The Self: Mirror of God
By Vilma Seelaus, O.C.D.
First published in The Way Vol. 32 No. 3 July 1992
Thomas Berry, The Cultural Historian and theologian, situates my reflections on the self as mirror of God. Out of his interest in planet earth and the role fulfilled by human beings within the dynamics of the universe, Berry, a self-described 'geologian', writes:
The industrial age itself, as we have known it, can be described as a period of technological entrancement, an altered state of consciousness, a mental fixation that alone can explain how we came to ruin our air and water and soil and to severely damage all our basic life systems under the illusion of 'progress.' But now that the trance is passing, we have before us the task of structuring a human mode of life within the earth complex of communities. This task is now on the scale of 'reinventing the human' since none of the prior cultures or concepts of the human can deal with these issues on the scale required.1
'Reinventing the human' therefore, is a critical contemporary need. It provides a sub-title for this article which finds in John of the Cross a vision of the human within the mystery of human-God relatedness. As a mystic, John expands human self-understanding and opens doors for a global, even human-cosmic insertion. John's self-awareness and his experience of God concur within the mystery of God's intimate, indwelling presence and the reality of God's creating, sustaining presence in the universe.2
In the Spiritual Canticle, 11.3, John explains that the divine presence in the universe can be of three kinds. The first is God's essential presence which holds all things in existence and gives them life and being. The second is God's presence by grace. John explains grace as God pleased and satisfied with the soul. God delights in our person. The third is God's presence by spiritual affection: a dynamic of relationship through which God refreshes, delights and gladdens our inner being. We can delight in God. This dynamic however, happens within the ambience of human acceptance or rejection of God. Those who reject God through mortal sin lose the divine presence.
God's essential presence in the universe causes things to be what they are:
Pouring out a thousand graces
He passed these groves in haste
And having looked at them
With His image alone
Clothed them in beauty. (Stanza 5)
Modern cosmology, with a vision akin to the mystics, speaks of the universe become conscious of itself through its evolution to human life. We humans are 'conscious children of cosmic dust'. Brian Swimme, the physicist, remarks with poetic insight that: 'The universe shivers with wonder in the depths of the human'.3 Also in the language of poetry, John of the Cross images God whose presence fashions the universe, fashioning humans through grace. Grace is God's self-revelation as lover. God invites us into a relationship of mutual delight. Just as God's presence is hidden in creation so too is God hidden in the soul. 'The conditions of this life will not allow such a manifestation' (11.3). The soul's inner movement therefore, is a search for God, who is truly present, yet hidden. The dynamic of this search - grounded in faith - prepares humans for intimacy with God. Grace offers human consciousness a transcendent presence.
Billions of years prepare planet earth for life and for human consciousness. A unique combination of elements in the evolutionary process eventually births human life. Evolution can be seen as the universe in search of itself. Our appearance as humans allows the universe to move to a deeper level. It can now search for the heart of itself: God - the living flame of love who energizes, transforms and glorifies all that is.
The universe in search of itself is one reality with the human search for God. God is the hidden partner of the rhythm of the spheres and the dance of life. The first eleven stanzas of the Spiritual Canticle represent the human/cosmic search for God in the symbol of a lover in search of her beloved.
Where have you hidden?…Shepherds, if by chance you see him, tell him…Seeking my love I head for the mountains…Green meadows, has he passed by you?…Reveal your presence…
The human heart resonates with these words of longing. Spiritual longing is part of our identity as humans. Such longing urges us home to our centre when the desires of the heart get caught up in temporal concerns or in trivial pursuit.
In The Ascent of Mount Carmel and The Dark Night, John of the Cross details the painful journey of homecoming to ourselves in God. In the Spiritual Canticle, he places the human process within the rhythm of the cosmos: resounding waters, stanza 14; earth lowlands and river banks, stanza 20; the breathing of the air, stanza 39; the flame [fire] that is consuming and painless, stanza 39; the flame [fire] that is consuming and painless, stanza 39. All the cosmic elements are contained in earth, air , fire, and water.
The stanzas of the Spiritual Canticle are like a mirror - they image us to ourselves. We are the bride in search of the beloved. Knowingly or unknowingly, we search for God, for the meaning of life, and for our deepest self. In stanza 12, John specifically creates the mirror image. The power of the image invites us to a deeper self-understanding.
Picture the searching lover, thirsty from the journey, bending to drink from the waters of a mountain spring. As she glimpses her own reflection in the waters, she cries out in her pain:
O Spring-like crystal!
