CHAPTER 5
Conclusions
a. Theological and Biblical Method
In Frank Lake's issue-long article "The Theology of Pastoral Counseling" published in Contact in 1980, he cites three general theological goals: the thorough theological grounding for everything he does, the communication of a cross-based theodicy, and finally, the development of a theodicy which can even incorporate fetal suffering. As was stated previously, a full analysis of Lake's theological method is beyond the scope of the present work, but a critique of Lake's exegetical and hermeneutical methodology relating to the
M-FDS is needed. Secondly, central toward an understanding of the M-FDS as a theological paradigm is Lake's theodicy. Simply put, what are the correlations between Christ's sufferings and ours, and how can these be effectively communicated to sufferers"?206
As has previously been noted, Lake's use of the term "paradigm" relating to the theological dimension of the M-FDS was defined as "a pattern, something shown side by side with something else, inviting comparison of the correspondences."207 What he sought to imply by this was the close parallel between "the agony of the human spirit as it endures
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206Lake, "Research and Pre-natal Reconciling," 2.
207Lake, "Report from the Research Department #2," 3.
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ultimate injuries and the agonies of Christ in his crucifixion."208 But underlying this paradigmatic relationship were Lake's assumptions regarding the integration of the psychological and theological realms. That a theological understanding of Christ's sufferings could be not only correlated, but also integrated with the psychological trauma of a first trimester fetus is assumed by Lake.209
1. Lake's Methodology
a. Theological and Biblical Method
In an article titled "The Work of Christ in the Healing of Primal Pain" Lake described his theological method:
My task is to approach the 'work of Christ' from the limited aspect of an inductive, strictly 'clinical' theology. I am not, as I understand my task, required to give a full and rounded account of the whole body of soteriological doctrine as such. I am not here a teacher of theology, responsible to stress this or that aspect in direct proportion to the stress it receives in the scriptures, and argue deductively that what must follow is such and such.
Approaching the theological task inductively my concern must be ... to take up 'an issue in the present situation'. .. and then analyze it in depth, to see what is at stake in it and how Christian truth may be related to it.210
He continues by stating that he does not see it as his task to "declare the whole counsel of God" on every occasion. Rather, he says, "the whole pharmacopoeia of the gospel medicine is open to us to use. . . . What we do stands or falls by its faithfulness to the juncture between the particular human need and a particular God-given resource at whatever level."211
The attempted integration of "God-given resources" and the "pharmacopoeia of the gospel" with the various facets of "human need" is both the strength and weakness of Lake's
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208Lake, Clinical Theology, xvii.
209In an article on "Clinical Theology" contained in the Dictionary of Pastoral Care, John Gravelle writes "The theological basis of the movement assumes, first, that parents. especially the mother, express on an emotional level the infant's experience of God, and secondly, that Christ's creative encountering of the personal pain of humanity is both a resource we need to claim, and an example of both spiritual and personal growth. It also believes that correlations can be made between, for instance, the biblical understandings of man and psychodynamic analyses of personality." (John Gravelle, "Clinical Theology." in Dictionary of Pastoral Care , ed. Alastalr V. Campbell [New York: Crossroad Books, 1990], 38).
210Lake, "The Work of Christ in the Healing of Primal Pain," 226.
211ibid., 227.
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entire project. The division of the human person into physiological, psychological and spiritual dimensions while often practical, arbitrarily and superficially violates the essential unity of what it means to be a human being. Lake's stated attempt to integrate the various bodies of specialized data into a unity, grounded in a Christian theology informed by the Bible is certainly commendable.212 But he succeeds only in a superficial manner and often at the expense of seeming to violate the original meaning of various passages.
Also estimable is the distinctly Christian therapy that this attempted integration gave rise to. "Clinical Theology" was defined by Lake as "the theology of pastoral care of a person in trouble, sorrow, weakness, confusion, affliction, anxiety, depression and the like" or "the theology that informs a 'clinical meeting' where actual cases and concrete problems are being presented. analyzed and discussed with a view to 'treatment' or the 'conduct of the case'."213 Certainly these overlap and from the standpoint of the seeming inadequacies and weaknesses of both traditional Christian pastoral care214 and traditional psychotherapeutic models,215 both were needed.
