In 1963 Duquesne University, located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, offered a new three year Master of Arts degree open only to members of Catholic religious orders. The Institute of Man, through which the degree was offered, developed out of Duquesne's psychology department. There is variety in the stories, but it appears that Adrian van Kaam, Amadeo Georgi, Charles Maes and Bert van Croonenberg, who together gave the psychology department a phenomenological air, established the Institute to study the relation between religion and psychology.
In 1978 the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools suggested that the level and amount of academic work could support the accreditation of the degree Doctor of Philosophy. The following year the name was changed to the Institute of Formative Spirituality (IFS) and enrollment was open to all. In addition to the Ph.D., two Master of Arts degrees were offered as well as a sabbatical program. Georgi and van Croonenberg were no longer directly involved in the project which was guided by van Kaam.
Van Kaam's writings are voluminous. He is author of at least thirty books and hundreds of articles. We may be able to divide van Kaam's work into an "early" and "late" phase marked by the publication of the Formative Spirituality series.
Early on it appears that van Kaam addressed his work to two main audiences: Catholics and psychologists. His earliest works are oriented towards two main areas: a critique of contemporary psychological theories, and writings specifically pertaining to Catholicism (which often bear the Imprimatur). Both of these areas at times overlapped. His later work, marked by the Formative Spirituality series, as well as "glossaries" in the journal Studies in Formative Spirituality, is specific to his attempt at establishing a science of spirituality. However, in the late 1970s and early 1980s van Kaam had written on the basic tenets of a science of spirituality which seems to have been the preamble to the veritable explosion of writing that makes up the Formative Spirituality series. There is a distinct and radical shift in his subject, style and possible audience in this series.
It is an understatement to say that the sheer amount of material, as well as the specialized language used in the Formative Spirituality series, are daunting to those for whom it would be of interest. Van Kaam himself wrote in 1981, two years before the Formative Spirituality series began publication:
The groundwork of this (Formative Spirituality) approach is laid in its steadily expanding body of knowledge as developed so far by faculty and students. Its principles, assumptions, and methods are explained in approximately 30 books and over 150 articles published by faculty members. Furthermore it is developed to date in 15 volumes of Humanitas, in 160 issues of Envoy, and in the more than 125 theses by Institute graduates. It is also contained in the tape library of courses, lectures, and films given within and outside of the university and in theses and dissertations at other universities in the United States, Canada, and Rome.
Though I shall be largely relying upon the first four volumes of Formative Spirituality, it is useful to have a sense of van Kaam's earlier writings addressed to psychologists and Catholics. As we shall see, van Kaam himself is concerned with the underlying assumptions that undergird scientific theorizing and action. To my mind, this must also be a concern of the critical reader approaching this vast corpus. Given my statement of limitation concerning the use of religious and psychological discourse as outside the scope of this project one might think that I could easily ignore van Kaam's writings in these areas, and to a degree this is true. But at the same time an awareness of some of van Kaam's early concerns can assist the reader who would then approach his later work in all its daunting complexity. One can detect themes of interest present throughout his writings that, for the reader approaching the later works van Kaam for the first time, may be more readily grasped in light of an awareness of his early Catholic and psychological writings. A basic sense of van Kaam's early psychological and Catholic concerns is useful in that they display some of the evolution of and influences upon his later writings.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s his writing consists of relatively standard academic writing in the field of psychology and popular-inspirational books for Catholics. In the late 1960s and 1970s one sees more of an integration of the psychology and the Catholicism which seems to lead into an interest in spirituality as a naturally occurring human phenomenon and thus a potential human science. This interest becomes exclusive in the 1980s, with side mentions of Christianity as illustrative of general theorizing.
As a psychologist, it would appear that van Kaam's central concern was with the underlying philosophical assumptions of the various schools of psychology. According to van Kaam, these assumptions went unacknowledged by most practitioners in the field thus having an unrecognized effect upon psychological theorizing and practice. He writes:
Various psychologists try to escape the realization that assumptions are inevitable. Some of them profess that they consider all the views of all the schools of psychology as equally relative and that they themselves start without any assumption. But by declaring all these views to be relative the psychologist cannot escape having his own very definite view. The more this relativity of the different psychological viewpoints is stressed, the more forcefully the absolute character of one's own position in psychology reveals itself...
Others say that there are no assumptions because they cannot be proven by means of the scientific method. Even this effort to get rid of assumptions is in vain. For to declare that only these propositions of psychologists make sense which can be experimentally verified is one of the most sweeping assumptions one can think of because it contains a definite and irrevocable judgment concerning all possibilities of human knowledge and their relationship to what is knowable. There is no escape from assumptions in psychology. The psychologist of every school always makes an ultimate and absolute judgment about what is called the nature of man and about the way in which man can be understood. These assumptions of psychologists are not arrived at by psychological research. On the contrary, the assumptions of the psychologist are the point of departure for the kind of research that he will perform and for the evaluation of the results of this research (Van Melsen, 1952, 1954).
Without a recognition of these assumptions concerning the "nature of man" and their effects, psychologists fall prey to an error of mistaking their partial psychological perspective for the whole. Van Kaam groups these perspectives into two main assumptive camps: the positivist/empiricist/behaviorist and the subjectivist/rationalist/ idealist/introspectionist, both of which are expressions of an underlying Cartesian prejudice. These methodological approaches to the inquiry into human behavior have become absolutized leading to "isms". "This absolutism leads to subjectivism, objectivism, and situationalism."
The general approaches of positivism and idealism signify the underlying assumptions possessed by the psychologist. These two main assumptive camps produce the various schools of psychology that are, at best, limited perspectives on any given phenomenon. This elicits from van Kaam a concern for the development of a structure or principle of cognitive organization that would enable us to maintain awareness of, and a sense of relationship among the various perspectives that may be taken on the varieties of human experience. It appears to me that it was this concern that was later to evolve into the construct of a "field model". Early on though, van Kaam used the term "anthropological psychology" (and sometimes "comprehensive existential psychology") in an attempt to communicate the need for this structure that could be used to integrate the various perspectival psychologies. An anonymous author wrote:
In critical response to the inclination to exclude the important findings of other schools and brances (sic) of psychology, [van Kaam] proposed a new term, anthropological psychology, to replace humanistic and existential psychologies while absorbing their best contributions. Anthropological psychology according to this book (Existential Foundations of Psychology) would integrate all contributions of all types of psychologies insofar as they would be relevant to the practical daily formation of people's life and world on basis of the distinctively human or, to say the same, spiritual values acknowledged by the classical formation traditions and by some humanistic and existential psychologists.
