue, consider her thoughts on writing, which are conveyed in a letter to her good friend and confidant Gustav Thibon: In the operation of writing, the hand which holds the pen, and the body and soul which are attached to it, with all their social environment, are things of infinitesimal importance for those who love the truth. They are infinitely small in the order of nothingness. That at any rate is the measure of importance I attach in this operation not only to my own personality but to yours and to that of any other writer I respect. Only the personality of those whom I more or less despise matters to me in such a domain. (1952/1997, p. xiii)

As for Weil personally: “(M)y greatest desire is to lose not only all will but all personal being” (1951/1973, p. 59). The “virtuoso” or “genius” – religious, artistic, philosophical, whatever – is one who has succeeded in effacing his or her personality to such a degree that Reality can shine through. What’s more, he or she will be decidedly less oriented to the past (or the future) but will instead be rooted, to the greatest extent possible, in the present. “If we consider what we are at a definite moment – the present moment, cut off from the past and the future – we are innocent. We cannot at that instant be anything but what we are” (1952/1997, p. 32). We are emptied of those imaginings and fantasies and illusions that mire us in the personal, the subjective. In this context too, therefore, there is a kind of built-in resistance to the biographical, auto- and otherwise. Weil may, of course, be wrong about all of this. Moreover, there is a good deal of evidence to suggest that, despite her very loud protests against the ego, her fervent wish to lose her personal being, and so on, she herself remained ego-invested in her own “decreative” project in a big way. As Thibon (1953b) has noted: On the one hand there was a longing for absolute self-effacement, an unlimited opening to reality even under its harshest forms, and, on the other, a terrible self-will at the very heart of the self-stripping; the inflexible desire that this stripping should be her own work and should be accomplished in her own way, the consuming temptation to verify everything from within, to test everything and experience everything for herself. (p. 114)

But that is not all. “(S)he, who when her pleasure or her needs were involved would not have allowed anyone to make the slightest sacrifice on her behalf, did not seem to realize the complications and even sufferings she caused in the lives of others as soon as there was a question of her vocation to

The personal and beyond 189 self-effacement” (p. 117). Thibon goes on to speak of a “transcendental egoism” in this context: This soul, who wanted to be flexible to every movement of the divine will, could not bear the course of events or the kindness of her friends to change by one inch the position of the stakes with which her own will had marked her path of immolation. Though utterly and entirely detached from her tastes and needs, she was not detached from her detachment. And the way she mounted guard around her emptiness still showed a terrible preoccupation with herself. In the great book of the universe spread often before her, her ego was, as it were, a word which she may perhaps have succeeded in effacing, but which was still underlined. (p. 119)

Thibon, it should be noted, is not particularly troubled by Weil’s egoism. “The saints are not given us for the sake of comfort, and I do not entirely reproach her for this uncomfortable side of her nature. Moreover there were some delightful moments when she let herself go and relaxed. Yet she lacked that supreme peace of mind, that sweetness and all-embracing indulgence which the signs of God’s maturity in man” (p. 120). So it is that he speaks of the “green immaturity” of Weil’s spiritual life, the fact that she “had not yet reached the reversed summit of supreme humility, that point where height and depth correspond, that divine abasement which counterbalances man’s baseness, that final simplicity in which the saint no longer judges anything but bathes all in the unity of love” (p. 126), the presumption being that, had she lived longer (she died at 34) and continued to develop spiritually, she might indeed have succeeded in achieving the full-scale self-immolation she so desired. “Simone Weil,” Thibon writes, “was complete truth and, at a certain level, complete love; she was not yet complete welcome (. . .) In a sense she remained all her life the inflexible child who sat down in the snow and refused to go on because her parents had given the heaviest baggage to her brother to carry” (p. 126). For all that Thibon was acutely attuned to Weil’s inner workings (and nonworkings), he, like Weil herself, remains steadfast in his refusal to engage in the explanation game. “Is what we know of the character and interior life of Simone Weil enough to explain her thought, and to account for this unique work of hers which stands out sheer and solitary, like an isolated peak in the immense range of the highest achievements of human genius?” (p. 134). By all indications, Thibon’s answer to this question is a resounding “No.” And yet, even he will find in Weil’s character and interior life vitally important clues not only to her thought but to the very fabric of her experience. In the pages to follow, I will pay particular attention to two significant challenges associated with biographical inquiry into religious lives. The first, which we have encountered already, concerns the familiar problem of biographical reduction, i.e., the attempt to use dimensions of character, inner life, childhood events (etc.) in order to explain whatever resultant phenomena

190 Mark Freeman (mystical experiences, feats of artistic greatness, atrocities, whatever) one may be interested in explaining. This, of course, is a problem that is part and parcel of any biographical enterprise but is particularly acute in the study of those sorts of transformative experiences found in religious lives. The second challenge, which follows from the first, concerns the problem of transcendence. And it has to do with the fact that, from the perspective of the person whose story it is, the experiences being recounted are often regarded as supernatural visitations from without, not only irreducible to all that has come before but irreducible to, and transcendent of, any “account” whatsoever. Now, we, as psychologists, operating essentially in an agnostic mode (at least concerning the transcendental status of these sorts of data), need not (and perhaps cannot) “buy” these transcendentally transformative stories uncritically. Doing so, in fact, would immediately launch us into the theological realm – which, for most psychologists, is quite out of bounds. At the same time, I would argue, we cannot discredit such stories uncritically either, by effectively ruling out the possibility that they are actually about what they claim to be about (see Freeman, 2004a). The challenge, therefore, as I see it, is to fashion a language in our own renditions of the lives being studied that somehow preserves the transcendent moment of the experiences being recounted – following Weil, such experiences may indeed go beyond the human personality – but without relegating them to a “wholly Other” sphere. The language of which I am speaking is poetic language, and, as I hope to show, it provides a valuable vehicle for responding to each of the two challenges just identified.

Narrative understanding and the necessity of biography In the very first chapter of The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902/1982), James gives us an important warning of sorts regarding the centrality of narrative understanding. After offering his well-known distinction between an existential judgment and a spiritual judgment, he notes that, in dealing with the phenomena of religious experience “as if they were mere curious facts of individual history,” some readers may consider it “a degradation of so sublime a subject,” perhaps even imagining that he is “deliberately seeking to discredit the religious side of life” (p. 6). James’ very reliance on narrative data, in other words, is likely to be seen by some as inherently reductive: by tracing the emergence of the spiritual, or the ostensibly spiritual, to the existential conditions of a life, it would seem on the face of it that the existential is gaining the upper hand. Somehow, therefore, he needs to show that this reliance on narrative understanding, far from degrading and discrediting the subject at hand, will in fact do something quite different, something not only salutary but perhaps necessary. We begin to see James’ approach in action in Lecture II, his “Circumscription of the Topic,” where, among other things, he emphasizes the centrality of “the

The personal and beyond 191 feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude” (p. 31) in understanding religion. But it is in the third lecture, on “The Reality of the Unseen,” that his narrative aims are truly coming into view. “(T)he whole array of our instances,” he tells us early in the lecture, “leads to a conclusion something like this: It is as if there were in the human consciousness a sense of reality, a feeling of objective presence, a perception of what we may call ‘something there,’ more deep and more general than any of the particular and special ‘senses’ by which the current psychology supposes existent realities to be originally revealed” (p. 58). Later on, after having examined some of these instances, he notes that, “Such cases, taken along with others which would be too tedious for quotation, seem sufficiently to prove the existence in our mental machinery of a sense of present reality more diffused and general than that which our special senses yield” (p. 63). The language here is one of “instances,” “cases” – in a word, stories. And it is precisely these stories that will serve as the foundation for his ultimate defense of the seemingly transcendent nature of religious experience. Indeed, in a distinct sense, James implies, there is but one way to “testify” to the ostensibly transcendent dimension of the phenomena at hand, and that is to tell the story of their coming to be. Hence the great wealth of biographical detail found in the Varieties. And hence the idea that drawing upon biographical data is the most appropriate means of exploring the realities at hand. It is surely necessary in the case Simone Weil. One might in fact ask of her strange and, on some level, downright mysterious case: How on earth did she come to be the person she did? Among other things, she was, as noted earlier, a philosopher, a political activist, and a mystic who, at age six, swore off sugar in order to send her share to French soldiers fighting at the front (Perrin, 1953); at age 10, had become involved in labor union demonstrations; and, by age 14, had developed what some have considered an “almost pathological receptiveness to the suffering of others” as well as “a strong tendency to cultivate her own” (Du Plessix Gray, 2001, p. 15). There had also been extraordinarily painful migraines and, as time wore on, a seemingly obsessive preoccupation with eating issues – to the extent that some (e.g., Du Plessix Gray, 2001) are thoroughly convinced of her anorectic status. And then there were her multiple attempts to immerse herself in the experiential world of the afflicted, particularly through hard factory labor, her ostensible goal in these endeavors being nothing less than reaching rock bottom, such that misery would somehow pass over into the clearest and most profound testimony to God’s presence. There is little doubt but that she died in such a state of misery as well, at least one of the known causes being self-starvation – which, not unlike her swearing off sugar as a six-year old, was apparently another act of solidarity with the afflicted. In the end, Robert Coles (2001) has written,

192 Mark Freeman Simone Weil seemed to have no interest in survival, at least the human survival most of us want. A discussion continues among many who knew her or admire her as to whether she did or did not take her own life, whether she was anorectic, a masochist, irrational, or psychotic at the end of her life. Her doctors were confused, frustrated, and enraged by her behavior. Here was a young woman as bright as any human being could want to be, educated and refined, not poor or without friends, who yet had no interest in cooperating with her doctors and nurses. Ultimately they tried tube feeding in a futile effort to save her. She died alone, on August 24, a thirty-four-year-old woman mourned by only a handful of London friends. (p. 18)

Given this sort of profile, it is hardly surprising that chroniclers of Weil’s life and work should turn to her early life, her childhood in particular, and “maybe find reasons to be concerned” (Coles, 2001, p. 7). The same may be said of her efforts at hard labor; and even though it remains unclear whether these efforts bespeak “silly romanticism or self-righteousness masked as idealism or a decent person’s hard struggle to find out how to live and work and in a morally useful way, and by doing so, to learn something precious” (p. 10), there is little doubt but that they call out for biographical understanding. There was also a serious (if complicated) strain of anti-Semitism on Weil’s part – and this despite the fact (or because of the fact) of her Jewishness. How, in light of all this information, could one not turn to biography in Weil’s case? Consider also Weil’s physical presence as well as her own relation to her own bodily/sexual being. “The beauty of her porcelain skin, of her delicate features,” Du Plessix Gray (2001) writes, “continued to be all but hidden by her huge glasses, her grubby clothes, her awkward gait. And those who saw through to her beauty wondered why she had chosen to make herself so ugly” (p. 25). Some of her philosophy students, Du Plessix Gray notes, had initially been “amused by her awkwardness, her clumsy way of holding the chalk, the total anarchy of her clothes.” In due time, “they came to admire her deeply and tried to protect her from her own clumsiness, helping her to change her sweaters, for instance, which she often put on inside out” (p. 53). There was something about her “halo of voluntary poverty” and “the ascetic disarray of her life” that “touched them deeply” (p. 53) and that seemed, through it all, utterly authentic and real. But there was no getting around the sheer strangeness of her presence. As Thibon (1953) puts the matter, “she was not ugly, as has been said, but prematurely bent and old-looking through asceticism and illness.” It was only her “magnificent eyes” that “triumphed in this shipwreck of beauty” (p. 116). Weil was also not only “averse to physical contact (. . .), shunning even the most casual of hugs or comradely linking of elbows,” but demonstrated a positive “dread of sexuality” (Du Plessix Gray, 2001, p. 25). As for her manner, Du Plessix Gray continues, “she retained the argumentative, eccentric style she had evolved in her mid-teens, and which had become even more intransigent”

The personal and beyond 193 (p. 25) over the course of time. There were times, in fact, when she was nothing short of “ruthless” in the way “she could cut off friends who in some small way displeased her” (p. 42). Du Plessix Gray also calls attention to Weil’s “impulse to extreme domination, which is now recognized as another frequent symptom of anorexia” (p. 29), as well as her hyperactivity. “Such hyperactivity, fueled by the constant rationale of urgent causes, is a symptom that very frequently attends eating disorders” (p. 60). It was these urgent causes that would lead to Weil’s “growing interest in the redemptive value of suffering” (p. 98) and, eventually, the birth of her spiritual consciousness. “The day-to-day struggles of trade unionism,” Fiedler adds, “unemployment, the Civil War in Spain, the role of the Soviet Union, anarchism, and pacifism” – filtered, as above, through Weil’s own distinctive character and manner – “these are the determinants of her ideas, the unforeseen roads that led to her sanctity. Though she passed finally beyond politics,” therefore, “her thought bears to the end the mark of her early interests, as the teaching of St. Paul is influenced by his rabbinical schooling, or that of St. Augustine by his training in rhetoric” (p. 4). Along the lines being drawn here, therefore, there is no questioning the value of exploring Weil’s life and work in biographical terms. As we shall see shortly, however, there is also no questioning the limits of such an approach in coming to terms with the religious sphere of her life, which, by degrees, came to be the primary locus of her very being-in-the-world.

Mystical experience “In a profound sense,” Fiedler (1951) maintains, “[Weil’s] life is her chief work, and without some notion of her biography it is impossible to know her total meaning” (p. 12). On one level, indeed, Simone Weil’s life and work lend themselves readily – too readily perhaps – to biographical analysis. Du Plessix Gray’s (2001) portrait of Weil, in particular, provides a great deal of compelling biographical detail, and there are many places in her account that seem essentially to proclaim that, yes, finally, these biographical data are the surest means we have to get hold of Weil’s life and work. And yet, there is a refusal in virtually all of them to go the biographical route exclusively: The severe secularist might trace Simone’s religious emergence to the myriad disenchantments she’d experienced in the social and political sphere: Passionate young woman lives through a series of traumatic disillusionments; turns away from Marxism, Revolutionary Syndicalism, trade unionism, the Spanish Republican cause; is successively shaken by her experience as a factory worker, by her disappointment at the fate of France’s Popular Front, by the growing evidence of her country’s moral malaise; and throughout remains ambivalent – just as her father had been all along – about her Jewish origins. (Du Plessix Gray, p. 129)

194 Mark Freeman But there are aspects of Weil’s own profile, Du Plessix Gray maintains – particularly the nature of her mystical experiences – that resist this purely secularist account, or that at least underscore its limits. Let us turn briefly to Weil’s own account of these experiences in her “Spiritual Autobiography” (1951/1973), written to her friend Fr. Perrin in 1942. Weil begins by saying that, “(N)ever at any moment in my life have I ‘sought for God’ (. . .) As soon as I reached adolescence, I saw the problem of God as a problem the data of which could not be obtained here below, and I decided that the only way of being sure not to reach a wrong solution, which seemed to me the greatest possible evil, was to leave it alone. So I left it alone. I neither affirmed nor denied anything” (p. 62). Strictly speaking, therefore, her earlier life was largely devoid of explicit religious commitment or belief. Looking backward, Weil can nevertheless see some important precursors, if not determinants, of her spiritual vocation. At the age of 14, for instance, I fell into one of those fits of bottomless despair that come with adolescence, and I seriously thought of dying because of the mediocrity of my natural faculties. The exceptional gifts of my brother, who had a childhood and youth comparable to those of Pascal, brought my own inferiority home to me. I did not mind having no visible successes, but what did grieve me was the idea of being excluded from that transcendent kingdom to which only the truly great have access and wherein truth abides. I preferred to die rather than live without that truth. After months of inward darkness, I suddenly had the everlasting conviction that any human being, even though practically devoid of natural faculties, can penetrate to the kingdom of truth reserved for genius, if only he longs for truth and perpetually concentrates all his attention on its attainment. He thus becomes a genius too, even though for lack of talent his genius cannot be visible from the outside. (p. 64)

As early as her adolescence, therefore, Weil had gained intimations of the “transcendent kingdom” to which she would ultimately devote herself as well as the possibility of her own “genius.” She also recalls an experience at age 16 when the idea of purity “took possession” of her. “This idea came to me when I was contemplating a mountain landscape and little by little it was imposed upon me in an irresistible manner” (p. 65). These formative experiences notwithstanding, Weil is quick to emphasize and re-emphasize that none of these are to be equated with her entry into the Church. By her own account, there was little reason to add “dogma” to her own conception of life. And the institutional dimension of the Church, in her view, could only detract from authentic religious experience. This is why she would never be baptized: true religion, she essentially believed, could only be had outside the gates of religious institutions, with their inevitably collectivistic codes and strictures. In view of the account provided thus far, the story Weil is telling in her autobiography brings forth a variety of experiences that are at once “preparatory”

The personal and beyond 195 to her mystical experiences – at least as judged in retrospect – but not “causative” in any obvious way. Not surprisingly, particularly in light of her own emphasis on the idea of “obedience” and her suggestion that “the most beautiful life possible [is] the one where everything is determined, either by the pressure of circumstances or by impulses (. . .) and where there is never any room for choice” (p. 63), there is also little talk of intention. This narrative strategy may, of course, be purposeful on Weil’s part: in line with her own philosophy, there would be little room in such an account for purely personal decisions. Continuing with her account, Weil acknowledges that she “had three contacts with Catholicism that really counted.” After a year of brutal factory labor, in which, coupled with her own “prolonged and first-hand experience” of affliction, the affliction of others had “entered into my flesh and my soul,” she had accompanied her parents to Portugal, where she had visited a little village. “I was, as it were, in pieces, soul and body,” the “contact with affliction [having] killed my youth” (p. 66). Weil continues as follows: In this state of mind, then, and in a wretched condition physically, I entered the little Portuguese village, which, alas, was very wretched too, on the very day of the festival of its patron saint. I was alone. It was the evening and there was a full moon over the sea. The wives of the fishermen were, in procession, making a tour of all the ships, carrying candles and singing what must certainly be very ancient hymns of a heart-rending sadness. Nothing can give any idea of it. I have never heard anything so poignant unless it were the song of the boatmen on the Volga. There the conviction was suddenly borne in upon me that Christianity is pre-eminently the religion of slaves, that slaves cannot help belonging to it, and I among others. (p. 67)

It is difficult to know which (language of) “enslavement” came first, the factory experience or the encounter with the fishermen’s wives – or whether, perhaps more likely, it came after the fact of both, during the course of autobiographical reflection and writing. Weil’s narrative at any rate establishes a connection between the two: the factory experience was the condition without which there would have been no being “borne in” upon her the idea of Christianity as “the religion of slaves.” In this context, again, there is no questioning the relevance of Weil’s biography, even by Weil herself. In her (retrospective) view, the earlier experience had, at the least, “set the stage” for the latter. At the same time, this first recounted mystical experience, and the “conviction” it brought in its wake, would, of necessity, work against the intentional, the biographical, the personal. The very idea of enslavement, not unrelated to the aforementioned idea of obedience, says as much: she was a captive, of affliction, of beauty, of God, and, she would soon see, of Christ. In the second of her three significant contacts with Catholicism, in 1937, she would venture to Assisi, and “There, alone in the little twelfth-century Romanesque chapel of Santa Maria degli Angeli, an incomparable marvel of

196 Mark Freeman purity where Saint Francis often used to pray, something stronger than I was compelled me for the first time in my life to go down on my knees” (pp. 67–68). Unlike the first experience, for which she does establish a precursor of sorts, this second experience seems devoid of one. She does acknowledge at one point in the autobiography that she “fell in love with Saint Francis of Assisi as soon as I came to know about him,” and she also acknowledges that she “always believed and hoped that one day Fate would force upon me the condition of a vagabond and a beggar which he embraced freely. Actually,” she adds, in true Weilian form, “I felt the same way about prison” (p. 65). The more affliction, the better! But, in her own rendition of things, there was simply no denying that “something stronger than I was,” strong enough indeed to force her to her knees, had descended upon her. The final (recounted) experience would happen a year later: In 1938 I spent ten days at Solesmes, from Palm Sunday to Easter Tuesday, following all the liturgical services. I was suffering from splitting headaches; each sound hurt me like a blow; by an extreme effort of concentration I was able to rise above this wretched flesh, to leave it to suffer by itself, heaped up in a corner, and to find a pure and perfect joy in the unimaginable beauty of the chanting and the words. This experience enabled me by analogy to get a better understanding of the possibility of loving divine love in the midst of affliction. It goes without saying that in the course of these services the thought of the Passion of Christ entered my being once and for all. (p. 68)

But there is more. In the course of this experience, she had encountered a “young English Catholic” from whom she would gain her first idea of the supernatural power of the sacraments because of the truly angelic radiance with which he seemed to be clothed after going to communion. Chance – for I always prefer saying chance rather than Providence – made of him a messenger to me. For he told me of those English poets of the seventeenth century who are named metaphysical. In reading them later on, I discovered the poem (. . .) called “Love.” I learned it by heart. Often, at the culminating point of a violent headache, I make myself say it over, concentrating all my attention upon it and clinging with all my soul to the tenderness it enshrines. I used to think I was merely reciting it as a beautiful poem, but without my knowing it the recitation had the virtue of a prayer. It was during one of these recitations that (. . .) Christ himself came down and took possession of me. (pp. 68–69)

This visitation was apparently a shock to Weil. “In my arguments about the insolubility of God,” she writes, “I had never foreseen the possibility of that, of a contact, person to person, here below, between a human being and God. I had vaguely heard tell of things of this kind, but I had never believed in them.” In fact, she continues, “accounts of apparitions rather put me off if anything, like the miracles in the gospel.” She apparently hadn’t had any familiarity with

The personal and beyond 197 mystical works either. “I had never read any mystical works because I had never felt any call to read them. (. . .) God in his mercy had prevented me from reading the mystics, so that it should be evident to me that I had not invented this absolutely unexpected contact.” Indeed, “(I)n this sudden possession of me by Christ, neither my senses nor my imagination had any part; I only felt in the midst of my suffering the presence of a love, like that which one can read in the smile on a beloved face” (p. 69). Weil’s skepticism had apparently met its match. Given that she was vehemently “anti-apparition,” as it were, and given as well that she (apparently) knew precious little about the mystics, she could only assume that neither her senses nor her imagination had played a role. Did they? Must they have? There is, of course, no way to answer these sorts of questions definitively. But what are the possibilities here? One is straightforwardly theological, and is in strict keeping with Weil’s own view: Christ possessed her! One could also go the Jamesian route and essentially suspend the question. One could say, in other words, that these experiences were utterly binding and valid for Weil but that they certainly need not be considered so by anyone else: if she says that neither her senses nor her imagination had entered the scene, then so be it. With all due respect to James, most psychologists would likely move in a different direction. After all, it was Christ who (allegedly) possessed her, not the Buddha or Mohammed or any other putatively divine being or force. Now, maybe if she had never heard of Christ, we could more easily assume that there was no imaginative work going on. But clearly she had, and it stands to (psychological) reason that some of what she knew had found its way into these ostensibly unanticipated and, in the last case, “absolutely unexpected” encounters. In some recent work (e.g., Freeman, 2002), I have spoken of the “narrative unconscious,” which, I have suggested, refers not to what has been dynamically repressed but to that which has been lived through but which remains largely unthought and hence untold – which is to say, to those aspects of one’s history that have not yet become part of one’s story. Bearing this idea in mind, it could be that Weil had internalized – from her reading, from the people she met, and from the cultural surround more generally – much more than she (consciously) knew and that, somehow or other, she brought this knowledge with her to Portugal, Assisi, Solesmes, and countless other places, infusing the quite real features of the world (such as those extraordinarily moving Portuguese songs) with her memory and imagination, covertly at work. But this sort of account, valid though it may be within its own sphere, isn’t entirely satisfactory either. For, in the end, it does a kind of violence to Weil’s own account, essentially relegating her visitations from without to the internal machinations of her mind and the particularities of her life history. This would seem to be true of virtually any explanatory account of this sort, however hermeneutically sensitive it

198 Mark Freeman may be. Even while positing the necessity of biography, therefore, some measure of violence would appear inescapable. Is there a way to minimize it?

Probing the limits of biography For Du Plessix Gray (2001), who in many respects offers a more purely psychological account of Weil’s life and work than most others, Weil’s testimony bears within it “all the earmarks of a true mystical experience: the severe physical and emotional suffering that preceded it robbed her of all self-will; the experience came unexpectedly – she had no premonition of it; the feelings of submission, joy, and particularly of a Pascalian certitude brought her by her epiphany (a presence ‘more certain and more real’) were unrelated to any emotions she’d known thus far” (p. 129). Fiedler (1951), while also comfortable enumerating “the determinants of her ideas,” concurs. Given the prominence of her political commitments, he notes, there were many, in fact, who were shocked upon learning about Weil’s posthumous meditations on spiritual and religious life. “Surely,” he writes, “no ‘friend of God’ in all history, had moved more unwillingly toward the mystic encounter. There is in her earlier work no sense of a groping toward the divine, no promise of holiness, no pursuit of a purity beyond this world – only a conventionally left-wing concern with the problems of industrialization, rendered in a tone at once extraordinarily inflexible and wonderfully sensitive” (p. 4). What is so compelling about Weil’s testimony is, again, “the feeling that her role as a mystic was so unintended, one for which she had not in any sense prepared.” Indeed, “An undertone of incredulity persists beneath her astonishing honesty: quite suddenly God had taken her, radical, agnostic, contemptuous of religious life and practice as she had observed it!” (pp. 4–5). One could, of course, see Weil’s spiritual awakening as little more than reaction-formation and one could also return to Weil’s ostensibly pathological characteristics and trace them back, one by one, to this or that dimension of her history. But most agree that there remains a marked gap in her case, between any and all wholly secular determinants and the profound depth of her spiritual vocation. Anna Freud (cited in Coles, 2001) has commented that, even though Weil undoubtedly had some significant eating issues, for instance, and even though these issues undoubtedly point in the direction of a form of narcissism, hers “is a narcissism that is not pathologically ‘fixed’ on her own appearance and weight and her appetite and her potential obesity” (p. 39). Indeed, Freud maintains, despite the severity of her various commitments, it isn’t at all clear whether any sort of “clinical emphasis” is warranted in Weil’s case. Coles picks up on this line of thinking in his own rendition of the matter: Her hunger was for God, not a slim waistline. She was not the first mystic to be a picky eater. She wanted the quickest possible life consistent with her own

The personal and beyond 199 tenaciously held ideas (. . .) She wanted to live, so she could die in the most honorable manner (. . .) One feels sure that this brave and yet scatterbrained person, as shrewdly sane as could be and as wacky as could be, had a central dream: her moment of release, her giddy ascent, His welcome. Her intense moral imagination simply couldn’t stop doing its work, couldn’t stop distracting her from the routines the rest of us take for granted, including our meals. She refused the food offered her while awaiting the big feast she often mentioned, the one given the symbolic form of the Holy Communion. She yearned to have her appetite appeased, not for a day or for a week, Sunday to Sunday, but forever. ( p. 41)

“Once Simone Weil met Christ,” Coles continues, “her life began anew, a slave, now, to a particular master.” For Coles, it is not stretching things to say that, in a distinct sense, Weil “fell in love with Jesus; that he became her beloved; that she kept him on her mind and in her heart.” The last five years of her life would be spent “thinking about Jesus, writing about him, praying to him, fitting him into her social and economic and political scheme of things. She was a nun of sorts, following her vocation alone. She was an ambitious, dedicated follower, anxious to meet him – maybe become one of his saints” (p. 119). How, then, shall we deal with her case, in particular her writing, which at once grows out of her distinctive biography and yet, somehow, beyond it? “One does best (. . .) to accept her writing for what it was, a gift of the gods who resided in her, inspired sparks that had not yet come together as a single flame” (p. 19). This is a familiar refrain in the lore about Weil. The philosopher Gabriel Marcel, for instance, had “warned” against any and all attempts to situate Weil’s thought within extant categories or, for that matter, to analyze her life and work. Whatever is said about her cannot help but distort her (cited in Miles, 1986). As Finch (2001) adds, “Psychology and sociology and even philosophy will not help us with Simone Weil. Her messages are messages of grace, received by those who wait and not by those who grasp” (p. 112). It is because “the very premises of psychology and sociology and philosophy are grasping willed knowledge,” Finch maintains, that they cannot rise to the challenge at hand. “We are used to people who impose interpretations on the world, not those who wait and let it come to them.” But again, it is precisely such “waiting” that “puts the world into a new context, a sacred human one,” and that underscores “the recognition that everything that matters most to us comes to us as a gift” (p. 112). According to Finch, one of the most important lessons learned from Weil herself concerns the distinction between the psychological and the spiritual (or what Jung [1933] calls the “visionary”). It is a “delusion of our age,” as Finch puts it, that it is possible to ‘explain’ the spiritual psychologically (Freud, Jung, Reich, and the rest). We have myths that have the appearance, but not the reality, of science. They have to be taken on faith, ‘believed in,’ like pseudo-religions (. . .) Simone

200 Mark Freeman Weil herself has been the victim of such psychological ‘explanations,’ which in effect ignore her philosophy and try instead to fit it into categories of masochism or anorexia or self-hatred, in the way that psychologists have attempted to explain Leonard da Vinci’s art as a mother-fixation or Dostoevsky’s as parricide. In the case of Simone Weil, such ‘theories’ may fulfill a useful purpose by forming a protective shell around her that guarantees that only those who are seriously interested will be able to see through it. This will prevent her from being turned into a cult. Those who cannot recognize her genius had best stay away. Thus, her intellectual and moral and spiritual integrity will remain protected until such reductive psychology has disappeared and we are able to meet her truly. (p. 115)

But what exactly does it mean to “meet her truly”? What exactly is Finch calling for here? Weil’s friend Thibon (1953a) raises concerns similar to Finch (though in a bit less acerbic a fashion) in his discussion of the challenge of dealing biographically with the likes of Weil. “ ‘Who could conceive a biography of the sun?’ ” Baudelaire had written. “ ‘From the time when the flaming ball gave its first sign of life the story is one of monotony, light and greatness.’ ” “And indeed,” Thibon himself continues, one can no more write the story of the sun than the story of God. What a condemnation of all that side of history which appeals to the depraved appetite of the crowd! (. . .) The deep reality is too eternal to be ‘actual,’ too intimate and too continuous to be sensational (. . .) The true greatness of Simone Weil was of such an order. Depths of silence have to be traversed in order to grasp the authentic meaning of her words. Moreover, it is no longer she who pronounces those words; it is the Spirit from above, into whose submissive instrument her body and soul are transformed; at those times of supreme inspiration the hand which writes and the mind which thinks have become nothing but a ‘link between mortal and immortal,’ an impersonal intermediary through which the ‘the Creator and the creature exchange their secrets.’ (p. 3)

Not unlike Marcel, Thibon continues, “it is better not to speak [of Weil]; her message absorbs her personality; her life, her character, her actions become as she herself expresses it ‘infinitesimal to the nth degree’ – particles of change in the bosom of an ocean of necessity. Biography can only deal with what is contingent, the absolute and universal provide no handle for narrative” (pp. 3–4). After this rather romantic rendition of things, Thibon seems to catch himself. Her “greatness” notwithstanding, Simone Weil, (. . .) like every created being, was not constantly and completely under the influence of supreme inspiration. Side by side with her deep originality (. . .) and her purity which was invisible to the outward eye, she was gifted with another kind of originality which was not only visible but striking, provocative, almost aggressive. And these two sides of her nature were not only juxtaposed, but were very closely interconnected (. . .) Like most of those who are marked by a transcendental vocation, she was at the same time above and below the level of normal

The personal and beyond 201 activities, and the picturesque singularity of her person was at once the consequence and the antithesis of the self-effacement and transparency of her personality. (pp. 4–5)

As Thibon goes on to note, there is a twofold tendency in accounts of Weil’s life and work. First, there is the tendency for her message to be considered “as a kind of infallible revelation of universal import,” set essentially apart from her imperfections and weaknesses, from the messy details of her life. The result of such an enterprise is generally “a deplorably flat picture of the being or the work unduly adored (. . .) for, in refusing the see the limitations of a human being, one is bound to miss his deep reality which is marked and as it were moulded in its very foundations by these same limitations. One substitutes a perfection, the frozen immutability of a mummy for the warmth and movement of a finite human body. Much could be written about the sterilizing process of idolatry” (p. 5). The second tendency is “to stress everything which might be considered as exaggerated or illusory in the thought of Simone Weil in order to question, not only the deep value, but even the authenticity of her spiritual testimony” (p. 5). Thibon goes on to speak of “these totalitarian, and for that reason, mutilating, interpretations” (p. 6). We are therefore left with the following idea: “The finite and infinite, which paradoxically coexist in all men, in her case form contrasts so great and of such violence as to confound the judgment. Attracted by that in her which is infinite, one is tempted to forget her limitations, or else, shocked by her limitations, one is in danger of misunderstanding that which is infinite.” The challenge, therefore, is “to avoid this double pitfall” (p. 6).

“Personalized depersonalization” Thibon, along with Finch, has presented us with a difficult task. For Thibon, it is necessary to somehow preserve the tension between the biographical and that which, on some level, transcends it: to recognize and embrace the “limitations,” the “warmth” and movement of [the] finite human body,” that mould the deepest realities of being and, at the same time, to convey both the “authenticity” and “value” of the spiritual testimony in question. Only then will we avoid a “deplorably flat picture” or a “totalitarian, mutilating” one. Can there be a biographical perspective on religious lives that avoids the sort of mutilating violence about which Thibon speaks? As for Finch’s rendition of things, one can ask a related question: Can there be a different kind of psychology than the one he refers to, one that avoids the (al)lure of reduction and that is able to deal appropriately with the spiritual as such? Or is this simply a contradictory, and ultimately untenable, project? These are questions that apply not only to the study of religion but the arts as well. Insofar as creativity is itself an act of transcendence, of a sort,

202 Mark Freeman a “going-beyond” the determinants of the past in the service of creating something new, its existence poses similar questions and problems. So it is that Jung (1933), for instance, insists that “the creative aspect of life which finds its clearest expression in art baffles all attempts at rational formulation” and “will for ever elude the human understanding” (p. 153). None of what is being said, he clarifies, means that biographical data are irrelevant: “No objection can be raised if is admitted that this approach” – which Jung associates with Freud – “amounts to nothing more than the elucidation of those personal determinants without which a work of art is unthinkable. But should the claim be made that such an analysis accounts for the work of art itself, then a categorical denial is called for.” Jung’s next sentences might have been spoken by Simone Weil herself: “The personal idiosyncrasies that creep into a work of art are not essential,” Jung argues; “in fact, the more we have to cope with these peculiarities, the less it is a work of art. What is essential in a work of art is that it should rise far above the personal life and speak from the spirit and heart of the poet as man to the spirit and heart of mankind. The personal aspect is a limitation – and even a sin – in the work of art” (p. 168). By way of returning to a question posed earlier: Is there a way of conceptualizing the process whereby the personal becomes transformed into the impersonal? Whether the object in question is religion or art, what we seem to be considering here is a kind of psycho-spiritual “alchemy.” Recall in this context Weil’s own “everlasting conviction” that “any human being, even though practically devoid of natural faculties, can penetrate to the kingdom of truth reserved for genius, if only he longs for truth and perpetually concentrates all his attention on its attainment” (1951/1973, p. 64). Here, it would seem, we have a preliminary, if somewhat rudimentary, clue about this transmutative process. With this in mind, let us return to Weil herself once more, focusing especially on her thoughts regarding attention. In Gravity and Grace (1952/1997), Weil speaks early on of the necessity, first, to adopt an “attitude of supplication”: “I must necessarily turn to something other than myself since it is a question of being delivered from self ” (p. 3). “Grace,” she continues, “fills empty spaces but it can only enter where there is a void to receive it, and it is grace itself which makes this void” (p. 10). Somehow, therefore, the self needs to be emptied, made void. As we saw earlier, the experience of affliction is one significant way for this self-emptying to occur. “To strip ourselves of the imaginary royalty of the world” (p. 12), through suffering, degradation, even humiliation, serves to carve out the necessary space. Indeed, “Relentless necessity, wretchedness, distress, the crushing burden of poverty and of labour which wears us out, cruelty, torture, violent death, constraint, disease – all these constitute divine love” (p. 28) insofar as they pave the way to the operation of grace. This is Weil’s notion of

The personal and beyond 203 “decreation”: “It is God who in love withdraws from us so that we can love him. For if we were exposed to the direct radiance of his love, without the protection of space, of time and of matter, we should be evaporated like water in the sun” (p. 28). Following this line of thinking, Weil maintains that we, as individual selves, need to “withdraw” in much the same way. “He emptied himself of his divinity. We should empty ourselves of the false divinity with which we were born. Once we have understood we are nothing, the object of all our efforts is to become nothing.” Weil goes on to suggest that there is a deep connection, even a “resemblance,” as she puts it, between the “lower” and the “higher.” “Hence slavery is an image of obedience to God, humiliation an image of humility, physical necessity an image of the irresistible pressure of grace.” The implication? “On this account it is necessary to seek out what is lowest. (. . .) May that which is low in us go downwards so that what is high can go upwards” (p. 30). The preliminary aim, therefore, is nothing short of disappearance: “May I disappear in order that those things that I see become perfect in their beauty from the very fact that they are no longer things I see.” To clarify: “I do not in the least wish that this created world should fade from my view, but that it should no longer be to me personally that it shows itself.” Strictly speaking, this may be impossible: “When I am in any place, I disturb the silence of heaven and earth by my breathing and the beating of my heart.” But the aim remains: “To see a landscape as it is when I am not there” (p. 37) – in short, and again, to “unself ” oneself (see especially Murdoch, 1970; also Dargan, 1999) to the greatest possible extent in order to behold unvarnished reality. What Weil has presented thus far, however, is only part of the equation. Alongside the dissolution of the self, there needs to be attention directed outward, to the other-than-self; for “attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer” (p. 105). In line with Weil’s idea regarding the attainability of genius by all, here too she is convinced that “if we turn our mind towards the good, it is impossible that little by little the whole soul will not be attracted thereto in spite of itself.” Ultimately, she argues, “Extreme attention is what constitutes the creative faculty in man and the only extreme attention is religious.” As such, “The amount of creative genius in any period is strictly in proportion to the amount of extreme attention and thus of authentic religion at that period” (p. 106). Weil makes an interesting move at this point by noting that not only is the dissolution of the self a prerequisite for the work of attention but attention, in turn, is itself instrumental in the dissolution of the self: “Attention alone – that attention which is so full that the ‘I’ disappears – is required of me” (p. 107). It is this dialectic of decreation and attention that is constitutive of the “creative faculty” in art and religion alike. In another interesting move, Weil seems to offer a correction of sorts to the earlier notion of self-emptying. On the one hand, “Attention consists in

204 Mark Freeman suspending our thought, leaving it detached, empty, and ready to be penetrated by the object.” But it also means holding in our minds, within reach of this thought, but on a lower level and not in contact with it, the diverse knowledge we have acquired which we are forced to make use of. Our thought should be in relation to all particular and already formulated thoughts, as a man on a mountain who, as he looks forward, sees also below him, without actually looking at them, a great many forests and plains. Above all our thoughts should be empty, waiting, not seeking anything, but ready to receive in its naked truth the object that is to penetrate it. (1951/1973, pp. 111–112)

Rather than seeing virtuosic achievement, whether in art or religion, either as a visitation from without or as a product of some special faculty or personal characteristic, therefore, Weil, not unlike Jung, sees depersonalization as the requisite condition. When personality dominates in the process of creation, wonderful achievements remain possible. “But above this level, far above, separated by an abyss, is the level where the things are achieved,” and these are “essentially anonymous” (1986, p. 55). It is for this reason that “every time that a man rises to a degree of excellence, (. . .) we are aware of something impersonal and anonymous about him. His voice is enveloped in silence. This is evident in all the great works of art or thoughts, in the great deeds of saints and in their words” (1952/1997, p. 179). Weil has also told us, however, that the kind of attention that is requisite for the emergence of these impersonal and anonymous dimensions must itself pass through one’s biography, including all the “diverse knowledge” that has been acquired. Her formulation is a provocative one. In a distinct sense, Weil is calling for a kind of “personalized depersonalization,” a process that draws upon the energy and movement of one’s own unique history even as one seeks to purge oneself of it.

Telling the story of religious lives One might think of the study of religious lives in much the same way. On the one hand, all of the diverse knowledge one has accumulated about the life in question must be brought to bear on the objects of one’s attention. For this reason, turning to the biographical is, once more, a matter of necessity. But it must be done, Weil implies, in a different way than it often is – such that the relevant biographical data are held in mind, within reach but not in direct contact. The biographical is thus the necessary “backdrop,” one might say, the condition without which there could be no authentic encounter with the phenomenon of interest. One turns to the biographical, therefore, not to explain this or that phenomenon, this or that artistic or religious “product”; explaining in this sense can quickly become an explaining-away, reductive in just the way that both James and Finch had discussed. One turns to the biographical instead in order

The personal and beyond 205 to show the deep belonging of history to the present. The relationship at hand is dialectical through and through and embodies within it the dual meaning of “history” – as the constellation of the quite real events, emerging in time, that culminate in and permeate the present and as the story that that is told, from the present, about the movement of the past. The task, therefore, in the study of religious lives especially, is to adopt a biographical approach that is “nonviolent,” that displays its own limits – that itself embodies a kind of humility. Just as the artist or person of faith must renounce his or her self, his or her personality, in order to behold reality, those who study religious lives must do something similar, particularly with respect to their own theoretical interests. The aim, as above, cannot be to explain, to grasp, willfully, alone; that would inevitably lead to a kind of violence. Rather, the aim, it would seem, is to open oneself attentively to the otherness of that life in such a way that both the personal and the impersonal, the “finite” and the “infinite,” live on the page as one. The challenge, I have suggested, is a poetic one (see Freeman, 1999, 2004b). Recall Weil’s idea that “every time that a man rises to a degree of excellence, (. . .) we are aware of something impersonal and anonymous about him” and that, as such, “his voice is enveloped in silence” (1952/1997, p. 179). A narrative perspective on such lives and works, I suggest, must somehow employ language that preserves this silence and that finds, in the fabric of the flesh and blood person, those impersonal and anonymous dimensions that signal and express their transcendent excellence. In an essay called “The Power of Words” (1986), Weil states that, “thanks to a providential arrangement, there are certain words which possess, in themselves, when properly used, a virtue which illumines and lifts up towards the good.” Such words, she maintains, in true Platonic form, “refer to an absolute perfection which we cannot conceive. Since the proper use of these words involves not trying to make them fit any conception, it is in the words themselves, as words, that the power to enlighten and draw upward resides. What they express is beyond our conception” (p. 76). Whether the words about which Weil speaks refer to an “absolute perfection” remains an open question and need not be pursued here. But the idea of using words, using poetic language, as a vehicle for expressing what is, ultimately, “beyond our conception” – or at least potentially beyond our conception – is an important one. The reason is that poetic language itself entails what I earlier referred to as an act of transcendence, a going-beyond: in this context, a going-beyond the routine use of referential language for the sake of disclosing – or, as Heidegger (1971; see also 1977) might put it, “unconcealing” – those features of reality that would ordinarily go unnoticed and unthought. Poetic language points beyond itself, and at its best, points precisely in the direction of naming the unnamable, giving voice and presence to that which is at once beyond our conception and that calls for it.

206 Mark Freeman Nearly everything that has been said here rests on the presupposition that there are modes of human experience, aesthetic and religious being foremost among them, that are unable fully to be accounted for by a factor, set of factors, or constellation of factors of the sort that psychologists and other social scientists often seek to identify. They are indeed beyond our conception, and so must be preserved against any and all methodological strategies that might try wholly to grasp them, to contain them. To the extent that this is so, some might argue, these modes of experience escape the purview of psychology. Insofar as psychology is irrevocably committed to the discourse of causality, explanation, theoretical “entrapment,” as Heidegger (1977) puts it, this is true. But there is no necessary reason, I would argue, for this to be considered unassailably so. Indeed, as I have suggested elsewhere, a portion of psychology would do well to embrace what I have termed the “untheorizable” and, in turn, to generate what might be termed “theory beyond theory” – that is, a kind of thinking, and a kind of writing, that tries to do justice, poetic justice, to precisely those sorts of phenomena that at least seem to be beyond theoretical conception as ordinarily understood (see Freeman, 2000). By doing so, this portion of psychology will have significantly expanded the reach of the discipline.

References Coles, R. (2001). Simone Weil: A modern pilgrimage. Woodstock, VT: Skylights Paths Publishing. Dargan, J. (1999). Simone Weil: Thinking poetically. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Du Plessix Gray, F. (2001). Simone Weil. New York: Penguin. Fiedler, L. (1951). Introduction. In S. Weil, Waiting for God. New York: Perennial Library. Finch, H. L. (2001). Simone Weil and the intellect of grace. New York: Continuum. Freeman, M. (1999). Life narratives, the poetics of selfhood, and the redefinition of psychological theory. In W. Maiers, B. Bayer, B. Esgalhado, R. Jorna & E. Schraube (Eds.), Challenges to theoretical psychology (pp. 245–250). North York, Ontario, Canada: Captus Publications Inc. Freeman, M. (2000). Theory beyond theory. Theory & Psychology, 10 (1), 71–77. Freeman, M. (2002). Charting the narrative unconscious: Cultural memory and the challenge of autobiography. Narrative Inquiry, 12, 193–211. Freeman, M. (2004a). The priority of the Other: Mysticism’s challenge to the legacy of the self. In J. Belzen & A. Geels (Eds.), Mysticism: A variety of psychological approaches (pp. 213–234). Amsterdam: Rodopi. Freeman, M. (2004b). Data are everywhere: Narrative criticism in the literature of experience. In C. Daiute & C. Lightfoot (Eds.), Narrative analysis: Studying the development of individuals in society (pp. 63–81). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Heidegger, M. (1971). Poetry, language, thought. New York: Harper Colophon. Heidegger, M. (1977). The question concerning technology and other essays. New York: Harper Torchbooks.

The personal and beyond 207 James, W. (1902/1982). The varieties of religious experience. New York: Penguin. Jung, C. G. (1933). Modern man in search of a soul. San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Miles, S. (Ed.) (1986). Simone Weil: An anthology. New York: Grove Press. Murdoch, I. (1970). The sovereignty of Good. London: Routledge. Perrin, J. M. (1953). Part I: Simone Weil in her religious search. In J.M. Perrin & G. Thibon, Simone Weil as we knew her (pp. 11–108). London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Thibon, G. (1952/1997). Introduction. In S. Weil, Gravity and grace (pp. vii–xxxvii). London: Routledge. Thibon, G. (1953a). Introduction. In J. M. Perrin & G. Thibon, Simone Weil as we knew her (pp. 1–10). London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Thibon, G. (1953b). Simone Weil as she appeared to me. In J. M. Perrin & G. Thibon, Simone Weil as we knew her (pp. 109–171). London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Weil, S. (1951/1973). Waiting for God. New York: Perennial Library. Weil, S. (1952/1997). Gravity and grace. London: Routledge. Weil, S. (1986). Human personality. In S. Miles (Ed.), Simone Weil: An anthology. New York: Grove Press.

FROM PARADISE TO PARADOX THE PSYCHOSPIRITUAL JOURNEY OF JOHN HEIDER Jeffrey Kripal Rasher kept turning pages of the Whole Earth Catalog. …“Here’s a book on tantra [ he said to Gustavo]: Tantra Art. ‘What is here is elsewhere. What is not here is nowhere.’ That’s the truth. That’s why I love Kansas. ‘What is not here is nowhere.’ ” … “The guy that did this Whole Earth Catalog, Stewart Brand, believes that we are as gods and might as well get good at it. …What does he mean, we are as gods?” “It’s in the Bible, Rasher. The serpent told Eve that if they ate of the tree of knowledge, they would become as gods, knowing good from evil.” “Isn’t that why God kicked them out of the garden of Eden?” “Yes,” answered Gustavo, “but it was worth it. Who wants to live in paradise, in blissful ignorance?” (John Heider, Living in Paradox, chapter 28, pp. 15–16)

The art and discipline of psychobiography is an established, if always somewhat controversial, practice. Any number of psychological systems have been applied to historical figures whose own cultures and self-understandings would have been completely unfamiliar with the categories applied to them within this type of modern scholarship. Leonardo Da Vinci, for example, would have most likely found Freud’s psychoanalysis of his art a bit odd, to say the least (Freud, 1910/1957); Martin Luther would have known nothing of Erik Erikson’s oedipal theories, and, had he somehow known of them precognitively, he would have certainly been deeply offended by their conclusions (Erikson, 1958); the authors of the Sanskrit Puranas would have been amazed to read Sudhir Kakar’s psychosexual analysis of the exploits of the gods they tell in such sensual detail; and so on (Kakar, 1981). This, of course, raises all sorts of interesting questions about the appropriateness of such methods, about the degree to which cultural context should determine one’s hermeneutical practices, about whether western psychological categories can be used outside western contexts, and so on. It is important to point out, however, that such issues are hardly restricted to the psychology of religion. Similar debates have developed along analogous lines with reference to any number of central comparative categories in anthropology, history, and the study of religion: indeed, religion itself is such a contested category, as are mythology, mysticism, ritual, initiation, gender, sexual orientation, and so on.

210 Jeffrey Kripal Much of this, of course, is a simple and unavoidable result of the linear flow of time. Obviously, a person who lived in a previous place and time cannot be expected to know about the categories and methods of a later one. But what happens when psychological categories and comparative methods are understood and used by contemporary religious actors who then become the objects of psychological and comparative study? That is, how might we go about interpreting psychologically a figure of history who is himself fluent in psychological and comparative ways of thinking, and who in fact uses these ways of thinking to interpret, understand and express his own life experience? Put a bit differently, what happens when the psychologist of religion can not only read an author’s texts but also talk to him as a fellow psychological theorist? Put impossibly, if I may, what happens when Leonardo befriends Sigmund and the Puranic authors decide Sudhir has something worth saying? The present essay is an experiment in just this sort of method. It involves the private, theoretical, and fictional writings of John Heider (b. 1936), an American group therapist and theorist who came from a family of academic psychologists, received a doctorate in psychology from a major research university, played a central role in one chapter of the American counterculture, and went on to a lifetime of group work teaching and theorizing. I first encountered Heider in my research on the history of the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California, where he remains something of a legend, even though he has not lived on the grounds there for over thirty-five years (Kripal, 2007). Intrigued by what I was hearing, I eventually contacted Heider and subsequently interviewed him on the phone and through numerous e-mail exchanges. I then visited him at his home in Lawrence, Kansas, which happens to be a few hundred miles up the Oregon Trail from where I grew up in southeastern Nebraska. During this process, John sent me a large box of his unpublished writings, including his Esalen journals, his theoretical essays on group work, and what he playfully calls his “utopian soap opera,” his novel Living in Paradox. These are the texts, put in close conversation with my conversations with Heider himself, that will focus the present essay. I read these texts with a particular method that might be described alternately as psychosexual and sexospiritual, that is, my main concerns revolve around two theoretical convictions: (1) a privileging of the importance of sexual forces in influencing and shaping psychological dynamics (the psychosexual); and (2) a focus on the interface between individual sexualities and specifically gendered spiritual symbolic systems (the sexospiritual). Put a bit differently, what I am most interested in here are the various ways that gender and sexuality weave in and out of Heider’s life-narrative and writings as these encounter and process the American counterculture and human potential movement of the late 60s and 70s. Central to these two decades was a certain American assimilation and creative translation of Asian religious forms. What I find especially interesting

From paradise to paradox 211 about this countercultural translation project is how the broad gender and sexual patterning of Western monotheism (with both male and female believers encountering a single male deity without a female spouse or sexual consort of any kind) was continuously compared to the perceived gender and sexual patterns of Asian nondual traditions (often expressed symbolically through heterosexual coupling) and found significantly wanting. One common response to such meta-comparisons was a subsequent attempted synthesis of East and West. This in turn had an impact on psychological thinking, particularly for a figure like John Heider, who attempted to fuse or synthesize Western psychological theory (particularly gestalt psychology and encounter group process) with Asian religions (particularly Taoism and Tantra). Heider, of course, was not the first to try this. Jung, for example, although insisting on the unique nature and trajectories of the western psyche, had not hesitated to turn to Hindu Tantric yoga to catalyze his own theorizing and even found there what he called “important parallels” to his depth psychology, “especially with kundalini yoga and the symbolism of tantric yoga” (Jung, 1936/1969, p. 537). Probably the earliest major figure in Heider’s orbit, however, to envision a deep synthesis of western psychology and Asian religions was Alan Watts in his Psychotherapy East & West (Watts, 1961). Significantly, Watts framed his comparative reflections in a way that was particularly relevant to Heider’s own, still future, psychological leanings, that is, in the insights of an emerging gestalt psychology that Watts believed was in sync with the metaphysical insights of contemporary physics and biology and, just as importantly, the nature of psychedelic experience. In many ways, Watts was right, of course, for gestalt psychology was already such a fusion. The Taoist and Zen influences on Fritz Perls, for example, are well known, and it was Perls who did more than anyone to bring gestalt psychology into some sort of public recognition in the 60s at the Esalen Institute, where Heider lived and where Perls’s particular brand of gestalt psychology was often jokingly referred to as “Zen Judaism” (Kripal, 2007, pp. 157–165). As I have suggested elsewhere, the American countercultural project was strongly (but by no means exclusively) oriented toward analogous “countercultural” forms in Asia, which we might, for the sake of conversation here, capture under the alliterative rubrics of the Tantra and the Tao (Kripal, forthcoming). Both broad categories, it turns out, have been subsumed by contemporary scholarship within the even broader comparative category of Tantra. I am following the same convention here. Hence I am defining Tantra as a broad comparative category that scholars of Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Taoism have forged over the last century (but particularly in the last four decades, that is, since the counterculture) to describe a broad pan-Asian “deep worldview” or “supertradition” that weaves together such local traditions as Hindu Shakta Tantra, some forms of Indian Jainism, certainly Vajrayana or Tibetan Buddhism, much of

212 Jeffrey Kripal Chinese Taoism and Mahayana Buddhism, as well as various forms of esoteric Japanese Buddhism, including and especially many aspects of Zen. Both the transgressive nature of much Tantric ritual and the basic doctrinal features of this supertradition have been debated endlessly, but I am adopting here for the sake of discussion the doctrinal definition of the Indologist David Gordon White. For White, Tantra is the Asian body of beliefs and practices which, working from the principle that the universe we experience is nothing other than the concrete manifestation of the divine energy of the godhead that creates and maintains that universe, seeks to ritually appropriate and channel that energy, within the human microcosm, in creative and emancipatory ways. (White, 2000, p. 9)

What fascinates me so about this particular framing (although I could cite others) is that, if we keep in mind the transgressive nature of much of Tantric logic and ritual, such a definition can also function as a perfectly accurate description of many of the metaphysical assumptions of the counterculture, that broad band of utopian, psychedelic, and mystical movements that arced between America and England in the 60s and 70s and helped energize other more political projects, from civil rights and early feminism, to the anti-war and gay rights movements. That is to say, when American countercultural actors turned to Asia for inspiration and guidance, they intuitively selected out those practices and ideas – however well or poorly they understood them – that could serve and support their own countering projects. Consequently, they tended to ignore the conservative, ascetic, and hierarchical aspects of Asian cultures that have in fact been normative and dominant throughout Asia and honed in instead on the most radical and transgressive practices of those same cultures, that is, on their own subcultures and countercultures. The latter often involved sexual practice or, at the very least, sexual symbolism. If it was not “Tantric sex,” then at least it was the yin and the yang of the Tao symbol, itself modeled on the united opposites and erotic energies of heterosexual intercourse, or as Watts described it in one of his entertaining one-liners, “the black and white fishes in eternal intercourse” (Watts, 1961, p. 56). The life and work of John Heider is a powerful example and clear confirmation of this countercultural Tantric transmission thesis, and much that follows is a teasing out of this basic subtext and deeper weave of his written corpus. What I find in Heider’s texts is more or less precisely what I have previously theorized about the human potential movement and the American counterculture and their religious relationships to Asia, that is, a deeply intuitive orientation toward transgressive sexual practices and paradoxical forms of religious thinking that can well be classified as Tantric or Taoist, or, more simply and

From paradise to paradox 213 more comparatively, as Tantra.1 This, in turn, as I hope to show here, has some rather major implications for these same cultures’ embrace and transformation of psychological method, particularly in its gestalt and psychoanalytic forms. I will proceed in five parts. I begin in Part 1 with some brief historical, cultural and biographical background necessary in order to set the stage. I then move on immediately to Heider’s private Esalen journals (Part 2); to his theoretical essays on the dynamics of group work (Part 3); and, most centrally, to his work of fiction, Living in Paradox (Part 4). I read the latter, clearly autobiographical, novel as Heider’s fullest and most sophisticated assessment of his experience as a group leader in the 60s and 70s and as one of the clearest statements on record of the Tantric subtext of this particular moment in American history. Taken together and put in dialogue with my oral interviews, all of this material provides a multifaceted perspective on a single historical figure that will in turn enable me to offer in Part 5 some tentative psychological analyses and methodological reflections on the psychology of religion as it passes through the prism of the human potential movement and the American counterculture.

1. Historical, biographical and intellectual contexts The Esalen Institute is located in Big Sur, California. It was founded in 1962 by two Stanford graduates, Richard Price (1930–1985) and Michael Murphy (b. 1930). Working on Murphy’s family property and with Price’s family money, these two men sought to start their own institute dedicated to what Aldous Huxley had called “the human potentialities,” that is, those levels of consciousness and otherwise unconscious forms of bodily experience that lie dormant in all human beings and which different cultures realize or repress in various degrees, depending upon their own specific value systems and priorities. Huxley believed that human culture was at a unique crossroads, and that it now had sufficient cross-cultural knowledge and scientific know-how to attempt an activation of these latent human potentials on a reasonably large and systematic scale. In 1960, Price had attended a lecture Huxley gave on this very topic in San Francisco, and subsequently Murphy and Price corresponded with the author about how his ideas might help them with the founding of their still imagined institute. The two would later meet Huxley, when he and his wife, Laura, visited Big Sur in the summer of 1962. Interestingly, just a few months before this meeting, in March of 1962, to be exact, Huxley published his last novel, Island, about a utopian island called 1

Some scholars, including this one, consider Chinese Taoism, Japanese Zen, much of Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism, and the Indian Tantric traditions to be local expressions of a much broader pan-Asian super tradition, hence the even broader modern comparative construction of “Tantra,” which is assumed, but not critically discussed, here.