If only, on your silvered-over face
You would suddenly form
The eyes I have desired,
Which I bear sketched deep within my heart. (Stanza 12)
Water is the symbol of universal potentialities. John uses it to unveil the face of God sketched in the human heart.
In stanza 11.12, John writes:
The soul experiences within herself a certain sketch of love, which is the sickness she mentions, and she desires the completion of the sketch of this image, the image of her Bridegroom, The Word, the Son of God, who as St. Paul says, is the splendour of His glory and the image of His substance (Heb 1,3).
Stanza 12 continues the image of the sketch.
She also feels that she is like wax in which an impress is being made, but not yet completed. She knows too that she is like a sketch or first draft of a drawing and calls out to the one who did this sketch to finish the painting and image. As a result she does not know what to do other than turn to this very faith which contains and hides the image and the beauty of her Beloved, and from which she also receives these sketches and token of love…(12.1).
These lines express a profound reality. The lover finds herself in the Beloved. The image or sketch that she sees mirrored deep within is indeed a sketch of her Beloved the Bridegroom (stanza 11). At the same time: 'She knows that she too is like a sketch…and [she] calls out to the one who did this sketch to finish the painting and image' (stanza 12). The experience of God and the experience of self are one.4
The soul of the bride, like a mirror, reflects the face of God and the face of her true self. Teresa recounts similar experiences in The book of her life. In chapter 40.5 she writes:
…my soul suddenly became recollected; and it seemed to me to be like a brightly polished mirror…In it center Christ, our Lord, was shown to me…It seemed to me I saw Him clearly in every part of my soul, as though in a mirror. And this mirror also-I don't know how to explain it - was completely engraved upon the Lord Himself by means of a very loving communication I wouldn't know how to describe.5
In John's commentary the spring-like crystal mirrors both Christ and the soul. Teresa's experience is similar. In 40.5 of The life Teresa sees Christ in the center of the brightly polished mirror. Relating a similar vision, in 40.10 of The life, Teresa experiences the divinity within like a very clear diamond, or like a mirror in which everything is visible since it contains all things within itself.
It was a frightening experience for me to see in so short a time so many things joined together in this diamond, and it is most saddening…to see appearing in that pure brilliance things as ugly as were my sins (40.10).
Within the diamond mirror Teresa sees Christ and she sees herself, including her dark side.
Mirroring is an image found in the myths of primitive peoples. World religions have mirroring stories describing the human - divine relationship.6 In mystical writings it is a recurring symbol. The image of the mirror is deeply engraved in the human psyche.7 It is an image of human - cosmic connectedness. Everything is visible to Teresa in the diamond mirror.
I live in Rhode Island, the Ocean State. Here, one is seldom far from water. The monastery overlooks Narragansett Bay and from my window I can see the bay sparkling with the reflection of an afternoon sun, or aglow with the reflected colours of a sunset. Besides the bay, many lakes and ponds add to the beauty of our area. Nearby Brickyard Pond is one of these. It is surrounded by woods, and it is one of my favourite places for a quiet walk. When the water table is high, or after a rain, puddles decorate its winding paths. The sun reflected on the bay is a magnificent sight, but to see the entire sky in one of these shallow puddles always stops me in wonder. The puddle becomes like a mirror. Within it are tall trees and passing clouds. Even the sun shines in its shallow stillness. It mirrors my face as I bend over and my shadow as I pass by.
Stanza 12 of the Canticle shows the shallow puddle of our finitude reflecting both the face of God and the face of our deepest self. This stanza exposes the inner dynamic which characterizes us as humans. Within the universal movement toward cosmic fulfilment is the human person whose being mirrors the divine.
All of creation reflects the glory of God. But we humans, with consciousness informed by faith, give the face of God a particularity beyond that of the stars. The pull of God in the human is like a magnet. In 11.4, the soul 'is drawn and carried toward this good more forcibly than any material object is pulled toward its center by gravity'. Again in 12.1 the soul feels 'that she is rushing toward God as impetuously as a falling stone when nearing its centre'. The thrust of the universe is toward consciousness of itself: the thrust of the human is toward God-consciousness.