Van Kaam's use of the term "anthropological psychology" not only functions as a way of taking into account various underlying assumptions, but by the nature of its integrative function it is able to view the human as both similar to animals and unique from them. It would be able to function in such a way that the psychologist should be able to simultaneously hold in his or her attention the insights of such various schools of thought as the Skinnerian and Jungian without becoming exclusivistic. This psychology would be able to integrate not only various psychological schools, but Taoist and Zen anthropologies as well. It is a "new image" of the human that is clearly holistic. But what is more, given that the integrating principles must be the most basic and foundationally applicable available it opens up our awareness to "...the most essential and basic characteristics in which man and reality can be thought of." A key phrase, as it hints of the Formative Spirituality to come.
Van Kaam summed up his understanding of psychology as follows. Notice how he describes some movements as "temporary".
Existential Psychology: A temporary movement toward fundamental reconstruction of scientific psychology by means of the assimilation of the psychologically relevant insights implicit in the pre-philosophical contemporary view of man that is called existential.
Anthropological Psychology: A scientific-theoretical movement within psychology that integrates empirical, clinical, and theoretical psychologies within an open theory of personality that serves as a comprehensive frame of reference for all the significant theories and data in the field.
Existential Anthropological Psychology: An anthropological psychology that roots its comprehensive frame of reference in the existential image of man.
The main relevant insight that is derived from the existential view of the human is that the human "...is a dialogue with things and processes in his own organism and in his surroundings." The human is always a being-in-the-world. Existential psychology, by viewing the human as a unitary expression rather than as the traditional Cartesian-derived subject and object, unites the positivist and idealist trends which tend to inquire about only the subject or the objective world in isolation one from the other.
This existential view also provides the insight that science itself is necessarily selective, differential and perspectival. "The reality encountered in my original mode of existence is brimming with meaning, but as a scientist I select only certain meanings of reality as the focus of my investigations." Thus, there is an inherent danger in science. Science seeks reality, but it can never approach reality as a whole. The scientist must take pains to keep in mind the perspectival nature of his or her inquiries so as not to mistake that one perspective (such as positivist or idealist, subject or object) as the whole. Existential psychology is only temporary in that once all psychologists recognize the perspectival nature of science all psychology will, in essence, be existential psychology. At this point in his thought, van Kaam articulates the constructs that would bind psychology together as the view that all psychology studies behavior insofar as it is teleological or intentional, and insofar as it is functional, or able to express its intentions in the world. The human is not only "being-in-the-world, but also at-the-world".
It is "anthropological" psychology that studies and presents the constructs that would integrate the various perspectives on the intentional-functional behavior of the human as being-in-the-world. The constructs necessary for anthropological psychology "should transcend the exclusively subjective, objective, or situational connotations of the constructs of differential psychologies". They should point "to precisely those unique qualities that make man distinct from every type of being". It must be phenomenological and thus based in actual lived human experience and it must not center on the functional aspects of human behavior as do the differential psychologies.
We can say that the thrust of van Kaam's work as a psychologist is towards a theoretical structure, called "anthropological" psychology, which could integrate the various scientific perspectives on the human being. Existentialism, as it affected psychology, serves as a corrective to perspectival absolutism. Anthropological psychology is phenomenological in that it is in lived human experience that the human as a whole is shown forth. Anthropological psychology would necessarily shed light upon, or be concerned with that which is distinctively and uniquely human. Because it looks at the human as a whole, this wholeness necessarily implies distinction from other animals. At this point in van Kaam's psychological writing the implied distinctiveness of the human is latent. It is in his Catholic writing that we discover his interest in the human as distinct.
The Catholic Christian influence on van Kaam as human scientist could possibly be an issue for readers exploring the clinical implications of his thought. After all, he is a Catholic priest (as was van Croonenberg) and Duquesne is a Catholic University. There is no question I've heard raised that would cast doubt on van Kaam's interest in Catholic orthodoxy. The Institute of Man was open only to members of Catholic religious orders which did not include diocesan priests. At times, van Kaam will mention seemingly Christian concepts such as "Christ-form" and "Eternal Trinitarian Formation Event" and "the fall" side by side with his attempts to devise more universally applicable constructs. In such instances, van Kaam seems to be attempting to discuss both human spirituality and a Christian articulation of that spirituality at the same time. The reader needs to distinguish between these two projects and take care not to confuse one with the other.
It must also be remembered that van Kaam was writing at a time of intellectual turmoil in the Catholic church. The very nature of trying to turn spirituality into a science could have been construed as undesirable or threatening from the viewpoint of a religious orthodoxy. Perhaps referring to this situation van Kaam writes:
We witness the hesitant beginning of a new understanding which holds that Christian universities are hardly worthy of that name if their psychology, sociology, formation and education departments allow secular philosophies to dominate their teaching...
It is this new climate which compels us, as a faculty in a Christian, Church-related university, to relate the new science of human or, to say the same, spiritual formation to a Christian frame of reference.
This 1980 quote is illuminating in two ways. It indicates the forces acting upon van Kaam, as well as sounding a note of caution for the reader of van Kaam's later writings. The admission of non-Catholic students to the IFS resulted in the pointing out of subtle examples of a specifically Catholic influence in van Kaam's thought, though these have not found their way into written discussions of the issue.
The first writings pertaining to a science of spirituality, what we are calling Formative Spirituality, appear to be within his Catholic writings. It is in a 1975 discussion of Catholic spirituality that the idea of a human spirituality is first introduced. "To fully master the field of Fundamental Catholic Spirituality, one should gain insight into the dynamics of human spirituality." In order to explicate the foundations of Catholic spirituality, van Kaam would necessarily have to articulate a generalizable spirituality of which Catholic spirituality would be a particular instance. Or, as he put it, human spirituality would be a subset of Catholic spirituality. It is in this discussion that van Kaam outlines how he will later talk about the relation between religion (what he would later call a religious form tradition) and a science of spirituality. He will distinguish between revealed and pre-revealed dimensions of spirituality, that is, spirituality prior to what is for Catholics a revelation from deity in and through Jesus, and spirituality after that alleged event.