214 Jeffrey Kripal Pala. Pala was a kind of pragmatic ideal community for Huxley, modeled on erotic and psychedelic practices that had, according to Huxley, been tried successfully in other places and times (three specific communities focus much of his discussion here: the “complex marriage” practices of John Humphrey Noyes’ Oneida community in nineteenth-century New York, the contemplative sexual techniques of Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism, and the sexual symbols and sensuous deities of Shaiva Hinduism). Among these practices, two stood out as absolutely central for the Palanians: the coitus reservatus of Tantric sexual practice, which provided them with both a constantly renewable source of physical joy and an effective form of birth control, and the ingestion of a psychedelic mushroom they called Moksha, which initiated them, at puberty, into the metaphysical gnosis that their social egos were useful masks or filters for a greater and infinitely freer cosmic consciousness in which they all shared. We will see forms of both practices again in Paradox, Kansas. Using mailing lists Alan Watts provided them, Murphy and Price sent out their first brochure that same summer, announcing both Huxley’s human potentialities and their own triple interests in “psychology, psychical research and work with the ‘mind-opening drugs.’ ” A heavy Asian accent could also be detected, as both Murphy and Price had been deeply influenced by the Indian mystic Sri Aurobindo and Buddhism, respectively. Hence the early brochures featured a Buddhist or Hindu lotus on their covers, a Thai bust of the Buddha appeared inside the first brochure, and all three P’s (psychology, psychical research, and psychedelics) would quickly take on orientalized forms within their discussions. The first seminar, titled “The Expanding Vision,” occurred on September 22–23, 1962. This was the effective beginning of what would soon become the Esalen Institute (not incorporated as such until the summer of 1964), which would in turn become the epicenter of the human potential movement, a phrase coined in 1965 by Michael Murphy and Look magazine writer, George Leonard. Although it was founded on more intellectual and somewhat different principles, the Esalen scene of the 1960s came to be very much defined by the American counterculture, which flowed down to Big Sur from the San Francisco Bay area (about a three and a half hour drive), by the gestalt psychology of Fritz Perls, by William C. Schutz and the encounter group movement, and by the presence of Ida Rolf and a whole host of body workers and healers. It was into this heady mix that a young man named John Heider appeared. In 1967, the Summer of Love, John and Anne Heider were driving from New York to California by way of Mexico City on their BMW motorcycle. John Heider had grown up a faculty brat, first at Smith College and then in the University of Kansas/Menninger Clinic environment. His parents, Fritz and Grace Heider, were both well-known academic psychologists. Heider followed in their footsteps. Sort of. He graduated from Harvard College in 1960 and went on to pursue a Ph.D. in psychology at Duke University. Despite a dominantly cerebral

From paradise to paradox 215 academic environment that was hostile to both his personal and research interests in yoga and meditation, Heider managed to locate those aspects of the university that interested him the most. In his own words, what he wanted to do was join the best of the two worlds of the “community of scholars” and “mysticism.”2 Toward this end, he took LSD as part of a university hospital study, participated in ESP research with J.B. Rhine’s parapsychological team, wrote his major area paper on the perceptual benefits of meditation (Heider, 1965), and finally finished a dissertation on creative states of awareness that drew on such non-traditional psychological sources as the poems of William Blake, Mircea Eliade’s study of yoga, the Buddhist writings of Alan Watts, Huxley’s The Doors of Perception, and the folk lyrics of the Beatles – not your typical behaviorist tract (Heider, 1968). It is no exaggeration to say that John barely squeaked through the system. Heider, after all, was not interested in the positivistic methods and statistical analyses of experimental psychology. He was interested in how human consciousness could be expanded, or, as he later put it, he wanted to ask questions like, “What is the life force?” “Is Energy real?” and “Do people have a god within themselves?” (Heider, 1997, p. 1). We might say that John Heider was an energy mystic. It struck him in an especially powerful way, for example, that libido remains a mere metaphor for orthodox Freudian psychology, and that Wilhelm Reich’s central heresy lay in his insistence that the orgone is real. Hence no medical school or department of psychology in the country professes the physical and spiritual reality of the life force. He was interested, in other words, in what Paul Robinson has identified as the Freudian Left, that is, that heretical or heterodox style of psychoanalysis whose central move – a thorough-going embrace of the Id or instinctual powers as essentially real, good and wise, even divine – can be traced back most immediately to Wilhelm Reich, but which also displays obvious resonances with any number of pre-psychological esoteric and mystical systems, from Mesmerism to Tantric yoga. The latter correspondences, as we shall soon see, did not escape Heider, nor any number of other Esalen actors. Certainly Esalen was the first place John Heider ever lived where he felt truly at home. Esalen, after all, believed in the reality and power of Energy as a mystical and erotic force. Practically speaking, John and Anne got to the Esalen Institute the same way so many other people did. Ed Maupin invited them. Like Heider, Maupin had written his doctoral dissertation on meditation. When the Heiders met Maupin in L.A. that summer, he invited them up to Esalen. They visited and were impressed with what they found there. After returning to the East Coast to put

2

Heider (1968–71), p. 88.

216 Jeffrey Kripal their things in order, they would return to Big Sur and stay for almost four years, John from September 15, 1967 to February 4, 1971. During this time, Heider would become one of the central players of the Flying Circus (the local name for a particularly intense and uninhibited encounter group team led by Will Schutz). He would also become known in the community, along with Steve Stroud and Seymour Carter, as among the wildest and most daring of the group leaders.

2. The Esalen Journals As private reflections on this wild-man public status, Heider’s private journals and unpublished essays are some of the most insightful and entertaining things one can find on this period of Esalen’s history. Reading them, it is easy to see why Heider became such a popular Esalen figure. His psychological insights are often acute, and his commentary is inevitably humorous, if not hilarious. He is also radically blunt about both the halos and the holes of what he witnessed first-hand and often helped effect. And he is as graphic and as fierce about his own neuroses, projections, desires and bodily fluids as he is about anyone else’s. The journals orbit around Heider’s central role in the Flying Circus and the larger encounter group movement. Encounter, for Heider, involves the key notion of human potential, which he glosses as “power.” Encounter is thus about the activation and integration of more and more energy or power into a human life. Physically speaking, it is about literally activating more and more cells of the body through action and acting out. Psychologically speaking, it is about the integration of the “inner man” and the “outer man,” which leads to a kind of radical “integrity.” Toward this same integral end, encounter group work is about truth telling and risk-taking towards what Heider calls an “enlargement of the Self.” “Since,” however, “what one might be is latent,” encounter involves “techniques to make the latent manifest and the unconscious conscious” (Heider, 1968–71, pp. 78–79). Both the human potential and group encounter, in other words, display a distinctly psychoanalytic structure in Heider’s journals. Human potential author George Leonard once asked Heider what it was like to live at Hot Springs during those years. Heider’s answer was disarming: “I wondered if it might not be akin to his [Leonard’s] WW2 experience: wonderful, awful, wouldn’t have missed it, would never wish to be there again” (Heider, 1997, p. 17). The journal entries bear out this war-story sensibility. They begin on August 14, 1968, that is, almost a full year after he had been living on the grounds. They then proceed through the months and years, with this or that long break, as a reflection of the rhythms, joys, heartbreaks and personalities of the Esalen community. The entries certainly list all the big names, the usual list of Who’s Who meant to impress, but they also describe, and lovingly so, all the little names, all the unknown X-Men and X-Women of the world who never

From paradise to paradox 217 made it into the Esalen catalogs or public histories but who nevertheless made Esalen Esalen in the late 60s. There was “the lady who showed us how to stroke auras,” for example, and “the gold miner from Willow Creek.” Then there was “dishwasher who can read your palm; the group leader who was a chicken farmer in India where he studied magic rather than going to college; the baker who had been an addict, a huckster, a circus fire-eater, and, coming to Esalen, became a teacher of small-group process” (Heider, 1968–71, pp. 7–8). And that was just the beginning. “Doubtless,” Heider observes, “I accepted many false teachings and enjoyed many illusions” (Heider, 1968–71, p. 9). The accent, though, was clearly on enjoyed. On April 29, 1969, Heider humorously alludes to a series of events that would spell the eventual end of the Flying Circus. “The community has been in turmoil the past few weeks,” Heider begins. “Dick Price finally took his far-out trip and became a seer with a vision. Unfortunately this vision includes getting rid of Will Schutz and turning Esalen into a monastery.” Rumors flew and a good deal of ill will took its toll. “The Flying Circus will probably die,” Heider concludes. Certainly their “More Joy” workshops would not appear in that fall’s catalog: “so that is that.” By February 5, 1971, Heider was even more down: “In September 1967, Esalen seemed a paradise of permission, opportunity, beauty and truth. By February 1971, both I and the Institute seem older and weary, jaded by too many miracles too quickly digested.” An elaborate paradoxical meditation follows on Esalen as “filth amid natural beauty,” on the baths as both “meditation and massage in the sun” and “dreadful grime, old cinder blocks, body lice and staph.” “Perhaps,” Heider muses, “Esalen’s power rests on this co-existence of good and evil” (Heider, 1968–71, p. 42). Good or evil, though, by the early 70s John Heider was tired and worn out. He was also becoming increasingly critical of Esalen’s high divorce rate, its high staff turnover, and especially its high suicide rate. He now counted four friends who had taken their own lives. That was more than enough. “I have been a rolling stone. I would like to rest a while” (Heider, 1968–71, p. 44), he wrote. On September 2, 1971, Heider announces his departure in the journal and enters one final meditation on sex, drugs and Esalen: Incredibly, Esalen was never busted. We knew they knew, but they left us alone. In what other institute in the country would girls working in the garden expose their breasts freely without hostility or fear? Esalen is another world. A foreign land and culture. Probably the most beautiful place, the highest place, the freest place I’ll ever live. (…) After Esalen 1967–1968, there really was no place to go, was there? (Heider, 1968–71, p. 50)

Before we leave the journals, it is important to describe Heider’s use of Tantric and Taoist language in them. Amidst those 148 private pages, for example, he

218 Jeffrey Kripal can write of both the “Tao of Encounter” and “Encounter Tantra,” thus implicitly (and probably correctly) uniting the Indian Tantric and Chinese Taoist historical streams (Heider, 1968–71, p. 89). He can also distinguish between being “Tantrically related” to a woman and being “karmically related” to his wife. The former he defines as a sharing of “vibration lust not ego entanglement” (Heider, 1968–71, p. 90). Tantric sex, in other words, is about arousing, channeling and sublimating energy, not developing a personal relationship. The exact same distinction will later appear in the novel as tantric and karmic sex. In a similar mood, he can note how “to know” in the Bible is equivalent “to fuck,” and comment how this erotic epistemology is developed even further in the Tantric traditions (Heider, 1968–71, p. 68). In a similar mood again, when he draws in the margin the Greek letter for psi, the first letter of psyche and the symbol for the discipline of psychology, it looks remarkably like a refashioning of a Tantric cakra being penetrated by the kundalini, hence his gloss on the doodle, describing it as “made of [an] energy bundle passing through [a] lotus” (Heider, 1968–71, p. 95). Moreover, when he ponders on how to best translate the title, Tao Te Ching, he lands on “The Energy Channel.” The Taoist text thus becomes a manual about “how to be so that more energy can flow through the channel of one’s body. If one half of a Tantric couple were me and the second half the field of the earth/infinity, I could learn Tao” (Heider, 1968–71, p. 114).3 Things are not always so abstract, however. Drawing on one of his early inspirations, the eccentric Yugoslovian-American scientist Nikolas Tesla, the employee of Thomas Edison and friend of Albert Einstein and Mark Twain who invented the earliest technology of the alternating electrical current, Heider can speculate that the erotics of Tantric practice may be generated in a similar fashion, that is, by the phallus as a kind of wire passing current through the magnetic coil of the vagina. “Is this our oscillator circuit?” he asks (Heider, 1968–71, p. 134). Much of this, of course, must remain in the form of a question, but toward the very end of the journals, Heider abandons the speculative question mark and states his own concluding conviction as a declaration: “The key to the secret of life was sex. Freud was right and far more so Wilhelm Reich.” The question remains, however, this time not as a speculation, but as a warning: “Yet the power of sex is so great as to ruin lives and spoil nations so what right minded man or woman would not fear it?” (Heider, 1968–71, p. 140)

3. Magnetizing the Tantra and encountering the Tao: to The Human Potential Essays of John Heider (1976) This is more or less how John Heider ended his journal reflections in 1971. He hardly stopped reflecting, however. Within five years, that is, by 1976, he had 3

Heider has the infinity symbol here, not the word.

From paradise to paradox 219 produced over two dozen brief but potent essays on the dynamics of group encounter, which he then collected into a self-published volume entitled Life on the Group Room Floor: An Introduction to Human Potential Theory & Practice (Heider, 1997).4 Based on both his Esalen years and his five years leading encounter groups in California, Florida and Kansas, these essays represent a real shift for Heider. Seasoned by years of encounter group work at Esalen with Bill Schutz, not all of it successful (some of it, in his own opinion, quite frankly disastrous and irresponsible), Heider had already abandoned the confrontational group style of the Flying Circus and had evolved toward the subtler ways of what he was now calling the Tao of Encounter. He turned to the traditional Taoist image of flowing water to explain how his new methods differed from his older ways: basically, he was no longer after dramatic confrontations and forceful meetings; he was after more gentle flowings together or confluences, as when two rivers meet and become one (Heider, 1968–71, p. 78). Central to this gentle meeting and merging of waters was something he called, as an essay title, the “Theory of the Energy Awareness Field.” Heider is impressively reflexive and agnostic about the ontological status of both this energy and this awareness or field of consciousness. He recognizes, immediately, that perhaps there is no such energy field at all, that someday we might learn to explain and describe these experienced flows in a better, more precise scientific and finally quantifiable language.5 He resists any such quantification for now, however, opting instead for a distinctly metaphysical stance: “This is the basic assumption underlying energy awareness field theory: everything in the whole universe is a vibrating process and a part of the whole vibrating cosmos: all creation is energy” (Heider, 1997, p. 1). After citing Frijof Capra on the physics of this reality, he turns to religion and states quite matter of factly that, “this unified field is the cosmic unity which we experience during moments of enlightenment or cosmic consciousness” (Heider, 1997, p. 2).6 Not that Heider knows what consciousness is either. As with the energy field, he frankly confesses that he does not know what consciousness is, although he believes “that consciousness means God or Tao.” He then sets up the following metaphysical structure: “I think that consciousness is like God and unlike 4

Each of the essays comprising this collection are individually paginated. He repeats this same agnosticism for what I would call a phenomenological position in “The Individual’s Energy Field”: “I do not know whether or not these sensations represent an actual energy that is different from the known electro-chemical energies of ordinary physiological functioning. I do know that successful meditation, body work or psychological work leads to these characteristic sensations that can be readily described as if an energy were present” (Heider, 1997, p. 1). 6 For a recent work of technical scholarship that comes to a very similar conclusion via systems theory, see Studstill, 2005. 5

220 Jeffrey Kripal electricity because electricity has frequency, it vibrates, while God is eternal and unchanging. I believe that consciousness is eternal and unchanging also, unlike electricity, like God” (Heider, 1997, p. 4).7 Such a situation creates a strange situation on the group room floor, where each person is permeated with consciousness and energy, but the group as a whole is unaware of this. Seen in this light, group encounter, then, becomes a series of practices, exercises and meditations designed to optimize the energy awareness field, that is, to unite consciousness and energy and bring them both into a kind of enlightenment of the body: “We reestablish the free flow of energy and awareness throughout all the tissue of the body by directly teaching awareness and by freeing up the blocks caused by attachments” (Heider, 1997, p. 9). Heider pursues this same enlightenment of the body further in his “Electric Sex and Magnetic Sex,” probably the clearest statement we have from a major Esalen figure on the psychology and mechanics of a contemplative sexual practice. The essay begins with an obvious but crucial observation: “More people experience energy sensations during sexual intercourse than during any other experience.” Heider then proceeds to explain how these energy fields can be expanded, deepened and developed through a contemplative approach to sexual intercourse. Crucial here is Heider’s distinction between electric sex and magnetic sex. “Electric sex is male sex, yang sex. Electric sex works when a body specifically stimulates sexual trigger points such as the head of the man’s penis or the woman’s clitoris” (Heider, 1997, p. 1). This in effect zaps the body into arousal and eventually sparks an electric circuit through which the sexual energies can arc and discharge, leaving the body in a state of relaxation (or exhaustion). Magnetic sex is different. “Magnetic sex is female sex, yin sex. Magnetic sex works when the fields of two people awaken and make contact. Magnetic sexual arousal is diffuse and felt more or less equally all over the body and in the space surrounding the body” (Heider, 1997, p. 2). Magnetic sex, moreover, need not lead to a traditional orgasm and the pleasurable discharge of the energies. Energies can build and build here and be sublimated into deeper and deeper states of bodily bliss and contemplative consciousness. Heider then proceeds to give some rather elaborate and graphic instructions on how to engage in both forms of sex, warning the reader in the process that what he is offering is a recipe that should be followed liberally according to taste, not literally as a set of mechanical rules or commands. “The Individual Energy Field” pursues similar themes again, this time in the context of exercises designed to get a person to sense the magnetic and electric currents surrounding and infusing the body. Heider notes, for example, that if one closes the eyes and carefully brings the fingers of both hands almost together, 7

Crucially, Heider does not engender consciousness as male and energy as female here, as most Tantric traditions have done. More on this “American” move below, in my conclusion.

From paradise to paradox 221 moving them slightly but never quite touching, one can often feel a very subtle magnetic current between the fingers. As with encounter group work and electromagnetic sexual practice, the goal of all such exercises is “freely flowing energy and awareness” (Heider, 1997, p. 6). The model here is profoundly Reichian, since it is understood that, “all disease and all blocks on natural growth are seen as disruptions of this free flow of energy and awareness throughout the body” (Heider, 1997, p. 5). In a fascinating (and, I think, basically correct) move, Heider understands the phenomenology of charisma and sanctity through this same enlightenment of the body model and a kind of metaphorical awakening. “People with very powerful fields can wake the dead and bring new life to parts of bodies long shut down in disease,” he notes. “There are stories from all lands about very holy people with fields of such force that even the corrupt see them shining and come free and alive simply by believing and by being in the presence of the sacred field” (Heider, 1997, p. 8). But there is a real problem here, which Heider explores in a little sermon or homily he once gave in a Lawrence, Kansas church (where he has regularly preached over the years) as “Morals and Magic.” The problem is this. Free flowing energy and the “power” of potential can be used morally or immorally. Energy in some basic sense is neutral. So, then, are the energies of mystical experience and charisma. They can be used for the good or the ill of others. Heider looks back on the 60s and both explains why his generation rejected conservative society and how they themselves went astray. “It was very clear to many of in the 1960s that values advocated by a culture engaged in dropping napalm on Vietnamese children were suspect. We paid taxes that bought napalm that we dropped on children. We saw that on TV” (Heider, 1997, p. 5). Much of what the youth adopted in the 60s was hedonistic in the sense that it operated from the principle – which Heider relates to Rabelais and the sexual magician Aleister Crowley – of “Do your own thing.” The highest good was the highest pleasure. Hence Esalen was often called “the candy factory.” Treats were everywhere. Unfortunately, this kind of hedonism often devolved into a kind of selfish magic in which people attempted to manipulate events and energies for their own personal pleasure. The basic mistake was that this kind of hedonism did not take into account the effects of these sorts of actions; it did not realize that “I do not act alone. I am a part of the whole cosmos. (…) I can do what I want but I will become what I do” (Heider, 1997, p. 3). The difficulty was this: our group work, our meditation, our drugs and fasting and chanting gave us a taste of conscious living. We saw the light. That is true. But to be honest, we did not see the light unwaveringly. The light did not flicker; we flickered. (Heider, 1997, p. 6)

“Sex and Sin” pursues similar themes again through the pleasures of sexuality. After comparing the radical openings and intimacies of group work to those

222 Jeffrey Kripal described by the nineteenth-century American religious revolutionary, John Humphrey Noyes (whose Oneida community turned to sexuality as one of the secrets of the spiritual life and practiced a form of “free love” that they called “complex marriage”), Heider performs a fascinating “energetic exegesis” of Saint Paul’s attitudes toward virginity, marriage, remarriage and adultery that will also turn up in Living in Paradox. “Sin means, in our language, doing something that puts a person out of harmony with the cosmos, the universal energy field. Sin puts a person into an unconscious, blocked, self-centered ego state” (Heider, 1997, pp. 3–4). Heider is not particularly impressed with the sexual solutions of his own generation, which he frankly admits have not led to sexual bliss but to “a floating world in which many people, relentlessly aging, drift from pseudospouse to pseudo-spouse” (Heider, 1997, p. 8). What Heider hopes for, then, is not a return to the 60s or the sexual revolution, but a “new covenant,” “a new Law” derived not from Paul or Christianity, which has always more or less “regretted that we [have] bodies with carnal impulses,” but from the Asian Tantric traditions and their use of sex “to help people become increasing[ly] married to one another and to the cosmic whole.” Heider points out that this Tantric turn was anticipated in western culture by Reich, who “specifically said that when sexual union is free from blocks, the energy fields of the two partners become one unified energy field” (Heider, 1997, p. 9). Heider’s homiletic conclusion is well worth quoting in full here. Even Paul gets embraced, if also finally outshined, here: If we have been, as a culture, irrevocably sexualized, perhaps we are offered an opportunity to grow in awareness of ourselves and our part in the whole not by avoiding the difficulties that accompany sexuality but by becoming aware of our sexual natures and transcending the powerful attachments sex involves. In this way, we may possibly see more and more sexual experimentation leading to more and more sexual meditation and finally, as Paul would have it, more and more celibacy on the part of those who have climbed the sexual ladder to the point where everyday life outshines the brightest orgasm. (Heider, 1997, p. 10)

4. From paradise to paradox In many ways, this move from the asceticism of Pauline Christianity to a kind of transerotic Asian Tantra, from the Gospel to the Goddess, as it were, is one of the key subtexts of Heider’s novel, Living in Paradox: A Utopian Soap Opera (1976),8 which he was writing concurrently with the essays treated above as a way of working through his dramatic experiences at Esalen and after. Writing the novel was also a way of doing oral history for Heider, who realized that a

8

Henceforth LP in body of text, followed by chapter and page numbers, hence LP 1.1 renders Living in Paradox, chapter 1, page 1 (each chapter is individually paginated).

From paradise to paradox 223 traditional and published historical account would upset many and offend more than few; he could say what he wanted to say, and remember what he wanted to remember, in the format of fiction, however. That was different. And so this is what he did. He wrote a work of fiction that was largely factual. He revealed the truth by concealing the truth. The novel focuses on a small fictional town in northeastern Kansas called Paradox, “Founded 1856. Population 2317. Elevation 1136 ft.” (LP 3.22). Originally, the place was supposed to be called Paradise, but the cranky postmaster who applied for the post office box accidentally-but-intentionally put down “Paradox” instead (LP 4.2). And so it became. In this bit of mischievous misspelling, in this intentional mistake, lies the entire metaphysical sweep of the novel, which moves from the Christian search for some final answer or complete salvation in an eternal and never-changing heaven, to a deeply Taoist sense of process and paradox, of reality as a never-ending cycle of conflicting opposites that are nevertheless deeply, erotically, related. From Paradise to Paradox, then: this is the structuring secret of both Heider’s “fictional” text and his own real-life psychospiritual journey. The narrative of the novel involves a middle-aged Boston couple named Barry and Jean Baker. Barry is a successful lawyer, and Jean is one of Boston’s many socialites. Suffering from a shared mid-life crisis of sorts, in March of 1967 they hop on a motorcycle and travel out to California (much like John and Anne Heider did that same summer) in order to attend an Esalen seminar led by Bill Schutz called “More Joy” (an actual seminar series which Heider, in real life, helped coordinate). Immensely turned on by the experience whose psychophysical breakthroughs remind Barry of the first time he and Jean made love in college (more on that later), they decide they have enough money and guts to try their hand at starting their own alternative community. After their San Francisco bisexual friend, Gustavo, shows them around the Bay Area, hoping they will buy there, they finally decide to purchase an abandoned college property in Paradox, Kansas, instead. Gustavo is appalled, offering the usual platitudes about Kansas and suggesting that the state is precisely the black-and-white boredom the characters of “The Wizard of Oz” escaped from on their way to the delicious Technicolor brilliance of a California Oz. “No one goes to Kansas,” Gustavo insists with his exaggerated horror. “You know they won’t let me come too!” But Jean Baker knows better than to take so seriously the pretensions of the West (or East) Coast. She thus compassionately answers Gustavo with a bit of midwestern paradox, that is, she answers in the middle: “Oh dear! Of course, they will let you in, Gustavo. There must be some homosexuals in Kansas. And even in the movie, the Tin Woodsman, the Cowardly Lion, the Scarecrow, Toto (…) Why, all of them, even the Wizard, were really from Kansas. The Land of Oz wasn’t real, Gustavo. Dorothy was in an altered state of consciousness: she was hallucinating!” (LP 3.12–13). Gustavo is

224 Jeffrey Kripal eventually convinced and quickly warms up to the place recognizing, in the end, that Oz and Kansas are indeed the same place and that, as another character realizes later on in the novel through a bit of tantric wisdom, “What is here is elsewhere. What is not here is nowhere” (LP 28.16). And indeed, Paradox turns out to have just about everything. The new college is thus able to draw a delightfully diverse crew from the furthest ends of the Bakers’ social spectrum: their daughter Claire, for example, insists on coming with them and asserting there her own spiritual and sexual freedoms, before them. Gustavo moves in and brings along Luz, his faithful housekeeper who also happens to be a psychically gifted bruja or witch. Later, he will bring along members of his gay community and settle into one of the college’s nicer homes, now dubbed the Gentleman’s Club. Brash young hippies, with names like Rasher, Tilth, Vision, and Ganja, show up after meeting the Bakers in the redwoods of California and reading about them in an alternative magazine. Similarly, a gifted Zen teacher named Max Schaeffer appears to play the meditation and awarenessis-everything card (he learns that it is not [LP 7.22]), as does Jubilo, an AfricanAmerican veteran and masseur whose contemplative massages of white women draws the ire of a bit of hate-mail but the ultimate support of the college community: “We will take our risks, knowingly,” they conclude. A bit later, an AfricanAmerican woman by the name of Ophelia shows up to attract Jubilo’s erotic attention and so effectively dispel the racial tensions. Not that this was absolutely necessary. This, after all, was Bleeding Kansas, “the first battle ground of the Civil War” and an adamant defender of American individualism and the freedom of the slaves (LP 3.14). The citizens of Paradox, educated in this long and proud history of Kansas liberalism and a pragmatic live-and-let-be, quickly warm up to the new strange community among them. And why not? The new college is very good for business, and – not to be underestimated in any small town – it becomes a bottomless well of exciting gossip, almost all of it, oddly enough, basically true. The college’s and community’s pre-histories, adventures, teachings, debates, joys and tragedies proceed through thirty-six chapters and over three years, with Barry Baker, having become “an adept at tantric sexual meditation” (LP 23.11), eventually traveling to Nepal to live a life of celibate contemplation, Jean becoming Gustavo’s lover while Barry is gone (with his full knowledge and ambiguous support), and Rasher, Vision, Ganja, Max and the rest wrestling through the limitless paradoxes, problems and promises of spiritual, sexual and political freedom. It is not easy being free. Nor is it simple. The entire novel spins out these various complexities, almost all of them produced by a series of dynamic opposites that freedom must generate. There is, for example, that tension between individual freedom and community stability, between the need to nurture experimentation and the need to make money, or, more practically, between the traditional wisdom of home

From paradise to paradox 225 childbirth and an appreciation of the local hospital when these traditional methods fail (32.22). They also come to learn that neither pure conservatism nor pure liberalism will do, that each needs the other, that the pendulum will always swing back, and that traditionalism and stability are necessary for any effective revolution (29.11). Jean sees this almost immediately: “I just want a safe adventure,” she tells her beloved Gustavo, “a little stable chaos, a revolution on a firm foundation! Maybe, I just want to live in paradox” (LP 3.11). Interestingly, Heider appears to see this paradox as an apt expression of Kansas’s geographic location in the exact middle of the country: Kansas is America’s “neither East nor West,” its both-and. Thus when the college comrades sign their Paradox Covenant, they do so on July 4 (Independence Day), 1967, and seal the document with a Taoist yin-yang symbol (LP 8.26). So too one of the citizens of Paradox explains to Jean how “[t]he primary paradox in Kansas is being fiercely independent and at the same time respectful of others, cooperative, even in a way conformist” (LP 32.5). It is in this mid-western American context that the novel embraces, translates and eventually transforms what it calls simply “tantra.”9 This thirty-six chapter process begins, though, not with an American history lesson, nor a piece of geography, but with an act of physical love on a carpeted floor beneath a Chickering grand piano at Smith College, Jean’s alma mater. It was there, beneath the piano, that a youthful Barry Baker and Jean Anshaw experienced what the Indian Upanishads had known as ananda, the “bliss” that undergirds the universe (1.3), and what Will Schutz was now claiming as his own human potential notion of “joy” (1.4), that natural state of all human beings that can be actualized with the right techniques and attitudes. The first few pages of Living in Paradox implicitly connects both this ancient bliss and this modern joy to the Baker’s sexual ecstasy under the piano: “Bliss. Yes, the earth had moved, bells had rung, and neither could ever forget that absolute proof of the existence of God and the triumph of love that lingered for days and weeks” (LP 1.6). One has the sense – I have the sense anyway – that the rest of the novel is an elaborate working out of this original erotic gnosis on page 6, that the novel, first and foremost, functions as a narrative setting for the proclamation and celebration of this real-life sexo-spiritual diamond. One also has the sense – I have the sense anyway – that, although Heider knew a great deal about comparative mystical literature, when he looked around for available and truly adequate symbols to express (t)his original erotic gnosis, he could not find any in the Western religions. Like the American counterculture, he thus turned to 9

This cultural transmission is possible because of the metaphysics of Tantra itself, which finally denies the ultimacy of cultural and political boundaries through an affirmation of the universal (and always sexual) body: “What is here is elsewhere. What is not here is nowhere” (LP 13.23).

226 Jeffrey Kripal Asian languages and iconographies, and more specifically the Tao and the Tantra. Here he found what he was looking for. Here, he recognized something of himself. John Heider thus speaks through Jean Baker, who “[w]henever she heard mentioned the subject of sexual meditation,” that is, the subject of tantra, she found her “ears pricking up,” as if, she confessed, “something very deep in me” is being touched. “It feels almost like a memory from another incarnation” (13.23). Heider more or less says the same in the novel, through the character of Max speaking to Richard, Gustavo’s lover: “…we have no widely-known Western traditions of spiritual sexuality. Oh, there’s Oneida and Karezza and magnetic sex. But Christianity – that’s our primary influence – doesn’t have much to offer on the body. Nothing good below the diaphragm. Christians distrust pleasure, especially sexual pleasure” (26.13). “So what is Tantra in twenty five words or less?” Richard reasonably asks. Max answers back immediately in twenty nine: “Tantric meditation opens the whole human body to the energies of sexual intercourse, refining and amplifying them, and creating a more perfect union between oneself, one’s beloved, and God.” More technically – and more practically – tantra is about having sex without coming (LP 11.16), that is, it is a kind of contemplative coitus reservatus. Here is how it worked for the College community, through which tantra was spreading, “like a prairie fire” (LP 15.10). “Suppose,” the lovely hippie muse, Horizon, explains to Jubilo, “Suppose we were naked. And you sat on a zafu [meditation pillow] with your legs crossed, like meditation, in the lotus position. And I sat down on you, in your lap, face to face, my legs around you, taking you up inside me. And we just sat that way, breathing in unison, for thirty minutes or even an hour” (LP 13.8). Jubilo no doubt expresses the feelings of many a male reader when he confesses that he “couldn’t take it.” Still, that is what tantra is all about, at least for this novel. It is about riding sexual desire until it morphs into spiritual experience. It is about the paradoxical union of Spirit and Sex. Although hardly reflective of all of Tantra in South Asia, much of which involves the literal production of sexual fluids (that is, coming) as sacrificial offerings to the Goddess (White, 2003),10 such a practice bears a striking resemblance to the “male continence” techniques of John Humphrey Noyes, which the novel freely admits and connects literally to the Kansas Governor Charles 10

Impressively, Heider’s novel seems to intuit this “other history” through the character of Jordan, who claims that the “ultimate sacrifice” or loss of self involves him putting his penis in Vision and ejaculating. In this spirit, he thus asks Vision to go down into the coal mine shaft (which he likens to her vagina) with him, drop acid, and sit in sexual meditation, so that they can “die and be reborn together” (LP 26.28). This is much closer to the early history of Tantra in South Asia. It is also basically identical (minus the coal shaft) to the ancient Indian understanding of sexuality-as-sacrifice.

From paradise to paradox 227 Robinson (LP 15.3–5), as well as to the maithuna or sexual intercourse rituals of Huxley’s fictional island of Pala, which the novel seems to be aware of but does not mention as such (LP 9.8). Tantra as coitus reservatus, in other words, closely resembles earlier Western experiments. As such, it is something of both an East-West fusion and a reflection of the state of knowledge of Tantric practices in the 60s and 70s, which more or less equated the tradition with, well, not coming. But even Tantra is not sufficient unto itself. It too must be balanced by its opposites, that is, by Christianity, the West, and what the novel calls simply the Law. Barry Baker, at least, insists on what he calls the paradox of the Way and the Law, which at one point he sees incarnated, of all places, in the “burning bush” of Ophelia’s vagina (LP 23.25). The Way or Tao may need the Law, but in the end both are subsumed within the Tantra. One of the California hippies, Ganja (an Indian term for marijuana), also becomes a spokesperson here by his double claim that “[a]ll creation is dualistic, consisting of a dance of opposites,” and that we are not whole and become sick primarily and most deeply because of sexuality and gender: “Deeper than race or religion or nation, deeper than neurosis or psychosis, or even species is sex,” he insists. If we wish to become truly whole, then, Ganja claims that we must escape the trap of yin or yang, that is, we must escape the trap of sexual differentiation or gender itself (LP 34.4–5). This, it turns out, is one of the final and most radical claims of the novel. It is one of the deepest meanings of truly “living in paradox.” The novel itself suggests that Huxley knew about this attempt to go beyond gender, that the earliest Christian priests had Agapetae, or female ritual lovers, and that both the early Christian Gnostics and the later Catholic moralists permitted a form of coitus reservatus, the latter “claiming that it was known to Adam in the Garden and therefore a part of Paradise” (LP 13.18). Here we come to my alliterative thesis again “from Paradise to Paradox,” that is, here we finally arrive at a return to Paradise, not through the ascetic and certain means of salvation and the Gospel of Paul, but through the Goddess of the Gnostics and their sexual meditations,11 here joined to the contemplative techniques of Asian Tantra. The Gospel meets the Goddess. Or on Barry Baker’s words now: “We are discovering a new way, an American Tao, a Western Sadhana, a New Path Up The Mountain” (LP 25.6). By such a Path, Paradise has become Paradox, and a little town in Kansas has become the center of the universe. And why not? “What is here is elsewhere. What is not here is nowhere.”

11

Paul, Barry Baker points out, believed that sex and Spirit don’t mix; “‘Paul never tried tantra’ said Barry. ‘Paul never tried anything,’ grumped Gustavo” (LP 23.18).

228 Jeffrey Kripal Postscript to Living in Paradox – The “Sex and Drugs” Staff Week Seminar of 1991 The staff of Esalen traditionally takes a retreat together in December, usually the week before Christmas. In 1991, the staff invited an old friend and veteran group facilitator, John Heider, to help them process their reflections and frustrations. Heider, as we have already seen, had lived at Esalen from 1967 to 1971, during what was perhaps Esalen’s most well-known and celebrated period. Since then, Heider had gone on to work at the Menninger Clinic in Topeka Kansas; he had helped found a human potential center in Mendecino, California; he had become a successful encounter group leader and author; and, finally, he had nursed his parents through the portals of old age and death in his hometown of Lawrence, Kansas, where he resides now. John Heider knew more than a little about Esalen’s history, and his years there are still fondly remembered by Esalen community members, both present and former. On the last day of the retreat, Heider decided to deliver a talk entitled “Olden Times and New: Sex and Drugs at Esalen.”12 The text of this talk is a remarkable historical document, certainly for its actual content, but also for its marking of a particular moment of the community’s history, that is, a kind of post-Price period of nostalgia and resentment (Price, after serving as the community’s moral and spiritual axis for almost twenty years, had been killed by a boulder in a freak hiking accident in 1985). Heider is quintessentially himself here, that is, in turn funny, shocking, irreverent, chiding and loving, as he at once affirms the value of the transgressions of the Outlaw Era (that is, the 60s and early 70s) and gently encourages the community to stop romanticizing a past that was at best deeply ambiguous (and occasionally deadly) and move into a renewed vision of what Esalen can be in what is, by all measures, a radically different present. As Heider introduces the talk to his readers and contextualizes its original delivery, he recalls how much of the December 1991 retreat discussions revolved around a single issue, the familiar issue of freedom of self-expression. “A great deal of energy went into saying, well, it wasn’t like this in the old days. Or – if Dick Price were only here…” Heider signals what he is about to say in the text of the talk by reminding his readers that not everyone in the 60s condoned the excesses of the counterculture, and that many individuals who came to Esalen “were disturbed by what they found, and left.” “In the end,” Heider points out, “exhausted, I left too.” Interestingly, Heider’s long-hand notes to himself at this point in the manuscript read: “[Aleister] Crowley Do what thou wilt antinomian heresy” and “Svecchacara [a Sanskrit term meaning roughly “the practice of following one’s own will”]: Tantra idiotae: self-gods.” Heider, in other words, connects the power, promise and problems of this era with Western 12

This essay appears as Chapter 9 in Heider, 1997.

From paradise to paradox 229 sexual magic and Indian Tantra, very much along the lines we have been examining all along. The actual retreat talk begins with Heider observing that the community seems relatively peaceful now at the end of 1991, “more harmonious in most respects than it has [been] in all its history.” He also observes that “Esalen is blessed and burdened with a myth of the total freedom of olden times,” and that, like many myths, “this one has a measure of truth.” He remembers, for example, two Esalen sayings that he heard when he arrived on these grounds in 1967: “You can do whatever you have the balls to do in Big Sur,” and Ed Maupin’s famous, “Mother Esalen gives permission.” “But this is 1991,” Heider insists. “No community leader would say that today. (…) Times have changed.” The transgressions of the 60s made good sense, as they functioned as a meaningful response to a repressive, frightened and stunted culture. Much of that repression and transgression, moreover, revolved around sexuality. “Sex was Topic A,” and the men at least “assumed that men and women wanted the same thing: more.” There were certainly few serious sexually transmitted diseases to worry about. Antibiotics were effective. The pill was nearly universal. Esalen even had its own VD clinic provided by Monterey County, which provided services down at the baths every few weeks. Granted, female sexuality was still a mystery, but that was changing too. The mysterium of the Tantric yoni or vagina, for example, was a matter of actual empirical observation: It was Lenore, the county crotch doctor’s nurse, who brought us our first plastic speculums on August 27, 1968. These gynecological instruments were to Esalen as Galileo’s telescope or Leeuwenhoek’s microscope had been to pioneers of an earlier time. The plastic speculum let us see, see what had never been seen before: the mysterium altum, the inside of a vagina. No one I knew had looked into that darkness before (. . .) Not into a vagina, not at a penis. No one I knew had ever sat and meditated on a lingam or a yoni. No one had seen menstrual blood ooze out of a cervix.13

And it wasn’t just sex that was everywhere. Danger too lurked around every corner, or more accurately, along every cliff-edge: “The paths were unlighted, the cliffs unfenced. Esalen was not a safe place. People came for the danger, the risk, the freedom.” But this freedom, Heider chides, meant far more than doing what one wanted to do. It also meant doing precisely what one did not want to 13

This experiment, by the way, was an encounter group disaster. “Then Steve [Stroud] asked how many of the women would like to see the inside of their vaginas. Nearly all raised their hands. Then I said, ‘Well, we just happen to have with us…’ I brought out a speculum. The group froze, the energy went into stasis. At this point, too late, I recentered and saw that I’d made a mistake, a bad mistake” (Heider, 1968–71, p. 24). Heider had told more or less the same story, minus the existential disaster, in Living in Paradox (LP 23.4–5).

230 Jeffrey Kripal do at all, that is, what one most feared. “Remember the Freudian belief that resistance is a sure sign of work to be done; think of the body worker’s attitude toward chronic muscle tension.” Push and press there. Do that. Make the unconscious conscious. The principle was a simple (psychoanalytic) one: “The greater the fear, the more energy is bound up in it, the more potential for liberation.” The human potential, in other words, was not simply about joy and light; it was also about real fear and the psychoanalytic attempt to release often terrifying amounts of bound up energy and power. And then there were the drugs. This was not about casual drug use at all. Rather, drugs were what Heider calls “the Royal Road to higher consciousness.” “Our goal,” Heider insisted, “the goal of Esalen and of much of the counterculture, was simple: enlightenment.” But there were casualties on this royal road to enlightenment and its transgressive ways. Occasionally, too occasionally, there were even real deaths. In his journals, Heider had listed four: Marcia, who shot herself in a pick-up truck; Diane, who hung herself from the loft in Staff 1; Art, who had been thrown through a window in the fall of 1970 encounter group only to kill himself within the year; and Sunshine, who shot himself in the head at the craft barn. Such memories were personally crushing for Heider.14 Now he remembers for the community what his father had said to him about these terrible deaths: “Yes, but you’ll never know how many people went to Esalen already on the edge and decided not to kill themselves because of what happened there.” Heider also remembers what his teacher, Will Schutz, called Esalen: “the court of last resort.” Again, Will had said the same in the novel. Heider ends his retreat talk by noting that every counterculture is eventually itself countered. The pendulum swings back. If the 60s were a reaction to the McCarthyism of the 50s, the 80s would be a reaction to the 60s and 70s. Thus throughout the 80s the Outlaw Area shrank. The baths were cleaned, the paths were paved and lit, and fences were installed on the cliff. Heider then utters the thought many were thinking. “Put a date on the day the music finally stopped.” The day? Dick’s death. “Dick’s death ended Esalen’s role as blow-out center.” Almost. Heider finally pushes his listeners to wake up to their own historical moment and renew the spirit of Esalen, not in the then and there, but in the here and now: But has the Outlaw Area really shrunk or have individuals shrunk from the burden of being outlaws? Do you still await the return of the 60s, the Second Coming of 14

There were others as well, including Lois Delattre, who first introduced George Leonard to Michael Murphy and worked in the San Francisco office (she died in January of 1968 during a psychedelic session with MDA); Judith Gold, who drowned herself in the baths early in 1969; and Jeannie Butler, whose clothes were found above the cliff behind the Big House. Walter Truett Anderson’s discussion of the suicide issue is, as usual, balanced and insightful (Anderson, 2004, pp. 174, 180–181, 199–202, 236–237).

From paradise to paradox 231 Dick Price? I hope not. Your task is harder. You do not have the support of a culture in revolt. (…) You must be your own Fritz Perls, Will Schutz, Dick Price. If that won’t do, then wait and the unfolding gestalten [wholes] of time will soon enough deliver us into another revolutionary era, a new and unimaginable cultural shift. (…) I ask you, in the light of the 1990’s, to take stock: What are your beliefs, your customs today? Where do you stand on sex, drugs, and acting out your repressed selves? (…) What matters, what excites you, where are your frontiers? What are your freedoms and the limits to your freedoms? Why are you here? What are you doing at Esalen, what is Esalen’s mission now?

For anyone who has read John Heider’s unpublished essays and novel (admittedly a very small crowd), this is familiar stuff, but no less potent. What he was doing, after all, was encouraging, prodding his listeners “to live in paradox.” The Garden of Eden was still there. Anyone who has been to Big Sur knows that. All they had to do was abandon their hope in that silver bullet, in that final answer or complete salvation. Only then could they accept the serpent’s gift, awaken to their own moral maturity, actualize their own potential divinity, and finally understand the paradoxical processes that constitute the Way or Tao of the world. True, Paradise before the fruit was no more. Such a utopia had been exposed as a dangerous and finally futile fiction of the Western religious imagination – it was what they woke up from, in the bite. But Paradox, that universal experience of the most radical mystical traditions, was still very much alive and potential. “What is here is elsewhere. What is not here is nowhere.” The Wizard still lives in Oz, and Oz can be in Kansas or California or Calcutta. It makes no difference at all.

5. Answering our questions – The psychosexual promise of the modern autobiographer and the sexospiritual thesis of the Freudian left So what are we to make of all of this? Or, more to the present point, what does this have to do with the psychohistorical study of autobiography and the history of the psychology of religion? These two questions, recall, were the methodological promises (or problems) with which I began. What does it mean to study psychologically an historical figure who himself employs psychological techniques to live and to write? And, more historically, what happened to the psychology of religion as it passed through the prism of the human potential movement and the American counterculture? The answers to these two questions, it turns out, involve the two theoretical constructs with which I began, that is, the psychosexual and the sexospiritual, respectively. Let me begin with the first question, which we might rephrase this way: What can we learn here that we cannot learn elsewhere, that is, with dead people and historical texts? “What is here is elsewhere. What is not here is nowhere.” Yes, but the “here” is accessible in a way that the “elsewhere” – particularly a temporal elsewhere – is not and never can be. Let me put it most simply, that is,

232 Jeffrey Kripal personally. When I study comparative erotic themes in other cultures and times, I must work through historical distance, translation and, much too often, complicated screens of cultural denial, political history, censorship, even religious outrage. When, however, I work on the same or similar themes in a post-Freudian context like the counterculture or the human potential movement, I am given phone numbers, addresses, boxes of archival material, graphic dreams and visions, jokes, occasionally even a photo or anecdote, some of which I cannot possibly reproduce in any public context. “O that! That’s nothing. Let me tell you this. Oh, and here’s a photo.” I am exaggerating, of course, but not much, and only to make a point: oral history and living subjects are invaluable sources of methodological reflection for us, particularly when they themselves are trained in the methods we are using. What I have called the psychosexual for them is not a matter of some Freudian perversion or wild western theory; it is an obvious daily reality, a patent fact. The answer to our first question, then, is a rather simple one: contemporary autobiographers are invaluable sources of psychological theory precisely to the extent that they themselves are psychologically reflexive and so open about their own psychosexual dynamics, at least, of course, as they have access to these. They represent not a problem but a promise. I cannot count the times, for example, in my oral interviews with Esalen figures when the conversation turned to specifically psychoanalytic themes or interpretations. One central figure, for example, told me in great emotional and physical detail about a mystico-erotic encounter he had with a female angelic presence at an especially sensitive crisis-point in his personal life. He was able, with considerable precision, to tell me how far Freud could take him here, how much psychoanalysis made sense of the experience, why it happened then, why it felt the way it did emotionally, why it was sexual, etc.. He could also tell me, however, exactly at what point in the interpretive process Freud failed him. That point was metaphysical. Yes, of course, there was repression, sublimation, unconscious ideation. Yes, of course, he could feel how his own mind was shaping the form of the angel and the details of the encounter. But there was also something there. That is, there was something powerfully real about the experience that classical Freudian reductionism could not explain. Moreover, there was something about the sexual component that was not exactly sexual, that was transcendent. Significantly, this man turned to Tantric Sanskrit terms to explain what he meant, that is, he found the mystico-erotic language of Tantra to be more accurate than the reductive language of Freud here, even though he could see precisely how each type of interpretive language had its place and legitimacy. And here is where we approach the second question about what happened to the psychology of religion as it passed through the prism of the counterculture. Here is where we approach the question of the sexospiritual, that is, how

From paradise to paradox 233 precisely sexual and spiritual phenomena are related to one another. Certainly the same question haunts the journal entries, essays and novel of John Heider. Heider freely employs any number of modern psychological systems to interpret his experiences and group practice. Gestalt psychology, encounter group process, Freud, Jung, Reich – they are all used, at different times and in different contexts, to express and interpret the life. To take perhaps the simplest case, Heider clearly sides with Reich against Freud in his conviction that something like libidinal energies exist and that, moreover, their ontological status overflows the mechanistic models of classical psychoanalysis and, even more so, the exile into pure metaphor or symbol that many of the later ego psychologies and non-psychoanalytic systems have forced them into. This is not to say, however, that Heider is naı¨ve about the literal existence of these energies, as if they could be measured with a tuning fork or seen on a neuro-imaging scan. Recall that he freely speculates that such energies may not exist at all, but that he also insists on their phenomenological power. This is why he finds the Reichian language more adequate than the Freudian one. No historical author before the twentieth century could have told us that. This Reichian stream in Heider’s texts points to a broader cultural context that deserves some comment here, particularly since it points to the answer to our second question. The Freudian lineage at Esalen and in the broader human potential movement is definitely not an orthodox one. We are hardly on the East Coast with the American Psychoanalytic Association. We are rather on the West Coast with a kind of developing psychoanalytic mysticism of energy whose central move – that is, a thorough-going embrace of the Id or instinctual powers as essentially good and wise, even divine – can be traced back most immediately to Wilhelm Reich and a developing school of psychoanalytic thought that Paul Robinson has aptly named the Freudian Left (Robinson, 1990). There are many authors we could cite here as examples of this Freudian Left, from Alan Watts to Stanislav Grof, but one will have to suffice, the classicist turned poetic philosopher Norman O. Brown. Brown’s Love’s Body (1966) – which literally begins with Freud and ends with Buddhist Tantra – functioned as something of an intellectual Bible for the counterculture. The text is filled with passages like this one on what really unites mind and body and how the shameful fruit of the Garden of Eden can be redeemed by the shared gnosis of unorthodox psychoanalysis and Indian Tantra: Knowledge is carnal knowledge. A subterranean passage between mind and body underlies all analogy; no word is metaphysical without its first being physical; and the body that is the measure of all things is sexual. All metaphors are sexual; a penis in every convex object and a vagina in every concave one. Symbolism is polymorphous perversity. Orthodox psychoanalysis warns against the resexualization of thought and speech; orthodox psychoanalysis bows down before the reality-principle. (…) Nothing wrong, except the refusal to play: when our eyes are opened to the symbolic

234 Jeffrey Kripal meaning, our only refuge is loss of shame, polymorphous perversity, pansexualism; penises everywhere. As in Tantric Yoga, in which any sexual act may become a form of mystic meditation, and any mystic state may be interpreted sexually. (Brown, 1966, pp. 249–250)

It should hardly surprise us, then, when this same Freudian Left will later provide the broad intellectual context through which the shakti or “occult energy” of Asian Tantra will be transmitted and transmuted into American culture. The Freudian Left was the “cultural receptor,” as it were, for the meme of Tantra. Thus when the Tantric guru Bhagwan Rajneesh, for example, observed that “Freud only got to the third chakra,” he was saying at least two things, namely, that Freud’s drive theory and Tantra’s kundalini yoga are comparable models of occult energy and sublimation, and that Freud missed the “deeper” or “higher” blisses of the Id beyond the first three centers of the anal, genital and digestive systems (that is, the first three chakras). Freud, in other words, was not wrong; he simply did not go far enough. The language is Indian here, but the basic point is remarkably similar to some of the voices of the Freudian Left who out-Freud Freud by turning to explicitly religious or poetic languages in order to embrace and celebrate the Id as a mystical Force of orgasmic bliss, social revolution and even bodily transfiguration. What we have in the Freudian Left, in other words, is a kind of left-handed psychoanalysis that always begins with Freud but often ends with a re-visioned Western Tantra. And this, of course, is what we see in the writings of John Heider. The answer to our second question about what happened to the psychology of religion as it passed through the counterculture, then, involves the sexospiritual issue of a divinized Id, that is, it involves the efflorescence of the Freudian Left. This is what happened. Sometimes. It must be admitted, for example, that Heider is not primarily a psychoanalytic thinker. His primary psychological tools are group process and gestalt psychology. And this, I would suggest, is why he turns to Taoism as his primary religious conversation partner. If Indian Tantra is the Asian analogue of Western psychoanalysis (since both employ elaborate hydraulic mechanisms of Energy to express their theories), then Chinese Taoism and Zen Buddhism are the Asian analogues of gestalt psychology (since each employs a symbolism of the Whole or the field and a focus on Consciousness or awareness to express their theories). I recognize that this is somewhat simplistic, that Taoist traditions possess their own energy systems, that Zen is about more than awareness, and so on, but I nevertheless think it captures something true and correct, at least with respect to the corpus of John Heider. The Tantra is about Energy, and the Tao is about Consciousness, and Heider’s life and work have leaned toward the latter over the former. Almost. The concept and practice of Energy has never quite gone away for John Heider. It is not all about Consciousness, the Whole, or the Way. A certain

From paradise to paradox 235 mysticism of energy, a kind of Western Tantra, remains alongside and inside the Tao. I want to end with that remainder, with that Tantra in the Tao. John once told me a story about his father-in-law, a scientist who has spent much of his later life pursuing a rather interesting theory. He believes that when the human species first evolved from its primate ancestors, the earth was flooded with significantly more radiation, and that these low levels of ionizing radiation are what our bodies need to stay healthy and function at an optimum level. As evidence for such a theory, John’s father-in-law points to the rise of cancers in modernity, to the healing effect that radiation has on many cancers, and to many places on earth were people go to be healed from a variety of maladies and illnesses. The sand from one such place, a beach in Brazil, for example, is mildly radioactive, and that is why it heals. John half-believes this theory. He believes it enough anyway to sleep on occasion with a small bag of radioactive sand, which he got from his father-in-law, under his bed. I take this odd, slightly humorously, delightfully eccentric image as an apt place to end my equally eccentric essay. While Consciousness sleeps, Energy, real Energy burns under the bed, that place of sex and sleep and dream. The two, however, can never really be separated. Consciousness is Energy, and Energy is Consciousness. Spirit is Sex, and Sex is Spirit. That is the Paradox in which John Heider has lived since he left Paradise.

References Anderson, W. T. (2004). The upstart spring: Esalen and the human potential movement: The first twenty years. Lincoln: iUniverse. Brown, N. O. (1966). Love’s body. Berkeley: University of California Press. Erikson, E. H. (1958). Young man Luther. New York: Norton. Freud, S. (1910/1957). Leonardo Da Vinci and a memory of his childhood. In Standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud. Vol. 11 (translated and edited by James Strachey; pp. 59–137). London: Hogarth. Heider, J. (1965). The enhancement of perceptual acuity as a result of meditation. (Unpublished area paper. Duke University) Heider, J. (1968). The flexibility and rigidity of perceptual/cognitive constructs: A study of creative states of awareness. (Ph.D. dissertation, Duke University) Heider, J. (1968–71). Private Esalen Journals. (Unpublished) Heider, J. (1997). Life on the group room floor: An introduction to human potential theory & practice. (Unpublished manuscript) Huxley, A. (1962). Island. New York: Harper & Row. Jung, C. G. (1936/1969). Yoga and the West. In Psychology and religion: West and East (The Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Vol. 11, trans. by R. F. C. Hull, pp. 529–537). Princeton: Princeton University Press (Bollingen Series 20). Kakar, S. (1981). The inner world: A psycho-analytic study of childhood and society in India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Kripal, J. J. (2007). Esalen: America and the religion of no religion. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

236 Jeffrey Kripal Kripal, J. J. (forthcoming). Remembering ourselves: Notes on some countercultural echoes of contemporary Tantric studies. Journal of Religions of South Asia, 1 (1). Robinson, P. (1990). The Freudian left: Wilhelm Reich, Geza Roheim, Herbert Marcuse. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Studstill, R. (2005). The unity of mystical traditions. Leiden: E. J. Brill. Watts, A. W. (1961). Psychotherapy East & West. New York: Ballantine. White, D. G. (2003). Kiss of the Yogini: “Tantric sex” in its South Asian contexts. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. White, D. G. (2000). The practice of Tantra: A reader. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

DIFFERENT RELIGIONS, DIFFERENT CULTURES, DIFFERENT STORIES

THE PLACE OF RELIGION IN THE EXPERIENCE OF WAR-ORPHANS AS CONSTRUCTED IN THEIR LIFE STORIES1 Amia Lieblich “And there is another story about Y’s father, may he rest in peace, that I wanted to share with you. Later that winter of ’48, when the siege became quite bad, no coming or going out of the kibbutz, trenches all around, the agricultural work naturally had to stop in the fields. In the evenings, the men would gather in one of the rooms to pray and study the daily portion of the Talmud, taking turns in leading the lesson. There were enormous scholars and teachers among our fathers, you know. So Y’s father suggested one day: ‘Let us turn to study Maimonides’ thesis about martyrdom (Kidush Ha-shem)’. And so the group started to study this issue: Under what circumstances will it be justified to sacrifice oneself for God or the Torah? And later at night, when the group finished its lesson, and the men went on to their guard duties, Y’s father would take his gun, and a small backpack with his volume of Maimonides, and sneak quietly out of the kibbutz grounds through the fence, towards the neighboring village, Masuot Yitzchak, to teach the same lesson there. Let all of them be truly prepared for what might happen.”2

Background and history This episode was narrated during our interview by one of the most religious participants in my study of the second generation of the survivors of Kfar Etzion, Israel, to be described below. Within its general context, the story is constructed to include a number of meaningful messages: Our fathers were great believers and scholars, they conducted highly Jewish-religious life to the very last, they were martyrs and they knew it. Such episodes, with their implied meanings, give some purpose to the death of the fathers in the narrators’ world, and help them reach acceptance and reconciliation with their fate. Moreover, such stories indirectly imply or recommend a certain way of life for the descendents of these martyrs, namely my research participants. My thesis in the present paper is – as follows from the famous claims of James (1902/1958), Frankl (1959) and others – that a deep religious belief fortifies the individual against adversity, and may help him or her cope with highly stressful circumstances. Moreover, as we will see, many of the life-stories of the religious participants collected in this study demonstrate McAdams’ concept of redemption as a major theme in constructing their 1

The study was conducted and funded within the framework of Scholion, an interdisciplinary center for Jewish studies, at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. A Hebrew book titled The children of Kfar Etzion by the author (2007), provides a complete report of the study. 2 All the quotes are translated from Hebrew and, when necessary, slightly abbreviated.

