Reflective Practice - Formation and Supervision in Ministry (E-Journal)

Anderson, Herbert

SECTION III: SPIRITUALITY AND PASTORAL COUNSELING SUPERVISION Editorial Introduction

Stortz, Martha E.

English

Practitioner as Pilgrim: Pilgrimage and Formation for Ministry

Clark, Peter Yuichi

Grefe, Dagmar

Freeman, Susan

Encounters for Change: A Book Review Roundtable

Brumleve, Barbara

A Roman Catholic Spirituality for 
Spiritual Care Supervision 
 
 
Barbara Brumleve 
 
Because I do not presume to speak for all Roman Catholics, it is important 
to name and claim my own social location at the outset. I’m a Midwesterner, 
born and raised in a German-Catholic farming community of 800 people, 
where I lived within nature’s seasons and the Catholic liturgical year. I also 
know that my ministry of more than 50 years and my spirituality of even 
more years has many influences beyond Roman Catholicism. My bicycle 
spelled freedom and adventure for me years before I got a driver’s license. 
My stamp collection, together with music and Girl Scout events, broadened 
my world—a world that expanded further when I entered the School Sisters 
of Notre dame (SSNd)—an international congregation of Roman Catholic 
women religious that has always believed that education, particularly for 
women, can transform society. I came alive to a more global context when I 
learned about, met, and spent time with other SSNds in North America and 
for short times in Asia, Central America, Africa, and Europe. 
I am a lifelong learner supported by the School Sisters of Notre dame 
(SSNd) to earn undergraduate and graduate degrees in English and philosophy. 
In addition, I have had numerous opportunities to study theology. 
My ministries—in the Midwest, the South, and the East—have been rich and 
varied and opened still more doors to me. And then—late in life—I discovered 
clinical pastoral education and eventually became an ACpE Supervisor. 
With this multi-faceted reality in mind, I come to the question: How 
does my Roman Catholic background inform my ministry of supervision for 
spiritual care? First of all, Roman Catholics believe (more in a practical than 
a creedal way) in the sacramentality of all creation. The Jesuit poet Gerard 
Manley Hopkins voiced this belief when he wrote “The world is charged 
with the grandeur of God.” My commitment to the sacramentality of all creation 
means that I am willing to entertain any material that students present 
in supervising. Any work—playing with a child, listening to a nurse’s heartache, 
singing to a dying person—can be spiritual because I expect to find the 
“footprint” of God everywhere. 
Roman Catholics are story-people, steeped in centuries of living the liturgical 
year, annually re-visiting the mysteries of Advent and Christmas and 
Lent, Easter and Pentecost, and the ’ordinary’ time in between. We are accustomed 
to stained glass windows whose colors often tell the story of Jesus 
and the stories of saints. In working with students, I listen carefully to their 
stories, their images, metaphors and their sub-texts. One of my favorite scriptural 
images for my own ministry as a pastoral educator is the Emmaus story, 
because often I identify with the role of the stranger who caught up with 
the two dejected persons traveling from Jerusalem to Emmaus. The stranger 
asks a question I often ask in pastoral supervision. “What are you discussing 
