FEBRUARY 2006 - ISSUE 6 - ISSN 1448 - 6326

Pursuing the Scent of Love

Jade Ireland

Abstract

This paper seeks to illuminate the theology-psychology integration discussion. It posits a relationship between the postmodern metaphors of “intersubjectivity” (Stolorow, Brandchaft, & Atwood cited in Baker, 1999), “underlying fiduciary structure” (Shults, 1997), and two psychological theories of stages of faith development (Genia, 1995; Peck, 1990). The practice implications for  interdisciplinary discussion and counsellor-client encounters are hypothesised. It is concluded that there is a place for all underlying fiduciary structures/stages of faith with different implications for each, depending upon the intersubjective field of the interlocutors as they pursue “the scent of Love” (Miller 1983 as cited in Peck, 1990, p. 294).

Introduction

The relationship between the postmodern metaphors of “intersubjectivity” (Stolorow, Brandchaft, & Atwood cited in Baker, 1999), “underlying fiduciary structure” (Shults, 1997), and two psychological theories of stages of faith development (Genia, 1995; Peck, 1990) is employed in this paper to explore the problematic discussion of the integration of theology and psychology.  These metaphors open the pastoral counsellor to theoretical narratives that can be used to explain how different people engage in the problem, as inter-disciplinarians, practicing counsellors and clients. Consequently, these narratives construct a range of positions from which the counsellor and client can engage in the counsellor-client encounter, each position with its own particular set of practice implications. Firstly, the metaphor of “intersubjectivity” is discussed.

 The postmodern metaphor of “intersubjectivity”

Intersubjectivity challenges the modernist assumption of “objectivity” by constructing the counselling–client relationship as being “co-determined by both participants in the transference field” (Baker, 1999, p.293). The postmodern position scathingly defines the modernist concept of objectivity, “as a disguise for power or authority in the academy, and often as the last fortress of white male privilege” (Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy, cited in McDowell, 1999, p. 618). The modernist position constructs the counsellor as the person with the authoritative construction of reality whose task it is to bring the client to this same reality. The counsellor holds the power in the modernist position. Baker (1999), when discussing therapeutic impasses with the resistances in religious patients argues:

The basic assumption of this classical perspective is that the therapist has a more accurate understanding of how the patient should perceive their relationship, and activity by the patient that is in opposition to the therapist’s guidance in the course of treatment is termed resistance. (p. 292)

This modernist, objective psychological position is what Baker calls “one-person” (p. 292) psychology. Being able to delegitimise this authoritative position is an example of a benefit of postmodern critique for previously marginalised positions, that Shults (1997) acknowledges has “demonstrated the provisional, subjective, and contextual nature of our disciplinary knowledge and theorizing"”(p. 329).

The postmodern position focusses on the relationship between the counsellor and client, the “therapist-patient dyad” (p. 292), that Baker (1999) describes as a shift to “two-person psychology” (p. 292). This “paradigm shift” (Rabin as cited in Baker, p. 291) insists that the “subjectivity” (Baker, p. 292) of both the counsellor and client be explicated. Baker explains that his use of the term “subjectivity,” when referring to “either a patient or therapist….(is) the subjective experience of that person which is necessarily filtered through his or her organizing principles.” (p. 292). Baker builds his discussion upon Trop’s (1994 as cited in Baker) construction of the concept of organizing principles:

Organizing principles are mental schemata that are primarily unconscious and serve to thematise and give structure to affective experiences, much like a blueprint provides the structure necessary to build a house. Just like a blueprint is not part of the physical house, organizing principles are not part of the content of human experience, but exist as a means of structuring experience in meaningful ways. (p. 292)

This idea of organising principles as unconscious mental schemata that give structure through which the individual makes sense of his or her experience in meaningful ways is what Shults (1997) develops in his phrase “underlying fiduciary structure.” The paradigm shift from the modernist “one person” psychology to the postmodern “two person psychology” is an example of a shift from one underlying fiduciary structure to another, capable of “holding” more complex, relational concepts. So, from a postmodern position, the counsellor and client both bring their underlying fiduciary structures to the counsellor-client encounter, consequently, as Baker (1999) argues, they bring their subjectivites to the encounter. Their subjectivities are a direct result of their underlying fiduciary structures. It is the intersubjective relationship that occurs between these two subjectivities that determines the consequent practice implications. The postmodern emphasis is on the relationship, not the content of the discipline area. This is because it is the relationship, the intersubjective field, that will mediate the interpretations of the content that both counsellor and client will arrive at. The modernist underlying fiduciary structure position will not engage in this level of relational discussion.