240 Amia Lieblich narratives (McAdams & Bowman, 2001; McAdams, 2006). Thus, the report provides additional support, this time concerning the Jewish faith, for the hypothesis that religious beliefs or practices are associated with narrating one’s life according to the redemption motif (See McAdams & Albaugh, this volume). Following is a brief history of the community with which this study is concerned. Kibbutz Kfar Etzion, on the hills between Jerusalem and Hebron in Israel, was founded by a group of religious, Zionist Jewish pioneers in 1943. The common history of the first generation started, however, in the mid-thirties, when they formed training groups for collective farming (kvutzot hachshara), and started their communal existence as Kvutzat Avraham – a commune of agricultural workers who lived near Kfar Pines, at the center of Israel. For five years they prepared themselves, grew in number, and waited for the allocation of land for their settlement as a separate kibbutz, which finally happened in 1943. They managed to form a highly successful collective village, based on the double values of Jewish way of life and manual work, as formulated in the slogan “Torah Ve-Avodah” (Holy studies and work). Furthermore, they were able to absorb a number of Holocaust survivors who joined the kibbutz as members after WW II. However, the history of this community in its permanent location spans only five years; Kibbutz Kfar Etzion was conquered and completely destroyed by Arabs during the early stages of the War of Independence, in May 1948. Among the 240 casualties of these bloody days, seventy members of the kibbutz, most of them men, were killed in battle, while they tried to defend their settlement. Many of them were slaughtered after their surrender. Their offspring, the second generation of the kibbutz, which concern the present study, still call themselves “the children of Kfar Etzion” to this very day. They consist of 60 men and women, the oldest of whom were born in 1939, and the youngest in 1948. Their survival was ensured by the painful decision to evacuate non-fighters from the settlement. Four months before the tragic end, when life under siege in the kibbutz became extremely dangerous, all the children, their mothers3 and some pregnant women, were evacuated from the kibbutz to a Catholic monastery in Jerusalem, which temporarily sheltered them. Most of them never saw their fathers or husbands again. Their life as a commune continued for a while in Jaffa, where the government allocated to them a compound of homes evacuated by the Arabs. In 1952, the collective way of life was abandoned, and each family (the great majority were households headed by women) went its own way. Some of the widows remarried, while others raised their children alone. Some moved to other parts of Israel, while others remained in Jaffa, in the same location, for 15 years or more.

3

One mother refused to separate from her husband and sent her baby boy away with her closest friend. She is the only mother who died in battle.

The place of religion in the experience of war-orphans 241 This brief history of the community has an additional important chapter, namely the re-settlement of Kfar Etzion in its original site after the Six Days War of 1967. This significant finale has tremendous significance in the eyes of the community, although it directly concerns only about 12 of the second generation, who had joined the new kibbutz and settled there permanently. Fifty-five years after the tragedy of Kfar Etzion, during 2003–2004, I decided to study and write a book about the life stories of the “children” of Kfar Etzion. At this time, their addresses were spread all over Israel, with two of them living abroad, but most of them maintained at least superficial contacts among themselves, and kept seeing each other annually in the memorial ceremony for their deceased fathers. I contacted them individually and obtained agreement for the study from the vast majority of the group members.4 Conducting a qualitative, narrative research (Lieblich, Tuval-Mashiach & Zilber, 1998), I did not start off with particular hypotheses, but had two general aims in mind: from a psychological perspective – in line with my former studies of the effects of war (Lieblich, 1978) or about POWs (Lieblich, 1994) – to explore life after a major loss and trauma as experienced by this group members, and from a historical perspective – to study the construction of collective and individual memory in these selected individuals. Investigating the place of religion and its significance in the life-stories of my participants was not among the goals set for the study, but emerged from their discourse spontaneously. The material for the study was obtained by individual interviews with 51 members of the second generation group. Forty three of these women and men were orphaned of their fathers in 1948, during the battles in Kfar Etzion. Each conversation lasted between 1.5 to 4 hours, conducted in one or two meetings, and fully recorded and transcribed. In approaching these individuals – now 55 to 65 years old – I was asking each one separately to tell me her or his life story. No specific instructions were given to the task, but the men and women knew that I was interested in their unique history, and this had obviously affected their response. Almost all of the interviewees started their personal story from their common history as “children of Kfar Etzion,” including their serial number within the children’s community. The first part of the interview included almost always a presentation of the collective story of Kfar Etzion, its establishment, struggle and demise. It also recounted the story of the father’s death – or miraculous survival – events that were not part of the personal memory of the narrators in most cases, but based on stories they had heard or read since childhood. Furthermore, before elaborating on their own life stories, many of the narrators 4

Three factors may explain the very high rate of consent among the approached members: The fact that the Association of Kfar Etzion Survivors endorsed my study, the individual motivation of the people to spread their story and preserve the memory of their deceased parents, and my reputation as a non-fiction author in Israeli society.

242 Amia Lieblich provided long and detailed history of their parents’ families of origin in East Europe, their parents’ whereabouts during WW-II, and the circumstances of their rescue and immigration to Palestine. In most cases, they also reported about their children and grandchildren, emphasizing the continuity between the generations. About eighty-five percent of the narrators were religious, namely believing Jews who led their daily lives in accordance with the religious Jewish law (halacha). As mentioned above, the subject of religion was not directly asked about in our conversations. However, it should be mentioned that for Jewish observing individuals, their religious way of life is apparent from their external appearance. Men put on yarmulkes (Kippahs) on their heads, and do not shave during particular periods of the year. Most religious women of this generation, if married – cover their hair, do not wear pants but only skirts or dresses, and in general – maintain a certain dress code of “modesty,” which I, too, observed in their company. In other words, whether a participant was religious or not5 was immediately obvious the moment we met. In the next sections of the paper I will propose and discuss several points where religious beliefs and life style intersected with the individual narratives, or emerged as a topic for elaboration during our interviews, starting with the most general conclusion, and then detailing several more specific mechanisms.

Some of the research outcomes concerning religion Undoubtedly, the “children” of Kfar Etzion experienced severe events in their early childhood. The vast majority of them lost their fathers and were uprooted from their homes. As their memories indicate, these hardships had been clearly manifested in their daily lives with their mothers and in the conduct of these young widows. One of the strongest outcomes of the study is, however, that the participants did not describe their history as “traumatic.” They did talk about their “loss” and “tragedy,” both as individuals and a community, emphasizing the great sadness of their mothers, and their own regrets about the loss of the kibbutz. Moreover, as adults and parents at present, they realized that they had missed a great deal by not having fathers to raise and educate them. But their discourse very rarely used the popular psychological terms of trauma and recovery. Their 5

Among the Jews in Israel, there exists a general well know division between “religious” (dati), namely people who observe the Jewish way of life, more or less similarly to the Orthodox Jews in the USA, and “secular” (chiloni), who are Jews who do not observe the traditional religious way yet clearly identify themselves as Jewish. There are many shades of religiosity among the Jews in Israel and elsewhere, which are beyond the scope of the present study. The type of religiosity of the participants of the present study is usually termed “national religious.” (See for example Forta, 1995; Shmueli, 1990. These books may be useful to elaborate on the other Jewish concepts utilized in this paper.)

The place of religion in the experience of war-orphans 243 reports never included references to what is considered as Post Traumatic Syndrome Disorder (APA, 1994). Moreover, several of the men said explicitly in our interview: “I hope that you will not write about our childhood events as a big trauma for us, because this will be a grave mistake of misrepresentation.” Some of them added in summary of their childhood chapter: “In fact, we had a very happy childhood.” Not only was this verbally emphasized in the discourse and language of the conversations, but, in spite of its multiple losses, the studied group would be considered normal or super-normal by any accepted mental health criterion. They were all married and had children and grandchildren (one woman was presently undergoing a divorce, one man and a woman had divorced and remarried), and were middle-class or higher in their education and professional achievements.6 Following Belzen (this volume) in quoting Freud’s famous criteria for mental health – stability in love and work – the research participants were all apparently healthy. How can we explain the resilience or unusual coping of the participants with their losses? How did they escape the fate of seeing their lives as governed by trauma, having to re-experience its Post-Traumatic effects?

Broad components Several factors seem to suggest an explanation for this finding, and among them community, religion and patriotism play the largest role. These three interconnected factors were also proposed by the interviewees themselves, in our conversations about this subject.

a. Community During the formative years of their childhood after their loss, the boys and girls were raised in the kibbutz’ communal way of life, which provided for continuity in their experiences, in spite of their tragedy. They lived with their mothers and the small number of surviving men in Jaffa,7 in several neighboring houses. While their mothers underwent various professional training programs or worked outside the compound, the children spent the day in school or in the kibbutz children dormitories, where they also slept during the night. Their contact with the mothers was limited mostly to the afternoons. The children, who almost all 6 Possibly the people who refused to meet me had more problematic life stories, which they did not want to disclose. As stated above, I interviewed 51 participants for the research. Of the sixty original group members, four had already died, and the remaining five – namely less than 10% – refused to participate in the study. 7 Jaffa, south of Tel Aviv, (presently part of Tel Aviv municipality) was an Arab town prior to 1948. When, during the War of Independence, many of the Arabs left, houses became available for the Jewish refugees and new immigrants, and that’s where the authorities relocated the survivors of Kfar Etzion.

244 Amia Lieblich shared the same fate and knew well of each other’s family situation, developed a caring and cohesive children community. They created their own games, adventures, songs and language in the social world that they shared, and provided dayand-night entertainment for each other. Being an orphan in this children community was not unusual. According to the narrators’ memories, the opposite was true; the children whose fathers survived were a small minority, often jealous of the prestigious orphans. . . Fatherless children were considered sons and daughters of great heroes, and their games often re-enacted their battles. Furthermore, the female and male adults who took care of the children were mostly described as extremely warm and caring. They provided surrogate family for the children, whose mothers were often gloomy or volatile at the time. A vast proportion of the narrators’ stories described their children community, a subject they also keep reminiscing about whenever they meet. As we will see in the following section about the more specific mechanisms, the community governed the children’s lives in many ways, which in general removed them from the direct, intense influence of their mothers, and seem to have been beneficial to their well being.

b. Religion In addition to the place of the community, the stories constructed by the second generation elaborate the role of religion in eliminating or minimizing possible post-traumatic effects. As demonstrated in the opening quotation, the deceased fathers are described as ardent believers and deeply religious in their way of life. The construction of their death as Kiddush Hashem, namely martyrdom for God’s sake, connects their history to that of the long chain of the Jewish pious (Tzadikim) who sacrificed their lives for their faith. Although according to Jewish tradition God’s ways are not always understandable to humans, and the interviewees wondered about it in our conversation, their current religious beliefs helped them in maintaining that there was some Godly purpose in their parents’ fate. Furthermore, as we will see below, Jewish religious rituals provide public and private frameworks for mourning and commemoration of the deceased, thus helping the individual in his or her progress from calamity to routine. Additional support for my sense of the role of religion in the participants’ resilience resulted from the fact that of the very few interviewees (no more than 5 out of the 51) who did describe their childhood circumstances as traumatic, the vast majority (four out of five) were presently non-religious adults.

c. Patriotism According to the participants’ stories, the long desperate battle of Kfar Etzion, which led to the death of their fathers, defended Jerusalem, secured it as Israel’s capital, and prevented its capture by the Arab forces. Thus, the narrators’ fathers’ heroic death plays a part in the patriotic sentiment of contributing what is of utmost worth to the individual, for the benefit of the State. This meaning was

The place of religion in the experience of war-orphans 245 reinforced in the famous eulogy of Ben Gurion for the fighters of Kfar Etzion and the other three neighboring villages, when he said in their collective funeral in November 1950: “The citizens of Jerusalem owe their thanks not only to those who brought in food at night into the besieged city, under constant shelling and shooting, and not only to the military units who liberated the city at long last, but first and foremost to those who fell in Kfar Etzion. Their sacrifice saved Jerusalem more than the entire military effort” (Free translation from Hebrew, A.L.). People often said something similar to the following quotation from one of the female orphans, 60 years old: “I am sad that I never knew my father. But I know he died for a purpose. There was a meaning to his death – defending Jerusalem and paving the way for the declaration of the State.8 Since childhood, every time I heard the stories about the War of Independence and the establishment of the State in school, I knew that it is about me, about us, and I felt very proud.” Clearly, such emotions and attitudes help people in coping with their losses. To summarize, it is evident that – as in other cases in history – the total Gestalt of the three factors, namely community support, religion and patriotism, consists of a strong formula for producing resilience and coping with adversity.

Specific mechanisms While the above general components of the narrators’ experience provide some answers to the question of the group’s resilience, their stories abound with more specific descriptions which detail the power of religion in helping the war orphans sustain their losses. Since the collective life-style of the adults and children was religious, the community observed and celebrated the Jewish calendar (Forta, 1995), in a way that provided a sense of rhythm, continuity and confidence to its members. First of all, a clear distinction was made between the days of the week, and the Sabbath, starting with sunset on Friday evening, and till stars could be viewed on Saturday night. People did not work on Sabbath, and the children did not go to school. Public prayers were held and the ritual meals were undertaken in the dining hall on Friday and Saturday. Since much of the traditional Jewish ritual is usually performed by the male adults, having a common event provided all children, including the many fatherless ones, with the opportunity to participate in the ritual as performed by the seven males who had survived the battle (plus some younger men who joined the community). The orphan children did not feel excluded neither from the Sabbath ritual, nor from other annual holiday rituals. Sukkoth, for example, is a holiday which requires the building of a temporary hut, covered with tree branches, where all meals take place during the Sukkoth week (Forta, 1995). Younger boys and girls, or their mothers, could not probably 8

Kibbutz Kfar Etzion was conquered on the 4th of May 1948, one day before Ben Gurion’s declaration of the establishment of the independent state of Israel.

246 Amia Lieblich carry out this ritual construction. As long as the kibbutz community existed, the children were spared this personal problem, since a Sukkah for the entire community was erected in the common yard. When after five years the kibbutz life style was discarded in the compound, spontaneous arrangements took place whereby the surviving male adults helped the growing boys to perform this ritual. One such example is the following: “I remember the first Sukkoth when I realized that a kibbutz’ Sukkah will not be built this year. I brought some wooden leftovers from the neighborhood, but the moment I used the hammer, I hurt myself. Nothing seemed to work. I was desolate. Then Nahum saw me in the yard and came over. He said: ‘Let us do this together,’ and so we did. I will never forget this kindness.” Again, what we see in this example is the combination of religion and community for the provision of a stable and meaningful framework to the survivors’ daily existence. In other words, their individual losses were mitigated by the security bestowed through the shared rituals, as conducted in the community. A separate room in the compound was dedicated to act as the synagogue of the group. In the beginning it had very little equipment, since even the Toarah scrolls were not rescued from the original kibbutz. However, in a poetic mood one of the male participants, (not religious today) recounted: “I used to sneak into the little synagogue quietly when nobody was there. I would imagine God as a big lion lying on top of the arch, and I conducted all kind of conversations with Him.” The Jewish ritual public prayer requires the presence of a minyan, namely ten adult males (Forta, 1995). Normally there was not this number of men around on weekdays, so common prayers were conducted only on the Sabbath and on holidays. The assembly of the entire community in these occasions is described as extremely important and meaningful for the children (and probably the adults, too). Many ‘children’ narrated about these events with nostalgia, as recalled by one of the participants: In the beginning it was strange to pray to God, since all these prayers are full of expressions of praise and gratitude. I remember I told my Mom that I could not pray, but we joined the congregation just the same, of course. Gradually these prayers became meaningful again; I don’t know how it happened. The music, the melody in which we had always chanted the prayers in Kfar Etzion, was terribly moving in these circumstances.

Many participants referred to the music of the synagogue prayers as a cherished memory. Many of them pray in the same style and form to this very day. Without having to mention their loss and longing, these prayers manifested the absence of most men from the community, on the one hand, and the persistent continuation of their heritage, on the other hand. The particular music of the Kfar Etzion prayers is one of the symbols of the community to this very day. There is a tape and a record of some of these prayers, as performed by twin

The place of religion in the experience of war-orphans 247 brothers, orphans from the second generation. One of the interviewees told me how amazed he was to encounter the same melody in a boarding school he attended years later, and how he went to the Rabbi who conducted the ritual and identified himself as “a child of Kfar Etzion, where this melody comes from.” In the narrators’ memories, deep sadness is also associated with the synagogue, as recalled tearfully by a female orphan: The synagogue was the place where the absence of my father was mostly experienced by me. It was terrible to sit there on the bench for Friday night prayers, next to my mother, surrounded by all these women and children, and almost no men. I missed my father terribly there. I was envious of the few friends whose fathers remained alive. I remember how I noticed younger children who clang to the few men who survived, thirsty for an embrace, as if they needed a masculine touch.

Others, mostly men, referred to another aspect of this want, as for example: “It was very difficult to conduct public prayers in the synagogue, since all our best cantors were killed in the war. The men who replaced them were not as musical, but they did their best.” Without going too far with my interpretations, it is obvious that God and the prayers slightly compensate the little children for the lack of their fathers. Moreover, some of the experiences detailed above can be viewed as depicting the synagogue as a container of the participants’ pain (Stroebe, Stroebe & Hansson, 1993), in other words: a place/occasion where the mourning and sadness of the children was legitimized, thus empowering them. In the participants narratives, these processes and experiences balanced somewhat the predominantly happy childhood memories which they provided, in elaborating about their games and adventures in the children society. In addition to these specific mechanisms, which operated the whole year round, I would like to highlight two annual events, which also touch upon the link of religious practices and coping. All of the interviewees detailed at length the annual memorial service for the deceased which took place in Mt. Herzel, Jerusalem, the main military cemetery, where the common grave of the defenders of Kfar Etzion is situated. This is the occasion for the annual meeting of all people who are related to the history of the kibbutz, and particularly the spouses, children and grandchildren of those who were killed in the Last Battle. According to the Jewish tradition, prayers are recited in memory of the dead, whose full names are read one by one by the cantors, and Kadish is said by the male descendants (Forta, 1995). Although this is a completely religious ceremony, it is also a sacred assembly of the community at large, believers and non-believers alike. The number of people attending (as I witnessed myself in the last couple of years) grows every year, with generations of new-born added to the crowd. All are welcome to attend, and indeed it is not a sorrowful occasion, but rather a formal ritualistic gathering of a community sharing a common history. All come to be seen and

248 Amia Lieblich to see each other. For many interviewees, their unquestionable presence in this social-religious ceremony consists of their core identity. I am not sure whether such a powerful community event would have taken place persistently had it not been also required by the law of religion, which is naturally more relevant to these mostly orthodox individuals. There are other nonreligious communities in Israel that share a tragedy of similar nature (although not of similar magnitude) – and none of them has the same intense and pervasive memorial ceremonies. Finally, among the specific religious mechanisms I include also the camps which the community organized for its children every summer for five years following the disaster. These summer camps, which took place in various locations in Israel, chosen to resemble the original landscape of Kfar Etzion, were mostly fun and scouting events, which allowed the mothers also to take a break of ten to fifteen days away from their kids. However, at the same time, the camps were designed to be highly educational, emphasizing two goals: preserving the memory and history of Kfar Ezion and reinforcing the religious belief and practices of the boys and the girls. While it is clear that the community had a tremendous interest to preserve its collective memory, these camps were described by several of the participants also as schools for religious practice which created habits for life. For example: “I never knew how you bless the Lord after the meals. When we still ate in the common dining room I was too small, and I am not even sure we did ‘birkat ha-mazon’ then. When we started to eat in private, at home, my mother certainly never made these prayers or asked me and my sister to do it. Only in camp did we learn.” And similarly: “We had no minyan for prayers in our small synagogue, I really didn’t know the daily prayers until I came to camp.”

The expression of loss and pain Throughout the interviews the participants, now in their fifties or sixties, expressed their longing for their fathers, and their wishes and attempts to learn more about them. In the religious realm, the fathers’ absence was often experienced as an educational deprivation. Since it is the traditional role of the father to teach his children – mainly his sons – the proper way of being Jewish, a socialization which takes place from early childhood on and much earlier than schooling time, the lack of male parent was often experienced as some ignorance in the participants’ Jewish understanding and practices. In spite of the mechanisms described above, which compensated partially for this absence, some interviewees were critical of their mothers as the sole educators at home. The following is a relevant quote about this matter: I raised myself, we grew up like wild grass, as a children, adult-less society. There was not enough instruction of any kind. Our mothers were busy, often miserable and lacking patience. I didn’t know how to pray and I didn’t understand the Mitzva’s, we

The place of religion in the experience of war-orphans 249 never received any serious religious education – because this is the role of the father and my father was dead. I felt it acutely when I was Bar-Mitzva’d, although the collective gave me a good teacher to prepare me and provided me and my peers with a great Bar-Mitzva party. I know of my father that he was a great Jewish scholar, and I miss his teaching. Sadly enough, all the great teachers, the religious leaders of our community, were killed in battle, and we all remained orphans in this respect.

In fact, some of the men whose mothers remarried during their childhood, complimented their step fathers for providing them with the necessary religious socialization. Although this trend may be viewed as a contradiction to the former presentation of the community and its values as possible replacement for the missing fathers, I see this theme as manifesting openness and lack of repression on the second generation’s part. These expressions of shortcomings, together with the more general disclosure of sorrow and longing for the fathers (which are beyond the scope of the present paper) manifest the multi-faceted nature of the healthy mourning process. Allowing people to share their pain, at the same time fortifying them with religious and Zionistic meanings, is perhaps what resulted in their healthy adjustment. As the years go by, many of the survivors of the first generation of Kfar Etzion settlers have gradually died. According to the Jewish religious mourning laws, the family which lost one of its members sits shiva, namely seven days, in the mourners’ home, praying in public three times a day and receiving people who come to express their condolence (Forta, 1995). These events, highly attended by the second generation members of the community, provide opportunities where people meet to share their pain and to reminisce. Furthermore, many of the interviewees told me that when they sat shiva for their mothers, they indeed felt they were doing it for their fathers, who had died more than fifty years ago. The beneficial psychological effect of these religious habits was recently analyzed by Alon and Omer (2006).The emotional blend of prayer, memory, and the legitimized expression of pain made these occasions highly intense and meaningful in the lives of the individuals and the community.

The return to Kfar Eztion and its religious significance In the Six-Day War of 1967, the hills of Kfar Etzion were won back from the Jordanians, in other words “liberated”. Three months later, the Israeli government allowed a group of young men and women, led by a small number of the second generation of Kfar Etzion survivors, to resettle the kibbutz. After nineteen years of exile, the village was rebuilt and is at present a thriving religious kibbutz among many new settlements in the area. Without going into the political debate about Israel and the occupation, the “return” gave additional religious significance to the story of Kfar Etzion and, in some respects elevated it to a

250 Amia Lieblich narrative of mythical nature. It is well known that the Jewish history is in a nutshell a narrative of settlement, exile and return. The ancient Israelites lived in the Land of Israel, till exiled by the Romans more than 2000 years ago. In the Bible, God promised to his people that, after their exile, they would return to the promised land. For generations, in the Diaspora, the Jews kept praying daily for this return to happen in their lifetime (Shmueli, 1990). It did happen in the 20th century, in circumstances we all know. So, the political narrative of the Zionist movement and the State of Israel is deeply intertwined with the religious narrative about God, His people and the Holy Land. Putting aside the issue of justice and rights of the different nations involved in the Middle East conflict, the return of Kfar Etzion to its previous location, after nineteen years of exile and longing, could be constructed as a mini-history of the entire Jewish nation and its fate. Thus, the story of this particular village may become a symbol or a myth representing supernatural intervention, and God’s response to human prayer. Although only a small minority of the second generation of Kfar Etzion live at present in the re-built kibbutz, among its most vocal leaders are some of my research participants, whose belief system represents a close amalgam of Jewish religion and Zionist ideology. While some of my research participants were greatly critical of what they felt was the utilization of their history for blatant political aims, most of them did not refrain from framing the “return” as an act of God, according to their religious beliefs and in answer to their prayers.

Discussion On the whole, this study demonstrated the importance of religious beliefs and practices as a means for individual adjustment after adversity. It explored the general and specific mechanism which may account for this finding. The collective story of Kfar Etzion is a typical redemption narrative. Starting from a very difficult situation in life, the narrators describe long life of competence, achievements and satisfaction. They did not repress their so-called traumas, but vowed to remember their past. According to McAdams (2006) the redemptive self is a story about how a blessed protagonist, equipped with morality and values, traverses life’s dangers, overcomes pain and trouble, and deeply cares about future generations. This description fits the second generation of Kfar Etzion very well. Moreover, in accordance with McAdams’ claim about the association between the redemption myth and generativity (McAdams, 2006), the participants of the present study indeed seemed to me as healthy citizens in society, contributing to their families and the community at large, namely what Erikson (1963) or McAdams would call “generative adults.” When I set out to interview the second generation of Kfar Etzion I was highly aware of the literature about transgenerational transmission of trauma

The place of religion in the experience of war-orphans 251 (e.g., Harkness, 1993) and in particular the studies about the second generation of Holocaust survivors (for example Hass, 1996). I was more than prepared to hear stories about trauma, on-going suffering, and the psychological long term outcomes of such antecedents. As I got to know the participants, however, I was surprised to discover that very rarely did they use the discourse of trauma and coping, or saw themselves as survivors of any kind. If anything general can be stated, they saw themselves as offspring of heroes whose noble deeds are not as wellknown as they should be. This discrepancy between my researcher’s expectations and the data motivated my entire project and writing, as well as this particular report about the place of religion in the life stories of the research participants. In the growing literature about trauma and suffering, we often see trauma as almost an objective state, using an objective definition, and its severity is graded by experts. Trauma is frequently perceived in psychological literature as well as in popular thought as an event, rather than a state of mind (see Alon & Omer, 2004). It is in fact an individual response to events, which cannot be directly predicted from the historical past. It goes without saying that this view allows for the development of hope for people who have encountered tragedies of various kinds in their lives. The study of Kfar Etzion strongly supported this point of view. It demonstrated to me in great clarity that one should define trauma only subjectively or phenomenologically. In other words, since the vast majority of the interviewees did not construct their life stories as those of trauma and recovery, and I could not detect hidden, indirect expressions of post-traumatic stress in their discourse (following, for example, Rogers et al., 1999), I am taking the stance of the “trusting scholar,” suspending my disbelief, or in using Ricoeur’s (1970) terms “the hermeneutics of faith” (Josselson, 2004). Put succinctly, I came to think that the use of trauma as a major concept in this context is unjustified. Among the probable reasons for the scarcity of traumatic motifs in the participants’ discourse or the construction of their pasts, I have presented in this paper community, religion and patriotism. These factors are not very different from the ones listed in theories about variables producing resilience of high-risk children (Werner & Smith, 1992), which emphasize the importance of stable emotional support and peer relationships as highly significant in protecting individuals against the psychological stress they had experienced earlier. I would like to add to the factors mentioned so far also the ample opportunities which the interviewees have had for narrating their experiences and history, as most evident in their memorial services and “shiva” meetings. None of my research participants named this factor directly, although it was actually prevalent in their narratives. I firmly believe, as most psychotherapists do, that in providing opportunity where people who had undergone suffering are allowed and encouraged to talk about it, we help them adjust to their lot and function as healthy human being (Alon & Omer, 2006). This telling, re-telling and sharing memories,

252 Amia Lieblich indeed, is what happens in several of the religious rituals and gathering of Kfar Etzion descendents to this very day. As people aged, it was possible for them, in these religious occasions, to re-write and re-author their stories about their dead parents, and, as a result, to experience self-growth and change (White, 1997). A discussion of the controversial place of memory in Jewish religion, its philosophy and practices, is far beyond the scope of this paper or my capacity. Although some scholars (see for example Yerushalmi, 1982) claim that history did not concern the Jewish scholarship till recently, I would argue that, on a general level, the Jewish religion cherishes the memory of the past. It is a biblical command (mitzvah) to remember one’s past (zakhor), especially the collective past of the nation. Jewish holiday rituals, for example Passover and Hanukah, remind the observers’ congregation of ancient times’ historical events. Thus, a link with the past is always present in the lives of Jewish believers, and in case of past losses, this provides a legitimized means for maintaining contact with the deceased, in a manner that promotes individual mental health and well being. In addition, many of the Jewish holidays recount historical myths of redemption, thus providing religious Jews with meta-narratives of the redemption motif for their own individual life-stories. The Jewish religion, being a national religion and requiring many collective rituals, is actually based on the three components observed in the Kfar Etzion case: religiosity, belonging to the community and attachment to the nation. With different blend of these described factors and mechanisms, some of them cultural- religious and others of more social-ideological nature, most of the individual war-orphans which I studied in Kafar Etzion second generation were able to fortify themselves against their past personal tragedies, and lead normal lives in their communities.

References Alon, N. & Omer, H. (2004). Demonic and tragic narratives in psychotherapy. In A. Lieblich, R. Josselson & D. McAdams (Eds.), Healing plots: the narrative basis of psychotherapy (pp. 29–48) New York: American Psychological Association Press. Alon, N. & Omer, H. (2006). The psychology of demonization: Promoting acceptance and reducing conflict. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Publishers. American Psychiatric Association (APA) (1994). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (3rd Edition), Washington DC: APA. Belzen, J. A. (this volume). Autobiography, psychic functioning and mental health: Religion and the transformation of the self. Erikson, E. H. (1963). Childhood and society (2nd Ed.). New york: Norton. Forta, A. (1995). Judaism. New York: Harcourt Education. Frankl, V. E. (1959). Man’s search for meaning. Boston: Beacon Press. Harkness, L. L. (1993). Transgenerational transmission of war-related trauma. In J. P. Wilson & B. Raphael (Eds.), International handbook of traumatic stress syndromes (pp. 635–644). New York: Plenum Press.

The place of religion in the experience of war-orphans 253 Hass, A. (1996). In the shadow of the Holocaust: The second generation. New York: Cambridge University Press. James, W. (1902/1958). The variety of religious experience. New York: New American Library. Josselson, R. (2004). The hermeneutics of faith and the hermeneutics of suspicion. Narrative Inquiry, 14 (1), 1–29. Lieblich, A. (1978). Tin soldiers on Jerusalem beach. New York: Pantheon. Lieblich, A. (1994). Seasons of captivity. New York: New York University Press. Lieblich, A. (2007). The children of Kfar Etzion. Haifa, Israel: University of Haifa Press (Hebrew). Lieblich, A. Tuval Mashiach, R. & Zilber, T. (1998). Narrative research: Reading analysis and interpretation. Thousand Oaks, Ca.: Sage. McAdams, D. P. (2006). The redemptive self: Stories Americans live by. New York: Oxford University Press. McAdams, D. P. & Albaugh, M. (this volume). The redemptive self, generativity, and American Christians at midlife: Life stories of evangelical and mainline protestants. McAdams, D. P. & Bowman, P. J. (2001). Narrating life’s turning points: Redemption and contamination. In D. P. McAdams, R. Josselson & A. Lieblich (Eds.), Turns in the road: Narrative studies of lives in transition (pp. 3–34). New York: American Psychological Association Press. Ricoeur, P. (1970). Freud and philosophy: An essay on interpretation. New York: Yale University Press. Rogers, A., Holland, J., Casey, M. E., Nakkula, V., Ekert, J. & Sheinberg, N. (1999). An interpretive poetics of languages of the unsayable. In R. Josselson & A. Lieblich (Eds), Making meaning of narratives: The narrative study of lives, Vol. 6 (p. 77–106). Thousand Oaks, Ca: Sage. Shmueli, E. (1990). Seven Jewish cultures. New York: Cambridge University Press. Stroebe, M. S., Stroebe, W. & Hansson, R. O. (Eds.) (1993). Handbook of bereavement: Theory, research and intervention. New York: Cambridge University Press. Werner, E. & Smith, R. (1992). Overcoming the odds: High-risk children from birth to adulthood. New York: Cornell University Press. White, M. (1997). Narratives of therapists lives. Adelaide: Dulwich Centre Publications. Yerushalmi, Y. H. (1982). Zakhor: Jewish history and Jewish memory. Seattle: University of Washington Press.

THE REDEMPTIVE SELF, GENERATIVITY, AND AMERICAN CHRISTIANS AT MIDLIFE EXPLORATIONS OF THE LIFE STORIES OF EVANGELICAL AND MAINLINE PROTESTANTS1 Dan P. McAdams and Michelle Albaugh Religious faith is about stories. Faith traditions from around the globe tell and teach the sacred narratives that animate their respective belief systems, rituals, social practices, and characteristic ways of making meaning out of human life. Religious people learn, and often learn to love, stories that have been passed down from one generation to the next – tales about the creation of the world, destructive floods, holy wars, virgin births, heroic founders and evil foes, martyrs and saints, captivity and liberation, covenants and transgressions, the meaning of the natural world and the animal kingdom, reincarnation, personal enlightenment, and transcendence (Fowler, 1981; Smith, 2003). And they learn, and often learn to love, contemporary anecdotes and applications, stories of how religious faith transformed the lives of their neighbors and friends, how a relative was once “lost” but now is “saved,” how a boy became a martyr for the cause, how a prayer was once answered, how a good life once went awry. Any and all of these stories – from the Buddha’s struggle to make sense of suffering to an uncle’s deathbed conversion – can conceivably find their ultimate way, transformed and personalized, into the stories people tell about their own lives. It is these latter narratives – people’s life stories – that form the centerpiece for the inquiry here. Our central question is this: How do people of faith narrate the stories of their lives? In what follows, we describe an approach to the psychology of religion that combines quantitative social science with the more interpretive, hermeneutical modes of inquiry that are featured in the narrative study of lives (Josselson & Lieblich, 1993; McAdams, 2001a). We briefly outline the procedure we are currently following in an ongoing study of the life stories, religious values, and politics of nearly 200 midlife American adults who are deeply involved in 1

The research described in this paper was funded by a grant to the first author from the Foley Family Foundation. We would like to thank Dan Bartels, Jacob Belzen, Keith Cox, Ed de St. Aubin, Jonathan Haidt, Gina Logan, Brad Olson, Jennifer Pals, and Bill Peterson for comments on an earlier draft of this manuscript. Address correspondence to Dan P. McAdams, Foley Center for the Study of Lives, Northwestern University, 2120 Campus Drive, Evanston, IL 60208, U. S. A. [email protected]

256 Dan P. McAdams and Michelle Albaugh Christian faith traditions and who regularly vote in local and national elections. We then describe two key concepts that form the theoretical backdrop for our inquiry. These are generativity, which Erikson (1963) defined as the adult’s concern for and commitment to the growth and well-being of future generations, and the redemptive self, which is a particular kind of story or personal myth that, research suggests, especially generative American adults tend to tell about their own lives at midlife (McAdams, 2006). In short, the redemptive self is a story about how a blessed protagonist, equipped with moral conviction, journeys forth into a dangerous world and eventually overcomes adversity and suffering to leave a positive legacy of the self for future generations. We then introduce two case studies that illustrate two respective variations on the redemptive self. In the first, an evangelical Protestant woman describes how her conservative religious faith and her conservative brand of politics, built around what the sociolinguist George Lakoff (2002) calls a strict father model of morality, save her from an unregulated and chaotic life driven by impulse and materialism. In the second, a more liberal, mainline Protestant woman describes how her more progressive and spiritual form of religious faith and her more liberal politics, structured partly around Lakoff’s nurturant caregiver model, deliver her from an unfulfilled and hollow life. The two cases illustrate two sharply different discourses of redemption in the life stories of midlife American Christians – a more conservative, quasi-Freudian story of overcoming conflict and a more liberal, humanistic story about filling up an empty self.

The approach – Social science and the narrative study of lives Recent books and review chapters suggest that the psychology of religion is currently enjoying a resurgence of interest among researchers, scholars, and practitioners (Emmons & Paloutzian, 2003; Paloutzian & Park, 2005; Pargament, 2002). Over the past two decades, empirical scientists have employed quantitative methodologies to examine the effects of religious belief and practice on physical and mental health (Powell, Shahabi, & Thoresen, 2003; Seybold & Hill, 2001), the role of religion in social relationships (Donahue & Nielsen, 2005), the nature of religious conversion (Paloutzian, Richardson, & Rambo, 1999), the cognitive and emotional correlates of religious experience (Emmons, 2005; Ozorak, 2005), and the development of religion and spirituality across the life course (King & Furrow, 2004; Wink & Dillon, 2003). Scholars with a more hermeneutical bent have continued to employ psychoanalytic, feminist, and postmodernist frames to interpret religious lives and the role of religion in contemporary society (Belzen, 1997; Corveleyn & Luyten, 2005; MillerMcLemore, 2001). Intensive, case-based studies featuring various hermeneutical strategies provide the kind of depth and texture that more quantitative surveys

The redemptive self, generativity, and American Christians at midlife 257 and experiments lack. But the quantitative studies typically enjoy the advantages that come with conventional social-science inquiry, such as precision in measurement, generalizability of results, and the ability to test hypotheses in systematic ways. Our approach shares similarities with both quantitative, hypothesis-testing science and qualitative hermeneutics. On the social-science side, we employ well-validated measures of psychological, social, and religious constructs, and we endeavor to test hypotheses in groups of research participants. On the hermeneutical side, we collect rich, qualitative data from all of our participants, extended texts that we subject to a wide range of interpretive schemes. The texts are narrative accounts of people’s lives, with a special emphasis on how religion and spirituality play out in those lives. The texts speak directly to how people make meaning out of their lives (Park, 2005), how they reconstruct the personal past and imagine their futures, and how they understand their roles in society and their place in the world. We pay special attention to the cultural meanings of people’s stories, how personal stories of faith interact with, borrow from, and speak out against prevailing cultural norms and narratives. As such, we believe that our research answers Belzen’s (2001) call for a more nuanced cultural psychology of religion, which “tries to understand how the specific ‘form of life’ the person is embedded in constitutes and constructs feelings, thoughts and conduct” (Belzen, 2001, p. 47). The narrative study of lives is a wide-ranging and cross-disciplinary movement in the social sciences that aims to collect, analyze, and disseminate firstperson accounts of human lives (Josselson & Lieblich, 1993; Josselson, Lieblich, & McAdams, 2003; McAdams, 2001a; Rosenwald & Ochberg, 1992). The various research approaches, both qualitative and quantitative, that fall under this heading share the common assertion that human beings make sense of their lives in time through stories (Bruner, 1990; Giddens, 1991; Polkinghorne, 1988). According to McAdams’s (1985, 2001a) life-story model of identity, people begin to construct their lives as integrative stories in late adolescence and young adulthood, when they first come to experience the need for pattern and design in their lives (Habermas & Bluck, 2000), and the stories they continue to construct across the life course – their narrative identities – continue to provide their lives with some semblance of unity, purpose, and meaning. Narrative identities are psychosocial constructions – imaginative reconstructions of the past and anticipations of the future that reflect a person’s understanding of who he or she has been and will be and where he or she fits in the social world. From the standpoint of psychological research, then, the main reason to delve into life stories is not so much to examine developmental roots residing in the distant past as it is to understand how people make narrative sense of their lives today. Rather than expressing the past as it “really” was, a life-narrative account reflects a person’s self-defining myth about his or her

258 Dan P. McAdams and Michelle Albaugh life (McAdams, 1993). The myth draws heavily, furthermore, on the categories, expectations, and scripts of culture. Our approach to the narrative study of lives relies on both qualitative and quantitative procedures. While we select particular life narratives as exemplary cases to explore in idiographic detail, we also endeavor to test theoreticallydriven hypotheses regarding recurrent themes and images that can be found across a large number of individual cases. In order to accomplish the latter, we code narrative data for clearly-defined categories that have proven to predict important psychological outcomes in previous research – categories such as narrative tone and complexity (McAdams et al., 2004), narrative coherence (Baerger & McAdams, 1999), themes of agency and communion (McAdams, Hoffman, Mansfield, & Day, 1996), themes of growth and personal integration (Bauer, McAdams, & Sakaeda, 2005), and dynamic sequences of redemption and contamination (McAdams et al., 2001). Although the nomothetic application of coding categories precludes the examination of each case in its exquisite idiographic detail, it enables the researcher to make empirically-grounded claims about trends and tendencies across cases. We believe the social-scientific advantages of this procedure strongly outweigh the disadvantages. In the current paper, therefore, we will use two exemplary case studies to illustrate thematic trends we are finding in the data as a whole. Of course, the individual cases are interesting in their own right. But at the end of the day, we are primarily concerned with findings that apply across multiple cases in our sample.

The sample – Committed American Christians at midlife, politically involved The United States is arguably the most religious industrialized democracy in the Western world. Around 63% of Americans believe in God “without any doubt,” and most of the rest profess some form of faith in God. Only 2.2% report they do not believe in God. One third say the Bible is the actual word of God, and 80% believe it is “divinely inspired.” A total of 77% believe in heaven; 63% in hell; 58% in the devil. Almost two thirds of Americans claim a membership in a religious organization; one third claim to attend religious services at least once a week; 45% attend at least monthly (Sherkat & Ellison, 1999). In a September 5, 2005 Newsweek poll, 88% of Americans described themselves as either “religious” or “spiritual” or “both.” Of these, the large majority (over 80%) identify themselves as Christian. The landscape of Christianity in America is vast and complex. American Christians tend to adopt a cafeteria approach to religion, mixing beliefs and practices from a wide range of spiritual traditions, including Eastern practices of meditation and other influences outside of Christianity proper (Wolfe, 2003; Wulff, 1997). Nonetheless, four distinctive clusters of American Christians are

The redemptive self, generativity, and American Christians at midlife 259 consistently portrayed in sociological studies (e.g., Sherkat & Ellison, 1999) and in the press. The first is made up of evangelical and/or fundamentalist Protestants, such as those affiliated with many Baptist branches and many “nondenominational” Christian congregations. Although there are notable exceptions, these groups tend toward the conservative end of the theological spectrum, emphasizing more literal interpretations of the bible, strict moral codes, and the development of a “personal relationship” with Jesus, through which salvation is attained. In the past three decades, furthermore, evangelical Protestants have also trended conservative in their politics. From Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority Coalition to James Dobson’s Focus on the Family to the growing number of evangelical megachurches that dot the American suburbs, conservative Protestants have become an especially influential voice in American culture and politics, often labeled simply as the Christian Right. This characterization is something of an oversimplification in that some evangelicals have also championed causes typically embraced by liberals as well, such as providing food and health care for thirdworld countries. Indeed, some observers have recently detected a move to the political left among a small number of evangelicals in America. Nonetheless, the overall political orientation for most evangelicals is still relatively conservative, and polls show that in the 2004 Presidential election, evangelicals voted overwhelmingly for George W. Bush. A second clustering is made up of mainline Protestant denominations, such as those represented in Episcopalian, United Church of Christ, and some (though by no means all) Methodist, Presbyterian, and Lutheran congregations. Theologically, these groups tend to be less literalist in their interpretations of the bible and more accommodating with respect to alternative religious and moral frameworks. In the overall, mainline Protestants are politically somewhat less conservative than their evangelical counterparts and more likely to support such liberal causes as affirmative action for minorities, gay rights, and economic policies that seek to redistribute wealth in order to support the poor. Some observers have suggested that the revival of a strong liberal and socially progressive voice in American politics can be detected among Christians in this group (Wallis, 2005). While observers of American religion have noted that membership in these denominations has declined significantly in recent decades, those affiliated with mainline Protestant denominations still make up nearly one third of self-identified Christians in the United States. A third group, encompassing 25% of American Christians, is Catholics. A fourth, much smaller group consists of Black members of African-American congregations, such as the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) denominations. These latter two groups are extremely heterogeneous with respect to theology, morality, and social ethics. Catholics and members of historically Black churches in the United States also exert a strong impact on American culture

260 Dan P. McAdams and Michelle Albaugh and politics. While many Catholics have historically supported liberal social causes and tended to vote Democratic, recent years have witnessed strong support among some Catholics for conservative pro-life (anti-abortion) candidates, who tend to be Republican. African-American Christians tend to be the Democratic Party’s strongest constituency, even though many espouse relatively conservative views on some social issues, such as gay marriage. Our ongoing study of the life stories of American Christians at midlife aims to sample from all four of these clusters: Protestant evangelicals, members of Protestant mainline congregations, Catholics, and members of African-American Christian congregations. To date, we have focused mainly on the first two groups. We have collected questionnaires and interview data from almost 50 adults between the ages of 35 and 65 years who are active members of evangelical Protestant churches. For the most part, these men and women identify themselves as religiously and politically conservative. Over 80% of the participants in this group voted for George W. Bush in the 2004 Presidential election. We have also collected questionnaires and interview data from almost 50 adults between the ages of 35 and 65 years who are active members of mainline Protestant denominations, such as Episcopalian, United Church of Christ, and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA: despite its name, this is the historically moderate-to-liberal branch of Lutheranism in the United states; the more conservative branch is named the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod). For the most part, the men and women in this second group identify themselves as religiously and politically moderate or liberal. Most of them voted for John Kerry in the 2004 U. S. Presidential election. Although each of the two groups show some heterogeneity with respect to religious and political attitudes (as assessed on a battery of self-report questionnaires), the evangelicals in our sample tend to be significantly and substantially more conservative in the overall and the mainline Protestants tend to be moderate or liberal. For ease of presentation, therefore, we will often refer to the evangelicals in this sample as conservative in their overall ideological, theological, and political orientation, and we will refer to the mainline Protestants as more liberal. All of the participants in our study completed a packet of questionnaires assessing a wide range of psychological, social, political, and religious/spiritual variables. Included in the mix were standardized self-report measures of psychological well-being, personality traits, motives and goals, generativity, right-wing authoritarianism, social dominance orientation, normative and humanistic values, religiosity, and spiritual transcendence. We also obtained demographic information from each participant. All participants also took part in a two-hour, one-on-one interview entitled “Faith, Politics, and the Life Story.” As outlined in Table 1, the interview was

The redemptive self, generativity, and American Christians at midlife 261 Table 1 Outline of the Faith, Politics, and the Life Story Interview Part One. The Life Story: Eight Key Scenes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

High Point (peak experience) Low Point (nadir experience) Turning Point Positive Childhood Scene Negative Childhood Scene Important Adolescent Scene Important Adult Scene Imagined Future Scene

Part Two. Religious Faith, Spirituality Overall religious orientation, beliefs, and values in a nutshell Religious practices Prayer Three key scenes in the Faith Story 1. Opening scene (an episode that connects to beginning of faith story) 2. Faith high point (peak experience in faith/religion/spirituality) 3. Faith low point (nadir experience in faith/religion/spirituality) Change and continuity in religious beliefs and practices over time Alternative Story: What if you had no religious faith? Other Part Three. Politics Overall political orientation, beliefs, and values in a nutshell Change and continuity in political beliefs over time Political practices (e.g., voting, campaigning, rallies, contributions) An important life-story scene connected to politics in some way Relation between religious faith and politics 2004 U. S. Presidential election Whom did you vote for? Why? Did religious faith affect the choice? Why might Christians vote for the other candidate? Positive contributions to society Other

divided into three parts. In the first part (modeled after life story interview protocols described in McAdams, 1993, and on the website http://www.sesp.north western.edu/foley/), the participants described eight key scenes or episodes in their life stories: a high point scene (peak experience, greatest moment in one’s life), a low point scene (nadir experience, worst moment in one’s life), a turning point scene, a positive childhood scene, a negative childhood scene, a significant adolescent scene, a significant adult scene, and an imagined scene

262 Dan P. McAdams and Michelle Albaugh from the future. For each scene, the participant was asked to describe fully what happened in the episode, who was involved, what feelings and thoughts were connected to the scene, and what the participant believes this particular scene means in the context of his or her overall life story. Although the first part of the interview does not explicitly concern religion, many participants introduced religious issues in their descriptions of the eight life-story scenes. The second part of the interview focused on religious faith and spirituality. Participants described their religious beliefs and values in a nutshell and their favorite religious practices. They were asked to recite or describe a prayer. They also described in detail (in the manner of the eight scenes from the first part of the interview) three key scenes from the “story of your faith”: an early memory (opening scene) regarding faith/religion/spirituality, a high point scene, and a low point scene. The participants also described ways in which their religious perspective on life has changed over time and ways in which it has remained the same. Finally, they were asked to imagine a life without God or faith: “What might your life be like if you had no religious faith?” In the interview’s third part (which is not a main focus for the current paper), the participant answered a series of questions about politics and about the relationships between politics and faith. Included in this last section were the description of one political scene in life (a life episode in which the participant was involved in the political process) and a series of questions about the 2004 American presidential election. The interview ends by asking participants to recap ways in which they believe they are making a positive contribution to society. A central aim in our research is to discern how more conservative evangelicals and their more moderate-to-liberal counterparts from mainline Protestant denominations tend to differ in their accounts of their life stories and their understanding of the development of their faith. But we are also interested in commonalities. Indeed, the commonalities help to frame the differences and to inform the study as a whole. Whether conservative or liberal, evangelical or mainline, the midlife Christian Protestants in our study shared much in common. Psychologically speaking, two of their most notable commonalities concern generativity and the redemptive self.

Generativity, adult development, and religion in America In his famous eight-stage model of the human lifespan, Erik Erikson (1963) proposed that generativity versus stagnation captured the central psychosocial issue of midlife. Generativity is an adult’s concern for and commitment to promoting the well-being of future generations. In their 30s, 40s, 50s, and beyond, Erikson argued, adults may express generativity through parenting, teaching, mentoring, leadership, creative endeavors, and many other activities and

The redemptive self, generativity, and American Christians at midlife 263 pursuits aimed at leaving a positive legacy of the self for future generations. Generative adults are the norm-bearers and destiny-shapers in society. They pass on wisdom from one generation to the next; they work hard to create, maintain, and restore environments (families, neighborhoods, society) that will promote the well-being of future generations; they build institutions, commit themselves to projects, and volunteer their time and resources for the social good. From Erikson’s perspective, generativity is both an ethical and a psychological challenge. Those who fail to heed its call fail to live up to the moral challenge of middle adulthood (Browning, 2004). Failures in generativity may manifest themselves in feelings of stagnation (I cannot generate anything; I am stuck and cannot move forward in life) and self-preoccupation (I am so focused on myself that I cannot care for others). Successful generativity, by contrast, is a sign of psychosocial maturity in midlife, and it should also promote psychological health. Following Erikson’s lead, personality and developmental psychologists have designed reliable and valid measures for assessing individual differences in generativity among adults (e.g., McAdams & de St. Aubin, 1992; Peterson & Stewart, 1990; Stewart & Vandewater, 1998). A substantial body of quantitative research shows that adults who score high on self-report measures of generativity are more positively involved in their families, neighborhoods, and social institutions, compared to individuals low in generativity (for reviews see: de St. Aubin, McAdams, & Kim, 2004; McAdams, 2001b; McAdams & de St. Aubin, 1998). Generativity is positively correlated with (1) authoritative (warm and relatively strict/involved) parenting styles, (2) positive involvement in children’s schooling, (3) emphasizing positive lessons and guidelines in conversations with children, (4) broader friendships networks and more satisfactory social support, (5) volunteer activity in the community, (6) participation in the political process, and (7) higher levels of religious observance among midlife American adults. Furthermore, American adults high in generativity also tend to report that as children they were raised in religious households and involved in religious institutions, to a greater extent than adults low in generativity (Rossi, 2001). The connection between generativity and religion seems especially tight in American society. Religious organizations provide social and spiritual resources for families. Many offer religious instruction for children, support systems for young parents, youth groups for teens, opportunities for intergenerational activities, and a generally family-friendly environment. Research shows that religious fathers spend more time with their children (Sherkat & Ellison, 1999). Beyond the family, religious involvement is associated with such generative activities as staffing food pantries, running soup kitchens and homeless shelters, mentoring disadvantaged youth, and raising funds for social ministries aimed at the disadvantaged, the sick, and the dying. Religious organizations

264 Dan P. McAdams and Michelle Albaugh often run schools and hospitals. They operate prison ministries. AfricanAmerican churches have traditionally functioned as powerful, multi-purpose institutions in Black neighborhoods, providing basic services for community members and mobilizing forces for community activism. It is through churches, synagogues, and other religious organizations that many Americans express their desires to become involved in the world beyond the self and to help and care for others who live beyond the orbit of their immediate family and friends. It should come as no surprise, then, that many of the participants in our study of life stories and religious faith scored especially high in generativity. To date, the total sample’s mean score on the most widely used generativity measure (the Loyola Generativity Scale, LGS: McAdams & de St. Aubin, 1992) is about one standard deviation above what is typically found for midlife adults. Even those adults in the study who scored in the moderate range on the LGS described a number of civic engagements and volunteer activities indicative of highly generative adults. Like religion, generativity comes in many different varieties, liberal, conservative, and everything in between. The data suggest that midlife Christian evangelicals are no more or less generative than their mainline Protestant counterparts. A strong and abiding commitment to promoting the well-being of future generations and working hard to make a positive difference in families, neighborhoods, and communities are common and pervasive themes in the lives and life stories of both the evangelical and mainline Protestant participants in our study.

The redemptive self – An American life story associated with generativity Generativity is tough work. Raising children, mentoring young people, teaching Sunday School, volunteering time to work in food pantries, agitating for political change, caring for the disadvantaged – these are the kinds of activities that bring as many headaches as they do rewards. It is so much easier to take life less seriously, to retreat into television or golf or gambling or reading a fine novel. And there is always the danger that one’s most important generative efforts will fail. Children inevitably disappoint their parents; improvement projects often do more harm than good; others may not appreciate one’s efforts to make a positive difference for the next generation. “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child!” cried King Lear. Problems in generativity helped drive him to madness. In order to support one’s best generative efforts and in order to render sensible and coherent a life given over to promoting the well-being of the next generation, highly generative adults in their midlife years need a good story. A growing body of narrative research suggests that among many highly

The redemptive self, generativity, and American Christians at midlife 265 generative American adults that story centers on the theme of redemption (Bauer, McAdams, & Pals, in press; Colby & Damon, 1992; Maruna, 2001; McAdams, 2006; McAdams & Bowman, 2001; McAdams, Diamond, de St. Aubin, & Mansfield, 1997; McAdams et al., 2001; Pals, 2006; Roy & Lucas, 2006). Stripped to its psychological core, redemption is the deliverance from suffering to an enhanced status or state. Redemptive life narratives tell how protagonists invariably experience bad things in life, but bad things often lead to positive results. People overcome adversity, recover from sickness, rise above their limitations, learn positive life lessons from difficult setbacks, rehabilitate themselves, atone for their sins, attain ultimate rewards after a life of punishment. Among the most powerful narratives of redemption in contemporary American society are stories of upward social mobility (from poverty to riches, often called “the American Dream”), personal liberation (from slavery to freedom), recovery (from sickness or addiction to health), and atonement (from sin to salvation) (McAdams, 2006). Models for these narratives can be found everywhere in American culture – from self-help books to Hollywood movies to the kinds of stories children learn in school about American history (McAdams, 2006). Highly generative American adults in midlife are significantly more likely than their less generative counterparts to narrate their lives in redemptive terms (McAdams, 2006). Careful content analysis of narrative data provided by hundreds of research participants shows that generativity is associated with constructing a greater number of redemption sequences (individual life episodes telling how a negative event led to a positive effect) in life-narrative interviews and written autobiographical accounts. The studies also suggest that redemption sequences are often accompanied by a suite of related themes that together we call the redemptive self. The main themes that make up the redemptive self are these: (1) the protagonist’s enjoying a special advantage or blessing in childhood, or feeling that he or she has been “called” to do something good in life (the theme of early advantage); (2) recalling early events in which other people experienced suffering or oppression or even death (the theme of the suffering of others); (3) establishing strong and clear moral values, often associated with religion, by the time one has completed adolescence, and sticking with those values for the rest of life (the theme of moral steadfastness); (4) experiencing negative events that lead to positive outcomes or beneficial longterm effects (the theme of redemption); (5) struggling to reconcile competing desires/goals for agency/power/achievement and communion/love/intimacy (the theme of power versus love); and (6) anticipating a future in which the protagonist continues to invest in goals aimed at benefiting others and/or society at large (the theme of prosocial goals). The redemptive self is a life-narrative form that is well-designed to support a generative life. The story reinforces the idea that the teller/protagonist is

266 Dan P. McAdams and Michelle Albaugh fortunate in some fundamental way, blessed from birth perhaps. Yet the world is full of suffering, as early memories also reinforce. “I am blessed; but others suffer.” Perhaps, then, I have been called to do something good in my life, in gratitude for the blessings I have received. The juxtaposition of early advantage and the suffering of others sets up a moral challenge in the narrative. Generativity makes sense as an expression of gratitude (McCullough et al., 2001) or the pursuit of a mission in a world that really needs me. Often derived from either a faith tradition or strong family influences, the protagonist develops a clear and abiding set of beliefs early on in life – typically simple ideas like the golden rule, love thy neighbor, always work for social justice, and so on. The story tells how these values continue to provide clear guidance and encouragement throughout life. The values provide a justification or rationalization for generative programs and pursuits. Bad things inevitably happen: divorce, unemployment, illness, abuse and neglect. Family members die. Life dreams are dashed. But good things often follow the bad in redemptive life narratives. The tough work of generativity will ultimately pay off, these stories say. The seeds you plant and water will eventually grow; bad children will become good; your long-term investments will yield dividends down the road. The redemptive self is not without a dark side (McAdams, 2006). For all their optimism and their ability to sustain a generative life, for example, redemptive life narratives can sometimes come across as naïve, arrogant, and self-righteous. They tend to portray the kind of highly individualistic protagonist that Americans have traditionally held dear, even in the face of cultural critiques suggesting Americans are far too individualistic for their own (and especially others’) good (e.g., Putnam, 2000). Redemptive stories may be tonedeaf to the meaning, power, and value of tragedy in human lives (Alon & Omer, 2004; McAdams, 2006). Nonetheless, redemptive life narratives appear to support some of the best efforts on the part of midlife American adults to have a positive impact on the next generation. It should come as no surprise, then, that the narrative accounts we have collected to date in our study of life stories and religious faith are filled with redemptive themes of many sorts, as wells as the other motifs that comprise the redemptive self. Both evangelical/conservative and mainline/liberal Protestants in our study, most of whom score relatively high on generativity scales as well, tend to tell life stories about gifted protagonists who journey forth into an unredeemed world of suffering, equipped with strong convictions consolidated in their early years, repeatedly overcoming adversity and setbacks and finding meaning in their pain, as they work hard to make a positive difference for the next generation. The redemptive self is a common narrative platform for the articulation of a generative American life. But interesting variations in the articulation can still be observed, as a function, we believe, of different perspectives on and experiences with religious faith.

