God and Attachment, Article Writing Example

According to thearticle, a study by Hall, Bliss, Brokaw, Edwards, & Pike (1998), reveals a positive relationship exists between object relations development and spiritual maturity. This is evident in their words that suggest, “the developmental maturity of one’s faith andrelationship with God is associated with the developmental maturity of one’srelationships with others” (p. 2). This concept is one that many people, no doubt, believe in, if they believe in God and the teachings of the Bible, which states, “If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?” (1 John 4:20, KJV). ‘Brother’, in this context, means any person, and this passage suggests there is definitely a connection between what one believes (or purports to believe) and his or her relationship with God. This is referred to as one’s level of object relations development, as measured by the Bell Object Relations Inventory, which is an assessment tool for measuring insufficiencies in ego functioning related to object relations, according to (Hall, Bliss, Brokaw, Edwards, & Pike, 1998). This study focused on results of the Bell Object Relations Inventory on study participants, which revealed a 95 percent (19 out of 20) signficance in correlations between spiritual maturity and level of object relations development.

The article notes the long history of theoretical religious studies from a psychoanalytic perspective, particuarly as it relates to objecr relations theory, as examined by noted researchers. One such researcher propsed that everyone has a God representation within them that is transformed and reshaped, on a continous basis, throughout their development depending on new experiences to which they are exposed. This was expanded upon by Hall, Bliss, Brokaw, Edwards, & Pike, 1998 in their study. Additionally, these researches sparked growing interest in investigating religion psychoanalytically, with a focus on spritual maturity.

As noted, spiritual maturity is related to a person’s spiritual “fruits”, which are the traits they continuously exhibit in daily life. This is something that is measured by clinicians and researchers by means of observable behaviors and beliefs, which are also described as significant to one’s relationship with God and spiritual well-being. “Such a model of spiritual maturity provides a unique perspective that correspondswell with a contemporary psychoanalytic point of view” (Hall, Bliss, Brokaw, Edwards, & Pike, 1998, p. 4).

The research further examines the relationship between relational maturity and spiritual dependency. This is explained from both a biblical and psychological perspective, which notes that how people relate to God is the same psychologically as they relate to their relationships with other people. This is the basis for the theoretical perspective that spiritual and psychological functioning from an object relations perspective is inexplicably related to a positive relationship between level of relations development and spiritual maturity. The study measures the validity of this theory with subscale results from the Bell Object Relations Inventory, as mentioned above. The article explains the methodology used in the study and states 76 subjects, which diverse ages, ethnicities and educational statuses participated in the study.

The purpose of the study was to investigate religion from a psychoanalytic perspective, by extending the findings of pervious research that focused on internal representations of God and a relationship between the God representation and level of object relations development. Findings revealed strongly significant correlations between spiritual maturity and level of object relations development, which supports the theoretical assumption that a person’s level of object relations development is significantly related with the nature of his or her relationship with God.

References

Hall, T. W., Bliss, R. W., Brokaw, B. F., Edwards, K. J., & Pike, P. L. (1998). An Empirical Exploration of Psychoanalysis and Religion: Spiritual Maturity and Object Relations Development. Journal of the Scientific Study of Religion, 37(2), 1-26.