A Ramble About Attachment Disorders

As part of my training for work, I am having to plow through a three inch thick binder of reading materials. Most of it is a repeat of materials, laws, and regulations which I have already read or with which I have already become acquainted. But recently I read through a pamphlet in the binder on attachment disorders which caught my attention and got me thinking. It isn't the first time I had encountered material on AD or RAD, but this time rusty gears started whirring.

In short, an attachment disorder occurs when a child fails, generally through either neglect or abuse, to form a healthy nurturing attachment to their parent. This in turn leads them to be unable to form healthy attachments to other people and can cause them to either cling to a person, or to completely reject and become abusive to the person, and in many cases to become abusive to themselves. The author of the article I had read stated that such children will often try to cause their foster parents (assuming a foster care situation) to abuse them to try to get them to treat them as their abusive birth parents did. The author also states that such children engage in pathological lying, invent stories of being abused, and refuse to take responsibility for their actions blaming others; such behavior continuing into adulthood.

I have often referred to "sin" as a disorder or malfunction of the human psyche (the very word in Greek, hamartia, meaning "error, malfunction, disorder, mistake", and used frequently in Greek literature to denote the "fatal flaw" which resides within every human being). I have also often referred to it as a kind of Spiritual Autism or Spiritual Asberger's Syndrome where the person initially is unable to communicate or socialize normally with God, or the spiritual world in general. I have also described the path of Jesus Christ as a kind of treatment plan for this disorder.

Now I would like to explore these elements, add one or two more, and then try to put a bigger picture together.

Another psychologist, Abraham Maslow, described what he called a hierarchy of needs, also referred to as Maslow's pyramid. In it he describes five levels of need, each level of which must be realized and satisfied before the person can progress upwards: 1)physiological, 2)safety and security, 3)love/belonging, 4)esteem, 5)self-actualization. This scheme is debated as to which level should go where, and that it doesn't always look the same in every individual, but the basic idea is sound. It is when a need is perceived as not being met that psychological aberrations begin to occur, and the person is often unable to progress to the next level.

Another piece of the puzzle I am attempting to put together lies in the descriptions given of experiences of deep prayer and meditation and even enlightenment among the various mystical traditions. To condense a great number of such witnesses, when one draws ever closer to God to the point where there is only the individual and God, and the lines begin to blur, the general consensus is the experience of overwhelming peace, joy, love, and fulfillment in knowing Him in an intimate way.

I would posit that the human being's "natural" state was to be in intimate constant relationship with God. Such a relationship would consistently and permanently meet all that person's needs for safety, love, belonging, esteem, and self-actualization. It would not matter if everything collapsed and burned down around them(as has also been reported as being experienced), this constant relationship and awareness would continuously provide that those needs would be met. I should add here that in this kind of relationship it would be understood that the physical needs, while important, would likely be considered of secondary importance (also reported as being experienced).

The hamartia disorder (no, I don't like using the word "sin" because of it's frequent misuse and abuse) renders the human being unable to communicate or relate "normally" with God. Like a person with Asperger's or Autism, the person is often aware of God, or rather aware of the absence of "Something", but is unable to socialize normally or experience normal relationship. It is not that God is not present, but that the person in question is unable to recognize that presence without promptings from Him, and even often with promptings the person is unable to recognize and respond appropriately to Him.

The leads to the perception that somehow God, the Primary Parent, is not present or is somehow neglectful of the person whether or not that is the actual reality. This then precipitates a kind of Attachment Disorder with God, or more often because of the initial disorder, our perception of God which is all too often a misperception or a fantasy created in our mind of what we expect God to be because of our lack of direct experience or "observation". The mind creates an image which to which it then attaches the label "God" with God Himself being formless and imageless. We lie, we refuse to take responsibility, we become abusive to ourselves, to our perception of God, and to other people. We cling to our perceptions or fantasies about God, or we reject them outright hoping that He will love us while we tell Him how much we hate Him.

This also lends itself to the conclusion that it is this primary disorder, hamartia, which is the root cause of all other disorders. Without the uninterrupted relationship from birth of the psyche to God, the psyche then turns to the people around the person to fulfill those needs perceived as being unfulfilled. This then leads to a Russian roulette where the person's apparent psychological health is dependent largely on the circumstances of his birth, childhood and upraising, as well as his own choices which are highly influenced by these factors.

Even after a person is baptized, and is so joined to God through being grafted onto Christ, there is still the matter of integrating that new state. The person has developed a lifetime of behaviors which developed while unable to respond to the presence of God, and now they must integrate that new sense and ability into their pattern of behavior which takes both time and practice. Integration does not happen immediately, and it must progress and occur before the full benefits of such Treatment can be realized, at least in this life.

It stands to reason that we will relate to God in the same way that we will relate to other people. If we present a false front to other people, we will likely attempt to do so with God. If we are honest with other people and open, we are likely to do so with God. If we are capable of dysfunctional relationships with other people, then we are equally capable of it with God and are likely to treat Him thus.

In spite of all this, God is still present. He still loves us. He still wants desperately for us to work through this and to know Him, knowing the whole time the kind of fight and struggle it will be. He wants us to succeed in this and ultimately to experience deep, intimate, normal relationship with Him. The way things were supposed to be.