with each other while you walk along?” (Lk 24:17). That is followed by the 
seemingly naïve “What things?” (24:19). From this story comes my desire to 
invite students to open their eyes as we ‘walk along’ together in the supervisor 
process. 
When I first heard Roman Catholicism described as “smells and bells” 
I was taken aback. There is some truth in the phrase, however. We do use 
incense, candles, music, bells, beads, vestments, processions, statues, devotional 
practices, and special celebrations. Roman Catholicism is a faith tradition 
that Andrew Greeley once described as “enthralled by metaphors and 
at the same time constantly uneasy about the metaphors it finds itself using.” 
1 In my supervision I use metaphor, analogy, story, and poetry—what 
has been called the analogical or religious imagination. There is a mystical 
dimension to Catholic imagination. In that spirit, I ask students to appeal to 
more than one sense as they engage their peers in reflection. We have had 
centering prayer, a breathing-relaxing exercise, a YouTube circus film, reflection 
on an orange slice, and the Liturgy of the Hours. Students begin with 
their experience in their theologizing. Although inductive, experience-based 
theology through story and metaphor is messy at times, it remains honest to 
the student’s experience and their own analogical imagination. 
Behind, beneath, within, outside of creation’s sacramentality is a loving 
Trinitarian God—both immanent and transcendent. Totally Other, God is at 
the same time closer to me than I am to myself. My God images, and those of 
my students, are always derivative and shatter in the face of our experiences 
to be replaced with still other images. While I myself continue to learn, I also 
walk with students as they learn to let go of making God in their image, instead 
of the other way around. I journey with them as both they and I try to 
appreciate more deeply, and give expression to, the depths of God’s intimate 
love for us. Our work together may at times look primarily psychological— 
dealing with fear, shame, control, rigidity, and the like—but it is based in a 
theology that God loves us and that human beings are essentially good. 
In keeping with the emphasis of my religious community (SSNd) and 
an openness to the world that characterizes my understanding of Roman 
Catholicism, I am currently studying positive psychology, cosmic evolution, 
and the history of our early Christian tradition—always looking for connections. 
I am doing what Rainer Maria Rilke wrote in Letters to a Young Poet:2 
Try to love the question themselves, like locked rooms and like books 
written in a foreign language…And the point is, to live everything. Live 
the questions now. perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, 
without even noticing it, live your way into the answer. 
Why do I live the questions? Augustine said it one way: “Thou madest us 
for Thyself, and our heart is restless, until it repose in Thee.”3 My childhood 
catechism said it another say: Like all other persons I am made in the image 
and likeness of God, primarily through my intellect and my will. For me, 
imago Dei means questions. Because I view students in supervision through 
the eyes of that vision of imago Dei, I invite them to love the questions long 
enough to discover their own unique gifts for ministry. 
 