The postmodern metaphor of “underlying fiduciary structure”

Shults’ (1997), without reference to Trop (1994 as cited in Baker, 1999),  explains the phrase “underlying fiduciary structure” as being concerned with “the deeper level of the holding structure that subtends the self and its relation to its world view" (p. 330). He goes beyond Trop’s explanation of giving structure to affective experiences, to encompass meaning making of cognitive experiences as well. The word “fiduciary” comes from the word faith. Shults explains that the Greek word for faith means “to bind” (p. 330) and Shults is acknowledging that a person is bound to their methodology through their unconscious faith in their underlying organising principles. He explains:

I am using methodological faith in this context to refer to the way a person is related to knowledge, that is, the way he or she holds the relation of the self as knower to the reality studied by each discipline. (Shults, p. 330)

Shults’ postmodern position is evident in the usage of the term “methodological faith” which in the modernist scientific paradigm would be an oxymoron. Also, the postmodern position is evident in the focus on the relationship between the knower and the reality producing the meaning making rather than the modernist position of objective Truth residing in the content of the discipline area.

Shults (1997) proposes a classification of three different underlying fiduciary structures: “traditionalist,” “modernist,” and “postmodernist” that provide increasingly complex developmental levels that determine a person’s ability to construct their “relation of the self to its knowledge of reality” (p. 330). He builds upon Kegan’s “subject-object” theory that posits five “orders of consciousness”(Shults, p. 331), one evolving from the other in increasing complexity, each successive one taking “as object what was previously lived or experienced as subject" (p. 331) (see Table 1). Speaking specifically to the psychology theology dialogue, Shults argues that many stakeholders miss the point of integration of the disciplines. They do this because their underlying fiduciary structures through which they make meaning are not sufficiently complex to hold the relational concepts and paradoxes that will inevitably be encountered in this endeavour. Shults argues:

We will see that many of the participants in the current dialogue between  psychology and theology use  relational language (or content), but seem to relate to the relationship in a way that is not fully up to the task of subtending  inherently relational concepts. That is to say, the relational structure of their frame of reference has not developed sufficiently to support the explanatory concepts which are referents in the frame. (p. 330)

The traditionalist underlying fiduciary structure is the first category that Shults charges with this claim. (see Table 1 & 2 )

Table 1:

Summary of Kegan’s Five “Orders of Consciousness”

Subject	Object	Underlying Structure
1 Perceptions Impulses	Movement Sensation	Single Point/Immediate/Atomistic
2 Concrete Point of View Enduring Dispositions	Perceptions Impulses	Durable Category
3 Traditionalism Abstractions Interpersonalism Inner States	Concrete Point of View Enduring Dispositions	Cross-Categorical, Trans-Categorical Stepping outside of one’s “point of view,” to see it as object among other possible “points of view.”
4 Modernism Abstract Systems Ideology Self-Formation	Abstractions Interpersonalism Inner States	System/Complex   A mental structure that “subtends, subordinates, acts upon, directs, and actually generates the  meaning of relationships.”
5 Postmodernism Trans-Ideological Inter-Institutional Self-Transformation	Abstract Systems Ideology Self-Formation	Trans-System, Trans-Complex   Systemic knowing itself is relativized, made object instead of subject. Relationship is seen as prior to the elements in relation.

