I write about Stuff

Cultural-social phenomenon – a life under the shadow of transgenderism.

Introduction

Foucalt said,

technologies of the self, which permit individuals to effect by their own means or with the help of others a certain number of operations on their own bodies and souls, thoughts, conduct, and way of being, so as to transform themselves in order to attain a certain state of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection, or immortality.[1]

This essay will attempt using Fowler’s seven stages of faith[2] to put a structure on a lived experience in a dysfunctional family. The framework of spirituality that is used is that of lived experience from the authentic subjectivity of O’Sullivan.[3] Which means I can only be true to what I understand happened and allow that truth to develop and mature as I developed and matured. When information was received, as was my case, in the latter years of a life a new perspective is then grown to allow the shadow self to reveal itself more fully and be embraced. In that way wounds are healing; a fuller life of faith is being experienced and a new state stage is being explored.

The shadow falls across the cradle

Primal undifferentiated faith[4] 0-2

I was raised by wolves.

I was not raised by wolves.

 When you have lived in someone else’s dysfunction for so long it is seeming impossible to differentiate what is nature, what is nurture and what is just because they were having a bad hair day and in time my own bad hair days. As a two-year-old child I met love for the first time when a lady scooped me up and loved me, unconditionally. She lived next door to my family as we moved into a new house in the country. When I recall the first number of years of my life that is the standout moment.

I did not understand why the Christmas carol, “Away in a Manger” upset me so much until Barnardo’s brought out their advert that had words something like, “Edel has learned not to cry because no one comes.” The line that upset me in the carol was,

The cattle are lowing; the poor baby wakes,

But little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes.[5]

The children in my family did not cry. We were fearful and trusted no one. This was developed in us and relates to Fowler’s first stage of faith, stage 0, primal undifferentiated faith[6]which equates with Erickson’s take on this stage “trust vs mistrust” with the virtue of hope[7] and where Piaget’s theory of cognitive development is the lowest tier of Sensorimotor stage[8]. At this stage we learn cognitively by touch with hands and then putting everything into the mouth to feel it at the most visceral level. Conversely Vygotsky promoted a theory that we learned at that stage based on our surroundings. Piaget thought our learning ages 0-18 months was internal, and Vygotsky’s theory involved society and culture. Vygotsky believed that external factors (such as culture) and people (such as parents, caregivers, and peers) play a more significant role in what he termed ‘the zone of proximal development’.[9] If I had not encountered the lady that lifted me up and loved me, I would not have known hope existed, though it took my decades to realise. Her mission was to love the next-door children unconditionally and I was proximate to this mission for the next four years.

Old sins cast long shadows.

Intuitive-Projective Faith[10] 3-7

To aid me in this essay I am introducing James Finley’s lived experience also. James was a Trappist monk, was mentored by Thomas Merton, abused by his father and someone in the monastery, had a dysfunctional first marriage and has journeyed on a healing path like me.

I am looking up at my father coming towards me, I think to pick me up and hold me. Instead, he seizes hold of me and throws me across the room. My face hits the leg of a table. I fall to the ground crying. The place where my face hit the table feels hot. My father walks towards me, stands over me for a moment, then walks away saying nothing. This is my first memory.[11]

Erikson calls this stage “autonomy vs shame”[12] with the virtue of will. With increased independence away from the primary carer decisions begin to be made by the child. I have a jumble of memories from this time; I burned a lady’s house down, I was taught quadrilateral equations and I did not speak. Starting school at four, I was taken to chapel by both the lady who scooped me up and loved me and the lady whose house burned down. I participated in services from the very beginning, which as I look back was not the experience of my peer group. I began to speak a little at five, but only to those I trusted; a girl at school and the two ladies. This is probably the time in which I was first called idiot savant. Unlike Piaget’s stage of pre-operational thinking[13] I could grasp logical thought processes and had a reading age of fifteen, (when I began to speak) and a similar writing age though fine motor skills never really developed.

I had deep down encountered shame and guilt, contrary to Erikson’s separating these out into two stages. My life teetered around not being found out, that I was a fraud, not the stealing and burning but that I was less than human; I was not normal, not like the rest of the people I knew. Then my parents separated, and it got worse.

