Grief, hope, and prophetic imagination: psychoanalysis and Christian tradition in dialogue.

Wright, Ronald W. ; Strawn, Brad D.

The Loss of Tradition and Ramifications for Psychoanalysis

Over the past 40 years there has been a profound shift in the manner in which the philosophy of the natural and social sciences has been understood (Bernstein, 1983). There has been a gradual moving away from understandings of science as providing an "objective", "neutral", and pristine picture of the natural and social world towards understandings that view the scientific endeavor as always being reliant on paradigms, interpretations, and metaphors (Kuhn, 1970). Part of what this critique has revealed is the manner in which moral assumptions inherent in the scientific method and its theoretical outcomes are never examined but taken to be "natural". Thus, the autonomous, neutral, rational, utilitarian, and self-interested individual is taken to be the norm and morality and meaning-making are assumed to be secondary to a scientific knowledge which provides individual and technical control over one's world. Adding to this critique of the hidden moral assumptions of scientific theories is the critique from social constructivism, which suggests that all theory is socially/culturally/historically embedded and makes sense only within those particular dynamics. Thus, for the constructivist, modern scientific method and theory need to be embedded and understood within the historical and cultural milieu characterized by the period of the Enlightenment in the West, but cannot be easily generalized across time, history, and culture.

Psychoanalytic theories are not immune from these critiques, as implicit in most of these theories are universal assumptions about human nature as well as a vision of the good life or what type of life humans should live. That is, psychoanalytic theories often fail to situate themselves historically and culturally, as well as fail to state the moral background of their assumptions. These failures reflect the manner in which the discipline of psychoanalysis is a descendant of what Alasdair Maclntyre (1984) calls the "Enlightenment Project" as well as a descendant of the successor to the Enlightenment which he broadly terms "emotivism."

The Enlightenment Project was largely an attempt to discover universal truth disconnected from history, culture, and tradition. For MacIntyre (1984), the problem with this approach was that moral and ethical terms became disconnected and unmoored from the larger moral scheme and context which had made sense of them in the first place. Within the former Aristotelian traditions, according to Maclntyre, there was a three-fold moral scheme 1) untutored-humannature-as-is, 2) human-nature-as-it-could-be-if-it-realized-its-telos, and 3) the virtues, ethical precepts, and moral injunctions by which one moved from untutored human nature towards one's purpose or telos. When the notion of telos was rejected during the Enlightenment, moral philosophy attempted to hold together notions of human nature with moral injunctions (often at odds with human nature) through appeal to universal rationality. This project "failed" because the teleological understanding of humanity and the social contexts within which moral behaviors were intelligible were no longer present and no appeal to rational justification could overcome the loss of these aspects (Maclntyre, 1984).

With the failure of rational explanations for moral behavior, moral authority shifted from external sources to internal sources, from communal sources to individual sources. This shift is reflected in the rise of emotivism, which asserts that all moral judgments are nothing but expressions of preference. Nietzsche, understanding the logical implications of emotivism, argued that if there is nothing to morality but expressions of will, then morality can only be what the individual will creates (Maclntyre, 1984). Thus, morality and the good life are shifted to what the individual thinks/feels it should be for him or her.

MacIntyre's (1984) analysis suggests that the current inability to rationally justify any moral stance in the public realm (hence we experience in the culture unwinnable conflict and arguments over abortion, poverty, war, etc.) is a reflection of the manner in which emotivism has won the day. Emotivism has correctly demonstrated that there are no rational, universal justifications for morality that are disconnected from tradition. For Maclntyre (1984), though, the rejection of tradition during the Enlightenment was premature and unnecessary and it is the notion of tradition, along with its concomitant package of telos, virtues, and practices, which presents a viable alternative to Nietzschean emotivism.

In an attempt to exemplify what this means for psychoanalysis, we will now turn to the specific psychoanalytic theory of Peter Shabad, as a kind of "test case" for the above argument. First, a clinical vignette is used to demonstrate the utility of this way of working psychoanalytically. In an attempt to avoid emotivism, we will then place Shabad's work in conversation with the rich Christian tradition of the prophets via the writing of Walter Brueggeman. It is our contention that both psychoanalysis and Christianity need one another to develop a thick tradition from which to make ethical, teleological, and practical claims.