NOTES 
1. Andrew M. Greeley, The Catholic Myth: The Behavior and Beliefs of American Catholics 
(New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1990). 
2. Rainer Maria Rilke, “Letter 4: July 16, 1903,” in Letters to a Young Poet, Stephen Mitchell, 
trans. (A Bookvirtual digital Edition), 23–24, accessed March 16, 2013, http://images. 
jenes.multiply.multiplycontent.com/attachment/0/R6Q3qgoKCs8AAE1U1x01/ 
Rainer_Maria_Rilke_-_Letters_to_a_Young_poet.pdf?key=jenes:journal:112. 
3. Augustine of Hippo, Book 1, in Confessions (electronic edition), 3, accessed March 16, 
2013, http://sparks.eserver.org/books/augustineconfess.pdf. 
 
Barbara Brumleve, SSNd, phd, is Manager of Clinical pastoral Education in the department 
of pastoral Care, St. vincent Health, 2001 W 86th St., Indianapolis, IN 46260 (Email: 
bbrumlev@stvincent.org). 


A Roman Catholic Spirituality for Spirtual Care Supervision

Whitehead and, James D.

Whitehead, Evelyn Eaton

James D. Whitehead and Evelyn Eaton Whitehead, Nourishing the 
Spirit: The Healing Emotions of Wonder, Joy, Compassion and Hope 
(Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2012), 181 pp. 
Readers of Reflective Practice will be familiar with James E. Whitehead and Evelyn 
Eaton Whitehead’s earlier book, Method in Ministry, which has been a staple 
in theological education.1 Nourishing the Spirit is the Whitehead’s most recent 
book. In this volume, they argue that western Christianity has erred too much 
on the side of rationality, being fearful of the negative consequences of intense 
emotions. Only in recent years, under the influence of positive psychology, they 
suggest, are we beginning to appreciate the value of emotion in the life of the 
Spirit. In particular, the Whiteheads focus on the value of positive emotions, 
like joy, compassion, hope, and wonder for enriching and giving passion to our 
spirituality. If you have read any of the Whitehead’s earlier books, you will also 
appreciate in this volume their warm, direct, and clear style of writing. In examining 
each of the positive emotions, they draw easily on the Biblical courses 
of Augustine, Aquinas, Gregory of Gregory of Nyssa, and then, contemporary 
theologians and psychologists. At each point they carefully define, clarify, and 
distinguish the meanings of such “emotions” as joy versus happiness, awe versus 
wonder, pride versus humility, attachment and love, and compassion and 
self-care. At points I found their distinctions to be a bit of a stretch, like focusing 
largely on the positive aspects of anger while ignoring the horrific effects 
of out-of-control anger. This is a positive, even optimistic view of the human 
nature. The other deficit from my perspective was an absence of very many 
“How to’s.” I was easily convinced that joy, wonder, hope, and compassion are 
good things and that I could enrich my spiritual walk if I nourished these emotions, 
but I longed for some practical strategies, or perhaps a clinical vignette 
or two, that would have helped me implement this nourishment. Perhaps that 
will come in their next book. Nevertheless, their thesis is a solid one and a corrective 
voice that needs to be heard in theological academic circles, which tend 
to emphasize thinking over feeling in the life of Spirit. 
 
NOTE 
1. James E. Whitehead and Evelyn Eaton Whitehead, Method in Ministry: Theological Reflection 
and Christian Ministry, Revised ed. (Lanham, MD: Sheed & Ward, 1995). 
 
Scott Sullender 
San Francisco Theological Seminary 
San Anselmo, CA 


Nourishing the Spirit: The Healing Emotions of Wonder, Joy, Compassion and Hope

Lemov, Doug

Woolway, Erica

Yezzi, Katie

Doug Lemov, Erica Woolway, and Katie Yezzi, Practice Perfect: 42 
Rules for Getting Better at Getting Better (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 
2012), 263 pp. 
Given the name of this journal, I was drawn to the title, Perfect Practice, written 
by three authors who are all experts in the field of teacher education— 
the educating and training of people to be effective public school teachers. 
Doug Lemov is noteworthy for his bestseller, Teach Like A Champion.1 In this 
volume the authors summarize their extensive experience by focusing on 
the importance of practice and its various components, instruction, modeling, 
and feedback. The book gives us 42 rules for improving practice and, 
therefore, the performance of those we teach. They show how these rules are 
applicable to a wide variety of professions and disciplines, from sports to 
business, medicine, and the military. I was intrigued to read this book with 
an eye toward the kind of skills training that we do—training in care-giving 
skills. We normally think of theological education as the teaching of concepts 
and ideas, but a good percentage of seminary work is focused on skills 
training, caring skills, communication skills, and administrative skills—and 
the effective teaching of skills like these involves a lot of practice. 
This is not a profound book. The writing is more like common sense. It 
is not a theological book, or even a theoretical book—but it is an interesting 
book. As I read it, I found myself reflecting on how I teach listening skills in 
my courses in pastoral care and counseling. Of the 42 rules, here are a few 
highlights: 
• Normalize error—so many of our theological students try so hard to be good 
that they are afraid to fail; 
• Necessity of practice—many of our theological students think that if they are 
called to ministry, then they should be able to do ministry naturally; 
• Make practice fun—many of our theological students are so serious that they 
cannot enjoy learning; 
• “Praise or criticize the work, not the person”—so many of our theological 
students are hypersensitive to being liked; and finally, 
• Apply First, then Reflect—in the realm of skills practice, endless theological 
reflection can be a barrier to effective practice. Some skills are better taught 
by doing first, then reflecting. 
I normally do not recommend popular self-help books, but Perfect Practice 
is worth a read, especially if you work in the arena of skills education. 
We have much to learn from the discipline of teacher education. 
 