As Fowler states, there is “deeper intuitiveness to understanding of right and wrong at this age” in an average child[14]. I have witnessed this in my own children. They would have blushed at being caught out in an inconsequential lie. In my family of origin my siblings did not blush, they hid their lives as I did. Three people who could have had much in common kept separate, worshipping the divine mother figure in her narcissism.[15]

Shadowboxing

Mythic-Literal Faith[16] 7-12

I encountered Jesus again aged 8-13. Holidays with beach missions, Ichthus meetings at school, Christian friends and in that reality I shone. I loved it, it was real for the moment. When I look back into those moments a smiling happy child looks back. Finley began his journey of faith within the Roman Catholic tradition at this time. He says,

When I was seven years old, I made my first Holy Communion. With childlike, devotional sincerity I believe that Jesus was truly present in the concentrated host. … kneeling there inside the church, I sensed that I was kneeling inside of God, who, in the consecrated host I had just received, was also inside of me.  … deeply affected me in intimate and consoling ways but I could not and did not need to understand. … I was granted my first taste of what it must be like to be in heaven. … I was initiated into the mysterious ways in which the polar opposites realms of trauma and transcendence meet and merge to form a bittersweet alchemy.[17]

This is the stage Fowler says there is an understanding of the divine in terms of human existence. This means a literal understand of God as Father in heaven, a white bearded man in a cloud, an anthropomorphic image of God.

In contrast my shadow life took over. By the end of this stage any remnant of childhood was gone in every understanding of the word, and I was hollow, my academic career over, cast out into the wilderness. I knew I was a sinner of the proper order and knew my place, a living hell with no escape. Sounds very dramatic and when I cared enough to care I knew it was not fair, justice had not been brought down. I accidently almost drowned and met my understanding of God in that thin place. In opposition to this bittersweet moment one of my mother’s boyfriend tried to drown me, I did not find God in that moment.

Of the three children in the house at the time, one was dabbling with LSD and prescription tablets, one was on a road that led to years of heroin chic, and one had discovered the numbing effect of alcohol. We were self-medicated, and all functioned in the world of work as though there was nothing awry. Piaget’s concrete-operational stage[18] can be used to understand the logic of the children in my family; Life sucks, this (drug/alcohol/something) helps, let’s use it. Bringing in Erikson’s “initiative vs guilt” and “industry vs inferiority” with the virtues of purpose and competency[19]. That was our family. We worked together but separately; we compartmentalised our lives. My siblings continued to achieve academically; I checked out.

Frightened by my own shadow.

Synthetic-Conventional Faith[20] 12+

Faith was not a part of my family’s life. Mother and father fluctuate between atheist and agnostic, Sister thinks Jesus was a nice man and believes in fairies and Brother claims pantheism.  As I tried to be Christian the wave of family jeering always won over. Fowler asserts, “Conflicts that occur when one’s beliefs are challenged are often ignored because they represent too much of a threat to one’s faith-based identity.[21]” I was not part of the main group either socially, familial or within a faith-based context. I just wanted to be taken into institutional care and leave my family forever. I tried to be arrested for various offences but met grace at every turn. Piaget calls this phase the formal operational stage where cognitively there is increased deductive reasoning and logical progression[22]. This means that hypothetical and abstract ideas can be grappled with.

For me, it is where Douglas Adams imagined this God he did not believe in as, in one example,

“The Great Green Arkleseizure is the creator of the universe, as claimed by adherents of the faith on planet Viltvodle VI. The Jatravartids of this faith believe that the Universe was sneezed out of the Great Green Arkleseizure’s nose.[23]”

Erikson sees this stage as a space where identity as an individual and confusion over a person’s role occurs and he projects a virtue of fidelity[24]. During my years away from God, I prayed and sang; Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be), Amazing Grace and One Day At A Time, Sweet Jesus with occasional Jesus Loves Me This I Know. I concretely walked away from God but needed God each day.

Finley recounting his twelve-year-old self, where his mum asked something of him above what should be ever asked as a child resonated to my story of being Mother’s confessor. Finley’s mother asked him to stay awake at night and listen to the beating she was getting. He was to call the police/ go to a neighbour if he thought she was going to die.[25] Both children were triangulated by the ‘victim’ parent.

Through my whole life, the family of origin has projected blame onto me, the scapegoat. One time I was blamed for something, and I realised I was not born, and I held that truth whilst accepting the blame. I was full of guilt and shame for everything; things done; things projected. I was stuck in a high level of anxiety about all of this whilst trying to hide the ‘real’ sin. I did not have a word for this sin I remained knowing it was bad – I was not normal. So maybe everything was my fault.

During this period this spiral ebbed and flowed as I struggled with becoming the person, I thought I should be whilst trying to erase the brainwashing of Mother. Father had left stage right. My identity was not what it appeared, but it was always just outside the corner of my eye. I left home, got a degree, married, and began a journey of being a parent. I wanted to belong to someone and needed to be needed. My emotional needs were coming to the fore for the first time, and I loved to be held for hours. Just held, supported, loved.

Catch not at the shadow and lose the substance.