Adapted from Kegan, In Over Our Heads, 1994, p. 314  (Shults, 1997, p.331)

Table 2

Fiduciary Structures and the Shaping of Interdisciplinary Method

Fiduciary Structure	Shaping of Interdisciplinary Method
Traditionalist Fiduciary Structure   (parallel to Kegan’s third order of consciousness)	Interdisciplinary method: “ex parte relationality” Relation between disciplines is viewed “from one side only.”   Tendency of the interdisciplinarian to collapse the double bind by leaning toward the “absolute” or objective pole.
Modernist Fiduciary Structure   (parallel to Kegan’s fourth order of consciousness)	Interdisciplinary method: “ab extra relationality” The relationality (between disciplines) itself becomes the object of reflection, but one starts with the disciplines as separate, and then analyses the relation “from the outside.”   Tendency of the interdisciplinarian to collapse the double bind by leaning toward the “relative” or subjective pole.
Postmodernist Fiduciary Structure   (parallel to Kegan’s fifth order of consciousness)	Interdisciplinary method: “ab intra  relationality” The relation of the disciplines is held on to “from within” the relationality itself. One starts by indwelling the tensional unity that constitutes the interdisciplinary relation.   Tendency of the interdisciplinarian to allow the prior relationality of subject-object in knowledge to shape the resolution of the double-bind.

Note: Children or adolescents with first and second “orders of consciousness” are at a developmental stage incapable of holding on to an understanding of relations between disciplines. In the first order (atomistic) individual, there would be no consciousness of relationality, no sense of a distinct discipline. For an individual at the second order (durable category), the concept of a discipline emerges as a category, but experience can only be constructed or understood from within the category. A fiduciary structure (or methodological “faith”) sufficiently complex for interdisciplinary discourse is only possible after movement to the third order of consciousness. (Shults, 1997, p. 334)  

The traditionalist underlying fiduciary structure

The traditionalist’s underlying fiduciary structure (see Table 2) positions the “reader” of the “text” of the psychology theology integration discussion to read the relationship between the disciplines from one of the discipline areas only, in a reductionistic way. Shults cites the materialistic behaviourism of Skinner (1971) and the spiritual reductionism of Adams (1970) as an example from each discipline (p. 335). As Shults explains, “The point here is not the content, but the way the interdisciplinarian holds onto the relationship” (p. 334). This foundationalist epistemology provides no room for serious dialogue. As Van Huyssteen (as cited in Shults) argues:

Both believe that there are serious conflicts between contemporary science and religious beliefs, both seek knowledge with a secure and incontrovertible foundation, and find this in either logic and sense data (science), or in an infallible scripture or self-authenticating revelation (theology); both claim that science and theology make rival claims about the same domain and one has to choose between them. (p. 335)

There is no room for dialogue about integration at this level of underlying fiduciary structure. The readers of the text can only hold absolutes from within their own discipline areas. Shults calls this interdisciplinary method “ex parte  relationality” (p. 334). Jones and Butman (1991) also cite Adams when they are discussing integration, referring to an exchange that one of the authors had with Jay Adams. Adams was asked if he had any advice for Christians who were studying psychology. Adams replied, “Drop out of graduate school. If you want to serve God as a counselor, you can only do so by going to seminary, studying the word of God rather than the words of men, and becoming a pastor” (as cited in Jones & Butman, p. 18).

 

This dogmatic approach characteristic of the traditionalist underlying fiduciary structure is also characteristic of both Peck’s (1990) stage two, “formal, institutional” (p. 188) stage of faith development and Genia’s (1995) stage two, “dogmatic faith” (p. 51). Peck argues that stage two people make up the “majority of churchgoers and believers (as well as that of most emotionally healthy “latency” period children)” (p. 190). He characterises stage two people as being attached to the forms rather than essence of their religion and conceptualising God as an external, transcendent Being (p. 190). Stage two people are “letter of the law” people and this makes them closed to new and challenging ideas. So, the traditionalist underlying fiduciary structure concurs with stage two, formal, institutional/dogmatics. This position, when held by one or both participants in the counsellor-client encounter would necessarily impact upon the relationship that is the intersubjective field, depending upon what dyadic pairing of fiduciary structures were engaging. For example, two stage two people would probably confirm each other’s traditionalist fiduciary structure and encourage each other to remain as stage two, formal, institutional/dogmatics. When the mystic, Meister Eckhart told people that they have to reject God to find God, he was probably talking to stage two, dogmatics. The next of Shult’s (1997) stages is called the modernist fiduciary structure.