NOTE 
1. Doug Lemov, Teach Like A Champion: 49 Techniques that Put Students on the Path to College 
(K-12) (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2010). 
 
Scott Sullender 
San Francisco Theological Seminary 
San Anselmo, CA 


Practice Perfect: 42 Rules for Getting Better at Getting Better

SECTION II: HOW DOES YOUR RELIGIOUS TRADITION INFORM YOUR PRACTICE OF SPIRITUAL CARE? Editorial Introduction

Buckner, Carrie

A Progressive Christian Approach to Spiritual Care 
 
 
Carrie l. Buckner 
 
When I attended seminary in the early 1990’s, the language of spirituality 
was just beginning to make its way into mainstream Christianity. The 
eclipse of traditional religion, often marked by the phrase ‘spiritual but not 
religious’, has created an unnecessary and unhelpful cleavage between the 
two. As a progressive Christian, I advocate for greater collaboration between 
spirituality and religion. Spirituality is part of my religious identity. My religious 
identity and practices involve a communal dimension, whereas spirituality 
invokes a personal sense of all that is sacred. In order to avoid unnecessary 
polarizing between the individual and institutions or between ‘bad’ 
religion and ‘good’ spirituality, I regard myself as spiritual and religious. 
progressive Christians embrace the inclusivity of spirituality as part of 
their religious identity. Chaplains, spiritual directors, and field educators are 
religious professionals, engaging in spiritual dialogue with individuals and 
communities. As a professional chaplain serving in a community hospital, 
I draw on the language of spirituality while, at the same time, integrating 
religious language in meaning-making and supporting people coping with 
difficult life events. In spiritual care, I reclaim the religious language central 
to my particular Christian perspective—the language of hope, grace, peace, 
forgiveness, and justice. As I reflect on the ‘face’ of the divine, I bring to my 
patient/family visits these religious themes that inform my spiritual care 
and presence. 
I am mindful of the breadth of spiritual and religious perspectives and 
traditions as I minister in a multi-faith clinical setting, working alongside 
colleagues of diverse cultural, linguistic, ethnic, and religious backgrounds. 
professional chaplains often describe our work as tending to the ‘spiritual 
and emotional’ needs of patients, families, and staff, typically in a healthcare 
setting. In this context, I understand ‘spirit’ as the sacred dimension of a person— 
the inherent goodness, humanity, and essence of a person. 
“Feelings are the language of the soul” someone once said in my hearing. 
When we respond to the feelings patients express, we are listening to 
their soul at a deep level. 
While religion often connotes the practices, theology, and human made 
creeds of my faith tradition, spirituality connects me to the deeper values 
and experiences of the person of Jesus and his teachings. My spirituality 
and religious practices reflect the core values of Jesus’ teachings (love, inclusivity, 
grace, justice, and forgiveness). I am also aware that people who are 
not religious have a rich variety of spiritual practices such as poetry reading, 
gardening, walking a beach, watching the sun set, and working in soup 
kitchens. Spirituality is at the heart of my beliefs as a progressive Christian. 
As I provide care for patients and family members, I am constantly assessing 
their spiritual and religious needs, as well as their spiritual and religious 
resources. What specific religious needs do they have? What are their 
private spiritual practices and what needs might they have to continue these 
practices while sick or in the hospital? What feelings do they have about 
themselves, their loved ones, their health, and what is happening to them? 
Finally, what has given them a sense of ultimate meaning and/or ultimate 
value in the past? What resources in each of these areas will they need to be 
able to nurture their own inner spirit during this time of illness? 
Recently, a Chaplain Resident who serves on an adolescent mental 
health unit, shared a pastoral visit with a 17-year-old gay young man in supervision. 
The patient was raised in a devout Roman Catholic family and 
asked the Chaplain “Why are you a Christian?” The Chaplain accurately assessed 
the adolescent’s question as a deeper longing/searching for a meaningful 
spiritual connection. The patient trusted the chaplain (who had visited 
him several times during his hospital stay and led spirituality groups as 
part of the recovery treatment team) and the Chaplain shared from her heart: 
“To me, being a Christian is about believing in the power of love. It’s about 
believing that there’s always room for something new—and it’s about Jesus— 
that’s the unique thing about Christianity, right? Jesus for me is about 
a different way of being in the world. He came into a system of oppression. 
He was about caring for and loving those that society pushed down. Not 
only caring for them, but joining with them to change the way that society 
works. That’s why I’m a Christian.” What is important about the student’s 
response to the question is that having specific beliefs about Jesus enhanced 
her commitment to attend to a range of spiritual beliefs and practices. 
As a progressive Christian, I cherish the sacred as part of my religious 
identity, spiritual practices, and beliefs while at the same time seeking to incorporate 
wisdom from many spiritual traditions in my work. I seek to remain 
spiritual and religious. 
 
