Journal of Spirituality In Mental Health, 11:512, 2009

Copyright # Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

ISSN: 1934-9637 print / 1934-9645 online
DOI: 10.1080/19349630902904675

Psychotherapy as an Operational Theology

Process
MERLE R. JORDAN
Emeritus Professor, Boston University School of Theology, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

This article discusses the concept that pathology derives from the
absolutizing of an internalized object, usually from the family of
origin, which unconsciously operates as a false absolute or idol in
ones psyche. To survive in a world perceived as governed by such
a false god, one develops symptoms and strategies that function as
false saviours and idolatrous processes of ones distorted universe.
The therapists task is to help the client to identify and to consider
changing the double idolatry of the false god and of the idolatrous
strategies of salvation. Thus, such unconscious operational
theology of the double idolatry is made conscious and the client
becomes free to live in a universe governed by the loving creator
who seeks to save the client by the unconditional and unambiguous divine love.
A unique task of spiritually-oriented therapists is to investigate, explore, and
help the client to transform his/her distorted world view, false images of
God, unconscious and destructive belief systems, self-sabotaging narratives,
and pathological perspectives that undermines ones life. The client is living
with an out-of-awareness self-governing perspective based upon two
principles that are inherent in what some call operational theology (not
the theology that one rationally and intellectually professes, but the lived
theology from the unconscious patterns, images, and beliefs that one has
internalized from the key authorities of ones family of origin and other
influential childhood relationships).

Address correspondence to Merle R. Jordan, 98 North St., Stoneham, MA 02180. E-mail:

M1B1@comcast.net
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M. R. Jordan

THE FIRST CONSTRUCT: UNDERSTANDING THE PATHOLOGY

FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF OPERATIONAL THEOLOGY
The first construct of understanding this pathology from the perspective of
operational theology is the unconscious creation of an internalized object
from childhood that functions in ones psyche as a false ultimate authority or
idol. Such an idolatry operates unconsciously whether the client is a
believer, an agnostic, or an atheist. This first construct of idolatry of inner
objects originated with a Viennese analyst, Wilfried Daim, who believed that
Freud, in his research, was correct that the object of fixation that caused
pathology came from some internalized object of childhood. Daim wrote:
Empirical research of analytic processes confirms that Freud was right in
seeing the real root of neurosis in a fixation of the human being on an
object of childhood. At closer examination, we found that in every case,
the object of the fixation process possesses an absolute character. The
object of fixation in Freuds system is what we call an idol. (1955, p. 28)

In the clients mind, the object of fixation possesses the nature of

ultimate truth and ultimate reality, even if the client doesnt like the style of
that persons way of relating. For example, it is quite common to have a
client who disliked the authoritarian, dictatorial, and rigid ways in which a
father or mother functioned, but the client internalizes the so-called
rightness of the dictator and structures ones way of functioning around
that supreme authority. With other clients, their parents may have been
distant and non-engaging empathically and compassionately, and so the
emptiness, loneliness, and distancing of the parental object become the
guiding force in the clients life. Then there are the clients who have been
taught in an authoritarian way that vulnerable feelings such as sadness, hurt,
fear ,and helplessness are always forbidden, and life has to be lived from a
defensively strong position. Not being obedient to the repressive, demanding authority often makes one feel guilty or a failure if one experiences
vulnerable human feelings.
Now let us look at a clinical example of how one who uses operational
theology attempts to get at the psychic idol of a client. With the first client,
we have a middle-aged woman, Jan, a very effective nurse in patient care.
She was active in her church and community. She is seen by people as very
supportive and caring. However, she also tends to give herself away and to
not be assertive on her own behalf. Her professional role fits her perfectly, as
she has been brought up to negate her own needs and feelings and to take
care of others in her family. She was somewhat depressed as she had to
adapt around her dominant controlling husband.
Therapist (T): Where is the push coming from to take care of other
people and to give yourself a back seat?