In keeping with his phenomenological perspective van Kaam is struck by the fact of religio-spiritual discourse. Religious traditions present an image or conception of the human as spiritual. They comment on the "nature of man". This image "...suggests to us what the spiritual nature of man and mankind is; the dynamics of its development; its influence on the other dimensions of human personality and society; and the conditions for its wholesome growth." And yet, we today are also confronted by the development of the various human sciences, such as psychology, that also put forth an image of, and add to our understanding of the human. (As well as reflecting any underlying perspectival assumptions.) In keeping with his interest in a structure of integrative cognitive organization (anthropological psychology) van Kaam does not want to throw out the traditional religious statements concerning human being, nor does he want to set up a dichotomy between the traditional-religious and contemporary-scientific statements about the human. Rather, he seeks a system by means of which he will be able to reinterpret the traditional views in light of the contemporary findings. The reader can discern the integration of van Kaam's religiosity and phenomenological outlook with his view of anthropological psychology, which when integrated, begin to produce his understanding of human spirituality. Through this integration he is able to write as both priest and as anthropological psychologist.
Therefore, dialogue between our image of the person as a spiritual being and the ever new discoveries of the human sciences should be an ongoing endeavor; otherwise, the image of spiritual man [spirituality as naturally occurring human phenomenon] underlying our Fundamental Catholic Spirituality will be at odds with the human personality as we know it. ...When we ask ourselves what is the objective of the study of the human dimension of Catholic spiritual life, we may say that it is to study the naturally spiritual man and his community, as disclosed by the human arts and sciences.
Van Kaam is really doing something rather surprising and unique here. He is attempting to broaden our understanding of the term "spirituality" out of an exclusively religious realm of discourse. At the same time he is challenging the scientific realm to integrate traditional religious discourse into its oeuvre. He writes: "The various arts and sciences and their subdivisions may deal indirectly with the isolated profiles of their spiritual life." Traditional religio-spiritual discourse may thus shed light on our understanding of the arts and sciences as expressions of the spirit. It is implied that traditional religious discourse does in fact identify, address and discuss an aspect of human reality: that which is distinctive about the human, that is, human spirituality. This same reality, as peculiarly human, will also necessarily show forth in the peculiarly human activities of the arts and sciences.
Thus, the first step in the attempt to delineate Formative Spirituality "...is to study-- in the light of his own and others' experiences-- the perspectives, ideas, concepts, and theories made available to him..." on the topic of human spirituality. "The student of fundamental human spirituality will build his theory, therefore, on comprehensive concepts, but these concepts themselves should be rooted in the firm ground of reality-experience and not in mere theory..."
In a 1980 addition to an earlier work van Kaam begins to subordinate his interest in specifically Catholic spirituality to his quest for an articulation of general human spirituality and identifies a new field of inquiry: "Foundational Formative Spirituality". It is here that van Kaam first identifies some of the "comprehensive concepts"-- gained from religious traditions and/or the arts and sciences-- that would form the basis for this new discipline. He acknowledges that terminology compatible with the Judeo-Christian traditions has been used in the development of Formative Spirituality. However, "...this science of spiritual formation is not necessarily bound to any specific humanistic or religious formation tradition, such as the existential, Buddhist, Islamic or Christian formation traditions." He compares it to the field of androgogy which "...focus(es) primarily on the meanings, dynamics and conditions of human formation as they manifest themselves in people of all ages, in all stages and development, and in all cultures." However, it is in a dissertation by Richard Byrne that we first encounter the clear, theoretical rationale for this new field of thought.
Byrne's work can be divided into three main sections or projects. 1) A discussion of science itself and the place of Formative Spirituality within the hierarchy of sciences. 2) A presentation of the objectives and methods of this new science. 3) An understanding of Christianity in light of this new field of inquiry. It is the second part that is of particular relevance to this current project. With the addition of Byrne's work, we are now ready to cull from the material those basic and comprehensive constructs that will enable us to gain an understanding of human spirituality. In the following pages I shall select, arrange and discuss these constructs in a way that I judge appropriate for our goals. I shall refer to both Byrne and van Kaam, as well as provide pointers to other theorists whose work seem to shed additional light on the constructs.
These main constructs are: 1) formation, 2) the mystery of formation and the distinctiveness of human formation, 3) the field of formation. Each of these constructs represents a perspective on a whole. We could list them in any order as each implicitly refers to the others and illustrates the others. None can be clearly understood without reference to the others. Armed with these constructs, we shall be able to articulate the basic activity of the human-as-spiritual. Then, in the next two chapters, we will apply these tools to the Muslim and Twelve Step perspective of inordinate mood-altering behaviors as being symptomatic of spiritual disorder.
Byrne is writing just before van Kaam's Formative Spirituality series and refers to a number of unpublished works that would later make up the glossaries and the text of Formative Spirituality. It is difficult to ascertain to what degree Byrne influenced van Kaam, but it is clear that Byrne has produced a cogent and concise accounting of formation theory.
FORM AND FORMATION
Byrne begins with an extensive discussion of the philosophy of science and presents a classification of sciences. He points out that many sciences are not just theoretical or descriptive of phenomena, but practical as well, that is, as formative.
As formative... both description and theory attempt to assist humanity in its efforts to give form to its concrete personal and social interaction with the world. ...Included in this group of sciences are those sciences that are oriented toward the reformation of pathological human experience and those that are oriented toward the formation or transformation of human experience with all its potentialities. Examples of the former are the many forms of psychotherapeutic sciences and disciplines. Examples of the latter are a group of sciences that may be called the "human formation sciences."... All of them originate as concerned with a specific profile of the experience of the human formation process, its dynamics, conditions, and effect.
It is this profile "of the experience of the human formation process", as articulated by Formative Spirituality, that concerns us. Formative Spirituality "directs itself to the study of the necessary and sufficient conditions for the possibility of any distinctively human or spiritual formation whatsoever... (it) is in principle transcultural and transtemporal..." This distinctively human formation is concerned with questions related to the meaning of human life and the concern with the direction that life should take that will lead to the fulfillment of that meaning. Every culture implicitly and explicitly embodies these concerns. The fact is, these concerns are a consistently present human phenomenon. Formative Spirituality thus seeks to bring some disciplined observation to bear on them.