Carrie L. Buckner, BCC, ACPE, director of Chaplaincy Services and ACPE Supervisor, 
Sutter Health, Alan Bates Summit Medical Center, 2450 Ashby Ave., Berkeley, CA 94705- 
2067 (Email: bucknec2@sutterhealth.org). 
 


A Progressive Christian Approach to Spiritual Care

Wilhoit, James C.

James C. Wilhoit, Spiritual Formation as if the Church Mattered: Growing 
in Christ through Community (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2008) 
233 pp. 
Conversation in Protestant circles about spiritual formation has come a long 
way since 1978 when Richard Foster first released his Celebration of Discipline. 
With a plethora of titles and approaches, along with the recovery of 
the treasures of the Christian tradition, many people are exploring, probing, 
and developing what it means to be formed spiritually. What James Wilhoit 
distinctly offers is a voice that calls attention to the foundational way in 
which community—the local church—indispensably plays a role in forming 
persons. 
Written primarily for pastors and practitioners, Wilhoit places his eyes 
on the formative life of congregations. He leads his readers to consider a 
“curriculum of Christlikeness”—a term that comes out of Dallas Willard’s 
work. Wilhoit’s contribution comes in two ways. First, Wilhoit anchors this 
curriculum with a review of Jesus’ use of invitations within the gospels. 
These invitations give way, according to Wilhoit, to four distinct dimensions 
that frame the balance of the book. 
Second, Wilhoit is not content to merely speak about spiritual disciplines 
or practices in isolation from the practices of congregations. The 
curriculum: 
[R]efers to a lifelong course of study designed to promote spiritual transformation, 
largely through the teaching of core Christian knowledge, service 
learning opportunities, training in key spiritual practices, and the 
continual representation of essential spiritual truths…coupled with opportunities 
to be coached through specific applications of the gospel to 
person issues” (p. 50). 
This outline represents Wilhoit’s conviction that spiritual formation is 
not an individual endeavor but rather rooted in the life of a community— 
and it is this contribution from Wilhoit’s work that is particularly needed 
and useful. 
As noted earlier, Wilhoit identifies four dimensions of community formation 
that reflect his understanding of the various invitations of Jesus in 
the gospels—receiving, remembering, responding, and relating. These four 
verbs comprise the organizational structure of much of the book. What 
makes Wilhoit’s book valuable is not simply the various theological values 
and practices that he uses to surround each of these verbs. Rather the value 
to the reader is in the way he presses to speak to the intentional life and practices 
of communities that prompt and reinforce these values. 
The intentionality of Wilhoit’s book presents a compelling framework 
for the role that congregations play in formation. The call for a curriculum of 
Christlikeness creatively helps to revision adult education in congregations 
and pushes the conversation beyond information to formation. One thing 
that would strengthen the book’s thesis would be the inclusion of more concrete 
examples from ministry and congregational contexts that reinforce the 
very thing that the author is commending. 
Wilhoit writes from a reformed, evangelical point of view; however, 
Wilhoit demonstrates a cogent awareness and appreciation for the larger 
church tradition and uses the tradition to good effect. Each chapter concludes 
with an annotated bibliography that sends the thoughtful reader to 
a broad array of other voices. For persons who teach in the area of congregations 
and spiritual formation, Wilhoit’s book provides a lively place for 
conversation and reflection on what it means to foster spiritual formation 
within congregations. 
Carson E. Reed 
Abilene Christian University 
Abilene, TX 