Consciousness is the condition for intimacy with God. It becomes the home of faith, hope and love. In John's symbolic language, the white tunic of faith, along with the green livery of hope and the red toga of charity/love prepare the soul for union with divine wisdom. 'Because these virtues have the function of withdrawing the soul from all that is less than God' writes John, 'they consequently have the mission of joining it with God' (Book 2 Night ch. 21). In the Canticle, the bride's longing for union finds no remedy in any creature:
...so she turns to speak to faith, as to that which most vividly sheds light concerning her Beloved, and takes it as a means toward this union. Indeed, there is no other means by which one reaches true union and spiritual espousal with God, as Osee indicates: I will espouse you to me in faith [Os. 2:20] (12.2).
The soul indeed mirrors the face of God, but God's face in this life is silvered over. Faith gives us God, but covered over with the silver of faith like the gold earrings, plated with silver, of the bride in the Song of Songs. Faith then, is like an inner eye of the intellect which reveals the face of the Beloved sketched deep within the soul (12.4).
Over this sketch of faith is drawn in the will of the lover the sketch of love.
When there is union of love, the image of the Beloved is so sketched in the will and drawn so intimately and vividly, that it is true to say that the Beloved lives in the lover and the lover in the Beloved (12.7).
John writes that everyone can be called a sketch of love even if the sketch is imperfect compared to the perfect image, the transformation in glory. Every person mirrors, however imperfectly, the face of God. Through its evolution to human consciousness the universe reached a peak in its own fulfilment. Consciousness, however, exists within the limits of human finitude. Faith knows no such limits. By uniting us with God faith stretches human boundaries to infinitude. Faith, sketched over with love, becomes like an inner mirror. In it all things are seen in God: the self, others, the entire universe.
Stanza 12 uses two significant symbols to tell our inner story: water and mirroring. These two archetypal images are related to each other. Ancient cultures regard water as the preserver of life circulating throughout the whole of nature in the form of rain, sap, milk and blood. Limitless and immortal, the waters are the beginning and end of all things on earth. In modern psychology, water is the symbol of the unconscious, that is of the non-formed or unthematic, yet dynamic, motivating, feminine side of the personality. For the ancients, water like earth was a feminine principle, the home of wisdom - a mediator between life and death. The projection ot the mother - image into the waters endows them with numinous properties characteristic of the mother. Immersion in water intensifies the life - force. As secondary symbolism, water is identified with intuitive wisdom.
Water, in short, symbolizes the struggle of the psychic depths (the unconscious) to find a way of formulating a clear message comprehensible to the consciousness. Conversely, its companion image, the mirror, symbolizes consciousness in its capacity to reflect the reality of the visible world. The mirror relates to thought, in so far as thought, for some philosophers, is the instrument of self - contemplation as well as the reflection of the universe. This links the mirror - symbolism with water as a reflector and with the Narcissus myth: the cosmos appears as a huge Narcissus regarding his own reflections in human consciousness.8
The mirror is an ambivalent symbol. As the moon receives the light of the sun, the mirror is lunar by its reflecting and passive characteristics. In this it too has feminine overtones. While denoting consciousness, mirrors are also magic symbols for unconscious memories comparable with crystal palaces.9 Recall the crystal castle of Teresa's dwelling places (1 IC 1.1).
Through the images of water and mirror John describes the mystery of our inner being - our transcendent self. The transcendent self is fluid - one with the flow of all of life (sap-blood). It is feminine, a watery womb which shapes unconscious thought and memories for conscious life. Like a mother, it births intuitive wisdom. Water has passive, reflective characteristics. It will flow wherever there is an opening and when it is contained in stillness, moon - like it reflects the universe. Paradoxically, such passive, reflective characteristics are the enablers of self-transcendence. They introduce the poem's language of faith. Water mirrors the inner flow toward a fuller consciousness. The bride discovers that the remedy of her searching is not in creatures so she turns toward faith as to that which most vividly sheds light concerning her Beloved (12.2).
Faith is a spring-like crystal. The Spanish, cristalina, provides a play on words. Faith, comments John, is like a crystal because it concerns Christ, her Spouse. It is clear, strong and pure. It is a spring because from it the the waters of all spiritual goods flow into the soul as for the Samaritan woman. Christ is in the soul like a fountain whose waters leap up unto life everlasting (12.3). Faith is not static, but fluid. It is the dynamic movement of a relationship with God which embraces all of life. The soul says in truth, 'I live now, not I but Christ lives in me'. 'Each one lives in the other and and both are one in the transformation of love' (12.7). Faith is the inner sketch of Christ drawn over by love. The loving face of Christ within darkly reflects us to ourselves. It also shapes the other's true countenance which we can recognize only in faith.