The redemptive self, generativity, and American Christians at midlife 267 Redemption and the conflicted life – A conservative Evangelical story Constance Williams is a 35-year-old mother of two who works part-time as an assistant to a pastor for an evangelical, nondenominational Christian congregation, the same church she attends. Although she is biracial (her father is African-American; her mother is White), the middle-class suburban church she attends is predominantly White. Her husband, Randall, recently gave up a lucrative position in business to attend a Christian seminary. Over the objections of her family and his, Randall is resolved to become an ordained minister and, ultimately, to lead an evangelical congregation. Although she worries about the financial hit she and her husband are now taking, Constance believes that “we’re right where God wants us, and He will guide our path and our steps.” Constance and Randall are committed to raising their children in a strict Christian household. They work hard to nurture their children’s faith in God and to teach them that they need to be of service to other people. They endeavor to practice what they preach. Over the course of their lives, both Constance and Randall have engaged in a great deal of volunteer work with disadvantaged children and families. Like most of the conservative evangelicals in our sample, Constance spells out her religious beliefs in clear and unapologetic detail: I believe that there’s one God and that He sent his son, Jesus, to redeem all of us, that none shall perish. (. . .) I believe that God desires that all of us should come to know Him and that Christ sacrificed for everybody. But, of course, we have free will, and God is omniscient. He knows who is going to choose Him and who is not. But I think as a believer that it’s our responsibility to share that in a way that is real to people. And I don’t tend to be one that evangelizes a lot, but I think that I can testify to that [salvation through Christ] by the way I live my life.

In his historical analysis of American evangelicalism, Hart (2002) observes that many evangelicals refuse to separate religion from the rest of their life. Even in the first third of the interview, which is not about religious faith per se, Constance repeatedly refers to how events in her life influenced her faith. Her life’s high-point scene is her attendance at a Christian camp when she was 16, where she first experienced a “personal relationship” with Jesus. A year later, she is sexually assaulted – the low-point scene in her overall life story – but the event eventually led her to be “closer to God.” Constance even uses the interview as an opportunity to share her faith, as well as her personal concerns, with the interviewer. In response to a request to describe how she prays, Constance offers a remarkable real-time prayer: Father God, I thank you that you have called me to this place to meet Michelle [the interviewer]. And I don’t know what this study is all about and in your economy and in your kingdom, Lord. But there’s a reason why you called me to participate in this,

268 Dan P. McAdams and Michelle Albaugh and I just pray Lord that you would give us wisdom and discernment. I pray for the people who are doing the study, that you would show them how they are to use this data, that ultimately it might help people and it might grow and stretch them in their understanding and their knowledge of you and what you plan to do in their lives, and in the lives of those who you love and are called according to your purpose. And for myself today I just pray that you help me to be a better wife, to be a better mother, that you show me the kind of parent that Andrew and Amanda need, particularly Andrew, Lord, because he’s a very strong little child. I just pray that you would show me how to minister to him that he might grow up to know you and to honor you and to grow into his full potential. So Lord, just be with us today, and I just pray that you protect both Michelle and I as we go about our business and do the jobs that you have set before us today. I just pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Table 2 summarizes Constance’s accounts of 12 key scenes in her life story, each in response to a particular interview query. A quick read of the list supports the general findings from past research on the redemptive self, and is consistent with many of the interviews in the current study as well – namely, that highly generative American adults tend to feature the theme of redemption in their life stories. Constance narrates at least 7 of the 12 events as clear redemption sequences. She structures each such that the episode begins with a negative state of affairs but ends with a positive development or a life message that affirms hope. Depicting redemption as liberation (McAdams, 2006), Constance tells how her high-point camp experience in high school frees her from the stultifying Catholic faith of her childhood years. Depicting redemption as recovery (McAdams, 2006), she begins her low-point scene with the sexual assault she experienced at age 17, which ushers in an 8-year “dark period” in her life. But she ends the narration by telling how she got through it all, indeed how she needed to get through it all to recover her original goodness and to grow in her faith. In her turning point event, she goes from a bad relationship with a “materialistic” man to a loving and faithful relationship with her husband-to-be. In the positive childhood scene, her discomfort at being stared at by a white woman in a restaurant gives way to joy when her father tells her that she is staring at the family because Constance and her sister are the “most beautiful girls in the restaurant.” In the negative childhood scene, her father has an affair with a friend’s mother, but Constance forgives him. She continues to cherish her relationship with her father. Like many of the participants in our study, and like many highly generative American adults at midlife, Constance believes that she has, in some sense, been called to lead a productive and caring life because of the blessings she received early on. Whereas some adults might find such an early blessing or advantage in family relationships, a special talent, or some positive feature of childhood school or play, Constance locates it mainly in the special relationship she has with Jesus, which she traces back to the high-point camp experience. (She also remarks at length about the love she enjoyed as a child, especially

The redemptive self, generativity, and American Christians at midlife 269 Table 2 Twelve Key Scenes in the Life Story of Constance Williams High Point

Age 16, Constance attends a Christian camp. She feels an overwhelming kinship with other campers and a close, direct relationship with God. She feels “set free” from the previous “thought processes” of her Catholic upbringing. The experience introduces strain with her Catholic family.

Low Point

Age 17, Constance is “sexually assaulted.” She feels guilt afterwards, because she may have “led the man on.” The event ushers in an 8-year “dark period” in Constance’s life “when I made really bad choices and sin was a big problem.” But “I needed to go through it” in order to grow and become closer to God.

Turning Point

In her mid-20s, Constance is dating a highly successful but materialistic man when she meets her husband-to-be. They go to church together and share their faith with each other. They become leaders in the congregation. Through the church, Constance ministers to impoverished teen-aged girls.

Positive Child Scene

Constance’s father was black; her mother was white. At a restaurant, a white woman keeps staring at the biracial family. Her father tells Constance that the woman is staring because Constance and her sister are “the most beautiful girls in the restaurant.”

Negative Child Scene

Constance comes to realize that her father is having an affair. She feels betrayed. But because “I was the only one in the family who was a Christian,” she is able to forgive him. Constance speculates that the affair may have contributed in some way to her own “dark period.”

Adolescent Scene

Constance is elected class president in high school. She is “in awe of the way people rallied around me.” This gives her confidence that she can be a “leader.”

Adult Scene

Age 18, Constance has an abortion. Over a 10-year period, she moves through regret, depression, and finally an acceptance of God’s forgiveness. She becomes avidly “pro-life” and resolves to minister to pregnant teenagers.

Future Scene

Constance imagines speaking at her husband’s funeral, reading from his “prayer journal.” The event will validate her husband’s life and ministry.

Early Faith Scene

The mother of a friend mentors Constance in her faith and urges her to “give your life to the Lord.”

Faith High Point

Constance and her husband attend a weekend religious retreat. At the retreat, “you search your heart and really reflect on your sin.” She gains insights into her life, her family. (Continued )

270 Dan P. McAdams and Michelle Albaugh Table 2 (Continued) Faith Low Point

Political Scene

The abortion, because “it made me doubt my faith altogether.” But it also led directly to Constance’s ministry with pregnant teenagers. In the 1990s, Constance attends a political rally for Bill Clinton. Although she is moved at the time, she now sees the reaction as “ridiculous.” She is more “cynical” about politics now, she says. Her pro-life position trumps all other political issues.

from her father.) Like many highly generative adults, furthermore, Constance suggests that she was aware of suffering and oppression in the world from an early age. For example, her positive childhood memory stems from the racist stares she experienced in the restaurant. Her religious faith undergirds her moral steadfastness. Although she feels she has grown in her faith, she also believes that her basic values and orientation have not changed qualitatively since her camp experience at age 16. She believes in redemption, especially the Christian, born-again variety. Although she worries about money, she is confident that the future will bring continued growth and fulfillment, for her, for her husband and children, and for the people they will all touch in their Christian ministry. There is a good deal of sweetness and light in Constance’s story. But there is darkness, too. Redemptive stories are like that – you cannot have the good without the bad, because in some way or another the good comes from the bad. The same idea is captured in many of the world’s religions. In The Varieties of Religious Experience, William James (1902/1958) observed “a certain uniform deliverance in which religions all appear to meet” (p. 383). The deliverance (redemption) consists of two parts: An uneasiness (the bad) and its solution (the good). “The uneasiness, reduced to its simplest terms, is a sense that there is something wrong about us as we naturally stand.” In response, “the solution is a sense that we are saved from the wrongness by making proper connection with the higher powers” (James, 1902/1958, p. 383, italics in original). In the fundamental Christian story, which is also part of Constance’s narrative of self, William James’s “uneasiness” is something like original sin. In Romans 3:23, Paul writes: “For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” This is the starting point for the redemption sequence, the bad that precedes the good. William James’s “solution” (and Paul’s) is Christ’s death and resurrection, which works to redeem humankind. The story’s gist, inscribed in memory for many evangelical and nonevangelical Christians, is John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in him shall not perish but have everlasting life.” Good news – which is what the word “gospel” means.

The redemptive self, generativity, and American Christians at midlife 271 But the nature of the good news one experiences depends on what the bad things were that preceded it. The ultimate bad thing is death. In part, religious faith functions to assuage one’s concern with death (and suffering), providing some kind of meaningful response to the consciousness of human mortality (Becker, 1973; Berger, 1967). But religion may help to deliver human beings from many other bad things as well. It may quell the forces of social chaos, anger, hopelessness, and many other negative conditions in human life (Pargament, 1997). In order to probe into the depths of “uneasiness,” we asked participants in the study to imagine a life without faith. If you had no belief in God, if there were no religious or spiritual dimension to your life whatsoever, what would your life be like? Here is what Constance said: I think anger would just take me over. I think about like arguments, how with my husband and if we didn’t have faith, I mean, there’s so many opportunities for divorce. And I actually was just telling a girlfriend this last night, that when I first got married I thought how do people that aren’t Christian stay married? How does that happen? (. . .) And parenting, oh my goodness, I need so much help with that. I really do. And I think we would be a lot more materialistic. I think we would have given in to a lot of trends. My kids would have a PlayStation. They would play video games all the time. They would be in probably all the different classes and things that they say you should put your kids through. (. . .) And we see it like with our cousins, like they’re all building homes. And one cousin uses the same builder as another cousin, and she told the builder, she asked the builder, “How much square footage does Ken [the other cousin] have? Because I want our home to have more square footage than his.” That’s sick. They’re first cousins! I see that a lot with my family (. . .) I would be like “Woe is me.” I can feel sorry for myself. And that’s an honest thing where I have to live my life others-focused. Because when you take your eyes off of God and off of others and put it on yourself, you’re never going to measure up. I mean, I’m never going to be happy with the way I look, what size I wear, anything. I would never be happy. I would never.

In sum, Constance says that if she had no faith, she would be angry and unhappy much of the time. She would give in to the rampant materialism she perceives all around her. She might not stay married. She would be a bad parent. In her life story, religion helps to deliver her from a wide range of negative experiences. She is redeemed not only from death, but from anger, greed, and divorce. We have conducted a systematic content analysis of our participants’ responses to the “What if you had no faith?” question. The results reveal a number of commonalities shared by evangelicals and mainline Protestants. Both groups, for example, frequently say that a life without faith would be characterized by (1) fear (anxiety, terror), (2) sadness (depression, distress, despair), (3) interpersonal isolation (loneliness, lack of connection to other human beings), (4) lack of hope (inability to cope with life’s setbacks, loss of optimism and confidence), and (5) loss of meaning in life. But the results also indicate a stark contrast

272 Dan P. McAdams and Michelle Albaugh between evangelicals and moderate mainline Protestants on another set of important themes. Like Constance, evangelicals are much more likely to underscore religion’s effects on (1) anger (bitterness, cynicism, hatred, mean-spiritedness), (2) self-regulation, and (3) societal institutions. They are much more likely than mainline Protestants to say, as Constance does, that faith keeps them from being angry and cynical, that faith helps them regulate anti-social and materialistic impulses (sexual immorality, substance abuse, hedonism of all kinds, materialism), and that faith protects and supports society’s most important institutions (e.g., the family, marriage and parenting) and helps to integrate people into productive niches within society (e.g., employment). The life story Constance tells provides many examples in which un-regulated human impulses take their toll. Her father’s affair nearly destroys her family; to this day, Constance’s sisters refuse to speak to their father. A young man sexually assaults Constance at a party. Afterwards, she blames herself for “leading him on.” The sexual assault ushers in the “dark period” in her life, “when I made really bad choices and sin was a big problem.” Still in high school, Constance takes up with a different young man, and soon she is pregnant. At age 18, she has an abortion. The abortion and its aftermath may be the most important redemption sequence in the story. Even after she marries Randall and even while she is deeply involved in church and volunteer work in the community, Constance continues to feel guilt and despair regarding the abortion: So I would cry all the time. It was crazy, Michelle. I couldn’t put my finger on it. I had this like heavy heart. And keep in mind this is the time period when I was working in the church, involved in ministry in every way with these little girls. So fulfilled, so happy in my marriage. We had just bought our first home. I could not figure out why I had such a heavy heart, and it was deep in my spirit. And I remember there was a gal that I met at a retreat. And I didn’t know her real well, but she invited me to her baby shower. (. . .) So I was driving to the shower and I was very emotional. (. . .) And I’m like, well, what is wrong with me. I can’t pull myself together. I could feel a spirit of death. (. . .) [After the baby shower] I came home and I could not take it anymore. And I just like fell to my knees. I remember it so vividly. I’m on the dining room floor face down sobbing. And then all of a sudden I had this vision of Christ holding my baby. And it was the most amazing thing. And I got it. Like I got it for the first time. I mean, intellectually I understood forgiveness. But that day I really understood forgiveness in like an amazing way. And to me that was like transformation of all my life. (. . .) Right after that I joined this Bible study at the Crisis Pregnancy Center that just brings you through that whole grieving process that God chose to take me through by myself.

Since then Constance has become involved in counseling young girls who have had abortions. She plans to obtain formal training in this area in the future, so that she can expand her “ministry.” The sequence of events has had a strong impact on her political views. She votes for candidates who oppose abortion.

The redemptive self, generativity, and American Christians at midlife 273 Her “pro-life” stance tends now to trump all other political issues. She now believes that Planned Parenthood and other agencies that provide advice and counseling for abortion tend to downplay the long-term, negative effects of terminating a pregnancy. Indeed, she believes that they “lie” to young girls. She will continue to use her own abortion story to comfort those who have had abortions and (just as importantly) to convince pregnant girls to reject the abortion option. “God put me in a place that something that was so horrible, like at the right place and the right time, can be used by Him, which is to me like the best thing in the world.” Highly generative American adults tend to see themselves as advantaged protagonists who were chosen early in life to relieve what William James called the “uneasiness” of the world (McAdams, 2006). For Constance and many of the evangelicals in our study, the uneasiness is a world in which impetuous people fail to reign in their impulses and greedy desires. Sexual affairs, alcohol abuse, abortions, and rampant consumerism wreck lives and families, and undermine societal institutions. Religious faith serves as an antidote to human greed and impulse. Through God’s love and through the rules and guidelines that religion provides, sinful people can learn to live together, as productive and caring (that is, generative) people. But this is never easy. The characters in the life stories of evangelicals are often strong-willed people whose lives are subjected to powerful forces for both good and evil. The potential for conflict is ever present. In simple Freudian terms, id impulses do regular battle with a religious superego. Because human greed and id impulses are so powerful and destructive, people need a strong framework of rules and guidelines to assist in self-regulation. Accordingly, evangelical life-narrative accounts in our study tend to show some of the themes identified by Lakoff (2002) in his characterization of the strict father form of morality. Lakoff argues that political conservatives project onto government the image of a strong father who sets strict rules for the good behavior of all family members. Through “tough love,” strict fathers instill the values of self-discipline, self-reliance, hard work, and respect for legitimate authority. Many conservative evangelicals in our study emphasize these values when talking about religion and politics. But do they incorporate these ideas into the narrations of their lives? Do they project a strict father morality onto their stories? We have coded scenes from the life-narrative interviews for evidence of three themes derived from Lakoff’s characterization of the strict father morality – (1) rules and reinforcements, (2) self-discipline, and (3) competition/success. Our provisional results provide strong support for the theme of self-discipline and moderate support for the rules and reinforcements. Compared to their more liberal Protestant counterparts, conservative evangelicals are much more likely to describe important scenes in their lives in which characters struggle to control, govern, or set aside immature, selfish, or destructive

274 Dan P. McAdams and Michelle Albaugh impulses. They are also somewhat more likely to describe scenes in which authorities establish rules for proper conduct and/or reinforce good behavior (or punish bad behavior). Emphasizing themes of self-discipline and authoritative rules and underscoring the danger of a world in which selfish impulses could reign, redemptive stories for evangelicals are about the deliverance from a potentially conflicted, Freudian self. Like Freud (1930/1961) in Civilization and its Discontents, evangelicals imagine an impetuous and potentially greedy self who, left to its own devices, would destroy the world. But unlike Freud, their faith gives them the redemptive hope that they will be delivered from conflict. Freud elaborated upon the conflict between a “bad” (polymorphously perverse) id/self and a “good” (rule-governed, though repressive) society. Evangelicals add the equally vexing conflict between a well-meaning and Godly self (a kind of enlightened superego/ego mix) and a bad, corrupting outside world. Hart (2002) writes that American evangelicals feel deeply estranged from the consumerism and permissiveness of modern society. They are strangers in a strange land. Their solution, however, is not to retreat, like the Amish, into a sequestered existence of simple piety. They must live in the modern world, and indeed attempt to transform it. Evangelicals refuse to compartmentalize their lives into secular and religious, for to do so would be to deny God’s sovereignty in their lives as a whole. Therefore, they are quick to adopt certain signature aspects of modern culture – popular music, multi-media entertainment, self-help rhetoric, slick advertising – in their Sunday morning services. At the same time, they struggle mightily to infuse their religious sensibility into the lives they lead – at work, in school, with the family – on Monday through Saturday as well (Hart, 2002). The conflict between the secular and the sacred is pervasive in many life stories told by American evangelicals, exacerbated by their insistence that the sacred should be secular too, and the secular should be sacred. Whether one is talking, therefore, about warring factions within the self or the conflict between the self and the world, the prime challenge of redemption in the evangelical story is the deliverance from conflict.

Redemption and the empty life – A liberal Protestant story Sally McNeil is a 44-year-old mother of two daughters, who works part-time as a registered nurse. Her husband, Paul, is a corporate lawyer. The family attends an Episcopal church that is known throughout their wealthy suburb for its commitment to progressive social issues. Paul recently accompanied the church youth group on a two-week mission trip to Mississippi, where the teenagers built homes and taught Sunday school in an impoverished rural community. Compared to Constance and Randall, however, the McNeils have had considerably less

The redemptive self, generativity, and American Christians at midlife 275 success to date in raising their children in the faith. They insist that their daughters attend church, but Sally is convinced that her older one “doesn’t believe in a thing.” A friend recently asked Sally why she insists on dragging her kids to church every Sunday: “And I said, one of my Jewish friends gave me a great line – she said, ‘You know, you have to give them something to reject, if nothing else!’” Like many more liberal, mainline Protestants in our sample, Sally falters a bit when asked to describe her specific religious beliefs. She suggests that her “spirituality” may have originated in her love of nature. “If you can’t believe that God created this beauty, not sure what else you’re ever going to believe.” Her rambling account eventually gets around to a set of core beliefs regarding love, tolerance, inclusiveness, and empathy. Stealing a line from Les Miserables, Sally says: “To love another person is to see the face of God.” “If nothing else, God is between you and me,” she adds. Sally believes that Christianity is but one pathway to God. “The Muslims and the Buddhists and all the other religions can know Him their way. They just don’t know Him through Christ.” “Episcopalians are so inclusive,” she remarks. In this respect, her faith and her politics are aligned: We are all so inclusive. We are open to anybody. We put women in the clergy, gays in the clergy. We’re open to gay marriage. (. . .) So the fact that my religion is so inclusive, it’s the same as my politics. You know, [I believe] that gays have equal rights, that gays should be able to marry, that gay partners should be allowed to have benefits. They should be allowed to inherit. They should be allowed to keep the house. There’s so much tied up with the politics of being gay, but don’t tell me that my best friends who are gay, who’ve been together 27 years, that you’re not going to let next of kin in? I mean, when they are dying of AIDS, and the lover could not come in [to see the dying person in the hospital]. It was amazing. Yeah, so I think the biggest thing is that my politics is inclusive. We need to protect every single person on this planet, we need to, you know, and the Republicans are not treating us right.

Sally’s scores on our generativity questionnaires are near the top of the distribution, even in this highly generative sample. Like Constance, she sees her family as the first realm for the expression of generativity. “I still think the most important thing for me to do is just raise caring, responsible individuals.” Throughout the interview, Sally draws parenting lessons from particular events in her life. Because the end of a college love affair sent her into a period of depression, Sally today is especially attentive to signs of her children’s emotional pain. “I think I’d be very watchful of my children if they had a crush on somebody.” Because her own mother discouraged Sally from taking physical risks, Sally teaches her children to overcome their fears and do vigorous physical things, like hiking and white-water rafting. Because she was bullied in third grade, Sally is sensitive to injustices and inequalities in her children’s school experiences. Consistent with research on highly generative adults, Sally

276 Dan P. McAdams and Michelle Albaugh narrates many life-story scenes as redemption sequences. As can be seen in Table 3, at least 4 of the 12 key scenes in the story fit the redemptive pattern. Like many highly generative American adults, furthermore, Sally sees herself as a very fortunate person. “Because we are blessed, we must be a blessing unto others,” she says. Like Constance, Sally narrates a life story featuring a blessed, advantaged, chosen protagonist who journeys forth into a dangerous world. The biggest danger in the world is death. As a nurse, Sally has seen many people die. In recent years, two of her close friends have died, as well. Death has sometimes shaken her faith. “There’s nothing in miracles,” Sally asserts. “I know the body too well.” When a mother of young children dies from breast cancer, Sally rails angrily against God. How could He let this happen? It is the low point in Sally’s faith story. But death also brings Sally closer to God. When asked to recall an opening scene for her faith story, Sally decides not to talk about anything from childhood or adolescence but instead tells how the suffering and death she has witnessed as a nurse have influenced her faith. Patients have often asked her to pray with them. Early in her career, Sally was afraid to do this: Boy! I can’t [pray with the patients.] There’s so much death of young people that I think I would initially go the other way, like there just cannot be a God that would make people suffer like this and have this happen. And then somewhere along the line I kind of turned around and went, “Well, it just keeps happening all the time!” You know? And then I kind of got my little mind [to think] that God didn’t really plan it this way, that He is crying too, and that He’s suffering along with us.

The image of a crying God who, like the people on earth, cannot do anything to stop suffering and pain is both powerful and disquieting. (It also contrasts sharply with, while oddly capturing some of the same feelings in, Constance’s vision of Christ’s cradling her aborted baby.) Sally’s God is supremely empathic. He cares so much for the world that He feels the same pain that human beings feel. Moving from religion to politics, Sally’s image of God seems simpatico with Lakoff’s (2002) description of the liberal’s nurturant caregiver model of morality, in which “love, empathy, and nurturance are primary” (p. 33). According to Lakoff (2002), the nurturant caregiver encourages and affirms children’s individuality while teaching them to be open and empathic to others, so that they will eventually “be fulfilled and happy in their lives” (p. 34). Applying Lakoff’s ideas to the interview data collected to date, we have coded the 12 key scenes in all of the life-story interviews for evidence of three themes derived from our reading of Lakoff’s characterization of nurturant caregiver morality. We labeled the three (1) providing care, (2) empathy and openness, and (3) self-fulfillment. Our provisional results provide strong support for only one of the three themes. By a wide margin, the life-story scenes told by liberal Protestants show more examples of characters’ feeling empathy for

The redemptive self, generativity, and American Christians at midlife 277 Table 3 Twelve Key Scenes in the Life Story of Sally McNeil High Point

At age 44, Sally accompanies her husband and two children on a camping trip to Mexico. “It was so much fun and we were working so hard as a team.” The family learns about a new culture. Both Sarah and her younger daughter get over their fears of certain physical activities.

Low Point

In college, Sally’s boyfriend breaks up with her. During the same period, she gains 60 pounds and becomes depressed. Eventually she pulls herself out of the malaise. As a result, today she is very attentive to her children’s emotional pain.

Turning Point

Also in college, Sally struggles with her nursing program and other issues. Her parents pull her out of the program temporarily and encourage her to attend summer camp. Camp is rejuvenating. “I got to write music, and be funny and lose some weight and get back to myself.”

Positive Child Scene

Sally enjoys a family camping trip to California. Sarah and her sisters see and do many interesting things. Today, Sally believes it is important to ignore fears of change and to travel and explore new areas and experiences.

Negative Child Scene In third grade, a bully humiliates her in class. The teacher unfairly favored the boys over the girls. Sally recalls other scenes in which boys were mean to girls. “Yeah, we were not feminists back then.” Adolescent Scene

In another positive camp experience, Sally wins a leadership award. The summer experience was also important because it exposes her to kids from other religions, ethnicities, and social classes and because she learns how to “share.” If it weren’t for camp, “I would still be a spoiled brat.”

Adult Scene

Years later, Sally learns that one of her former camp counselors, who had remained a much esteemed friend, was a lesbian and had seduced some of the girls at camp. Sally feels betrayed, and, in an ugly scene, she confronts her.

Future Scene

Sally imagines working with her husband and grown children in a relief effort, perhaps in Africa. They would all be working together, learning new things, and helping people in need.

Early Faith Scene

Sally talks about different deaths she has witnessed as a nurse and how these have shaped her faith. In each case: “God didn’t really plan it this way; He is crying too and He’s suffering along with us.” She focuses on the death of a particular good friend, which happened when Sally was 32. (Continued )

278 Dan P. McAdams and Michelle Albaugh Table 3 (Continued) Faith High Point

In her 20s, Sally is accepted into the Episcopalian faith.

Faith Low Point

Sally feels tremendous anger after the death of another friend from cancer. “There’s nothing in miracles; I know the body too well.”

Political Scene

Before the 2004 Presidential election, Sally has a political argument with her Republican brother-in-law

and being open to the experiences of other people, compared to those life-story scenes narrated by evangelicals. Interestingly, however, evangelicals appear to be just as likely as the mainline Protestants to feature caregiving and selffulfillment in their life-narrative scenes. Getting back to the two cases we feature in this paper, both Sally and Constance describe life-story scenes in which people provide care or nurturance for others. But Constance tends also to prioritize the strict-father themes of rules and self-discipline while Sally’s story is much more about feeling empathy for others who are different from the self. We asked Sally what her life would be like if she had no religious faith. Here is what she said: I think it might be very empty. You know, I think that there would be, you know, fewer highs and lows. I mean, the highs are so great. There’s always the peak experiences. I mean, you know, but the low ones are just as important. And if you didn’t have God there, I mean, sometimes I just sit on the edge of the bed and just say one little thing, like, “Oh my God, I have totally screwed up! Can you just get me through it?” You know? And it’s been the times where I just really feel as a human being, as a person, I have failed, that I will say that kind of a prayer at the edge of the bed in the dark of the night, you know. Certainly forgiving for sin, forgiving for bad thoughts, forgiving for screwing up with a friend or, you know, I do ask for forgiveness. There’s no question. And I think that, I think it [life without God] would be dull. I think it might be less interesting. I think it would be, I think you would have less in common with the rest of the world, too, you know. I am always curious at dinner parties when they say, “Don’t talk about politics or religion.” Well, what the hell you want us to talk about? American Idol? I mean, I think it could be very dull! And boring and monotonous. I think that that adds a whole dimension, whether its good or bad, whether you’re questioning or believing, whether you’re faithful or struggling or teaching or learning. So, and I think that that’s good for the kids to see, too, that we’re all kind of in there with them. (. . .) I cannot imagine being in the medical world without a belief in God. There is nothing more fascinating, complicated. I don’t care what Microsoft comes up with. It is nothing compared to the brain, nothing. I can’t even imagine not having faith when I’m in the profession I’m in.

The central idea in Sally’s response to the “What if you had no faith?” question is emptiness. Without faith, life would have nothing to fill it up; it would be barren and monotonous. The idea of emptiness is a variation on a theme that we

The redemptive self, generativity, and American Christians at midlife 279 have found to be much more common among the responses to this question provided by liberal mainline Protestants compared to the conservative evangelicals. Without faith, life may lack richness, color, texture, vividness, challenges, or any of a host of things that potentially provide life with its characteristic abundance, things that help to fill the void. For Sally and a number of other more religiously and politically liberal mainline Protestants in our study, what William James described as the basic “uneasiness” (for which religion is the “solution”) seems tied up with a fear of self-depletion. In short, evangelicals like Constance look to faith for self-regulation and the support of threatened social institutions. For them, religious faith helps to resolve the intractable conflicts that inevitably arise when strong-willed people try to live together. The impetuous, conflicted self wants many things; faith helps to resolve the conflicts and make peace. By contrast, more liberal Christians like Sally look to faith for self-enrichment. They fear a depleted, empty existence. Faith fills them up. We propose that many moderate-to-liberal American Christians may narrate the redemptive self as a story of how depletion gives way to fulfillment. Read from this perspective, Sally’s emphasis on empathy and inclusiveness takes on new meaning. To be empathic is to feel the other’s experience; to be inclusive is to welcome the other into one’s life. The more different the other is from the self, the greater the level of empathy or inclusiveness required. For white, affluent, healthy, and heterosexual liberals like Sally, those who best qualify as the to-be-welcomed “other” include people of color, the poor, the sick, gays and lesbians, and others whom she is not likely to meet at her local hair salon, or church. These people represent the challenges in empathy and inclusiveness for which Sally’s liberal faith best prepares her. Empathy and inclusiveness bring the other into the self, help to fill the self up with new people, new experiences, give life color, texture, and richness. Amazingly, 6 of the 12 key scenes in Sally’s life story, summarized in Table 3, involve trips away from home, typically to camp. In each, she meets new and exotic people, and she collects new experiences. Her high point scene is a family trip to Mexico, where she meets many different kinds of people and learns about a foreign culture. In her key adolescent scene, Sally goes off to a camp where she meets Jews, Catholics, Blacks, working-class people, and other exotic specimens – pretty much for the first time in her life. The experience is exhilarating. When she later learns (in her key adult scene) that a beloved camp counselor (who remained a friend in adulthood) turns out to have been a lesbian who seduced some of the camp girls in her care, Sally feels betrayed. She is understandably upset about pedophilia: “She [the lesbian counselor] used the place that I loved as a vehicle for her illness [pedophilia].” But Sally seems even more hurt, even outraged, by the woman’s failure to tell her that she was a lesbian: “I just wanted her to be honest with me. She didn’t have the balls to tell

280 Dan P. McAdams and Michelle Albaugh me she was gay and know that I would be totally accepting of that.” It is as if the camp counselor implicitly questioned Sally’s empathy and inclusiveness. She did not know that Sally is “totally accepting” of others. In Sally’s imagined future scene, she and her husband meet their grown daughters in Africa, and the four of them organize a relief effort. In this extended outing combining camp and a mission trip, Sally and her family feed the poor and heal the sick, as they fill their life up with yet another enriching encounter with “the other.” Sally’s model for this kind of work is Dr. Paul Farmer, a physician and author who has gained national recognition for his work with the poor. Farmer spends nine months out of the year working with the poor in Haiti. During the other three months, Farmer rests and refuels in his upper-middle class Boston neighborhood. Sally is not ready to give up all the luxuries of her own upper-middle class life. She admits that she enjoys the wealth that her husband’s career affords them. It is hard to imagine that she and her husband would make the same financial sacrifices that Constance and her husband Randall made when Randall decided to enter the seminary. Nonetheless, Sally firmly believes that her family can and should make more sacrifices and do more good work for the world. Her idealistic dream for an African rendezvous ties together the strongest themes in her life story – Sally’s boundless empathy, her inclusive faith, her desire to experience and explore new vistas, her belief that she has been chosen to make a positive difference in the world, her belief that the world needs her to do so, her generativity, and her intuitive sense that redemption is about filling up the void with God’s abundance.

Conclusion The two cases featured in this paper illustrate a number of themes to be found in the larger sample of midlife American Christians we have interviewed to date. Like both Constance and Sally, the overall sample of active members of evangelical and mainline Protestant congregations tends to show many indices of high generativity, in accord with Erikson’s description of healthy adjustment and high psychosocial functioning in the midlife years. Like many highly generative adults in American society, their life stories tend to follow the outline of the redemptive self – stories about gifted protagonists who, equipped with strong religious and/or political beliefs, go up against a dangerous world as they turn suffering into enhancement and work hard to leave a positive legacy for the next generation (McAdams, 2006). Their life stories script a range of favored redemptive narratives in American culture – stories of atonement, upward mobility, liberation, and recovery. The featured cases illustrate two variations on the redemptive self. Constance narrates a variation that we have observed among many of the more conservative evangelicals in our sample; Sally narrates a more liberal, mainline-Protestant

The redemptive self, generativity, and American Christians at midlife 281 variation. If redemption is the deliverance from suffering to an enhanced status or state, then the key to understanding the distinction between conservative evangelical and liberal mainline stories is to consider what kind of suffering our participants feel their faith delivers them from. For both groups, the data suggest, religious faith helps to assuage fear, sadness, loneliness, and hopelessness, and it serves to provide meaning in the face of death (Berger, 1967). For conservative evangelicals, however, faith provides the additional benefits of self-regulation and the support of valued social institutions, like marriage. If people did not have religious faith, they would be unable to regulate destructive impulses regarding sexuality and selfishness, these stories say. People would be unable to resolve the inevitable conflicts that strong-willed protagonists experience when they attempt to live together in society. For more liberal Protestants like Sally, by contrast, faith helps to fill up an empty life. Without a spiritual or religious sensibility, life would be devoid of those things that make it worth living. In simple terms, faith saves Sally from a depleted life whereas faith saves Constance from a conflicted life. For Sally, the self is potentially empty, and faith helps to fill it up. In a sense, Constance’s spiritual problem is almost the opposite: The self is too full; people want too much; society makes too many demands; and, thank God, faith lightens the load by sorting out what is really important from those things that merely clutter life up, or burden people beyond their capabilities, or drive people and marriages and families to ruin. To a certain extent, Constance’s more conservative story reflects Lakoff’s (2002) strict father morality. Evangelicals in our study tend to highlight the power of self-discipline and the importance of moral rules and reinforcements in their significant life story scenes to a greater extent than do the more liberal mainline Protestants. It makes good narrative sense that they should do so. If their greatest fears concern how unregulated impulses may undermine society and divide the self in two, then self-discipline and strong rules may be seen as allies in the never-ending struggle to reconcile the warring factions that prevail within the conflicted self. By contrast, mainline Protestants like Sally tend to emphasize the theme of empathy and openness to others, consistent with Lakoff’s model of nurturant caregiver morality. Empathy for those who are different from the self and openness to new others and new experiences help to fill up the void. For Sally, faith is an antidote to a depleted self. Evident for both Constance and Sally, however, and contrary to expectations derived from Lakoff, the theme of providing care for others appears to be pervasive in both conservative and liberal variations on the redemptive self. Whether evangelical or mainline Protestant, the midlife adults in our study told life stories that privileged caring for others. These are, after all, highly generative adults. The variations on the redemptive self identified in the stories told by Constance and Sally may be interpreted from a number of other theoretical perspectives. For example, Constance’s story may reflect the kind of ideological

282 Dan P. McAdams and Michelle Albaugh life scripts that Tomkins (1987) associated with normativism whereas Sally’s story may reflect an ideological script of humanism (see de St. Aubin, 1996, de St. Aubin et al., 2006). Normativists tend to believe that human beings are fundamentally bad (or weak) and that, therefore, strong rules and norms are imperative to keep social order. By contrast, humanists tend to believe that human beings are fundamentally good and that, therefore, they need to be nurtured in order to achieve their inner potential. Another potentially useful interpretive frame for our data comes from Haidt’s argument regarding the intuitive ethics that underlie conservative and liberal moral value systems (Haidt & Joseph, 2004). According to Haidt, whereas liberals focus mainly on issues of harm (the extent to which people suffer) and reciprocity (fairness, justice) in making moral judgments, conservatives add three other issues to the mix – hierarchy (the need for authority and vertical order in relationships), ingroup (allegiance to family, social groups, society, etc.), and moral purity. From Haidt’s standpoint, it should not be surprising that conservatives should perceive more potential conflict in the self and in the world, at least when it comes to moral decision making. After all, they owe some allegiance to five very different ethical mandates. Interestingly, things seem rather easier for liberals, who consider only two of the five important. Their moral plate is not as full, you might say. Of course, it is a long way from Haidt’s intuitive ethics to the themes that run through the life stories of conservative evangelicals and more liberal mainline Protestants. Further research on the life stories of religious people may nonetheless profit from an inclusion of broad theoretical perspectives that lie largely outside the psychology of religion, such as those provided by Tomkins (1987) and Haidt and Joseph (2004) and frameworks that are more typically associated with political ideologies (e.g., Altemeyer, 1996; Jost et al., 2003). More generally, we believe that the study of religion may benefit from theoretical and methodological approaches founded in psychological analysis that prioritize how religious people make sense of their lives and their faith through stories. Born from past research on generativity and the redemptive self, the current chapter represents a first step along just such a research pathway – the systematic exploration of life stories constructed by people of faith.

References Altemeyer, B. (1996). The authoritarian spectre. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Alon, N. & Omer, H. (2004). Demonic and tragic narratives in psychotherapy. In A. Lieblich, D. P. McAdams, & R. Josselson (Eds.), Healing plots: The narrative bases of psychotherapy (pp. 29–48). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association Press.

The redemptive self, generativity, and American Christians at midlife 283 Baerger, D. & McAdams, D. P. (1999). Life story coherence and its relation to psychological well-being. Narrative Inquiry, 9, 69–96. Bauer, J. J., McAdams, D. P. & Sakaeda, A. (2005). Interpreting the good life: How mature, happy people frame their autobiographical memories. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 88, 203–217. Bauer, J. J. McAdams, D. P. & Pals, J. L. (in press). Narrative identity and eudaimonic well-being. Journal of Happiness Studies. Becker, E. (1973). The denial of death. New York: The Free Press. Belzen, J. A. (Ed.) (1997). Hermeneutical approaches in psychology of religion. Atlanta, GA: Rodopi Press. Belzen, J. A. (2001). The future is in the return: Back to cultural psychology of religion. In D. Jonte-Pace & W. B. Parsons (Eds.), Religion and psychology: Mapping the terrain (pp. 43–56). London: Routledge. Berger, P. L. (1967). The sacred canopy: Elements of a sociological theory of religion. New York: Random House. Browning, D. (2004). An ethical analysis of Erikson’s concept of generativity. In E. de St. Aubin, D. P. McAdams & T. C. Kim (Eds.), The generative society (pp. 241–255). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association Press. Bruner, J. (1990). Acts of meaning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Colby, A. & Damon, W. (1992). Some do care: Contemporary lives of moral commitment. New York: The Free Press. Corveleyn, J. & Luyten, P. (2005). Psychodynamic psychologies and religion: Past, present, and future. In R. F. Paloutzian & C. L. Park (Eds.), Handbook of the psychology of religion and spirituality (pp. 80–100). New York: Guilford Press. de St. Aubin, E. (1996). Personal ideology polarity: Its emotional foundation and its manifestation in individual value systems, religiosity, political orientation, and assumptions concerning human nature. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71, 152–165. de St. Aubin, E., McAdams, D. P. & Kim, T. C. (Eds.) (2004). The generative society. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association Press. de St. Aubin, E., Wandrei, M., Skerven, K. & Coppolillo, C. M. (2006). A narrative exploration of personal ideology and identity. In D. P. McAdams, R. Josselson & A. Lieblich (Eds.), Identity and story: Creating self in narrative (pp. 223–248). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association Press. Donahue, M. J. & Nielsen, M. E. (2005). Religion, attitudes, and social behavior. In R. F. Paloutzian & C. L. Park (Eds.), Handbook of the psychology of religion and spirituality (pp. 274–291). New York: Guilford Press. Emmons, R. A. (2005). Emotion and religion. In R. F. Paloutzian & C. L. Park (Eds.), Handbook of the psychology of religion and spirituality (pp. 235–252). New York: Guilford Press. Emmons, R. A. & Paloutzian, R. F. (2003). The psychology of religion. Annual Review of Psychology, 54, 377–402. Erikson, E. H. (1963). Childhood and society (2nd Ed.). New York: Norton. Fowler, J. (1981). Stages of faith: The psychology of human development and the quest for meaning. New York: Harper & Row.

284 Dan P. McAdams and Michelle Albaugh Freud, S. (1930/1961). Civilization and its discontents. In J. Strachey (Ed.), The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud (Vol. 21). London: Hogarth. Giddens, A. (1991). Modernity and self-identity: Self and society in the late modern age. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Habermas, T. & Bluck, S. (2000). Getting a life: The emergence of the life story in adolescence. Psychological Bulletin, 126, 748–769. Haidt, J. & Joseph, C. (2004). Intuitive ethics: How innately prepared intuitions generate culturally variable virtues. Daedalus, fall, 55–66. Hart, D. G. (2002). That old-time religion in modern America: Evangelical Protestantism in the twentieth century. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee. James, W. (1902/1958). The varieties of religious experience. New York: New American Library. Josselson, R. & Lieblich, A. (Eds.) (1993). The narrative study of lives. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Josselson, R., Lieblich, A. & McAdams, D. P. (Eds.) (2003). Up close and personal: The teaching and learning of narrative research. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association Press. Jost, J. T., Glaser, J., Kruglanski, A. W. & Sulloway, F. J. (2003). Political conservatism as motivated social cognition. Psychological Bulletin, 129, 339–375. King, P. E. & Furrow, J. L. (2004). Religion as a resource for positive youth development: Religion, social capital, and moral outcomes. Developmental Psychology, 40, 703–713. Lakoff, G. (2002). Moral politics: How liberals and conservatives think. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Maruna, S. (2001). Making good: How ex-convicts reform and rebuild their lives. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association Press. McAdams, D. P. (1985). Power, intimacy, and the life story: Personological inquiries into identity. New York: Guilford Press. McAdams, D. P. (1993). The stories we live by: Personal myths and the making of the self. New York: William Morrow. McAdams, D. P. (2001a). The psychology of life stories. Review of General Psychology, 5, 100–122. McAdams, D. P. (2001b). Generativity in midlife. In M. Lachman (Ed.), Handbook of midlife development (pp. 395–443). New York: Wiley. McAdams, D. P. (2006). The redemptive self: Stories Americans live by. New York: Oxford University Press. McAdams, D. P., Anyidoho, N. A., Brown, C., Huang, Y. T., Kaplan, B. & Machado, M. (2004). Traits and stories: Links between dispositional and narrative features of personality. Journal of Personality, 72, 761–784. McAdams, D. P. & Bowman, P. J. (2001). Narrating life’s turning points: Redemption and contamination. In D. P. McAdams, R. Josselson & A. Lieblich (Eds.), Turns in the road: Narrative studies of lives in transition (pp. 3–34). New York: American Psychological Association Press. McAdams, D. P. & de St. Aubin, E. (1992). A theory of generativity and its assessment through self-report, behavioral acts, and narrative themes in autobiography. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 62, 1003–1015.

The redemptive self, generativity, and American Christians at midlife 285 McAdams, D. P. & de St. Aubin, E. (Eds.) (1998). Generativity and adult development: How and why we care for the next generation. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association Press. McAdams, D. P., Diamond, A., de St. Aubin, E. & Mansfield, E. D. (1997). Stories of commitment: The psychosocial construction of generative lives. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 72, 678–694. McAdams, D. P., Hoffman, B. J., Mansfield, E. D. & Day, R. (1996). Themes of agency and communion in significant autobiographical scenes. Journal of Personality, 64, 339–377. McAdams, D. P., Reynolds, J., Lewis, M., Patten, A. & Bowman, P. J. (2001). When bad things turn good and good things turn bad: Sequences of redemption and contamination in life narrative, and their relation to psychosocial adaptation in midlife and in students. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 27, 208–230. McCullough, M. E., Kilpatrick, S. D., Emmons, R. A. & Larson, D. B. (2001). Is gratitude a moral affect? Psychological Bulletin, 127, 249–266. Miller-McLemore, B. J. (2001). Shaping the future of religion and psychology: Feminist transformations in pastoral psychology. In D. Jonte-Pace & W. B. Parsons (Eds.), Religion and psychology: Mapping the terrain (pp. 181–201). London: Routledge. Newsweek, September 5, 2005. Special report: Spirituality 2005. In search of the spiritual, pp. 44–65. Ozorak, E. W. (2005). Cognitive approaches to religion. In R. F. Paloutzian & C. L. Park (Eds.), Handbook of the psychology of religion and spirituality (pp. 216–234). New York: Guilford Press. Pals, J. L. (2006). Authoring a second chance in life: Emotion and transformational processing within narrative identity. Research in Human Development. Paloutzian, R. F. & Park, C. L. (2005). Integrative themes in the current science of the psychology of religion. In R. F. Paloutzian & C. L. Park (Eds.), Handbook of the psychology of religion and spirituality (pp. 3–20). New York: Guilford Press. Paloutzian, R. F., Richardson, J. T. & Rambo, L. R. (1999). Religious conversion and personality change. Journal of Personality, 67, 1047–1079. Pargament, K. L. (1997). The psychology of religion and coping. NewYork: Guilford Press. Pargament, K. L. (2002). The bitter and the sweet: An evaluation of the costs and benefits of religiousness. Psychological Inquiry, 13, 168–181. Park, C. L. (2005). Religion and meaning. In R. F. Paloutzian & C. L. Park (Eds.), Handbook of the psychology of religion and spirituality (pp. 295–314). New York: Guilford Press. Peterson, B. & Stewart, A. J. (1990). Using personal and fictional documents to assess psychosocial development: The case of Vera Brittain’s generativity. Psychology and Aging, 5, 400–411. Polkinghorne, D. (1988). Narrative knowing and the human sciences. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Powell, L. H., Shahabi, L., & Thoresen, C. E. (2003). Religion and spirituality: Linkages to physical health. American Psychologist, 58, 36–52. Putnam, R. (2000). Bowling along: The collapse and revival of American community. New York: Simon & Schuster.

286 Dan P. McAdams and Michelle Albaugh Rosenwald, G. & Ochberg, R. L. (Eds.) (1992). Storied lives: The cultural politics of self-understanding. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Rossi, A. (Ed.). (2001). Caring and doing for others: Social responsibility in the domains of family, work, and community. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Roy, K. M. & Lucas, K. (2006). Generativity as second chance: Low-income fathers and transformation of the difficult past. Research in Human Development. Seybold, K. S. & Hill, P. C. (2001). The role of religion and spirituality in mental and physical health. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 10, 21–24. Sherkat, D. E. & Ellison, C. G. (1999). Recent developments and current controversies in the sociology of religion. Annual Review of Sociology, 25, 363–394. Smith, C. (2003). Moral, believing animals: Human personhood and culture. New York: Oxford University Press. Stewart, A. J. & Vandewater, E. (1998). The course of generativity. In D. P. McAdams & E. de St. Aubin (Eds.), Generativity and adult development: How and why we care for the next generation (pp. 75–100). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association Press. Tomkins, S. S. (1987). Script theory. In J. Aronoff, A. I. Rabin & R. Zucker (Eds.), The emergence of personality (pp. 147–216). New York: Springer. Wallis, J. (2005). God’s politics: Why the right gets it wrong and the left doesn’t get it. San Francisco: Harper. Wink, P. & Dillon, M. (2003). Religiousness, spirituality, and psychosocial functioning in late adulthood: Findings from a longitudinal study. Psychology and Aging, 18, 916–924. Wolfe, A. (2003). The transformation of American religion: How we actually live our faith. New York: The Free Press. Wulff, D. M. (1997). Psychology of religion: Classic and contemporary (2nd Ed.). New York: Wiley.

SPIRITUALITY, NARRATIVE, AND CHARACTER TWO PRIESTS ON PATHS TO SPIRITUAL MATURITY AND INTEGRITY IN LATE LIFE1 Melvin E. Miller At fifteen I set my heart upon learning. At thirty I established myself [in accordance with ritual]. At forty I no longer had perplexities. At fifty I knew the Mandate of Heaven. At sixty I was at ease with whatever I heard. At seventy I could follow my heart’s desire without transgressing the boundaries of right. Confucius, Analects (Wei-Ming, 1978, p. 121) Each individual, to become a mature adult, must to a sufficient degree develop all of the ego qualities (. . .), so that a wise Indian, a true gentleman, and a mature peasant share and recognize in one another the final state of integrity. Erikson (1950, p. 269)

Introduction What is the full complement of attributes or ego qualities needed to become a mature adult en route to something akin to integrity? What is it that “a wise Indian, a true gentleman, and a mature peasant” (Erikson, 1950, p. 269) share and recognize in each other? Are both Erikson and Confucius, in the above passages, getting at something similar? What are the essential attributes that might be realized by women and men who have attempted to fight the good fight (of ongoing personal and spiritual development), and can they be identified? What are the perennial qualities experienced by those who have struggled to reach maturity, a spiritual way of being, wisdom, and integrity? In this chapter, I hope to cast some light on what I have found to be some of the attributes that lead to spiritual maturity. I also hope to reflect on the kinds of images of the ultimate, images of the good, and the good life that are developed and sought by those striving toward ego integrity, by those searching for ways of experiencing and expressing their spiritual aspirations or, if you will, their spiritual possession. I do not presume to be able to give any definitive responses to these complex matters, but I do intend to present a distillation of my ponderings, 1

An earlier paper with some of the same content, written by Miller (1999), was published in Thomas & Eisenhandler (1999).

288 Melvin E. Miller arrived at through research, clinical experience, and an ongoing personal and theoretical tug-of-war with these concerns. Through many years of clinical experience I have learned to keep an open mind when listening to narrative. I have become accustomed to listening for multiple layers of possible meanings, not accepting any story at face value. In that vein, I’ll attempt to keep an optimal level of openness while listening to (and analyzing) the interview material offered by my participants. I am also quite interested in understanding the drive or motivational element which underlies the search for transformative experiences. Those seeking to experience full, individuated, actualized lives appear to want transformation. The same seems to be true for those who long for a spiritual way of being and a moral or ethical way of life. If there are such drives, when in the life span might they “kik into gear”? Are we born with a spiritual instinct that is similar to Kant’s categorical imperative? Does a spiritual inclination of sorts reside in people from the beginning in a manner similar to the drive to actualize or individuate as discussed by theorists such as Maslow (1968) and Adler (1927)? Perhaps there is a developmental stage, such as that espoused in Jung’s midlife transition, where a spiritual instinct is awakened? Does one’s search for a spiritual way of being, religious understanding, moral improvement, and genuine connectedness ever end? Is this propensity the same for all people? Does this need or desire increase or perhaps decrease in the later years? What are the forms that these strivings take? And, what might these strivings reveal about the mental health of the person in question? Do they usually reveal sound mental health, or are they ever indicative of some degree of character pathology or mental disturbance? The above represent the types of questions that have perpetually interested me from very early in my academic career. From their inchoate formulation, I began to devise a strategy and a device to help me explore such questions. Out of this effort, and my long-standing interest in exploring philosophical narratives, evolved the World View Interview,2 a structured interview procedure through which the vicissitudes of an individual’s beliefs, values, motivations, and meaning-making efforts could be explored (Miller, 1982, 1988, 1994, 1996, 1999; Miller & West, 1993). Through the use of this instrument, I found myself in a very privileged position. I was, through intermittent interviews in a longitudinal format, able to listen to the stories and narratives of people as they aged. I was able to listen to expressions of their interest in (and yearnings for) the spiritual dimension; 2

For a complete transcript of the World View Interview, contact Melvin E. Miller, Department of Psychology, Norwich University, Northfield, Vermont 05663. For a further discussion of the overall world view project and details on the development of the World View Interview, see Miller (1982, 1988, 1994, 1996, 1999; Miller & West, 1993).

Spirituality, narrative, and character 289 I was able to listen to their questions of ultimate concern. Throughout this process, I became increasingly interested, both academically and personally, in exploring this often hidden dimension of human experience. In my research on world views and personality, and from my clinical experience, as I listened more and more carefully to my respondents, I heard stories and tales about the deep yearnings of the soul. It was usually when I listened more sensitively and patiently that this would happen. When I did listen carefully, I heard respondents talk about spiritual needs, ethical needs, and the need for authentic ways of being. It is this set of needs and drives – and the attendant outcomes of such drives – that I hope to explore in more detail in this paper.

Terminology Maturity and spiritual maturity Before turning to excerpts from the narratives of my research participants, I believe it would be helpful to have a collective understanding of key terms used in this chapter. First we must come to an understanding of how the notion of spiritual maturity will be employed. In general, I plan to take my lead from Conn (1989) as outlined in her book Spirituality and Personal Maturity: Maturity [is] a matter of loving relationships and fidelity to one’s personal call and gifts. Radically new possibilities and [the] re-examination of religious authority reinforce the need for discernment which demands that one both trust and evaluate personal decisions. (p. 25)

Integrity In a similar vein, we shall draw on Erikson for a working understanding of integrity. Most likely the reader is aware that integrity or ego integrity is the optimal outcome of Erikson’s eighth stage of development. Erikson (1950) initially articulates his understanding of this term in his outline of the Eight Ages of Man (p. 268). Through this concept of integrity, Erikson is describing those attributes or qualities the actualized or fully developed individual may experience in the later years of life. Only in him who (. . .) has taken care of things and people and has adapted himself to the triumphs and disappointments adherent to being the originator of others or the generator of products and ideas – only in him may gradually ripen the fruit of these seven stages. I know no better word for it than ego integrity. Lacking a clear definition, I shall point to a few constituents of this state of mind. It is the ego’s accrued assurance of its proclivity for order and meaning. It is a post-narcissistic love of the human ego – not of the self – as an experience which conveys some world order and spiritual sense, no matter how dearly paid for. (p. 268)

We shall be looking for the emergence or unfolding of both maturity and integrity in my participants as we follow the development of their spirituality in

290 Melvin E. Miller the interview excerpts below. Spiritual maturity and integrity will not necessarily be used interchangeably in this paper. Nonetheless, it is assumed that there is a significant overlap present in these attributes. Those who have led thoughtful and reflective lives, guided by hard-won values, principles, and spiritual orientation, may reflect both virtues in the later years of life.