The modernist fiduciary structure

Shults (1997) argues that the modernist fiduciary structure positions its readers of the text of the theology psychology integration discussion to reflect upon the relationality between the disciplines. However, as Shults explains, “one starts from the disciplines as separate, and then analyses the relationship “from outside the relationality itself” (p. 334). He calls this “ab extra relationality.” So, for the interdisciplinarian, their discipline’s content and methods precede the relationship of dialogue with the other discipline. Shults explains, “One begins by abstracting the fields of study as though they were not in relation, and then asks how to relate them” (p. 334). He argues that this is the fiduciary structure that most theologians and psychologists have who are engaging in struggling with issues of epistemology and interdisciplinary method. He acknowledges that “the fiduciary structure is adequate for most psychological and theological work” (p. 335). However, Shults argues that, “Its limitations are revealed only when relational realities that demand new modes of thinking are introduced into our experience” (p. 335).

Shults (1997) contrasts this modernist fiduciary structure with the traditionalist structure, arguing that they make two separate poles of a double-bind. The traditionalists lean towards absolutism and the modernists towards relativism. He argues that neither of these structures are sufficiently sophisticated enough to “hold” the kinds of relational concepts that emerge from a postmodern fiduciary structure. As quoted earlier, Shults argues:  

That is to say, the relational structure of their frame of reference has not developed sufficiently to support the explanatory concepts which are referents in the frame. (p. 330)

The modernist fiduciary structure is more complex than the traditionalist structure thus positioning the subjectivity to be open to engagement with positions other than itself, rather than the traditionalist position of refusing to engage. However, the limitations of the modernist fiduciary structure will consequently impact upon the intersubjective field relationship that is engaged in between the interdisciplinary readers and writers. Shults draws upon an analogy of A.A. Sappington (1994 cited in Shults, pp. 335-336) to illustrate:

Consistent with a modernist fiduciary structure, he (Sappington) exhibits a relativizing tendency, reducing “Christian living” to functional descriptions. He offers the analogy of a person praying to God for help in crossing a river, while a rowboat sits nearby. While admitting God could miraculously provide transport, Sappington suggests the rowboat (psychology) may be the answer to the prayer (p.13). This metaphor clearly shows the precipitate separation between the disciplines in Sappington’s mind. Either God makes it happen or we use psychology. Even his subtitle, “putting psychology at the service of the church,” indicates an ab extra way of approaching the relation between psychology and theology. (Shults, p. 336)

The modernist is a seeker of the Truth and is open to engaging in both disciplines. It is the way he or she engages that makes him, or her, a modernist.

Another example of the modernist fiduciary structure, and a most sophisticated one at that, is Jones and Butman (1991). They clearly position themselves in this structure when they explicate their framework for examining psychotherapy theories as “humanizer or Christianizer of science” (p. 20):

An approach that involves the explicit incorporation of religiously based beliefs as the control that shape the perception of facts, theories and methods in social science (e.g. Evans, 1977, 1989; or Van Leeuwen, 1985). (Jones & Butman, p. 20)

Jones and Butman provide an insightful modernist critique of both theology and psychology demonstrating well-honed critical thinking belonging to this fiduciary structure that challenges the certainty of the traditionalist fiduciary structure’s position. The backcover “blurb” of Jones and Butman says, “this book represents a third stage in the complicated relationship between faith and psychology. That stage is the critical, theologically informed appropriation of psychotherapy.”  The key word here is appropriation. From a postmodern underlying fiduciary structure position, the modernist position appropriates one discipline for the other. This is appropriation not integration. This openness to new ideas that characterises the modernist underlying fiduciary structure is also characteristic of Peck’ (1990) stage three “skeptic, individual” stage of faith (p. 188) and Genia’s (1995) stages three and four, “transitional” (p. 75) and “reconstructed” (p. 97) stages of faith. Peck characterises these people as “often deeply involved in and committed to social causes…..highly submitted to principle…. Advanced Stage III men and women are active truth seekers” (p. 191-192). This position, when held by one or both participants in the counsellor-client encounter would necessarily impact upon the relationship that is the intersubjective field, depending upon what dyadic pairing of fiduciary structures were engaging. However, Shults (1997) argues that the modernist underlying fiduciary structure is not capable of holding relational postmodern concepts faithfully.      

