Lifton, Robert Jay. (1978, Winter). Advocacy and corruption in the healing professions. Military Chaplains' Review, 15-25.
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This article is about a nationwide effort to meet in groups Vietnam veterans in the USA that were under some trauma, but an explicit psychological as avoided (as not being what the vets wanted).
"Guilt and rage were fundamental emotions explored in the groups. But the men had a special anger toward two types of professionals, chaplains and "shrinks." They talked about chaplains great anger and resentment as having blessed the troops, their mission, their guns, and their killing. Catholic veterans spoke of confessing meaningless transgressions while never being held accountable for the ultimate one (killing)." (p. 19)So these vets saw the chaplains basically as stooges of the system and no better than it. So, that's exactly what I'm trying to say: that you have to retain your saltiness and not hide light under a bushel, but if you go compromising left and right with the military and getting all caught up in having to be a soldier and, well, assimilating, which is how they'd say it in crosscultural terms. You can't assimilate, because then you're not different, and you have to be different to be salt to the earth and light of the world. We are to be in the world but not of it, and all the more the chaplain who is in a spiritual leadership position.
So this is exactly what happened and these vets are not stupid they saw it was, and they were right. chaplains had lost their saltiness and had put their light under a barrel because they thought it was more important to assimilate and become a soldier than it was to be a good chaplain. And if he happened to be a Christian he is first and foremost an ambassador for Christ and his citizenship is in heaven
In this case, the chaplains were merely stooges of the military it sounds like. Did they check their brains out at the door? Did they not have an individual, independent ability to think?
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"But in their resentment toward chaplains and psychiatrists the men were saying something more. It was one thing to be ordered into a situation they came to perceive as absurd and evil, but it was quite another to have that process rationalized and justified by authorities of the spirit and mind. Chaplains and psychiatrists formed an unholy alliance not only with the command but also with the more corruptible elements in the psyche.
We can thus speak of a "counterfeit universe" in which pervasive, spiritually reinforced inner corruption becomes the price of survival." (p. 20)I think the Vienna mission had something like this and that was part of the socialization process and how I've been saying that it seemed like they wanted you to sort of come to them with your weaknesses so then they would help you along with the socialization process. It was a kind of a breaking and then they would put you back together again - like Humpty Dumpty. For the secretaries, it would mean sort of fatherly conversations with your boss who would guide you along. But that didn't work for me, I guess, because I didn't do the breaking down, so they had to send me back to the USA to try to do it that way, maybe.
I really resented the "counterfeit universe" of the mission too, for several reasons, I think. In the Vienna mission, I think it was manipulative. Since it was manufactured, it could also easily be changed at a moment's notice for any or no reason. I also didn't think it was necessary for the ministry, unless, of course, there was something else going on that probably shouldn't be.
The rationalization and justification mentioned here also happened in Vienna and H.R director was particularly adept at it, but seasoned and senior others could also do it. They tended to use Scripture or stories in symbolical ways. Of course, they could always say later that they never meant anything by it. But that's just like saying moving someone from an office with a corner window to the basement 't mean anything. I taught ESL/EFL and sociolinguistics and things like connotation were among the things I was most interested in (rather than syntax, which is just a necessary evil as far as language study and teaching is concerned in my opinion). Connotation exists and it's every bit as real as other parts of language and if you want to get technical you can look at all the body language, tone of voice, the intonation, etc., etc., so I don't want to hear from them that "Oh, I didn't mean it that way." I don't think they want to go there.
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I think that's all I want to take from that article, which is nice for me because I'm tired.