It’s About Individuation

I’m preparing to teach a new course at Fuller Theological Seminary this summer on Personality, Theology, and Pastoral Counseling.  It’s a new class for me to teach, as well.  I think the only place it’s been offered before is at the Seattle campus of the seminary.  The class will look at how we develop our personalities, and will focus heavily  on the process of individuation

That’s an interesting concept–individuation.  Basically is means that we have successfully become our own self, rather than just an extension of someone else, such as a parent.  It’s like when all the pieces of who I am come together into a whole me.  I’ve often illustrated this by asking an audience, or an individual, “When you are with your parents, how old do you feel on the inside?”  Someone who has successfully traveled the path of individuation will say, “I feel like I’m an adult, just as they are adults.”  But most often, I hear the person say, “Wow, when I’m around my parents, I still feel like a six-year-old kid,” or “I feel like I’m still 16.”   If you feel like you’re six, you’ve got some work to do in individuating.  If you feel like you’re 16, you’re at least in the process.

Individuation causes us to feel like we are being dumped out of all the containers which have formed us into who we are–our family in particular. One of the things that help us individuate is what can be termed, “a call.”  Something pulls you away from family and allows you to complete the sense of who you are.  A career, a new job, a new location–anything that pulls us out of the comfortable and familiar can start the process.

The Old Testament in the Bible is full of examples of individuation.  Abraham had “a call.”  God called him to leave his home and his family and claim a new place as home.  That “call” initiated the process of his individuation–of him becoming his own self.  It’s interesting that he took along a part of his old family–his nephew Lot.  But eventually he was left alone to finish his development.

During this individuating process in Abraham, we see his faith growing.  When he went into Egypt, his faith was weak–he was afraid the Egyptians would kill him in order to get Sarah, his beautiful wife.  He should have been fearless, for God’s promise that he would have numerous heirs hadn’t been fulfilled at this point and so he had to know there was no way he was going to die–at least if he still believed the promise.

But toward the end of his life, his faith, and you could also say, his sense of self in relation to God, had grown to the point that he was willing to obey God and offer his son,Isaac as a sacrifice–even though Isaac was the key to the promise.  He was on his way to the fulfillment of his calling–becoming a great nation!

Jacob’s individuation process is also interesting–we’ll look at it in the next posting.

Question:  How old do you feel on the inside when you’re around your parents, or in the presence of an authority figure?