The first appearance of such terminology by van Kaam is in the addition to Religion and Personality. At this time, van Kaam is using "life form" as a substitute for "personality":
...we prefer the term "life form" to that of "personality." There is nothing wrong with the word personality. A merely humanistic usage, however may lead to the connotation of total autonomy where the human effort to attain fulfillment is concerned. The phrase "life form" is related to the Judeo-biblical concept of human life as the image or form of God...
In this mid-career, transitional passage van Kaam refers to religion as the basis for this terminology. This is in contradistinction to Byrne's explanation that would link such a term, and its concurrent perspective on phenomena, to contemporary physics. "Contemporary theoretical physics affirms a similar conception of the cosmos as a dynamic field of formation." However, this difference should not be construed as a disagreement, but as evidence of the progress of the attempt to delineate this new human science, and van Kaam did later stress the connection between formation and theoretical physics.
One may immediately think that the use of the terms "form" and "formation" indicates a neo-Platonic approach to reality. This would be a mistake. The use of these terms denotes nothing like a static platonic form, but the dynamic processes of reality. Writes Byrne,
Energy assumes form. Its forms rise and fall. They increase and decrease; they flow and rush together; they continually change and return. The most simple of forms strives toward complexity, and the complexity of forms returns home to the simple... Contemporary theoretical physics affirms a similar conception of the cosmos as a dynamic field of formation.
This is a significantly different view than that afforded by Newtonian physics and its development as Cartesianism. Rather than understanding phenomena as discrete, independent entities, they are viewed as intimately interrelated, always in flux and process. It is the dynamism of phenomena that is stressed. However, in keeping with van Kaam's integrative interest, this is not to deny the appearance of phenomena as discrete entities.
Other theorists, such as Susanne Langer and Robert Jay Lifton have also used the terms "form" and "formation" to lend certain connotations to their work. Lifton, in particular, is concerned with formation. In the 1976 The Life of the Self: Toward a New Psychology Lifton addresses concerns for a new development needed in psychology, a new paradigm, and discusses this need in terms of a "formative principle", a "formative-symbolic" approach that will, when combined with psychohistorical approaches, lead to "a wholistic sense of interacting elements of a kind now stressed in 'systems theory'." A "psychoformative" approach notes that the human never passively receives information or experience, but there is always an "inner re-creation". That is, formation of the information or experience, and thus of the subject as well. A creative activity. In van Kaam's scheme while the human always apprehends form as such, it does not necessarily engage in what he calls "form appreciative apprehension". By this he means that the individual not only apprehends form, but recognizes it in so far as it is relevant to his or her own on-going formation.
The word appreciative refers to the fact that to apprehend something as formative or deformative implies a value judgment.
Symbols play a crucial part in the shaping of form appreciative apprehensions. Faith and form traditions, myths, proverbs, and works of art express in symbols possible links of formative meaning... (People) are exposed to these symbols of meaning. This exposure modulates their apprehensions.... Other sources of formative symbols that influence form appreciative apprehensions are legal codes, constitutions, and social conventions.
This act of form appreciative apprehension is not just passive, but actually gives form to the apprehended form. As the relevance of the form to human life changes by means of the value judgment, the form itself is now different. At the same time, there is the possibility that the apprehended relevance may result in a formative movement on the part of the subject. Thus, the human is capable of giving form to and receiving form from other forms-- called form donation and reception. With this we begin to glimpse the dynamism of formation theory. Form appreciative apprehension is essentially a hermeneutic of experience.
Both Langer, in her philosophy of art (in Philosophy in a New Key and Feeling and Form) and Lifton also point to the importance of symbolization as central to formation, as does Byrne. Langer utilizes the word "form" to discuss the aesthetic experience: "Art is the creation of forms symbolic of human feeling." Langer mirrors the integrational concerns of Formative Spirituality, "An artistic symbol is a much more intricate thing than what we usually think of as a form, because it involves all the relationships of its elements to one another, all similarities and differences of quality, not only geometric or other familiar relations."
At the same time, Langer parallels one of van Kaam's ways of discussing form and formation. He distinguishes between formation and information. She distinguishes between the communication of semblance by the art-form from the communication of its utility.
For van Kaam, informative thinking is distinguished from formative thinking in its orientation towards issues and begins and ends with logical or measurable results. "Linear and progressive, such thinking does not dwell necessarily on the implications of these issues for experiential human formation." Such a style of thinking can lead to what van Kaam calls "functionalism"-- a major theme of his throughout the Formative Spirituality series and a term he often uses to distinguish his use of "transcendent". By this term he connotes that which is practical, useful and utilitarian; that type of thought which divides and separates the totality of experience. This is the opposite of Langer's artistic semblance wherein the artistic form seems to lose its utility to become pure, integrated form (the integration includes utility) presented for aesthetic contemplation.
Still, at this point, we can say that Formative Spirituality views all of reality, in its most basic or foundational appearance-to-the-human, as engaged in formation. Matter and energy come together and give rise to forms which then, in turn, both give and receive form to and from other forms. "There is nothing in human experience of which we can think that does not in some way manifest a process of active and receptive formation. This process always involves direction and incarnation." Because human formation is, by definition, temporal we can talk of its direction. To the extent that form is appreciatively apprehended we say that the form carries a directive pertaining to human formation. Formative Spirituality assumes teleology. Directives are appreciatively apprehended out of phenomena.
The natural and human sciences are attempts to describe the patterns or laws governing the rise and fall of the various forms we apprehend. However, no one scientific discipline is able to fully account for this process. (Thus van Kaam's criticism of both positivism and idealism.) Byrne writes "all forms have a tendency to give and receive a particular form during their life span." Essentially, a form does not begin as an elephant and then change form to that of a mouse. However, form reception and donation do take place within certain identifiable patterns of formation-- including elements of indeterminacy. The primary drive of all forms is towards maintenance of form or "form potency". "To maintain and expand such form effectiveness is the most foundational and primary drive of all forms in the universe." Essentially, a form tries to survive.
For the human, formation exhibits consonance. That is, forms-as-discrete "fit together" with each other. However, specifically human formation always exhibits a degree of dissonance, of "not fitting in" with the rest of formation. What is referred to here is the fact of suffering, angst, incompleteness, restlessness, surprise, unpredictability etc. that is present in all human life.