Contemporary interpretation of John of the Cross is assisted by fascinating current psychological insights. The psychologist, Heinz Kohut, through the symbolic language of mirroring, offers a psychological counterpart to the spiritual realities represented in John of the Cross. An overview of Kohut's theory, limited to what is useful to this development, opens up significant personal and societal implications implicit in stanza 12 of the Canticle. Kohut and his colleagues have formed the basis of what is known as self psychology. Kohut's use of self is in the broad sense: 'as the center of the individual's psychological universe…a center of initiative and the recipient of impressions'. A rudimentary self emerges from relatedness with others in the environment, becoming a cohesive self.
Kohut's theory holds that parents' inability appropriately to empathize with their children causes parenting failures. An empathetic other mirrors us to ourselves. The delighted response of the parents to the child…the gleam in the mother's eye…are all essential to the child's development. Such responses mirror back to the child a sense of self-worth and value, creating internal self-respect. Parental responses of indifference, hostility or excessive criticism reflect back low worth and consequently inhibit the child's appropriate assertiveness.
Empathetic mirroring happens when responses are genuine, caring and appropriate. To affirm inappropriate behaviour is inaccurate and therefore is an inappropriate response. The American heritage dictionary defines empathy as 'understanding so intimate that the feelings, thoughts and motives of one are readily comprehended by another'. It is not to be confused with being nice to someone, nor is it 'what I would feel if I were in their place'. Empathy is intrinsically to comprehend the experience of others from their own unique perspective.
In developing his theory of empathetic mirroring, Kohut says that like the infant for whom parents are functional parts of itself, unaffirmed persons who lack a sense of self use others as functional parts of themselves. They lack a clear awareness that others are separate from the self. They become locked into the primary narcissism of infancy. With consistent shortcoming in appropriate mirroring, individuals become merger-hungry personalities who must continuously attach themselves to others in such an entangled way that they are often unable to discriminate their own thoughts, wishes and intentions from those of others. Locked in archaic narcissism, such persons are compelled insistently to display themselves in a desperate need for continuous confirming and admiring responses, without which they feel worthless.
Kohut also believes that ultimately, no individual becomes independent of others, but rather requires throughout life a milieu of empathically responding others in order to function. We need to feel a degree of alikeness with other people. Children like to imitate the adult world to secure their sense of belonging. We know the power that comes to us when another person resonates with our story. Normal adults have narcissistic needs and so they continue to need the mirroring of the self throughout life.
If we make efforts on behalf of someone who is indifferent and unresponsive to us, we feel helpless and empty, with a lowered self-esteem. This generates anger and even rage as the self becomes fragmented. Sincere empathetic mirroring gives us back to ourselves. Genuine love involves mutual mirroring which enhances the self-esteem of both persons involved. Such healthy narcissism is manifested in adulthood in creativity, humour and empathy.10
We all experience inadequate empathetic mirroring at one time or another from persons indifferent to us and even from those who love us. We bear the scars both of human inadequacy and of human sinfulness. In spite of psychological sophistication and self-growth opportunities, addiction, co-dependence and overt violence increase.
Kohut's use of empathy is akin to gospel compassion. Gospel compassion adds a special, needed dimension to the face of human failure - the dimension of faith. Faith, in giving us God (12.4), gives us each other. Unfortunately, the projections of our psyche blur faith's vision. Unidentified emotions block intuitive wisdom from seeing the inner divine sketch. Instead, others become mirrors of past hurts. The dynamic of projection distorts the reality of the present moment. It leaves a person unfree for an empathetic encounter. Such unfreedom can ultimately destroy a relationship.
At the cutting edge of human freedom stands Christ whose face is compassion (12.7). Compassion is the face of God. Empathetic mirroring at its truest is a faith reality reflecting compassion and therefore, forgiveness. Compassion and forgiveness mirror each other. Over the sketch of compassion is the sketch of forgiveness. Without forgiveness, the pain of hurt controls what we see in others.
The theologian Doris Donnelly, in her books on forgiveness, claims that when people do not forgive, they become resentful. They feel the pain and hurt of being injured again and again. They filter everything they do, everything that happens, through the hurt and the pain. They lose their freedom and let the pain and hurt control them. The hurt becomes a distorted mirror through which persons unjustly perceive others and their whole life situation.
