Abnormality – individual agency and context

would need to be one capable of responding constructively to this broad conception of factors. This method will be explored in the next chapter, ‘Model of Psychotherapy’.

The following section aims to locate the importance of relationality amidst our biological and volitional capacities. This preserves a space for explanations in which individual freedom operates within the broader network of relationships; these in turn provide boundaries within around which willing may occur.

One danger of basing a model of abnormality upon ideas regarding relational deficits alone is that it leaves little room for personal responsibility in relation to pathological outcomes. It fosters a view of pure victimhood and the logical consequence of blaming the parents (or some other external factor), for our problems. Alternatively, a model of sin that has been articulated in Chapter 1, including ‘original sin’ as opposed to McFadyen’s ‘originating in sinful relationships’, holds a balance regarding pathology as both personal and systemic in origin, internal and external in causation, and multi-factorial, rather than reducing it to one issue. This in turn preserves a space for human agency and individual accountability for pathology (unless it is deemed to be purely genetic) which ironically is the basis of hope: we can act not just react, and so may choose reparation towards more healthy patterns of relating. It has been noted by Johnson and Jones that the concept of the will and resultant agency has been marginalised by a psychological tradition rooted in an empirical theory of knowledge. Furthermore, within the context of counselling, approaches lacking a significant concept of human agency will struggle to embrace the core therapeutic ethic of autonomy. Johnson is most helpful in offering a nuanced account of agency which preserves human responsibility in choosing, yet gives weight to numerous factors which influence and thus contextualise our decisions and actions. This kind of explanation flows from the more ‘open-ended’ dialogical portrayal of personhood for which this book is arguing. Johnson’s account includes six contextual factors.

They are:

1. Biology – genetic, hormonal, morphological;

2. Identity – life choices only make sense in the light of who we are – in Waverley terms this links the volitional area to the spiritual, and is but one example of why the model needs to be drawn as open ended with perforated circles – indicating dynamic intra-relatedness of the ‘five areas of functioning’, always operating amidst the ‘outside world’ (my extra ‘category’);

3. Narrative – our identity unfolds through the history of our relatedness – a developmental pathway ‘journey’. Johnson puts it as follows:

We act according to purposes, goals developed and shaped in the past and related to the persons and events that are a part of our story. Our actions express a pilgrimage from our earliest years to the celestial or infernal city. Without a history there is no agency.168

4. Environment – includes both physical and social. Any specific environment will open up and close down ‘action opportunities’. Because such contexts are key to our core identity, these bodily or external conditions form part of our internal world. Socially sensitive choosing would be derived in part by these conditions;

5. Goods – we are set in cultures which communicate values by asserting what goods are desirable. As has been noted previously (Chapter 2, ‘Model of Personality’) a cornerstone of the Waverley Model’s notion of motivation is desire (thirst, longing), which may be focused on ‘greater’ or ‘lesser goods’ which yield more or less pathological outcomes. As a result of the above, in Johnson’s case study, set in contemporary USA, a Ferrari not a Raleigh Runabout would generally be desired;

6. Linguistic/Rationale – continually repeated cultural stories strengthen values via things said and thought and portray good or bad consequences from actions (vicarious reinforcement).

It is arguable as to whether some of Johnson’s six categories are separable. ‘Identity’, ‘narrative’, ‘goods’, and ‘linguistic/rationale’ all appear as aspects of cultural conditions, especially if identity is worked out with relational aspects, although not exclusively so. There appear to be no objective criteria for establishing how to categorise elements of our external world. Any division, including Johnson’s, seems somewhat arbitrary – semantic and pragmatic. In my amended model I have sought to avoid these issues by utilising one all-embracing category ‘outside world’ (see Appendix B). Being deliberately non-specific, this denotation can be ‘filled out’ according to relevant conditions for each individual, for example; in certain cases, church will be a highly significant element, whereas for others it will be irrelevant.

Johnson’s account of limited freedom arises as one possible perspective amidst a long standing broader philosophical debate around human freedom and determinism. This has been touched upon in Chapter 1 regarding concepts of imago Dei and sin. In this section a more limited point is intended regarding the development of abnormality which is not proven to be reducible to one cause – individual choices or environmental conditions.

Retaining a balance between individual and systemic causes of abnormality enables a multidimensional account of abnormality (as above), beyond a purely biological (illness) or purely relational (historical reaction/ defence). Along with human agency and willing, relational deprivation as an explanatory mechanism of abnormality becomes a predictor not a determinant. Thus it could be said, and attachment research findings support this, that upon eliciting a description of an individual’s early relational environment, it could be presumed more or less probable that abnormal behaviour would result. Jones and Butman sum up this issue as follows:

We are certainly influenced in powerful and significant ways by past relationships. We do not have to assume, however, that this history ‘forces’ us to behave in a predetermined way, but rather provides ‘probabilities’ of how we will act.169

The nature of the relationship is not so much akin to a scientific, inexorable, universal law but more like proverbial wisdom – if ‘x’ then probably ‘y’. In this light, we may interpret correctly ‘cause’ and ‘effect’ statements within the book of Proverbs, eg 22:6 (‘Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it’). The proverbial language may sound literally absolute in its prediction, but this is for the sake of simplicity of thought, not an absolute description of all truth relating to these two phenomena.

Summary and evaluation

In all of this, we may conclude that the general emphasis given to the importance of early styles of relationship in personality development makes sense, especially if we hold a model of imago Dei that is relational. It may be expected that relatively healthy people would emerge from relational patterns that reflect God’s relational character; and conversely, that relatively abnormal people would emerge from relational patterns that do not reflect God’s character. Jones and Butman rightly assert that our most profound relationships (with parents, grandparents etc) will deeply shape our personalities: that deprived parents may in turn deprive their children – this is one approach to interpreting Exodus 34:7 (‘he punishes the children and their children for the sin of parents to the third and fourth generation’). Designed to fully function in a God relationship, we will not find all the resources necessary to build a mature self, as biblically defined, amidst broken and finite relationships.

In explaining individual abnormality, a balanced biblical perspective should at least take into consideration the following: location, culture, history, parents, genetic make-up; all of these operating alongside an individual’s particular choices. Thus, an individual who is considered to be making healthy choices (aligning the self with Christ’s pattern) may still suffer ‘mental ill-health’ as a result of the destructive effects of the other factors which comprise a rounded perspective on what contributes to human wellbeing. Conversely, an individual who has benefited from favourable contingent factors such as good parenting, genetics and cultural values may still make

subsequent choices which undermine relatively healthy foundations and so produce pathological outcomes. Neither personal choice, nor ‘unchosen’ contingencies fully determine either normality or abnormality.

As Palmer puts it, ‘a human being is whole – a bio-psycho-social unity’.170 In any individual case of abnormality, explanations of causal factors could relate to any or all of these domains. Consequently, a method of psychotherapy would need to be one capable of responding constructively to this broad conception of factors. This method will now be explored in the following chapter, ‘Model of Psychotherapy’.