***
When I was considering writing my autobiography, as I wrote in some of my earlier posts, I really considered some of the ramifications and my attitudes about it and those kinds of things. When I collected these articles I wasn't doing it for anyone but for myself to try to understand my life. So it was only for myself and not for anyone else that I even have these articles.It's a whole other thing as far as why I am writing this blog in the first place and secondly why I am using the articles in it. I didn't have to, after all. But I've gone through so much since then that I've found that nobody understands me. It's really awful to have no one understand you. Some people think I'm lazy, others think I'm greedy, still others think I'm just plain crazy, and a whole other group just think I should get married.
And you know, before you know it, I just can't do anything right and no one will give me a chance anyway because they've written me for one or the other of these reasons, whether or not it's true. And chances are they h heard it from someone who has some vested interest in whatever it is being true or maybe they visited me somewhere where I was living and they think they understand everything there is to know about me there from seeing that surface part of my life there. And that's what they go tell everyone and they believe it and then people won't believe my story of my own life.
That's the truth.
***
The next article is:
Oden, Thomas C. (1980, Fall). Recovering lost identity. Military Chaplains' Review, p. 29-45.
The title, at least, seems appropriate, considering my diatribe above.
***
"I found that all seven turn-of-the-century authors quoted or referred to at least once to Chrystostom, Augustine, Luther and Baxter... There were 154 references to these ten classical pastoral guides...
Curosity aroused, I then selected seven major contemporary writers on pastoral conseling... I checked the indices of all these well-known references and could not find one sincle quotation by or reference to any of our classical figures!...
... I found 330 references to these modern figures in the same books, including 109 to Freud, 101 to Rogers, 45 to Jung, 27 to Fromm, 26 to Berne and 22 to Sullivan." (p. 36)
Here, while the author (because of the journal) was addressing military chaplains, was studying civilian sources, which military chaplains also utilize. So he seems to bemoaning the over-reliance on then contemporary secular psychology in Christian counseling books, especially in comparison to earlier ones.
I find this concern encouraging. However, that being said, I have seen it happen altogether too often (maybe I was in the wrong circles, I don't know) that Scripture can very easily be misused in counseling, which it was in the Vienna mission. There's not a thing you can do about it though. At least that's how I felt, and I don't think anyone would have been in a position to stand up for me. For example, if I had mentioned to a theologian, even casually that someone had given such and such a Scriptual passage a certain interpretation, well, first of all they undoubtedly would have understood right away what was going on and probably would not have wanted to get involved, especially since my boss was the second in command. But it's possible that someone might have offered that that was a strange interpretation and may have helped me out some, perhaps with some information to help me know what to do. It's possible.
But the thing is that why on earth could they misuse the Scripture like that in the first place?
The other thing is just to deal with surface issues with Scripture and gloss over the real meat of what's going on. Well, and that's when you'll probably get a power struggle because they wouldn't get to the meat of anything, not on your life. Are you kidding?
***
"What has occurred subsequently are wave after wave of various hegemonies of emergent psychologies accommodated cheaply into pastoral care without much self-conscious identity formation from the tradition." (p. 39)
I think this writer must be familiar with Habermas and the lifeworld hegemony theory because his thinking has some similarity it seems with that line of thought.
I must admit that this author does seem to make some sense. He makes it sound, however, like he is the minority and most military chaplains have gone the way of the world as far as counseling is concerned. If this is the case, then there is a good chance that maybe the chaplains in the Vienna mission followed more the secular line of counseling also. At the very least they surely would have been exposed to it as reserve chaplains.
***
"An accumulation of controlled studies by highly respected psychologists (Allen Bergin, Hans Eysenck, Hans Strupp, Meltzoff and Kornreich, Jerome Frank, Whitehorn and Betz, Truax and Carkhuff, Philip Hanson and others) has convincingly shown that average psychotherapy is not more effective than the cure rate that eventuates merely through the passage of time... which have caused me to question the effectiveness of the very psychotherapies upon which I had been building my case as a theologian in dialogue with behavior change theories." (p. 40)
That was most decidedly not the position of the Vienna mission, because they sent not only me but also two mission leaders' wives before me back to the USA for counseling. My position is that they use psychology in their socialization process, including in Vienna. Since I didn't break down in tears at the things they made difficult for me I wasn't a good subject, but that would have set the stage for me entering the counseling process with them there in Vienna. Of course, that's manipulative counseling, whereas if you're sent to the USA to work with a professional, it's not the same. There you're taught to suck up and make the decision finally to bear up and go with the mission. So when you start counseling in the USA it's probably supposed to end out being nothing really, because you've already gotten it all under control, because the problem is how you're going to deal with the mission. Are you in or out?
But for me, I decided that I'm out, but I'll have a dual nature and act like I'm in, hiding the truth from virtually everyone. The thing is, though, that now no one understands. How fortunate I was to have my Grandmother to talk with, because she understood.
***
"The spectre of government-sponsored pastoral counseling not only raises questions of church and state boundaries, but moreso it raises puzzling questions about the extent of disavowal of religious orientation and witness implicit in tax supported counseling...
Some counselors will quickly answer, Yes, I can in good conscience accept government funding, pointing easily to other ministers who have entered government social service." (p. 44)
This whole text is surreal. Did the author not realize that he himself is an example of an issue of "church and state boundaries"? (I.e., not everyone thinks that the existence if military chaplains is respectful of church and state boundaries.) I mean, it is very nice that the author has a conscience about this issue, but I guess he does have a blind spot regarding his own profession. I wish he hadn't ended on that note.