Individuative-Reflective Faith 25-39

I was late to the party. The faith awakening did not happen until mid-40’s. One day I came to the end of myself outside the church of my childhood and began to attend. Coming to the realisation of all I had done, what had been done to me and a life wasted I began a journey with a food aversion usually experienced by pre-pubescent girls. It was the guilt and shame meeting freedom; I was fully vulnerable, with an exposed authentic faith that cannot be erased. Or so I thought. Fowler states this stage as having that tension, the angst, the struggle of personal responsibility and nuance of belief system[26]. Reading Piaget, it appears on the surface that there is no growth after the previous stage; he has four stages of cognitive development. However, the last stage is open-ended because there is the use of the word ‘begins.’ Lived experience begins to mould a person’s viewpoint as much as any rhetoric heard from pulpit or the Dáil. Piaget sees child development as a qualitative process, he wrote

“I find myself opposed to the view of knowledge as a passive copy of reality,”.[27]

Although Piaget was focused on child development there is room to bring his theory into the lived experience of adults, particularly when the shadow self is still a child.

Finley as a young man entered monastery, he says,

 “I was a silent God-seeking young man in a community of silent God-seeking men.[28]”

This resonates with me because until very recently I continued the “not speaking” of my early years. I spent most of my life in silence which like Finley aided me in my interior life as I came to know God more intimately.

Erikson’s theory brings state stages through a lifetime. And whilst Fowler is concerned with the anxiety of faith Erikson sees the psychosocial crisis of this age group as being isolation with intimacy being what is sought, the virtue is love[29]. I had a deep need to be loved for myself but no way to articulate it. At the close of one therapy bout, I felt I had gone as far as I could that either the information needed to progress was locked away in my mind or I did not have it.

Coming out from the shadow

Conjunctive Faith 40-60      

Within a couple of years, I was leading worship, bible studies, training to be a preacher, working full time, being parent to three growing boys and a wife. Something had to give. It seemed normal to leave work and begin unpaid full-time work for the church. I candidated to become a minister and failed. By the time I went through the process again, the jigsaw puzzle piece, the shadow that I could not grasp, was gifted to me by my father.

He came back in my life to tell me his story. A story of not belonging, deceit and history. This was new information.

O’Sullivan when expanding on receptivity he says,

“I mean the disposition and capacity to receive evidence in one’s subjectivity that is consistent with beauty, intelligibility, truth, goodness, and love in life.[30]”

 Erikson confirms that too much of a positive is maladaptation. Too much negative is malignancy. There is a need in each stage to be birthed into the next by the tension of holding say trust and untrust. Erikson purports that if this tension is held and the positive and negative elements are held the virtue will be the torchbearer into the next phase. In this stage Erikson has generativity as the positive and stagnation as the negative with care as the virtue. Fowler’s conjunctive faith is playing in my life as I grapple with the truths of Biblical teaching and the truths of my own life. The mystery of how we end up where we end up and how we get there is happily a mystery to me. Death is no longer my choice of tomorrow and living each day in care and compassion for others and self-care for me feeds my soul.

“Will the real slim shady please stand up”[31]

Universalizing 60+

Ming-Dao says,

“True stillness comes naturally from moments of solitude where we allow our minds to settle. Just as water seeks its own level, the mind will gravitate toward the holy.[32]”

Embracing my shadow and loving that part of me that the world does not need to know because she is just ‘a wee bairn’ who just wanted to be loved unconditionally. Sitting in stillness I am aware of the presence of God, as Liu Changsheng, translated by Louis Komjathy says,

Attain the Dao and become perfected naturally;

The azure lotus emerges from a muddy pond.

Even if obstructions hinder, the heart-mind is not obstructed;

Cast off form to manifest the body-beyond-the-body.[33]

Finley and I are on the healing path, the nuances of which unfold and are revealed as our lives unfurl. In his story there are areas still to be healed which resonates with my story. After our traumatic childhoods, Finley encountered abuse in the haven of a monastery[34] and I recently encountered similar abuse in a healthcare setting. The faith of a mustard seed[35] can be enough to sustain a person through such abuses (though they should not happen) when the lived experience is one of overcoming childhood trauma and abuse.

Endnotes

[1] Michel Foucault, Technologies Of The Self: A Seminar With Michel Foucault Eds. Luther H. Martin, Huck Gutman and Patrick H. Hutton.  (London: Tavistock Publications, 1988) 18.

[2] James W. Fowler, Stages Of Faith; The Psychology Of Human Development And The Quest For Meaning (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1981.) xi.

[3] Michael O’Sullivan, “Authentic subjectivity and social transformation” HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies [Online], Volume 72 Number 4 (24 October 2016).

[4] James W. Fowler, Stages Of Faith; The Psychology Of Human Development And The Quest For Meaning (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1981.) 119-121.

