Thesis advisor: Dominic Doyle / Thesis advisor: Theresa O'Keefe / Thesis (STL) — Boston College, 2012. / Submitted to: Boston College. School of Theology and Ministry. / Discipline: Sacred Theology.

The aim of this study, as explained in the first chapter, is to synthesize insights from Christianity and secular psychology in order to answer four questions: (1) Why do people reflect upon themselves? (2) Why do they understand themselves wrongly (i.e., constructing a false self)? (3) What does true self-understanding entail? (4) What interventions can foster true self-understanding? Chapter 2 presents a biblical response, with specific focus on passages from Proverbs, Matthew’s Gospel, and Paul’s letters. Chapter 3 collects answers from the writings of four Christian thinkers: Augustine of Hippo, Martin Luther, Søren Kierkegaard, and Thomas Merton. Chapter 4 examines answers from two modern psychologists, D.W. Winnicott and Susan Harter. The fifth chapter concludes with a synthesis of these answers, in order to propose a Christian perspective on the false self and true self.

In this thesis I respond to Miroslav Volfs proposal that in the eschaton painful memories will be forgotten in order not to detract from the joy of the New Creation. Through consideration of the constitution of personal identity and memory I will show that his proposal is problematic if, in the New Creation, persons are to be continuous with themselves. In my chapter on forgiveness I show that that it is possible, through forgiveness, for people to come to remember even the most painful of experiences without experiencing pain anew, I will show that painful memories can be healed and transformed, and thus that eschatological forgetting is not necessary. I will argue in the final chapter that, just as in his resurrection body Christ bore scars of the crucifixion, so in the New Creation we too will bear scars from our earthly lives. The main sources in the chapter on personal identity are John Macmurray, Alastair McFadyen and, to a lesser extent, Paul Ricoeur. The work of Gregory Jones is significant in chapters 2 and 3 (looking at memory and forgiveness respectively). In chapter 4 (New Creation) I have drawn on the work of Jurgen Moltmann as well as that of Bauckham and Hart.

Self-knowledge unavoidably implicates and, in the end, it must presume correspondence. How, indeed, can a self even be posited in the absence of a corresponding other? While the triunity of God reveals a dialectic of unity and correspondence, the human self has ever struggled, within traditions as seemingly diverse as ancient Hellenism and the sundry schools of modern philosophy and psychology, against the presumption that “autonomous self” might not be fatally contradictory. On the other hand, with the lens of orthodox Christology properly affixed, God, self, and others may finally be seen as they truly are. Christ is the revealer of mysteries, the reconciler of God and humanity, and the One in whom all the treasures of (self-)knowledge and wisdom are found. Christian self-knowledge, then, presumes the believer’s ethical correspondence—to God-in-Christ and, through Christ, with fellow believers by means of faith expressing itself in love. When sought in Christian caregiving contexts, this Christ-mediated knowledge of self, over time, counters and undermines the countertherapeutic expression of dissociation and its ethical corollary, self-deception.