The Grieving work of Psychoanalysis: Therapeutic Vignette

Mark was in his second year of twice-weekly psychoanalytic psychotherapy and although not clinically depressed was feeling terribly down. In a session that would prove pivotal to Mark's work, he entered his hour and began to discuss his belief that he might need medication. This was not a decision Mark came to flippantly, because at some level he felt that taking medication might be admitting a kind of weakness. He had done his homework and identified a psychiatrist through his insurance. He would need a letter from his analyst indicating that he was already in therapy.

After Mark laid out his plan there was silence. In the quiet Mark felt nervous. His analyst then spoke, "I'd like for us to talk about your wish for me to write a letter." Mark fell mute. Quite suddenly he felt overwhelming waves of sadness and he began to weep. He was speechless for some time.

When his analyst asked him to explore the tears, all Mark could say was, "I don't understand why you won't write a letter for me." To this the analyst gently replied, "I didn't say I wouldn't write a letter, but I did suggest we talk about it." Mark began to talk about how badly he had recently been feeling and how he wanted nothing more than to feel better. He talked about how desperately he needed his analyst's help and how her response felt as if she was saying that she wouldn't or couldn't help him.

After much exploration Mark's analyst finally interpreted, "I think that given the history of terrible disappointment that you experienced with your mother, you have held on to a kind of wish that someone out there might be able to change everything for you, fix you, make you feel okay, put you back together again in the same way that a part of you hopes that your actual mother might still see and acknowledge you. And when I said 'let's talk about writing a letter' what you heard was, 'I won't and I can't help you'. And that awoke a very deep grief in you--a grief you have been hiding even from yourself--that there is no person or event out there that can make up for what you never received from your mother."

Understanding this pivotal moment in therapy actually took many sessions. This exchange became a kind of fulcrum point in therapy that encapsulated the majority of the work. Mark had indeed been aware of the disillusionment that he had suffered with his mother but he was unaware of the unconscious wish he had created as a defense against this grief--a wish that somewhere there would be a person or event that would undo his pain and make him whole again. Mark entered every relationship with this unconscious wish only to be consistently disappointed. His wish was so strong and so unrealistic that he would inadvertently push others away --making them feel that they were never quite good enough--just as he had felt as a small boy.

Peter Shabad: Despair and the Return of Hope

Contemporary clinical psychology has rightfully critiqued psychotherapy theory for being obsessed with pathology. As a counter-reaction, the positive psychology movement has emphasized resiliency, strengths, and resources found within clients. While we find this a helpful corrective, we offer an alternative path found within psychoanalysis and Christian theology that we believe offers a conduit toward realistic hope. We believe it is the loss of the ability to lament and express anger, so frequently found within Christian communities, that leads to incomplete mourning and repetition and blocks the path to true hope and healing. We will utilize psychoanalytic theory, specifically the work of Dr. Peter Shabad (1993, 2001) on the intergenerational transmission of traumatic themes, and place Shabad's work into dialogue with the Christian prophetic tradition as outlined by Walter Brueggemann (2001). We will argue that when psychoanalysis and the Christian tradition are held within a dialogical tension, there is a resonance and mutual enrichment that demonstrates mourning as the necessary mechanism of the rebirth of hope. While psychology has, perhaps, been too focused on pathology, it is our contention that the central role of grief in psychotherapy has been unduly overlooked.

Mourning the Loss of the Wish

As a psychoanalytic theorist, Peter Shabad (1993, 2001) is somewhat difficult to neatly categorize. He may be conceptualized as a contemporary relational psychoanalyst (small "r") with deep indebtedness to Object Relations--including the British Middle School--as well as Self Psychology. Furthermore, he seems to find affinity with contemporary Relational psychoanalysis (capital "R"). While not a classic Freudian in any sense, Dr. Shabad is more of a theoretical integrator. His psychoanalytic anthropology includes internal representations, true and false selves, and intrapsychic conflict as well as interpersonal reality. He speaks of "good enough" parents and psychic trauma--as well as unconscious wishes and defenses. All of his contemporary psychodynamic understanding is further embedded in a rich background of philosophical existentialism. Shabad's conceptualization of human development and relationships must be understood in light of this philosophical bent. Central to his theorizing is the manner in which individuals deal with death, the loan of life, authenticity, passion, self-actualization, and meaning.

