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Kevin VailP634 – Dr. Brian Grant The Search
The SearchKevin VailP 634 – Theological Perspectives on Pastoral Care & CounselingDr. Brian Grant – Instructor 
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Kevin VailP634 – Dr. Brian Grant The Search
In perhaps the most famous statement in Christian literature, outside of the Bible, St.Augustine of Hippo writes “Our hearts were made for you, O’ Lord, and they are restless till theyrest in Thee”. His Confessions is the poetic and doxological narration of his own lifelong searchfor that ultimate object of faith, God, and is arguably the founding document of Christian psychology. Contemporary object relations theory confirms what St. Augustine knew, human beings are object seeking and object using creatures. Common objects of our world are imbuedwith a meaning and value for us and we need them to feel real and alive. Faith is part of everyhuman life and it requires such objects,
vocatus atque non vocatus, Deus aderit 
(called or notcalled, God is present), or as Ryan Lamothe puts it, “[t]he infant is born with faith” (2001, p. 51).However, this object seeking can and does go awry, as is implied by St. Augustine’s statement.Human beings can and do imbue the wrong objects with meanings that they cannot contain. Theobject, so imbued with all the hopes and faith of the individual, cannot but fail to satisfy theheart. The result of such failure is a loss of vitality and personality
dis
integration. The individualcan become trapped in a cycle of obsessive and compulsive behaviors, as he/she again and again places all his/her hopes and faith in the object. Today, we often call this cycle addiction; theancients knew it as idolatry.Lamothe writes, “In the midst of the vicissitudes and struggles of life, human beings possess and make use of objects that reveal the reality and necessity of their faith” (2001, p. 77).He illustrates the above truth in his book Revitalizing Faith Through Pastoral Counseling withthe case of a man he calls “Len”. Working as a substance abuse counselor for most of my adultlife, I have seen many “Len’s”; persons who, as a result of failures in early development, becamefixated on a panacea that provided them with “a sense of continuity and psychological cohesion”that was “mostly presymbolic and unreflective” (Lamothe, 2001, p. 88). This paper is a brief 
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Kevin VailP634 – Dr. Brian Grant The Search
discussion of one such case.The client, who I will call “Steve”, is a 32-year-old white male from a working class background. At the time of treatment he was incarcerated by the Indiana Department of Corrections as a result of forging his own prescriptions for narcotic medications. He met D.S.M.-IV criteria for Opiate Dependence and reported using 2 to 4 80 mg OxyContin tablets,intravenously, per day. He reported he had been using OxyContin for 3 years prior to hisincarceration.Steve disclosed that his home life growing up was chaotic, his father had abandoned thefamily when he was an infant and his mother was alcoholic. He had 2 siblings who were older than him and who took responsibility for the affairs of the home. He reported his mother wouldfrequently be absent from the home for days at a time and the children would be on their ownregarding meals and daily activities. He reported that when his mother was around she wastypically intoxicated and sometimes became physically abusive. There was no stable male figurein his life, other than his brothers, though Mom did have occasional boyfriends. Theserelationships did not last long enough for him to form any sort of lasting attachment to any of these men. He attended primary school and completed up to the 9
th
grade before he quit. Hisolder brothers introduced him to alcohol and marijuana when he was 9 years old and he usedthem regularly until he was introduced to opiates in his mid-20’s. Childrens’ Services was never involved with the family and, to Steve it seemed as though “no one cared about us”.Steve began shoplifting when he was 11 years old and graduated to home burglaries byage 16. He reported no gang involvement or juvenile arrests. He had no documented history of violence. He was successful at forging prescriptions for narcotics for 2 years prior to beingarrested and prosecuted for the current violation. He was employed while at in the work release
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