Spirit, spiritual, and spirituality Before we move on, we also must look further into the concepts of spirit and the spiritual, and the related notion of spirituality. What does it mean to be full of spirit or spirited? Might we contemplate what it means to be a spiritual person? As we do this, let us look at some early contributions to the narrative surrounding spirit and spirituality, and get a sense of how these notions might inform this study. What is this thing called spirit? Without going into the Greek, Hebrew, or early Latin etymological derivatives, we find that the notion of spirit has had a long, gradually unfolding history. Spirit has been called: “the animating or vital principle (. . .) that gives life to the physical organism; the breath of life. [It has been called] being or intelligence conceived as distinct from (. . .) anything physical or material” (Oxford English Dictionary [OED], p. 617). Spirit, historically, also has been used to mean one’s “mettle; vigor or mind; courage; disposition or readiness to assert oneself or hold one’s own” (OED, p. 617). In addition, it has been defined as “a brisk or lively quality in things (. . .) liveliness, vivacity, or animation in persons, their actions, discourse. . .” (OED, p. 617). Spirit has also been used as a verb meaning “to infuse spirit, life, ardor, or energy into (a person); to inspirit [inspiration]; to animate; to encourage; to lead or urge on as encouragement; to excite; instigate; or stir up; to invest with a spirit or animating principle, (and) to invest with a particular spirit; disposition or character” (OED, p. 617). Spirit moves one as does the wind. In the New Testament, for example, spirit is said to “‘blow where it wills’; (. . .) In keeping with its wind nature, spirit is vivifying, firing, stimulating, inciting, and inspiring. Spirit is always an active, winged, swift-moving being. In addition to its characterization as wind, spirit is also said to be breathed into one.” (Fuller, 1994, p. 102). Let us think for a moment about how we use the term spirit in common, every-day language and expressions. We say things such as: the spirit moves you, he is a spirited chap, he is in low spirits, she is in high spirits today, that was a spirited discussion, and so on. C. G. Jung is one modern thinker who boldly spoke of such unconventional and daring topics. Jung had some rather fitting notions about the importance of spirit in people’s lives. Jung argued that the only life to be lived was the spirited

Spirituality, narrative, and character 291 life – the inspired life. He wrote as if to say that it behooves a person to find what animates him or her and to live out a life in accordance with this sense of spirit. This seems to be the essence of the following passage. “[L]ife needs to be lived in a certain spirit [emphasis added], needs to be taken hold of and possessed by the wider consciousness that is spirit – for the fulfillment of its destined potentialities” (Jung, 1969, p. 333). Thus, to be spirited is to have an animating energy, an energy that can be freed up for certain actions and commitments. Similarly, Fuller (1994) argues that “Life needs the superiority of independent, dominant spirit, the inspiration that spirit alone can bring. Spirit gives life meaning and allows its fullest unfolding” (p. 103). It is important at this juncture to see how Jung and others tie together and unite the notions of spirituality and meaning. The union of these concepts is especially critical for our understanding of essential development in adulthood and the later years. It is also interesting to note that Erikson (1950), Jung (1968), Fuller (1994), and others, make this all sound so positive and developmentally appropriate – on track as it were. They don’t seem to give serious consideration to the possibility that such yearnings or drives toward greater spirituality or religiosity might stem from deeper levels of psychological disturbance or some form of character flaw. I think we need to be open to that possibility. Jung proposes that the wish to find meaning – the struggle to find meaning – is an “instinct” that is initiated or sparked as one makes the turn into the second half of life. Spirit, according to Jung (1968), “is the archetype of meaning, and the spiritual is that [through which and] towards which life moves to its goal. Spirit inspires us with good and creative ideas, fills us with enthusiasm, and spurs us on” (p. 214). Perhaps a few points on the distinction between spirit and the spiritual need to be made. Spirit, in its most basic sense, as we have seen above, can be called the animating force, the energy of life. Spirit has been called the “breath of life” and the source of inspiration. According to this way of thinking, a spiritual orientation could come from a focusing of spirit in a particular direction, toward salient objects or events. We might ask, though, how does this notion differ from the psychoanalytic concept of cathexis – the concentration of psychic energy upon a given object (Hinsie & Campbell, 1970, p. 113)? We shall keep this distinction in mind for later. Keen, a theologian, contends that spirituality should be understood as a soulful quest, path, or journey. To Keen (1994), this spiritual orientation or journey manifests a striving . . . to discover our higher selves and to explore the depths, to allow ourselves to be moved, animated, inspired, by that sacred “no-thing” that keeps us human. [It is] the impulse to go beyond the ego and to explore the heights and depths, to connect our individual life with something beyond self, something more everlasting than the self. (p. 58)

292 Melvin E. Miller To be spiritual then, is to take the energy of spirit and direct it to commitments and connections, to personal development, or to that which is perceived as the ultimate. May (1977) and other existential theorists speak of people with a blocked or inhibited propensity to individuate, in contrast to those possessed by spirit. Similarly, Woodman, a contemporary Jungian, writes about individuals who are reluctant to orient themselves spiritually; she speaks of those “not willing to find the river [of spirit] in their lives [nor] surrender to its current” (Anderson & Hopkins, 1991, p. 7). These reluctant souls seem alienated from themselves and cut off from the source of their inspiration and energy. In my world view research project, I was interested in discovering people who searched for the river or current3 of spirituality in their lives, people who tried to find the source of their inspiration and perhaps surrender to it. Moreover, might I find individuals who were not only willing to surrender to the updraft, but also willing and able to talk about the process? And then, another nagging question emerged: could I assume that this predilection to search (and surrender) was a sign of mental health, or might I find emotional disturbance in these people? Likewise, I wondered if I might discover research participants who actively invited this struggle with spirit, people who grappled with the presence of meaning in their lives, people who struggled with their demons. Might I discover those who could look at both the positive and negative extensions of their character and early development, and ponder the influence of same? Might I find some special individuals who took an open, active orientation to such matters and invited an ongoing relationship with the other: with other people and with the ultimate other – regardless of the specific form in which the ultimate was envisaged? Might I find people who seemed to fit Jung’s (1974) description of the spirited or spiritual life portrayed below? [The] spiritual life – a life lived according to an ideal – in which one resolutely chooses one’s own way, and demands a life beyond social, moral, religious, political, and philosophical conventionality. God’s “true sons” [and daughters] are said to be those who break with convention and take the “steep and narrow path” that leads into the unknown. (Jung, 1974, p. 175)

These were the individuals I hoped I might find.

The project – Interviews, narratives, and assessment At this point I would like to begin to explore excerpts from the interview protocols of two spirited research participants. Before doing so, I will briefly introduce the methodology and structure of the overall world view research project. 3

For a further discussion of this concept, see Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s The Phenomenon of Man (1965) and The Divine Milieu (1957). Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s (1990) explication of flow is fairly consistent with the idea of giving oneself over to the current of one’s spiritual inspirations as well.

Spirituality, narrative, and character 293 Method In all, there were forty participants (40 men)4 who were administered the World View Interview,5 The Washington University Sentence Completion Test (WUSCT – Loevinger’s Sentence Completion Test of Ego Development [Loevinger, 1970]), Rokeach’s Dogmatism Scale (Rokeach, 1960), and the Perry Assessment of Intellectual and Ethical Development (Perry, 1970). Most participants in the original research group (including the two discussed in this paper) have been subjected to these same assessment measures on three different occasions over the past 25 years. The World View Interview was written in a semistructured format with lead questions that would encourage participants to discuss the central features of their world views or philosophical frame of reference. In other words, it was structured to invite narrative – to invite participants to unfold stories about their lives in general, and their religious aspirations and meaningmaking endeavors in particular. Questions similar to the following were used: Do you think that you have a world view? What role does/did religion and spirituality play in the development of your views? When did you first develop a world view? How often do you think of it? Under what circumstances do you think of it? How do changes in your world view transpire? Do you actively work to change or modify it? Additional questions were added to the interview to probe more deeply into variables that seemed to merit further investigation (e.g., questions that addressed the interplay between personality dynamics and the choice of/development of one’s world view; questions that attempted to ascertain how aware an individual was of his psychological life and related personality dynamics, etc.). The participants’ responses to this 3 to 5 hour interview process were carefully analyzed and participants were assigned to one of nine world view positions (See Appendix: World View Descriptions). The Loevinger Ego Development protocols were scored by a WUSCT expert, and the Perry positions were assigned according to Perry’s scoring criteria. Although it is not within the purview of this project to offer a detailed elaboration of these test scores and empirical findings, the scores of the two men in question will be introduced in context below. What is more important for the project at hand is the content of their responses, including the layers of meaning that can be extrapolated from the stories they revealed. 4

Only men were chosen for this project in order to not complicate the findings with matters related to gender. This shortcoming is acknowledged as are the limitations of the generalizability of the results. Furthermore, the sample was deliberately selective. To increase the overall diversity in world views obtained, the subjects were chosen from five vocational and professional areas (viz. physical scientists, social scientists, lawyers, military personnel, and ministers/priests). 5 The most complete presentation of the World View Interview, the World View Classification Grid, and descriptions of all nine world views can be located in a chapter by Miller (1994).

294 Melvin E. Miller The narrative material below has been excerpted from their interviews and related correspondence gleaned over the past twenty-five years.

The participants Let us now begin to investigate the spiritual journeys of a couple of priests – one a Roman Catholic, the other a protestant. Here I will attempt to highlight their struggles with matters of ultimate concern and their ever-evolving relationships with spiritual issues. In doing so, I’ll focus on their consistent efforts to become more spiritually committed and enlivened as they strive toward ego integrity and a mature, spirited life. Their respective searches for an ethical stance or ethical way of being will be highlighted, even as I attempt to understand their relationships with other people, with the mysterious, and with their sources of inspiration. Then we shall analyze bits of narrative from their spiritual journeys as they reflect movement through interior, psychological, and spiritual landscapes. The excerpts from the stories of these individuals are like narrative snapshots taken from the lives of two fairly dissimilar men. Among other things, they seem to have very different family and cultural backgrounds as well as distinct personal, interpersonal, and professional characteristics. These men, of course, share some commonalities as well. Thus, I ask the reader to be sensitive to both their similarities and difference as we reflect on their lives and struggles. The reader is also invited to imagine himself or herself in some form of empathic identification with these participants. (I imagine my own identification with them is conspicuously transparent.) Perhaps readers will see themselves mirrored in the lives and struggles of these people and will not only observe but also experience how these courageous souls confronted their demons and wrestled with the frustrations and torments of their interior worlds. There is no way that I can do justice to the breadth of the struggles encountered by these complex individuals in such a brief essay. I do hope, however, to present enough material to highlight their active, ongoing grappling with issues of ultimate concern and to focus on the often intense intrapsychic and interpersonal conflicts that emerged during their efforts to relate to themselves, others, and the ultimate. I also would like to reflect on the personal, historical background relevant to their spiritual struggles, and take some initial steps in analyzing the impact of these influences from a psychodynamic perspective. In turn, I shall explore some of the tentative resolutions articulated by these men throughout their spiritual journeys.

Case 1: The priest The first research participant is a 73 year-old Roman Catholic priest, who we will call Father Monti.6 This man has been, and continues to be, a very influential 6

The names and backgrounds of the participants have been altered to protect their anonymity. Nonetheless, permission to include these vignettes was obtained.

Spirituality, narrative, and character 295 figure in his parish, in his broader religious community, and in his secular community. He inspires people with his ideas, his sermons, his music, and with what he described as his “charismatic personality.” Father Monti has been involved in seminaries and religious training for virtually his entire life. He has struggled diligently to have a special relationship with religion, spirituality, the key leaders of his order and church, and his God. This struggle has taken on many shapes and forms over the years. He was born into a fairly typical Midwestern working-class family. According to Monti’s report, his mother and father fought almost continuously. He noted that his father was often harsh and sometimes even cruel to his mother and to the children. Monti found himself frequently on the receiving end of severe physical punishment and heavy-handed verbal criticism. At one point during the second major interview, Monti remarked: “my father was incapable of love,” and he “often did things to make us have low opinions of ourselves.” Although Monti felt mistreated by his father, he was more consciously concerned with how unhappy his mother was in her marriage to his father. I suspect there was a keen identification with his mother around this and other matters. This identification notwithstanding, Monti was determined to “do all that he could” to make his mother “feel better and to try to make her happy in life.” He felt that he had to take care of her; he had to make her life better. He described his mother as “a saint,” and a “very loving person.” He was also known as his mother’s favorite child. Understandably, the other five children were jealous of him for this “special relationship” with her, and they let him know that in various ways (e.g, mocking him, playing tricks on him, etc.). In those early, formative years, we find clear evidence that Monti tended to shy away from his father, staying out of range of his pernicious tongue-lashings and general cruelty. Conversely, as we saw above, he described being close to his mother, working hard to make her happy; he wanted to improve her life. One gets the sense that there was a fair degree of parental neglect. If a child has to work so hard (thinks he has to work so hard) to take care of his mother, one can assume that there was more than a modicum of parental care and mirroring missing from the developmental picture. In short, we find in the story of Monti’s early life evidence of classical pre-Oedipal7 injury and the roots of a narcissistic disturbance. Are we herein witnessing both the pressures and consequences of being, among other things, the “favorite” or Gifted Child (cf. Miller, 1981)? We also see early 7

The psychoanalytic expression “classical pre-Oedipal injury” or disturbance is a shorthand for describing the effects of neglect or trauma that occurred before the Oedipal period of approximately 4 to 5 years. The implication is that optimal development has been hampered by these early traumatogenic events. Failures of empathy and mirroring during the symbiotic stage are likely precipitants of these disturbances, eventually leading to the emergence of a narcissistic and/or grandiose self. The terms “Preneurotic Character Structure” and “Pre-Oedipal injury” are often used interchangeably (cf. Horner, 1984, pp. 104–169).

296 Melvin E. Miller on in his life, the seeds of harmavoidance and a life-long focus on pleasing and taking care of people. Again, this can be understood as part and parcel of a narcissistic defense. A driving force in his life, especially in the early years, was pleasing people – especially women. He tried to please both men and women – especially women, although in actuality, he had no idea how to please them; he had no idea what to think (and do) about women, especially about women as sexual beings. This is a phenomenon to which we’ll later return. Thus, in what was primarily an attempt to please his mother, he decided to become a priest. In both his family and in his cultural circles, becoming a priest was one of the most laudable things a good son could do. Monti believed he could cure his mother of her unhappiness if he entered a monastery and became a holy father himself. His mother encouraged this decision. He later acknowledged that his mother’s encouragement (and his efforts to help her emotionally) were not the sole reasons for entering the priesthood, but were certainly major contributors. He claimed that his own religious sentiments were evolving and growing during this period. In short, it appears that his life-long vocation as a priest was determined at a very young age, and as we have seen, this decision was informed by a variety of interwoven factors. So, it was off to the monastery (priest prep school) for Monti at the age of 14. In the early years of formal religious training, Monti had to struggle desperately, often against negative forces within himself, to obey the rules and duties of his religion and his religious order. He wanted to learn how to be a “good priest.” He had a lot of energy and high ideals, and he wanted to use it all for good. Thus, he resisted the inclination to disobey or challenge the rules of the church, although in his own mind he questioned them – time and time again. Over time, he became almost sickened by the rules and by those who rigidly adhered to them, often in hypocritical ways. At times he hated his superiors; he experienced profound rage8 towards them, but, of course, most of the time he hated himself. Either they were wrong, or he was wrong – a version of the kind of emotional splitting9 we often find in those with pre-Oedipal trauma. Usually he felt that he was the one in the wrong. The customs and rules of the Church 8

This is the narcissistic rage discussed by Kohut (1977) and others. Those with early narcissistic injuries can be provoked into dramatic outbursts of rage by even the most minor empathic failure. Father Monti experienced such failures on a daily basis during the years of his religious training. 9 Splitting is a primitive defense mechanism that involves creating worlds and objects (inner and outer) that are deemed all good or all bad. Grotstein (1981) contends that splitting includes separating the experience of objects and/or inner states, or the self which experiences the experience. Pathological splitting also alters the perception of the object by inappropriate divisions (into all good and all bad; right vs. wrong), by splintering and fragmentation. Splitting the perception of an object is also associated with the splitting of the self (pp. 9–10).

Spirituality, narrative, and character 297 seemed to painfully conflict with his personal inclinations and inspirations. Even as he aspired to be a good Catholic and faithful priest, he felt tormented, exploited, and rather mishandled by the system in which he was struggling so hard to belong. He was angry with the system, with its leaders, with himself, and with God. The God that he conceived of at this juncture could be described as the mean, critical Father God discussed by Rizzuto (1974; 1976). Here Rizzuto analyzed how one’s early object-relations and internalized objects determined one’s images of the ultimate. Thus, the religious system he was a part of – the people in this system – and the God image associated with this system – all seemed to contribute to a reduction in his self-confidence and an increase in his feelings of shame. We could say that Monti was having a typical psychoanalytic transference experience with his superiors. These feelings of course paralleled those associated with the scoldings and punishments he received from his actual birth father. Together, these dynamics further contributed to the ongoing diminution and fragmentation of his sense of self. Monti believed that those in charge of his religious training, sometimes unwittingly and often consciously fostered an acute sense of inferiority in him. Instead of ministering unto his narcissistic wounds and assuaging them, he felt as if his superiors threw salt on them; they intentionally exacerbated them. This was a set of feelings with which he struggled most of his life. “Why is it that I have this feeling of insecurity? I mean I can take it far back into my life . . . the things that my parents have said, the things that my superiors said, (. . .) that my fellow students have said [that I am irresponsible, selfish, etc.]. I feel a great amount of guilt and shame [over these things].” Again, we see the negative feelings getting turned against self. As we saw earlier, in the context of splitting, such affects will either get directed outward (toward the other, the world) or turned toward self. More often than not, Monti turned his anger and rage toward self. All this contributed to his intermittent episodes of dysthymia and depression. He continued: I have this kind of inferiority feeling (. . .) I had one superior in particular (. . .) who was very critical of things that I did and I don’t know why and still don’t to this day (. . .) why he hated my guts (. . .) and I never understood why. And I was very sensitive to this kind of feedback (. . .) He just simply treated me like I was a piece of dirt (. . .) I [also] developed this sensitivity to criticism from my peers.

He felt criticized, blamed, and shamed; he could not figure out why. His entire religious training seemed to repeat the lack of mirroring he experienced as a child. Was he actually worthy of blame? What had he done wrong? Were the criticisms offered by his Church superiors and those issued by his parents and peers stemming from the same ugly and unsuitable traits within himself ? He seriously entertained this possibility, while turning anger and hatred toward himself – often unaware that he was doing so. He wondered: Were they all

298 Melvin E. Miller pointing out some indelible flaw within him? Were their responses evoked by some incredibly obvious defect? This of course, is a fairly typical defensive response of a child (of any individual) faced with a history of pernicious, negative feedback and lack of empathic mirroring. “It must be my fault” is a common defensive stance when someone has had to face an early, longstanding history of cruel treatment. It is one of the alternating poles of a narcissistic defensive system. If it is “all my fault,” at least the world makes some sense, and the person doesn’t have to face his deeper feelings of anger and resentment quite as directly – let alone the even more profound feelings of sadness and grief related to early loss. As a result of this conflict and its accompanying ego defenses, Monti often felt an overarching inconsistency between the yearnings of his heart and the mandates of the Church and its leaders. Why these awful feelings about self, my badness, my evilness – whilst trying to become a religious man and serve God and the good? Why this overweening conscience? These are just a few of the struggles over which Father Monti agonized. As we shall see, these struggles reached crisis proportion for Monti during mid-life. When I first arrived on the scene with the World View Interview in hand, Father Monti was almost 50 years old. He had been actively working in a parish and carrying out his clerical duties while trying to come to terms with critical conflicts that had reached crises of conscience proportion. He was wrestling with the depths of his religious commitment and the challenges presented to it that took the form of questions relating to rules, dogma, morality, sexuality, interpersonal relations, and his relationship with God. He had vowed to himself that he would not give up on trying to resolve these matters, that he would not let his spirit be dampened. He pledged to work continually on his relationship with his Church, his God, and himself. He took these vows seriously – as seriously as he took his formal religious vows – and he struggled intensely. He was determined to see this through, despite the fact that his confidence in the Church and in himself were often badly shaken. This life crisis (this crisis of conscience), seemed to focus in general around his reluctance to think and act the way the superiors in his Church dictated. They wanted him to follow the Church’s rules to the letter of the law. He felt distant, removed, and kept at arm’s length by the church’s behavioral mandates. He wanted to feel loved by his superiors (the church fathers) to a palpable degree – to a degree that would make up for what he missed out on as a child. Instead, as a result of their continuous punishments and criticisms, he balked; he resisted. He just could not give himself over to their way of doing things; he resented their rules and their hypocrisy. The pivotal event of this crisis, interestingly enough, involved a midlife sexual awakening. The confusion and conflict surfacing around sexual urges befuddled him and led him to ask such questions of himself, such as: how can I be a Christian and a priest and have

Spirituality, narrative, and character 299 such feelings? Am I bad or dirty? Must I actually be the evil sex monster they will say I am for having such feelings? In his own words: The girls at the school (. . .) this sexual arousal (. . .) I found myself getting interested in girls and women, and I thought I was bad – an evil sex fiend. They always taught us the evils of sex, but never the nature of love. My order didn’t teach me anything about spirituality. It taught me only to go through the motions.

Throughout this crisis period, he had been actively trying to develop a more personal relationship with his God. He had been frustrated by the effort required to live in accordance with such a strict set of rules. He had been fighting for more depth in his relationship with God. He was striving for a more meaningful relationship with a loving God; he wanted a relationship with a more natural God, not a controlling and critical God. Was he now looking for a “good parent” in his image/concept of God? He needed help. He did not waver or pull back from the struggle. He did not let his spirit be dampened. He was resolute in his determination. It was as if this ongoing quest was his job. It was more than his job; it was his duty, his vocation; it was his life’s path. He was beginning to understand quite profoundly that he needed more than mere rules, that something more was needed in the form of relationship with God, with others, and with himself. His constant prayer at this point in his life was: “Dear God, I am your servant. Do with me whatever you will from this point on. I will be able to tolerate anything as long as I am in your good graces.” How do we understand this prayer? Is this his harmavoidance tendency rearing its head again? Is it the prayer of a narcissistically injured person asking for the special favors he deserves? Is this the prayer of a small child looking for a good, loving, and mirroring parent, and/or is this prayer a reflection of his search for a different kind of relationship with God? As noted, the God in which Father Monti believed up to this point in his life could be classified under Rizzuto’s (1974) first category of God-images. This category included those who believed in a God who was Supreme, who must be pleased, who is both one’s maker and one’s judge, and, at the same time is experienced as personal (1974, pp. 88–91). His struggle, according to Rizzuto’s parlance and Monti’s personal prayer, was to try to find a God who was more loving and accepting, more welcoming and friendly. Monti’s image of God at this point could also be grouped under Fowler’s (1981, 1996) 3rd stage of faith development – the Synthetic-Conventional Faith stage. In this stage, “A personal and largely unreflective synthesis of beliefs and values evolves to support identity and to unite one in emotional solidarity with others” (1996, p. 170). Monti would fervently pray for an answer to his crisis; he’d plea for a resolution. Finally, something extraordinary happened. At some point, around midlife, Father Monti experienced a profound moment of insight. It was an

300 Melvin E. Miller epiphany. He called it a “mystical experience,” an experience of the presence of God in his life. It was a transformative experience for him. Monti said it was a “turning point in my life.” He went on to say that “This transformation was about God’s presence, my relationship to God, and it was a sanction of my Okness.” It was as if God said, “Stop struggling so hard. You are OK the way that you are. Don’t be so influenced by those negative, critical Church leaders. Focus on your relationship with me, focus on your relationship with your parishioners, and let yourself be who you are – who you were meant to be.” According to Father Monti: I did have a mystical experience in my life (. . .) of God’s presence, and I think that it was a turning point in my life. On the day that this mystical experience occurred to me, (. . .) I am almost sure I hear the voice [of God] say: “Monti, you are going to be my servant.” I am telling you, there was a feeling that came over me [as I heard something like] I’m going to use you and I am going to use your personality and your experiences. I am going to use all of that (. . .) for my purposes.

He goes on to describe this experience as a feeling of overwhelming love – a powerful yet kind type of love. It was a love that changed him, transformed him, and contributed to a significantly greater degree of self-acceptance. I am not afraid anymore (. . .) because I have been loved enough by God; he has really given me a lot of gifts. There is hope for us all, if we can just quit worrying about ourselves and just let the Lord love us and try to give love back as well. [T]he day that I found out I was lovable was the day that my life was changed.

He believed that this awakening or transformative moment happened to him because he continued to struggle with the issues that were tormenting him, because he continued to pray, to meditate, and to work on his relationship with God and his image of God, because he never gave up. We might ask what really happened here, what made this transformation possible? Was this mainly a shift in thinking or a transformation that included both affect and thought (cf. Miller, 2006, pp. 230–232)? What is it that gave him such relief from his narcissistic burden? He felt exonerated by God. Did he now come to believe that it “wasn’t his fault” (McWilliams, 1999, p. 120)? Did he truly work though the background and vicissitudes of his narcissistic character, or did he jump to a grandiose position – “Now, God loves me; I am special in the eyes of God”? The results of our empirical measures might give us some perspective on how to address this question. Over the 25 years of this study, Father Monti evidenced only very minor elevations on the WUSCT-Ego Development Test results. This slight score elevation technically reflects only a modest increase in self-awareness and the ability to be aware of inner conflict and emotional complexity. Was he beginning to experience more permission to have his own thoughts and feelings and to appreciate their complexity? On the other hand,

Spirituality, narrative, and character 301 this WUSCT improvement was offset by a slightly greater increase in his Rokeach Dogmatism Test scores. This increase might suggest that any cognitive changes made were not accompanied by deeper structural change. This is certainly only a tentative hypothesis though. Here are some of his reflections that followed the transformative experience: I now have a kind of spirituality all my own (. . .) I feel I’ve finally gotten with my central purpose in life, that I am becoming who I was meant to be. My prayer is the prayer of nature. My prayer is the prayer of being with people, and it is not the prayer that my order wants me to pray out of a book.

He finally began to be comfortable with this prayer and with himself. In doing so, he became a (post mid-life) rebel of sorts. He went on: I think being a preacher is very important to me. But (. . .) I’m only as good as the relationship that I have with God because it’s duplicity for me to get up there and talk about platitudes that I’ve been taught over the years (. . .) which is the way I was when I first became a preacher. [Early on] I wrote things that people should hear because I was trained to tell those kinds of things. Now, I am doing more of my own thing.

Monti now described himself as one who was formerly rigid. Although, as noted, his Rokeach Dogmatism Scale scores did not reflect any reduction in cognitive rigidity, to his mind, he had loosened up. He felt better. He felt more flexible. He could now call himself “previously rule driven.” He believed he had been working hard to shift from his archaic, and defended ways to a more authentic and spontaneous style. He began to understand more clearly how his problems with rules and regulations – and his crisis of conscience – were tied in with his own psychology and his personal conflicts resulting from rules and direction imposed from without – from these cruel, older priests (who reminded him of his father). In like manner, he began to seriously entertain the possibility that some of his difficulties with superiors stemmed from his unique, hard-won defensive style. He was so pleased that some internal change had actually begun. In terms of being a religious speaker and studying scripture, he noted that, after the mystical experience, he finally began to take pleasure in ecclesiastical activities that used to be so tedious. Now he could do what he had heretofore resented, since he wasn’t just following the rules. I enjoy it. [Now, I can sit] down for a whole afternoon and simply read scriptures and the interpretations that great minds have given to us and I’m not even aware that time had passed. It went [over time] from “you should” to “it would be nice if you did” to “I want to.” And I think I’ve finally integrated all that (. . .) to the stage now that (. . .) nobody has to tell me that “you should do this.” I’m speaking more about integration now (. . .) I would like to be a preacher who believes what he is saying because he has integrated it into his own life.

302 Melvin E. Miller From this point on, he approached his calling with renewed vigor and energy. He began to feel more integrated emotionally; the personal and professional arenas of his life felt more integrated as well. In the second interview, when Monti was almost 60, he was still working on developing his relationships with people and his relationship with God. He was trying to care even more deeply for his parishioners. He also continued to make gains in self-confidence and self-esteem. He affirmed that he had made a lot of progress in his relationship with God, and he was still working on it. At this point in his life, he could imagine a God who was not a mean-spirited tyrant or a guardian of rules and regulations, but a loving God, a relationship-oriented God, a God of nature. He had now found a God with whom he could dialogue, as found in both nature and people. Subsequent interviews indicated that these changes continued over the years. By the time he reached the age of 72, it almost appeared as if we could legitimately speak of character change – as if these changes – and feelings of integration – had been incorporated into his character. It all seemed easier and more natural now. He believed that he was continuing to assimilate and integrate the meaning of this transformative experience into his everyday life, primarily leading to more self-acceptance and more care for his fellow human beings. Here are some examples of the dominant awareness articulated by Father Monti that were distilled from the second interview: [T]he philosophy that was still underlying it all was my personal relationship with God as I viewed him and that view has changed dramatically over the years. That personal relationship with God now in my life at the age of 60 (. . .) is based on those who are ill, because He said, “When I was sick, you visited me.” And this is my spirituality now; this is my prayer. I am in the position or I have the honor of serving (. . .) directly through dealing with His sick, because when I am dealing with them I am dealing with Him. So this is my prayer life, right here. The reason I love it so much is that my work is my prayer, and I am totally fulfilled in this work.

Concerning his response to guilt experienced over not abiding by the rules of the Church in a rigid, dogmatic manner, he comments: “There is no more guilt.” He continued along this vein: Now I could not, based on my philosophy, ever do an evil action deliberately. It is (. . .) far removed from my personality. I can literally and truthfully say to you, I have never done an action that I regarded as being an affront to God (. . .) even though it was contrary to what those guys [Church superiors] said. [I]f I were to do that, it would be like taking [someone] you love deeply, and killing the relationship somehow. Now, that would be hell for me.

Monti now feels his actions and behaviors are consistent with his conscience and his sense of the ultimate. Do we take this belief at face value, or is it better understood as a reflection of Monti ramping up his narcissistic defenses even

Spirituality, narrative, and character 303 further? Should we entertain the possibility that Monti is becoming more like Confucius (cf. the frontispiece of this chapter) where he exclaimed that “At seventy I could follow my heart’s desire without transgressing the boundaries of right”? Father Monti’s spiritual strivings, according to his own report, have led him in the direction in which he was aiming. In the third interview, he claimed to be at peace. He went on to say, “[Now] I have the very thing I’ve been trying all my life to get and that is a personal relationship with God and I find it here in my people. I don’t know what else could be given me that would be greater than this. I am fulfilled.” In short, through this abbreviated exploration of the life of one searching soul, we have come to see how a devout man of the cloth had to struggle diligently to come into his own – to fight the character style and the attendant defenses that were shaped by early trauma. We saw him move toward ego integrity and spiritual maturity through an extended crisis of faith. We saw him be buffeted and battered, if not tormented, by crisis en route to what he described as a pivotal transformative experience. We saw how he worked to direct his spirit and energy and how he strove to do so through meditation, dialogue, and prayer. He developed the ability to set limits and to say “no.” He had learned to say “no” to the more questionable rules of the order. He learned to say “no” or “hands off ” to the people who made him feel so inferior (his parents, his father, certain friends and acquaintances). In the process, he deeply struggled with impulses and yearnings that were contrary to the order and its teachings; he learned that he could put them in a manageable perspective. He actively worked to create, construct, and keep an image of God in mind, an image that had more to do with relationship, nature, and peace than any he had known previously. To these images (and concepts) he was able to say “yes.” He now claimed that he was freed to be more completely himself by this profoundly transformative experience.

Case 2: The minister The second research participant is a 65-year-old Protestant minister. We shall call him Reverend Ernest. Ernest was born into a family of ministers/priests. His father, grandfather, uncles, and brothers were all ministers. In fact, for a number of generations, the men in his family chose the ministry (protestant priesthood) as a vocation. He inherited this tradition and believed he had to follow it. It was as if he had no choice in the matter. Was this identify foreclosure at work (cf. Erikson, 1968)? He eventually did follow the family tradition, albeit not without great ambivalence and conflict. Since I cam from a long line of ministers, I wonder if I am doing it for the wrong reasons. I was inoculated with just enough Christianity for a long time to keep me from catching the real thing. I learned Christianity as a culture, as family heritage, as duty, and as ritual – all of which seem very, very close to the center of Christianity, but (. . .) missing the kernel.

304 Melvin E. Miller Reverend Ernest spoke with ambivalence about the early years of his life. Ernest’s parents were missionaries during his formative years, so they traveled a great deal. His father was the one out in the world – doing God’s good will, while his mother remained at home, primarily functioning as a housewife. His parents, according to Ernest, were adequate caretakers, but his father’s absence from the home left Ernest with an emptiness, a yearning for more of his father’s presence. He also developed a sensitivity to the plight of his mother – and to women in general. He grew up with mixed identifications – home with mother and siblings, and yet longing for the important world of activity and business (God’s business) in which his father participated. He was the youngest of five children and tended to get lost in the chaos of the home environment. On the other hand, his parents got along amicably and functioned well as a couple – both at home and in the world of work. He felt loved, empathically mirrored, and was offered a fair amount of structure for his life and his inner world. He was encouraged and supported by his family – especially in the realm of academics. Because he was the youngest, he sometimes felt like the runt of the litter. He felt like an afterthought and tended to get lost in the shuffle of the home front. These feelings were accentuated by almost every school and academic experience he had in life. In the first interview, Ernest described how being the youngest in his prep school class negatively affected him and shaped his personality and interpersonal style. He was always picked on; he was always beaten up. Below, he mentions the impact that this dynamic played in life. When I was a child of 11, 12, 13 and was going off to prep school, I found that I was two years younger than the rest of the school. I was beaten up [by the older students] and thus I developed coping strategies which involved pleasing people and being self-evasive. Out of adapting to this situation, I came to feel that assertiveness was dangerous and probably wrong. And, therefore, since assertiveness was taboo, longrange goals were hard to set.

In many ways, Ernest believed that these early experiences set the tone for and established the paradigm for much of his later professional life and interpersonal relationships. “If you think that you need to please people so that they will quit beating on you or affirm you, that tempts you toward even more workaholism.” Here we see at work some of the forces that drove Reverend Ernest’s conscientiousness. He had become a very superego driven person. He wanted to please, he wanted to do good works, and – from the vantage point of his strict superego, he was not particularly in touch with his anger toward the authorities – the church leaders. His anger, though prevalent, did not seem to reach the level of narcissistic rage as we saw with Father Monti. It was fairly well repressed. Given these dynamics, I think we can safely say that his early development (his

Spirituality, narrative, and character 305 early parenting) was “good enough” to help create within him more of an Oedipal / post-Oedipal psychological structure (cf. Footnote #7). That is, he was able to develop enough of an inner structure – and enough relationship capacity, to readily engage with parents, siblings, peers, and those in his educational and professional world. In contrast with Father Monti, Reverend Ernest did not tend to split affect toward self and other into “all good” or “all bad” dichotomies. Moreover, he did not tend to have to boost his self-esteem artificially with fantasies of his own superiority. He was intermittently troubled by guilt (although sometimes shame) for not doing enough, for not working hard enough, for not doing a good enough job. These feelings simply made him work harder. As Reverend Ernest talked further about his formative years, he noted that throughout his college and graduate years he struggled to find his way. He felt lukewarm in his religious commitment. He even took a naturalistic, positivistic (anti-ecclesiastic) world view during his university years because it was popular to do so in his circle. He believed he did so because it was difficult for him to understand and develop his own perspective on things, let alone take an unpopular stance among his college friends and colleagues. Ernest was almost continuously worried about what others thought of him. It was as if his center or core was off base, misdirected, even missing. He was in the business of pleasing everyone else but certainly not himself; personally, he was floundering. This was all terribly disconcerting to him, but he didn’t know what to do about it. He had high energy and a wish to do good things but had no real direction, except to please others and avoid harm. Early in the first interview session, Reverend Ernest frequently articulated a struggle he had been experiencing related to an important professional decision. This dilemma was consistent with the aforementioned inner template (please others vs. actualize self ). He had been offered an administrative position in a seminary just prior to the first World View Interview and the beginning of the longitudinal assessment. He was torn between his own highly-developed interest in academic teaching and writing and the call (the pressure) to become more involved in administration and church leadership. He labored over this decision, but eventually accepted the administrative position. In his own words: “Something needed to be done; nobody else seemed to be up to doing it. I am always eager to please, so I said I would do it. I am not comfortable with the decision.” During the early interviews, he spoke often about the frequent struggles within him. He was very conflicted between what he thought he wanted from within (for himself) versus the demands from without (the expectations of others). This is a fairly common neurotic (Oedipal/post-Oedipal) type of conflict. He needed to please and to get the reinforcement; he longed for the positive feedback obtained from a job well done. He needed to keep people from “beating” on him. So, he capitulated to the pressures from the church authorities to

306 Melvin E. Miller be the best administrator that he could be. He didn’t want to give in to such pressures, but felt that he “needed to” – that it was required of him. Interestingly, as he began to fulfill this new role, he began to discover an emerging urge for power grow within himself. It crossed his mind more than once – although he claimed it wasn’t an entirely serious thought – that these newly found feelings of power could make up for the years of being picked on. He was aware of and acknowledged the compensatory nature of these flights of fantasy. They felt very compensatory to him. Nonetheless, at times during the interview, he berated himself for selling himself to the highest bidder. In some respects, he felt like he had sold his soul to the devil. On the other hand, at a very deep level, Revered Ernest wanted to grow, to develop, to feel more freedom to individuate. Instead, though, he felt seduced by the reinforcements found in administration. He wanted to please people; he needed to please people; he liked the adulation and positive feedback. He enjoyed the approbation but found that, meanwhile, he had overlooked family, friends, and, perhaps, most importantly, himself. His relationship with God seemed to disappear in the process as well. When asked about his most important life goals or objectives, he responded, I am re-evaluating whom I want to please and acknowledging very painfully that I can’t please everybody. I really want to live; I really want to live in God – the trying God (. . .) In terms of long range goals? I define the primary long range goal as knowing God and enjoying him forever. The specific (. . .) this takes at the present is – working through this mid-life crisis [emphasis added] or whatever, and trying to come to a resolution between an emphasis on teaching and an emphasis on administration.

This occurred at midlife, he called it a true midlife crisis. As a result of this upheaval, he began to analyze himself more carefully and closely. He began to look more systematically at his personality style, his people-pleasing, selfeffacing tendencies, and the untoward consequences of these qualities. He also had begun to realize about this time that he had been fighting against the updraft; he had been resisting the current of the river of self-transformation. Reverend Ernest had great intellect, great academic and people skills, and great energy. Through the interviews and through self-reflection, he eventually came to understand that these strengths were not unified nor focused in a self-enhancing manner. He experienced too many conflicts that interfered with his ability to more fully individuate himself. He berated himself for following the plans of others – for responding so readily to the “call to please.” He desired to be truer to himself and his unique spiritual journey. He longed for further personal and spiritual transformation. This was his prayer. He continued with this line of thought: Whom do you play to? Firstly, in the spiritual quest, learning how to relate to God, not as a cosmic taskmaster, not as a policeman in the sky, not in those categories that

Spirituality, narrative, and character 307 one tends to use compulsively as a child, but in some way as He really is. I have come to discover that this is the spiritual quest at the deepest level. Secondly, as a priority, would be the family. The family and I do not want to let work come above the family in order of priority. What does a man profit if he gains the whole world and loses his family?

Here we see glimpses of the peculiarities of his God image. According to Rizzuto’s formulation, he would be placed in her first category – as was Father Monti, although the specifics of his God image were shaped by different object relations dynamics. Ernest’s God was both supreme and personal. It was a God who must be pleased. His God was both the original maker of all things and an omniscient judge ( both “cosmic taskmaster” and “policeman”). Other empirical findings revealed that his WUSCT (ego development) scores moved from mid-range to high mid-range (from I-4 to I-4/5) over the 25 years of this investigation. In like manner, his Fowler Stages of Faith ranking was initially assessed to be at Stage #4 – Individuative-Reflective Faith.10 We then saw it evolve into a Stage #5 position (Conjunctive Faith)11 midway through this longitudinal process. These scores evidence a richly differentiated inner life, and – by inference – suggest that his psychological structure had developed into the Oedipal/ post-Oedipal range. And, as might be predicted, we did not find in Ernest the tendency towards defensive splitting that we found in Monti. In its place, we discovered an ability to grapple with both intrapsychic and interpersonal complexity. Despite these indicators of more highly-developed functioning, we found that his Rokeach Dogmatism scores remained in the above average range over the same period, indicating a measurable degree of cognitive inflexibility. Irrespective of Reverend Ernest’s emerging awareness of his self-limiting ways, and his wish to fight against his workaholism and the tendency to please, he did (as we saw above) take the job in administration. He continued to be ruled by the people-pleasing demon for quite a while longer. He attempted to develop the perfect Christian community in his seminary. As he immersed himself in this effort, he lost his relationship with himself, with God, and, to a degree, his wife and family. 10

Stage #4-Individuative-Reflective Faith (Young adulthood & beyond): Critical reflection upon one’s beliefs and values, utilizing third-person perspective-taking; understanding of the self and others as part of a social system; the internalization of authority and the assumption of responsibility for making explicit choices of ideology and lifestyle open the way for critically self-aware commitments in relationships and vocation (Fowler, 1996, p. 170). 11 Stage #5-Conjunctive Faith (Early Mid-life & beyond): The embrace of polarities in one’s life, an alertness to paradox, and the need for multiple interpretations of reality mark this stage. Symbol and story, metaphor and myth (from one’s own traditions and others’) are newly appreciated (second, or willed naivete) as vehicles for expressing truth (Fowler, 1996, p. 170).

308 Melvin E. Miller At some point, he screwed up his courage and decided to put an end to these self-inhibiting, counterproductive ways. In the second interview, at age 50, he talked more about an increased awareness of his self-declared foibles. “I pushed my needs on the community, while calling them God’s needs or wishes.” Reverend Ernest was able to admit to himself that he had remained a workaholic during the administrative years. Yes, he was getting good feedback and praise for the job he was doing, but he remained discontented and unhappy. Yes, he had been getting the job done; he had helped create a very exciting learning and religious environment. He had been infusing others with energy and spirit, and with a sense of mission and passion. However, something was missing for him. So (. . .) if there was a career to which I was committed, it was this dream of being part of a “perfect Christian community.” And, what I’ve discovered, of course, is that dreams can be savagely devouring (. . .) that the price of participation in that type of project is often higher than you want to go on paying indefinitely. (. . .) And, also, I guess you discover that the dream is not susceptible of realization (. . .) that in some ways the harder you work at it, the worse you do.

He continued: All of this has become clear to me, I think, in the last year or so. I’ll be fifty this year. Realizing how much I need to recapture . . . a family I missed out on at some point earlier on, and also my need to be a part of something “important” drove my participation in this dream . . . or this career . . . and how I was embedded in it . . . I couldn’t get any distance on it . . . and just got really burned out trying to make a perfect Christian community happen on the basis of my own application of energy.

At this point, it appeared that Reverend Ernest really wanted to do things differently. His emerging awarenesses were ready to be put into action – ready to be actualized. He sincerely wanted to let relationship be the keystone of his existence, e.g., his relationship with his wife, with family, with a Christian community, and with God. Relationship became his core guiding value, a pivotal ideal in his philosophy of life. In this context, it could argued that his interest in/capacity for relationship was making up for something that was missing in his early development (as in the case of Father Monti). And, at the same time, one could posit that such a relationship orientation would not have been possible to this degree were it not for the substantial relational underpinnings garnered in his early years of development. Relational strivings were now beginning to eclipse the impetus toward hard, driving work. As he began to not only conceptualize the importance of relationship, but also to act on it, he no longer felt burned out; his spirit and energy became more focused, and he believed himself to be heading in a healthier, more integrated direction. What I think I got a little distance on over the last few years has been the needs that were driving my participation in this dream, and a little distance on the ideology of

Spirituality, narrative, and character 309 the community that I belong to (. . .) realizing that it has a lot of strengths (. . .) but doesn’t incorporate other significant themes quite as well. For example, it has strong commitments to truth, (. . .) and it is a strongly thinking type orientation (. . .) but maybe not so strong commitments to relationships. While the truth commitment is necessary, an overweening preoccupation with truth is really unhelpful to a lot of people.

Although his comments above seem a little abstract or pedantic, it does appear that something rather transformative had been occurring within Reverend Ernest. Coincidental with an ever-increasing awareness of his own motivations, Earnest was now more skeptical of (and critical of ) the community that he previously had been trying so hard to create and please. He was now noticing within his church community the very same kinds of psychological issues and dynamics with which he had been struggling over the years, e.g., the tension between a focus on the life of the intellect (the world of ideas and concepts) versus a belief in (and commitment to) the centrality of relationship. He now spoke from first-hand experience. As all this was developing, he began to get an even sharper image of what he wanted for his own continued psychological and spiritual development. In his own words again, “Now, I would like to develop a network of acquaintances and colleagues who are interested in the same kinds of questions I am (. . .) namely (. . .) adult development (. . .) spirituality, and the reconciliation of men and women.” In our most recent conversation (interview #3), I asked Reverend Ernest about how satisfied he was with his present personality and what, if any, changes he envisaged for himself in the future. Reverend Ernest replied, I feel like I’m just out of the egg (. . .) just beginning to grow. I read the literature of Christian spirituality over twenty centuries, and I look at these people and I think (. . .) oh man, they were light years beyond where I am. I’m just getting to the point where I might get to the starting line (. . .) I want to be more receptive and open – listening and paying attention, (. . .) and yet I’m grateful to God for who I am. I don’t feel that the solution to the remaining deficiencies in my personality – of which I’m so painfully aware – is repression or willful imposed discipline, but rather a deeper relationship with God.

I suspect that it was this kind of increasing self-awareness in general, coupled with his ability to live with more psychological complexity in particular, that contributed to the elevations in his WUSCT (ego development) scores (and the advance in Fowler Faith Stages – from #4 to #5) revealed in subsequent administrations of the assessment procedures. He continued, “So in terms of goals and objectives (. . .) I am waiting and seeing, in part. I certainly would like to emphasize relationships in the next phase of my life (. . .) much more than ideology and the defense of the institution (. . .) which is where I’ve been the last 15 years or so.” Thus, we find Reverend Ernest in the sixth decade of his life continuing to strive for increased

310 Melvin E. Miller self awareness, yearning for further individuation. His main preoccupations became this ever-escalating emphasis upon developing relationships that included deep commitment to the other and profound interpersonal connections and involvement. At this juncture in his life there seemed to be much less of a need to please. We find him experiencing more of a sense of personal integrity, more of a sense of self, greater self-possession – even though hints of the old self-effacement remain. Nonetheless, we should note that he worked hard to continue his personal and spiritual growth. He never gave up on himself. He kept re-envisioning what he wanted in his life. Through an ongoing exploratory process, he eventually arrived at an expanded understanding of God, a newly constructed image of God, and a more personal relationship with God. And this was coupled, as we saw, with enhanced relationships with all people, in all their myriad manifestations. So, in turn, the roles of relationship and dialogue became privileged in every facet of his life. Through the process of these changes, his gifts of care and spirit to the community became even greater.

Discussion In the preceding we witnessed two men struggling with their infection of spirit in very different ways. We noted how they tried to get into relationship with it and how they, at times, attempted to direct it. They seemed almost possessed by spirit early on. It appeared as if they were engrossed in an attempt to get with the updraft, even as part of them seemed to struggle against it. Sometimes defenses, intrapsychic conflicts, interpersonal issues, and idiosyncratic dynamics of character got in the way of their going with the flow of the spiritual in their lives. In many respects, it could be posited that this long-term world view project makes us ponder the irrepressible, indelible influence of personality and character – particularly as made emblematic in (and seen through) the lives of these two men. In this light, perhaps another working question for both this paper and the larger research project can be formulated as follows: Can the sometimes pernicious formative and shaping consequences of early character formation ever be surmounted? Both participants highlighted in this chapter encountered degrees of environmental (familial) difficulties in their formative years, although Father Monti’s were considerably more severe. One man had a father who was mean and sometimes cruel; the other had a father who was mainly absent (at least out of the range of direct influence). Both men grew up then, with more maternal influence, and, consequently, strong identifications with their mothers and with women in general were formed. According to their self reports, such identifications made it difficult for them to be assertive. Albeit stemming from different backgrounds and fundamentally different psychological structures, both men struggled fiercely

Spirituality, narrative, and character 311 with low self-esteem, self-criticality, and self-condemnation. Monti suffered from narcissistic rages, then shame; Ernest was more plagued by guilt over things not accomplished (people not pleased). Neither man initially had much confidence in his ability to be out in the world as a major participant in the day-to-day, rough and tumble world of men, women, and bureaucratic systems. As a result, they both got into a people-pleasing/authority-pleasing modes of relating and behaving. They strove for harm-avoidance while, at the same time, they searched for approbation and praise. Consequently, this focus forced them – at times – to relegate their searches for individuation, actualization, and personal integrity to the back burner. Despite their troubles and conflicts, the spark of spiritual aliveness was never entirely extinguished in either man. Both continued to wrestle with many impediments to their spiritual development, but they continued on their paths. They continued to struggle with relationship, ethical and leadership issues, as well as with personal conflicts and their respective modes of being in the world. Both men talked at length about the use of prayer and meditation. They spoke of wrestling with themselves and with God as did Jacob in Genesis (Chap. 32). They explored, deconstructed, and reconstructed their images of God as best they could, asking themselves: “So do I believe in the same God that my superiors believe in”? “Is he praying to the same God I pray to”? Both asked: “Are there different images (conceptualizations) of God that are more accurate, more fitting, more life enhancing, more spirit promoting”? Both men kept praying. They were both relentless in their strivings, resolute in their talks with God, determined to stay with their individuation processes, striving toward whatever sense of personal integrity they could find. They both struggled against great odds. Interestingly enough, they continued to experience themselves as spiritual beings in the midst of all this inner turmoil. They continued to try to find ways to release (free up) the flow of spirit within themselves and move ahead. Neither man included much room for doubt in his search. Should they be praised for this kind of effort, or is this merely one more manifestation of what McAdams (2006) described as optimistic stories of the redemptive self that are so prevalent in America? Both men developed positive, redemptive story lines as this longitudinal study unfolded. Father Monti’s transformation led to a story about how much he was loved by God, and Reverend Ernest’s led to a narrative about the increased goodness/richness found in relationship. In addition to these two men, I found that most of the research participants in the larger longitudinal project seemed engrossed with developing a positive and forward (upward) moving narrative. This was true with all but those assigned to the Nihilistic and Agnostic world view categories (cf. descriptions of World Views #4 and #5).12 The vast majority of the participants (34 out of 40) were 12

Please refer to footnotes #2 and #4 for information on how to access the World View Interview. Brief descriptions of all nine world views can be found in the Appendix.

312 Melvin E. Miller committed to and passionate about giving themselves over to the force of personal development and/or the influence of spirit. This phenomenon was not always described in a religious sense; often it wasn’t. However, most often the story line had an essentialist “acorn theory” quality to it (cf. Hillman, 1996). These men tended to believe in the inexorable, positive unfolding of their lives – from one-of-a-kind acorns to unique, full-grown trees. Such themes were most often expressed with a story line suggestive of a predetermined or predestined plan. They crafted narratives that reflected these notions. When times were hard or in moments of doubt, they would fight harder. They resolutely struggled to find their ways through the midlife period and beyond. As they did so, they often evidenced an uncanny ability to infuse others – to stir up and animate others – with life, spirit, courage, and a passion for spiritual exploration. They influenced most whom they met; they inspired those with whom they came in contact. Yet, as we have witnessed with these two men in particular, they did not have an easy time of it themselves. They were often plagued by self-doubt, confusion, and uncertainty. However, they never gave up. Little did I realize, as I began my world view research, that it would develop into a project of such magnitude and dimension. I never quite imagined that this project would evolve into a vehicle through which I could gather such insights into these essential spiritual strivings and the forces of character behind them. In essence, I had been asking people about what possessed them, though I didn’t realize the full impact of the questions at the time. I did have a strong hunch that the ideas (and passions) that captured people’s imaginations would have a motivating influence in their lives. But, I didn’t fully realize the power behind these possessions, nor did I realize the impact that personality and character traits would have on spiritual development. And, I certainly didn’t realize how the combined force of these variables could streamline a life in a particular direction or move one along in a seemingly inexorable path. In this paper, I have presented a brief synopsis of only two people, but they seem to be representative of most participants in the larger research group. What I heard from Father Monti, Reverend Ernest and the other men in my study was a longing for integration, actualization, and maturity. These men evidenced an inherent drive that enabled them to overcome many obstacles, both intrapsychic and interpersonal. I also witnessed a tension in many of them. Sometimes it was a multi-valenced tension. There was the tension experienced through being estranged from the updraft, from being out of the current. There was also a tension between the demands of and the longing for individual growth (the need to individuate) and the need to be involved in and grow through relationship. The call toward experiencing both seemed to get louder and louder for some as they aged. The passage of time seems to have created a sense of urgency for these men. Both participants in this study eventually evidenced the integration of individuation needs with the need for intimate relationships with partners, friends,

Spirituality, narrative, and character 313 and the ultimate. As time goes on, and they both approach the twilight years of their lives and their eventual deaths, the level of activity in their searches appears to have intensified; these men have not diverted their eyes from the path. In short, I found both men iterating a call for meaning, a cry towards integration. They have consistently attempted to situate their lives within the context of something greater than themselves. As noted, this phenomenon seemed to be true for most men in my research group. For some, new meaning was found in the re-creation or revamping of images of God. For others, deeper meaning was found in a new relationship with friends and lovers, or perhaps in a new relationship with the ultimate. Both men in this project felt compelled to rethink and revision their images of the ultimate – even as they modified their life narratives. Finally, this project is a study of individual motivations to change, the capacity to change, and the dynamics of change. In a way, it raises the longstanding question/conundrum: Do we work to fight against or modify the force of individual character as shaped by early upbringing, or do we go along with it and adapt to its demands? These men felt compelled to fight it. They struggled against the shaping, molding, and sometimes ineffable forces of established character and character disturbance. Both Father Monti and Reverend Ernest seemed to actively attempt to alter those forces – even as they made room for spiritual influence and direction. Before closing, I am tempted to don the hat of the skeptic and challenge the transformational claims made by these men. In addition, I am inclined to be critical of some of the tentative formulations I have suggested. In lieu of that effort, I will leave the reader with some questions to ponder. I will simply list them: 1) Were these “true” (veridical) transformations that were posited by these men? 2) What constitutes true or veridical transformation? 3) Were their alleged transformations merely changes or modifications to old story lines? 4) Would we know veridical conversion and/or transformation if confronted by it? 5) Must there be structural change (in a Piagetian, Loevingerian sense) for there to be true change? 6) Is the notion of true transformation simply a disguised version of the optimistic American story of the redemptive self (cf. McAdams, 2006) promulgated by sectors of the academic community? Each of these questions poses a challenge to the conclusions drawn from this project. I have attempted to tackle some of these questions elsewhere (Miller, 1981, 1994, 1996, & 2006; Miller & West, 1993); others will have to be left to subsequent endeavors. Despite the necessity of maintaining a degree of objectivity about these kinds of findings and their interpretations, I do think it is safe to say that the life stories of these men have changed. However, I am not confident that we can say the character or inner structure of either man has changed, even though I am inclined to do so. The empirical evidence does not substantiate measurable change of this sort. But, something did change in their narratives

314 Melvin E. Miller and in their meaning-making dynamics, as well as in their relationships to self, the other, and their images of God. Both men feel better about themselves. They also believe their involvement with this project has been helpful to them, that their lives have been transformed, and both claim to be pleased with the directions their lives have taken. In closing, as we look back to the beginning of the paper, here is another question to ponder: Can we imagine a fantasy meeting between these two men (Father Monti and Reverend Ernest) at some point down the road, perhaps at a mutually shared chronological crossroads at age 75 or possibly 80? Can we imagine Monti and Ernest congratulating each other for keeping with the good fight, for not giving up on themselves, and for staying with this intense effort of character and spiritual transformation – even if it might be deemed incomplete? If so, perhaps we can imagine these men saying to themselves (and to each other) the words of Confucius noted at the beginning of the chapter: Yes, “I [am] at ease with whatever I hear. . . I [can] follow my heart’s desire without transgressing the boundaries of right.” Might we dare to think that each could see in the other (that they could share with and recognize in one another) a kind of spiritual maturity – a kind of integral fullness – despite the differences in background and orientation? Might these men also realize in themselves and in each other the attributes of Erikson’s final stage of ego integrity? Such a fantasy is a rich one. Yes, I can imagine it.

References Adler, A. (1927). The practice and theory of individual psychology. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World. Anderson, S. R. & Hopkins, P. (1991). The feminine face of god: The unfolding of the sacred in women. New York: Bantam Books. Conn, J. W. (1989). Spirituality and personal maturity. Lanham, MD: University Press of America. Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The psychology of optimal experience. New York: Harper Collins Publishers. Erikson, E. H. (1950). Childhood and society. New York: Norton. Erikson, E. H. (1968). Identity, youth, and crisis. New York: Norton. Fowler, J. (1981). Stages of faith: The psychology of human development and the quest for meaning. New York: Harper & Row. Fowler, J. (1996). Pluralism and oneness in religious experience: William James, faith development theory, and clinical practice. In E. P. Shafranske (Ed.), Religion and the clinical practice of psychology (pp. 165–186). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Fuller, A. F. (1994). Psychology and religion: Eight points of view. Lanham, MD: Littlefield Adams. Grotstein, J. S. (1981). Splitting and projective identification. New York: Jason Aronson. Hillman, J. (1996). The soul’s code: In search of character and calling. New York: Random House.

Spirituality, narrative, and character 315 Hinsie, L. E. & Campbell, R. J. (1970). Psychiatric dictionary, 4th edition. New York: Oxford University Press. Horner, A. J. (1984). Object relations and the developing ego in therapy. Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, Inc. Jung, C. G. (1968). The archetypes and the collective unconscious. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Jung, C. G. (1969). The structure and dynamics of the psyche. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Jung, C. G. (1974). The development of personality. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Keen, S. (1994). Hymns to an unknown god: Awakening the spirit in everyday life. New York: Bantam. Kohut, H. (1977). The restoration of the self. New York: International Universities Press. Loevinger, J. (1976). Ego development: Conceptions and theories. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Maslow, A. H. (1968). Toward a psychology of being. New York: Van Nostrand. May, R. (1977). The meaning of anxiety. New York: Norton. McAdams, D. P. (2006). The redemptive self: Stories Americans live by. New York: Oxford University Press. McWilliams, N. (1999). Psychoanalytic case formulation. New York: The Guilford Press. Miller, A. (1981). Prisoners of childhood: The drama of the gifted child and the search for the true self. New York: Basic Books. Miller, M. E. (1982). World views and ego development in adulthood. Dissertation Abstracts International, 42, 3459–3460. Miller, M. E. (1988). Developing a world view: The universal and the particular. New England Psychological Association Newsletter, 5, 3–4. Miller, M. E. (1994). World views, ego development, and epistemological changes from the conventional to the postformal: A longitudinal perspective. In M. E. Miller & S. Cook-Greuter (Eds.), Transcendence and mature thought in adulthood (pp. 147–179). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Miller, M. E. (1996). Ethics and understanding through interrelationship: I and thou in dialogue. In R. Josselson (Ed.), Ethics and process in the narrative study of lives (pp. 129–147). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Miller, M. E. (1999). Religious and ethical strivings in the later years: Three paths to spiritual maturity and integrity. In L. E. Thomas & S. A. Eisenhandler (Eds.), Religion, belief and spirituality in late life. New York: Springer Publishing Company. Miller, M. E. (2006). Adult development, learning, and insight through psychotherapy: The cultivation of change and transformation. In C. Hoare (Ed.), Handbook of adult development and learning (pp. 219–239). New York: Oxford University Press. Miller, M. E. & West, A. N. (1993). Influences of world view on personality epistemology, and choice of profession. In J. Demick & P. Miller (Eds.), Development in the workplace (pp. 3–19). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Oxford English Dictionary (compact ed.). (1971). New York: Oxford University Press. Perry, W. G. (1970). Forms of intellectual and ethical development in the college years. New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston.