Idolatry and Psychotherapy

Client (C): I was brought up that way. My father was always in charge
and he knew what everyone else in the family should do.
T: How did you feel about that?
C: We just accepted it, though my younger sister occasionally rebelled.
T: And your mothers role?
C: She adapted around my father, and she set the model for how we
should behave.
T: So did you ever question either ones role in your life?
C: No. I just worked very hard to do what I thought would be helpful to
them.
T: Any drawbacks to that plan? Any downside?
C: I cant take an administrative leadership role in my profession
because that would put me in a place to exercise authority and
possibly face conflict. Thats too much for me to bear so I seek to
avoid those leadership roles. Im more of a caretaker and helper.
T: So you learned as a child to adapt to other authorities and to be a
helpful, caring person, but you also got cheated because you had no
right to exercise your own authority.
C: True.
T: It seems like you also re-created the pattern you learned from your
father in your unconscious selection of mate who is so authoritative,
directive and right.
C: Thats for sure, but I never realized I had played a part in needing
Jack to be like my father.

Later, I invited her to confront her two ruling parental authorities. Note from
Daims research that being able to be angry with a psychic idol is a key step
in getting free from it.
T:

C:
T:
C:

T:
C:
T:
C:
T:
C:

Can we first put your mother in the empty chair? Can you tell her
about some of your hidden feelings about her always modeling for
you to be a caring, helping wimp?
Mom, its so difficult because you are always so good and so helpful. I felt
badly for you that you had to live under the rule and directions of daddy.
Any feelings of annoyance or irritation you can share with her?
Mom, Im sorry that you learned in your childhood years that it was
not safe to be assertive or challenging. You learned from your family
to be a loving patsy also.
How does that make you feel?
Sorry for her.
Yes. Anything else?
A bit annoyed. I got trapped in the same way that she was caught. I
couldnt be fully free to be me either.
How strongly can you articulate your annoyance to her?
Sometimes I feel furious with dad for oppressing you who is such a
sweet, loving, intelligent woman. He really suppressed you in many
ways. That was unfair and unjust.

M. R. Jordan

T:

So it is a bit safer being angry with your father on behalf of your

mother. Could you imagine putting him in the other empty chair and
saying that to him?
C: Dad, I know you loved mother. But you also squelched her a lot.
You clearly spelled out how she should be and what she should do.
That wasnt fair to mom. It hurt me that she had to live submissively
under your rule.
T: Any way of telling him that it was the same mistreatment of you by
him as it was for your mother and it was unfair and infuriating?
C: Dad, I am afraid to tell you this, but I have to have the courage to
speak up. Under the surface of my compliance to you, I was stewing
in my frustration and my irritation with you. I didnt like that I
couldnt feel free to be myself and to explore my needs and true
feelings in many instances.

Later:
T:

Can you now refocus on your mother for a minute? Could you tell
her about your longing for her to provide the parental model for you
to speak up and to confront conflict with your genuine feelings?
C: Mom, its really true. As much as I love you and I feel compassionate
for how you got into this submissive bind also, I am really enraged
that you couldnt screw up the courage to confront daddy and
provide me with a healthy model to genuinely deal with such
oppressive authority.

Comments on Case
As Jan suffered from the first idolatry of experiencing her father as being the
ultimate authority, she also deeply suffered from following her mothers
submissiveness as being the major way of coping. Jan had made her
mothers submissive way of surviving as her own idolatrous way of saving
and protecting herself.

THE SECOND CONSTRUCT: CLIENTS OUT-OF-AWARENESS

STRATEGY
The second construct deals with the clients out-of-awareness strategy for
protecting oneself, defending oneself and surviving in a psychic world so
erroneously governed by a false absolute. It is really an unconscious
salvation strategy that operates as a second idolatry. The client hangs oneself
on an out-of-awareness cross (such as an addiction) that becomes the
symptom to protect oneself from some major problem (in order to survive
under the dominant role of the first idol). In secular terms, Bruce Ecker and