In his 2001 book, Dr. Shabad covers an impressive breadth of territory. He is truly a prosaic psychoanalyst--citing philosophy and literature--in addition to integrating a vast knowledge of psychoanalysis. His book is also filled with impressively written case vignettes that helpfully illuminate his central concepts. We will limit ourselves to one primary theme, the compulsion to repeat, that he picks up from his 1993 paper Repetition and Incomplete Mourning: The Intergenerational Transmission of Traumatic Themes.

When a child experiences chronic disillusionments from caregivers, over time these become what Shabad (1993) calls "traumatic themes". The traumatic theme is a "chronic pattern of frustrating childhood experiences suffered at the hands of significant others, which, when repeated day after day over a number of years, may cumulatively take on the emotional significance of a trauma" (1993, p. 65). Shabad further writes, "... the helplessness engendered by the traumatic theme derives from the child's continued incapacity to change the parent into a wished-for figure" (p. 65). The traumatic themes, and the subsequent wished-for relationship with the parent, are repressed. This defensive repression is a kind of clinging to the previous wished for generation, yet as Shabad points out, by burying the wish it returns from the repressed "with an all consuming vengeance" (p. 66). In fact, the child, now grown, attempts unconsciously, to be reconciled to the wished-for parent by an act of imitative repetition with the parent. In the case vignette above, we can witness the intergenerational transmission of Mark and his mother's traumatic theme. Mark joins his mother in her misery by duplicating her behavior. She never felt that she was good enough and she visited this on Mark causing him to never feel good enough. Mark now in turn plays that out in all his relationships causing them to end poorly, confirming for Mark that he indeed is not enough. Mark's mother was miserable and Mark stays intrapsychically connected with her by also being miserable.

Shabad (1993, 2001) points out that by internalizing these sadomasochistic interactions with the caregiver, the child (now adult) engages in a kind of "identification with the aggressor". But this internalization with the parent, however painful it may be, unconsciously serves as a means to stay connected with the wished-for parent (a kind of loyalty if you will) and serves as a defense against the acceptance of what really took place. We would describe it as a defense against the loss of hope that things were in fact different and/or that they can somehow magically be different in the future. But Shabad points out that leaving these wishes and the compulsion to repeat behind and to live into a life based more in reality and realistic hope requires mourning.

   What I mean by mourning here is
   not so much a close emotional
   encounter with what one has lost .
   but a reintegrative experience--specifically,
   a reintegration of unconscious
   wishes that had been disowned
   because of their painful links
   with the chronic disillusionment specific
   to one's traumatic theme(s). It is
   through consciously reclaiming and
   elaborating on previously unconscious
   wishes to undo the traumatic
   theme that one is also able to gain
   access to a vision of one's ideal childhood
   and, in so doing, open up with
   renewed hope to the possibilities of a
   less circumscribed life for oneself and
   one's children." (p. 62)

This process of grief and reintegration can sneak up on a client--often in the transference--as it did with Mark. What is grieved and lamented in this process is the loss of hope of the wished-for parent and/or wished for experience that will bring completeness/healing, etc. For some patients, this is the loss of the fantasized ideal parent, ideal self, or ideal childhood. And it may also be the loss of the wish that the parent will someday still give supply the patient with what they desperately want and need.

In therapy, this mourning process may be strongly resisted. The patient may fight with the therapist in an attempt to protect the long-held "wished-for" representation of their parent. To give up on one's parents or to criticize them, even if they are only the internalized and idealized parents of one's childhood, is akin to terrible disloyalty and may bring tremendous guilt (Shabad, 2001). But if the patient and therapist succeed in this process a period of acute pain may develop. The patient may cry out, demand justice, threaten to give up on both themselves and others; they may enter despair. Their cries may have a haunting similarity to the numerous lament Psalms of the Hebrew Scriptures. But it is precisely through this painful mourning that one begins to restructure one's life. Hans Loewald (1978) captures this process:

   Mourning is a psychic activity that
   comprises the relinquishment of intimate
   object relations and the reestablishment,
   in the internal area[,] of
   elements of these object relations by
   identificatory processes. In mourning,
   an object relationship is gradually
   given up, involving pain and suffering,
   and is substituted by a restructuring
   of the internal world which is in
   consonance with the relinquished
   relationship. (pp. 45-46)

We believe with Shabad that it is only by this process of mourning that individuals can truly be liberated from the compulsion to repeat and enter into life with realistic hope.

