Abstract
In Growing Down, Jaco J. Hamman writes, our “need to be constantly connected and online, is deeply rooted in the most basic ways humans develop. … [T]he virtual world plays upon humanity’s deep yearning to reestablish that primary life-giving environment and recall those first loving and caring relationships” (book jacket). Hamman is concerned that while technology can enable the play, “flirtation,” and creativity that connect us with the self, God, and others, it too often interrupts a deeply connected life. Hamman is a pastoral theologian whose thinking is rooted in the object relations theory of D. W. Winnicott. Indeed, given the attention to laying out object relations in a clear, and accessible manner, the book might be described as a pastoral theological elaboration of object relations theory illustrated by a commentary on virtual technologies.
In object relations thought, human development rests on healthy holding relationships, starting with the relationship between mother and child. Holding relationships provide the infant the security to develop identity and the capacity for transformation. Thus, in Winnicott’s rich language, we strive to be good enough parents to enable the child’s growth. Because our developmental life is ongoing we also need—and seek to be—good enough partners, pastors, teachers, and so forth. To do this, in the provocative language of the title, we must grow down in order to reclaim “core aspects of oneself in relationship and becoming a response-able, ethical, and caring person” (10).
This brings us to the subtitle, Theology and Human Nature in the Virtual Age. Hamman asks whether contemporary media assist us in growing down, in becoming good enough in our relationships to enable fullness of life for ourselves and others, and in developing a relationship in which we are held by God. While Hamman asserts the possibility that technology can support life-giving relationships, his examples are of ways digital communications interfere with the face-to-face and thus, he believes, with full human development. He opens, “Intuitively we know that something is not right,” (1) and offers examples of what is not right: parents give a two-year-old a tablet instead of attention; children and adults bring their phones to the dinner table; lovers anxious about intimacy “finger their social media apps” (2); and a lonely student turns to a hook-up app.
Countering technological interference with our face-to-face relationships requires understanding both our relational self and the technologies we embrace. Hamman proposes the cultivation of six intelligences which he roots in object relations: self intelligence understands the self’s search for security, identity, and transformation; relational intelligence and transitional intelligence build capacity for relationship and develop the capacity to understand inner and outer worlds and the space between them; reparative intelligence and playground intelligence enable restoration of the self, develop creative capacity to build relationships, and move between inner and outer worlds; and finally technological intelligence discerns the impact of technology on the self and our relationships with others.
This book is most likely to be found in seminary classrooms focused on pastoral theology. Yet it is a readable introduction to object relations demonstrating how the theory is helpful in pastoral reflection. It would be useful to chaplains and pastors interested in human development and growth-oriented pastoral care.
Hamman stands with cautious media critics like Sherry Turkle, whose work informs Hamman’s thinking about media. They don’t reject new technologies out of hand, but adopt an Amish approach, asking in every case how this new technology will impact community life. This is a useful caution. Technologies have unintended consequence. The rise of printing provided more than more books in circulation; it created new roles and relationships based on literacy that encouraged, among other things, the rise of the Protestant self. We are in the midst of a communication revolution as profound as that one. It behooves us to pay attention to what social relations and understandings of the self it encourages. But we must attend to more than Hamman’s anxious list of media interruptions. New media are also creating personal and social space for the development and expression of religious identity, for connection and networked relationships that expand horizons and enable new religious communities. Hamman offers a helpful way to think about the contributions and costs of a changing media culture. However, Growing Down should be supplemented with studies that explore actual religious practice in virtual spaces.