Inoperative Love and Social Well-Being in the Face of Oppression: A Psychoanalytic-Agambenian Developmental Perspective and Its Implications for Psychoanalytic Therapy.

The author depicts, relying on several of Giorgio Agamben's philosophical concepts as well as a psychoanalytic developmental perspective, the origins and features of inoperative love and spaces, especially as they pertain to oppressive situations wherein social, political, and economic apparatuses undermine the psychosocial well-being of individuals, families, and communities. In addition, the author conceptualizes psychoanalytic therapy as an inoperative space wherein patients actualize their capacity for impotentiality and experience singularity and rapport.

The taboo of politics in pastoral counseling.

The political realities of society are present in counseling in subtle and overt ways. In this article, I argue that the client's (and counselor's) political experiences, beliefs, and commitments can be and, in many cases, should be explored. The idea of the political self or subjectivity and its identifying features and sources are described.

The clash of Gods: changes in a patient's use of God representations.

In this article, I argue that manifest and latent intrapsychic and interpersonal clashes of god representations, which are inextricably yoked to transference and countertransference communications, signify the patient's and therapist's personal realities and histories. More specifically, the therapist's conscious (relatively speaking) commitment to a god representation will not only shape his/her analytic attitude-as well as interpretations and noninterpretive interventions-it may also be implicated in a patient altering his/her use of god representations. I suggest further that one way to understand the process of psychoanalytic therapy is how both analyst and analysand tacitly face and answer the following questions: What God(s) orients my life and relationships? What God(s) represents subjugation, fear, and the loss of freedom? What God(s) have I repressed? What God(s) represents the possibility and experience of being alive and real with others? In the end, what God(s) will I choose to serve, to surrender to?

Empire matters: implications for pastoral care.

In this essay, I argue that the American Empire matters for pastoral care. I begin with a discussion of the meaning of empire and the particular historical roots and characteristics of the American Empire. From this, I contend that the American Empire matters because the United States has had a long history of expansionist aims, which has been couched in idealized secular discourse as well as ensconced in theo-political discourse.

"I came so that they may have life": amative space and faith as vital concern.

This article describes four attributes of faith as vital concern--relational spontaneity, responsiveness, receptiveness, and vulnerability--which are key ingredients to subjective and intersubjective experiences of being alive and real. The metaphor, amative space, refers to the processes and dynamics that make faith as vital concern a viable possibility between and among people. The author depicts these processes as four, interrelated dialectical pairs--recognition-negation, surrender-generation, trust-distrust, and disruption-repair.

A challenge to church leaders: the necessity of supervision for ordained ministers.

This article is an explicit challenge to church leaders and ministers of all denominations to take seriously the necessity of obligatory supervision for ordained ministers. To support this challenge, the author describes fundamental principles of pastoral care that found the moral demand for and benefits of the supervision of pastoral practice. Before offering practical suggestions on the implementation of supervision, reasons for the personal and institutional resistance to supervision of ordained ministers are depicted.

Rethinking supervision of ministry.

This article addresses the need for ongoing supervision in ministry and explores reasons for the avoidance of supervision. More specifically, twentieth century ideas regarding epistemology and Freud's "discovery" of the unconscious reveal important limitations in the commonly held model of supervision and at the same time provide reasons for the benefits of supervision. Further, this article proposes that individual unconscious motivations and religious institutional structures contribute to the avoidance of ongoing supervision in ministry.

Freud's unfortunates: reflections on haunted beings who know the disaster of severe trauma.

The forms of dissociation are multiplex and must include a type of dissociation that represents human beings' fundamental inability to process and represent severe trauma. This article posits a form of dissociation--resulting from trauma--linked to disastrous knowledge, signifying a person's incapacity to use language and symbol to organize the core of the traumatic experience in terms of semantically structured self-in-relation. Catastrophic knowledge of severe trauma is unexperienced experience that paradoxically stands for an indescribable core of an event that undermines self-in-relation and the concomitant capacities for language, narrative, and knowledge.

The birth of reality: psychoanalytic developmental considerations.

In this article, utilizing an emended version of Winnicott's notion of transitional objects and recent parent-infant research, the author offers a perspective on the development of individuals' experience of being alive and real in relation to objects and persons. Primary transitional objects, which represent parent-infant interactions, facilitate the infant's transition from early undifferentiated, bodily, and global experiences of being real and alive to the infant's yoking and extending these subjective organizations to recognized not-me objects. Secondary transitional objects make their appearance when the child begins to acquire the capacities for self-reflexivity, symbolization, and language.