Further, Moss makes the point that Lake's therapeutic system has the advantage of making clearly apparent, up front, its religious undertones.215 These undertones216 were, for
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212Hugh Melinsky, in an article attempting to evaluate the Clinical Theology Association, wrote that academically speaking, "it had been a brave attempt to marry the diverse disciplines of theology and psychology." Peters adds that Melinsky thought that this integration was both "too selective" and "too uniform". (Hugh Melinsky, Religion and Medicine[London: SCM Press, 1970] quoted in Peters, Frank Lake, 171).
213Lake, "The Work of Christ in the Healing of Primal Pain," 226-227.
214"Perhaps its [Clinical Theology] greatest contribution remains the challenge presented to others, in that it has forced Christians to look again at emotional suffering, and has demonstrated the inadequacies of many more traditional pastoral practices." ("Clinical Theology," in New Dictionery of Theology, eds. Sinclair B. Ferguson and David F. Wright [Downers Grove, Ill.: Intervarsity Press, 1988]: 150).
215Moss writes that "for many Christians, systems and methods are inherently suspect until they can be shown to be derived from Scripture or from authentic doctrine and tradition." (Moss, "In The Beginning," 15:1).
216Clare states that many modern psychotherapies are really secular religions that have hidden "religious" agendas. "Many of the people flocking to the growth centres and the ashrams, the encounter groups and the rolfing sessions seem to us to be unhappy, bewildered and disoriented people searching for some philosophical principle, some system of values by which to live. The questions they ask are often the ultimate questions concerning existence, purpose, the meaning of life, happiness, pain and death. Nor is there any doubt that psychotherapists are willing to be cast in the role of 'secular pastoral workers' providing values and meaning of their own. Yet we do feel that the announced agenda of psychotherapy. with its heavily medical. secular and pseudoscientific flavour, insufficiently reflects its frankly religious undertones." (Anthony Clare, Interview by Sally Thompson, 1981, British Broadcasting Corporation, 238, quoted in Moss, "In The Beginning," 15:1).
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Lake, not simply implicit in a minor way, but rather foundational. Lake's intention was that psychology and therapy are always to be judged by and answer to a Biblically-informed Christianity.
But the weaknesses of Lake's attempted integration of "God-given resources" and the "pharmacopoeia of the gospel" with the various facets of "human need" are also readily apparent. Lake's so-called inductive theology217 manifests itself practically as a hermeneutic theory in which both the biblical and theological resources are used in the service of certain psychological observations.218 Lake's stated theological task of "taking up an issue in the
present situation" and then going to the "pharmacopoeia of the gospel" to see what applies to particular human need" is the essence of how he utilizes both the Bible and various theologians.219
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217Peter van de Kastelle addressed Lake's claim of an inductive theology with the following statement: "It has been suggested that Frank's theological method was inductive, but was it? My suspicion is that it was merely eclectic, more like a series of footnotes. The apparent strength of the Clinical Theology Assn., in my opinion, is the apparent attempt to provide some theological base for those aspects of the human sciences which seemed important to Frank in his clinical work. . . . my feeling is that his theology was almost non-existent. Certainly Frank personally had a glorious vision of the sufferings of the Christ for us which appeared to motivate him, and which he was able to share with others in pain. A vision is not sufficient to provide a theology, though it may prove to be the seedbed out of which theology grows." Peter van de Kastelle, "A New Shape for Ministry" in "Freedom to Serve: Towards the Future with C.T.A." CTA Occasional Paper #3 [Clinical Theology Association, St. Mary's House, Oxford, April 1984], 14).
218In a review of Tight Comers in Pastoral Counselling, Atkinson writes: "There seem to be places where Lake is tailoring his theology to fit his psychological and therapeutic assumptions." (David Atkinson, review of Tight Corners in Pastoral Counselling, by Frank Lake, Third Way (September 1982). Commenting on Lake's observations relative to Christ and fetal-pain, Maclnnes writes: "Obviously there is much in the passion of Christ which will speak to our experience and be used in our healing. But Dr. Lake comes perilously near to establishing his psychology as a theology." (Mac Innes, "Reply to 'The Work of Christ in the Healing of Primal Pain," 12).