316 Melvin E. Miller Rizzuto, A.-M. (1974). Object relations and the image of God. British Journal of Medical Psychiatry, 47, 83–99. Rizzuto, A.-M. (1976). Freud, God, the devil and the theory of object representation. International Review of Psycho-Analysis, 3, 165–180. Rokeach, M. (1960). The open and closed mind. New York: Basic Books. Teilhard de Chardin, P. (1957). The divine milieu: An essay on the interior life. New York: Harper & Row. Teilhard de Chardin, P. (1965). The phenomenon of man. New York: Harper & Row. Thomas, L. E. & Eisenhandler, S. A. (Eds.) (1999), Religion, belief, and spirituality in late life. New York: Springer Publishing Company. Wei-Ming, T. (1978). The Confucian perception of adulthood. In E. Erikson (Ed.), Adulthood (pp. 113–127). New York: Norton.

Spirituality, narrative, and character 317

APPENDIX World View Descriptions (Abbreviated Version)13 World View 1 – Atomism It makes the most sense to me to think of all reality as being comprised of small particles called atoms. And I believe that to make sense of things, we only need to break them down into their atomic parts and study the relationships that exist among them. Most often, these relationships are precise enough to formulate them with mathematical exactness. Phenomena as diverse as human relationships and events in the physical world all can be treated with equal precision. We need no gods nor a deity to give meaning to existence. Science can give us all the answers.

World View 2 – Stoicism I would say that there really is no rhyme or reason to events that occur, and that there are no fixed orders, purposes, or meanings in life. Given this state of affairs, it seems that the best thing for people to do is to keep busy. I may not be able to control things on a larger perspective, but I can control my attitude toward what happens and what I do with my life.

World View 3 – Traditional Theism It seems to me that there is a universal purpose and meaning to life. These purposes and meanings are most likely predetermined, and are likely determined by a deity or God or some “higher” form of intelligence. Our purpose in life is to understand these meanings and to live in accordance with them. The unhappiness that exists in the world is a result of people and nations not living in accordance with these realizations.

World View 4 – Nihilism I do not think that anything can be claimed to be true with any sense of certainty. There is no such thing as reliable knowledge, and no God or gods or moral order in the universe. Given these facts, people can do with their lives whatever they wish. Everything is entirely up to the individual, for in the long run, nothing really matters anyhow.

World View 5 – Skepticism-Agnosticism I do not know what – if anything – human beings can know for sure. I tend to doubt anybody or any system that says it has the ultimate truth about anything, and I am 13

This table is from Miller & West (1993) and includes only the abbreviated descriptions of the nine world views included in the World View Classification Grid. See Miller (1982) for more detailed descriptions.

318 Melvin E. Miller especially suspicious of any claims to “official” truths whether they come in the form of religion or science. At best, everything is relative. Despite this doubting position, I believe that I keep an open mind that receives new input and information.

World View 6 – Traditional Humanism I would say that we cannot be certain of any fixed purposes or predetermined meanings or “ends” toward which the universe and/or individual lives are moving. Despite this absence of certainty, things do matter and there is a general direction in which the world and human lives move. We are in charge of our own lives, and the community of the world is in charge of “Spaceship Earth.” Both individuals and groups must endeavor to establish appropriate and positive meanings and goals. The ecology movement, the human potential movement, and the peace movement are considered important.

World View 7 – Pantheistic Monism Personal and/or spiritual awareness are the most important things to be worked at during this life, so that I can more greatly appreciate the specialness and uniqueness of each moment. Activities and aesthetic pursuits are valuable in and of themselves. I am not working toward ultimate goals that are predetermined, nor do I believe in a personal god who oversees everything. But I do commit myself to understanding myself and the world more completely, and to appreciating all of life.

World View 8 – Integrated-Committed Existentialism Nothing is intrinsically or ultimately meaningful. What is “right” – and the particular goals that are important to work toward – can best be arrived at through conversation and dialogue with concerned others. I am committed to care for people and the world despite the lack of a master plan or blueprint, and despite the apparent relativistic nature of things. I see my life as being comprised of a series of ongoing commitments to self-exploration and the world’s needs.

World View 9 – Integrated-Committed Theism & Humanism I believe in a God or gods – or something greater than myself, but I dot not see things as being predetermined or part of a preordained divine scheme. I think that one should remain in dialogue with that which is perceived as being divine or greater than the self. Through introspection, an exploration or values, and this dialogical relationship, one can orient oneself and commit oneself to worthwhile goals and projects. It seems that there is a general “direction” in which lives and worlds should move, but things are not fixed or etched in stone. Lives and events can change and improve through individual and collective human effort. Human relationships, social causes, ecology, and world peace are the kinds of commitment in which I might invest time and energy.

ACTING AS MISSIONARIES: THE RELIGIOUS SELF IN INTERCULTURAL PRACTICE AN APPROACH FROM ACTION THEORY AND CULTURAL PSYCHOLOGY Jürgen Straub and Maik Arnold I consider ‘morality’ a system of beliefs which corresponds to the believer’s living conditions. Friedrich Nietzsche Belief (. . .) is one of the strongest motivations; it may bring out the most sublime or the most pernicious in humanity. Martyrs as well as torturers and hangmen, saints and healers as well as seducers, visionaries as well as blind men, artists, church builders as well as iconoclasts – all acted and suffered for their own unwavering convictions. Ernst E. Boesch

The narrated self, the self as story-teller Every so often, people will focus on and thematize their own lives and themselves. A widely used mode of self-thematization is story-telling. To be able to understand and come up with stories, including stories about oneself, requires participation in a social environment where stories in all forms, from rudimentary episodes to complex plots, are circulating everywhere. An episodic or autobiographical memory can only be developed when the individual is immersed in a narrative practice, as Katherine Nelson (1989, 1993, 1996; Nelson & Fivush, 2001, 2004) and many others have shown. Memory, as part of the brain, is in part a sociocultural achievement.1 Telling stories about ourselves becomes an integral part of our lives quite early. Individuals remember and anticipate their lives, they present and flesh out their selves in stories. These stories deal with the past, the present, and the future, with experiences and hopes, past sufferings and wished-for happiness, real events and things imagined. They recapitulate and assess what was and what is, they imagine what could and what should be. Rational reconstruction and analysis go hand in hand with emotional turmoil and complex evaluations in which thought and emotion, conscious decisions and subconscious relations form a strong liaison. Ernst Boesch (2005) considers story-telling one of the most 1

This was noted early on by Frederic Bartlett (1932) and Maurice Halbwachs (1925/1985); for a contemporary overview see Markowitsch and Welzer (2005), Welzer (2001).

320 Jürgen Straub and Maik Arnold psychologically crucial ways to bring the self and the world into balance and create a certain amount of stability. When he talks of Homo narrator, he recognizes the universal importance of this manner of speech. Over the course of humankind’s history, as well as over the lifetime of an individual, the narrator steps onto the “stage of life” using a variety of guises and props. Depending on culturally determined choices and habits, repertoires and routines, he makes use of different symbolic forms and means to articulate his life and self. (Brockmeier, 2000, 2003; Brockmeier & Carbaugh, 2001; Bruner, 1987, 1990; McAdams, 1988, 1993; Echterhoff & Straub, 2003, 2004). There are many psychologically relevant functions of story-telling.2 For the purposes of this paper, the following four seem to be of particular interest: (1) People communicate who they are, who they have become, and who they wish to be, by – among other things – telling stories. Narratives focusing directly on one’s own experiences and interests gain special importance. Still, indirect references to the self in and through stories dealing with unfamiliar experiences and expectations (as, for example, in stories of past generations), too, may be significant. An autobiographical narrator situates the changes of his or her self within a sequence of events, happenings, and actions. Here, the dynamic and transitory self (Straub and Renn, 2002) emerges within a story which communicates, reflects, forms, and in part constitutes the self through the very act of narration. (This is true, in any case, when the self is understood as a hermeneutically conveyed construct, a symbolic and linguistic construct in particular.) This important function of story-telling has been the focus of much analysis. It has received attention in relevant theories and in empirical research projects, among them projects focusing on the psychology of religion. Probably the most well-known in this field are conversion narratives, which relevant analyses show to be organized typically according to a certain narrative pattern that describes a radical change in personality, i.e., the emergence of “another person”.3 2

Cp. the extensive list in Straub (2005a, p. 62ff ) which primarily deals with historical narratives, as well as other contributions to the field of narrative psychology, such as Echterhoff and Straub (2003, 2007), Bruner (1990), McAdams (1988, 1993). These texts also offer discussions of additional pragmatic aspects of story-telling, they attempt to define the structural characteristics of story-telling, which are necessary to develop a theoretical concept of story-telling and define ways to differentiate it from other modes of talking/writing and equivalent objectivations. 3 There is extensive literature specifically about the psychology of conversion (c. e.g., Popp-Baier, 1998; McAdams, in this publication; Belzen, 1999); it grows endlessy when relevant works from related disciplines like sociology (in particular sociological studies about biography) are taken into account (see: Knoblauch, Krech & Wohlrab-Sahr, 1998; Wohlrab-Sahr, 1999). Belzen (in this publication) draws attention to the fact that

Acting as missionaries 321 (2) A second, just as important function of story-telling has not yet attracted the same kind of attention as the first: often the above mentioned self-narratives provide reasons (of various degrees of complexity) for or explanations of actions and/or their implicit convictions and orientations etc.) (Straub, 1998a, 1999a, 1999b).4 The purpose of this function may be predominantly practicalperformative, like justifying an action or apologizing for one. Yet it may also satisfy a primary, cognitive-epistemical need, such as haunts scientists, too. They may devote themselves (however “over-determined” and irreducible to one single cause or origin it may be) to the genesis of one action and, related to this, its possibly multi-layered, polyvalent5 meanings. Autobiographical narratives not only describe what was, they also explain uno actu how the reported, described happenings and events came about. When writing about an action (or about the refraining from an action), these kinds of narratives explain why a person did (thought, felt etc.) so, why he will do so or plans to do so, why he refrained from doing so and perhaps continues to refrain from doing so, and what that all of it means. Often the narratives’ descriptive “elements” cannot be separated from the explanatory ones. Narratives are descriptive by nature and, at least when describing an event extensively, they are auto-explanatory.6 Also, they are able to integrate and work with other, nonnarrative forms of explanation. When narratives offer explanations for actions, they are the “best account” (Taylor, 1981) when compared to other (narrative or other) explanations.7 This is evident even in some of the contributions to this volume. Thus, for example, Belzen concludes that an understanding explanation

psychological studies are neither interested nor authorized to make judgements about the religious or spiritual meaning of such conversions. Rather, they focus on the psychological or psychosocial changes, that is, on aspects of a person’s transformation which can be psychologically assessed. He (with McAdams) distinguishes between three levels of analysis: firstly, dispositions (like openness to experience, conscentiousness, extracersion, agreeableness, neuroticism), secondly, personal issues and orientations (like life and action-oriented goals, plans, and strategies), and finally, identity and self, conveyed and represented in the form of a life story (which goes beyond and integrates level two and three). This story, in its different parts and as a whole, gives meaning and importance to the subjects. The empirical analyses presented below address similar dimensions, but do not deal specifically with conversion experiences. 4 For the concept of action, c. Straub (1998a, 1999a). 5 For the concept of “polyvalence,” see: Boesch (1991). For reasons of space, it is not possible to present a satisfying definition of the concept of hermeneutical, understanding explanations [verstehende Erklärung] used here. For more detailed discussions, see, Angehrn (1985); Schurz (1988); Straub (1999a, 1999b). 6 As shown for historical narrative and explanation by Danto (1965) 7 Cp. to the typology of action explanations developed elsewhere (Straub 1999a), according to which the model of intentional (goal-oriented, functional) or rule-guided action is decisive as well as the narrative scheme.

322 Jürgen Straub and Maik Arnold (verstehende Erklärung) for religious actions and attitudes – in short, for all protestations of belief – always needs more than just references to an abstract and generally defined religion or religiosity. To simply be a Christian – Catholic or Protestant8 – a Muslim or a Buddhist means and explains little or nothing. This is almost equally true for other categories used to label people. Which means that, “(i)t is always important to check how individual religiosity is related to the cultural and subcultural ‘world’ in which the person lives her life, and how it is structured within the person’s broader psychic life. (. . .) To understand something about a person’s religiosity (. . .), it is important to focus attention on the individual and to immerse oneself in her personal life story, as articulated in her autobiography” (Belzen, in this publication, p. 35). This is also true for religious acts. It is true for each action which is connected pragma-semantically with the religious belief, even when the focus is not on the action’s individuality or uniqueness, but on its typicality and categorizability. The understanding explanation of a categorized religious act – for example, approaching others in a persuasive manner with missionary intent – needs a biographical-theoretical perspective, too. This perspective, then, brings categorizable patterns (which are often already categorized by the narrator) into view, which make plausible how the action in question came about and which meanings this action – as part of a complex life form and related to specific language games – may hold. The categorization of life stories, of life experiences and expectations as well as of the autobiographical narratives they symbolically represent, depend upon cultural life forms, according to which some things are possible and others are not. Not everything can simply happen in each and every life and be turned retrospectively into a narrative’s theme. (Nor can everything be imagined in a premeditated look back from before the events, in the grammatical tense of futurum exactum as “future past”.) Cultural ways of life both open up and limit what is real and what is possible.9 (3) The peculiar structure and dynamic of the functions upon which we have elaborated so far, at times permeate narratives in a unique way, which cannot be replaced by any other form of (language-dependent) communication. In 8

Regarding the many Christian denominations, it is almost impossible to speak of a specifically Protestant mission, and even less so, to speak of the Protestant. In Germany, there can still be observed – at least in the public perception – a deep internal rift that splits the Christian Church into two fractions (“Catholics” and “Protestants”). But since the 18th century the term “Protestantism” has come to mean in German-speaking countries, too, all such movements of modern Christianity which see themselves as a third line of religious tradition separate from the Roman-Catholic and the Orthodox Church. However, as we could not yet come up with a suitable alternative term for the “Protestant” missionaries that are the focus of this study, we chose to stick for now with the wide-spread usage of the term “Protestant” meaning a member of the Evangelische Kirche in Germany. 9 For the concept of “culture,” cp. Boesch (1991), Boesch & Straub (2007), Bruner (1990), Straub (1999a, 2003).

Acting as missionaries 323 self-narratives a person creates his self within his extension in time and, consequently, as a “unity” of the own self’s differences in time.10 This is another, again very fundamental function of self-narratives. As Paul Ricoeur noted in his profound studies, it is the “inner” or “intrinsic” connection between (a specifically human) time and story-telling which turns the narrative self-thematization into an exceptional form of speech. Putting oneself within one’s own temporality, mutability, and mortality – thus, within a constant “becoming” – means situating one’s self within a past, present, and future. This also holds true when this process of becoming results in no changes in the self. In a sense, always remaining the same still means living in time. Past, present, and future reciprocally reflect upon each other, yet they can be distinguished only from the viewpoint of an “analyzer”. Their intrinsic characteristics make them dependent on each other, which becomes evident in the act of narration and in the narratives themselves. Not only does the past determine the present (and the future). The past is a mental, “memory-based” construct that depends as much upon (ever changing) interpretations in the present as on expectations of the future. The past changes to correspond to new experiences, whether these experiences in fact just happened or are still anticipated, dreaded, or hoped for. Ian Hacking (1995) poignantly speaks of a certain uncertainty of the past. Pasts, just like actions, are meaning-structured phenomena, and as such they find themselves “under a description” (a phrase from Anscombe’s famous formula; Anscombe, 1957). As the present is passing, past and future are altered, or rather: our descriptions of the past are altered (and it is these descriptions in which we are interested; we are not dealing with past, present, or future events which simply are what they were or will be, no matter our symbolic representations of them). New experiences alter past experiences as well as a person’s expectations. Life narratives not only recall the passing of time, 10

This unity should, however, not be misinterpreted, in the sense of, perhaps, an elimination of difference and heterogeneity. Rather, the Self as unity of its differences is a “synthesis of the heterogeneous” (Ricoeur, 1994) symbolized in narrative. The narrative form creates a unity, without presupposing the persistence of a substratum or a substance, and without denying the internal differentiality and heterogeneity of a life steeped in contingencies. Each life and also its symbolic representation in form of a narrative bears witness to the self-withdrawal constitutive of the self (cp. Ricken, 2002; Straub, 2002, 2004b). This aspect, too, was discussed exhaustively mostly in debates theorizing identity. A specific bias often lingered in the background of these debates, namely the allegation that with the concept of a “personal identity” – or any other term available! – the no longer feasible, out-dated perception of a subject “identical with itself ” had entered discussion. This was counteracted with the theoretical concept of a “non-identical,” “pluralistic,” “dialogical,” “multiple,” “diasporic” etc. self. But a sufficiently complex (psychological, sociological) concept of personal identity has nothing to do with a simple, diachronic and synchronic oneness of “something” with itself (cp. Straub & Renn, 2002). Such a trivializing interpretation was rejected by all of the more ambitious psychological and sociological theories developed in the 19th and 20th century (Straub, 1991, 2002, 2004a).

324 Jürgen Straub and Maik Arnold they are also situated within time (and, consequently, within changing contexts); as symbolic representations they can only ever be conceived of in the plural (cp. the contribution by Belzen, in this volume).11 (4) Telling self-narratives means “presenting” oneself within one’s temporal, historical, and biographical extension, that which exists beyond our bodies. However, the function of self-narratives is not only, and not even primarily that of description. They are never meant to be listened to and read as simple descriptions of a life. Understood as narrative self-thematizations within a discourse-pragmatic perspective, they are extremely complex speech acts imbued with a performative power of their own. “Telling one’s self ” is more than and different from giving a detached and thoughtful description of one’s life. In the act of story-telling, the person creates and presents his self, which is then likely to be recognized by others. But regardless, a demand to be recognized exists regardless of whether it is met: self-narratives demand recognition by others. This is true for all possible modes of autobiographical-narrative selfthematization: Justificatory confessions, through which the performatively raised claim to one’s own identity can be authenticated, are not to be confused with the description, always selective, of an individual. The literary genre of the letter, the confession, the diary, the autobiography, the Bildungsroman, and the didactically recited self-reflection (. . .) testifies to the transformed illocutionary mode: it is not a matter of reports and descriptions from the perspective of an observer, not even of self-observations; rather, it is a matter of interested presentations of self, with which a complex claim presented to second persons is justified – a claim to recognition of the irreplaceable identity of an ego manifesting itself in a conscious [and not so conscious, J.S./M.A.] way of life. This claim is brought to bear in the performative attitude, and the attempt to make it plausible by means of a totalizing draft of one’s life will always remain fragmentary; but this attempt must not be confused with the never completed descriptive endeavour of characterizing a subject through to totality of all statements that could apply to it. (Habermas, 1992, p. 167)

The same is true for everyday, oral self-narratives, including the spontaneously improvised story so well-loved in narrative interviews. These narratives remain fragmentary, and in most cases they are not about the “whole” life or the “whole” person anyway. The story-telling self acts selectively, it wishes to be recognized (or fears rejection). Certain experiences and events are moved to the center, the focus of the narrative is concentrated on certain fields of action, certain areas of life – like, for example, the religious belief of the narrator – and related events, happenings, activities, and actions. 11

Representations – a problematic which can only be hinted at here – are constructs but not arbitrary inventions. Autobiographical self-narratives refer back to past events without ever being able to realistically depict them. These thoughts are fully fledged out in complex philosophical theories of referentiality.

Acting as missionaries 325 Thus, we conclude our reminiscing about the important psycho-social functions that are so evidently fulfilled by self-narratives – as will become apparent in the autobiographical narratives that we discuss below. Our approach to these narratives differs from others. Psychological research of biography is rarely interested in the full story of an entire life. Just like the narrators themselves in their everyday lives, research has been satisfied with single stories from the narrators’ lives. Of course, these stories are all part of one life-narrative, and the narrator might even weave them together to make this broader background felt through hints and selective glimpses. At times, autobiographical narrators build huge story arcs of different events, experiences, and expectations; they weave episodes, which on first glance seem entirely disconnected, into a meaningfully structured whole. Here “emplotment” (German “Fabelbildung,” French “intrigue”) creates a temporally complex web of meanings. Beginning and end are set contingently, an irrefutable demonstration that each narrative, each emplotment, is a poetic act (White, 1987; Straub, 1989, 1993, 1996). Whether narratives are answerable to imagination alone, as is all fiction, or whether they refer to supposedly real events, as do most prominently historical and autobiographical accounts – they all involve making choices about what to tell and what not to tell. Biographical narratives are bound to place, to point-of-view – they are selective constructions. Each symbolic representation of a life, each “bio” (biography), cannot help but be distinct from the life it represents. There are many reasons for this. Thus, each autobiographical representation is part of a whole that by its very nature cannot be represented. Life can never be grasped in its entirety.12 Incidentally, such a claim of totality would also hardly be useful. Ulrike PoppBaier reminds us (in her contribution to this volume) that usually we are not all that interested in our life as a whole. In his everyday life, the story-telling Self recounts one episode at one time, another episode some other time, but never “all,” never his “whole life” or his “entire life story”. A depressing incident may be a reason to thematize one’s life and self, or an upcoming decision that needs to be carefully thought through, the need to concentrate and find a new orientation during crucial events, or the wish to justify a deed, to apologize for it, to understand it, or rather, to explain it with understanding. Or perhaps an autobiographical story, especially one that covers more than just a few episodes, is told because the narrator was asked to tell it by (researching) psychologists wishing to do biographical-narrative interviews. 12

Life narratives are told retrospectively – anticipations are nothing but retrospections cast imaginatively into the future. Thus a narrative about an entire life is simply not possible as life necessarily includes death. And, as we all know, there are no autobiographies from beyond the grave. Also, philosophical critics have noted that there are good ethical and moral reasons to refuse the cultural imperative aimed at one’s entire life, “Tell yourself!” (Thomä, 1998).

326 Jürgen Straub and Maik Arnold Missionary action in biographical research and cultural psychology – An overview of what follows Such interviews are conducted, transcribed, and analyzed for very different purposes (Deppermann & Lucius-Hoene, 2004), among which might be the explanation and analysis of the meanings of actions, as we have already described in detail above. Interest, as in this paper, may focus on one particular type of human activity (and on possible internal sub-differentiations of that type). The following thoughts are part of the research tradition that deals with narrative biographies, a tradition influenced by symbolic action theory and cultural psychology. Of particular interest are the missionary activities of Protestant believers, or to put it more generally, those Protestants’ actions and orientations, experiences, and expectations that pragma-semantically lead up to the acceptance of a missionary calling. Missionary activities whose intention is to propagate religious beliefs are obviously fundamentally shaped by culture. The possible meanings of these activities are thus as much cultural as personal. The following discussion is devoted to these manifold meanings. We will talk very briefly and selectively about the concept and the reality of “mission” (3). Then we will present the first, rather tentative results of our empirical research (4). We will focus on selected examples that have brought to our attention some possible meanings of missionary actions within intercultural contexts, which are not visible at first glance. “Mission” can mean very different things for different people (e.g., from different cultural backgrounds, religions, and within different contexts). And just like “religion,”13 or rather, religious beliefs, the psychological meanings of “mission” can only be understood by studying the experiences and actions, the practices and symbolic representations of those who are doing missionary work (or who are the focus of missionary work), and who thus go through experiences and cherish hopes that are important for their life stories and their selves. After presenting our analyses of selected statements and passages from narrative interviews, we will conclude by briefly turning to the question of what the activities in question could possibly have to do with “intercultural competence,” or whether such skills and knowledge are irreconcilable and incompatible with missionary work (5). Among many things, this analysis refers back to the demand described above, the story-teller’s demand to be recognized as narrated 13

Belzen (in this volume) summarizes an accurate insight when he writes: “It has been well noted that as a concept ‘religion’ is actually too inclusive; too much can be classified within it to be able to work with analytically. (. . .) Religion as such, or a specific form of religion such as a Christian denomination or sub-denomination, does not ‘do’ anything and bears no relation to psychic development or to something like mental health. It is religious symbols, especially practices, or better yet: it is persons involved in religion who sort out the effects” (p. 33).

Acting as missionaries 327 and narrating self. In such a culturally diverse world as ours – liberated, pluralized, and open to very individualistic life-styles – an assertion like this will always be chancy. This is even more true for people in a secular society who have dedicated their lives to a religious mission or are about to accept that calling. Which is not to say that “religion,” and “mission” in particular, is an indicator of a minority position within society, in danger of being stigmatized and discriminated against. This is certainly not the case. In “Western” societies, Christians, as well as members of other religious groups, enjoy for the most part – although not to an equal extent – a high reputation and goodwill while on the legal side freedom of religion is guaranteed.14 Even so, the missionary zeal of some religious people is no longer well regarded by the general populace. It is by no means an accident that the term “mission” is shunned even in places where Christians are openly demanding stronger evangelization movements, i.e., more missions.15

Mission in dispute – Idea and reality of religious expansion Securing the enduring existence and development of religions and world views requires geographical, political, and ideological proliferation as well as attracting new followers. In this context, the term “mission” (from the Latin missio) is often used, which according to a 16th century source, stems from the missionary oath votum de missionibus of the Jesuit envoys, who were ordered by their church to convert the “unbaptized” and win them over to their own religion and community of belief (Gensichen, 1986). In the field of religious sciences and related disciplines, the term “mission” means the organized expansion of religions and world views (cp. among others, Wrogemann, 2006; Ström, 1994). For the longest time, the emergence and development of the concept of “mission” took place in European, i.e., “Western” cultures. The use of this allegedly universally applicable term in order to describe religions, world views, and ways of life other than Christian has often been criticized, it was warningly pointed out that this constituted a “nostrocentered” description presuming an “ideal 14

Much more could be said, but for the purpose of this paper it is of little consequence whether the pronouncement of a “renaissance of religion” is justified or not. (It’s not as if secularisation – however it can be defined and understood – had ever made religion disappear; rather, one should talk about structural changes of religious experience and a transformation of the modes of participation in religious communities; cp. PoppBaier, 1998). Empirically evident is the fact that there is an increase in societal discourses which focus on religious belief or “God”. The recent trip of Pope Benedict XVI. through his Bavarian homeland is a good illustration of this phenomenon. 15 This happened numerous times during the last stay of the head of the Catholic Church in Germany in September of 2006. The word “mission” was nowhere to be heard, although it was all about mission, and the Pope himself acted as a missionary.

328 Jürgen Straub and Maik Arnold form of mission” (cp. Matthes, 1992, 1993; Wrogemann, 2006). In what follows we retain this (Christianity-centered) traditional understanding of mission, when we make a couple of cursory notes about several key aspects of missionary thought. Only in the sections dealing with empirical material are such distinctions considered, i.e., whenever our interview partners themselves thematize their own missionary actions in their respective individual polyvalences. The Christian mission sees itself as a universal sign of the vitality of its church. Within the belief system, it is based on the incarnation of the “Divine logos,” the humanity of Christ. The history of humankind is conceptualized as a history of salvation. Mission is understood as an integral part of this history, missionaries are committed to fulfilling “the will of God” (Bürkle, 1994, p. 59). The stated goals of “mission” changed during the course of history, with a severe shift of emphasis in the 20th century (Bürkle, 1994, p. 60f ): In the traditional theological understanding of someone like Gustav Warneck (1834–1910), the purpose of mission was to found new religious communities at a grassroots level. Warneck emphasized the existential change of the individual missionary through the conversion experience (the common metaphor indicates that this was a change of power: “He who was lost is saved”). In the more evangelical missions, the personal calling to be a missionary was even more important. Then the Second Vatican Council decreed that the goal of mission work was seen in the fact that God the Father sent his only Son to the world “at that one time for the salvation of all” (Vaticanian Council II, 1966, Art. 3). Mission work would bring to humanity “integral salvation, one which embraces the whole person and all mankind, and opens up the wondrous prospect of divine filiation” (John Paul II, 1991, Art. 11). The ecumenical discussion about mission obviously led to a new focus on the Holy Trinity (Joest, 1995). The practice of missionary proselytizing means proclaiming the word of God in all areas (parish work, social welfare, medical and educational services etc.) of the lives of those in need of mission. As a “servant of his church,” a missionary leaves his home and his culture to proclaim the Christian Gospel. He leaves for the world, and in close cooperation with the local leaders of the church, follows his calling. If he enters new territory where he cannot fall back on already existing institutional structures and resources, his mission work means building a Church institution. Missionaries are often the ones who open up fields of action suitable for institutionalized church work, and then step back from being actively involved in the work of the new parish. (Müller & Sundermeier, 1987, p. 278). The mission stations are the central location and starting point for communicating the Christian Gospel. To establish a two-sided dialogue it is necessary to form personal relationships with the local population (families, kinship groups, colleagues), make arrangements with local churches (for invitations, necessary

Acting as missionaries 329 visas, etc.), and acquire or possess a good knowledge of the local language, or at least of the lingua franca, if there is one (Margull, 1986, p. 982). The traditional goals and means of the Christian mission are changing, at least in Europe. The reasons can be found in the advancing secularization of numerous “modern” societies, individualization, (religious) differentiation and pluralization – which are all part of the increasing cultural exchange worldwide and the growth of non-Christian religions and world views (Burke, 2000). In recent decades, the “young churches” of Africa, Asia, and Latin America have gained greater independence and have become missionary societies themselves. The reality of missionary work world-wide has become much more complex. The classical “pioneer-missionary” who testifies for his God in front of the “heathens,” works towards their conversion, thus contributing to making his community a thriving and active parish, has become a rarity indeed. The term “mission,” then, does not mean a universal practice of missionary work that is the same everywhere. Many of the very stereotypical preconceptions of missionary work are misleading, and even more so when the term is used to include more than just the specifically Christian mission. As is well-known, other religions and world views, too, have brought forth their own expansive movements, which are usually not globally organized, but that steadily continue their work nonetheless. Other than tribal and folk religions, all of the so-called world religions (Ström, 1994; Glasenapp, 1997) insist on their own traditional, universalistic Gospel and work hard to spread their particular belief in a transcendental reality and “last truth” (Rosenkranz, 1986). Their claim to offer religious truth for all the world is met by already existing regional and trans-regional, traditional cultures and religions. Several strategies are available to missionaries in such a situation, in particular adaptation, syncretism, and exclusion (cp. Sundermeier, 1996, 2003). Incidentally, the (religious, Christian) term mission is – and often rather naïvely – extended to non-religious matters and contexts. Frequently the term mission is used to mean almost the same thing as colonial expansion and imperialism. There is no doubt that the expansion of religions into every corner of the globe and throughout human history occurred within a highly ambivalent context, one that was rarely free from acts of physical, psychological, or symbolic violence. This is still true today. The spiritual – and not only spiritual – encounter between different cultures, peoples, and within particular religious communities has always gone hand in hand with radical changes in power structures and ruling authorities (and for a long time this meant that European claims to ideological and political, cultural and social power were pushed through). Currently, a broad range of academic disciplines is participating in the reinterpretation of the history of missionary work. Exhaustive research is being conducted on missionary involvement in histories of violence, colonization, and terror (cp. among others, Heyden, 2000; Boesch, 2005; Wagner, 1994).

330 Jürgen Straub and Maik Arnold It is more than evident that only “insiders” have anything good to say about both the term and the reality of “mission,” which is widely perceived as a rather dubious enterprise. A diverse range of often very good and well regarded ideas and projects, programs, and practices come under the label of “mission,” still, missionary work today is confronted with severe problems of legitimization. Today’s missionaries are, more than at any other time in history, forced to justify their calling and their work. In some regions of the world, missionary work is both very important and a highly sensitive issue. Missionaries are easily suspected of turning human beings into the objects of dubious, violent manipulations. Subtle forms of persuasion and conversion have always accompanied missionaries’ more drastic interventions in local societies. And time and again, the violent character of missionary work has been explicitly justified by the Church. Think, for example, of the degrading labeling of Native Americans as idolaters, cannibals, and sodomites in Francisco López de Gómara’s Hispania Victrix: First and Second Parts of the General History of the Indies (1552). Or think of Ginés de Sepúlvedas, who justified the war against the Spaniards because he (referring to Aristotle) thought them to be inferior “Untermenschen.” These and many similar statements show that the “discovery of America” was a “conquest of the other” (Todorov, 1989), as numerous critics have pointed out. The Spanish conquistadors were accused of cruelty and, in a complementary move, the “indigenous” ways of life were vindicated. Thus, for example, Bartolomé de Las Casas, one of the first to write on the still popular theme of “barbaric Europe,” captured “The Tears of the Indians” (1552). All these works, too, have long been an essential part of the written record of missionary Christianity (cp. Mahn-Lot, 1982; Todorov, 1989). Among other things, this historiography determined the cultural background of today’s (Christian) mission work. The young German Protestants we interviewed all referred several times to this historical context which – as we will show in the next part of the paper – seems to be very present to them. They contextualize and temporalize their missionary involvement by placing it within the collective history of humankind where religious missions left their cruel marks. This is yet another fine example of the interlacing of autobiography and historiography, when biographical and historical narratives are put in significant relations to each other (Straub, 1996, 1998b/2005a; Kölbl, 2004; Kölbl & Straub, 2003). The Christians we interviewed follow their missionary call with religious devotion and loyalty with respect to their church, but they reject the violence which in the past and present has been carried out in the name of such devotion and loyalty. (For this violence is still part of some missionary work today, even though the forms may have changed.) This is but one aspect that shapes their religious self-image and view of the world and gives a meaningful context for their missionary actions. But it is an important aspect, not least because it reflects a general tendency of our times. We’ll come back to that point.

Acting as missionaries 331 Representative empirical analyses, initial results In the following, we are not concerned with ethical or moral aspects of missionary actions. Our research is guided by our interest in psychology. From this point-of-view we ask questions like, for example: What do we, in fact, mean when we talk about missionary activities (what do the subjects mean, the scientific researchers?) What is the intent and impact, and what are the concrete actions of a person who proselytizes other people, often in remote areas and under severe hardship (whether he or she is a successful missionary or not)? What kind of symbolic actions does mission work consist of, what are the psycho-social functions they fulfill, independent of whether the subjects are aware of them or not? How do people come to missionary work in the first place, and why do they stick with it? Finally, what does it mean to understand missionary action as intercultural practice? In what is following, we will try to provide some answers to these questions. We do not think of our answers as final or complete; what we describe is by no means the result of an exhaustive analysis. What we will present are the first tentative results of the systematic interpretation of three selected biographicalnarrative interviews in which missionaries, who are about to start or have just started their work, talk about their education, missionary training, their first tour to another country, and their experiences, expectations, accomplishments, and disappointments in foreign countries in general.16 16

The evaluation method of this interpretation follows the methodological principles based on a hermeneutics of symbolic action theory and cultural psychology (Straub, 1999a, 2006). This approach is in some important aspects supported by the so-called documentary interpretation (Bohnsack, 2003) and comparative analysis (Glaser, 1978; Glaser & Strauss, 1967; Strauss, 1991; Kelle, 1994; Nohl, 2007). The written material is the result of narrative interviews (Schütze, 1987). They were transcribed verbatim and are here presented in a translation from the written German. The interviewers strictly adhered to the methodological principles of openness, being a stranger, and communication (Appelsmeyer, Kochinka & Straub, 1997; Hoffmann-Riem, 1980; Lamnek, 1996), thus the way the narratives are thematically structured and how they are told linguistically represents to a high degree the narrators’ own sense of significance as well as their expressive abilities. This kind of responses were made possible by the initial questions eliciting the narrative in the interview. The interviewees were asked to “simply” tell about their own adventures, or rather, their experiences, especially experiences made abroad while being trained to be missionary (or further vocational training) or during the missionary practice. The eliciting question did not simply ask about “which specific and new experiences did you make abroad when you look back on everything that happened in your life” (interview with Ansgar, p. 1, lines 21–23), but encouraged the interviewee also to “begin where it all started, when you became interested in missionary work” (interview with Ansgar, p. 1, line 25). This standard eliciting question could be slightly changed, depending on situation and personality of the interviewee, but basically it was asked at the beginning of each interview. Then followed the autobiographical narration

332 Jürgen Straub and Maik Arnold The three interviews chosen for this presentation lasted between one and a half and a couple of hours. At the time of the interviews, our interview partners, (two women and one man), were 43 (Ansgar), 26 (Ursula), and 32 (Susanne) years old. Ansgar was trained as painter, and as a so-called Campus Worker he had been involved in religious and church work for the previous 15 years. He had traveled several times to Russia (or other member states of GUS), each trip lasting between one to six months. Ursula has a diploma in social work and spent four years in the Philippines. Susanne lived in Russia for two years. All three of these partners had completed additional vocational training offered by the Protestant Church and had participated in missionary tours. The focus of all the narratives used for this presentation is – among other things – the self of the interviewees. Still, numerous “significant others” (G. H. Mead), prominent among them members of other, foreign societies and cultures as much as the communication, co-operation, and co-existence side by side with them, are also part of these narratives. Analyzing the experiences and expectations embedded within the biographical narrations of our interview partners, we mean to gain insights into a psychology of belief, focusing in particular on the psycho-social meanings and functions of missionary action in the context of intercultural religious practice. This action we regard, like any human action, as polyvalent (Boesch, 1991; Boesch & Straub, 2007; Straub, 2001). This term from Boesch’s symbolic action theory and cultural psychology refers to a highly complex web of cultural, social and individual (autobiographical), denotative, and (especially) connotative meanings. Actions are always situated within pragma-semantical networks. Boesch speaks of “webs of meaning” which can be examined with the method of connotation analysis or related methods of interpretation (cp. Boesch & Straub, 2007; Straub, 1999a, 2001, 2006; Straub & Weidemann, 2007). It is those very meanings psychology needs to concentrate on in order to be able to make meaningful assessments of actions and happenings, orientations, expectations, and experiences. Such meanings are almost always in a pragma-semantical relationship with the shaping, the stabilization or transformation of the self and its boundaries. By performing actions, and while they are performing them, human beings strive toward , and thus they have an impact, whether intentional or accidental. Self-impact is not only manifested in the “outer” tracing the road towards involvement with the religious mission. – For more information, please refer to the dissertation project of Maik Arnold (Chemnitz University of Technology, Chair of Intercultural Communication, http://www.tu-chemnitz.de/phil/ ikk/ik/files/de/content-35.html [last access: 15.01.2007]). So far, the database consists of five autobiographical-narrative interviews. Additional interviews are planned including interviews with members of the “target groups” of missionary work as well as people (from Russia) who were converted by missionary efforts. Furthermore, field trips with participating observation of missionary practice as well as group discussions, also with different subjects, are in their planning stages.

Acting as missionaries 333 Table 1 Thematic heading of the comparative interpretations Biographical backgrounds: paths towards becoming a missionary Caritas: altruism under the banner of love and charity To prove oneself: stability in faith Secular desires and hedonistic proclivities The time in the field: reasons to stay “Staying abroad”: broadening occupational perspectives Strings of the heart: love for country and people, fun and “pleasure gain” Experiences of difference I: Life without a worlds of consumptions – positive alternative visions for materialistic societies of affluence and individualistic “fake worlds of glamour” Experiences of difference II: Life without stress – positive alternative visions to time pressures and achievement orientation at home Experiences of difference III: sociableness and hospitality – positive alternative visions to the isolated seclusion of private spheres Experiences of difference IV: authentic emotions and powerful religiosity – positive alternative visions to a rationalistic culture Cultural difference, intercultural communication and competence Everyday cooperation and coexistence beyond cultural boundaries Differences that remain, necessary arguments Adjustment, combined arrangements, and “third spaces” Persuasive communication and violence: mission as helping people to help themselves or patronizing conversion Struggles for acceptance, dominance, and enforcement of one’s own culture Missionary action as strengthening the self and a heightened sense of the self

world over which a person gains influence. With each act people shape their own selves and, in particular, their potential for further action (Boesch, 1991). Various aspects of what we have just discussed can be seen in the following passages. Because of space restrictions we can only occasionally quote directly from the interviews. Our interpretations and comparative analyses are not extensive, and sometimes we restrict our representations to mere hints. The first results of our comparative interpretations of these autobiographical narratives are grouped under the following thematic headings (see table one):

Biographical backgrounds – Paths towards becoming a missionary There are many different answers to the question of how someone reaches a point in life where he or she wishes to participate in religious missionary work. (Here, we completely ignore the biographical paths towards becoming a religious person.) This might sound trite, but the willingness to promulgate one’s own belief and to actually participate in missionary practice can be due to a whole

334 Jürgen Straub and Maik Arnold range of possible biographical developments in which categorizable intentions, motives and ambitions have their origins. It is no surprise that in the autobiographical narratives we use, on-going, implicit developments are present as well as individual key events that are assigned a prominent biographical significance by our interview partners (see below). Often there is also an element of chance, a “motivational trace” in one’s life-story.17 Biographical developments do not follow one simple decision and fixed plan – even allowing for the fact that intentionally acting subjects may take an active part in the shaping of their lives and development (cp. Brandtstädter, 2001; Brandtstädter & Greve, 2007). According to the religious interpretation pattern used frequently by our interview partners, the path of one’s life follows the guidance and bidding of God: “I’d say, God simply led me there” (Ursula, p.1, line 53–54). God may not play dice, but he provides certain events in each life, events that people may construe as coincidence in hindsight – even as non-accidental coincidence – which must seem quite paradoxical against the background of the religious interpretation pattern just mentioned. To this category of nonaccidental coincidence belong events like supposedly chance meetings with other people that turned the interviewees’ lives in an unforeseen direction. The counsel and advice, as well as all kinds of social assistance these people offered were often crucial when certain decisions needed to be made and carried out. Here are some examples from the interviews that make exactly this point (they speak for themselves). There was, eh, well, young people formed a group, mainly students who had become Christians, and we all met, usually every day, and together we read the Bible (. . .), talked. (Ansgar, p. 1, line 32–43) Well, yes. That all started because I got to know someone who was with such a school, someplace else, well, now in Africa. I found that very interesting because that was not simply a . . . well, it is six months, and I imagined that as six months with God, when you have a bit more time, really, more or less like, well, take time for God. Because it really was not my plan to go and become a missionary. In fact, not at all (laughs). And at first I thought I would stay in Germany and do something like that in Germany, because my English was bad. It’s like, well, I thought I would for sure not be able to follow the lessons, but then he . . . well, it turned out quite differently then (laughs). And then I came across this address in the Philippines, quite by accident, really. It was German-English, too, the school, well at least this, this class, the instructions were German-English. (Ursula, p. 1, line 43–53)

Many interviewees spoke of similar experiences and developments. Sometimes they told stories from their earlier lives that already suggested – in hindsight – that they would later become missionaries. As the examples illustrate, the path to becoming a missionary, as it emerges from the interviews used here, is highly 17

Here we refer to the topos of Koselleck’s (2004) theory of history.

Acting as missionaries 335 contingent. Still, without exception, this path fits very well the deeply rooted (religious) motives and intentions that all the biographies share. At least in this respect, this path very much seems like a coherent continuation of the lives our interview partners have led so far.

Caritas – Altruism under the banner of love and charity The altruistic motives of people who often bring together their missionary work with social and development politics need not necessarily be interpreted as religious motives. Often it is simply the poverty of others that compels people to help. But in these interviews these motives are of course always associated with the interviewees’ Christian orientation in life. Their own religious convictions do not allow for too large a “gap” between rich and poor. The poor deserve compensatory justice and assistance under the banner of Christian love and charity. And one’s own – relative – wealth evokes feelings of shame. And when I came with the Liebenzeller Mission to Jekatherinburg two years ago I thought I knew how life was in Russia. But then I was really shocked when I arrived in a modern big city, and I felt I was in America or in Canada. From the airport I went to an apartment that to me was furnished with such luxury like I barely had had in Germany, for example, a stove with ceramic glass panels, Ikea-style furniture, the most beautiful, well, carpets, American washer, refrigerator, everything was there. Then I was supposed to buy furniture for my room, which was still unfurnished. The two of us lived in a three-bedroom-apartment. I was majorly confused inside. What kind of furniture should I buy, because I kept thinking from my German experiences, too, what kind of people will I invite here, and the thought crossed my mind, if I invited some poor Russian people to such a luxury apartment, what would happen then? (Susanne, p. 1, lines 42–54)

Here Susanne not only articulates the kind of trouble she has with her own “luxurious” life style, but as was the case with other interview partners, she talks several times about her wish that economic differences and discrimination could be amended. Religious belief and, in particular, the Christian commandment to help and support the poor and socially powerless are motivations which all our interview partners associate with their missionary engagement, providing an orientation for actions and in life, but also constituting a goal to which one can be true through doing missionary work, and perhaps even come close to achieving it.

To prove oneself – Stability in faith People who wish to work as missionaries need to fulfill different requirements. One of them is having a (relatively) firm belief. Missionaries starting out are expected to remain true to their religious orientations in both their actions and their lives. As is well-known, there is no such thing as belief never haunted by doubts. Almost all believers talk about such doubts. They are, as is often said,

336 Jürgen Straub and Maik Arnold an integral part of religious faith. Still, one can distinguish between more and less solid beliefs. Steadfastness of faith is, among other things, the result of more experience dealing with crises of faith (and of being able to successfully weather such crises), and missionaries should have proven themselves and be ready to have their faith put on trial again. Otherwise, their mission to live and convey their religious convictions will be jeopardized from the very start. Their education, as well as the additional training and preparation that further qualifies them to become missionaries, includes components aimed at a continued deepening of an already firm belief, which is one of the motivating wishes of our interview partners. In part, they explicitly express this wish, in part they show it as a desire and motivation “in between the lines” of their narratives. In the context of the missionary training of the Church, this wish is honored, for example, by the purposeful promotion of identification with the religion and the religious community through rituals and a whole range of other communal activities. It is further honored by assigning (simple, but also at times quite very challenging) tasks and the kind of responsibility that comes with such assignments. Priests and other mentors may play a crucial function as role models, not least because of the advice and assistance they provide the would-be missionaries. Due to space restrictions, we will not be offering any interview excerpts that prove this point. However, later we will return to the fact of how central the own (religious) self and the strengthening of this self is to missionary practice.

Secular desires and hedonistic proclivities The following aspect, too, is remarkable, but is also, of course, quite obvious: the roads that lead people to religious faith, and in particular to missionary work, not only guide them across the broad field of religious experiences and orientations. Whoever sets out to bring the Christian gospel to people living in far-away and strange countries, often has very secular interests as well, though it is not always clear that these interests will actually be satisfied. But if he or she finds opportunities, they fully enjoy them. People who are not “tuned in” to religion may have the same desires and wishes and may also try to have them met: the promise of excitement, adventure, a change of scenery, of fun and enjoyment. Side by side with deeper, morally or ethically motivated goals or spiritual aspirations, other aspects of life, are attracting people to missionary work. I had this address, then a friend somehow had seen a picture of the place. I mean, it sounds a bit crazy, but she somehow described the ocean and white ships she had seen on the picture (laughs). And anyway, this was the moment when I knew that it’s not Germany, and I (laughs), well I always wanted to go and see other places. It just never had turned out that way. I never came further than Vienna, never beyond Austria, and back then I really thought I did not want to travel farther. I wanted to finish school, but then, well, then all the signs said Philippines. Somehow I was . . . well, I watched a movie on TV. It was about the Philippines, and I, no matter what the

Acting as missionaries 337 newspapers said, well, I knew, this place and no other, something like that. And then I applied and got everything ready. (Ursula, p. 1–2, lines 54–64)

Our interview partners do not directly explain what they individually associate with the kinds of myths and phantasms hinted at in the above quote. But we do not need to know which subjective, individually connoted meanings “the ocean and white ships,” “the Philippines,” or simply “other places” may possess for the interviewee herself. It is clear that collective myths and individual phantasms, which are often only vaguely articulated and are sometimes pretty secular and “hedonistic” desires and longings (cp. Boesch, 1991, 1998, 2000, 2005; Lonner & Hayes, 2007), form an integral part of people’s motivations for leaving their homes to become missionaries. Foreign places seem attractive even though it may not be all that clear what exactly is attractive about them and what motivates people to leave Germany (temporarily), for example, and set out for a mission on the other side of the planet. Later we will look at more examples from the analyzed interviews, discussing such “pleasure gains” in the course of describing why our interview partners not only set out for many promising lands faraway, but also why they remained there for long periods of time.

The time in the field – Reasons to stay “Staying abroad” – Broadening occupational perspectives Interviewees did not always plan to stay abroad for an extended period. The decision to work as a missionary in far-away countries and remain there for a much longer period than initially intended was often made when the interview partners were already in the “field,” an experience that made old plans seem irrelevant. For Ursula, the participation in a Disciples of Christ School turned into a several-year-long stay in an increasingly familiar, foreign country that she enjoyed more and more. The unplanned extension included intensified occupational training that opened up job opportunities that Ursula had not considered before nor been aware were only available to her as a Christian: I was finished with almost all my courses prior to the diploma thesis. The rest I am doing now (laughs). And, yes, I left the university four years ago in October, well, yes, almost four years ago, and I got there with the intention to stay half a year, to take part in the School and then go back home again and do my work experience internship for the university. Well, I got a diploma in social work, I thought, I’d just see about jobs. Well, I really thought I’d stay in Germany and well, the missionary work thing was already a bit in the air, but I really expected more to return to Germany, and go in Germany, well, here, somewhere in Berlin or so, I’d go into a missionary social work project or something similar. Something like that. That was what I was expecting, anyway. Yes, then I got there, and after a very short time I really liked it very much, and relatively soon I could see myself staying longer. But I didn’t decide right away, and then at the end of the School we really had to decide more or less

338 Jürgen Straub and Maik Arnold where to go from there. And there at the School they have this offer about cacao where one could, well continue with, that is, do a three-year leadership training, and, yes, it was like this, well, I wanted to do that, well, I could very well imagine that I’d stay but I was always afraid God would say I should go back to Germany (laughs). And then I finally came to the point where I knew it was okay if I went back. I had made arrangements for the work experience internship so I could do that later, and then I was, well, at this point I already had the feeling that this could be something longer, that is, that I probably could very well live abroad for a longer period of time. And this leadership training I really did with the goal in mind, that it would not matter whether I will be in Germany or abroad, that is simply something like, well, a kind of preparation, if one day I will really live and work someplace else, as a Christian or a missionary (laughs). (Ursula, p. 2–7, lines 65–90)

Strings of the heart – Love for country and people, fun and “pleasure gain” Quite apart from occupational opportunities or the chance to learn about missionary life in close contact with people who share one’s beliefs, there were also other reasons to stay. Our interview partners talk about their basic religious ambitions, motives, and intentions but also of the secular things to which they soon became attached. They all describe their nascent love for the foreign country and its people, a love that in time grew into attachments that brought a new dimension to the occupational and religious motives and interests and complemented them. Schooling and additional occupational training turned into prolonged stays that were considered by the interviewees as gifts enriching their lives in a multitude of ways. Let’s start with the affection for others, the kind of satisfaction to be found in social relationships and other bonds, as well as a fully secular hedonism, which each one of our interview partners experienced. What I think now? Well, I think how much fun I had being there, that I really loved to be there. All in all, I stayed for three and a half years, I came back in May because of my internship, but I plan to go down there again next year and then I want to stay longer. About the Philippines, well, it’s like this, that from the very beginning I did not exactly feel like I was called to go to the Philippines or something like that. I really went there because of the school (additional training, J.S./ M.A.), but I have to say, somehow during that time I learned to love the country and the people and everything there very much, and being here (in Germany, J.S./ M.A.) now, I realize that sometimes, well that it simply, that it really has become a part of my heart which hadn’t been there before, when I read something or an email or something, aaah (laughs). That’s when I notice that somehow it really has taken a deep, deep hold or so. (Ursula, p. 2, lines 95–106) I really liked, too . . . well, we did a lot with the teenagers. Like, there was this one trip when we took them somehow, when we went out with the boats. Well, sometimes really exciting things happened (. . .) we here with those boats, with those little boats, and somehow we went out across the ocean in them (laughs) and somehow, well, we really had some adventures with them (laugh), there in some kind of boat, and then, in the middle of nowhere on the water (laughs) the engine stops. (Ursula, p. 13–14, lines 701–709)

Acting as missionaries 339 Ansgar, too, reports how some things “were burned into our hearts” (Ansgar, p. 2, line 100). And Susanne (p. 16) tells us: Well, I am not somebody who thinks negatively of Russia. From the distance it looks even more positive (. . .) Back then I came to Russia with a certain enthusiasm for this country because I simply have been on fire for this country, and the Russians feel that enthusiasm even when my attitude became a bit more realistic. (Susanne, pp. 16–17, line 580–629)

Numerous examples could be cited to illustrate the joy experienced abroad, the pleasure in being alive, the gratification, the satisfaction. But instead, we will later turn to those experiences in particular which our interview partners explicitly designated as positive alternative visions that made life in “Germany” look somewhat pale and bleak as well as superficial and meaningless. Many of our following points demonstrate very impressively how our interview partners turned away from “Germany,” or rather from a cultural life form they had in some respects begun to experience as “impoverished,” and which today they still criticize.

Experiences of difference I: Life without a worlds of consumptions – Positive alternative visions for materialistic societies of affluence and individualistic “fake worlds of glamour” Again and again a topos appears in the narratives that will sound familiar to the “postmaterialistically” minded:18 they reject an existence depleted of meaning under the conditions of rampant capitalism and consumerism. The figure of the lone individual who cares for nothing but shopping, owning, and consuming is considered highly unattractive. An alternative is provided not only by religious orientations, offering a meaningful existence, but also simply through life in regions less saturated by wealth. This can be seen especially in those parts of the narratives where the narrators talk about their perceptions of the big cities in Russia. They report almost shocking experiences because in Russia they encountered what they had known at home and had wished to escape. Thus Ansgar, much like Susanne and Ursula, describes how he had a hard time getting used to “the dirt in the streets,” “the filthy chairs in restaurants (. . .) or in hotel rooms, (. . .) they sometimes really had a greasy shine, or to the vermin running around the room.” But then he continues like this: And then it always was quite the interesting experience, for example, which had already started in Moscow because that city is on a whole different level, or then back again in Germany, to arrive in Berlin or in Frankfurt and to see all that. Of course on the one side I was grateful for many things, but other things I found repulsive, well, basically this consumerism and so on. It is, well, in Moscow it has 18

For an empirical diagnosis and discussions concerning the theoretical concept of “postmaterialism,” see, e.g., Inglehart (1977), Zitterbarth (1987). See also Straub, Zielke & Werbik, 2005.

340 Jürgen Straub and Maik Arnold become strong, too, sometimes even stronger than with us, but that, that, this, to have this discrepancy, that the people living in the provinces are so poor and then, and then here, they build this fake world of glamour. (Ansgar, p. 5, lines 256–262)

Consumerism in a fake world of glamour is rejected. It is fitting that the inevitable dispensing with wealth and luxury on missionary tours is experienced as an enrichment of life that brings “joy” and “fun.” Even unpleasant things such as unsanitary living conditions are put up with. Our interview partners left the countries they stayed at with an abiding positive impression, and this was owing to the inhabitants themselves, their colorful, lively existence, and foreign appearance. That in any case is something which I have often experienced, that I really had fun doing this, that I also like it, to sit in one of those huts sometimes, and in this moment really there is nothing I find disgusting, nothing which I find anything but that I rather like being there (laughs), well, so this was, it was really different, and what I now recall, well, there simply is a lot of joy, I have to say, to just to get to know these people, to get to know a little bit of that culture which is very colorful, too, very lively and very, they are even more, well, perhaps it’s just this gypsyness, you know? I just had a whole lot of fun being among these people or, or being a part of them, too, the way they looked sometimes. (Ursula, p. 13, lines 689–698)

Even under conditions of severe privations and exacting demands, the joy and fun by no means disappear. Thus, Ursula talked about an assignment in a community where the houses were built on posts, without running water, toilets, or a sewage system. And not only did the sanitary conditions leave much to be desired, but child mortality rates were at 50% – almost every day a newborn or a baby died. Illiteracy is the norm, medical care is inadequate, leprosy and other diseases are wide spread. Still, the narrator closes this passage with these words: “Well, this was an assignment which I really liked very much” (Ursula, p. 15, lines 802–803). For some time Ursula herself lived in poverty, had almost no money and was dependent on other people for food (Ursula, p. 16). But this, too, was not deplored, but rather considered an opportunity and an enriching experience. What Ursula misses the most when she is here (in Germany) now, where she has “my room alone,” as she puts it (Ursula, p. 3, lines 124), is the communal life.

Experiences of difference II: Life without stress – Positive alternative visions to time pressures and achievement orientation at home Different variations of the interpretational pattern summarized in the sub-heading for this section also often appear in our interview partners’ narratives. All of them identify a life-style in the “foreign culture” that they find attractive. Ursula gives a simple example, dealing with certain elements of (stereotypically represented) habitus, when she says about the Filipinos: Well somehow, there is for example this difference where you, where the Filipinos are actually much more relaxed and it’s real easy to learn that from them. (Ursula, p. 3, lines 156–157)

Acting as missionaries 341 Ursula is not inclined to idealize since she also talks about the drawbacks of the relaxed life-style just mentioned. Yet she sees it as a challenge for her own self, an opportunity and a chance to learn, to have experiences, which for different reasons (strict time regulations, achievement and efficiency orientation), are hard to come by in “Germany,” where they are rather the exception. But we will refrain here from presenting comparable, common knowledge examples and giving more detailed interpretations.