[5] Anonymous, Away in a manger, public domain [song]

[6] James W. Fowler, Stages Of Faith; The Psychology Of Human Development And The Quest For Meaning (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1981.) 119-121

[7] Erik Erikson, Childhood and Society (New York: Random House, 2014) 222

[8] Daevion Macclain, Child Development, (Waltham Abbey, Edtech, 2019) 141, 143

[9] Saul McLeod, Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory Of Cognitive Development in Simply Psychology https://www.simplypsychology.org/vygotsky.html accessed 29/4/23.

[10] James W. Fowler, Stages Of Faith; The Psychology Of Human Development And The Quest For Meaning (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1981.) 122-135

[11] James Finley, The Healing Path: A Memoir And An Invitation. (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2023) [Kindle: location 219 of 1841]

[12] Erik Erikson, Childhood and Society (New York: Random House, 2014) 226

[13] Daevion Macclain, Child Development, (Waltham Abbey, Edtech, 2019) 142, 144

[14] James W. Fowler, Stages Of Faith; The Psychology Of Human Development And The Quest For Meaning (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1981.) 122-135

[15] As adults all siblings in therapy. Recounting childhood were given words such as narcissistic parent/s, PTSD etc.

[16] James W. Fowler, Stages Of Faith; The Psychology Of Human Development And The Quest For Meaning (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1981.) 135-150

[17] James Finley, The Healing Path: A Memoir And An Invitation. (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2023) [Kindle: location 262 of 1841]

[18] Daevion Macclain, Child Development (Waltham Abbey, Edtech, 2019) 143-145

[19] Erik Erikson, Childhood and Society (New York: Random House, 2014) 229

[20] James W. Fowler, Stages Of Faith; The Psychology Of Human Development And The Quest For Meaning (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1981.) 151-173

[21] James W. Fowler, Stages Of Faith; The Psychology Of Human Development And The Quest For Meaning (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1981.) 218-268

[22] Willis F. Overton, The Handbook of Life-Span Development, Volume 1: Cognition, Biology and Methods (Oxford: John Wiley and Sons, 2010) 505  https://www.scribd.com/read/225336425/The-Handbook-of-Life-Span-Development-Cognition-Biology-and-Methods  accessed 29/4/23

[23] Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, (London, Pan, 1980) 1

[24] Erik Erikson, Childhood and Society (New York: Random House, 2014) 232

[25] James Finley, The Healing Path: A Memoir And An Invitation. (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2023) [Kindle: location 293 of 1841]

[26] James W. Fowler, Stages Of Faith; The Psychology Of Human Development And The Quest For Meaning (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1981.) 290-293

[27] Daevion Macclain, Child Development, (Waltham Abbey, Edtech, 2019) 146

[28] James Finley, The Healing Path: A Memoir And An Invitation. (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2023) [Kindle: location 663 of 1841]

[29] Erik Erikson, Childhood and Society (New York: Random House, 2014) 238

[30] Michael O’Sullivan, “Authentic subjectivity and social transformation” HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies [Online], Volume 72 Number 4 (24 October 2016).

[31] Eminem, Will The Real Slim Shady Please Stand Up, (Los Angeles: Aftermath, 2000)

[32] Deng Ming-Dao, 365 Tao: Daily Meditations (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2013) 25

[33]  Louis Komjathy, The Way Of Complete Perfection: A Quanzhen Daoist Anthology (New York: State University of New York, 2013) 378

[34] James Finley, The Healing Path: A Memoir And An Invitation. (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2023) [Kindle: location 947 of 1841]

[35] Matthew 17:20

Bibliography

Erikson, Erik. Childhood and Society. New York: Random House, 2014.

Finley, James The Healing Path: A Memoir And An Invitation. Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2023.

Foucault, Michel. Technologies Of The Self: A Seminar With Michel Foucault. Eds. Luther H. Martin, Huck Gutman and Patrick H. Hutton.  (London: Tavistock Publications, 1988).

Fowler, James W. Stages Of Faith; The Psychology Of Human Development And The Quest For Meaning. San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1981.

Komjathy, Louis. The Way Of Complete Perfection: A Quanzhen Daoist Anthology. New York: State University of New York, 2013.

Macclain, Daevion. Child Development. Waltham Abbey, Edtech, 2019.

McLeod, Saul. “Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory Of Cognitive Development” Simply Psychology https://www.simplypsychology.org/vygotsky.html accessed 29/4/23.

Ming-Dao, Deng. 365 Tao: Daily Meditations. San Francisco: HarperOne, 2013.

O’Sullivan, Michael. “Authentic subjectivity and social transformation” HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies [Online], Volume 72 Number 4 (24 October 2016).

Overton, Willis F. The Handbook of Life-Span Development, Volume 1: Cognition, Biology and Methods. Oxford: John Wiley and Sons, 2010.