219In his review of Lake's Tight Corners in PastoraI Counselling, Alastair Campbell addresses what he calls Lake's "medicine bad approach': "Whatever this approach is, it is not "inductive theology", as that has been identified by Hutner, for example. Rather, it appears to be the deductive [emphasis Campbell's] theology and "pastoral medicine bag" approach which Hutner specifically opposed. . . . Dr. Lake seems to believe that bits of the Gospel or Christian truth can be "applied" to specific situations, without themselves being affected. (Alastair Campbell, review of Tight Corners in Pastoral Counselling, by Frank Lake, in C~ta~t 74 [1982:2]:
26, quoting Seward Hutner, Preface to Pastoral Theology New York: Abington Press, 1958]).
Lake's response to Campbell was contained in a letter to the editor of Contact written three days before he died: "I was careful to define exactly what I meant by "Approaching the theological task inductively [emphasis Lake's]. My concern must be to take up an issue in the present situation and then to analyze it in depth, to see what is at stake in it and how Christian truth may be related to it."
Gratuitously denied my own definition of 'inductive', the reviewer, in homage to the Chicago pundit [Hutner], assert that this "is not 'inductive theology' as has been defined by Hutner" So what? So long as the sense of the word is accurately preserved, why should not two definitions be allowed? But then to be told that my approach is a "deductive", "medicine-bag approach", twisting the plain meaning of the word to its opposite, is monstrous. I do not oounsel with my hand impatient to open a "medicine bag"; quite the contrary. I stay with the person in their human dilemma, encouraging them to explore it and mull over it as it emerges, in their own way. This is not deductive. I do not ask them to start with my own theological premises. The reviewer's criticism of me here is flagrantly irresponsible. (Frank Lake, "Letter to the Editor," Contact 75 [1982:2], 28-29.)
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While Lake would certainly disagree with this criticism, the very manner in which he uses the Bible, which is quite often,220 illustrates his sometimes flawed exegesis. For
instance, Lake very often ignores basic grammaticohistorical exegetical principles in Clinical Theology when he uses biblical personages to illustrates various clinical psychiatric
descriptions, categories and treatments. For instance, Lake would see Ahitophel, Ahab and Elijah221 as exhibiting the classic behavioral signs of depression. Simon the Pharisee, Peter, and Paul all exhibit dissociative behavior.222 According to Lake, Jeremiah223 evidences
paranoid symptomology and Abraham,224 Jacob,225 and Job226 all evidence schizoid characteristics.
Perhaps typical of Lake's problematic exegetical method227 regarding the use of
Biblical figures is his understanding of Mary Magdalene as the prototypical hysteric and Jesus as the prototypical counselor of an hysteric.228 According to Lake, while Jesus affirms Mary, he affirms her not just as a person, but as a person of worth. Because of Mary's "hysterical" dependence upon Christ, his death is an "appalling cataclysm", because while the disciples may have lost their leader and Peter may have lost his self respect, Mary had lost her
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220ln Clinical Theology alone Lake cites Old Testament passages 135 times ("Index of Biblical References" pp 1200-1201) and New Testament ones 139 times ("Index of Biblical References" pp.1202-1203. He cites 56 different Biblical personages 222 different times ("Index of Biblical Characters" p.1204).
221ibid., 102-103.
222ibid., 461-470.
223bid., 1107.
224ibid., 752-763.
225ibid., 866-569.
226ibid., 581-588.
227Another example was given by Michael Hare Duke when he writes that "Dr. Lake claimed that his fundamental model of human nature was drawn from his meditation on the Christ of the Fourth Gospel. This assumes that St John was writing a biography of Jesus which can be used reliably as a way of understanding the psychodynamics of Christ's personality." (Michael Hare Duke, "Analyzing the Psychoanalysts," review of Frank Lake: the Man and His Work, by John Peters).
228Lake, CIininical Theology, 446-458.