Spiritual Formation as if the Church Mattered

Knowles, Caroline

Reflective Practice: Formation and Supervision in Ministry
ISSN 2325-2855
© Copyright 2013 Reflective Practice: Formation and Supervision in Ministry
All rights reserved.
Notes toward a Neuropsychology of Moral Injury
Caroline H. Knowles
Summary
This brief essay asks a question from the perspective of neuropsychology: What im-
plicit neural processes are triggered when one sees a comrade mortally wounded? 
The nightmares of wounded and dying combatants and civilians might be under-
stood as the simulations still active in the living neural circuitry of the warrior, long 
after the events.
Friedrich Nietzsche wrote, presciently, “Whoever fights with monsters 
should see to it that he does not become one himself. And when you stare 
for a long time into an abyss, the abyss stares back into you.”1
We have sent a new generation to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq 
and have learned again the lessons we had forgotten—the enormous cost 
not just to those slain or maimed, but for those returning from war whose 
inmost being has been changed forever. We have witnessed and recorded 
once more their darkness of spirit, the uneasy silence about acts witnessed 
and done, the trigger response to the sound of a car braking or the slamming 
of a door, the tense search for safety in crowded places, the dislocation from 
civil society, the loss of intimacy in family life.
Most enduring of all and least amenable to change are the sudden 
flashbacks and nightmares where images of the destruction of life and limb, 
experienced in combat, are revived. These recurrent dreams and recollec-
tions confront the combat survivor anew in each flashback with the pro-
found ethical challenge of soldiering in modern warfare. Sometimes warded 
off for decades, they return in times of vulnerability and later life crises.
I believe there is a dimension of these experiences which has not been ex-
plicitly explored in the light of the relatively new findings in the field of neuro-
psychology: the presence of mirror neurons in the human brain.2 First observed 
in monkeys, these neurons have now been confirmed in our species as well.
A recent brain imaging study showed that when we observe goal-related 
behaviors executed with effectors as different as the mouth, the hand, the 
foot, different specific sectors of our pre-motor cortex become active.3 
Caroline H. Knowles, PhD, MDiv, is a retired psychotherapist and volunteer counselor 
with veterans at the Interfaith Center at the Presidio, San Francisco, CA (Email: doctor 
carrie@gmail.com).
77
These cortical sectors are the same sectors that are active when we per-
form the same actions. Whenever we look at someone performing an ac-
tion, besides the activation of various visual areas, there is a concurrent 
activation of the motor circuits for the observed action—our motor sys-
tem becomes active as if we were executing the same action we are ob-
serving. A process of action simulation automatically establishes a direct 
implicit link between agent and observer.4
The discovery of mirror neurons has been hailed as the basis both of empa-
thy and imitation, illuminating vast areas of human learning and social behavior.
[M]any researchers believe that our empathic responses present a better 
case for simulation as the means by which we identify the mental states 
of others. My having empathy for your predicament, according to this 
view, depends on simulating, in my brain, your sad facial expression. 
This action makes me feel a little sad, and thus I can recognize what you 
are experiencing. Ditto for fear, disgust, anger, and so forth. Taking this 
fairly old idea and packaging it in terms of mirror neurons, neuroscientist 
Marco Iacoboni has proposed a general account for empathy according to 
which “the core imitation circuitry would simulate (or internally imitate) 
the facial emotional expressions of other people.”5
Suppose we extrapolate these findings from the quiet precincts of the clin-
ical laboratory to the messy chaos of the war zone: are we not led to ask what 
implicit neural processes are set off when the warrior discharges his weapon 
