Abstract
This article draws from intertwined Gospel accounts, in Luke 8 and elsewhere, of Jesus healing a hemorrhaging woman and a 12-year-old girl presumed dead, building on Capps’s (2008) claim that their physical symptoms manifested intense unconscious anxieties resulting from untenable sexual expectations of their culture. In these cases, healing derives from their capacity to believe in someone who has faith in them (Capps 2008, p. 124). The article encourages contemporary pastoral counselors to attend not only with strenuous professional ethicality but also with subversive moral generosity to minute differences among individuals marginalized due to sexual yearnings perceived to deviate from a presumed societal norm.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Disaffection for pastoral care and counseling by prominent Christian theologians continues unabated. In one recent example, William H. Willimon (2013), professor of the practice of ministry at Duke Divinity School, criticizes the priorities of ministers formerly under his supervision as a United Methodist bishop: “My admiration is unbounded for clergy who persist in proclaiming the gospel in the face of the resistance that the world throws at them. But I found too many clergy who allowed congregational caregiving and maintenance to trump more important acts of ministry, like truth telling and mission leadership. These tired pastors dash about offering parishioners undisciplined compassion rather than sharp biblical truth. One pastor led a self-study of her congregation and found that 80 percent of them thought that the minister’s primary job was to ‘care for me and my family.’ Debilitation is predictable for a kleros with no higher purpose for ministry than servitude to the voracious personal needs of the laos” (p. 11). Capps’s response to Nelson’s charges applies equally to Willimon’s: Why assume that congregational caregiving and maintenance, or pastoral compassion and attention to the personal needs of parishioners, are incommensurate with biblical truth and mission leadership? In Let the Children Come: Reimagining Childhood from a Christian Perspective, Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore (2003, pp. 26–30) echoes Capps’s concern with theologians who dismiss psychology in global terms.
Kearney (2014), a philosopher at Boston College, recounts conversations with his students about “losing our senses,” particularly the sense of touch, in an “increasingly virtual world.” His students admit to enjoying the relative anonymity of messaging online “before having ‘real contact’ with partners,” using “acronyms that signaled their level of willingness to have sex, and under what conditions.” He notes the paradox in “the ostensible immediacy of sexual contact [being] in fact mediated digitally” and discerns that “what is often thought of as a ‘materialist’ culture” is “arguably the most ‘immaterialist’ culture imaginable—vicarious, by proxy, and often voyeuristic” (p. 4SR). While reports on how much of the Internet consists of pornographic material tend to be wildly exaggerated (37 % is often cited), the best recent empirical data, in Ogas and Gaddam (2012), suggests that about 4 % of the million most frequented websites and 14 % of all web searches are devoted to pornography, though these figures still represent, as Ogas notes (in Ward 2013), “very significant numbers.” Ogas (as cited in Ruvolo 2011) also points out that “the single most popular adult site in the world is LiveJasmin.com, a webcam site which gets around 32 million visitors a month, or almost 2.5 %” of the world’s one billion Internet users. On this site, men pay to watch “women strip on a webcam” while being able to talk with them. Through apps such as Snapchat, Snapcash, and Kik, reports Bilton (2015) in the New York Times, targeted virtual sex is now easily accessed on smartphones and will account for $2.8 billion in porn-related revenue in 2015. Why, Bilton asks, would anyone “pay for online pornography when it’s available free everywhere”? Because “a private video chat on your mobile phone with a naked person is much more intimate and personal than a website or even a webcam. (So I hear.)” One Snapchat user told him “that people were attracted to the one-on-one nature of the interaction, as well as the built-in privacy.” Kari Lerum (in Richtel 2013), a sociologist at the University of Washington, says that “men are more open, vulnerable and emotional in [web]cam [chat]rooms than in, say, strip clubs. They can also become invested in a relationship that exists only on the screen. ‘This is mutual objectification,’ she said of camming.”
References
American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed.). Washington, DC: Author.