The postmodernist underlying fiduciary structure

The postmodernist underlying fiduciary structure, as already discussed, begins with the relationality of the intersubjective field. Shults (1997) says that the:

prime indicators are (a) starting (ab intra) with the relationality of the  disciplines and (b) including the irreducible influence of the knower in the act of constructing an interdisciplinary method. (p. 337)

Shults goes on to say, “knowledge emerges out of relationality inherent in reality” (p. 338). In contrast to the individualist construction of the person in, for example, the modernist scientific paradigm, or the external, anthropomorphic construction of God the Father as separate from the person, both products of the modernist underlying fiduciary structure, the postmodern construction of the person is relational. For a Christian with a postmodern structure the primary relationship is Jesus-God-Holy Spirit, that is, the Trinity, and the human person. The person is the relationship of him or herself with the Trinity. The traditionalist and modernist positions construct the person as in relationship with the Trinity, who is separate from him or herself.

 

The postmodern underlying fiduciary structure “maps” the inter-connectedness of all things. So, the postmodern Christian position would posit the relationship of human person-Trinity at the centre of a web of relationships that would inter-connect the human person-Trinity relationship with all relational aspects of his or her relational reality. She or he would be intersubjectivity not have a subjectivity. There is an ontological difference. The modernist, Descarte said, “I think therefore I am” (http://college.hmco.com/history/west/mosaic/chapter11/source351.html). A person with a postmodern underlying fiduciary structure would say, “I am relationship” or more simply, “I am” which is what God said (Exodus 3: 14). Shults discusses the relational unity of Jesus as truly God and truly human to argue the position that the “hypostatic union…constitutes the ontological ground for claiming that relationship is definitive for reality” (p. 337)

 

The medieval Christian mystic, Symeon understood this relationality because he lived it. de Catanzano (1980) succinctly captures Symeon’s experience in the following explanation:

…But every theme that Symeon presents to his readers is only part of a whole. The ascetical practices that he develops and the constant stress on purification and repentance have meaning only in the light of the goal, the divinization of the individual Christian into a loving child of God, more and more consciously aware of the transforming love of the indwelling Trinity that makes him “a god by adoption and grace,” a phrase repeated continually by Symeon. …He wishes to move Christians away from any superficial, externally motivated relationship with God into a deeper person-to-person relationship. This means one has to destroy idols, go beyond words and ideas, and live in the awesome darkness of mystery that becomes a light to those who have become purified. The inner presence of the Trinity, like a magnet, draws man’s  “conscious attention” away from old mental concepts that have become cliched and lifeless into a new manner of intuitively experiencing or knowing God. As the Trinity becomes that center of inner direction, the individual loses the conscious control he  had developed earlier…… Jesus Christ as Light, along with the two indwelling Divine Persons as Light, unites Himself with the Christian, making him “light from Light, true god from God.” This union defies description. (pp.35-36)

This is ontologically a very different way of being in the world from the traditionalist and modernist underlying fiduciary structures’ positions. The mystics are examples of Peck’s stage four, “mystic, communal” (p. 188) and Genia’s stage five, “transcendent faith” (p. 106) stages of faith. Their way of being in the world is relational. They are examples of intersubjectivities that would have postmodern underlying fiduciary structures.

 

The postmodern underlying fiduciary structure collapses the traditionalist and modernist underlying fiduciary structures’ boundaries. It is a completely different way of being in the world. It is incomprehensible to the other structures because it is paradoxical and outside of ideology, “one has to destroy idols” (de Catanzano, 1980, pp. 36). It draws its wisdom from the Silence of God not language; “go beyond words and ideas, and live in the awesome darkness of mystery” (de Catanzano, 1980, pp. 36). The traditionalist and modernist underlying fiduciary structures are ideological because they are contained within language, and seek to explain paradox rather than create it.

 

Shults (1997) argues that “having the right content in our interdisciplinary method is not enough” (p. 338).  He wants to develop an interdisciplinary method that is capable of holding postmodern underlying fiduciary structure’s relationality for the theology psychology integration discussion. One problem in communicating this interdisciplinary method will be that many people with not be able to “hold” such complex relational concepts in their underlying fiduciary structures. As Kegan (1994 as cited in Shults) laments when discussing his orders of consciousness:

Introducing new complex ideas constructed by a fourth order of consciousness to a person who still constructs the subject-object relation in the third order will not of itself accomplish a transformation. Rather, the person will simply fit the new concept into the old order on behalf of the old consiousness! (p. 332)

The power of transformation lies within God’s grace alone. Language can describe it but only divine relationship can make it possible to experience.

