Outline of My Second Oral Presentation

The Birth of the Self in Infants,

The Self in Childhood and Adolescence,

and The Self or Proprium in Adulthood.

This is a presentation of Theistic Psychology, By Leon James,

Section 6.0.6 – 6.0.8, 2005, Online Book at : www.soc.Hawaii.edu/leonj/theistic

By Raymond Kwok Wai Chan

Instruction for this oral presentation are found at:

www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/g22-oral.htm

Three Concepts from 6.0.6-6.0.8:

1) The Theistic Psychology on Infants:

A. The Born of Self (the correlation between inner desire and outer action)

- The development of Self Awareness- the ability to reflect on self as objects is a cognitive skill that progress from infancy to adolescence. The earliest knowledge of the self is from awareness of physical feature and name. The physical aspects of the self are more important in early childhood and are more frequently incorporated in self-understanding if they distinguish between self and others. (e.g “my mouth tells my hand what to do”)

B. Contradiction between Clashing Wills and Harmonious Wills (First taste of Heaven and Hell):

- The definition: “Infants love many things since they are born with hereditary loves in the mind. These love are not learned. They imprints in our mental organs. The heaven is the delight of receiving the mother’s approval. The hell is to receive the mother disapproval of clash of wills..” Dr. James

- The lowest stage of moral reasoning.

- The development of Obedience depends on external surveillance. Acceptance of God being there all the time, the moral reasoning will become more rational and more motivated.

C. The nature of the Self.

- The self is rebellion to god

- The self wants the things that god forbid. (Fighting between desire and moral)

- We gain aware of what we want that we cannot have or what we want to do that cannot.

D. Separation from God or Heaven (Mental or Material world)

- Self is limited to material life, materialistically orientated on biological needs or psychological pleasure based on materialistic world.

- Perceive God as mental or unreal, therefore reject it.

- For those who in heavenly phase they accept the existence of heavenly feeling and delights. These experiences are produced in the infant through the presence of celestial angels.

- Those who in the hellish phase, the angel withdraws and approach to evil spirit. And that may imprint in his personality that influence further development. (e.g. Against the good, Violent, or more seriously rejection of being rational)

My Opinion:

In optimal caregiving environment (sensitive response to the infant’s needs balance with consistent and firm, it will form a prototype of God’s love and guidance (heavenly feeling)). On the other hand, The caregiving environment that are neglect of the child’s needs, random and inconsistent responsiveness, and unpredictable discipline will set the prototype for a capricious and frightening god. The infant’s ultimate relationship to god depends on multiple influences and is not simply that with the caregiver. However, this primary relationship has powerful effects.

2) Childhood and Adolescence :

A. The Way of Happiness

-The mental balance, which give us freedom to choose heaven and hell. Choice of regeneration or degeneration to hell.

- “Attachment” of Self: Attach on evil enjoyment (loose of mental balance) or attach on the good we enjoy (meritoriousness)

- Those are delusional concept of self, and are separated from god.

B. The True way of acquiring the happiness

- Benefits from understanding both good and evil at the early age. Prepare a ground that use good to defeat the evil. Finally, appreciate the power to defeat the devil from God, not the self. Because God is present in the mind as a manager, making it works and operates. Thus the children will get familiar with God and even attached to God.

- Therefore, more focus on Morality and virtues, fundamental for building rationality or regeneration.

My Opinion:

As children enter adolescence, their cognitive process expand to abstract reasoning and able to think beyond their experiences. Their faith will often stretch beyond the boundaries of their faith community as they discover the existence of other possibilities. An additional developmental task of adolescence is the construction of a personal identity. The faith of adolescence frequently incorporates a personal relationship with God. God is understood as the One who is there for us. As adolescents move into the adult world with conflicting demands and responsibilities, their faith systems may undergo further transformations.

3) The Self in Adulthood:

A. Remnants (Seed of Truth and Good.)

- Liberation or regeneration begins when the young adult is fully prepared with rational skills that can take Divine Truth from Sacred Scripture and apply it to one’s thinking and feeling on the daily round of activities.

- It means preparation from birth to early age, the ability of rationality and the experiences between evils and goods.

B. Intelligence and Wisdom

- The understanding of truth is intelligence

- The application of intelligence is wisdom.

- “ The actions of picking up a lost wallet”

C. The Conscience

- it is formed by wisdom which is the “good of intelligence”, the principles by which we now want to live our life. And it gives rise to our personal codes of conduct.

- The “must” and “ought” consciences.

- A must conscience exists, which is the only type of conscience a child has. It evolves out of parental restriction and prohibitions, then it becoming internalized, guide behavior even when the parent are not present.

- Gradually, “must” is displaced by ought conscience. “ought” is tied closely to the person’s proprium. For example, the young adult realizes that if certain long-term goals are to be attained certain experiences out to be sought out and others avoided.

- “Must” - I must obey traffic regulation. I must repair the computer. I must hide my feeling….

- “Ought” – I ought to vote, I ought to write that letter. I ought to study hard.

- Conscience become a kind of self-guidance, it shifted from parental control to individual control.

D. The Spiritual Natural

- The thinking of first heaven

- Beginning step of regeneration.

- At the early period that we learned about god, heaven, hell and sacred scripture, come to us in the first rational so that these idead about spiritual subjects are natural ideas about spiritual topics. Gradually, we will comprehend these spiritual tropics spiritually.

- And this are result of out new adult proprium through the love of scared scripture and all the knowledge.

- Faults or dangerous delusion on this rational mind.

- we can’t think that the truth that we think and the good is from self. The truth and the good are felt to be our own, from out proprium.

- Seek reward from god., because it robs God of the ownership of all good and therefore denies God’s omnipotence.

- Models of “A landing boat”

My home page: www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/409af2004/chan/home.htm

Additional links: www.theheavenlydoctrines.org

www.victorianweb.org/religion/swdbor.htm