Bakan, D. (1966). The duality of human existence: Isolation and communion in Western man. Boston: Beacon.
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.
Bilton, N. (2015). Strippers go undercover on Snapchat. New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/26/style/strippers-go-undercover-on-snapchat.html. Accessed 10 Mar 2015.
Bronfen, E. (1992). Over her dead body: Death, femininity, and the aesthetic. New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Caird, G. B. (1963). The Gospel of St. Luke. New York: Seabury Press.
Capps, D. (1993). The depleted self: Sin in a narcissistic age. Minneapolis: Fortress Press.
Capps, D. (1998). Living stories: Pastoral counseling in congregational context. Minneapolis: Fortress Press.
Capps, D. (2008). Jesus the village psychiatrist. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press.
Coltart, N. (1992). Slouching toward Bethlehem. New York: Guilford Press.
Dornisch, L. C. (2002). A woman reads the Gospel of Luke. Collegeville: Liturgical Press.
Emerson, R. W. (1946/1981). The portable Emerson. Carl Bode (Ed.). New York: Penguin Books.
Erikson, E. H. (1974). Dimensions of a new identity: The 1973 Jefferson lectures in the humanities. New York: Norton.
Fiorenza, E. S. (1994). In memory of her: A feminist theological reconstruction of Christian origins. New York: Crossroad.
González, J. L. (2010). Luke. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press.
Green, J. B. (1997). The Gospel of Luke. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans.
Gutheil, T. G., & Gabbard, G. O. (1993). The concept of boundaries in clinical practice: theoretical and risk-management dimensions. American Journal of Psychiatry, 150(2), 188–196.
Haber, S. (2003). A woman’s touch: feminist encounters with the hemorrhaging woman in Mark 5.24-34. Journal for the Study of the New Testament, 26(2), 171–192.
Horovitz, B. (2007). Marketers zooming in on your daily routines. USA Today. http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20070430/1a_cover30.art.htm. Accessed 1 Aug 2014.
James, W. (1890/1956). The importance of individuals. In The will to believe and other essays in popular philosophy. New York: Dover Publications.
Jeffrey, D. L. (2012). Luke. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press.
Johnson, D. (1996). Students still sweat, they just don’t shower. New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/1996/04/22/us/students-still-sweat-they-just-don-t-shower.html?module=Search&mabReward=relbias%3Ar%2C%7B%221%22%3A%22RI%3A7%22%7D. Accessed 1 Aug 2014.
Kearney, R. (2014). Losing our touch. New York Times, p. 4SR. http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/08/30/losing-our-touch/?_php=true&_type=blogs&module=Search&mabReward=relbias%3As%2C%7B%221%22%3A%22RI%3A6%22%7D&_r=0. Accessed 31 Aug 2014.
Kinukawa, H. (1994). The story of the hemorrhaging woman (Mark 5:25–34) read from a Japanese feminist context. Biblical Interpretation, 2(3), 283–293.
Malbon, E. S. (1983). Fallible followers: women and men in the Gospel of Mark. Semeia, 28, 29–48.
McWhirter, J. (2013). Rejected prophets: Jesus and his witnesses in Luke-Acts. Minneapolis: Fortress Press.
Mencken, H. L. (1949/1982). A Mencken chrestomathy. New York: Vintage Books.
Micale, M. S. (1995). Approaching hysteria: Disease and its implications. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Miller-McLemore, B. J. (2003). Let the children come: Reimagining childhood from a Christian perspective. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Nelson, C. E. (1989). How faith matures. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press.
Ogas, O. (2011). Why it’s perfectly natural for men to want to show their manhood, even if it’s a bad idea: Congressman Weiner behaves like any other male primate. Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/billion-wicked-thoughts/201106/why-its-perfectly-natural-men-want-show-their-manhood-even-if. Accessed 10 Mar 2015.
Ogas, O., & Gaddam, S. (2012). A billion wicked thoughts: What the Internet tells us about sexual relationships. New York: Plume/Penguin.
