Formation Of The Human Heart – Adrian Van Kaam

If the possibility of fulfilling this desire remains absent, it leads to a hunger for its substitute: deformative fusion. To fill the void between them, merely functional people seek des- perately some substitute for intimacy, some sign of belonging. They try, therefore, to fuse their lives with others, with groups or movements. Fusion is the opposite of encounter.

It means being swallowed up by the emotional mterconsciousness of a group that shares similar needs. To- getherness of this sort may grant a moment of forgetfulness of one’s isola- tion. When the experience of fusion is over, one may feel more lonesome than before in the realization that there was no real communion in depth, that the hunger evoked by the predisposition for intimacy is still there, gnawing away at one’s lonely heart.

The togetherness of fusion is not a mode of genuine intimacy but a des- perate attempt to relieve isolated lives. In true encounter I appeal to the in- trasphere of others and I confirm their private life, its mystery and unique potency. In this confirmation, I likewise affirm my own intrasphere as unique, mysterious, and not totally communicable to others; I also affirm my own form potency as an inalienable epiphany of the mystery.

Through such appeal to the mystery of the privacy of each other, we may truly en- counter one another. We invite each other to transcend our immanence in the functional-vital interconsciousness imposed by functionalistic form traditions. We transcend our embeddedness in an everydayness not illu- mined by the mystery. We summon each other to be faithful to our own form potencies. This marks the beginning of interformative intimacy and community. In fusion, there is really no unique interiority experiencing in awe the mystery of another inwardness.

There are only isolated functionaries des- perately trying to escape their imprisonment by melting into one another. Symptoms of this attempt would be the cult of instant sexual unity, leav- ing nothing to the imagination, or the ‘‘therapeutic’’ attempt to force the emergence of instantaneous intimacy in certain ‘‘encounter’’ groups. Nothing remains awesome, personal, or private.

This is the third volume of the series on the science of human formation and its articula- tion in the Christian formation tradition. The first volume, titled Fundamental Formation, dealt with the foundations of distinctively human or spiritual formation. The second volume, titled Human Formation, was con- cerned with a practical theory of human for- mation thar takes into account rhe relevant contributions of rhe arts, sciences, and for- mation traditions.

In the final chaprers of Volume Two the “core form of life” was introduced, symbolized by rhe human heart and its enduring dispositions. Then ensued a discussion of the basic disposition of rhe heart, identified and described as awe in the face of mystery. In this third volume orher basic disposi- tions of the human heart are elaborared upon, theoretically and practically. These dispositions are congeniality, comparibility, and compassion; appreciation, openness, and derachment; firmness and gentleness; the privacy disposition and the communal disposition; and finally the disposition of social presence.

Dr. Adrian van Kaam is a renowned spiritual writer and professor of forma- tive spirituality as an academic and practical discipline. Ordained a priest in 1947, he studied and taught phil- osophy and psychology in a seminary in his homeland, Holland. In 1953 he came to the United States, where he taught and studied the psychology of spiritual formation and received a doc- foral degree in psychology from Case Western University. For the last twenty years he has dedicated himself to re- search, teaching, and writing in the field of formative spirituality.

Appointed a professor at Duquesne University, he founded the Institute of Formative Spiri- tuality in 1963. Within this institute Dr. van Kaam initiated, along with his col- leagues and graduate students, the science of fundamental human forma- tion, or formative spirituality. He is founder and editor of the journals Stud- ies in Formative Spirituality and Envoy as well as author of 24 books and over 100 articles.

Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2022 with funding from Kahle/Austin Foundation httops://archive.org/details/formationofhuman0003vank Formative Spirituality Volume Three FORMATION OF THE HUMAN HEART i bed ahied —— mais se – aa i xf ai ee aT, AAS Formative Spirituality Volume Three FORMATION OF THE HUMAN HEART *ADRIAN VAN KAAM: CROSSROAD + NEW YORK 1991 The Crossroad Publishing Company 370 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Copyright © 1986 by Adrian van Kaam All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of The Crossroad Publishing Company.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

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