Transitioning Integration: The Case of Regan and the Future of a Paradigm

Abstract

This article draws on narrative conventions to present a long-term case study involving a person engaged in a relational psychoanalytic treatment for childhood trauma, gender nonconformity, and religious disenfranchisement. Particular efforts are made to recapitulate Lindbeck’s seminal theological insights with regard to the nature and function of ecclesial doctrines, which are subsequently applied as hermeneutical sensibilities toward various integrative themes and processes emerging within this case study. Furthermore, a number of subordinate perspectives deemed to be coherent within Lindbeck’s superordinate conception of postliberal (or narrative) approaches to theology are privileged throughout this article. These postmodern perspectives are differentiated from more conservative and liberal approaches to theology. Afterward a postliberal theological framework is conceptualized as nesting interdisciplinary insights pertinent to this case study from miscellaneous scholars of relational psychoanalysis, gender and sexuality studies, and postmodern philosophies. Special considerations are given to three nested concepts from these scholars: identities as (co-constructed) soft assemblies; selves as braided and porous; and integrated multiplicity as normative. Auxiliary idioms to include queering, centering, witnessing, and prototyping are also applied at different points in this article. Together these idiomatic concepts are believed to supply viable alternatives to many modern conceptions of essentialism and supplement a postliberal approach to this case study. To be sure, it is suggested throughout this article that forms of modernity are conflated with theological approaches and now require attention from those communities who constitute the integrative paradigm. These points are summarized following this case study, which both reflects critically on the clinician’s subjectivity and renders coherent the clinical process from a postliberal theological framework.