Donnelly insists that forgiveness needs a faith perspective. It is a gift Christ freely gives. The best we can do is begin the process of forgiveness by getting in touch with our hurts, and taking whatever positive steps we need to structure a new situation. She writes: 'If you forgive you can be present to someone without interference from the time, or times, when you were hurt. When we forgive, we are saying, "you hurt me but that's not all you are to me, and I want to see the rest of you'".11 The eye of such perception is the compassionate, forgiving face of Christ - which is also the face of our true self. For the self to remain true, it forgives seventy times seven.
A remarkable story of forgiveness is Lee Atwater featured in the February, 1991 issue of Life Magazine. Its title is 'The Last Campaign'.
Bold print sums up the article: 'Battling against an inoperable brain tumour, the bad boy of Republican politics discovers the power of love - and a dream for America'. In 1990 at age 39 he felt on top of the world. 'My wife Sally was pregnant with our third child; I was recognized as a musician; my party leadership was intact. I was one cocky guy'. While delivering a Democrat - bashing speech his left foot began to shake uncontrollably. In seconds the twitch had moved into his leg and up the left side of his body. The outcome:
I am 39 years old. I helped elect the President. I am the general chairman of the Republican Party. I am suffering from inoperable brain cancer.
Atwater began tackling the cancer as he tackled everything else in life. 'Know your enemy.' But all of his research and brain tumour strategy only revealed that the malignant tumour was of much higher grade than originally thought. After much struggle, helplessness opened Atwater to the deeper dimension of himself. 'I sensed a new spiritual presence in my life - something that arrived without my having to call it.' He began reaching out to others in gestures of compassion. He came to terms with 'the less than virtuous acts in my life' by sending letters of apology to Dukakis and other political opponents for his 'naked cruelty'.
My illness helped me see that what was missing in society is what was missing in me: a little heart, a lot of brotherhood. The 80s were about acquiring - wealth, power, prestige. I acquired more wealth, power and prestige than most. But you can acquire all you want and still feel empty. What power wouldn't I trade for a little more time with my family? What price wouldn't I pay for an evening with friends? It took a deadly illness to put me eye to eye with that truth, but it is a truth that the country, caught up in it ruthless ambitions and moral decay, can learn on my dime. I don't know who will lead us through the 90s but they must be made to speak to this spiritual vacuum at the heart of American society, this tumour of the soul.
Mircea Eliade, the great historian of world religions, suggests that at times of cultural and spiritual chaos, when everything seems to be falling apart, at such times human spirituality may be getting ready to birth a new stage of spiritual creativity. In the experience of chaos, humanity's spiritual energy returns to the dark womb, there mystically to be reformed and to prepare to come forth with fresh energy.12
Stanza 39.4 of the Spiritual Canticle offers a timely challenge.
O souls, created for these grandeurs and called to them! What are you doing? How are you spending your time? Your aims are base and your possessions miseries! You are blind to so brilliant a light…(39.7)
John of the Cross's mystical vision of the human is transformation in love: love for God and love for one another. 'Love produces such likeness in this transformation of lovers that one can say each is the other and both are one…Thus each one lives in the other and is the other, and both are one in the transformation of love' (12.7). Each one lives in the other. What is true in our relationship with God is also true for interpersonal relations. In the indwelling Christ, we indwell each other. As humans, we reflect humanity to one another. Empathetic mirroring is the ability to give a person back to herself/himself as a worthwhile human being.
Social psychologists such as Robert Bellah and others, unfortunately, see us caught up in self-centred individualism. Social needs, poverty, injustice - the devastation of planet earth, leave us indifferent.13 This 'tumour of the soul' as Atwater names it, cries for healing. The doctrine of John of the Cross invites us beyond individualism to the truth of ourselves in God. Grace is relational, a love affair. In the experience of God, we experience our transcendent self. Teresa sees all things in the diamond mirror.
The universe sees itself through human eyes. We humans see ourselves through the eyes of others. Kohut has the parents actually giving the child its self - or withholding it. In our interpersonal relations, we mirror to one another value and worth. It is within our power to strengthen each other's inner self. Faith, in stretching the boundaries of consciousness, opens us to the transcendent self reflected in the compassionate face of Christ. Seeing one another beyond hurts is the silver of faith which penetrates through to the inner gold - the sketch of God within.
Faith, that spring-like crystal, also mirrors the compassionate face of Christ hidden in the universe. The prayer of Christ, that all may be one, is a prayer centred in cosmic realities. Thomas Berry, the geologian, introduced this interpretation of John of the Cross. The scientist, Brian Swimme brings it to a close.