Some Affirmations and Cautionary Questions

There is much to applaud and embrace in Shabad's work. His understanding of the connection between negative illusions, symptoms as commemorations, and experiences of disillusionment, as well as the need for someone to assist in authentically bearing witness to those experiences, is profound. The commitment Shabad displays to the importance of integrated self-awareness and his relational understanding of how that integration occurs in therapy is helpful and inspiring. But as psychotherapists that happen to be Christians--steeped within the Judeo-Christian perspective--we must stop and ask what our faith tradition has to do with our client Mark and his therapy. Should we uncritically embrace this psychoanalytic theory and practice as outlined by Dr. Shabad? Or is there a dialogue that we must enter into between psychoanalysis and our own faith tradition? What is the role of Mark's larger context? Is he best described as the product of not "good enough parenting"? Is he nothing more than a false and empty self that needs to be filled up through a relationship with an authentic therapist? How is he impacted by the larger Western consumerist culture in which he lives? And for that matter, how does this culture impact the very development of Shabad's psychoanalytic epistemology?

Psychoanalysis as Moral Discourse

Psychoanalysis is never apolitical or amoral nor is it, as noted earlier, ahistorical or acultural. Yet psychoanalysis has, more often than not, reflected and propagated notions of self-contained individualism which focus on autonomy, expressiveness, attention-seeking, entitlement, and self-centeredness as universal modes of being. Underneath these notions are historically and culturally conditioned moral claims about what is the proper way of being human. Philip Cushman (1995) has argued that psychotherapy is actually moral discourse and proposed that, "... we can conceptualize psychotherapy as a set of interactions that embody a competing and alternative moral frame that challenges the one to which patients have been previously committed" (p. 295). Within this paradigm the therapeutic relationship is never understood as being objective or value-neutral, but as always entailing the confrontation of two differing "moral landscapes" embodied in the therapist and the patient. In this perspective, psychoanalysis cannot help but to be entangled in moral questions about what it means to be human and what the good life is for humanity.

Peter Shabad's work reflects the tendency within psychoanalysis to assume a universal status for its conceptions of humanity and a value-neutral morality. In his book Despair and the Return of Hope: Echoes of Mourning in Psychotherapy, Shabad (2001) focuses on dyadic interactions within an astute and nuanced integration of Winnicottian, Self Psychology, and existential frameworks that greatly expand on the insights of each of these paradigms. Throughout, though, he assumes a Western self and caregiving approach that is presented as natural or universal. Perhaps it could be argued that Shabad is describing an understanding of humanity and parenting practices which reflect a particular configuration of the Western self in the late 20th century/early 21st century rather than a universal process.

In keeping the attention on dyadic interactions and the role of pathological accommodation leading to False Self development, however, the role of social and economic forces which may contribute to this dynamic are hidden. What are the economic pressures that may play a role in parents feeling overwhelmed and unable to "mirror" or accept their child as a "gift"? Noting these larger economic forces, John Bowlby (1988) writes, "Man and woman power devoted to the production of material goods counts a plus in all of our economic indices. Man and woman power devoted to the production of happy, healthy, and self-reliant children in their own homes does not count at all. We have created a topsy-turvy world [emphasis added]" (p. 2). Particularly given the preponderance of psychoanalytic literature in the past forty years addressing False Self development, narcissistic wounding, and patients' lack of vitality and authenticity, we might begin to wonder if there are larger social and historical forces at work that need to be illuminated.

As for a vision of the good life, Shabad's vision of the healthy individual is one who has chosen to risk connection to others in part because of the feelings of authenticity this allows in the unfolding of the True Self. We are left with the assertion that a life lived authentically, "to choose oneself" in Kierkegaard's terms, is better than a life lived defensively but without any rational justification for why this type of life is better than any other. While we concur with his conclusion that "risking connection" is crucial, we worry that the only resource within psychoanalysis to support this claim is an appeal to a universal ethic of mutuality grounded in the feelings of authenticity and vitality the individual experiences, which then allows them to actualize their True Self. The grounding of life on something as potentially fleeting and variable as feelings and experience does not seem to do justice to the serious commitments and obligations living life actually entails. At the conclusion of Despair and the Return of Hope Shabad (2001) writes:

   In the end, we must look back and
   answer for how we have conducted
   ourselves during life's journey. Have
   we used our lives fully with the fires
   of our passion? Have we been open
   enough to use the opportunities
   available to us? Have we kept faith
   with our conscience that weaves
   together our mutual destinies? We are
   ultimately responsible for realizing
   the personal truths that connect us to
   others--nothing less. (p. 313)

In this quote the individualistic and emotivist assumptions of Shabad became quite visible, as there are no explicit external or transcendent guidelines (although one might argue there are many implicit guidelines assumed by Shabad) for how one is to use their passion, openness, conscience, or personal truths. But this begs the question, how do we evaluate our lives? For what purpose or end is my life directed? What should my passion, openness, and authenticity be used for? For what ends should I connect myself to others? Here Shabad, and psychoanalysis, cannot provide an answer other than the emotivist position of individual preference.

Practicing Liberation: The Prophetic Imagination in Dialogue with Relational Psychoanalysis

So far, we have noted two concerns: 1) Psychoanalysis, and in particular the psychoanalytic framework of Peter Shabad, is ultimately grounded in a morality of "emotivism" or individual preference that provides weak or "thin" justifications for why one should face grief in hopes of beginning to live with "passion". In terms of addressing this latter concern we will attempt to put Christianity, through the theology of Walter Brueggemann, into dialogue with Shabad's psychoanalytic framework, and 2) Within the worship practices of evangelical Christianity there seems to be little room for the expression of negative emotions, such as grief, lamentation, and/or anger and we have highlighted the work of Peter Shabad as providing a practical, relational and incarnational psychoanalytic framework that can dialogue with Christianity about the manner in which despair and grief are linked with the rebirth of hope.

We view this dialogue as allowing an enrichment and "thickening" of psychoanalysis (via Shabad) and Christianity (via Brueggemann). Rather than a heroic, individual choice or feeling, the Christian tradition can provide a telos or purpose for human life and hope that is tied to a larger, transcendent vision of the moral and social world, while psychoanalysis provides Christianity with a rich description of the embodied and relational context for the movement from lament and despair to hope. Reciprocity of this type allows for these two differing sources to mutually illuminate or "problematize" aspects of each and in so doing, this "dialectical interplay" of a hermeneutic of suspicion with a hermeneutic of faith (Ricoeur, 1970), allows for something new to emerge that would not have been if not for the dialectic. Sorenson (2004) writes, "This makes for a dialogical hermeneutic of unmasking and demystification alongside another hermeneutic that recollects or restores meaning (in the root sense of religion: religare, to gather together)" (p. 167). In this dialogue, psychoanalysis and Christianity need each other.

A starting point for this type of dialogue can be found in the work that has been done suggesting that a Trinitarian understanding of God (Jones, 2008; Wright, 2007) provides a conception of humanity in terms of the imago Dei. This concept in turn resonates with relational psychoanalytic assumptions of the inherently relational matrix of human personhood. Furthermore, the imago Dei suggests a developmental trajectory as well (Balswick, King, & Reimer, 2005), that is humans are to become selves-in-community living in mutual interdependence with God, others, and the created order that is animated by self-giving love. This relational ontology suggests that the full range of human emotions (or pathos) within relationships is to be expected. In addressing what humans ought to be, space is created for evaluation of life. Part of this evaluation for the Church includes addressing any forces (cultural, social, interpersonal, intrapsychic) that play a role in keeping humans from becoming what they are meant to be. It is these "practices of liberation" (Jones, 2008), particularly the prophetic ministry as explored by Walter Brueggemann (2001), that we will put into dialogue with Shabad's work.

For Brueggemann (2001), God is a God of freedom who enters into a covenantal relationship, characterized by presence and divine pathos, with all of creation. God is with us and for us. This theological understanding of God must, however, be tied to social practices (e.g. economics, politics) for how life is lived in the world. The Church is the community which lives out the corresponding politics and practices of justice and compassion and bears witness to the God of freedom who is at work in redeeming creation and humanity. Brueggemann (2001) writes:

   Our sociology is predictably derived
   from, legitimated by, and reflective of
   our theology ... if a God is disclosed
   who is free to come and go, free
   from and even against the regime,
   free to hear and even answer slave
   cries, free from all proper goodness
   as defined by the empire, then it will
   bear decisively upon sociology
   because the freedom of God will surface
   in the brickyards and manifest
   itself as justice and compassion. (p. 8)

As psychological liberation is intimately tied up with social liberation (and liberation for the whole of creation); bearing witness to the God of freedom through living out justice and compassion requires practices of liberation that address multiple levels of life.