We live in relative dissonance with the forming energies at work in the universe, world, history, and our lives. Philosophers and religious traditions often refer to this dissonance as a state of "fallenness" in human life. It is an ongoing experience of having fallen away from a primordial consonance.
Human life is dominated by the basic dynamics of consonance and dissonance.
Healthy human formation thus entails the appreciative apprehension of forms, out of which directives to formation are apprehended and appraised in relation to the possibility of increased consonance and decreased dissonance. These directives are then embodied in acts of form reception and donation.
MYSTERY, TRANSCENDENCE & HUMAN FORMATION: SPIRITUALITY
Karen Armstrong writes about:
...the sense of reverence that arises in us when we contemplate the mystery of life. This attitude of awe sprang from that universal human experience of the numinous. The prophets of Israel had experienced this as a profound shock when they had their visions of holiness. Romantics such as Wordsworth had felt a similar reverence and sense of dependence upon the spirit they encountered in nature. Schleiermacher's distinguished pupil Rudolf Otto would explore this experience in his important book The Idea of the Holy, showing that when human beings are confronted with this transcendence, they no longer feel that they are the alpha and omega of existence.
The phenomenon of the human experience of, or thought about "the mystery of life" is the key to understanding formation as distinctively human, that is, as spiritual. So central is this to Formative Spirituality that Byrne identifies "the mystery of formation" as the Kuhnian paradigm upon which Formative Spirituality is founded. Van Kaam identifies these as the primordial issues of human life.
The fact that the various sciences provide only partial explications of formation processes leads to the central insight, assumption, and contribution of Formative Spirituality: the existence of the "mystery of formation" and its central position vis a vis distinctively human formation. Byrne writes:
The process of formation is a mystery. Although the physical and human sciences can demonstrate a certain lawfulness in the rising and falling of nature's forms and in the dynamics of human existence, this lawfulness always remains beyond complete discovery by scientific exploration... In van Kaam's thought, the formation mystery is both hidden and revealed. It transcends our comprehension. As a mystery in which we ourselves are involved, we cannot objectify it totally. The mystery is ultimately veiled to eyes that see only from within it. Yet, the formation mystery is disclosed in its manifestations or "epiphanies." This means that the mystery appears to human consciousness through the phenomena of formation events.
This mystery is the most foundational, comprehensive, and potentially unifying phenomenon and concept that underlies human existence... The transcendent mystery of formation is manifest in the transcendence-ability of human beings: their ability to go beyond their immersion in the cosmic and organismic manifestations of the formation mystery.
The science of foundational human formation is built upon our desire to understand the formation mystery... We seek such understanding that we may live in consonance...
When we speak of the mystery we are not speaking of a thing, a phenomenon amongst other phenomena. Rather, this mystery, as an object for thought and contemplation, is indicated or implied by means of the phenomena that are present to our apprehension. The mystery itself is not a phenomenon. Rather, when questioning the appearance of forms and asking from where or what they originate, the implication of mystery stops the process from becoming a reductio ad absurdum. We gather our corpus of discourse about any given form, acknowledge its "boundaries" or "limits" and posit that which is beyond the corpus of observation. Van Kaam and Byrne label this implication present through all phenomena or forms as an "epiphany" of the mystery. The mystery is shown forth by means of a cosmic, human and transhuman epiphany. It is the second that is of particular importance to this present project.
By "cosmic epiphany" is simply meant the mystery of the physical universe. It is what spurs the natural sciences. The quest for understanding of how life works, how stars are formed, how other animals behave all stems from the fact that reality appears to us as a mystery which elicits our close observation of phenomena. It is this observation that leads to the sense of form reception and donation discussed above. The great mystery lies within the consonance of the forms that we observe. The fact that all forms "fit together" into a whole.
By "human epiphany" is meant that in all human activity this same formation process is manifest as it is in the physical, non-human world. But in the human there is an element of distinction from the merely cosmic or physical processes of formation:
What is distinctive, however, about the epiphany of the mystery of formation in human beings is the unique transcendent dimension of human life. The transcendent mystery of formation is manifest in the transcendence-ability of human being: their ability to go beyond their immersion in the cosmic and organismic manifestations of the formation mystery.
So, not only does human formation participate in the form reception and donation that characterizes the physical universe-- the cosmic epiphany-- but there is also another type of formation process present only in the human form (as far as we know). The human form goes through a process of transcendence by "appreciatively" apprehending forms and by appraising directives to formation that may arise out of the "appreciative" apprehension. This not only gives form to that which is appreciatively apprehended, but it also gives rise to new forms not found in the cosmic realm. The formation process of, say, water on a rock is not appraised by either the water or the rock, nor does the water or the rock give rise to new or unpredictable forms. This reception and donation of form, one to the other in the consonant "fitting together" that we observe, is "blind". It is a phenomenon in that it "just happens". Human formation is both spontaneous in a similar manner, but is also, at times, deliberate. "Persons begin to emerge as distinctively human when a minimum of reflection enters their life."
The human form in its formation is not necessarily "blind". We apprehend directives to formation, and thus an element of choice-- of freedom-- is introduced into the formation process. This phenomenon itself then becomes an additional epiphany of the mystery. Do I hang this picture or that picture on the wall of my house? Do I buy this suit or that suit? Do I ask this person to marry me? Do I accept this job offer or reject it? Such questions point to this phenomenon of apprehension and appraisal of directives to formation that shows the human as having a degree of transcendence beyond other types of observed formation dynamics. Some may question if this is really "freedom", but such a question becomes irrelevant in that it is indubitably an observed phenomenon found only within the human form. The presence of art, of social and symbolic forms found nowhere other than the human realm are evidence of this transcendence-ability. More importantly, this transcendence implies, and symbolic forms give evidence to, the statement that the human generates new forms out of itself. The human itself is an energy-matter field (in keeping with Byrne's and van Kaam's analogies) out of which forms emerge. It is in this creative and generative process that we are observing human spirituality.
From the viewpoint of formation science, the human spirit is the power to give form to and receive form from human life and its corresponding world in a way that transcends an absolute determination by the vital and functional laws that rule the infra human micro- and macro-universe.
In SFHF, the human spirit is the power of appraisal and option that moves human life toward consonance, "to fit in with all being."