Idolatry and Psychotherapy

Laurel Hulley have expressed this brilliantly in their writings on coherence

therapy (previously known as depth oriented brief therapy). In this
approach, Ecker (2008) suggests that the therapist is to guide the client to
get directly in touch with the emotional truth of the symptom: The
underlying, unconscious emotional scheme that compellingly requires the
clients symptom or problem, despite the suffering entailed in having it (p.
45).
The therapist engages the client in a discovery process in an attempt to
help the client to experience why it is absolutely essential for him/her to
have ones symptom. Most therapeutic approaches take an anti-symptom
approach in seeking to get the client to give up ones symptom and get on
with living. Ecker and Hulley proposed therapeutic use of a pro-symptom
approach that leads clients into the awareness of why they have felt the
symptom was absolutely necessary in order for them to survive.
Ecker and Hulley (1996) explain further that they discovered that:
What matters most in triggering lasting change was for the client to find
and experience the already-existing but hidden emotional meaning that
the problem had for her or him to arrive at the point required
reaching into the clients constructions operating outside of awareness.
When we begin intentionally to seek the problems emotional truthan
unconscious construction of passionately felt meaningfrom the very
start of therapy, our work began to readily achieve the level of
effectiveness we were seeking. (p. 3)

Thus, ones construal of reality (or misperception of reality) and

construal of the defensive symptoms to try and solve the difficulty are
important to help the clients surface. The therapist uses various methods to
try to bring into awareness the deep and compelling meaning underlying the
symptom. A couple of techniques that I find most helpful in surfacing the
meaning of the symptom include: (a) sentence completion, and (b)
visualization of a symptom-free state. My favorite sentence completion is:
It is emotionally dangerous for me to give up my (name the symptom, like
an addiction) because ____. The visualization technique asks the person to
go into a peaceful scene in which he/she is without the symptom for an
extended period of time. Then the most important step for the client is to see
or sense if there are any unwelcome or disturbing feelings about the scene
without having the symptom. Lets look at some clinical illustrations of how
such inquiry or discovery has been generated.
One case that profoundly reveals the second truth of the meaningfulness and purposefulness from an unconscious perspective of ones
symptoms comes from a colleague. He tells a story of a middle-aged woman
named Susan who came with her husband to see him, and on the first
meeting she started out by saying, Im an alcoholic. So the therapist began

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M. R. Jordan

questioning her about what was involved in her drinking problem. She said
that when she went out to eat at a restaurant with another couple or just with
her husband, she always had too much to drink and she would get
inebriated. The therapist then asked her did she ever drank at home. She
said that she often did at home, but she would only have one glass of wine at
dinner at home with her husband. So the counselor invited her into the
curiosity of why it was important for her to drink when she was out at the
restaurant to the point of intoxication but not at home. He asked her to do a
visualization of her being with her husband and their best couple friends at
their favorite restaurant. The waiter was to come by and take the drink
orders. Other people told what they wanted to drink, and she had to say she
didnt want anything. Then the therapist asked her how she felt about not
ordering any drink. She said that she felt uncomfortable and nervous about
it. He asked her if she could focus on that feeling and what that was like. She
finally said hesitantly, Im afraid that I will be boring. He said, So you feel
that you would be boring to these other people if you do not get drunk? She
responded affirmatively and the discussion continued. The therapist asked,
Tell me a little bit about your life history in relationship to being boring.
The client responded by noting that when she was in early adolescence, she
was a very shy, introverted child and her mother was very worried about her
lack of social involvement, and she would challenge the daughter by telling
her that she was very boring by the way in which she was operating. So the
dialogue continued, discussing how she unconsciously feared that she
would be boring when she was out at a restaurant and so it was better for her
to drink too much and to be lots of fun while she was drinking than for her
to be boring and to be criticized, condemned, and isolated because of her
quietness. She had tried to rescue, heal, and save herself by the process of
drinking in order to overcome the terror of being a boring person.
One of the most poignant cases I have heard about was from a West
Coast therapist who met with a middle-aged gentleman who had seen at
least a dozen therapists previously and even more psychopharmacologists
for his problem of clinical depression. Neither talk therapy nor medication
had been helpful to his depression. After the therapist worked a while to see
if she could help him get rid of his symptom of depression, she realized that
she had to try another way, so she began to try and understand why it was
absolutely necessary from an unconscious point of view for the client to
have clinical depression. She discovered that eight years earlier his mother
had died. She had suffered from clinical depression most of her life. The
therapist and client began to find ways to discover that the son felt safe and
secure as long as he felt a bond with his mother by sharing clinical
depression. He was in a bond/bind of having the sense of being secure in
the connection with his mother even though it was emotionally very
expensive and costly to him. When he came to realize that his own clinical
depression was his only perceived way to maintain a connection with his