The practice of liberation begins with what Brueggemann (2001) calls the "prophetic imagination" which criticizes and dismantles current consciousness, or ways of viewing reality, and energizes movement through the emergence of an alternative consciousness. He writes, ". prophetic ministry consists of offering an alternative perception of reality and in letting people see their own history in the light of God's freedom and his will for justice" (p. 116). What is now does not mean what will be for the God of freedom and God's people. But what does this look like? To understand this prophetic imagination more completely we will examine Brueggemann's understanding of imperial reality or "royal consciousness", and the manner in which the language of grief is used to penetrate numbness.

Brueggemann (2001) views the prophetic imagination as beginning with the confrontation between Moses and Pharaoh and the manner in which Moses out imagines Pharaoh. Moses is confronted with "imperial reality" and the "static gods" of Egypt, which have resulted in the politics of oppression and exploitation. This imperial reality is experienced as an "eternal now" or a "forever" where there is little hope for change. The existence of this "royal consciousness" is not just something under Pharaoh's jurisdiction, but presents itself as an ongoing social (and we might argue, personal) reality throughout time and history. Wherever there are economics of affluence, oppressive social policies, and a God only of immanence, we can find ourselves caught in this hegemonic consciousness. Brueggemann (2001) writes:

   It takes little imagination to see ourselves
   in this same royal tradition.
   Ourselves in an economics of affluence
   in which we are so well off that
   pain is not noticed and we can eat
   our way around it. Ourselves in a politics
   of oppression in which the cries
   of the marginal are not heard or are
   dismissed as the noises of kooks and
   traitors. Ourselves in a religion of
   immanence and accessibility, in which
   God is so present to us that his abrasiveness,
   his absence, his banishment
   are not noticed, and the problem is
   reduced to psychology. (p. 36)

This royal consciousness redefines our notions of humanness, as people become objects to be manipulated for self-gain and humanity's experience becomes alienated from their behavior. It sets itself against memory as tradition and history are demeaned. Within it there are only problems to be managed and solved, there are no mysteries. Only a religion of optimism is allowed within the royal consciousness because, of course, God is about the business of justifying and sustaining our way of living. In particular, a royal conscious has two effects. One, it leads people to numbness, especially numbness about death. The powerful "forever" assumed by the royal consciousness refuses to allow endings to come in sight. Two, it leads people to despair about the potential for newness or change and thus militates against hope. This is why a prophetic imagination devoted to the pathos and passion of covenanting is needed.

According to Brueggemann the challenge to the royal consciousness, and the numbness it engenders, begins with grieving.

And the people of Israel groaned under their bondage, and cried out for help, and their cry under bondage came up to God. And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant . And God saw the people of Israel, and God knew their condition. (Exodus 2: 23-25)

Grief is the "visceral" pronouncement that things are not right and this allows the numbness to be penetrated. What Israel comes to realize, after a prolonged period of grieving and crying out, is that the royal consciousness of Pharaoh can do nothing for them and so they expect nothing from it anymore. In language reminiscent of psychoanalysis, this may be a kind of communal grieving of a "wished-for-empire". Brueggemann (2001) says that this grief "is the ultimate criticism which leads to dismantling" (p. 13) perhaps in the same way that the patient's grief may lead to reintegration (Shabad, 1993) or restructuring (Loewald, 1978). The insight that the biblical witness provides is that anguish leads to life, grieving leads to joy, and the embracing of endings leads to new beginnings (Brueggemann, 2001).