Experiences of difference III: Sociableness and hospitality – Positive alternative visions to the isolated seclusion of private spheres All of our interview partners described and reflected upon another experienced cultural difference (which, again, we will only briefly elaborate on): I always found it really nice that the people there live very openly and are incredibly welcoming and cheerful, really not so typically Asian but very loud, they like to sing and laugh, they like to dance, and somehow, and there it often happened to me that I was invited by complete strangers into their home or someone talked to me on the street or at the market or something like this. When I go to the market, then I can’t help but attract attention and then they immediately ask my name, where I come from, if I’m married. (Ursula, p. 4, lines 194–200) It (the missionary work, J.S. / M.A.) brings you into many homes, and many people invite you, and then something always comes up somehow (. . .), which is great, too. (. . .) Here you wouldn’t, not if you did not know the people, if you stood before their door, they would not let you in, not just so (laughs), but that is also different there, the whole attitude. (Ursula, p. 4, lines 208–213)

The interviewees agreed that on the whole the doors are simply open wider. It was easier to meet other people spontaneously, to be open and find time for others. Generally, they all experienced what it means to be welcome. They did not have to meet specific requirements or prove who they were and what they wanted (Ursula, p. 8). Encounters often occurred under the banner of hospitality and which our interview partners delighted in and experienced as a generous gift and enrichment, becaming a reason for them to stay or return.

Experiences of difference IV: Authentic emotions and powerful religiosity – Positive alternative visions to a rationalistic culture Some of the very important autobiographical events described in the narratives are those that deal with spiritual experiences and religious feelings, with emotions in general, and with their public expression. Well, that’s something else which I experienced there, that we Germans are so often bothered by our minds (laughs), or let’s put it this way, that many there struggle with their minds. (Ursula, pp. 17–18, lines 915–920) Well, for us it really was the most beautiful thing when, when the people who came (. . .), well, there were always some who came to believe, when we were there,

342 Jürgen Straub and Maik Arnold too. They opened their life to Jesus and had truly strong experiences with God. Well, we often said there, wow, this is really powerful, much stronger than for many of us, and they had, well, these young people still had a fire and they said we want to, now, yes, to continue with it, to build something. (Ansgar, p. 1, lines 54–58)

Our interview partners appreciated not just the enterprising spirit of the young converts, but as they emphasize, they outright admired how free from all fear the young people’s dealings with spiritual and religious experiences were. The interviewees attested to the presence in the “others” of a sense of ease and openness in emotional matters that had long been lost in their own reductive, rationalistic culture.

Cultural difference, intercultural communication and competence Everyday cooperation and coexistence beyond cultural boundaries All the interview partners talked about their experiences of cultural difference, of alterity and a sense of being alien (e.g., Susanne, p. 3, 16), but above all they talked about how they learned to understand and in part overcome their initial feelings of distance and strangeness. In the foreign country, they all had to live with the native inhabitants, to listen to their language and learn it, at least bits and pieces of it. Thus, paradoxically, they were forced to do what they wanted to do. Different from other groups living abroad because of their jobs, there was no possibility of retreat for our interview partners. They of course lived in teams in which they co-operated mostly with people “like themselves.” But remaining only among one’s own, or worse, living in “ghettoes” of privileged expatriates from the same country of origin, conflicts with the basic missionary calling. Thus, they were all expected to get along with everyone in the “in-group” of mostly international Christians. Furthermore, they were expected to become involved with possible converts, to talk to them, and to initiate social and cultural interactions. Usually this kind of community life extended over periods of months or even years, with people leaving and others joining the group. (This often meant living together in the same building and also traveling together; during missionary assignments, close contact with the inhabitants is welcome and the rule, the missionaries are part of the communities, they spend the night in the homes of local hosts, etc.; Ursula, p. 3 bottom). Also, locals are usually integrated into the school and work teams as co-worker or closely co-operating partners. In this respect, too, e.g., Ursula considers her experiences as positive (Ursula, p. 3, lines 132–133). Like the others, she never idealizes the sometimes difficult intercultural practice, clearly emphasizing communication problems and other obstacles to friendship and association.

Differences that remain, necessary arguments Almost inevitably conflicts will come up in such a close-knit communal life. They necessarily push problems to the surface, which in turn may initiate learning

Acting as missionaries 343 processes. Under different circumstances these learning processes could be easily avoided, the usual strategy to (not) deal with unresolved problems (cp. Weidemann, 2005, 2007). The difficulties and problems thematized in the narratives range from well-known language and communication difficulties (Susanne, p. 2, lines 70–91, p. 3, lines 110–117; Ursula, p. 5) to psychological injuries that hurt people so deeply that it calls the very self into question. That the language of the alien other can function as a means of severe discrimination and social exclusion, rather than as a means of communication, of negotiation, and co-ordination of action etc., can be vividly seen in a passage from Ursula’s narrative. For her, the exclusionary power of a foreign language was the most negative experience of her stay abroad. At the time of the interview, this experience was still painfully felt, and she continued to be highly sensitized to being excluded because of language. In similar situations, for example at the Caritas in Germany, where Ursula was working at the time of the interview, she reacted strongly to similar experiences. At the Caritas, she was meeting people who spoke Russian, another language she does not understand, and this served to exclude and segregate her (Ursula, p. 5). The key situation she experienced in the Philippines, where she often heard “remarks which really were against white people or against certain things” (Ursula, p. 5), was thus reactivated Well, I just remember one negative recollection, maybe because that’s still a little bit (laughs), well, I still haven’t worked that all through (laugh), but it is, I don’t know whether this, whether I got used to it, or maybe I just feel like that sometimes. I am, well, obviously I am no Filipina (laughs) and I never will be. For starters, I don’t look like one (laughs), that is, I am always different when I go there. And what I, I didn’t, it is really too bad, I have to admit, but I still cannot speak the language very well because I really always worked within this international context. And because I did not think I would stay there, in the beginning, and then I started speaking more, and there we often speak English, well, really, our language is English, and I always, well, I never thought now I am going to stay in the Philipinnes for a really long time, and somehow it probably was already my second language, that’s why I didn’t learn it but I intend to when I go again. First thing I do (laughs). But, yes, and there, there I sometimes got, well, that’s where I had the most difficulties, also with the different cultures, but really with the language sometimes. Not among us co-workers because there it’s like, everyone knows English and everybody, that is really our common language. It can be a bit like this, when a lot of Filipinos are together, then they very soon like to talk in their own language and then you feel a bit like you are left out, and I have to say, this is much stronger with the Filipinos than with the Germans, you know? Or the others who were there, maybe it’s because they were in their own country, I don’t know. Of course I know that there’s such a tendency in other countries as well. This being among themselves, that is something that really has to do with history, well, this, this is not only a matter of language, you know? That was something which often bothered me a bit, and there I noticed, too, there simply is, there just is, or, well, that it hurt me, perhaps this feeling of being excluded sometimes, and also sometimes the feeling that they really do not want to speak in another language right now, or maybe not at all, they want to speak among themselves. But

344 Jürgen Straub and Maik Arnold I really have to say, there are also other reasons. Not personal reasons, but that just has to do with cultural, historical reasons, you name it. Well, I do understand that. But right then, when it happens, it still makes you feel pretty bad. (Ursula, p. 5, lines 236–264)

In another interesting example from Ursula, which fits very well with the above narrative passage, the focus again is not on personal animosities or interpersonal differences: But of course there were always things coming up that were hurtful or that people like me found problematic. For example, down there are such, they have certain preconceptions of white people, which are shaped predominantly by Americans, and they also have certain historical backgrounds and so on, or the entire history that this country really was always occupied and most people were living as servants or in other oppressed positions, and there is just so much frustration with regard to white people or something like that. But often that does not come out directly, but sometimes more from the back, or they vent their frustration at you even though it’s not your fault, or such things. But then again they really almost worship white people because they really believe that they are somehow less because they have been oppressed all the time. And when they think they are better and still worship white people, that you notice, too. And then again there is such a frustration, and when I, for example, when I just go down the street, then people look at me, well, it can happen that people really stare at me or stop or whisper something among themselves. Well, it depends, too, where you are, but you always stick out there. (Ursula, p. 4, lines 174–189)

Obviously, Ursula is talking here about perceptions of self and other that are rooted in the country’s history of colonization. The own self is stigmatized by the native population because that self belongs to the group labeled “white people.” White people are all seen as former colonialists and placed within a historical tradition still associated with relationships of power and domination. Sometimes this is articulated quite openly and explicitly, but more often it is expressed subliminally. Oppression and inequality have been ongoing painful experiences for the inhabitants. And from the perspective of our interview partners, this may be seen or felt as either burden or flattery. The local inhabitants “reflect back” their experience of difference onto our interview partners, alternating between aloofness and attraction, aversion and respect, reserve and curiosity, rejection and admiration (Ursula, p. 7). That and the ways in which Christian religions and their missionaries have been implicated in colonization, and that today continue to be experienced as culturally dominant, remains an unresolved issue in the narratives. Nonetheless, the historical baggage of colonial rule and oppression are constantly present in relationships of today. Our interview partners are very sensitive to this “heritage” and struggle with how it is passed on from one generation to the next, changing but never vanishing. They soon find themselves in a situation that is as emotionally complex as it is precarious. As Ursula demonstrates so keenly in her narrative, the partners feel stigmatized as white people

Acting as missionaries 345 and personally hurt by the formerly colonized, alien others. What is experienced as offensive behavior, however, is immediately put into a broader context. Ursula feels hurt and knows at the same time that what to her seem to be hurtful actions of others are “not meant personally,” but need to be understand as a result of a shared history and its violent imbalance of power. Colonization, domination, oppression, and an inequality still manifest today determine the interaction and communication between local inhabitants and the white people. This situation is even more complicated by the fact that people like Ursula are working as missionaries. In the service of their God, they wish to turn the alien others into Christians, that is, they want to change them in the name of the Christian God. Because of the inherent claim of superiority, all such enterprises are in danger of reproducing colonial structures of the past that supposedly were overcome long ago. Try as they might, our interview partners, who criticize and reject these colonial structures, are still implicated in them through their missionary actions. For this and other reasons, Ursula’s religious engagement is structured in a highly complex way. As can be seen most notedly in her narrative, Ursula’s missionary work is at times accompanied by feelings of guilt that have their origin in the former European colonization of other continents. Transgenerational transferences are responsible that our interviewee’s self, and in particular her religious self, experiences feelings of guilt. And even more importantly, that self realizes that it is responsible for making restitution19 for the incurred injustice. At one point in her narrative (p.18), Ursula says that she “as a white person or German” could give something to the Filipinos and Filipinas, too, not least because she can ask “people’s forgiveness” for the violence and oppression they have suffered. She then talks about her efforts “to metaphorically kneel before them” (p. 18) and thus contribute to the healing of spiritual wounds: “It probably was not a complete healing for everything, but still, still I noticed that people were touched, or that something just changed” (p. 18). Ursula and her colleagues, through their missionary actions, sometimes strive for restitution by showing deference towards the alien others by assisting them and trying to learn from them instead of employing past generations’ dominant and oppressive behavior. They make these efforts within interactive relationships that are, however, by no means equal or egalitarian (as described above), but which in the perfect world imagined by the Protestants we interviewed, are supposed to be so. This is the ideal to which they adhere, and it may also become the ideal against which they fail. This in turn is related to a way of thinking that for logical and psychological reasons needs to “vindicate” each missionary action. But before we take a close look at this way of thinking, let’s return for a moment to the striving for respect and appreciation that has left such deep traces in the narratives of our interview partners. 19

For usage of the term “restitution,” cp. Hühn (2004).

346 Jürgen Straub and Maik Arnold Adjustment, combined arrangements, and “third spaces” Ursula and Susanne report in detail about their own adjustment and accommodation to the Philippine way of life and the inhabitants’ local attitudes. They are considerate of local habits (e.g., in matters of clothing or certain behavior, in Ursula’s case regarding the consumption of alcohol). They learn from the inhabitants and adopt certain attitudes and behaviors. For Ursula, this experience enriches her life beyond the length of her stay abroad: “To see differently, on the one hand, and then also to, to learn something else” (Ursula, p. 3, lines 148–149). The experience broadens the own horizon and allows for a certain distance from one’s own life form. And this, that is something which I noted, too, that this, that this, perhaps it builds connections, sometimes (. . .) also, if you really want to get to know something, to treat the other (. . .) with a certain respect, sometimes you manage that, well, and sometimes not (laughs), I think that is because, well, I think that everyone is a bit arrogant sometimes and thinks, his or hers is really better, that goes for opinions, too, you know. But, but really I have to say that I really got much out of it, doing things the way it is done there or to just learn bit from them or take over some things. For of course you still remain yourself, but it is really more of a plus, well, so I think that even if I came back to Germany, for a longer period of time, it would help me here, because, well, because perhaps I got another perspective on what is considered normal here, or because I have seen something else and got know other things. (Ursula, p. 7, lines 337–349)

In other passages, too, she talks about her wish to adjust herself to the Philippine way of life. Adjustment implies respect and, in a sense, subordination, but not the – futile in any case – attempt to assimilate in all regards and without exceptions. The same is true for Susanne who summarizes: They always say, adjust to the culture, be a Jew among Jews, a Greek in Greece, a Russian in Russia, that’s what this would mean. And our field leader was the first person in my life who told me: Susanne, you have to keep your identity, stay Susanne in Russia. Look at the culture and see where you maybe want to adjust yourself, but don’t do everything like the locals. And he became my role model. In Russia, people usually don’t shake hands when they meet, and if they do, then only the men. But usually a man never shakes hands with a woman. And he is doing that, always after the service he says goodbye to the people and shakes their hand. It is against all cultural norms, but he is doing it to show the people love, God’s love. He shakes hands with the women, and everyone responds positively to it. (Susanne, p. 12, lines 427–433)

Still, a certain consideration and respectful adaptation is necessary. All in all, Ursula associates her successful efforts to adjust with the feeling of being accepted as other: Often and more and more I felt that, that the people, on the other hand, accepted me very strongly, well, so that I didn’t, that I just never had the feeling of rejection because I came from another country. Well it’s, sometimes in certain situations it’s there, but

Acting as missionaries 347 I also have to say, if you, what I more often experienced, I really tried to adjust somewhat and I really liked to do that, well, as much as possible, for well, I think, there’s always things which you just simply can’t do. I can’t, I will always look different there. Or similar things, but then I really had incredible fun to give myself over to that, this, you know, and I have to say, it’s exactly this what, what I think the Filipinos really admire very much, when you, when you really don’t just stick to your position and, well, now, I am from there, and there I do that so-and-so, you know, but when you accept how they do it. I don’t know for sure if I can always do it, but that’s a bit my goal, to resign myself and not, and, and really to respect how, well, how things are done there. (Ursula, p. 6, lines 288–302)

Describing the cultural exchange and the intercultural learning processes she experienced, Ursula draws a typical conclusion. Neither the (initially) foreign and alien culture nor the (formerly familiar, now more distanced) own culture are idealized or unreservedly appreciated. All our interview partners either called for a combined way of life that integrates elements of both cultures, mitigating extremes here and there (which means that the chosen elements were not simply added up and put together unaltered). Or they design a third space in between both cultures, one that emerges from the imaginative and creative narrative practice and that constitutes something new, which should not be misunderstood as being just another combined arrangement of already existing elements. The words of our interview partners are reminicent of theoretical concepts that focus on e.g., the “creolization” of languages or the “hybridization” of cultural ways of life and identities.20 From Ursula’s narratives, here is one example of the first type: Well, I adjusted very much to this, but then again I realized that parts of the German are good, too, well, that it, that one needs to find a balance. Well, I’ve had the impression all along, anyway, that both these cultures, that they really fit very well: Philippine and German. Because, well, because we can, can learn from them and the other way round, well, we each got the extreme, and the balance is just, would be the best. To, hmm, the Filipinos often live a bit from one moment to the next and ha-, hmm, they are relatively aimless, while Germans on the other hand are very goal-oriented. They sometimes forget everything else that is around them, and the Filipinos forget everything else and never make one step (laughs). And if one can’t find a bit of a balance of the two, well, then this could be a really good mixture, you know, and, yes, I don’t know, but it depends, I think, we really learned quite a bit from each other, but I think, it always depends upon how much you really want it, you know, and, but I – yes, there are a lot of things which I really like very much. (Ursula, p. 3–4, lines 162–174)

Persuasive communication and violence – Mission as helping people to help themselves or patronizing conversion Central to missionary work is its religious character, yet this never dominates the narratives of our interview partners. They also see the very secular aspects 20

Cp. for example, Bhabha (1990, 1994, 1997); also Ackermann (2003).

348 Jürgen Straub and Maik Arnold of their religiously motivated engagement, and sometimes the goal of conversion is put aside. Their work, our interview partners told us, means serving others and assisting them in the achievement of their own goals and interests. In general, our interview partners claim to have respect for the foreign others, to be interested in them and to meet them with esteem and appreciation, which, our interview partners say, is felt and noticed by the others. Thus Ursula reports about several youths: Well (. . .), I think for them (. . .) this was a bit of a novelty that someone really just lives with them, well, shares their life, because that, well, I don’t think that happens very often (. . .). Well, they felt really honored or, or also kind of respected because, because usually nobody does that (. . .). I think for them it somehow was some kind of appreciation, too, you know. (Ursula, p. 14, lines 713–721)

The narratives repeatedly emphasized that other cultures and their members “really (have) something to give which you cannot get from a German” (Ursula, p. 17). This sentiment, too, our interview partners say, was expressed to the local inhabitants, along with numerous demonstrations of respect and admiration. And yet, the matter of respect, esteem, and appreciation is not so simple. The seemingly selfless “service to others” is in effect not a mere end in itself. It is always bound up with our interview partners’ interest in proselytizing their belief. Ultimately, the missionaries interfere more than just marginally in the lives of the alien others, consciously and purposely determined to change their ways of life. That the tendencies of, on the one hand, “selfless service to others” and, on the other hand, “patronizing conversion efforts” are felt as contradictory and antagonistic, can be seen in the following passage from Ursula’s narrative: For myself I find it important that when I go back now, well, when I can manage it (laughs), then I rather want to be in a supporting position and not necessarily the one who needs to do everything, well, this, I rather would be in a lesser place and I rather would stand behind the Filipinos and not in front of them, you know, and rather that they are released. I don’t want to go there and do something on my own or something like this, I don’t know for sure. (Ursula, p. 7–8, lines 376–382)

The often-declared consideration for the alien others, their ways of life, values and norms, traditions, and habits is not thematized for moral reasons alone. It also serves a superior strategical interest. This implicated the entire matter, and all communication and interaction between missionaries and local inhabitants is potentially fraught with suspicion and ambivalence. The (allegedly) selfless service to the alien others could be revealed as being mostly work for one’s own cause. The well-meant address and advice given to the free or “released” alien others may just be persuasive talk for the purpose of a “conversion to one’s own” religious belief (i.e., to a belief full of cultural-specific presuppositions, implications, and consequences). The declared aim of all missionary action – a kind

Acting as missionaries 349 of practical nostrification through conversion – is not easily compatible with the well-meant intention to accept the alien others as they are and to give them, at most, maeutic assistance when realizing their own aims.

Struggles for acceptance, dominance, and enforcement of one’s own culture As we have seen, differences between missionaries and the local inhabitants remain despite the continuing cultural exchange and the mutual rapprochement. Several times these autobiographical narratives mention that any attempts to cover up or to simply ignore differences would be futile and inexpedient. They have to be noted, not least because our interview partners do not accept all cultural differences unconditionally, as if it did not matter how one thinks, feels, acts, and lives, and whether one believes in this or that or some other God! Our interview partners judge the foreign culture, i.e., foreign cultural life forms, language games and action modes, according to what seems important to them. Their judgment is based in part on the fundamental, indisputable Christian values to which they adhere. Ultimately, these values are the valid measuring stick for judging the alien other. Incidentally, not only do our interview partners at times attest to a certain superiority in their own culture concerning questions of belief and religious conduct, but also in the organization of secular, everyday life. This concerns, for example, the differences between direct and indirect communication, a problematic often addressed in comparative studies of cultures. On the other hand, there again are certain things, where I think that we as Christians live together, and some things are wrong, too, in (other) cultures, and then you do not have to respect all of that in every last detail, you know. Well, I mean, for example, for us it’s more like that we are very upfront and say things very clearly which can be very, very hurtful for a Filipino, and that’s something they are not used to at all, but there I realize, here we can learn from each other, where perhaps as a German you need to be more careful and perhaps you have to say that somewhat more subtle and not so whosh, somehow, but on the other hand, the Filipinos can learn, too, that it’s better to talk directly about things, and not now somehow through a third person or what not, such things, you know. But this is again in another context, well, we live international, and we demand more of ourselves than now, if I”d go in some community, you know. (Ursula, p. 6, lines 302–313)

Certainly one can and should learn from each other. But at the same time, it is unequivocally clear that for our interview partners acting as missionaries, the final, “essential” goal is not intercultural exchange: it is mission and the Christian Protestant belief in the “one God”. This is the heart of life at the mission station, this is what it’s ultimately all about. The schooling or vocational training abroad, including the integrated missionary assignments, follows an institutionalized curriculum and leads up to a higher goal. The life stories recapitulate this schematic pattern, down to very detailed records of single components,

350 Jürgen Straub and Maik Arnold (e.g., a typical day in the Disciples of Christ School; Ursula, p. 8), and they never lose sight of the final goal. Youth With A Mission (YWAM), as well as older missionaries live “with God” and in His service, during the quiet hours of prayer, during communal worship, when engaged in everyday activities or talking to a mentor, as part of controversial discussions and public events, or in the moving hours-long overland trips while on missionary assignments, in short: ideally always and everywhere. Receiving and spreading the word of God is the center of everyday life. His word is supposed to be heard, and possibly in a most consequential manner. This is one of the primary reasons for meeting other people and maintaining contacts – as much as one might enjoy these contacts without always having the over-all goal in mind (Ursula, p. 11). Ursula cares very much about turning contacts into enduring and sustained friendships. She describes many activities that allow for the establishment and strengthening of such bonds. Among them were: “to clean the village,” “collect garbage,” “mow the lawn” and other activities of which the local inhabitants “did not know really why, now why we did that”. Organizing “events” in public spaces (e.g., schools, sport fields) was also part of these activities, and during these events films were shown: “Well, we showed Jesus films, but then we organized something, something like a small Disciples of Christ School, too, where we held lectures about certain issues, but with prayer, too, and such things and we did such things. But we did this only when we knew the people, and they really liked it a lot and that is, somehow things just developed on many levels or, or people connected with each other, or we became involved in different things” (Ursula, p. 12). These last interview excerpts demonstrate that contact with other people follows a calculated strategic plan. The religious motives initially stay in the background, at least most of the time, and the local inhabitants are not even really sure why these people collect the garbage in the village or mow the lawn to then invite them to come to “Woman’s Hour,” “Youth Circles,” religious services for children, Bible lectures, or prayer hours. Ursula lists a whole row of examples that can also be found in other interviews. Susanne (p. 24), for example, describes an organized discussion group for Russians interested in the German language, and that is conceived of as a pleasant “cappuccino for the soul”: Well, that is not yet a real Church event but it could turn into one. Well, now it’s something like this, where you establish relationships and contracts and bring in a little bit of what the Christian belief says about an issue, but you don’t say “you have to read the Bible” and it does not have the form of a service, but people are together in a relaxed atmosphere and talk about Christian issues. Well, it is people who are simply interested in German. (Susanne, p. 24, lines 853–860)

It is important that all the described contacts and relationships always lead to changes that affect the life and the self of the people about to be converted. For the alien others “things just developed,” which – in full accord with the goals of one’s

Acting as missionaries 351 own missionary actions – could be regarded as successes and enjoyed: “That’s something I found, well, for me this is the most beautiful thing”. Such success stories make the missionary assignments seem particularly rewarding, for all these assignments are about an intended conversion and the extension of one’s own community of belief that goes with it. Our interview partners act on the assumption based on their own religious convictions that conversion will bring happiness to the (converted) others. Often they say that the Christian belief leads individuals as well as the (somewhat ailing) society as a whole along the path towards lasting redemption, improvement, and healing (after “seventy years of ungodliness,” as Ursula (p. 15) says about Russia, adding that in Germany today “God is rejected” (Ursula, p. 17). There are also stories about very difficult but successful conversions. Ursula reports on an assignment in a poor non-Filipino neighborhood where “sea gypsies” live, a group influenced by Islam that is discriminated against in the Philippines by Filipinos and Muslims alike. This assignment she describes as “tough” and depressing because of the stark poverty that could be seen everywhere. Some things she really loathed and even found disgusting (Ursula, p. 13), a reaction she needed to overcome if she did not want to destroy all hopes for success right from the beginning. Ursula, as well as her fellow missionaries, managed to do this. With “the help of God” they found a way into the hearts of these poorest of the poor, the outcasts who nobody else cared about. Before the assignment they fasted and prayed, afterwards they thanked God that he “truly gives us the heart” (Ursula, p.13) to initiate such ventures, to go through with them, and complete them with success and inner satisfaction. We want to mention one other remarkable example. Ursula (p. 16) talks about a local priest working with youth gangs. Under his and other Christians’ influence the gang members changed into “new” people who went into the streets, no longer to commit violent crimes, but to protest peacefully. Ursula describes how the youths listened to the priest’s sermon, participated in a kind of worship and adoration, demonstrated their own dances in public places, and then they (did) another great thing, where all the leaders of the gangs stood together in front in a circle, and also for those, for those, too, they prayed together, where such great things just had happened, and I just thought this is just so incredible (. . .). Well, okay, the priest really did a lot with them and then this Youth With A Mission, they also organized a mini Disciples of Christ School for them, they had done that before and did it now again and during that time we were down there and participated, well, we also took part, well, we really participated a whole lot. (Ursula, p. 16, lines 835–839)

There are many similar stories to be found in the narratives, stories about people who were not originally among those who were to be converted, but nevertheless turned to the Christian belief. An example was a Japanese man who had

352 Jürgen Straub and Maik Arnold come to Russia to study the language. He and a group of Chinese were told that “we have a bit of a different kind of piety” (Susanne, p. 8, line 294), and once in while this “different kind” was successfully suggested to such “cases” standing at the margins of the conversion effort. Quod erat demonstratum: Satisfaction is found primarily in the changes of the selves of the alien others, in their turn towards the own Christian God and belief. It is certainly assumed that their religion or world-view, their life form, and everyday practice is “simply different” (Susanne, p. 9, lines 306–310) and “not negative,” however, one’s own actions are directed purposefully and steadily towards changing them. The missionary vanishing point can be seen in Ursula’s retrospective glimpse into an alternative positive vision of the history of humankind. That means if from the beginning of the history of the Church, well, when Jesus was no longer in the world, if every Christian in his or her life had helped one other person to also become a Christian, then in 1842 the entire population of the world would have been Christians. That is, there needs to be a question mark after that, I did not check whether it’s true, but what it simply means, you do not need the masses, do something now, that they become Christians.

As shown above, the missionaries themselves of course also change, they broaden their horizons and learn this or that, and they also learn existentially important things as well (Ursula, p. 20). Still, a radical transformation of the missionary’s own thoughts, feelings, wishes, and actions – as it is suggested to the converts – is not welcome, quite the contrary. Rather, what is sought is a strengthening and deepening of the missionaries’ faith and religious self. They attempt to pay closer attention to “how God sees the world, and not how I see the world or how my culture sees the world or how my thinking sees the world” (Ursula, p. 17). The missionary activities abroad fulfill the function of a continued, successive stabilization of the religious self. The missionary is supposed to “really (become) more stable in his or her Christian being” (Ursula, p. 20), to prove oneself and become stronger. And no matter what you do afterwards and where you go, that you just stand firmer and, and you are more stable or, in terms of character, too, you know. (Ursula, p. 21, lines 1108–1110)

Missionary action as strengthening the self and a heightened sense of the self From a psychological perspective, religious missionary actions address at least two groups. They are directed at people supposedly in need of conversion, i.e., those of no or a different belief. At the same time, the actions are auto-referential, i.e., directed at the missionaries themselves. The performance of actions can assert and stabilize (and of course weaken and endanger) one’s potential for action. When missionary actions lead to the desired conversion of the other, the

Acting as missionaries 353 ensuing strengthening of the self and the heightened sense of self are easily understood. These consequences are the result of the missionaries experiencing the effectiveness of their actions, that is, they experienced the in their view successful attempt of a – to put it in the terms of Ernst Boesch’s psychology of belief – “perfection” (“Vervollkommnung”) of the world. Missionaries work towards establishing “good” and warding off “evil.” The missionary work of conversion serves this twofold goal. As with almost all other actions, missionary actions, too, are performed long before they ever fulfill the above-mentioned psychological functions for the individual. Depending on the context, and particularly on the would-be converts’ reactions to the missionary efforts, they may or may not ever be fulfilled. Meeting people who respond openly to one’s intentions of converting them, and who are at least kindly disposed to the Christian faith and God, can in itself be experienced as an assertion of the self. We have already suggested that questions of doubt, hostility, and rejection, which Christian believers may often encounter, for example in “secularized” and “rationalist” Germany, are avoided in missionary encounters. The self thus enters into a more harmonious relationship with its social environment.21 Such a “balance of self and environment” is usually aspired to and experienced as a state of happiness (Boesch, 2005). This is exactly the case, for example, when missionary encounters become a kind of “protective cloak” distancing its bearer from the pointed questions and threatening attacks of brainy people – real and imagined – from rationalist cultures (as well as from the need for rationality and reality that haunts one’s faith). In these narratives, missionary action sometimes appears to be a bulwark against the ever-threatening doubts of faith from which one can never fully escape. Fulfilling one’s missionary calling, thus, is not simply a blessing because of the visible, “outer” success of conversion. Neither does it only optimize one’s potential for action in the sense that one acquires new skills and abilities (e.g., language skills and knowledge of other countries). And neither is it merely a demonstration of the power (of action) of self over the other. Successful missionary action, in fact, is rather a “victory” over oneself, over the own Self and its doubts of self and faith. The desire to shape a member of a foreign culture in the idealized image of one’s own culture – even more specifically, of one’s own belief -, goes hand in hand with the desire to correspond to this image oneself and be true to it. The fulfillment of this wish depends on a well-meaning, accommodating other. One’s belief and the religious self need this accommodating other as much, it seems, as the other’s conversion may be dependent on the action of the missionary. 21

For more about this “equilibrium of the soul,” cp. the original works of Ernst Bosch, whose theories we follow here, the notes by Straub (2005b) and Straub & Weidemann (2007).

354 Jürgen Straub and Maik Arnold In their autobiographical narratives the potential converts are revealed as “messengers” of a God-willed openness, spontaneity, emotionality, and cordialness that opens the gates to true belief and a whole-hearted trust in God and Jesus. Time and again, the others prove to be resources, providing important social assistance for the missionaries! They – and not just the like-minded teachers, mentors, and fellow missionaries – take on a protective and supporting function for an ever threatened self. Willing or unwilling, they contribute to the fact that the missionaries’ selves draw closer to the “equilibrium of self and environment,” which they will never fully reach but will always desire. Many of those momentary rapprochements can be found in the missionary practice as it is envisioned in the autobiographical narratives. The mission, and all actions that are subsumed under its higher purpose, contribute – paradoxically phrased – to the rapprochement of an unreachable goal. Missionary action, thus, finds its purpose not only in the potential convert, the object of proselytizing efforts, or in the purposeful act of conversion itself. Rather, the function of missionary action is the strengthening of the missionary’s self and the heightening of his or her sense of self by creating an equilibrium between inside and outside – a temporary balance, but one that, from a psychological perspective, is of lasting importance. Herein lies one highly important meaning of missionary action, a meaning that motivates people to bring their faith and God even to remote countries. Incidentally, the accommodating others can fulfill their described function even more effectively when they – all possible ambivalence notwithstanding – meet the missionaries with respect, with esteem as well as admiration. Suffice it to mention briefly that this aspect, too, is often addressed in the narratives. All our interview partners enjoyed the local inhabitants’ respect and an elevated, “exotic” position that may provide narcissistic satisfaction (but also raise suspicions). Even so, in concluding our paper, we will focus on another aspect.

Religious believers – Inclined to tolerance and intercultural competence? The self narrated by our interview partners lives within its religious faith and acts as a missionary in the context of cultural exchange. We hope to have shown why missionary action is an important subject for a psychology of religion. It should have become evident, too, why this subject is important for the psychology not only of religion. How can one’s own convictions – and, more particularly, one’s religious convictions and entire systems of belief – be recommended for acceptance and presented in such a way that they are attractive to others, and should they be so presented? And can such an attempt ever be viewed as “legitimate” and executed in a responsible manner? These questions lead right to the pulsating core of modern societies in a globalized and localized world. The diversity of heterogeneous images of the world and humankind, of life forms, language games, orientations, and practices has long become an eminent

Acting as missionaries 355 challenge to practical reason. But this is not only a question of ethics and morality, of law and politics, which we have to discuss and eventually solve in order to survive, at least tolerably well, the risky adventure of our shared life on this planet. Peaceful co-operation and co-existence of “unequals” requires a multitude of psychosocial and socio-cultural skills. A psychology of religion interested in missionary actions can make a contribution to finding out exactly what these skills are and where they can be developed. Missionary ideology openly assumes that there are plenty of people “out there” in the world who are somehow “messed up” and in any case are not on the “right path.” The direction in which they are heading needs to be changed and adjusted to the direction of the Christian faith. Missionary action is aimed explicitly at adjusting other and foreign beliefs to one’s own. When missionary actions are approved of and performed, the belief and knowledge of others, their thoughts, feelings, wishes, and actions seem undesirable, in need of improvement, and at times plain completely wrong. Why else would one want to engage in missionary action? In a very specific way, missionaries have committed themselves to strive for an “equilibrium of self and environment.” They resist the prevalent moral credo calling for an all-embracing and often even unconditional respect, tolerance, and esteem of the other. Missionaries take a different view: in their eyes others exist to be changed, and all that is foreign is potentially threatening and should, if incompatible with Christian beliefs, be incorporated into the own culture and mind. The community of believers of the one and true God is to be strengthened, its numbers increased. Though employing any and all means is no longer justified to achieve this end, expansion still remains the command and the calling.22 Persuasive forms of speech are considered “peaceful” missionary means, as are performative inclusions of the other culture in one’s own (e.g., in rituals or services). The convert is given a new social identity (for this term, see Tajfel, 1978, 1981). Missionary action depends on persuasive communication because of structural reasons that have to do with the nature of religious (Christian) belief. Missionary communication is aimed at “making the other one’s own,” at an assimilation of the other into one’s own system of belief, a process that cannot but help involve violence. Missionaries might respect others’ freedom of will and emphasize the voluntary nature of faith. Nevertheless, it is the very free will of the other which is the object of missionaries’ exerts of influence and strategic manipulations. Religious belief is not conveyed through sensible argument alone. Conversions are not the results of pure rational decisions. No one remains true to his or her religion or faith because mind and reason tell him or her to do so 22

This includes an assertion of self and a kind of “self defence”: the command to love the next man and woman, to love even one’s enemy, can become a revolutionary gesture, but there still are adversaries and enemies to be resisted and to be contained (Boesch, 2005, p. 256)

356 Jürgen Straub and Maik Arnold (although there might be good rational reasons for remaining a believer, too). World views, just like religious systems of beliefs, are based upon “strong” values and evaluations (Taylor, 1976, 1977/1985; Rosa, 1998, pp. 99–126) that elude purely rational discourse (Joas, 2003). Still, they are not entirely nonrational or irrational constructs. Not all their aspects defy reason, and neither do those people who are not religiously “intuned”. In no case religion is a mere expression of an “infantile regression” (Freud, 1927/2001), rooted in the desire for illusions, or in a fearful personality that reduces complexity and contingency whenever there is the chance to do so. Such psychological or psychoanalytical explanations are not sufficient. They don’t do justice to faith and believers. Religious convictions are part of a rather practical world-view. They imply a complex system of epistemic commitments. Sedmak (2003, p. 68ff) explains this system by differentiating between three kinds of implicit commitment: holding a religious conviction may ensue in, or entail praxeological, categorical, or propositional commitments. One can relate to those commitments by virtue of one’s capacity to reason (and say more than just “yeah Amen,” or shrug, being at a loss of how to respond). Like other convictions, religious beliefs are structured holistically: they depend on an entire pragma-semantical network that can change as a whole and even break apart if one single conviction is altered. It is important to note that systems of religious convictions change and oscillate23 between belief and rationally accessible knowledge. Missionaries “know” all that and act accordingly. None of this can be considered a priori as “bad” or “condemnable,” nor is it even very unusual behavior (exclusively performed by ambitious missionaries). What we have just explained about the way missionaries use (inter)religious communication, mutatis mutandis is true for all kinds of interpersonal communication. Why shouldn’t people try (or subconsciously want to work towards) changing their counterparts according to their own will and wishes? That is what they are, in any case, doing everywhere, and using persuasive and other manipulative means at that. The other is not always just as one wants him or her to be, no matter the current emphasis on the “other’s other” and the fashionable appreciation for “strangers” and all that is “foreign.” The other may be however he is, and barring exceptional situations of overwhelming generosity, he will never be as he should be, and he never can be. Just as with everything else on earth, the other will never match the perfection we imagine and desire. This is not only a view missionaries take when they direct their actions at this rarely consciously articulated desire, towards this wish that we are not likely to admit to ourselves in this “age of ever-present demands for tolerance.” In our 23

As has been demonstrated in recent studies analyzing speech, cp. Sedmak, 2003; Schärtl, 2003; Von Stosch, 2003.

Acting as missionaries 357 imagination, the other undergoes speedy adjustments, and it is this imagined “changed other” who moves us and guides our actions (in the same way as other phantasms do). More often than not this happens unconsciously. This process, too, can be described “positively”: people will just not leave each other “in peace”. They are not completely indifferent to each other. It is usually considered an unmistakable sign of a real conversation, of a meaningful dialogue or diapraxis when neither of the participants comes out the same as he or she went in. The changes may be subtle, a broadening of horizons, perhaps barely perceivable shifts or openings in the former boundaries of the self. These changes may well correspond with one’s own wishes and will. At least in retrospect, changes of the self may be welcomed and accepted even when they were initiated or even strategically planned by other people. Given the fact that a variety of influences are so commonly exerted by others, no one raises fundamental moral objections to them. In any case, it is not possible to completely avoid such influences altogether. Missionaries openly profess to making use of such influences. They consciously intend the conversion of other people. They have a clear goal, a tried and tested plan, helpful techniques, and usually a lot of passion and patience. A certain sense of self-righteousness adheres to their actions that many contemporaries are unwilling to accept. Last but not least, this has to do with the absolute claims made and enforced by religions, monotheistic religions in particular (Assmann, 2006). It may seem at times that many religiously motivated people resist a way of thinking that struggles for peacefulness and appeals to sensibilities of difference and empathy,24 to the capacity for tolerance and the potential for acceptance by all inhabitants of a multicultural “world society.” Missionaries and their intellectual justifications do not really fit into today’s popular and uncontested dictum of “live and let live,” even less so when this dictum is interpreted to mean a radically aesthetisized and individualized hedonism. Perhaps none of the influential world religions or any other pious community will subscribe to the motto of “Do as you please.” Some religions and many believers even have a hard time expressing serious respect for and tolerance of “the other others” or strangers (for the concept of “tolerance” see Bobbio, 1990; Walzer, 1997), and, instead, exercise some form of patronizing and derogatory tolerance. This is very evident in our interviews, too, even though the narrators speak very positively about respect, tolerance, and appreciation. Missionaries and their actions cast a shadow that threatens to undermine their own ethical and moral claims. They are caught in an irredeemable, structural 24

About this highly complex capacity or potential for action which needs to be reconstructed as an achievement of culturally conveyed, biographical learning processes, cp. Boesch’s remarks dealing specifically with religious belief (2005, p. 74 ff ).

358 Jürgen Straub and Maik Arnold paradox: the missionary program of peaceful expansion smells of a contradictio in adjecto. The declared will to expand one’s religion and belief makes it impossible for any missionary action to retain the character of a harmless, innocent enterprise. This becomes more evident the more openly missionary religions pronounce their claim that the “word of God” (or a “comparable” message) is the absolute truth, albeit one that is not wholly accessible to humans. Explicitly expansive endeavors will always be suspected of being about power and domination and not solely about an altruistic moral removed from all the not so selfless intricacies of human nature. Program and practice of all missionary action are based on the assumption that the planned conversions will enrich and bless the lives of the converted. (Doubts are allowed but only insofar as they do not undermine one of the basic tenets of faith.) Because of the argumentative paradox described above, missionaries are easily suspected of only paying lip service to the ideals of difference, diversity, and plurality, and to basically aiming at the reduction of all others to “one.” Missionary action requires the structural attribution of inferiority to the alien other, or at least the assumption that the other being is in need of change. This action vindicates a superiority that is often claimed dogmatically. The status of the chosen few creates hierarchies among human beings. The distance to God is not the same for everyone. Why else would one want to convert others? These days, official representatives of the Christian churches and millions of their members unanimously pronounce that they do not want to impose or force their beliefs upon anyone. Religious commitments, so they say, can only be made freely and by self-responsible individuals. Faith needs freedom. But this “liberal gesture,” and the implicit radical command to appreciate and tolerate all others, is not easily compatible with the call for missionary evangelicalization. Distancing themselves from every form of enforced belief, ambitious Christians – like our interview partners – find themselves in a theoretically and practically conflicted relationship to the missionary call to propagate their (ideally) stalwart belief in the word of their “one God”.25 Today, it seems to us that there are two kinds of one-sided and wrong interpretations of this conflicted relationship. On the one hand, religions, and missionary-expansionist religions in particular, are at times sweepingly regarded 25

Pope Benedict XVI provided many examples for this during his visit to Bavaria in September of 2006. He included the Protestants as possible addresses of his intensified evangelization of the world, announced both in sermons and in practice. To Protestants he suggested that they change certain elements of their religious beliefs and draw nearer to the Catholic doctrine. – Incidentally, the term mission was never mentioned in the Pope’s public speeches, which is no accident. In the last years it was rarely used even in religious (Christian, church) circles, but was pushed aside and replaced by the secular term “development aid” (or similar terms) – a term that the Pope who is strongly interested in evangelization obviously is critical of.

Acting as missionaries 359 as world-views that necessarily must lean towards violence. (A view that does justice neither to those religions nor their followers.) On the other hand, the above mentioned internal conflicts are marginalized and evened out, thus playing down the very elements of religious world-views and belief systems that both in spirit and deed do strongly suggest, or already embody, a certain aggressiveness and (physical, psychological, or symbolic) violence. To equate religion with violence and belief with intolerance is a highly undifferentiated view of things, but it is equally questionable (and dubious) to see in religious belief in general a structural disposition for tolerance, as does, for example, Joas (2003). Let’s have a closer look at this very interesting point! According to Joas’ (and Stosch’s, 2003) analysis, religious belief and an undeceivable awareness of contingency are inextricably interwoven. The awareness of and even the search for contingency is woven into a central religious action and experience, namely, the prayer. Religion and belief are newly defined by their positive and productive relationship to contingency. This make them integral components of modernity (late, postmodernity), thus giving them a new and contemporary meaning (instead of discarding them as outdated relics of time past, ready to be disposed of once and for all). Whether this suggestion can be accepted needs to be discussed on at least two levels. First, there are the subtle religious writings and theological texts that suggest and already articulate a certain familiarity with the phenomenon of contingency and the (modern) awareness of contingency. However, it seems to us, that a rather sympathetic interpretation of even those texts is required in order to be able to say with surety that there are “structures deep in the grammatical make-up of the religious convictions of the great world religions (. . .) that render it impossible that these convictions are undoubtedly in effect on the regulative level constitutive of world-views” (Stosch, 2003, p. 125). Nothing is impossible, not even in sacred texts and theological treatises, and even less so because all practical possibilities of reception-turned-into-action depend on “active readers” (Iser, 1990). Second, there is the biographical religious experience of many normal people, an experience that certainly is very diverse, especially in regards to the above mentioned experiences of contingency in prayer and the persistent awareness of contingency of “modern subjects”. Not all believers will experience and see things the way Von Stosch does (Schärtl, Joas et al.). To be able to make more detailed differentiations, empirical studies are needed to clarify how open to experiences of contingencies and doubts, to concrete, categorizable religious convictions, avowals of beliefs and belief systems, collective and individual experiences, and practices of belief in fact are. At the very least, such studies are needed to examine how a radical awareness of contingency and fundamental doubt go together with such subjective truths as are also provided (or should be provided) by religious belief in an absolute. Even if no believer could ever ignore

360 Jürgen Straub and Maik Arnold “the insight that his or her form is relative and conditional” (Joas, 2003, p.16), the open (empirical) question remains of what this means for the believer if he or she in fact adheres to this insight and reflects upon its implications and consequences. Even if awareness of contingency and doubt are integral to belief, they will not be equally welcomed by all believers or accepted as constitutive moments of their own religiosity and piousness. What Joas (2003, p. 16, with Von Stosch, Schärtl et al.) calls, or rather suggests as timely “self-reflection of belief under contemporary conditions of increased contingency” is obviously less of an empirical diagnosis that can be generally applied, but rather a pious hope that likely may only be fulfilled by some believers (but perhaps, one may add, hopefully by more and more believers). The conclusion, “that an awareness of the contingency of one’s own belief ” (Joas, 2003, p. 16) predisposes “towards tolerance between the religions and between believers and non-believers, and towards an ability to endure the conflicts between belief and knowledge within each single believer and within the churches” (ibid.), also, sounds almost too good to be true. It can be assumed that this may also be coincidentally true for a chosen few. But this again is an empirical question. The analysis of the missionary actions of ambitious Protestants presented in this paper rather suggests still assuming psychologically complex conflicted relationships. There is no easy peace within the human soul between, on the one hand, the belief and the religious convictions of the believers, and on the other hand, the sometimes very serious efforts to meet alien others with respect, to recognize and tolerate their cultural life forms, their language games, orientations, and practices. What we are dealing with here is rather a conflict that keeps the soul on its feet and at times throws it into arguments and crises. This conflict cannot be resolved. This is also amply demonstrated by our empirical analyses of selected autobiographical narratives of Protestant missionaries. To show respect and tolerance to others is a continual challenge for them. It is up to each individual to meet this challenge. Whether one’s own belief is a help or a hindrance cannot be answered today and likely neither tomorrow. Incidentally, the empirical studies demanded by us would need a prior discussion of the normative content of almost all definitions of “religion” and “faith”. The normativity of these terms is poignantly obvious, for example, when the authors of the mentioned small volume (Joas, 2003) strive for theoretical analyses and definitions of “religious convictions.” When religion and belief are defined as in the above mentioned text, it can only ever come to a good ending – even if once and while the authors admit: “Despite all the life-sustaining power religious convictions can enfold, they also appear to (sic! J.S./M.A.) possess a highly destructive potential” (von Stosch, 2003, p. 104). Significantly, such seeming concessions are always succeeded by statements putting what was just said in relative perspective: “It is however questionable whether what brings terrorists

Acting as missionaries 361 and politicians to the point of killing other people and themselves, are indeed religious convictions” (ibid.) (Terrorists and politicians? No-one else?) It is such passages where those very normative distinctions come into play, and the true religion, the serious belief and truly religious convictions are distinguished from degenerative blunders who falsely come under same name. Whereas “true” believers experience, acknowledge, and even cultivate the “vulnerability of their own convictions” and of the religious self, the “only seemingly religious people” (von Stosch, 2003, p. 16), that is namely terrorists and politicians, give in to self-misunderstanding and reject what “really” belongs to religion and belief. Such normative distinctions can, phenomenologically and hermeunetically, capture and grasp noteworthy differences in experience. This is beyond dispute. They are doubtlessly important to prevent that all too many things (“religion,” “faith”) are thrown into one pot. But they also might turn into a performative self-contradiction when they themselves are used to reject and accept, and the eyes are all-too-quickly closed before the “highly destructive potential” of religious convictions (or rather: when this potential is easily moved to the others. The “terrorists” are “outside” and never within. This exterritorialization of evil follows the well-known pattern: The evil-doers are the others, the strangers, the evil, the diseased, the perverted etc.). A psychological analysis that takes serious the structurally rooted ambivalence (and polyvance) of religious belief, can be found at Boesch (2005). His view of things allows for a whole range of accentuated distinctions (normative or not) but refuses to give substance to the longing myth or phantasma of a “pure” and wholly “good” religion and religiosity. We conclude as follows: Autobiographical narratives elucidate values and convictions (of the narrated and narrating self). They explain, although not immediately and not without ambivalence, what the narrator thinks, feels, wishes, desires and strives for, whom or what he feels obligated to. Our interview partners were very clear about one thing: unconditional recognition and tolerance of alien others is not “their thing”. They lived and are still living in contexts that have almost constantly been shaped by experiences of cultural difference. Even today, our interview partners are engaged in an intense struggle with these experiences, and in this they are likely fulfilling many requirements of “interculturally competent” action.26 The normative values associated with this wide spread theoretical concept are at the most partially shared by missionaries. With respect to social norms and values, intercultural competence means or implies, among many other things, perceiving and accepting the alien other, members of other cultures in general, as they are and on their own terms. But this obviously contradicts the believers’ missionary ambitions. Which does not mean that we should at once doubt their 26

For the term “intercultural competence,” cp. Straub, Weidemann & Weidemann, 2007.

362 Jürgen Straub and Maik Arnold “intercultural competence.” Rather, we should ask ourselves whether those of us from the relevant scientific communities are truly prepared today to clearly define what we mean when we talk about “intercultural competence,” and whether we, in light of the infinite features of specialized fields of actions and particular areas of life, will ever be able to come up with a general definition of intercultural competence.27

References Ackermann, A. (2003). Das Eigene und das Fremde: Hybridität, Vielfalt und Kulturtransfers. In F. Jäger & J. Rüsen (Eds.), Handbuch der Kulturwissenschaften. Vol. 3: Themen und Tendenzen (pp. 139–154). Stuttgart: Metzler. Angehrn, E. (1985). Geschichte und Identität. Berlin-New York: de Gruyter. Anscombe, G. E. M. (1957). Intention. Oxford: Blackwell. Appelsmeyer, H., Kochinka, A. & Straub, J. (1997). Qualitative Methoden. In J. Straub, W. Kempf & H. Werbik (Eds.), Psychologie: Eine Einführung. Grundlagen, Methoden, Perspektiven (pp. 709–742). München: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag. Assmann, J. (2006). Monotheismus und die Sprache der Gewalt. Wien: Picus. Bartlett, F. C. (1932). Remembering: A study in experimental and social psychology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Belzen, J. A. (1999). The cultural-psychological approach to religion: Contemporary debates on the object of the discipline. Theory and Psychology, 9, 229–256. Bhabha, H. (1990). Third space. In J. Rutherford (Ed.), Identity, community, culture and difference (pp. 207–221). London: Lawrence and Wishart. Bhabha, H. (1994). The location of culture. London-New York: Routledge. Bhabha, H. (1997). Die Frage der Identität. In E. Bronfen (Ed.), Hybride Kulturen: Beiträge zur anglo-amerikanischen Multikulturalismusdebatte (pp. 97–122). Tübingen: Stauffenberg. Bobbio, N. (1990). L’età dei diritti. Turin: Einaudi. Boesch, E. E. (1991). Symbolic action theory and cultural psychology. Berlin-Heidelberg: Springer. Boesch, E. E. (1998). Sehnsucht: Von der Suche nach Glück und Sinn. Bern: Huber. Boesch, E. E. (2000). Das lauernde Chaos: Mythen und Fiktionen im Alltag. Bern: Huber. Boesch, E. E. (2005). Von Kunst bis Terror: Über den Zwiespalt in der Kultur. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Boesch, E. E. & Straub, J. (2007). Kulturpsychologie: Prinzipien, Orientierungen, Konzeptionen. In G. Trommsdorff & H.-J. Kornadt (Eds.), Kulturvergleichende Psychologie. 27

The intention to develop an “empirically grounded,” differential conceptualization of “intercultural competence” (with respect to various specific domains) is central for the research program and empirical research projects of the interdisciplinary Graduate School on Intercultural Communication/Intercultural Competence, located at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (Essen, Germany) and the the Philosophical Faculty of the Chemnitz University of Technology (Chemnitz, Germany). (The Graduate School is supported by the Hans Böckler Foundation [Düsseldorf]; for further information see: http://www.tu-chemnitz.de/phil/ikk/gk/ [last access: 15.01.2007]).

Acting as missionaries 363 Vol 1: Theorien und Methoden in der kulturvergleichenden und kulturpsychologischen Forschung (Enzyklopädie der Psychologie: Themenbereich C Theorie und Forschung, Serie VII). Göttingen: Hogrefe (in press). Bohnsack, R. (2003)5. Rekonstruktive Sozialforschung: Einführung in Methodologie und Praxis qualitativer Forschung. Opladen: Leske & Budrich. Brandtstädter, J. (2001). Entwicklung – Intention – Handeln. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer. Brandtstädter, J. & Greve, W. (2007). Entwicklung und Handeln: Aktive Selbstentwicklung und Entwicklung des Handelns. In W. Schneider & F. Wilkening (Eds.), Theorien der Entwickungspsychologie. Enzyklopädie der Psychologie. Vol. C/V/1. Göttingen: Hogreve. Brockmeier, J. (2000). Autobiographical time. Narrative Inquiry, 10, 51–73. Brockmeier, J. (2003). Die Zeit meines Lebens. Journal für Psychologie, 11, 4–32. Brockmeier, J. & Carbaugh, D. (Eds.) (2001). Narrative and identity: Studies in autobiography, self and culture. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Bruner, J. S. (1987). Life as narrative. Social Research, 54, 11–32. Bruner, J. S. (1990). Acts of meaning. Cambridge, MA-London: Harvard University Press. Burke, P. (2000). Kultureller Austausch. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp. Bürkle, H. (1994). Art. Mission. VII. Systematisch-theologisch. In G. Krause & G. Müller (Eds.), Theologische Realenzyklopädie. Vol. 23 (pp. 59–68). Berlin-New York: de Gruyter. Danto, A. C. (1965). Analytical philosophy of history. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (dt. Analytische Philosophie der Geschichte. Frankfurt a.M: Suhrkamp, 1980). Deppermann, A. & Lucius-Hoene, G. (20042). Rekonstruktion narrativer Identität: Ein Arbeitsbuch zur Analyse narrativer Interviews. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. Echterhoff, G. & Straub, J. (2003). Narrative Psychologie: Facetten eines Forschungsprogramms (Teil 1) [Narrative psychology: Review of a research program (Pt. 1)]. Handlung Kultur Interpretation, Zeitschrift für Sozial- und Kulturwissenschaften, 12, 317–342. Echterhoff, G. & Straub, J. (2004). Narrative Psychologie: Facetten eines Forschungsprogramms (Teil 2). Handlung Kultur Interpretation, Zeitschrift für Sozial- und Kulturwissenschaften, 13 (1), 151–186. Echterhoff, G. & Straub, J. (Eds.) (2007). Narrative Psychologie. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Freud, S. (1927/2001). The future of an illusion : civilisation and its discounters and other works. (The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud. Vol 21). London: Vintage. Gensichen, H.-W. (1986)3. Art. Mission. III. C. Geschichte. In: K. Galling (Hg.). Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Handwörterbuch für Theologie und Religionswissenschaft. Vol. 4 (pp. 984–988). Tübingen: Mohr. Glasenapp, H. v. (1997). Die fünf Weltreligionen. München: Wilhelm Heyne. Glaser, B. G. (1978). Theoretical sensitivity: Advances in the methodology of grounded theory. Mill Valley: The Sociology Press. Glaser, B. G. & Strauss, A. L. (1967). The discovery of grounded theory: Strategies for qualitative research. Chicago: Aldine.

364 Jürgen Straub and Maik Arnold Habermas, J. (1992). Individuation through socialization: On George Herbert Mead’s Theory of Subjectivity. In J. Habermas (Ed.), Postmetaphysical thinking: Philosophical essays (pp. 149–204). Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Hacking, I. (1995). Rewriting the soul: Multiple personality and the sciences of memory. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Halbwachs, M. (1925/1985). Das soziale Gedächtnis und seine Bedingungen. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp. Heyden, U. v.d. (2000). Mission und Gewalt: Der Umgang christlicher Missionen mit Gewalt und die Ausbreitung des Christentums in Afrika und Asien in der Zeit von 1792 bis 1918/19. Stuttgart: Steiner. Hoffmann-Riem, C. (1980). Die Sozialforschung einer interpretativen Soziologie. Der Datengewinn. Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, 32, 339–372. Hühn, H. (2004). Wiedergutmachung. In J. Ritter, K. Gründer & G. Gabriel (Eds.), Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie. Vol. 12 (pp. 734–738). Darmstadt: wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. Inglehart, R. (1977). The silent revolution: Changing values and political styles among western. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Iser, W. (1990)3. Der Akt des Lesens: Theorie ästhetischer Wirkung. München: Fink. Joas, H. (Ed.) (2003). Was sind religiöse Überzeugungen? Göttingen: Wallstein-Verlag. Joest, W. (1995)4. Dogmatik. Bd. 1: Die Wirklichkeit Gottes. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. John Paul II (1991). Redemptoris missio. Enzyklika über die fortdauernde Gültigkeit des missionarischen Auftrages. 07.12.1990. AAS, 83, 249–340. Kelle, U. (1994). Empirisch begründete Theoriebildung: Zur Logik und Methodologie interpretativer Sozialforschung. Weinheim: Deutscher Studien Verlag. Knoblauch, H., Krech, V. & Wohlrab-Sahr, M. (Eds.) (1998): Religiöse Konversion. Konstanz: Universitätsverlag. Kölbl, C. (2004). Geschichtsbewußtsein im Jugendalter. Grundzüge einer Entwicklungspsychologie historischer Sinnbildung. Bielefeld: Transcript. Kölbl, C. & Straub, J. (2003). Geschichtsbewußtsein als psychologischer Begriff. Journal für Psychologie, 11 (1), 75–102. Koselleck, R. (2004). Chance as motivational trace in historical writing. In R. Koselleck (Ed.), Futures past: On the semantics of historical time (pp. 115–127). New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2004. Lamnek, S. (1996). Qualitative Sozialforschung. Bd. 1: Methodologie. München: Psychologie-Verl.-Union. Lonner, W. J. & Hayes, S. A. (Eds.) (2007). Discovering cultural psychology: A profile and selected readings of Ernest E. Boesch. North Carolina: Information Age Publishing (in press). Mahn-Lot, M. (1982). Bartolomé de Las Casas et la Droit des Indiens. Paris: Payot. Margull, J. (1986)3. Art. Mission. III. Christliche Mission. B. Missionarische Verkündigung (Methode). In K. Galling (Ed.), Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart: Handwörterbuch für Theologie und Religionswissenschaft. Vol. 4 (pp. 980–984). Tübingen: Mohr.