 

The second problem facing Shult’s (1997) desire to develop an interdisciplinary method capable of holding postmodern underlying fiduciary structure’s relationality is that many stage four mystics may see the debate as irrelevant. They know that every step of the journey is of the same value and they will not feel any need to convince people through logical discussion; the psychology-theology integration project itself being a stage three (Peck, 1990) discussion. In the Rig Veda, an ancient Hindu sacred text, it is written, “Truth is One and the learned call it by many different names” (Freke, 1998, p.11). Mystics know that to find the Truth one has to empty of ideological attachments. The world’s religions all advocate that the disciple enter an inner journey to attain self-knowledge. Common to all traditions are meditation and prayer practices that take the disciple into silence. The Christian mystic, Meister Eckhart said, “ There is nothing so much like God in all the universe as silence (Dowling, 1998, p.143).” The Hindu Maharamayana states, “The supreme truth is established by total silence, not logical discussion and argument. He alone sees the truth who sees the universe without intervention of the mind, and therefore without the notion of a universe (Freke, 1998, p. 16).” This is paradox that is engaged in through spiritual practice, in a relational space where there is no duality because everything is interconnected; I am; Om. There is no need to discuss integration here.

 

This relationship is about surrender and service. So, the mystic knows that all on the journey need to be accepted, loved and honoured, regardless of their underlying fiduciary structures or stages of faith, so that in that relationship of compassion, God is. The counsellor living this relationship would impact upon the counsellor-client intersubjective field.

Practice implications for the pastoral counsellor

In practice, the dynamic of the counsellor-client dyadic intersubjective field would concur with the relationship of the underlying fiduciary structures and their concurring stages of faith development, of the intersubjective subjectivities of both counsellor and client. For example, traditionalist fiduciary structure/stage two fundamentalist Christian counsellors may be an excellent help for clients who have just made the transition from Peck’s (1990) stage one, “chaotic, antisocial” (p. 188) and Genia’s (1995) stage one, “egocentric faith” (p. 19) to a traditionalist fiduciary structure/stage two faith. Shults (1997) does not bother to map the stage one faith level of fiduciary structure because his discussion is specifically focussed upon the theology psychology integration debate at the theoretical level. Stage one people would not have underlying organising structures developed enough to engage in this level of discussion. Peck characterises stage one people as needing certainty and “letter of the law” structures to stabilise their chaos. Traditionalist fiduciary structure/stage two counsellors could provide this kind of rigidity necessary to create enough trust, stability and certainty for the stage one person who has experienced a conversion to traditionalist/stage two, to stop them from “backsliding” (p. 193) to stage one. Peck explains:

From time to time people in stage one get in touch with the chaos of their being, and when they do, I think it is the most painful experience a human can have. Usually they just ride it out unchanged. A few, I suspect, kill themselves, unable to envision change. And some, occasionally, convert to stage II. Such conversions are usually sudden and dramatic and, I believe God given. It is as if God had reached down and grabbed that soul and yanked it up a quantum leap. The process also seems to be an unconscious one. It just seems to happen. But if it could be made conscious, it might be as if the person said to himself, “Anything, anything is preferable to this chaos. I am willing to do anything to liberate myself from this chaos, even to submit myself to an institution for my governance…for most, the institution to which they submit themselves for governance is the church. (pp. 189-190)

Peck identifies this problem of backsliding and says that it affects people in all stages of faith (p. 193). The traditionalist/stage two counsellor-stage one/two/ traditionalist client intersubjective field would be the most effective dyadic relationship for preventing the stage one /two/traditionalist client from backsliding.

Most importantly, Peck (1990) discusses that people in different stages of faith experience a “sense of threat” (p. 194) from people in stages above them. He makes the point of how important it is for “teachers, healers and ministers” (p. 195), and this author would specify pastoral counsellors, to be cognizant of this sense of threat  because “the art of being a good (pastoral counsellor)…consists largely of staying just one step ahead of your…clients” (p. 195). Peck argues:

If you are not ahead, it is unlikely that you will be able to lead them anywhere. But if you are two steps ahead, it is likely that you will lose them. If people are one step ahead of us, we usually admire them. If they are two steps ahead of us, we usually think they are evil. That’s why Socrates and Jesus were killed; they were thought to be evil. (p. 195)

Peck also discusses the problem of the difficulty for people, of reaching down two or more steps from their stage of faith development.

