41 Rewind: Trauma and Shame in King David's Childhood

Nov 9, 2020

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Intro: Welcome to the podcast Coronavirus Crisis: Carpe Diem!, where by God’s grace, you and I rise up and embrace the possibilities and opportunities for spiritual and psychological growth in this time of crisis, all grounded in a Catholic worldview. We are going beyond mere resilience, to rising up to the challenges of this pandemic and becoming even healthier in the natural and the spiritual realms than we were before. I’m clinical psychologist Peter Malinoski and I am here with you, to be your host and guide. This podcast is part of Souls and Hearts, our online outreach at soulsandhearts.com, which is all about shoring up our natural foundation for the Catholic spiritual life, all about overcoming psychological obstacles to being loved and to loving.
1. This is episode 41, released on November 9, 2020
2. Thank you for being here with me.
3. and it is the fifth episode in our series on shame.
4. and it is titled: Rewind: Trauma and Shame in King David's Childhood
5. We cover really difficult topics in this podcast --
  1. we go to the really challenging places that other podcasts are unwilling or unable to go.
  2. Because we have to. Because people are caught in those places and they are hurting, because people are trapped and people are in danger, they are in peril.
  3. And we need to reach out to them.
  4. And you know what? We are those people too.
    1. We have parts of us trapped in bad places, places we don't understand, places we are afraid of, places that we don't want to go by ourselves, all alone
    2. But together, each of us can understand much more of our unconscious.
6. This is the second of a subseries highly experiential episodes -- these episodes are opportunities for experiential learning -- to learn a lot about yourself -- about who you really are, about your history.
  1. St. Paul
    1. Romans 7:15 I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.
  2. 1. Romans 7:18b-19 I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want [that] is what I do.
  3. 1. St. Paul doesn't understand himself -- St. Paul, a pillar of virtue, author of half the books in the New Testament, St. Paul, who endured outrageous sufferings, amazing self sacrifice -- he's admitting to being dominated by his unconscious.
  4. 1. Isn't a question of willpower -- Paul had extraordinary willpower, hard to imagine many saints that can best him in terms of willpower.
  5. 1. It’s a question of insight. Of understanding.
      1. Won't be complete
      2. But we can have much more insight and understanding than we do now.
7. Continuing story of Princess Tamar, Crown Prince Amnon, Prince Absalom, and King David
  1. But diving much deeper into in the inner experience of these characters and others
    1. Why did they do the things that they did
    2. Why did they say the things that they did
    3. What were they thinking, feeling, sensing, believing, desiring, seeking
    4. And what where they missing, what where they forgetting, not noticing?
    5. What made them tick?
8. 1. Through clinical eyes.
9. 1. Much more to the story than the brief account in 2 Samuel 13
    1. We will be using other sources -- e.g. archeology to help us understand the time and culture
  2. 1. But also psychological insights about shame, trauma, the motives for the rape,
10. 1. Why -- not just to understand this story and the people this story
11. 1. But to help you understand your story and the people in your story
    1. Really about you understanding you
      1. I will be discussing the different internal parts or modes of operating for these men and women to help you gain insight into them. To make sense of their actions to see them in 3 dimensions instead of just in the short account given in the Scripture
    2. 1. Scripture is the word of God -- we need to unpack it, we need to decode the human language of revelation as the Pontifical Bible Commission put it in
        
        The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church -- 1993 Pontifical Bible Commission, endorsed by St. Pope John Paul II
        
        Psychology and theology continue their mutual dialogue. The modern extension of psychological research to the study of the dynamic structures of the subconscious has given rise to fresh attempts at interpreting ancient texts, including the Bible.
        
        Psychological and psychoanalytical studies do bring a certain enrichment to biblical exegesis in that, because of them, the texts of the Bible can be better understood in terms of experience of life and norms of behavior.
        
        As is well known, religion is always in a relationship of conflict or debate with the unconscious.
        
        It [the unconscious] plays a significant role in the proper orientation of human drives. Psychology and psychoanalysis… lead to a multidimensional understanding of Scripture and help decode the human language of revelation.
      2. What I am offering is admittedly speculative -- I am speculating about motives, internal conflicts, internal experience of the real people in the story
        
        I won't get it all right
        
        But the point is to show you a way to think about internal experience -- your own and others in a much deeper, more insightful way. It's about learning how to seek inside yourself to understand your own internal experience -- emotions, sensations, beliefs, attitudes, impulses, desires, intentions, conflicts, all the internal stuff. It's about that process, learning to seek. Seek and ye shall find.
        
        It's a way to understand the unconscious -- your unconscious, all the conflict inside, all the mysterious elements
      3. Utterly faithful to the fullness of truth as revealed by the Catholic Church.
      4. We are bringing the best of psychology to the fullness of divine revelation -- all in the service of being able to understand ourselves better so we can understand others better
        
        You can really understanding anybody else very well if you don't understand yourself. You'll misinterpret what you see in the other person.
        If you don't tolerate awareness of anger in yourself, and you sense anger in your relationship with another person, you'll assume it's the other person who is angry -- defense of projection

Not just some psychological self-discovery project --
1. to help you understand the story of others, and the people in their stories
2. So you can love them -- and love Christ in them.
We are going to get some of this wrong -- we won't be 100% accurate, but that's it's not the point right now. Tamar doesn't need us, at this point in her life, to empathize with her. She's dead and experiencing her eternity. So is King David, Prince Amnon, Prince Absalom, the...