into another living human being, in face to face encounter? What circuitry is 
activated when a soldier watches the abuse of prisoners of war? What implicit 
neural processes are triggered when one sees a comrade mortally wounded?
In military service, the warrior cannot choose what scenes she or he will 
witness. Activation of the circuits that underlie empathy are, it seems, a con-
stant in the complex fabric of our experience of others. It is reasonable to as-
sume, therefore, that as the warrior inflicts suffering and death on enemy com-
batants or on innocents trapped in the wrong place at the wrong time, the 
sights and sounds of that suffering and death will be simulated in that warrior.
In the modern science of war, military training strategies are directed 
purposefully at blocking empathy for those defined as the enemy. Stereotyp-
ing, de-humanizing, ridiculing, demonizing, discrediting—all are aimed at 
breaking down identification with the dangerous Other to promote efficient 
killing. These strategies are successful in practice: in World War II it is said 
that fewer than 20 percent of soldiers discharged their weapons at the en-
emy, while in today’s wars about 95 percent do so.
The question is, however, whether military training can override pro-
cesses that are “hard-wired” into our neural functioning, as mirror neurons 
KNOWlES
78
simulate the experience of those we injure and slay, and record the plight of 
comrades injured and slain before our eyes. It seems doubtful, as well, that 
training can be more than a temporary overlay, and it likely ceases to “cush-
ion” the simulated experience, once the warrior returns to civilian life.
We must listen carefully, then, when the veteran of our wars complains 
that he feels as if something died in him during his deployment to the war 
zone. The nightmares of wounded and dying combatants and civilians per-
haps should be understood as the simulations still active in the living neu-
ral circuitry of the warrior, long after the events—in effect the most powerful 
kind of learning of which humans are capable. It is not surprising that psychotro-
pic medication is often ineffective in easing the sense of spiritual damage and despair.
We are only at the threshold of understanding the ramifications for our 
life experience and our experience of self and other—of the intricate, subtle and 
powerful activity of mirror neurons. In an earlier century, William James raised 
the question of how Peter and Paul are able to distinguish, when they wake in the 
morning, whose thoughts belonged to each in their discussion the night before.6
Thus far, we have not approached the understanding of how, when 
we fight with monsters, we might yet escape becoming monsters ourselves. 
This we must learn from those for whom we care. They have looked long 
into the abyss, the abyss has looked back at them, and they will tell us, in 
their own good time, what eternal truths the abyss had to show them.
NOTES
1. Frederich Nietzsche, Epigram 146, Beyond Good and Evil, Rolf-Peter Horstmann and 
Judith Norman, eds., Judith Norman, trans. (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University 
Press, 2002), 69.
2. Sue Taylor Parker, Jonas langer, and Constance Milbrath, eds., Biology and Knowledge 
Revisited: From Neurogenesis to Psychogenesis: The Jean Piaget Symposium Series (Mah-
wah, NJ: lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2005).
3. Ibid., 208–209; Parker cites Giovanni Buccino, Ferdinand Binkofski, Gereon R. Fink, 
luciano Fadiga, leonardo Fogassi, Vittorio Gallese, Rüdiger J. Seitz, Karl J. Zilles, 
Giacomo Rizzolatti, and H.-J. Freund, “Action Observation Activates Premotor and 
Parietal Areas in a Somatotopic Manner: An fMRI Study,” European Journal of Neurosci-
ence 13, no. 2 (2001): 400–404.
4. Ibid., 209.
5. Patricia S. Churchland, ed., Braintrust: What Neuroscience Tells Us About Morality 
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011), 148.
6. William James, Psychology (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1909), 158.
NOTES TOWARD A NEUROPSYCHOlOGY OF MORAl INJURY


Notes toward a Neuropsychology of Moral Injury

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