The Bible, Wisdom and Human Nature
communication were the means by which working models were generated, maintained and transmitted to the next generation. This aspect of Bowlby’s theory provides a theoretical backdrop to the process of change evidenced in psychotherapy – a talking cure amidst an empathic, sensitive relationship. This issue will be expanded upon in the next chapter (‘Model of Psychotherapy’). Accounts of health and pathology which are centred around the issue of needy dependence on ‘the other’, such as those of Bowlby and Fairbairn, resonate well with an approach like the Waverley Model. It proposes that a mature dependence is a virtue, not a sign of immaturity as in the autonomous self of hyper-modernity. In addition, the concept that we internalise our relationships, ie that external experiences become part of our inner world, corresponds with biblical ideas of marriage (two become one); the body of Christ (1 Cor. 12), and that God in-dwells us. I have sought to affirm the value of a relational emphasis within modern psychological theories, especially via object relations and attachment theory as they began to deviate from Freud’s focus on biological drives. I have argued, however, that all three approaches can be complementary regarding explanations of motivation, rather than in opposition to each other. These theories give contemporary psychological credence to the relational emphasis of the traditional Waverley Model and are made more explicit in the adaptations of it for which this book argues. I have also outlined that from a biblical world-view, all three secular theories (even when regarded as complementing each other to form a broader notion of motivation) are limited by concepts that omit the benefit provided by a God relationship. This latter focus is distinctive of the Waverley Model in articulating the necessary specific ‘object’ (God) of mature dependency which thus defines ultimate health and pathology; normality and abnormality.
Abnormality and neuroscience In recent years neuroscientific research has added objective weight to the idea that relationality needs to be understood in embodied terms. Over the past thirty years, technological advances have made it 116
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