The human spirit is this transcendent aspiration with its uniquely human ability to appraise and follow in relative freedom those directives that are consonant...
The human spirit-- mind and will as illuminated by the transcendent dimension of the mind...
The human spirit is the power to give form to our life and its corresponding formation field in a way that transcends an absolute determination [by materialist/social forces]..
The apparent human ability to transcend mechanistic formation processes necessarily implies an underlying awareness of the mystery. We can say that the human is always at least pre-reflectively aware of the mystery as such. This awareness and the forms it itself generates are the arena of traditional, pre-scientific discourse about human spirituality such as may be articulated in the various religious traditions. Transcendence-ability, by means of some free appraisal of the possibilities of form reception-donation, is a "movement into" what is always mystery: a degree of indeterminacy and unpredictability in human formation. To the degree that there are skills that may be learned and utilized in this process of transcendence we can talk of spirituality in a way similar to how we could talk about, say, sociability as referring to the degree of interpersonal skills a person may or may not know and utilize. In that this is always, essentially, the appearance of new forms, these skills are, in essence, similar to the skills of creativity.
The human, because of this apparent freedom-through-transcendence, does not necessarily generate, or give and receive forms that "fit in" or are experienced as consonant with other observed phenomena. The forms we generate out of form reception and donation may elicit experiences of dissonance between self and not-self. Indeed, due to the very presence of indeterminacy and unpredictability in human formation the human form is always in a state of semi-dissonance. A healthy spirituality thus becomes the skills of minimizing this dissonance in so far as the degree of consonance or dissonance is related to the degree of awareness of, and manner of response to, the mystery.
By "transhuman epiphany" is meant the alleged possibility of action by the mystery itself: "...a revelation and self-communication to humanity of the ultimate source and absolute power of formation." This is primarily an issue related to religion as distinguished from spirituality, what van Kaam calls "form" and "faith" traditions which are discussed in the next chapter.
The mystery "epiphanizes" or appears by means of all-phenomena-present-to-consciousness. It "surrounds" the human form and is the element of consistency throughout the variety of experience. It is an essential and foundational component of the experience and observation of any phenomenon. In that there is discourse about the mystery, that which is non-phenomenal becomes phenomenalized (an experience-of), and thus itself spurs the formation dynamic. The discourse demands a response. Mystery thus becomes the primal, foundational experience, issue and concern of the human form. "Mystery is the best name for reality." It indicates not an absence, but an over-abundance.
...any thorough description of human questioning, human searching for meaning and order, makes it plain that reality takes on the character of a deepening mystery... Mystery, it soon becomes clear, is the best name for "reality," and mystery does not mean the absence of light or intelligibility but the surplus or excess.
According to van Kaam, the initial response to the appearance of the mystery takes the form of a primal human question as to the meaningfulness and beneficence of life. The question thus leads to the primal human option of freedom to choose a hermeneutic in relation to the mystery: "Do we choose to abandon ourselves in trust to the mystery of formation or do we let ourselves feel abandoned in a meaningless formation process?" Essentially there are only three main interpretations of the mystery. The mystery is seen as benevolent, indifferent or hostile towards consonant human formation, and within those possibilities it can also be interpreted as personal or impersonal (though neither van Kaam nor Byrne bring this out). These are the essential faith options concerning reality that are available to the human form. Out of this essential hermeneutic practical directives to form reception and donation emerge and produce socio-historical traditions of directives of formation.
The primordial decision implies a basic choice of meaning pertaining to the ongoing formation of one's own life and that of other people, universe, world, and history. As such, it provides the foundational formation theme of one's style of appraisal.... All other decisions are influenced by this primordial foundation. We cannot stress this point too strongly. Our life formation hinges on it. This underlying decision coforms all our perceptions, feelings, thoughts, memories, images, anticipations, and actions.
To choose what van Kaam calls an "appreciative abandonment" to the mystery is to enable one to apprehend hidden or novel possibilities for human consonance, thus fueling the impetus to transcend and thus generate form, that is, to exercise one's spirit.
THE HUMAN FIELD OF FORMATION
We discussed above that one of van Kaam's early concerns was the need for an integrating structure that he originally discussed under the rubric of anthropological psychology-- his sense that the human "...is a dialogue with things and processes..." We also saw that both Byrne and van Kaam make a point of referring to contemporary physics' sense of a field of energy-matter out of which forms arise. In addition, the human itself is a ground out of which forms arise of a symbolically meaningful nature. From these trends they derive the idea of the specifically human field of formation. That is, the human form itself is a field similar to the energy-matter field from which all forms emerge. However, in order to understand the roots of this construct we must again return to van Kaam's early work in psychology.
In the early 1960s van Kaam, along with Edward W. Hogan, was the editor of Duquesne University's "Psychological Series". In 1964 they published Aron Gurwitsch's The Field of Consciousness. This work, made possible by the National Science Foundation, could have had an influence on van Kaam to the extent he was aware of its content.
Gurwitsch develops his theories of the field of consciousness out of a background of gestalt psychology and out of reference to a number of theorists, especially William James. He defines the field as
...the totality of co-present data. Co-presence is understood in a broad sense so as to comprise not only data which are experienced as simultaneous but also those which are simultaneously experienced, though not as simultaneous. ...For a field-theory of consciousness there arises the task of investigating the articulation of the total field of consciousness and of bringing out the patterns and forms in which co-present data are organized with respect to each other.
...organization is inherent and immanent in immediate experience, and not brought about by any special organizing principle, agency or activity.
Gurwitsch points us in the direction of the need to construct a field model that will articulate not the contents or details of human experience, but the general organization of those contents or details, just as van Kaam is concerned with a structure (anthropological psychology) that will integrate and organize the various perspectives on any given phenomenon. Byrne writes:
Hence, the science of foundational human formation does not focus its investigations on the person-in-isolated-subjectivity, but on the wholistic formation process as it unfolds within what the science calls the "field of formation." Parallel to the science of physics which sees the structures of the universe as unfolding through dynamic interaction within a foundational energy-field, the science of foundational human formation views the formation of human life as a dynamic process of unfolding through interaction within polarities of one foundational field of formation. SFHF is, therefore, "field-thinking" about formation experience.