Peck (1990) argues that a stage four person, though engaged deeply, is not necessarily “the best therapist for many” (p. 195). This position regarding the stage four therapist aligns well with this author’s position regarding the stage four person’s engagement in the theology psychology integration debate, discussed earlier, because the stage four person’s paradigm is so radically different. Peck succinctly summarises the practice implications for the counsellor-client dyadic relationship when he says:

Generally speaking, Stage II people and programs offer the best therapy for Stage I people. Psychiatrists and psychologists in this country-primarily a Stage III group-have generally served their culture well as guides for those making the journey out of the dependent Stage II mentality. Stage IV therapists do best leading highly independent people toward a recognition of the mystical interdependence of this world. Most all of us are pulling someone up with one hand while we ourselves are being pulled up by the other. (p. 195-196)

Both in therapy and in theoretical discussion there is a place for all underlying fiduciary structures/stages of faith with different implications for all depending upon the intersubjective field of the interlocutors as they pursue “the scent of Love” (Miller 1983 as cited in Peck, 1990, p. 294).

Conclusion

The problematic discussion of the integration of theology and psychology is illuminated by this postmodern reading of the relationship between the postmodern metaphors of “intersubjectivity” (Stolorow, Brandchaft, & Atwood cited in Baker, 1999); and “underlying fiduciary structure” (Shults, 1997); and Genia (1995) and Peck’s (1990) psychological theories of stages of faith development, for both the theoretical interdisciplinarian and the counsellor and client, in their relationships. The postmodern point of this paper is not to prove which theoretical interdisciplinary position is “right.”  It is to acknowledge how and why different people construct the different positions that they do and to acknowledge that each position meets a need in the person that espouses it. 

 

Only God provides the power of transformation. The discipline areas of theology and psychology can only talk about that process. This postmodern position opens the pastoral counsellor to theoretical narratives that can be used to explain how different people engage in the problem, as theoretical interdisciplinarians, and practicing counsellors and clients. How the counsellor will engage in those narratives will depend upon his or her underlying fiduciary structure and stage of faith development. Consequently, the intersubjective subjectivity of the counsellor engaging in both the theoretical discussion and with clients, who also have their own intersubjectivites, will determine what readings will be produced by the interlocutors. Consequently, these readings will each determine their own particular set of practice implications.

References

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Barker, K. (Ed.) (1985). The NIV Study Bible: New international version. Grand Rapids: Zondervan.

De Catanzaro, C. (transl.). (1980). The new theologian: The discourses: The classics of western spirituality. New York: The Missionary Society of St Paul of the Apostle.

Dowling Singh, K. (1998). The grace in dying: A message of hope, comfort, and spiritual transformation. San Francisco: Harper.

 

Freke, T. (1998). The wisdom of the hindu gurus. Massachusetts: Journey Editions.

 

Peck, M. (1990). The different drum: The creation of true community-the first step to world peace. London: Arrow Books Limited.

 

Genia, V. (1995). Counseling and psychotherapy of religious patients: A developmental approach. Westport: Praeger. http://college.hmco.com/history/west/mosaic/chapter11/source351.html. Retrieved 16.4.03.

 

Jones, S., & Butman, R., (1991). Modern psychotherapies. A comprehensive Christian appraisal. Illinois: Intervarsity Press.

 

McDowell, J. (1999). The new evidence demands a verdict. Nashville: Thomas Nelson.

Shults, F. (1997). “Holding on” to the theology-psychology relationship: The underlying fiduciary structures of interdisciplinary method. Journal of  Psychology and Theology, 25(3), 329-340.

 

Jade Ireland graduated from the Master of Social Science (Pastoral Counselling) ACU in 2005. She has a B.A. (Com) USQ; Grad. Dip. (Sec. Ed.) and Grad. Cert. (R.E.) ACU; and M. Bus.(Com) QUT. Jade is currently working as a volunteer telephone bereavement counsellor at the Karuna Hospice Service in Brisbane. She is also studying and practising yoga and Tibetan Buddhist meditation.

Email: irelandbentley@bigpond.com

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