Phillips, A. (1994). On flirtation: Psychoanalytic essays on the uncommitted life. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Phillips, A. (1995). Terrors and experts. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Phillips, A. (2005). Going sane: Maps of happiness. New York: HarperCollins.
Phillips, A. (2010). On balance. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Rambo, S. (2009). Trauma and faith: reading the narrative of the hemorrhaging woman. International Journal of Practical Theology, 13, 233–257.
Reid, B. (1996). Choosing the better part? Women in the Gospel of Luke. Collegeville: Liturgical Press.
Remnick, D. (2012). We are alive: Bruce Springsteen at sixty-two. New Yorker, 38–57. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/07/30/we-are-alive. Accessed 1 Aug 2014.
Richtel, M. (2013). Intimacy on the Web, with a crowd. New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/22/technology/intimacy-on-the-web-with-a-crowd.html. Accessed 10 Mar 2015.
Rieff, P. (1966/2006). The triumph of the therapeutic: Uses of faith after Freud. Wilmington, DE: Intercollegiate Studies Institute.
Rowling, J. K. (2000). Harry Potter and the goblet of fire. New York: Scholastic.
Ruvolo, J. (2011). How much of the Internet is actually for porn. Forbes. http://www.forbes.com/sites/julieruvolo/2011/09/07/how-much-of-the-internet-is-actually-for-porn/. Accessed 10 Mar 2015.
Sinclair, S. (2015). Child, bride, mother. New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/02/08/opinion/sunday/exposures-child-bride-mother-stephanie-sinclair.html. Accessed 10 Mar 2015.
Smith-Rosenberg, C. (1981). The hysterical woman: Sex roles and role conflict in nineteenth-century America. In R. J. Brugger (Ed.), Our selves/our past: Psychological approaches to American history (pp. 205–227). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Strochlic, N. (2014). The sad plight of child grooms. The Daily Beast. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/09/18/the-sad-hidden-plight-of-child-grooms.html#. Accessed 19 Dec 2014.
Sweis, R. F. (2014). In Jordan, ever younger Syrian brides. New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/14/world/middleeast/in-jordan-ever-younger-syrian-brides.html?module=Search&mabReward=relbias%3Ar%2C%7B%221%22%3A%22RI%3A6%22%7D&_r=0. Accessed 19 Dec 2014.
Taylor, W. C. (2006). Get out of that rut and into the shower. New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/13/business/yourmoney/13mgmt.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0. Accessed 1 Aug 2014.
Tripp, C. A. (2005). The intimate world of Abraham Lincoln. New York: Free Press.
Vonnegut, M. (2002). The Eden express: A memoir of insanity. New York: Seven Stories Press.
Vonnegut, M. (2010). Just like someone without mental illness only more so: A memoir. New York: Delacorte Press/Random House.
Ward, M. (2013). Web porn: just how much is there? BBC News. http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-23030090. Accessed 10 March 2015.
Willimon, W. H. (2013). Making ministry difficult: the goal of seminary. Christian Century, 130(4), 11–12.
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to Donald Capps for the many contributions to this article gleaned from his Jesus the Village Psychiatrist and other works, as well as for his encouraging me to believe in his faith in me over many years; to Rubén Arjona-Mejía, a doctoral candidate in pastoral theology at Princeton Theological Seminary, for introducing me to Gultheil and Gabbard’s (1993) distinction between clinical boundary crossings and boundary violations; to Melanie Howard and Sarah Chae, also doctoral students at Princeton Seminary, for generous research assistance; to my former seminary student for permission to share a portion of his life story in this article; to Ryan LaMothe and members of the Midwest Region of the American Association of Pastoral Counselors for providing impetus to compose these thoughts; and to gifted friends in the Group for New Directions in Pastoral Theology, who learn and laugh with me along the way.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Dykstra, R.C. Finding Language for What Matters Most: Hosting Conversations about Sexuality in Pastoral Counseling. Pastoral Psychol 64, 663–680 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11089-015-0656-2
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11089-015-0656-2