Van Kaam proposes this model of the human field of formation:
FIG. 3.1
In van Kaam's understanding, the key spheres of the formation field are:
Preformation, referring to all that accompanies the subject to the immediate situation. This includes past experiences, family and social history, genetic proclivities etc. This pole of the formation field would be used to indicate possible genetic predispositions. It would also be used to describe past experiences.
Intraformation, referring to the private, subjective thoughts, feelings and dispositions of the subject. It entails the inner feeling and thinking of the subject.
Interformation, referring to the social dynamics and structures between individuals and groups of individuals including past and present generations. This immediate interformation takes place against a background of socio-historical embeddedness.
The Outer/Situational, sphere refers to the overall immediacy of the situation. It points to what is happening now.
The Outer/Mediated sphere is the general formative background to the immediate situation such as culture, history, etc. The individual is always embedded in a vast world not necessarily pertinent to his or her immediate concerns, but present none-the-less. Occurrences in foreign lands, ancient history, etc. all contribute to the dialogue that is human formation.
The construct of the formation field is the key structure by which Formative Spirituality points to the dialogical nature of human formation and avoids the reductionistic tendencies of the human and natural sciences.
Human life is a field of forces that interact with one another. An analysis of any facet of the field or of any event or its apprehension in isolation will not yield a sufficient understanding. No particular event, apprehension, or direction is a self-sufficient unit. Any one of them is only what it is because it is coformed by other forces.
Formation theory, by means of the formation field, emphasizes that human formation must always be understood as a dialogue among the various spheres of the field. "The dialogical nature of human formation, on the basis of transcendent presence, is one of the foundational principles of the science of formation." (By "transcendent presence" is meant that both implicit and explicit awareness of the mystery of formation necessarily enters into the dialogue in a significant manner-- the human spirit.)
Van Kaam's proposed model of the human-as-field is complicated in its detail. In addition to the spheres of the field he discusses ranges, regions, dimensions, dynamics and sources. As we shall see, the construct of a field model is post-Cartesian, and can serve to move the reader into a post-Cartesian hermeneutic of human experience. However, the reader new to van Kaam may miss the forest for the trees, so to speak. At times, he seems to use the construct in a way that could be construed as discussing environment. Some examples:
...the formation field of college...
...the world contains certain opportunities for human formation. These opportunities correspond with the unique structure of the human life-form and of its form potencies. Taken together, they present us with the possibility of constituting a human formation field.
...daily formation of human life within its formation field.
...situational interaction of the human life-form with its formation field.
At other times he seems to use the construct in a way that could be construed
as discussing social interaction:
...formation structures seem most effective and least contested in a uniform formation field. This is a field dominated by one underlying formation tradition, such as the Jewish, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Islamic, or tribal.
(The formation field) is coformed by other influences, among them especially the impact of other people.
...segments of a population. Each segment constitutes its own field.
The reader who is not careful-- keeping in mind the broad outline of van Kaam's project-- may come away with an incorrect Cartesian-like perception of his theoretical thrust. The above statements could be misconstrued as implying a dichotomy, a Cartesian-style isolation between the intra and interspheres-- an encounter between the intrasphere and the other spheres.
In my experience this complicated model, combined with multiple uses of the terminology for the purposes of explication, could lead to some problems regarding the clinical efficacy of formation theory as it is articulated by van Kaam. He is writing for those who would be formation scientists and so involved in detailed and nuanced explorations of formative dynamics. This would not necessarily be useful for clients. Thus, at this point, in that we are aiming for clinical approaches with this project, I propose a slightly different, simpler and clinically applied model of the human-as-field that will still allow for the various formative dynamics that have been and will be discussed. William Thompson, a Catholic theologian, utilizes a four-fold, or quaternion model to organize human experience. He writes:
...four cardinal dimensions of our common human life: (1) our relation to the Divine, (2) our vision and praxis as individuals, (3) our network of social relationships... (4) our relationship to the natural environment and our very material body... I did not arrive at these four poles of human life by accident. As I hope to illustrate throughout this book, it seems that every human being is an intersection between these four poles. There is a kind of quaternion structure to our human existence. Furthermore, it seems as if the poles are interrelated, so that oscillations in any one of the poles seem to reverberate upon the others.... If something is askew in one of the poles, the probability is that something will be askew in the other poles too. Conversely, healthiness in one of the poles will contribute toward the healthiness of all the poles.
Simple experience tells us that our lives are constituted by relationships to these various "poles."....Simple experience also tells us that these four poles are interrelated.
This quaternion structure (which I shall utilize with minor changes in labeling) is closely mirrored within van Kaam's own thought as the form dimensions: vital, socio-historical, functional, transcendent. Thompson points out the dialogue among the poles of the field, thus mirroring van Kaam's on-going concerns, but maintains a more clinical-- rather than van Kaam's theoretical-- tone. Van Kaam is writing at the cusp of Cartesian/post-Cartesian thought and seems to seek to move the reader into the later. In addition, he is attempting to reappropriate that which has been neglected by the Cartesian hermeneutic. As a consequence, he must articulate aspects of human experience as distinguished one from the other. This may then sound like the usual Cartesian subject-object, positivist-idealist approach to the uncareful reader. For instance, this passage by van Kaam is an example of his attempt to communicate his idea of the transcendent by placing it it in a seeming opposition to other, more familiar, arenas of experience. The reader without a firm view of the overall project could come away with a continued sense of Cartesian-style dualism:
Formation science sees the distinctively human form dispositions as constituted by two mutually complementary elements: the transcendent element of human presence and the functional-vital-sociohistorical element of expressions of this presence in life and world.
While van Kaam writes that formation theory "...starts out from the concept of human formation as a field," and with Thompson points to the interaction among the poles of a field-type structuring of human experience, neither van Kaam nor Byrne refers to "simple experience", or any other rationale, for the construction of the human-as-field. Indeed, van Kaam talks about human formation fields. It may seem that van Kaam is at times articulating the essential organizational structure of the human experience of "co-presence" of data, and at other times discussing the unique individuality of how that data is organized by each person within a common field-like structure, and sometimes both. Regardless, in my clinical and didactic work over the last few years I have utilized to great success a slight adaptation of Thompson's articulation of this structure-- a quaternion structure composed of subjective, physical, social, and spiritual poles:
FIG. 3.2
Subjective: What goes on "inside" the Cartesian subject. It would include psychological states; thoughts and emotions. It also includes our awareness of bodily states such as hunger or pain. The subjective area is largely "private". Others do not necessarily know what is happening "in" this area unless we share it.