So what are the ramifications of worship practices that implicitly deny or repress grief and anger? Once again Brueggemann (1995) warns us of this danger and reminds us of the important role of grief in Christian worship and theology in his article, "The Costly Loss of Lament'. Brueggemann draws on Object Relations psychology to highlight two costs that one must pay if one loses ecclesial lament/grief: the loss of genuine covenant interaction, and the stifling of the question of theodicy. Without the opportunity for communal grief, a false self is created that can only feel joy and that can only offer God praise. This false self also incorporates a false god: one that can only hear praise and that will hear nothing of complaint and distress. Obviously this false self and false god leave no room for Christians to bring their honest questions of theodicy. And Brueggemann warns that if we believe that questions of justice are not allowed at the throne, then they will not be allowed in the public realm and we may unwittingly endorse unjust systems. Obviously, Israel's deep and wide testimony to lament and rage will not admit of such a false self or false god.

Like Brueggemann, we have no desire to suggest, "that biblical faith be reduced to psychological categories"--especially categories that are not deeply engaged in social contexts. Even so, it seems to us that the insights from psychoanalysis indicate a further loss that has not been extensively developed, except by Shabbad (2001, 1993): the loss of the very mechanism by which one can move to hope and praise precisely through and in the midst of suffering and lament (Strawn & Strawn, 2001).

Conclusion

We hope it is obvious from this brief introduction that the dialogical interaction of Shabad's and Brueggemann's work contributes to a "thickening" of both. Each of them, in many ways, is about the business of stretching or recreating the imagination of individuals or communities. We conceptualize the Christian tradition as providing resources for psychoanalysis that can allow psychoanalysis to justify its goals. Viewing psychoanalysis as a prophetic ministry and practice of liberation within the Christian tradition provides a moral trajectory for psychoanalysis that frees it from its emotivist leanings and allows it to speak forthrightly about its assumptions of the good life. The Christian tradition provides a telos for human life that is broadly compatible with relational psychoanalytic conceptions of human personhood, which psychoanalysis cannot justify with its own resources. This telos allows for an evaluation of a life and an evaluation of all aspects of life (e.g. social, cultural, interpersonal, intrapsychic). Brueggemann's theological perspective can provide a rich, thick moral argument for psychoanalysis that reminds us that the social practices of consumption in 21st Century America are not neutral and that we will find our imaginations bound and our experiences numbed if we can find no place for human pathos and the prophetic imagination. We think this greatly enhances Shabad's work as the social, political, and economic dimensions of life can be brought into analysis and understood as contributors to a patient's "royal consciousness" and brokenness.

The psychoanalytic concern for liberating patients to a life of passion, vitality, flexibility, and authenticity is provided with direction when placed within the Christian tradition. Christianity, too, is concerned with liberating people from numbness and despair to lives of passion, vitality, and flexibility. But this is done with the hope that this liberation will allow people to move towards and into the suffering of others, which bears witness to the God of freedom who has been present with humanity. Authenticity, within the Christian tradition, is found in acting in accord with one's purpose and it is in self-giving, reciprocating love that humanity finds itself looking like the Triune God in whose image they are made.

We find Shabad's (1993, 2001) emphasis on the relational, embodied presence of an "other" who enters into another's suffering experience to bear witness of their reality a focus that is missing within Brueggemann's theological analysis. In Shabad, we find the incarnational grounding for the covenanting between God and a community. God's covenant and promise is seen through and in embodied relationships. This provides the practical and experiential understanding that allows us to "imagine" how our mourning may someday become dancing (Psalm 30:11).

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Ronald W. Wright

Mount Vernon Nazarene University

Brad D. Strawn

Southern Nazarene University

Authors

Ronald W. Wright, (Ph.D., Graduate School of Psychology, Fuller Theological Seminary, 1997) is a licensed psychologist and Professor of Psychology at Mount Vernon Nazarene University, Mount Vernon, OH. Specializations include integration of psychology and theology, particularly relational psychoanalytic theory and Wesleyan theology, and qualitative research in altruism and well-being. He is a member of the Society for the Study of Psychology and Wesleyan Theology.

Brad D. Strawn (Ph.D., Clinical Psychology, M.S., Theology, Fuller Theological Seminary) is professor, Vice President for Spiritual Development, and Dean of the Chapel at Southern Nazarene University, Bethany, OK. and Associate Director of the Society for Exploration of Psychoanalytic Therapies and Theology. His specialties include integration of psychology and theology, psychoanalytic psychotherapy, Wesleyan theology and spiritual formation.

Correspondence concerning this article should be sent to Ronald W. Wright, Mount Vernon Nazarene University, 800 Martinsburg Road, Mount Vernon, OH 43050; ron.wright@mvnu.edu