The theological and psychological foundations of adult faith as seen in Hans Urs von Balthasar, Melanie Klein, and D. W. Winnicott

This dissertation concerns the integration of theology and psychology and chooses theology as the integrating force because it understands it to be the more inclusive of the two disciplines. The dissertation treats theology and psychology with integrity and in their own terms while showing how each manifests the same fundamental human gestalt. Hans Urs von Balthasar's understanding of kenosis or emptying out (Phil. 2:6-11) provides the theological perspective, and the psychological perspective is that of Melanie Klein and D. W. Winnicott as representative of the neo-Freudian object relations school. Von Balthasar's theology contains in a seminal way an epistemology of gestalt which illuminates the human reality of emptiness/receptivity. Klein's and Winnicott's representation of the "depressive position" exemplifies the gestalt of emptiness/receptivity in psychological idiom. Thus the gestalt of emptiness/receptivity unites the two perspectives. Both the theology of kenosis and the psychology of the "depressive position" rely on the primordial experience of being loved. On the strength of primordial love, Christ Jesus emptied himself, taking on human form and received all from God. On the strength of primordial parental love, human beings are able to accept emptying out in the natural diminishments of life which prepares them to receive and respond to the love of God in the concrete events of daily life. This study concludes that Christ and human beings share the same fundamental gestalt of emptiness/receptivity and that the conscious acceptance of this reality is mature, adult faith.