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Observing the Rites of Autonomy, Distancing the Prospects for ‘The Spiritual’
Author(s) -
Furlong Mark
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
australian and new zealand journal of family therapy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.297
H-Index - 19
eISSN - 1467-8438
pISSN - 0814-723X
DOI - 10.1002/j.1467-8438.2003.tb00560.x
Subject(s) - autonomy , harmony (color) , social psychology , thriving , psychology , empowerment , interpersonal communication , social connectedness , sociology , argument (complex analysis) , environmental ethics , epistemology , political science , law , psychotherapist , medicine , visual arts , art , philosophy
We are acculturated to believe each healthy person is a firmly bordered republic, a kind of self‐sufficient island. With its associated values entitlement and self‐determination, this assumption has become an internalised schema within which individuals — and many therapists — evaluate personal competence and adjustment. Whilst acknowledging that an expectation of autonomy might encourage ambition and empowerment, the injunction ‘be autonomous’ may also bring with it a number of unintended consequences. These include the promotion of experiences of isolation and incompleteness, experiences that many find uncomfortable and which may come to be associated with an emerging desire for what might be called ‘the spiritual’. A question then arises: might an expectation of personal autonomy on the one hand prompt a yearning for spiritual experience yet, on the other, diminish the prospects of such an experience by marginalising the possibilities of personal and interpersonal connectedness? After developing this argument, I offer preliminary ideas to assist practitioners to envisage how the ‘secularly spiritual’ might be imagined and invoked within everyday therapeutic practice.