Abstract
The term “integration” has long been used as a metaphor for psychological health and wholeness, and a therapeutic goal. It is counterposed to related conceptions of pathology, such as “disintegration,” “fragmentation” and “splitting.” Christian theology has similarly framed salvation as “at-onement” vs. sin as alienation. Contemporary psychologies have begun to contest the hegemony of the “One,” leading to a number of paradigms of health that do not privilege “integration” as the primary model (e.g., feminist, postmodern, and relational-psychoanalytic). The seeds of a positive view of multiplicity already exist in earlier psychoanalytic models. This paper will argue for valuing multiplicity in psychotherapy as a way of conceptualizing both health and a goal of treatment. Re: pastoral psychotherapy in particular, multiplicity will be shown to have fruitful parallels in a constructive Trinitarian theology of multiplicity of God as a framework for interrogating “integration,” and claiming “dis-integration” as psycho-spiritual dissent and creativity.
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Notes
While Christian tradition includes other understandings of sin as stain, or immorality, this thread runs through all of Christian history, from biblical texts (e.g., Col. 1:21), through Augustine, and in modern times as a prominent theme in existential theology (e.g., Tillich 1957; Macquarrie 1977).
The foundational text for this school of thought is Mitchell (1988), Relational Concepts in Psychoanalysis: An Integration; see also Greenberg (1991), and Aron (1996). The development of relational theory can be traced through the journal Psychoanalytic Dialogues beginning with Vol. 1 in 1991, and in Mitchell and Aron, Eds., (1999), Relational Psychoanalysis: The Emergence of a Tradition.
In an offshoot of self psychology, intersubjectivity theorists Stolorow and Atwood (1992) have proposed three interrelated forms of unconsciousness: the “prereflective unconscious—the organizing principles that unconsciously shape and thematize a person's experiences; 2) the dynamic unconscious—experiences that were denied articulation because they were perceived to threaten needed ties; and 3) the unvalidated unconscious—experiences that could not be articulated because they never evoked the requisite validating responsiveness from the surround. All three forms of unconsciousness, we have emphasized, derived from specific, formative intersubjective contexts” (p. 33). For the sake of brevity, I have omitted a detailed examination of this contemporary movement in psychoanalysis, since most of its contributions are similar to those of the relational school, whose appropriation of object relations and constructivist paradigms in my view carry more explanatory power.
A detailed proposal for such a therapeutic method is offered in Cooper-White (2006), Many Voices, esp. Part 2 “Practicing Pastoral Psychotherapy,” pp. 135–248.
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Cooper-White, P. Interrogating Integration, Dissenting Dis-integration: Multiplicity as a Positive Metaphor in Therapy and Theology. Pastoral Psychol 57, 3–15 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11089-008-0135-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11089-008-0135-0