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personality. She goes to the tomb and refuses to leave. Christ appears to her and Mary unwittingly thinks she is speaking with the gardener. According to Lake, the two questions that Jesus asks Mary ("Why weepest thou?" and "Whom seeketh thou?") are the two questions fundamental to every hysteric. The hysteric is seeking someone who will give them a reason to stop crying. According to Lake, Jesus then begins to teach Mary that her dependence upon him must change229 not the fact of it or even the incarnational element to it, but rather the limitedly human element of it. She must give up clinging to the humanity of Jesus (ie. she tries to cling to his feet) because she now becomes a member of the new humanity, in which the Holy Spirit dwells within.
It could be argued that Lake's exegesis here is really an eisegesis. While this is certainly not always true regarding his handling of the biblical sources, he does at times read into the text rather than derive meaning from the text. Mary's relationship with Jesus apparently began when he cast seven demons from her.230 That it was a close relationship is seen in the fact that Mary, along with several other women, travelled with Jesus entourage and supported his ministry financially. She is next mentioned at the foot of the cross with Jesus' mother Mary.231 Finally, she is mentioned in all four gospels as one of the women who first discovers the absence of Jesus' body at the tomb.232
Based perhaps on Mary's "clinging" behavior following Jesus appearance to her, Lake reads into her actions and Jesus's response a totally foreign therapist/hysteric relationship. No biblical evidence exists to claim Mary as manifesting an hysterical dependence upon Christ. Indeed, Luke reports that both women "clasped his feet." Mary's presence at the garden tomb is not necessarily indicative of her loss of "personality", but is normal mourning behavior for one who has lost a close friend.233 Others were also in the garden, including Joanna,234
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229Lake sees the Jesus/Mary Magdalene dyad as a prototype. The therapist builds trust in the relationship, then lovingly introduces the "dark night" (cf. St. John of the Cross) of seeming loss wherein the person discovers that they have worth within and don't need to cling to some outside source of worth, and who, when the dawn finally oomes, is there to reaffirm the facts of internal worth once more.
230Luke 8:2.
231Mark 15:40 and John 19:25.
232Matthew 28:1-7, Mark 16:1-5, Luke 24:1-10 and John 20:1-2.
233Mary Magdalene's behavior is similar to Mary and Martha's behavior when their brother Lazarus dies (John 11:1-37).
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Salome and Mary, the mother of James.235 Jesus two questions to Mary are not assessment questions, but rather straightforward queries relative to his death and resurrection. While Lake's point that Jesus was telling Mary that their relationship would be changing is legitimate, the reason has to do not with psychodynamic notions of transference and dependence but with Christ's anticipated ascension and the giving of the Holy Spirit. While described behavior may certainly indicate certain parallels between biblical figures and certain personality types, Lake very often ignores the historical, cultural, social background of the various biblical passages he cites.
Certain passages are also cited by Lake as connoting certain descriptions or prescriptions for various psychiatric problems. For instance, Lake would see Psalm 42 as containing 6 characteristics of a healthy response of a depressed person to their depression.236 Others passages are also cited by Lake as indicative of certain psychological themes. He lists 48 psalms as "Psalms for the depressed,"237 and sixteen others as "Psalms for the Afflicted."238
Perhaps typical of his recurrent faulty exegesis regarding his use of Biblical passages as they related to therapeutic processes was his suggestion that being "born-again" could be understood as relating to reliving one's birth through primal integration. Tom Small writes:
I can remember when, together with a number of other leaders in the Anglican renewal movement, I met Frank in London to convey to him our concern and to beg him to not to go on suggesting that the text 'You must be born again' in John 3 could be validly exegeted as meaning, 'You must relive your birth experience'. We cannot have convinced him because he went on doing it.239
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234Luke 24:10.
235Mark 16:1.
235He is first honest with himself about what he feels and secondly, he affirms what he feels in God's presence. Thirdly, he does not seek to palliate the negative, 'he does not take refuge in a false dualism to save God's face by limiting his sovereignty." Fourthly, he attempts to stand outside himself and gain another perspective, while he fifthly counsels himself to "wait on God." Lastly, he looks forward to a "face-to-face" encounter with God. (Lake, Clinical Theology, 182).
