Pastoral Counseling, Psychiatry, and Disorderly Sexual Subjects

"Care of the Afflicted Flock": Pastoral Counseling, Psychiatry, and Disorderly Sexual Subjects The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Block, Mara Gertrude. 2015. "Care of the Afflicted Flock": Pastoral Counseling, Psychiatry, and Disorderly Sexual Subjects. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:23845473 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA “Care of the Afflicted Flock”: Pastoral Counseling, Psychiatry, and Disorderly Sexual Subjects A dissertation presented by Mara Gertrude Block to The Committee on the Study of Religion in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the subject of The Study of Religion Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts August 2015 © 2015 Mara Gertrude Block All rights reserved. Dissertation Advisors: Amy M. Hollywood, Mark D. Jordan Mara Gertrude Block “Care of the Afflicted Flock”: Pastoral Counseling, Psychiatry, and Disorderly Sexual Subjects Abstract While scholars have argued that modern medical authority over sexuality stands in some relation to earlier religious discourse, modern religion and its new relationship to medicine are absent from these narratives. This dissertation takes up just such a study through narrating the emergence of modern pastoral counseling and its assumptions, categories, and therapeutic techniques, all of which were deeply entangled with modern sciences of the mind. Modern pastoral counseling marks a decisive discontinuity from the long tradition of philosophical and Christian care for the soul in its relation to medicine and in its view of the self. This dissertation argues that mid-century American Protestant understandings of sexuality depended on a modern psychological conception of the self. Through analysis of archival documents, theological texts, and hospital case histories from the early clinical pastoral training movement, this study investigates the shifting pastoral rhetoric used to understand sexual maladjustment, and it traces shifting attempts to rework Christian sexual ethics. While psychiatry was the primary framework for making sense of queer love—at times even for queer people themselves—some fashioned new and imaginative languages for expressing forms of queer love and queer religion. Juxtaposing clinical discourse with these diverse genres not only illuminates the limits of contemporary debates about religion and sexuality, but it also illustrates the importance of studying entanglements of religion, science, and medicine in everyday life and social practice. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................. v Introduction. (Modern) Care of the Afflicted Flock ................................................................................. 1 Chapter 1. Clinical Pastoral Christianity and Sexual Madness .......................................................... 20 Chapter 2. Shepherds of the Personality: The Medical and Scientific Roots of Modern Pastoral Counseling ........................................................................................................................ 65 Chapter 3. Sexual Reformations: Christian Ethics and the American Sexual Mystique .................. 111 Chapter 4. American Psychiatry and the Pastoral Counseling of Homosexuals .............................. 168 Chapter 5. Fabulous Imaginaries: Queer Writing and the Language of Resistance ......................... 231 Conclusion New Labyrinths of Abnormal Sex .................................................................................. 273 Bibliography ................................................................................................................... 277 iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This project developed under the guidance of my advisors, Amy Hollywood and Mark Jordan. They combed through many drafts of each page, and offered careful and perceptive readings of my work. Whatever insight lies in these pages owes much to them. Words fall short of my gratitude for their support. They are exceptional teachers and mentors, and I count the opportunity to work with them as a great privilege. Mayra Rivera Rivera was an insightful reader who opened novel lines of inquiry. Her comments helped me articulate the major arcs of this story, and for this I am most thankful. Several other people were indispensible during the preparation of this dissertation. Francis Schüssler Fiorenza has been an especially valued mentor who has offered much support, not least for this project, throughout my time at Harvard. Gayle Rubin listened with interest as I talked through my research in painstaking detail, and offered insight and enthusiasm over many conversations. Brooks Holifield and Rod Hunter spent an afternoon having a conversation with me at Emory. Their deep familiarity and sustained engagement with American pastoral care enriched my own understanding. I am grateful for Ahmed Ragab, a dedicated teacher and friend, whose keen historical sensibility sharpened this work. Around the country, I was greeted by many archivists and librarians who helped navigate an immense amount of material. Without their insight and savvy, this project would have been impossible. I am especially thankful for Richard Adams, Evan Boyd, Jolie Braun, Fran O’Donnell, Vicki Johnson, Debra Madera, Kyle Morgan, and Eva Wolynska. Many friends and colleagues have offered inexhaustible support. This work has benefited from the astute readers among them as it has from much laughter and conversation. I am grateful for the rich social and intellectual world that surrounded the writing of this dissertation. Special thanks to Liz Angowski, Bradley Bannon, George González, Alice Howard, Nan Hutton, Michael Lesley, Emily Miller, Keira Moore, Andrzej Nowojewski, Emily Perrier, Jacob Quiring, Nick Vanselow, Jay Williams, and Tyler Zoanni. I tested his patience, but constant companionship from little Cortez was a source of much cheer. I am especially thankful for the incomparable friendship of Margaret Butterfield, Amy Howe, and that wild Henry Wheaton, and for Charlotte McKechnie, with whom my days are in the perfect key. With quirk and good humor, my family has always ensured that I had encouragement, love, care, and support to follow my dreams. I’m deeply grateful for them, especially my aunt Cheryl Dullabaun, whose beautiful creativity is an inspiration, my father, Barry Block, who every day teaches me the value of hard work and determination, and my mother, Marlene Block, whose bursts of laughter and love for the life of the mind are my constant joy. She has given innumerable hours to offering a gentle ear and wise guidance at every stage. It is my mom, therefore, to whom I dedicate this work. v INTRODUCTION (Modern) Care of the Afflicted Flock In 1955, a man given the pseudonym “Mr. Lin” went to the counseling center of American psychologist Carl Rogers for help. At the time, Rogers was in the process of arranging to have “motion pictures” taken of the center’s therapeutic interviews. Mr. Lin agreed to participate, and later returned to have his first interview with Rogers recorded. They sit across from each other in the grainy black and white film. Pallid light from a tall geometric lamp bleaches their faces as their voices echo through hollow sound quality and jumpy volume modulation. In the introductory remarks appended to the film, Rogers explains that he did not know the nature of the problem when the interview began. Mr. Lin waits no more than thirty seconds to state his problem. “The fact remains, it’s homosexuality. And I want to change.”1 Rogers’ “client-centered counseling” was the dominant model of American pastoral care in the 1940s and the 1950s.2 The filmed interview depicts this form of counseling, and it illustrates an approach to navigating matters of sexual concern common among psychologists and pastors alike. Rogers is calm and steady, an attentive listener throughout the interview. Mr. Lin’s self-analysis is laced with Rogers’ murmurs of agreement. Halfway into the conversation, Mr. Lin begins prodding other knotty troubles. He wastes time instead of practicing piano. He reads books, but never critically. 1 Carl R. Rogers and Reuben Segel, The Case of Mr. Lin, Part 1, Psychotherapy Begins, directed by Reuben H. Segel (University Park, PA: Penn State University, 1955), DVD. See also “Mr. Lin,” YouTube video, filmed 1955, posted by “SaybrookUniversity,” October 4, 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8NDuSYQfOA. 2 As historian Brooks Holifield phrases it, Rogers’ “was the first systematic theory of psychotherapy that attracted widespread support among the liberal Protestant clergy.” E. B. Holifield, “Carl R. Rogers,” in Dictionary of Pastoral Care and Counseling, edited by Rodney J. Hunter (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1990), 1091. 1 Rogers describes the development of their first interview as “somewhat characteristic” in an epilogue to the film. He explains that Mr. Lin initially identified his problem by a “certain label,” but as he gradually “[began] to get more and more into his experience,” he saw that the problem was “not that labeled

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