Created and Re-Created Within Relationship
I’d like to depart briefly from the exploration of the “name” of God, to offer an article that I wrote about how psychology understands the human psyche. It is in support of the idea that we are created as relational beings and it is within relationships that we grow, change, develop, thrive, and perhaps bring forth a more complete image of God.
First and Second Order Hermeneutics for Psychology
“Hermeneutics” from the Greek root meaning “interpret” was a discipline originally applied to Biblical study and philosophy. It was an attempt to set down “scientific” principles, structures, and methodology for “correct” and “truthful” interpretation of a given text or idea. It embodies the hope or belief that humans can develop a methodology or system that, if correctly applied, will result in a correct statement of truth, fact, observance, or understanding. Hermeneutics, in this way, was/is an attempt of the human ego to create a way of “knowing” that is absolute. If I apply these particular and definable methods of interpretation then I can be assured of the resultant observation and conclusion.
These methods were particularly tempting in the realm of Biblical interpretation (or any sacred or philosophical text). The elusive idea or awareness of “God” and “revelation” could be subjected to human methodical security and thus deemed worthy and absolute and enforceable.
The obvious problem with this notion is that the methods are believed to be infallible and absolute in themselves. But perhaps, more problematically, the observer and the one that imparts the “methods” becomes the all-knowing Knower and thus the expert on the outcome, the experience, the “reality” of things. In its unbounded form, hermeneutics can raise the human ego and mind to that of god-like status and thus destroy any sense of mystery, experience, co-creation, or new interpretation.
In the era of Freud and Klein, this hope of ultimate “knowing” was the guiding light. Thankfully, these early psychological theories and practitioners offered many ideas about the human unconscious, motivation, relationality, and development. However, these methods, many of which are still helpful to build an understanding of the human psyche, unfortunately, offered only a one-person psychology setting the therapist as the “knower” and the patient as the one to be known and interpreted.
This “first order” hermeneutic (my term) is very important because it helps to create order out of chaos and awareness out of the cacophony of functional and dysfunctional human relationships. However, this can not be the stopping point for an understanding of human development.
The human creature is essentially relational and social. We exist most effectively in a dynamic union between self as an individual and the co-created relationship with the other. Modern psychological research as well as current psychoanalytic teaching states unequivocally that the human sense of self is not a static or individualistic endeavor but instead is an exciting interplay of forces, culture, and primary social definition that creates the self. In essence, there is no such thing as an isolated self. There is only the co-created self.
Hermeneutics, and psychology in general, must take up this “second-order” (my term) hermeneutical principle. It is valid and wise to apply thoughtful categories of interpretation to the human experience and relational field, but to assume that the methods of interpretation arrive at a static “knowing” of the patient or the other is to break the very essence of what it means to be human - co-created within a relational sphere.
Second order hermeneutics begins with thoughtful and skilled analysis of a relational interaction and the psyche of an individual, but it cannot stop there with the misguided hope that a correct interpretation becomes the foundation of growth and truth and discovery. Instead, second order hermeneutics notices that we now have an “interpretation” amongst us and we must now encounter this interpretation. It is not “right” in and of itself. It is a component of development, and as such, the interpretation now becomes part of a dialogue instead of an ending point. It is right that the therapist brings a skilled interpretation (first order hermeneutic), but it must be placed gently and without attachment into the relational encounter so that the interpretation can become a powerful, creative, and catalytic force for dialogue, encounter, discovery, and unexpected creativity (second order hermeneutic). Within that field of “mystery” lies the energy of the developed and always developing human soul - always unfolding, and growing, and provoking both participants to stretch into the “not yet”. Both participants are invited to be fully human and to wake up to the unfolding life that they have always been.
Kirk Webb
PhD, Clinical Psychology