Acting as missionaries 365 Markowitsch, H. J. & Welzer, H. (2005). Das autobiographische Gedächtnis. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta. Matthes, J. (1992). Auf der Suche nach dem “Religiösen”. Sociologia Internationalis, 2, 129–142. Matthes, J. (1993). Was ist anders an anderen Religionen? Anmerkungen zur zentristischen Organisation des religionssoziologischen Denkens. In J. Bergmann, A. Hahn & T. Luckmann (Eds.), Religion und Kultur. [Special Issue]. Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, 33, 16–30. McAdams, D. P. (Ed.) (1988). Psychobiography and life narratives. Durham: Duke University Press. McAdams, D. P. (1993). The stories we live by: Personal myths and the making of the self. New York: Morrow. Müller, K. & Sundermeier, T. (1987): Lexikon missionarischer Grundbegriffe. Berlin: Reimer. Nelson, K. (1989). Narratives from the crib. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Nelson, K. (1993). The psychological and social origins of autobiographical memory. Psychological Science, 4, 7–14. Nelson, K. (1996). Language in cognitive development: The emergence of the mediated mind. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Nelson, K. & Fivush, R. (2001). Socialization of memory. In E. Tulving & F. I. M. Craik (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of memory (pp. 283–295). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nelson, K. & Fivush, R. (2004). The emergence of autobiographical memory: A social cultural developmental theory. Psychological Review, 111, 486–511. Nietzsche, F. (1982): Aus dem Nachlass der Achtziger Jahre. Werke in 3 Bänden. Bd. 3 (Hrsg. von Karl Schlechta). Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. Nohl, A.-M. (2007): Komparative Analyse. In J. Straub, A. Weidemann & D. Weidemann (Eds.), Handbuch interkulturelle Kommunikation und Kompetenz. Stuttgart: Metzler (in preparation). Popp-Baier, U. (1998). Das Heilige im Profanen: Religiöse Orientierungen im Alltag. Eine qualitative Studie zu religiösen Orientierungen von Frauen aus der charismatischevangelikalen Bewegung. Amsterdam-Atlanta, GA: Rodopi. Ricken, N. (2002). Identitätsspiele und die Intransparenz der Macht: Anmerkungen zur Struktur menschlicher Selbstverhältnisse. In J. Straub & J. Renn (Eds.), Transitorische Identität: Der Prozeßcharakter des modernen Selbst (pp. 318–359). Frankfurt-New York: Campus. Ricæur, P. (1994). Oneself as another. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Rosa, H. (1998): Identität und kulturelle Praxis. Politische Philosophie nach Charles Taylor. Frankfurt a. M.-New York: Campus. Rosenkranz, G. (1986)3. Art. Mission. I. Religionsgeschichtlich. In K. Galling (Ed.), Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart: Handwörterbuch für Theologie und Religionswissenschaft. Vol. 4 (pp. 969–971). Tübingen: Mohr. Schärtl, T. (2003). Was sind religiöse Überzeugungen? In H. Joas (Ed.), Was sind religiöse Überzeugungen? (pp. 18–53). Göttingen: Wallstein. Schurz, G. (1988). Erklären und Verstehen in der Wissenschaft. München: Oldenburg.

366 Jürgen Straub and Maik Arnold Schütze, F. (1987). Das narrative Interview in Interaktionsfeldstudien: Erzähltheoretische Grundlagen. Teil I: Merkmale von Alltagserzählungen und was wir mit ihrer Hilfe erkennen können. Hagen: Studienbrief der FernUniversität Hagen. Sedmak, C. (2003). Systematisch irreführende Äpfel. In H. Joas (Ed.), Was sind religiöse Überzeugungen? (pp. 54–102). Göttingen: Wallstein. Stosch, K. v. (2003). Was sind religiöse Überzeugungen? In: H. Joas (Ed.), Was sind religiöse Überzeugungen? (pp. 103–146). Göttingen: Wallstein. Straub, J. (1989). Historisch-psychologische Biographieforschung: Theoretische, methodologische und methodische Argumentationen in systematischer Absicht. Heidelberg: Asanger. Straub, J. (1991). Identitätstheorie im Übergang? Über Identitätsforschung, den Begriff der Identität und die zunehmende Beachtung des Nicht-Identischen in subjektheoretischen Diskursen. Sozialwissenschaftliche Literatur Rundschau, 14 (23), 49–71. Straub, J. (1993). Zeit, Erzählung, Interpretation: Zur Konstruktion und Analyse von Erzähltexten in der narrativen Biographieforschung. In H. Röckelein (Ed.), Möglichkeiten und Grenzen der psychohistorischen Biographieforschung (pp. 143–183). Tübingen: Edition Discord. Straub, J. (1996): Zur narrativen Konstruktion der Vergangenheit: Erzähltheoretische Überlegungen und eine exemplarische Analyse eines Gruppengesprächs über die ”NS-Zeit”. BIOS. Zeitschrift für Biographieforschung und Oral History, 9 (1), 30–58. Straub, J. (1998a): Handlungsbegriff und Handlungserklärung: Typologische Unterscheidungen unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des narrativen Modells. In J. Straub & H. Werbik (Eds.), Handlungstheorie: Begriff und Erklärung des Handelns im interdisziplinären Diskurs (pp. 261–283). Frankfurt a.M.: Campus. Straub, J. (Ed.) (1998b). Erzählung, Identität und historisches Bewußtsein: Die psychologische Konstruktion von Zeit und Geschichte. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp. Straub, J. (1999a). Handlung, Interpretation, Kritik: Grundzüge einer textwissenschaftlichen Handlungs- und Kulturpsychologie. Berlin-New York: de Gruyter. Straub, J. (1999b). Verstehen, Kritik, Anerkennung: Das Eigene und das Fremde in den interpretativen Wissenschaften. Göttingen: Wallstein. Straub, J. (2001): Psychologie und Kultur, Psychologie als Kulturwissenschaft. In H. Appelsmeyer & E. Billmann-Mahecha (Eds.), Kulturwissenschaft: Felder einer prozessorientierten wissenschaftlichen Praxis (pp. 125–167). Weilerswist: Velbrück. Straub, J. (2002). Personal and collective identity: A conceptual analysis. In: H. Friese (Ed.), Identities: Time, difference, and boundaries (pp. 56–76). New York: Berghahn. Straub, J. (2003). Psychologie und die Kulturen in einer globalisierten Welt. In A. Thomas (Ed.), Kulturvergleichende Psychologie (pp. 543–566). Göttingen et al.: Hogrefe. Straub, J. (2004a). Kulturwissenschaftliche Psychologie. In F. Jäger & J. Straub (Eds.), Handbuch der Kulturwissenschaften. Vol 2: Paradigmen und Disziplinen (pp. 568–591). Stuttgart: Metzler. Straub, J. (2004b). Identität. In F. Jäger & B. Liebsch (Eds.), Handbuch der Kulturwissenschaften. Vol 1: Grundlagen und Schlüsselbegriffe (pp. 277–303). Stuttgart: Metzler. Straub, J. (Ed.) (2005a). Narration, Identity and Historical Consciousness. The psychological construction of time and history. New York, Oxford: Berghan Books.

Acting as missionaries 367 Straub, J. (2005b). Labile Gleichgewichte zwischen Mensch und Kultur: Eine Einführung. In E. E. Boesch, Von Kunst zu Terror: Über den Zwiespalt der Kultur (pp. 7–16). Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Straub, J. (2006). Understanding cultural differences: Relational hermeneutics and comparative analysis in cultural psychology. In J. Straub , D. Weidemann, C. Kölbl & B. Zielke (Eds.), Pursuit of meaning: Theoretical and methodological advances in cultural and cross-cultural psychology (pp. 163–213). Bielefeld: Transcript. Straub, J. & Renn, J. (Eds.) (2002). Transistorische Identität: Der Prozesscharakter des modernen Selbst. Frankfurt a.M.-New York: Campus. Straub, J. & Weidemann, A. (2007). Foreword. Experience, method, and dynamic self: Prefatory comments on Ernest E. Boesch’s Contributions to Cultural Psychology. In W. J. Lonner & S. A. Hayes (Eds.), Discovering cultural psychology: A profile and selected readings of Ernest E. Boesch. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing Co. (in press). Straub, J., Weidemann, D. & Weidemann, A. (Eds.) (2007). Handbuch interkul-turelle Kommunikation und interkulturelle Kompetenz. Stuttgart: Metzler (in preparation). Straub, J., Zielke, B. & Werbik, H. (2005). Autonomy, narrative identity and their critics: A reply to some provocations of postmodern accounts in psychology. In W. Greve, K. Rothermund & D. Wentura (Eds.), The adaptive self (pp. 323–350). Göttingen et al.: Hogrefe. Strauss, A. L. (1991). Grundlagen qualitativer Sozialforschung: Datenanalyse und Theoriebildung in der empirischen soziologischen Forschung. München: Fink (Original: Basics of Qualitative Research. Grounded Theory Procedures and Techniques. Newbury Park, Calif: Sage Publications, 1987). Ström, A. V. (1994). Art. Mission. I. Religionsgeschichte. In: G. Krause & G. Müller (Eds.), Theologische Realenzyklopädie. Vol. 23 (pp. 18–20). Berlin-New York: de Gruyter. Sundermeier, T. (1996). Den Fremden verstehen: Eine praktische Hermeneutik. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Sundermeier, T. (2003). Religion und Fremde. In A. Wierlacher & A. Bogner (Eds.), Interkulturelle Germanistik (pp. 547–552). Stuttgart, Weimar: Metzler. Tajfel, H. (1978). Differentiation between social groups: Studies in the social psychology of intergroup relations. London-New York: Academic Press. Tajfel, H. (1981). Human groups and social categories: Studies in social psychology. Cambridge-New York: Cambridge University Press. Taylor, C. (1976). Responsibility for self. In A. O. Rorty (Ed.), The identities of persons (pp. 281–299). Berkeley: University of California Press. Taylor, C. (1977/1985). What is human agency? In Idem, Philosophical Papers. Vol. 1: Human Agency and Language (pp. 15–44). Cambridge: University Press. Taylor, C. (1981). Understanding and the explanation in the Geisteswissenschaften. In S. H. Holtzmann & C. Leich (Eds.), Wittgenstein: To follow a rule (pp. 191–210). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Thomä, D. (1998). Erzähle Dich selbst: Lebensgeschichte als philosophisches Problem. München: Beck. Todorov, T. (1989). The conquest of America: The question of the other. New York: Harper & Row.

368 Jürgen Straub and Maik Arnold Vaticanian Council II (1966). Ad gentes. Dekret über die Missionstätigkeit der Kirche. 07.12.1965. AAS, 58, 948–989. Wagner, W. (Ed.) (1994): Kolonien und Missionen. 3. Internationales Kolonialgeschichtliches Symposium 1993 in Bremen. Münster-Hamburg: Lit. Walzer, M. (1997). On toleration. New Haven: Yale University Press. Weidemann, D. (2005): Interkulturelles Lernen: Erfahrungen mit dem chinesischen “Gesicht”. Deutsche in Taiwan. Bielefeld: Transcript. Weidemann, D. (2007): Interkulturelles Lernen. In J. Straub, D. Weidemann, A. Weidemann (Eds.), Handbuch Interkulturelle Kommunikation und Kompetenz. Stuttgart: Metzler (in preparation). Welzer, H. (2001) (Ed.). Das soziale Gedächtnis: Geschichte, Erinnerung, Tradierung. Hamburg: Hamburger Edition. White, H. V. (1987). The content of the form: Narrative Discourse and historical representation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Wohlrab-Sahr, M. (1999). Konversion zum Islam in Deutschland und den USA. Frankfurt a.M.-New York. Campus. Wrogemann, H. (2006). Missionarischer Islam und gesellschaftlicher Dialog: Eine Studie zur Begründung und Praxis des Aufrufs zum Islam. Frankfurt a.M.: Otto Lembeck. Zitterbarth, W. (1987). Postmaterialismus und Lebensorientierung: Systematische Argumentation und exemplarische Erfahrungsbildung für eine Psychologie in kulturwissenschaftlicher Absicht. Frankfurt a.M.: Lang.

AFTERWORD: REFLECTIONS OF A NARRATIVE RESEARCHER Ruthellen Josselson

The “narrative turn” has marked all of the social sciences. Over the last twentyfive years, narrative research and the concepts of narrative and life-story have become increasingly prominent in a wide area of human or social sciences – psychology, education, sociology, history, culture studies, law and medicine to name just a few. (Many of these disciplines are represented in this volume, but most of the authors are from the field of psychology.) Narrative studies are flourishing as a means of understanding personal identity, life course development, culture and the historical world of the narrator. In this volume, this mode of inquiry is utilized to reflect on the meanings of religion in personal autobiographical accounts. All of the authors of this volume situate themselves within a narrative tradition and have offered an exposition of their understanding of the role and meaning of narrative analysis within the social sciences. I shall not repeat here these excellent synopses. In short, narrative inquiry is an effort to approach the understanding of lives in context rather than through a prefigured, narrowing lens. The crucial point is that meaning is not inherent in an act or experience, but is constructed through social discourse. Meaning is generated by the linkages the participant makes between aspects of the life he or she is living and by the explicit linkages the researcher makes between this understanding and interpretation, which is meaning constructed at another level of analysis. While the person storying his or her life is interpreting experience in constructing the account, the researchers’ task is hermeneutic and reconstructive (Chase, 1996; Fischer-Rosenthal, 2000) in offering a telling at some different level of discourse. All human social interaction is mediated through language. As Gadamer put it, “Being that can be understood is language” (Gardiner, 1992, p. 113). Hence all knowledge is ultimately rooted in the apperception and translation of texts which are formed by and constitutive of the world that they seek to portray. In Bakhtin’s view, all forms of human interaction are mediated by our dialogic relation to others. Consciousness itself presumes an “otherness” and an “answerability.” The self, too, is a dialogic relation. The dialogic implies a necessary multiplicity in human awareness, all constructed as a polyphonic text (Bakhtin, 1981). Understanding of people, like understanding of literature, then becomes a process of textual analysis. “Is it possible to find any other approach to [man] and his life

370 Ruthellen Josselson than through the signifying text that he has created or is creating? (. . .) Everywhere the actual or possible text and its understanding. Research becomes inquiry and conversation, that is, dialogue” (Bakhtin, 1986, p. 113). Meanings, of course, cannot be grasped directly and all meanings are essentially indeterminate in any unshakeable way. Therefore, interpretation becomes necessary, and this is the work of the hermeneutic enterprise. Although a term that originally referred to biblical exegesis, hermeneutics has evolved into a science of meanings inherent in texts, broadly construed. Hermeneutics represents a current in philosophy that may be traced through Kant, Hegel, Schleiermacher, Dilthey and Gadamer (Mace, 1999). But, following Ricoeur, a hermeneutic analysis can aim either to restore or re-present the meanings that seem to be intended by the narrator or may be approached as the demystification of meaning presented to the interpreter in the form of a disguise (Josselson, 2004). The contrast between the hermeneutics of restoration and the hermeneutics of demystification, however, refers not to a property of texts but of the stance of the interpreter: whether he or she conceives of the interpretative process as being one of distilling, elucidating, and illuminating the intended meanings of the informant or of discovering meanings that lie hidden within a false consciousness. Both of these forms of interpretation are to be found in this volume and reflect the kinds of questions the researcher brings to the material.

The role of religion in a life Imagine 8 people sitting in a row of a jumbo jet that begins to lurch in what seems to be an out of control way. All begin to pray. But to whom and how they pray and what prayer has meant in their lives are all very different. Religion, prayer, spirituality are words that signify a range of experience and hold vastly differing meanings in people’s lives. People come to relationship with what they conceive as the divine through different routes, both intrapsychically and socioculturally. Only through narrative autobiographical accounts can we understand how people use the transcendent to make meaning in their lives. Religion involves a set of culturally embedded stories that can be employed psychologically for a variety of purposes in constructing meaning in a person’s life history. Too often, psychologists have simply reduced religious experience to something else – defense mechanisms, infantile projections or some other set of concepts that makes religion consistent with a psychological worldview. The papers in this volume largely avoid this reductionism by considering the personal meanings that people offer in their autobiographical statements as organizing aspects of their life structures. Whatever else religion may serve, it is represented internally as some form of story that encompasses a belief system that guides some form of action in a

Afterword: Reflections of a narrative researcher 371 life. These stories can only be accessed through narrative accounts. The authors are in agreement that one must consider multilayered meanings when dealing with the role of religion in a life phenomena. Narrative accounts are not completely self-authored as they exist within a cultural stock of stories. Individual autobiography is situated within a set of stories a culture makes available. Belzen, for example, offers an analysis of conversion stories as a particular narrative genre with its own history and tradition. The authors agree that there are alignments between personal psychological (internal) experience and the use of available cultural scripts. Yet complex cultures make available a wide range of stories, so, the psychologist asks, what leads a person to choose a particular story genre around which to organize an identity and an autobiography. What internal psychological functions does the story serve? This, of course, can be asked of any autobiographical story, but religious ones raise particular epistemological questions. For one thing, a relationship with God is exquisitely private – no one else can be privy to the interactions. They cannot be externally verified in the way that occupational roles or relational experience with people can be observed or validated. One question psychologists have asked is how religious experiences and commitments function within an autobiography. How do they serve a person? Perhaps they can be understood as solutions to intrapsychic conflict or as reflective of internal psychological challenges, as Belzen, Geels, Lieblich, McAdams, Haartmann and Miller demonstrate. Perhaps faith can be conceived as itself a form of psychological development, as Keller details. But neither religion nor autobiography “exist” except as they are constructed through language under particular circumstances. Belzen pays particular attention to why his protagonist wrote what she did and Haartman considers how the Methodist autobiographies he analyzed were intended to function. Similarly, we might wonder about the circumstances of the interviews that are analyzed. Why are people constructing this particular account of their religious experience under the particular circumstances and under the influence of the particular relationship (including an imagined audience) in which the story is created? These are considerations which bedevil narrative research that would aim to present itself as a picture of some pre-existing “reality.” Something as affect-laden as religious belief is bound to result in “messy” narratives as participants struggle to put in language what is beyond language. One challenge to narrative research present in the endeavor to investigate religion is to avoid the temptation to represent only that which mirrors our own notions of rationality (and to pathologize what does not). Internal experience, the closer it is to the core of self, is inherently chaotic and one would therefore expect narratives of contradiction and allusions to the “unsayable” (Rogers, 2007). These articles represent works of courage in trying to respectfully take up that which is often beyond language and concept and attempt to find a framework in

372 Ruthellen Josselson which these phenomena can be theorized. Issues of emergent phenomena – where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts – have always represented a challenge to psychology which tends to break things down into their components. Enlightenment eludes language and diffraction precisely because it involves a felt sense of greater integration and insight. If it is at all possible to theorize the leap of faith, it must come from narrative modes of inquiry.

The horizons of understanding Narrative researchers recognize that they operate within a horizon of understanding (Heidegger, 1927/1962) related to their own situation within history and society and do not try to experience or present themselves as free of “bias.” Kripal eloquently states at the beginning of his paper that the understanding of historical figures inevitably involves applying to them concepts that would have been unintelligible in their own times and cultures. The paradigms of contemporary scholarship are socially constructed, and a narrative analysis requires a reflexive consideration of what the interpreter brings to the understanding. As Brockmeier reminds us, even the notion of time, without which the idea of a biography (a life through time) would be impossible, is a cultural artifact. Time in a religious and a secular worldview may be very different things. Further, Popp-Baier points out, even the notion of “religion” is an invention of scholars of religion, a seemingly unifying concept that may distort the experience of those who are chosen for study. The “soul” has never been (with the exception of James, perhaps) a psychological concept and psychologists, since Freud, have tended to regard religious belief as an epiphenomenon indicative of something else. Eschewing notions of “scientific neutrality,” narrative researchers selfconsciously reflect on what they are doing as they construct and present Otherness in their work (Fine, 1994). As Geels points out, even a “factual” reconstruction of a life is an interpretation, and narrative researchers recognize that it is therefore important to state the standpoint of the one who is doing the interpreting. Further, researchers may be limited in what they can understand about another’s life, both on account of their own personal autobiographies and their theoretical frameworks. Our positioning may allow access to certain aspects of experience and preclude awareness of others. This, as Freeman so eloquently details, may lead to “violence” in the presentation of a religious autobiography. The worldview of the psychologist thus becomes crucial to an understanding of the analysis that is presented. Freeman, we may imagine, although he does not say so explicitly, has a personal appreciation for the im-personal, the transcendent that is beyond language and is thus particularly sensitive to ineffable experiences in the lives of others as well as wary of their reduction in mundane language. In his presentation of

Afterword: Reflections of a narrative researcher 373 Weil, he tries to hold on to the poetry that may be beyond our conception, thus taking a position of humility in regard to his subject. In dealing with interviews, another level of complexity enters the interpretive equation and reflexivity takes on yet another level of meaning. Here it becomes important to know who is inviting the autobiographical reports, how they may be constructed by the interviewee and how the relational interaction may shape the story that is told. It makes a difference in our understanding to know that Jeffrey Kripal had been to Esalen (presumably without traumatic injury) and is therefore positioned to understand something about John Heider and his world in a way that those of us who have not been there cannot. Amia Lieblich tells us that she had such a high rate of participation because of very particular motivations of her participants to preserve the memories of their dead parents as well as resulting from her own reputation as a non-fiction author in Israeli society. Mel Miller tells us that he is a clinical psychologist who nevertheless uses the word “soul” and is drawn to transformative experiences. We learn that his work has led to his own transformation in terms of understanding the power of spiritual strivings in a life. In her analysis of the history of science, Evelyn Fox Keller (1985) distinguishes between the traditions based in a Baconian model of knowing that is oriented toward prediction and control and Platonic knowing, a knowing that is metaphorically based in eros, union, transcendence and love. Narrative research is rooted in the Platonic approach which regards knowledge as a form of transcendence, the overcoming of distance between the knower and the known. Ideally, a narrative research interview is an ‘encounter’, in which the listener accepts the story with complete respect, and refrains from judging or evaluating it. What makes this possible is the empathic stance, in which aspects of what is to be known are invited to permeate the knower, who attempts to “imagine the real” by making the Other present (Buber, 1965). Research then becomes a process of overcoming distance rather than creating it, moving what was Other, through our understanding of their independent selfhood and experience, into relation with us. The very indeterminacy between subject and object thus becomes a resource rather than a threat. Empathy is recruited into understanding precisely because its continuity and receptivity allows for a clearer perception of others. We aim to reach the internal array of an Other’s experience, bounded always by our shared participation in a matrix of signification (Josselson, 1995). The understanding of religious lives is particularly opaque to those with a secular worldview (and vice versa) because there are fundamental assumptions that are not shared. In a psychology of adolescence class I taught for a number of years at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, this became particularly apparent to me. Israeli society, in which I live part of each year, is divided, among its many other divisions, into fairly clearly demarcated (and visible though modes of dress)

374 Ruthellen Josselson “religious” and “secular” groups. What it took me a while, as an outsider to this society, to appreciate, was that there was little conversation across this divide. Therefore, I included in my course a segment on religious adolescents and invited discussion among the students of their experiences. I was astonished at the degree of ignorance that the religious and secular students had about one another – they had never talked across this boundary. And I learned a great deal from the questions that they, in the secure environment that had built in the class group, asked of one another. “How do you live without God?” the religious asked of the secular. “How do you live with so many restrictions on your life?” the secular asked of the religious. Their projections about the lives of those on the other side were easily accessed and brought to light. The dialogue that emerged from these discussion was quite moving as these twenty something year old people confronted the profundity of otherness. Studies such as the ones in this volume bring unheard voices into the corpus of what psychology can take up as meaningful in human lives, provoking perhaps a similar expansion of our psychological worldview.

The nature of narrative texts The authors in this volume are working with an array of narrative texts – some written for other purposes, some created as oral life histories and some responses to structured interview questions. And many have reflected on how the circumstances of the creation of the text are themselves demanding of consideration, for the autobiographical project is always contingent. Life history as text is always under construction, always modifiable and modified, and the authors, in their interpretations, attempt to avoid reifying their subjects. Instead, they try to capture the fluctuating impact that an evolving religious sensibility has on a life. The papers in this volume advance the narrative research project by situating the individuals under consideration, through presentation and analysis of aspects of their autobiographies, in such a way that empathic knowledge becomes possible. We learn about the array of what religion can mean in a life, how the divine is understood and privileged and how it may form the core of meaningfulness. There are, however, pervasive ethical issues throughout these projects as authors struggle for a place to stand to observe these phenomena. What interests are served by the questions raised? Who defines the terms of analysis? Always there appear to be subtexts of advocacy and it seems to me to be unavoidable to write about something as inflammatory as religion without there being a howeversubtle stance of judgment. How, for example, can narrative psychologists adequately represent the potential violence of the true believer – or the missionary (see Straub and Arnold)? The purpose of narrative inquiry, perhaps all inquiry, is to generate new relations among phenomena that serve further understanding. From that point of view, the various studies in this volume offer a wealth of possibility for thinking

Afterword: Reflections of a narrative researcher 375 new thoughts about how religion intersects autobiography. For myself, the chapter by Jeffrey Kripal raised interesting questions in my (non-believer’s) mind about what may lie beyond our traditional understandings. In focusing on the autobiography of John Heider, a man who himself uses a psychological/psychoanalytic worldview to interpret his own experience, Kripal confronts Heider’s own sense of the limits of this interpretive framework. Kripal then reaches for Eastern philosophical concepts that might transform our Western paradigms in their promise to account for aspects of experience that lie beyond the Western gaze. Thus, a non-psychologist, interpreting the life history of a psychologist, brings us psychologists (or at least this one) to a threshold of new ways to think about and frame insights about autobiography and religion and the still-unrealized potentials in this focus. Perhaps, to paraphrase Shakespeare, there are some things that are not dreamt of in our psychology. This is an example of the extraordinary heuristic value of narrative modes of inquiry.

References Bakhtin, M. (1981). The dialogic imagination (ed. M. Holquist, trans. C. Emerson & M. Holquist). Austin: University of Texas Press. Bakhtin, M. M. (1986). Speech genres and other late essays. Austin: University of Texas Press. Buber, M. (1965). The knowledge of man. New York: HarperCollins. Chase, S. (1996). Personal vulnerability and interpretive authority in narrative research. In R. Josselson (Ed.), Ethics and process in The Narrative Study of Lives (pp. 22–44). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Fine, M. (1994) Working the hyphens: Reinventing self and other in qualitative research. In N. Denzin & Y. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (pp. 70–82). Thousand Oaks, Ca.: Sage Publications. Fischer-Rosenthal, W. (2000). Address lost: How to fix lives. Biographical structuring in the European modern age. In R. Breckner, D. Kalekin-Fishman & I. Miethe, (Eds.), Biographies and the division of Europe (pp. 55–75). Opladen: Lieske-Budrich. Gardiner, M. (1992). The dialogics of critique. London: Routledge. Heidegger, M. (1927/1962). Being and time (trans. J. MacQuarrie & E. Robinson). New York: Harper & Row. Josselson, R. (1995). “Imagining the Real”: Empathy, narrative and the dialogic self. In R. Josselson & A. Lieblich (Eds.), Interpreting experience: The narrative study of lives, Vol. 3 (pp. 27–44).Thousand Oaks, Ca.: Sage Publications. Josselson, R. (2004). The hermeneutics of faith and the hermeneutics of suspicion. Narrative Inquiry, 14 (1), 1–29. Mace, C. (1999). Introduction: Philosophy and psychotherapy. In C. Mace (Ed.), Heart and soul: The therapeutic face of philosophy (pp. 1–11). London: Routledge. Rogers, A. (2007). The unsayable, Lacanian psychoanalysis and the art of narrative interviewing. In J. Clandinin (Ed.), Handbook of narrative inquiry (pp. 99–119). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Notes on contributors Maik Arnold is a researcher and lecturer at the Institute of Media Communication and Intercultural Communication, Chemnitz University of Technology, Germany. His research interests include missionary action and identity in intercultural contexts, intercultural communication and competence in the field of missionaries, and theory, methodology, and methods of qualitative evaluation. Michelle Albaugh is a graduate student in Human Development and Social Policy at Northwestern University. Her research interests are in leadership, religious faith, and social policy. Jacob A. Belzen graduated with doctoral degrees in social sciences, history, philosophy, and religious studies. He is a full professor of psychology of religion at the University of Amsterdam (the Netherlands). Having served in several national and international organizations in the disciplines of history and of psychology of religion, he has published extensively in these fields. Some recent volumes he has edited in English: Aspects in Contexts: Studies in the History of Psychology of Religion (2000), Psychohistory in Psychology of Religion: Interdisciplinary Studies (2001) and (together with Antoon Geels) Mysticism: A Variety of Psychological Approaches (2003). In 2001 he was elected a Fellow by the American Psychological Association, in 2002 he received the William James Award of APA’s Division 36 ( psychology of religion). Jens Brockmeier is a Senior Scientist at the Free University of Berlin and a Visiting Professor in the Psychology Department of the University of Manitoba at Winnipeg and at the School of Social Science, Media and Cultural Studies of the University of East London. He received his degrees in Psychology, Philosophy, and Linguistics/Literary Theory from the Free University of Berlin. He has published in the fields of psychology, linguistics, philosophy, and culture, most recently the volumes The Literate Mind: Literacy and the Relation between Language and Culture (1998, in German); Greenspeak: A Study of Environmental Discourse (with Rom Harré and Peter Mühlhäusler, 1999); Narrative and Identity: Studies in Autobiography, Self and Culture (ed. with Donal Carbaugh, 2001); and Literacy, Narrative and Culture (ed. with Min Wang and David R. Olson, 2002).

378 Mark Freeman is Professor of Psychology at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. He is the author of Rewriting the Self: History, Memory, Narrative (Routledge, 1993), Finding the Muse: A Sociopsychological Inquiry into the Conditions of Artistic Creativity (Cambridge, 1993), and numerous articles on memory, the self, autobiographical narrative, and the psychology of art and religion. He is currently at work on a book entitled Hindsight: The Promise and Peril of Narrative and has recently sought to complement his longstanding interest in the self with an in-depth exploration of the category, and place, of the Other in psychological life. Antoon Geels was trained in history of religions, and specialized in psychology of religion, in which subject he now is a chair professor at the University of Lund, Sweden. He is also an honorary professor in the psychology of nonWestern religions at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. His primary area of research is the comparative psychological study of mystical experience and mystical techniques. He is the author of about a dozen books, including Subud and the Javanese Mystical Tradition (1997), Förvandlande ögonblick. Religiösa visioner i dagens Sverige (Transforming Moments. Religious Visions in Contemporary Sweden, 2001) and recently the comparative study Berusad av Gud (Drunk on God, 2002) and Att betrakta tillvarons Grund (Contemplating the Ground of Existence, 2002). Together with Jacob Belzen he published Mysticism. A Variety of Psychological Perspectives (2003). Keith Haartman is a Ph.D. graduate of the Centre for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto. He is also a practicing psychoanalyst. In addition to his private practice in Toronto, he teaches part time at the University of Toronto in the Department of Religion and in the Program of Professional Writing and Communications. He is the author of Watching and Praying: Personality Transformation in 18th Century British Methodism (2004). Ruthellen Josselson is a professor of psychology at the Fielding Graduate University and was formerly a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and at Harvard University. Recipient of the Henry A. Murray Award from the American Psychological Association and a Fulbright Fellowship, she is also a practicing psychotherapist. Her most recent book is Playing Pygmalion: How People Create One Another. Her research interests focus on the use of narrative to understand people’s life histories. For many years, she co-edited, with Amia Lieblich and Dan McAdams, the series The Narrative Study of Lives. Psychologist Barbara Keller has been doing research and teaching at several European universities. She has also been involved in a state-funded international research project Varieties of Deconversion – Experiences in the Federal

379 Republic of Germany and the United States of America. She is in psychoanalytic training at the Institut für Psychoanalyse und Psychotherapie im Rheinland e.V., Köln. Jeffrey Kripal is the J. Newton Rayzor Professor and Chair of Religious Studies at Rice University. He is the author of Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion (2007), The Serpent’s Gift: Gnostic Reflections on the Study of Religion (2006), Roads of Excess, Palaces of Wisdom: Eroticism and Reflexivity in the Study of Mysticism (2001), and Kali’s Child: The Mystical and the Erotic in the Life and Teachings of Ramakrishna (1995). His areas of interest include the comparative erotics and ethics of mystical literature, American countercultural translations of Asian religious traditions, and the history of Western esotericism, particularly as this complex has encountered and incorporated Asian practices and ideas within modernity. Amia Lieblich is a professor of psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her studies focus on psychological aspects of the Israeli society, and particularly the influence of long stress on individual lives. She has published widely in Hebrew and English, and has been one of the editors of the Narrative Study of Lives series. Dan P. McAdams is Professor of Psychology and Professor of Human Development and Social Policy at Northwestern University. He is a leading researcher in the area of adult personality development. His most recent book, The Redemptive Self: Stories Americans Live By, won the American Psychological Association’s 2006 William James Award for best generalinterest book in psychology, across all subfields. Melvin E. Miller received the Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh. Since then, in addition to postdoctoral psychotherapy and psychoanalytic studies at the Boston Institute for Psychotherapy and the National Training Program in Contemporary Psychoanalysis, he has twice been a Visiting Scholar at Harvard Divinity School. He is presently Professor of Psychology, Director of Psychological Services, and Director of Doctoral Training at Norwich University. Among his publications are Transcendence and Mature Thought in Adulthood: The Further Reaches of Adult Development (1994), Creativity, Spirituality and Transcendence: Paths to Integrity and Wisdom in the Mature Self (2000, both co-edited with Susanne Cook-Greuter), Spirituality, Ethics, and Relationship: Clinical and Theoretical Explorations (2000, co-edited with Alan N. West) and The Psychology of Mature Spirituality (2000, co-edited with Polly Young-Eisendrath). He has a private practice in psychoanalysis in Montpelier, Vermont.

380 Ulrike Popp-Baier earned her Ph.D. in psychology at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg (in Germany). She is an associate professor of psychology of religion at the University of Amsterdam and currently honorary professor of psychology of religion at Utrecht University (both in The Netherlands). Her research interests include theoretical psychology, psychology of religion and qualitative research in the social sciences, fields to which she regularly contributes with publications. Jürgen Straub is a professor at the Institute of Media Communication and Intercultural Communication, Chemnitz University of Technology, Germany. His fields of research include cultural psychology, violence in modern societies, identity, (personal and collective) memory, historical consciousness, long-term psychosocial and cultural effects of the Shoa, migration research, and theory, methodology, and methods of qualitative social research. Some recent titles: Pursuit of Meaning. Theoretical and Methodological Advances in Cultural and Cross-Cultural Psychology (ed. with Doris Weidemann; Carlos Kölbl and Barbara Zielke, 2006), Narration, Identity and Historical Consciousness. The psychological construction of time and history (ed. 2005), Handbuch der Kulturwissenschaften. Band 2: Paradigmen und Disziplinen (ed. with Friedrich Jäger, 2004 [Handbook of Cultural Studies. Vol. 2: Paradigms and Disciplines]), Transitorische Identität. Der Prozesscharakter des modernen Selbst (ed. with Joachim Renn [Identity as Transition. The Dynamics of Modern Self ]), Handlung, Interpretation, Kritik. Grundzüge einer textwissenschaftlichen Handlungs- und Kulturpsychologie (1999 [Action, Interpretation, Critique. Outline of a hermeneutic action and cultural psychology]).

Index Abbs, Peter 22 Abelove, H. 175 Aberbach, D. 176 Ackermann, A. 347 Ackroyd, P. 110 Adler, Alfred 288 Agger, E.M. 142 Albaugh, Michelle 13, 255 Allport, Gordon 40 Alon, N. 249, 251, 266 Altemeyer, B. 282 Amundsen, Reidar 105 Anderson, Walter Truett 230 Anderson, S.R. 292 Andresen, J. 58 Angehrn, E. 321 Anyidoho, N.A. 258 Anscombe, G.E.M. 323 Appasamy, A.J. 104 Appelsmeyer, H. 331 Appoldt, G. 30, 34 Argyle, M. 53, 54 Aristotle 51, 330 Arnold, Maik 319, 332 Asad, Talal 57, 58, 60 Ashmore, R.D. 40, 42 Assmann, J. 357 Atatürk, Mustafa Kemal 107, 142 Atkinson, R. 44 Atran, S. 49 Auerbach, E. 40 Augustine of Hippo 23, 34, 125, 126, 193 Aurobindo, Sri 214 Baerger, D. 258 Bakhtin, Michail Michajlovi 121, 369, 370 Baltes, P.B. 79, 80, 91

43, 120,

Bamberg, M. 45 Bartlett, Frederic Charles 21, 319 Batson, C.D. 112 Baudelaire, Charles Pierre 200 Bauer, J.J. 258, 265 Beauvoir, Simone de 51 Becker, E. 271 Beebe, B. 81 Bell, C. 58 Bellah, Robert 59 Belzen, Jacob A. 7, 10, 12, 117, 132, 135, 143, 146, 161, 243, 255, 256, 257, 320, 321, 322, 324, 326, 371 Benedict XVI, pope 327, 358 Berger, P.L. 271, 281 Bhabha, H. 347 Bhairavi Brahmani 102 Bion, W.R. 180 Birnbacher, D. 52, 53, 54 Blake, Robert 110 Blake, William 110, 215 Bluck, S. 11, 47, 257 Blumenberg, Hans 24 Bobbio, N. 257 Boesch, Ernst E. 319, 321, 322, 329, 332, 333, 337, 353, 355, 357, 361 Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus 23 Bohnsack, R. 331 Bonhoeffer, D. 90 Borges, Jorge Luis 24 Bowlby, John 164, 176 Bowman, P.J. 240, 265 Bradshaw, Carrie 50 Brandtstäter, J. 42, 334 Brockmeier, Jens 10, 19, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 32, 320, 372 Bromley, D.G. 83 Brown, Norman O. 233, 234

382 Index Browning, D. 263 Bruner, Jerome Seymour 30, 40, 47, 48, 117, 257, 320, 322 Buber, Martin 43, 373 Buddha 197, 214, 255 Bühler, Charlotte 40 Bürkle, H. 328 Burke, P. 329 Bush, George W. 259, 260 Butler, Jeannie 230 Calvin, Jean 124 Campbell, R.J. 291 Capra, Frijof 219 Carbaugh, D. 320 Carter, Seymour 216 Casanova, J. 59 Cermak, L.S. 121 Chase, S. 369 Choudhary, K.P.S. 99, 101 Colby, A. 265 Coles, Robert 191, 192, 198, 199 Confucius 287, 303, 314 Conn, J.W. 289 Cook-Greuter, S. 379 Coppolillo, C.M. 11, 47, 282 Corveleyn, J. 256 Crowley, Aleister 221, 228 Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly 53, 292 Cushman, Ph. 7 Damon, W. 265 Daniélou, A. 99 Danto, A.C. 321 Danziger, Kurt 7 Dargan, J. 203 Davey, Cyril J. 108 Davies, B. 45 Day, R. 258 Defoe, Daniel 161 Delany, P. 124 Delattre, Lois 230 Deppermann, A. 45, 326 De Romilly, J. 23 De St. Aubin, E. 11, 47, 61, 255, 263, 264, 265, 282

DeVos, G. 28 Diamond, A. 265 Dillon, M. 256 Dilthey, Wilhelm 370 Dimond, S.G. 179 Dobson, James 259 Donahue, M.J. 256 Dongfang, S. 32 Dostoevsky, Fedor Michajlovi 200 Dubuisson, D. 57 Du Gay, P. 28 Du Plessix Gray, F. 191, 192, 193, 194, 198 Dweck, C.S. 49 Eakin, P.J. 30 Echterhoff, G. 320 Edison, Thomas 218 Einstein, Albert 218 Eisenhandler, S.A. 287 Ekström, Hjalmar 95, 96, 97, 98, 107, 109, 111 Eliade, Mircea 215 Elias, Norbert 26, 40 Ellison, C.G. 258, 259, 263 Emmons, R.A. 256 Epstein, S. 42 Erikson, Erik Homburger 14, 40, 76, 77, 209, 250, 256, 262, 263, 280, 287, 289, 291, 303, 314 Euripides 23 Evans, D. 137 Falwell, Jerry 259 Farrell, M.P. 132 Fellmann, Ferdinand 51 Ferguson, K.E. 48 Fiedler, L. 193, 198 Finch, H.L. 199, 200, 201, 204 Fine, M. 372 Fischer-Rosenthal, W. 369 Fitzgerald, T. 57 Fivush, R. 25, 319 Folkenflik, Robert 20 Fonagy, P. 181 Forta, A. 242, 245, 246, 247, 249

Index 383 Foucault, Michel 21, 35, 40, 49, 51 Fowler, James W. 75, 76, 77, 79, 81, 82, 83, 85, 88, 255, 299, 307, 309 Francis of Assisi, saint 196 Frankfurt, Harry 46, 54, 55 Frankl, Viktor Emil 239 Freeman, Mark 12, 13, 21, 28, 29, 33, 187, 190, 197, 205, 206, 372, 378 Freud, Anna 198 Freud, Sigmund 40, 122, 126, 132, 133, 148, 165, 209, 274, 356 Friedman, M. 54 Fuller, A.F. 290, 291 Furrow, J.L. 256 Gadamer, Hans-Georg 369, 370 Galilei, Galileo 229 Gardiner, M. 369 Gardner, H. 47 Gay, Peter 28, 40, 49 Gay, Volney Patrick 136, 138 Geels, Antoon 11, 12, 95, 96, 97, 98, 106, 112 Geertz, Clifford 24, 28, 29, 34, 48, 59, 60, 61 Gensichen, H.-W. 327 Gergen, Kenneth 40, 48 Gergen, Mary M. 40 Gergeley, G. 181 Gerrig, R.J. 78 Giddens, A. 257 Gillett, G. 48 Ginés de Sepúlveda, Juan 330 Glasenapp, H.v. 329 Glaser, B.G. 331 Glück, J. 91 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 49 Gold, Judith 230 Goodman, Nelson 48 Graumann, C. 78 Greenwood, J.D. 48 Greve, W. 42, 334 Greven, P. 160 Groenendijk, L.F. 129 Grof, Stanislav 233 Grom, B. 57

Grotstein, J.S. 296 Guignon, C. 119 Gullestad, Marianne 46 Gültekin, Neval 62, 65, 66 Gurion, Ben 245 Haartman, Keith 12, 159, 160, 169, 171, 177, 178, 179, 180 Habermas, T. 11, 47, 257, 324 Hacking, Ian 323 Haidt, J. 255, 282 Haime, John 166, 167, 168 Halbwachs, Maurice 319 Hall, S. 28 Han, J. 28 Hansen-Löve, A. 146 Hansson, R.O. 247 Harkness, L.L. 251 Harré, Rom 40, 42, 45, 48, 50, 51 Hart, D.G. 267, 274 Hartmann, H. 98 Hass, A. 251 Haute, P. van 118 Hay, David 110 Hayes, S.A. 337 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 118, 370 Hegel, R.E. 32, 34 Heidegger, Martin 33, 35, 49, 119, 205, 206, 372 Heider, Anne 214, 223 Heider, Fritz 49, 214 Heider, Grace 214 Heider, John 13, 209, 210, 211, 212, 214, 215, 216, 217, 218, 219, 220, 221, 222, 226, 228, 229, 231, 233, 234, 235, 373, 375 Heiler, Friedrich 102, 103, 104, 105 Heitzenrater, R.P. 180 Hermans, Hubert J.M. 40, 43, 120, 128, 152 Hessney, R.C. 34 Heyden, U. v.d. 329 Higgins, T.E. 42 Hill, P.C. 85, 88, 256 Hillman, J. 312

384 Index Hindmarsh, B.D. 161, 168, 176, 183 Hinsie, L.E. 291 Hoffman, B.J. 258, 331 Hoffmann-Riem, C. 331 Hood, Ralph W. 85, 88, 122, 154 Hopkins, P. 292 Horner, A.J. 295 Hsu, F.L.K. 28 Huang, C. 34 Hühn, H. 345 Husserl, Edmund 34 Huxley, Aldous 99, 213, 214, 215, 227 Indich, W.M. 101 Inglehart, R. 339 Inowlocki, Lena 62, 65 Iser, Walter 359 Isherwood, Christopher 99 Jacob 311 Jacobson, E. 160, 182 James, Henry 49 James, William 10, 41, 43, 44, 49, 58, 110, 111, 112, 120, 122, 152, 187, 190, 191, 239, 270, 273, 279 Jefferson, Thomas 59 Jensen, T. 99 Jesus Christ 102, 104, 105, 106, 112, 127, 146, 177 Joas, H. 356, 359, 360 Joest, W. 328 John of the Cross 101 John Paul II, pope 328 Johnson, Mark 48 Jones, J. 160 Jonte-Pace, D. 256, 257 Joseph, C. 282 Josephs, L. 160 Josselson, Ruthellen 15, 251, 255, 257, 369, 370, 373 Jost, J.T. 282 Juch, Miss 149 Jung, Carl Gustav 199, 202, 211, 290, 291, 292 Jussim, L. 40, 42

Kakar, Sudhir 99, 209 Kant, Immanuel 51, 58 Kaufmann, F.-X. 91 Kaul, S. 33 Keen, S. 291 Kelle, U. 331 Keller, Barbara 11, 75, 83, 378 Keller, Evelyn Fox 373 Kelley, H.H. 49 Kempen, Harry J.G. 40, 43, 120, 128, 152 Kent, John 175 Kernberg, O. 182 Kernberg, P.F. 142 Kerry, John 260 Kilpatrick, S.D. 266 Kim, T.C. 263 King, J.O. 177 King, P.E. 256 Kingwell, M. 52, 53 Kirschner, S.R. 78 Kitayama, S. 29 Kitsuse, J.I. 119 Knoblauch, H. 320 Kochinka, A. 331 Kohlberg, Lawrence 76, 78 Kohut, Heinz 133, 134, 135, 136, 138, 140, 144, 152, 160, 172, 176, 296 Kojève, A. 118 Kölbl, C. 330 Koselleck, R. 334 Kotre, J. 121 Krech, V. 320 Kripal, Jeffrey J. 13, 99, 209, 210, 211, 373, 375 Kuhn, T.S. 8 Kunzmann, U. 91 Kuyper, H.H. 149 Laan, M.C. van der 136 Lacan, Jacques 118, 137, 138 Lachman, F.M. 81 Lakoff, George 48, 256, 273, 276, 281 Lamnek, S. 331 Langenhove, Luk van 42 Lans, J. van der 57

Index 385 Laplanche, J. 160 Larson, Sheila 59 Las Casas, Bartolomé de 330 Lederer, W. 160 Lee, U. 182 Leeuwenhoek, Antony van 229 Leichtman, M.D. 28 Leonard, George 214, 216, 230 Leonardo Da Vinci 200, 209 Lerner, M.J. 57 Leuner, H. 98 Lieblich, Amia 13, 239, 241, 255, 257, 373 Lieburg, F.A. van 125 Linde, C. 42 Lindenberger, U. 79, 80 Lloyd, G. 33 Loevinger, J. 293 Loewald, Hans 80, 83, 91 Lonner, W.J. 337 López de Gómara, Francisco 330 Lucas, K. 265 Lucius-Hoene, Gabriele 44, 45, 326 Luckmann, Th. 328 Luther, Martin 124, 209 Lutz, Helma 62, 65 Luyten, P. 256 Mace, C. 370 MacIntyre, A. 46 Mahendranath Gupta 109 Mahler, M.S. 182 Mahn-Lot, M. 330 Maimonides 239 Mansfield, E.D. 258, 265 Mao Zedong 32 Marcel, Gabriel 199 Margull, J. 329 Markowitsch, H.J. 319 Markus, H.R. 29 Marsella, A.J. 28 Maruna, S. 265 Mary (Virgin) 101 Mascuch, M. 40 Maslow, Abraham H. 288 Mathews, R.D. 179

Matson, F.W. 48 Matthes, J. 57, 328 Mattingly, C. 43 Matsumoto, D. 7 Maupin, Ed 215 Mavromatis, A. 179 May, R. 52 McAdams, Dan P. 13, 128, 151, 255, 320, 379 McClelland, J.L. 48 McCullough, M.E. 266 McDevitt, J.B. 182 McFadden, S.H. 79 McGuire, M. 58 McKinnon, A. 57, 58 McNeil, Paul 274 McNeil, Sally 274, 277 McVay, T. 25 McWilliams, N. 300 Mead, George Herbert 48, 120, 332 Medin, D.L. 49 Meiden, A. van der 125 Meissner, William Walter 142 Merkur, D. 159, 160, 177, 179 Metzinger, T. 42 Meuter, N. 43 Miles, S. 199 Miller, A. 295 Miller, George Armitage 47, 48, 295, 313 Miller, Melvin E. 14, 288, 379 Miller-McLemore, B.J. 256 Mitchell, Stephen A. 78, 80, 81, 84 Mittag, A. 34 Mohammed 197 Molden, D.C. 49 Moore, C. 25 Moss, D.M. 133 Moss, Richard 12, 159, 160, 162, 163–166, 169–182 Mullally, P.R. 29 Mullen, M.K. 28 Müller, K. 328 Müller, Max 99 Murdoch, I. 203 Murphy, Michael 213, 214, 230

386 Index Murray, Henry 40 Myers, D.G. 78 Nanak Chand 103 Narvaez, D. 78 Neevel, W.G. 99, 100, 102, 109 Nelson, Katherine 25, 319 Nielsen, M.E. 256 Nietzsche, Friedrich 319 Nikhilananda, swami 101, 102, 109 Nixon, L. 176 Nohl, A.-M. 331 Notten, J.W.A. 141, 144, 146, 149, 153 Nowotny, H. 21 Noyes, John Humphrey 214, 222, 226 Nunberg, H. 98 Nurius, P.S. 42 Nussbaum, Martha 51 Obeyesekere, Gananath 159, 174, 183 Ochberg, R.L. 257 O’Donohue, W. 48 Ogilvie, D.M. 42 Omer, H. 249, 251, 266 Ostow, M. 176 Ovid 137 Ozorak, E.W. 256 Paine, Thomas 59 Paloutzian, R.F. 256 Pals, J.L. 265 Pargament, K.L. 256, 271 Park, C.L. 256, 257 Parker, Rebecca 104 Parsons, W.B. 256, 257 Paul, saint 193, 222 Peplau, L.A. 7 Pepper, S.C. 75 Perls, Fritz 214, 231 Perrin, J.M. 191 Perry, W.G. 293 Peterson, B. 263 Pfister, Oskar 159 Pfotenhauer, H. 40 Piaget, Jean 76, 78 Pietzcker, C. 135, 148 Pillemer, D.B. 28

Plato 23 Plotinus 23 Polkinghorne, D. 257 Pomerleau, C.S. 124 Pontalis, J.B. 160 Popp-Baier, Ulrike 45, 59, 320, 325, 327, 380 Powell, L.H. 256 Pratt, J.B. 99 Price, Dick 217, 228, 231 Price, Richard 213 Proust, Marcel 19 Pruyser, Paul W. 160, 173 Pugh, John 170, 171, 173 Putnam, R. 266 Rabelais, Francois 221 Rabin, A.I. 282 Rack, H.D. 179, 180 Radha 100 Rambo, Lewis R. 110, 129, 256 Ramkumar 100 Ramprasad 100 Rawls, J. 43 Ray, R.E. 79 Reich, Wilhelm 215, 218, 233 Reinsberg, August 123, 129 Reinsberg-Ypes, Doetje 123, 144–145 Renn, J. 320, 323 Reynolds, J. 258, 265 Rhine, J.B. 215 Richards, A.K. 142 Richardson, Samuel 161 Richardson, J.T. 256 Ricken, N. 323 Ricoeur, Paul 33, 40, 44, 118, 132, 251, 323 Riemann, Gerhard 62 Rivers, I. 161 Rizzuto, Ana Maria 75, 77, 83, 297, 299 Robinson, Paul 215, 233 Rogers, A. 251, 371 Rogers, Carl Ransom 42 Rokeach, M. 293 Rolf, Ida 214 Rolland, Romain 99

Index 387 Rosa, H. 356 Rosenberg, H.J. 132 Rosenberg, S.D. 132 Rosenkranz, G. 329 Rosenwald, G. 257 Rossi, A. 263 Roy, K.M. 265 Rubin, J.H. 160 Rumelhart, D.E. 48 Rümke, Henricus Cornelius 150 Rüsen, J. 34, 347 Ruusbroec, Jan van 101 Sakaeda, A. 258 Sarbin, Theodore R. 44, 119 Satan 145 Savornin Lohman, Alexander Frederik de 146 Schachtel, E. 100 Schafer, R. 160 Schärtl, T. 356 Schechtman, M. 56 Schecter, D.E. 160 Scheibe, K.E. 119, 122 Schilbrack, K. 59, 60 Schleiermacher, Friedrich Daniel Ernst 58 Schliemann, Heinrich 142 Schneider, W. 48 Schönau, W. 145 Schoenrade, P. 112 Schopenhauer, Arthur 35 Schurz, G. 321 Schutz, William C. 214 Schütze, Fritz 44, 331 Schweitzer, Albert 133 Sedmak, C. 356 Seel, M. 53 Seifert, L.S. 79 Selman, Robert L. 76 Seuse, Heinrich 101 Seybold, K.S. 256 Shahabi, L. 256 Shakespeare, William 46, 375 Shankara, Adi 102 Sharadami Devi 102

Sharpe, Eric J. 102, 103, 104, 105, 108 Sherkat, D.E. 258, 259, 263 Shmueli, E. 242, 250 Shore, B. 61 Shweder, R.A. 28 Siegel, A.M. 137, 172 Sil, N.P. 99 Singer, J.A. 84 Skerven, K. 47 Smith, C. 225 Smith, D.L. 165 Smith, J.Z. 57 Smith, R. 251 Snell, B. 40 Socrates 50 Söderblom, Nathan 102 Somers, M.R. 43 Sperry, R.W. 48 Spilka, B. 122, 154 Sprinker, M. 121 Stagnelius, Erik Johan 112 Starbuck, Edwin Diller 112 Staudinger, U.M. 11, 42, 46, 79, 80 Stendhal (penname of Beyle, Marie-Henri) 142 Stewart, A.J. 263 Stosch, K. von 356, 359, 360, 361 Straub, Jürgen 40, 43, 319, 320, 321, 322, 323, 325, 330, 331, 332, 339, 353, 361 Strauss, Anselm L. 62, 331 Streeter, B.H. 104 Streib, Heinz 75, 77, 79, 82, 83, 88 Stroebe, M.S. 247 Stroebe, W. 247 Ström, A.V. 327, 329 Stroud, Steve 216, 229 Studstill, R. 219 Sundar Singh 12, 102, 103, 104, 105, 108, 110, 111, 112 Sundén, Hjalmar 59, 99 Sundermeier, T. 328, 329 Swedenborg, Emanuel 108, 110 Tajfel, H. 355 Tauler, Johannes 101

388 Index Taylor, Charles 21, 40, 321, 356 Taylor, S.E. 7 Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre 292 Tengberg, Violet 97, 108 Tesla, Nikolas 218 Theunissen, M. 23 Thibon, Gustav 188, 189, 192, 200, 201 Thomä, D. 325 Thomas, K. 20 Thomas, L.E. 287 Thompson, Phyllis 108 Thoresen, C.E. 256 Todorov, T. 330 Tomkins, Silvan S. 47, 282 Totapuri 102, 109 Turner, Victor 58 Tuval-Mashiach, R. 241 Twain, Mark 218 Uleyn, Arnold J.R. 140 Ullman, Chana 110 Vandewater, E. 263 Van Fraassen, B.C. 32 Veenhoven, Ruut 52 Ventis, L.W. 112 Vergote, Antoon 56, 57, 148, 149 Vintges, K. 51 Vishnu 99, 103 Vivekananda 99, 102 Volten, family 130, 139, 153 Vygotsky, Lev Semenovi 43, 48 Wagner, W. 329 Wallis, J. 259 Walzer, M. 357 Wandrei, M. 11, 47, 282 Wang, Qi. 30 Warneck, Gustav 328 Watts, Alan 211, 212, 214, 215, 233 Webster, J.D. 75, 76 Weidemann, A. 332, 343, 353, 361 Weidemann, D. 343, 361 Weil, Simone 12, 187 Wei-Ming, T. 287

Weintraub, K.J. 162 Welzer, H. 319 Werbik, H. 339 Werner, E. 251 Wertsch, J.V. 128 Wesley, Charles 159, 160 Wesley, John 159, 160, 171, 177 West, A.N. 288, 313, 317 White, David Gordon 212, 226 White, Hayden V. 325 White, M. 252 Whitefield, George 170, 173, 175 Whitehouse, H. 174 Williams, Randall 267, 280 Williamson, W.P. 85, 88 Wink, P. 256 Winnicott, Donald Woods 83 Wisse, J. 149 Wittgenstein, Ludwig Josef Johann 29, 32, 53 Wohlrab-Sahr, M. 320 Wolf, E. 136 Wolf, S. 53 Wolfe, A. 258 Woodman, M. 292 Wortham, S. 45 Wright, William 169 Wrogemann, H. 327, 328 Wu, Pei-Yi 30, 32 Wulff, D.M. 57, 258 Wuthnow, R.-R. 40 Wysling, H. 146 Yerushalmi, Y.H. 252 Ypes, Egbertina 142 Ypes-Santée, Johanna Catherina 142 Zales, M.R. 176 Zielke, B. 339, 380 Zilber, T. 241 Zimbardo, P.G. 78 Zitterbarth, W. 339 Zürcher, E. 34 Zwaal, P. van der 118 Zweig, Arnold 126