237ibid.,186-187.
238ibid., 187.
239Peters, Frank Lake, 84.
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Lake's repeated eisegesis is even more apparent regarding some of the theological sources, particularly as it relates to the M-FDS. Lake justified the application of theological sources to psychological categories by stating that "alternative nomenclatures"240 have been used historically to refer to the same human experiences. Thus, Lake can state definitively
that St. John of the Cross' "Dark Night of the Soul", Martin Luther's "theologia crucis", Simone Weil's "Nail of Affliction"241 and Soren Kierkegaard's242 "Sickness Unto Death" all apply, more-or-less to various psychic disturbances, but are particularly applicable to the schizoid experience of dread, non-being, degradation and despair. The "alternative nomenclature" scheme, in which Lake connected and paralleled certain similar ideas, language and themes, results in a surface "integration" at the cost of the integrity of the theological sources.
For instance, Lake's appropriation of St. John of the Cross, Soren Kierkegaard and Simone Weil as not only describers of fetal distress, but also as sufferers is an affirmation fraught with difficulty. What Lake does is to connect in a facile manner the language of
theological reflection and description with the language of psychodynamic, psychological and primal descriptions. Since these languages, in his view, are merely "alternative
nomenclatures" for the same experiences, he moves back and forth between them with
apparent ease, sometimes with total disregard for the historical, social, religious, and political context in which St. John, Kierkegaard and Weil lived and wrote. Several specific examples follow.
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240Lake, Clinical Theology, 558. Lake cites several diflerent terms for what he asserts is really the same thing as our modern term "schizoid", ie. the Biblical term "affliction" used by Job and the Psalmists, Simone Weil term "malheur", Kierkegaard's "Sickness Unto Death", Cohn Wilson's term "Outsider." Elsewhere Lake writes that the horror of transmarginal stress has been accurately described "with those marvels of self-observation of the condition given by Simone Well, Soren Kierkegaard and so many lyrical poets from St. John of the Cross to George Herbert and Gerard Manley Hopkins, and the present Pope himself, in the Christian tradition." (Lake, "Mutual Caring," 32-3).
241As an example, take note of Lake's description of a "young Anglican priest": "He was in deep distress and pain. He was in that state of 'affliction' so vividly described by Simone Weil in 'Affliction and the home of God'. He had, he said, 'totally lost his faith'. He was hurt.and angry with 'god' that after years of 'trying' to be godly, no relief came to his perpetual inner sense of anguished grief. He was disgusted at himself as a playacting automaton, controlled by others. He felt a 'block betrayer' of the true self he could never find." (Lake, "Research and Pre- natal Reconciling," 1).
242In ClinicaI Theology, Lake cites Freud 58 times, but he cites Kierkegaard 68 times.
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As noted previously, Lake describes St. John of the Cross as a severely stressed and, indeed, schizoid personality,243 whose poem "I die because I do not die" is said to illustrate this. The translation that Lake uses of St. John's poem seems, on the surface, to express the paradoxical embrace of death and recoil from life that is so characteristic of the transmarginal states. Yet several other translations244 render the language of the poem as less expressive of hate of life and more expressive of longing for God. Indeed, the title of John's poem in one translation is rendered a description, "Coplas about the soul which suffers with impatience to see God."245 One example of the varying translations illustrates the point. The translation Lake uses for the first stanza follows:
This life I live in such a way
Is nothing but life's deprivation,
One prolonged annihilation
Till at last I live with Thee.
Hear, my God hear what I say,
I do not want this life of mine;
I die because I do not die.
M.C. D'Arcy's translation246 of the same stanza is quite differently evocative:
This life I live in vital strength
Is loss of life unless I win You:
And thus to die I shall continue
Until I live in You at length.
Listen (my God!) my life is in You.
This life I do not want, for I
Am dying that I do not die.
Lake's use of this poem as an expression of the despair of the schizoid position is quite different than its seeming expression of longing for God. Indeed, the schizoid position shuns all contact, especially with the mother and then with God as a projection of dynamics of
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243Lake writes that St. John of the Cross "expresses the schizoid position with startling clarity." Several hundred pages later he writes that "It is . . . quite evident that he was personally familiar with the demonic paradoxes of the schizoid position." (Lake. Clinical Theology, 593 and 842).
