Human Being

Jocelyn Bryan

Description

Drawing on recent research, this book provides a psychological perspective on key aspects of human nature and behaviour and reflects on the issues this raises for theology and ministry.

Informations

• Publié par: Hymns Ancient & Modern
• Date de parution: 30 juin 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780334049340
• Langue: English

Extrait

Human Being: Insights From Psychology and the Christian Faith
Jocelyn Bryan





Copyright information
© Jocelyn Bryan, 2016
First published in 2016 by SCM Press
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
978 0 334 04924 1
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Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd




Contents
Preface

1. Introduction: Human Beings
2. Living Narratives: Psychology, Theology and Human Experience
3. Narrative and Meaning-Making
4. Personality: Uncovering the Mystery of Who We Are
5. Goals and Motivation
6. Social Being
7. Understanding Emotions: The Colour of Experience and the Tone of the Narrative
8. Self-Regulation, Emotion and Narrative
9. Self-Esteem
10. Memory, Narrative, Identity and Ageing

Bibliography





Preface
During the past 20 years interdisciplinary academic research has become increasingly prevalent. Most, if not all, disciplines recognize an overlap of interests with other fields and are open to engaging with different perspectives in order to enrich our understanding of the world. Furthermore, there has been a significant shift in attitudes towards intra-disciplinary working. Thirty years ago, those engaged in neuropsychology were rarely in conversation with social psychologists; but today the perspectives of neuropsychology, evolutionary psychology, cognitive and social psychology are frequently brought into dialogue with one another. In parallel with these moves, practical theology has established the importance of cross-disciplinary dialogue between theology and other disciplines so that we might respond to the situations and issues which confront us with both theological integrity and wisdom.
An obvious dialogue partner for theology is psychology. Both disciplines take human experience seriously. Psychology studies human nature and experience to explain human thinking, feeling and action. It is also concerned with what enables human beings to develop and flourish. Theology and the Christian faith assert that God is active in the lives of human beings and indeed in all creation. Thus, identifying the work of God through and in human experience is one of the tasks of theology. In his letter to the Romans, Paul writes that, ‘Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made’ (1.20). Creation, including human nature and experience, is a source of revelation. Furthermore, our knowledge and beliefs concerning God begin and develop through our experience. In both theology and psychology human experience is analysed and a source of knowledge. They are markedly different in their approach; psychology is reductionist, and theology is rightly suspicious of the interpretation of the ‘nothing but’ theories present within the discipline. Both disciplines also hold different views on the purpose of human life and human nature, but as Watts suggests, there is still a lot to be gained from engaging with their ‘complementary perspectives to elucidate different aspects of [various] phenomena’ and there is ‘value in bringing them into creative dialogue’. 1
As a psychologist, working in ministerial formation for the past 15 years, my teaching has sought to establish this dialogue as essential to pastoral theology and practical theology. In the course of analysing a pastoral situation or incident, the insights of psychology have provided an important voice in determining a Christian response which is faithful to the gospel. This response must always be respectful and never diminish the human beings involved by reducing them to a model of the human person which fails to acknowledge their role in creation and the image of God within them. Hence the task has been to interpret the evidence from psychology through the lens of theological understandings of human nature and purpose.
This book aims to document this enterprise. By intersecting human experience and purpose as described by psychology with the description offered in the biblical narrative, I hope to enrich a Christian description and understanding of human being . The complexity of the reality of human experience means that this project is by no means complete. However, if it sparks interest to understand more fully what it means to be human by critically engaging with psychological research in a well-informed way then it has been worthwhile. It also aims to be a resource which will transform our understanding of ourselves and others.
We spend a significant amount of our lives listening to the stories of others’ experiences and telling our own story. In these narratives human experience is captured, reflected upon, and the process of meaning-making occurs. We live within our personal story, and this in turn intersects with numerous stories of others which are part of the web of relationships that constitute our social world. Into this web, the stories of our community, society, and ultimately the story of God are woven. They have a varying amount of influence on the narrative of our lives, but they shape and sometimes transform our narrative. The relationship between narrative, human experience and identity is a constant theme in the book. By offering psychological reflection on stories from the biblical narrative and setting this in dialogue with a theological reflection, resonances between the two approaches emerge which I hope will deepen our understanding of the transformative power of the gospel at work in people’s lives.
There are many people who deserve my thanks for their support during the process of conceiving and writing this book. My colleagues at Cranmer Hall and The Wesley Study Centre have graciously made space for a psychologist in a community of theologians. They have listened to my different questions and enriched my theological knowledge and understanding. This book would not have been possible without them. Natalie Watson has encouraged me over the past five years to write the book I wanted to write, and has never ceased in her support. Many students have wanted this book to accompany my teaching; their enthusiasm for the creative interface between psychology and the Christian faith, and their stories of its impact on their ministry, have also sustained my belief in the enterprise. Also, thanks to Rachel for reading the draft and offering such helpful comment and critique. As always, I am eternally grateful to my husband Steve and my children, Will, Rachel and Ed. More than anyone else, you four have taught me so much about myself and the power of love to sustain, enrich and ultimately transform human experience. This is for you.
JMB
Epiphany 2016
Note


1 Watts, F., 2010, ‘Psychology and theology’, in Harrison, P. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Science and Religion , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 191–3.



1. Introduction: Human Beings
In the month and year of my birth, the city of Berlin was carved in two. Overnight it became host to a wall that would mark the division between two global political ideologies for the next 28 years. Newsreel footage from the time shows the desperation of the citizens of Berlin as they literally jump from the windows of houses to freedom in the West. Their everyday lives were dramatically changed in a matter of hours. Families, friends, communities were divided physically and emotionally. The political story of the wall became cruelly entwined with the lives of Berlin’s citizens. Of course I have no recollection of the wall being built, but it signified one of the most important social and political divides in my lifetime, the consequences of which are still played out on the world stage today and, however remotely, they have impacted on my life.
Frieda Schulze was 77 years old when she made her attempt to flee into West Berlin. In a dramatic scene, the East German police held onto her through a window in the East while she was being pulled down by her neighbours in the West. Matt Frei, 2 in his BBC series on Berlin, describes Frieda in that moment as being Berlin ‘suspended between two regimes, two ideologies, two halves of the world’. After she finally fell into the West of the city, Frei notes that ‘she slipped quietly into the shadows’. The majority of those who had witnessed the scene would never see or hear of her again. But, for Frieda, it was likely that this episode was the self-defining moment for the rest of her life. The intensification of emotion, fear and action would be etched deeply in her memory. It was a life-changing moment, in which not only the map of the city but the map of her life was redrawn. She, and many others like her, would see and identify themselves in a different way after the trauma of August 1961. Frei suggests that what characterized Freida on that day is also present in the faces of Berliners today ‘in their resistance, the