Title

Where are the Nine?

School/Department

Rosemead School of Psychology

Publication Date

9-1-1996

Abstract

Jesus’ questions as recorded in the Gospels offer a prophetic challenge for Christian therapists who seek to integrate their faith with their clinical practice. One of my favorites is Jesus’ question in Luke 17 to the one leper who returned after all ten had been healed: “Where are the nine?” John Bunyan (1678/1969) in his classic The Pilgrim's Progresshad his protagonist, an Everyman he named “Christian,” traverse an allegorical odyssey en route to the Celestial City past adversarial characters with names like “Ignorance,” “Pliable,” and “Obstinate.” Taking inspiration from Bunyan, I propose putting the lepers in Luke to similarly imaginative use, recasting them for my purposes here as ten invented characters who represent different but common responses to the notion that integration is something indivisbly, irreducibly, and fundamentally personal. It is my thesis that we run from this notion just as the lepers ran from Christ. I have divided the lepers into four “colonies”: three of three lepers each, and the tenth as a colony of one. In this article I address the first two colonies, which I have named “No Need” and “No Good.”

Publication Title

Journal of Psychology and Theology

Volume

24

Issue

3

First Page

179

Last Page

196

DOI of Published Version

10.1177/009164719602400301

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