Physical: Our bodies and their chemical interactions, also our environment--the world as a whole. When we think of "health" we tend to think only of this area.
Social: Other human forms and the symbolic forms (traditions, artifacts, communications) that emerge from them.
Spiritual: Our awareness of, and response to the mystery of reality. The mystery is phenomenalized by means of, or is implied by the other three poles of the field in its cosmic, human and alleged transhuman epiphanies.
It seems to me that van Kaam's spheres can be more simply articulated such that a field model could be used with clients, including children. For instance, his "preformation" can be subsumed under both "physical" in terms of genetics and "social" in terms of received views. His "outer/mediated" can also be subsumed under "social". His levels of consciousness, pre-, focal-, and trans- can be subsumed under "subjective". The "immediate-situational" pole is simply the totality of the field at any given moment.
Thus, we can say, by "field" we mean both an approach to and a conceptualization of. The field is a conceptualization of the human subject that allows us to visualize and organize diverse and "co-present" phenomena, that is; it is wholistic. It is a model that forces us to keep in mind the diversity, interrelatedness and interpenetration of various areas of human experience. The field approach resists any attempt to reduce the complexity of any human phenomena to one specialization or to one pole of the field. It provides us with an intellectual map.
The clinician's key to understanding such a field approach (regardless
of how we will construct the field model) is this: any change,
good or bad, in any one area will necessarily show up in
the other three areas. When we focus our observation on spirituality
we are looking for changes in how the person responds to the implicit
or explicit awareness of the mystery: the degree of that awareness,
and how that awareness is then correlated to form reception and
donation in the other poles of the human-as-field. And conversely,
we observe how human formation in the other three poles affects
levels and types of awareness of and response to the mystery.
That is, we observe the dialogue among the poles-- the dialogue
that is the human form.
In light of the above, we can thus summarize by saying that from the perspective of Formative Spirituality the human is in constant, prereflective apprehension of formation as such, and possesses a sensitivity towards the degree of consonance among apprehended forms. The human is imbued with form potency expressed by means of the ability to, with some freedom, give and receive form based upon directives for formation that are apprehended and appraised. This giving and receiving of form is always within a field of formation and aims toward consonance among forms. Form is apprehended and shaped not just physically. While human formation of the physical world has obvious examples such as agriculture and industry, human formation also takes place in the realm of meaningful symbols. These symbols give rise to cultural, artistic, religious and ideological forms. Whereas the non-human realm of the natural sciences evidences the consonant dialogue among the various living and non-living forms, the distinctively human realm of the forms of meaningful symbols does not approximate consonance apart from the exercise of human form reception-donation. This potency may also be used in such a way as to produce dissonance rather than consonance. We can say that to the degree that an individual is lacking in spiritual skills and/or awareness there will be a corresponding shift in the degrees of experienced consonance and dissonance as evidenced by the forms they create.
Human formation is characterized by elements that are unique to, and distinctive of the human form. The human is possessed of a degree of freedom by means of appreciative apprehension of form and in the direction formation will take. That is, there is a unique transcendent dynamic (awareness of, and response to the epiphanies of mystery) operative in human formation which we call the spirit. To the degree that there are skills of transcendence we can talk about spirituality. There is a degree of freedom in choosing, by means of transcendent and functional appraisal, which directives will be embodied, and thus which possible forms emerge. This distinctive, or spiritual, quality of human formation introduces an element of unpredictability and deliberation into human formation, that is, the transcendent dynamic. Distinctively human formation transcends biogenetic determinants of formation as well as operant conditioning. Healthy human formation aims towards consonance, or a "fitting together" with phenomena-present-to-consciousness. This necessarily includes consonance with the mystery-as-phenomenon, that is, the arena of human spirituality.
We are now in a position to take the next step towards our goal. In the next
chapter I shall utilize and illustrate these basic constructs of formation theory
(formation, mystery, field) by exploring the Muslim tradition as it pertains
to inordinate mood-altering behaviors. I will introduce another element of formation
theory during this discussion: form/faith traditions.
In light of the above, we can thus summarize by saying that from the perspective of Formative Spirituality the human is in constant, prereflective apprehension of formation as such, and possesses a sensitivity towards the degree of consonance among apprehended forms. The human is imbued with form potency expressed by means of the ability to, with some freedom, give and receive form based upon directives for formation that are apprehended and appraised. This giving and receiving of form is always within a field of formation and aims toward consonance among forms. Form is apprehended and shaped not just physically. While human formation of the physical world has obvious examples such as agriculture and industry, human formation also takes place in the realm of meaningful symbols. These symbols give rise to cultural, artistic, religious and ideological forms. Whereas the non-human realm of the natural sciences evidences the consonant dialogue among the various living and non-living forms, the distinctively human realm of the forms of meaningful symbols does not approximate consonance apart from the exercise of human form reception-donation. This potency may also be used in such a way as to produce dissonance rather than consonance. We can say that to the degree that an individual is lacking in spiritual skills and/or awareness there will be a corresponding shift in the degrees of experienced consonance and dissonance as evidenced by the forms they create.
Human formation is characterized by elements that are unique to, and distinctive of the human form. The human is possessed of a degree of freedom by means of appreciative apprehension of form and in the direction formation will take. That is, there is a unique transcendent dynamic (awareness of, and response to the epiphanies of mystery) operative in human formation which we call the spirit. To the degree that there are skills of transcendence we can talk about spirituality. There is a degree of freedom in choosing, by means of transcendent and functional appraisal, which directives will be embodied, and thus which possible forms emerge. This distinctive, or spiritual, quality of human formation introduces an element of unpredictability and deliberation into human formation, that is, the transcendent dynamic. Distinctively human formation transcends biogenetic determinants of formation as well as operant conditioning. Healthy human formation aims towards consonance, or a "fitting together" with phenomena-present-to-consciousness. This necessarily includes consonance with the mystery-as-phenomenon, that is, the arena of human spirituality.
We are now in a position to take the next step towards our goal. In the next chapter I shall utilize and illustrate these basic constructs of formation theory (formation, mystery, field) by exploring the Muslim tradition as it pertains to inordinate mood-altering behaviors. I will introduce another element of formation theory during this discussion: form/faith traditions.