244John of the Cross, "I Live Yet Do Not Live in Me," In The Poems of St John of the Cross, trans. Willis Barnstone (New York: New Directions Books, 1968). 62-65; John of the Cross, "Life No Life," in The Poems of St John of the Cross, 3d Ed, trans. John Frederick Nims (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1979), 30-35.
245Poems of St John of the Cross, trans. Roy Campbell (New York: Pantheon Books, 1951) 35~7. Nims subtitle is "Rimes of the soul in an agony of longing to see God." ("Life No Life," The Poems of St John of the Cross, 31).
246M.C. DArcy, "Preface," in Poems of St John of the Cross, trans. Roy Campbell (New York: Pantheon Books, 1951), 8.
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the mother/child dyad. Thus, Lake's meaning is the diametric opposite; instead of a longing for God which makes this life pale by comparison,247 it becomes for Lake a rejection of life, including the relationships of life such as mother and God.
In Soren Kierkegaard Lake also finds a schizoid personality, one who was "afflicted with . . . dread and incurable melancholy,248 and one who also recorded an "alternative nomenclature" for the exigencies of fetal distress and it's result, the schizoid position. It is true that many Kierkegaardian scholars would acknowledge that Kierkegaard suffered from some form of dysfunction, if not psychopathology. And one can certainly and plainly see within the Kierkegaardian corpus an insightful and incisive comprehension of the human spirit and it's struggles, including the psychological struggles.
Lake is thus right to see Kierkegaard as a theologian who was a psychologist as well, with self-analysis as his main subject of inquiry. While Kierkegaard wrote of his "incurable melancholy" and at times acted in a peculiar manner, Lake's appropriation of Kierkegaard's terminology as expressive of specific characteristics of the M-FDS proceeds too far and reads too much into what Kierkegaard meant.
For instance, in Lake's hermeneutical hands, Kierkegaard's terms "dread", "despair" and "dis-relation" relate specifically to the fetus' or child's reaction to either abandonment or "the invasion of distressingly bad maternal emotions."249 resulting is "dis-relation" between mother and fetus/infant. "Sickness unto death" is closely related with the "abnormal, paradoxical wish to die and be annihilated."250 Lake wrote that Kierkegaard's language in the Concept of Dread "is straining to express the nature of life and its catastrophes in the earliest and most determinative months of existence."251
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247A more likely "interpretion" of John's poem would be as a reflection of sorts relative to Paul's statement of his longing for death" found in Philippians 1:21-24: "For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. If I am to go on living in the body, this will mean fruitful labor for me. Yet what shall I choose? I do not know! I am torn between the two: I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far; but it is more necessary for you that I remain in the body."
248Lake, Clinical Theology, 586.
249Lake, "Studies in Constricted Confusion," T19.
250ibid., 558.
251ibid., 726.