Idolatry and Psychotherapy

11

mother and that he really had some other ways to utilize, for example,
memory and other connections, he was able to move to the freedom of
giving up his own clinical depression as his only attachment to his mother.
He had been willing to sacrifice himself on the cross of clinical depression in
order to be bonded with his mother and avoid his fear of separation.
Clients have often set up unconsciously protective and defensive
strategies to rescue themselves from overwhelming pain, fear, hurt,
loneliness, and terror. The symptom often cloaks the clever escape plan
that clients use to save themselves from the unbearable hell of abuse,
neglect, control, loneliness, and the like.
So the implications of the previous thoughts in the clinical work of a
therapist are to explore various ways of helping the client; to talk about who
has been the dominant power and authority in his/her psyche. Along with
the emerging picture of the false idol, the therapist can explore with the
client the various patterns which the client uses to protect, rescue, save, and
heal oneself from that dominant inner power masquerading as a God or
ultimate truth. Thus, the therapist is focusing attention on both the false
psychic ultimate authority or idol, as well as on idolatrous patterns the client
uses to survive in his/her perceived world that is dominated by someone less
than the true creator and God. In Christian terms, the therapist is
investigating with the client the operative psychic idol and the false saviour
or false process of salvation from the idol who rules ones world.
An additional thought comes from the writings of Daim in which he
suggests that a person has a personality center that is at the core of ones
being and made for communion or communication or bonding with a true
God. Helping clients to be free from their double idolatry may also open up
the possibility of their being open to a connection with their true God and
saviour.
There is a story about a precocious four-year-old little girl whose
mother was pregnant. The little girl often asked her parents about where
babies come from. The parents gave the traditional answer that babies come
from heaven or from God. So the day arrived when the mother had to go to
the hospital to give birth to the baby. After four days in the hospital, the
mother returned home and the mother, father, and daughter took the new
little boy to his nursery room. The parents lowered him into his crib. Then
the little girl turned to her parents and said, Mom and Dad, would you
please leave the room; I want to be alone with my new baby brother. The
parents were a bit worried and anxious about the request, but they decided
that they would try and trust their daughter. So they went out of the room
and closed the door and then remembered that they had an audio system set
up. So they ran down the hallway to their bedroom and turned it on so they
could listen to what was going on. They heard the clomping of their
daughters feet as they imagined she walked back across the floor beside her
baby brothers crib and then they heard her say to him, Tell me about God,

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M. R. Jordan

Ive almost forgotten. So there is that yearning in the human heart to be

connected with that which is the true God.

CONCLUSION
Thus, the therapist is really a psychotheological sleuth seeking to help the
client expose and challenge the double idolatry. In addition, the therapists
way of being offers a radical correction to the clients relationship to his/her
psychic idol, as well as alternatives for healing besides the defensive/
idolatrous and pathological schemes and processes of false salvation. The
therapist seeks to mediate the nature of true divine love and caring which
hopefully helps to exorcise the twin idolatries in which the client has been
trapped.

REFERENCES
Daim, W. (1955). On depth-psychology and salvation. Journal of Psychotherapy as a
Religious Process, 2(January), 2437.
Ecker, B. (2008, September/October). Unlocking the emotional brain. Psychotherapy
Networker, p. 45.
Ecker, B., & Hulley, L. (1996). Depth oriented brief therapy. San Francisco: JosseyBass.