The universe is bound together in communion, each thing with all the rest. The gravitational bond unites all the galaxies; the electromagnetic interaction binds all the molecules; the genetic information connects all the generations of the ancestral tree of life. We live in interwoven layers of bondedness.14
The broadest horizon of our self-understanding is the universe. The universe - planet earth in particular - is the pre-text of our faith. The Florida Bishops in their Pastoral Letter on the environment, Companions in creation, relate environmental concerns to 'our Christian consistent ethic of human life'.15 When faith is in crisis, the earth suffers our abuse.
In stanza 12 of the Spiritual Canticle, John of the Cross gives a foundation for 're-inventing the human'. As a mystic, he experienced what scientists increasingly discover: the interconnectedness of all that is. Through the language of poetry, John of the Cross manifests a human - theological insertion in the universe. Our being is a spring-like crystal which mirrors all that is. We give planet earth back to itself in conscious reflection and in respectful use. Unlimited technology which destroys human life resources is no longer an option. The earth is itself a living organism. It cries out for freedom from the ecological devastation inflicted by humans. The process of earth's restoration is integral to the freedom we bring to one another in genuine empathetic mirroring.
At the heart of it all is Christ. Christ liberates our transcendent self by mirroring the sketch of God that each of us is. Colour, race, ethnicity are the diversity of God mirrored in the human. Our present awesome task is indeed, 're-inventing the human'. This is not a task of mind, but of heart. God's essential presence in the universe, God's presence of graced pleasure within, and God united with the soul in the transformation of love, is the heart of what is yet to be. Truly, everything can be called a sketch of love.
Vilma Seelaus, O.C.D.
NOTES
1 Lonergan, Anne, and Richards, Caroline, eds: Thomas Berry and the new cosmology, (Mystic, Connecticut: Twenty Third Publications, 1987), p 19.
2 See John of the Cross, Spiritual Canticle, 1.7-8. All further references to John of the Cross are taken from Kavanaugh, Kieran O.C.D., Rodriguez, Otilio O.C.D., translators: The collected works of St. John of the Cross (Washington, D.C.: Institute of Carmelite Studies Publications, 1979).
3 Swimme, Brian: The universe is a green dragon: a cosmic creation story (Santa Fe, New Mexico: Bear & Company, 1984,) p 32.
4 See: Rahner, Karl: 'Experience of self and experience of God', Theological investigations (New York: Crossroads, 1983), p 122.
5 References to The book of her life are taken from: Kavanaugh, Kieran (O.C.D.), Rodriguez, Otilio, (O.C.D.), translators, The collected works of St. Teresa of Avila (Washington, D.C.: Institute of Carmelite Studies Publication, 1976).
6 To cite but one example: In a mystical commentary on the Gita Jnanesvara speaks of something akin to Teresa's experience. 'Krishna and Arjuna were like two clean mirrors, placed one against the other, the one reflecting itself infinitely in the other. Arjuna saw himself along with God in God and God saw himself along with Arjuna in Arjuna', Ranade, R. D.: Mysticism in India: the poet-saints of Maharashtra (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1983), p 137.
7 See: 'Crossing cultures and disciplines: an interview with Lawrence E. Sullivan', Harvard Divinity Bulletin, XX:3, 1990-1991, p 13. Sullivan captures in a few brief examples the use of the mirror as integral to the human self-reflective process.
8 Cirlot, J.E.: A dictionary of symbols (New York: Philosophical Library, 1971, pp 364-7.
9 Ibid., pp 211-212.
10 See: Baker, Howard S. & Baker, Margaret N.: 'Heinz Kohut's self psycology: an overview', Am J Psychiarty, 1, January, 1987, p 144. Kahn, Edwin: 'Heinz Kohut and Carl Rogers: a timely comparison', American Psychologist, August, 1985; St. Claire, Michail: Object relations and self psychology (California, Brooks/Cole, 1986), chapter nine 'Heinz Kohut: self psychology and narcissism' pp 145-167.
11 Winter, Art: 'The benefits of forgiveness: an interview with Doris Donnelly', Praying, March/April, 1991.
12 See Eliade, Mircea: The two and the one (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), 'Cosmic and eschatological renewal', pp 125-155.
13 See Bellah, Robert N., Habits of the heart; individualism and commitment in American life (New York: Harper & Row, 1985).
14 Lonergan. Anne, and Richards, Caroline, (eds): Thomas Berry and the new cosmology, (Mystic, Connecticut: Twenty Third Publications, 1987), p 89.
15 Origins, Feburary 21, 1991, volume 20, number 37.