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Perhaps Lake anticipated the problems of applying Kierkegaard's terminology to the specific components of the M-FDS. Thus, he writes:
The fact that the terminology is difficult and the expression sometimes tortuous is not entirely the fault of Kierkegaard's too complex intelligence. This is in the nature of the material under consideration, which is essentially pre-verbal, or non-verbal, and paradoxical. He had to invent a language and define his own concepts. Whatever one tries to express in this field of schizoid studies, continued reading of Kierkegaard will show that either in the works he published, or in the posthumous Journals, he had said it all 120 years ago, and said it better."252
Thus stated, Lake feels free to appropriate Kierkegaard's descriptions of "per-verbal, non-verbal, and paradoxical" experiences to the M-FDS. Lake writes that "Kierkegaard is explicit about" the origin of the "catastrophes" of the M-FDS in the "infantile states of mind."253 Further, "Kierkegaard's image of a poisoned environment spreading its poison into him until his own life and whole existence is poisoned, occurs commonly in first trimester transcripts."254 Lake then cites an extract from Kierkegaard's Journals:
The whole of existence frightens me, from the smallest fly to the mystery of the Incarnation; everything is unintelligible to me, most of all myself; the whole of existence is poisoned in my sight, particularly myself. Great is my sorrow and beyond bounds; no man knows, only God in heaven, and He will not console me.255
Thus Lake sees in Kierkegaard's description a reiteration of primal distress, a recitation of the "facts" of transmarginal distress. But what Lake ignores is the rest of the journal entry which he quotes from. In it Kierkegaard is clearly referring back to 1836, to a period three years earlier when he had engaged in a period of moral rebellion and sin. Kierkegaard's journal entry, made in the very midst of his peculiar relationship with Regina Olsen, continues:
"No man can console me, only God in heaven and he will not have mercy upon me -- Young man, you who still stand at the beginning of the way, if you have gone astray, 0 be converted, turn to God and taught by him your youth will be strengthened to the work of manhood; you will never experience what he must suffer who after having wasted the strength and courage of his youth in rebellion against Him, must now, exhausted and powerless, begin a retreat through the desolate and devastated provinces surrounded on all sides by the
abomination of desolation, by burnt towns and the delusive expectations of smoking sites, by trampled down prosperity and broken strength, a retreat as slow as a bad year, as long as eternity monotonously broken by the sound of the complaint: these days please me not.256
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252ibid. 595.
253ibid., 701.
254Lake, "Mutual Caring," 44.
255Lake, "Mutual Caring," 45 quoting Kierkegaard, The Journals, Extract #275.
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For Lake, a third and very important originator of an "alternative nomenclature" for the M-FDS is Simone Weil, whom, he believes is also someone well acquainted with the dynamics of first-trimester transmarginal distress. Lake writes:
Simone Weil's account of the three-fold affliction corresponds exactly with the three-fold aspects of severe and undisplaced negative umbilical or intra-uterine affect. Persons re-living a very bad time in their first trimester, speak of themselves, in later life, exactly in these ways. Constricted confusion has been of schizoid intensity, following trans-marginal stress.257
Perhaps it can be affirmed that Lake's utilization of a very narrow segment of Weil's thought is less problematic than his use of St. John of the Cross or Kierkegaard. Weil's own struggle with dysfunction and pathology258 resulted in her premature death by anorexia nervosa.259 Her descriptions of "malheur" were, to an extent, self-descriptions. However, the problem of what Weil meant by her descriptions and how Lake's utilizes them to express the dynamics of the M-FDS still remains. Weil's essay, "The Love of God and Affliction"260 is the major source for Lake's use of Weil. This essay was written in response to an experience in 1938 during Holy Week, where she had gone to all of the Catholic liturgical services. Anderson writes that "in spite of splitting headaches, she had responded deeply to the beauty of the chanting and the words. 'The Passion of Christ' she said, 'entered into my being once and for all."'261
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256Kierkegaard, The Journals, Extract #275.
257Lake, "Studies in Constricted Confusion." T13.
258"Her notorious dislike of personal contact, her repulsion if she were kissed, and her total sexlessness, all point to personal phobias that were conquering the overworked, ill, and lonely woman." (Michele Murray, "The Jagged Edge: A Biographical Essay on Simone Weil," in Simone Weil Interpretations of A Life, ed. George Abbott White [Amherst, Mass.: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1981], 26).
259"The Coroner's verdict was 'cardiac failure due to myocardial degeneration of the heart muscles due to starvation and pulmonary tuberculosis. . . . The deceased did kill and slay herself by refusing to eat whilst the balance of her mind was disturbed'". (David McLellan Simone Weil: Utopian Pessimist London: Macmillan, 1989], 266).
260Weil, "The Love of God and Affliction" in Waiting for God, 117-136.
261David Anderson, Simone Weil (London: SCM Press, 1976), 58.
275
Thus, "The Love of God and Affliction" was a Good Friday meditation which focused on theodicy and the Cross. While Lake certainly saw correspondences between Weil's descriptions of affliction and his own understanding of prenatal distress, there is nothing in this essay which might indicate that Weil intended anything as specific as Lake envisions her to mean. Thus, Lake's use of Weil as a resource for a general theodicy is certainly legitimate. But seeing Weil as describing specifically the M-FDS is not.
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