Title: 13
Author: Joe G
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Company: GDC

Clanking Chains		06-04-02-A.CC02-591 /

Assault of the Paramours: Reversionism: Stage 7: Scar Tissue of the Soul: Calluses & Cicatrices; Terruwe’s “Psychopathic Personality and Neurosis”

Scar Tissue of the Soul:
(51)	Apalgeō is translated into the English by the NASB and NIV Bibles as “callous.”  The Greek-English lexicons support this:
•	The New Thayer’s Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament (53) defines it: to become callous, apathetic: those who have become insensible to truth, honor, and shame are called  apalgeō in Eph. 4:19.
•	Walter Bauer’s A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament (Arndt and Gingrich; 80): to become callous.  Eph. 4:19
•	W. E. Vine’s An Expository Dictionary of Biblical Words (419): to be callous, “past feeling,” insensible to honor and shame, Eph 4:19.
•	The Analytical Greek Lexicon (35): to become insensible or callous, Eph. 4:19.
(52)	English dictionaries provide similar definitions:
•	Oxford English Dictionary: callous fig. Of the mind, feelings, conscience, and of persons: Hardened, unfeeling, insensible.
•	The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language: callous.  Emotionally hardened; insensitive; unfeeling.
•	Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary: callous.  Feeling no emotion; feeling or showing no sympathy for others: hard-hearted.
•	The New Oxford American Dictionary: callous. Showing or having an insensitive and cruel disregard for others.
(53)	The word is derived from the Latin callosus, “hard-skinned,” and its derivative callum, “hard flesh; toughness, insensibility.”
(54)	A callus on the skin is caused by a buildup of scar tissue due to constant pressure or friction.  This also occurs around the healing of a wound and is called a cicatrix \si’ ka‑triks\.
(55)	This is exactly what happens to the soul when false doctrine causes an injury to the norms and standards and the scale of values.  The wounded soul seeks to heal itself but wheel-tracks of wickedness cause the individual to become desensitized thus creating a cicatrix or scar tissue on the soul.
NOTE:	Anna Antoinette Terruwe earned her M.D. at the University of Utrecht \ü’ trecht\ and her Ph.D. at the University of Leiden \līd’ en\.  She had a deep knowledge of European explorers and trends in mental health, especially psychoanalysis.  Anna believed that they were dry wells.  So she got into the philosophers, convinced that the right path towards an answer was to be found in the classical Christian notions of man and the human psyche.  Without a correct anthropology, no real answer was to be found.  She deepened her studies on Saint Thomas Aquinas, and discovered that many notions attributed to “modern discoveries” were already part of the Christian tradition.
So taking elements from her therapeutic experience, as well as from modern clinical findings, and reaching into the rich wells of the Saint Thomas systematization, she came with a new blend of psychological proposals.  Her vision tried to cover the whole of man’s reality.  She arrived at the conclusion that to try to ignore or separate man’s psyche from his spirit was an act of mutilation of the human being.  “Psychic wholeness” came as an answer to the holistic perspective.
She made an effort to understand the whole man.  In her efforts she had the light of philosophical anthropology, was well as a phenomenological perspective.  Many people misunderstood her ideas.  Criticism aroused very strongly against Terruwe.  (http://www.rudolfallers.info/terruwe.html)
The following quote is taken from Terruwe’s book, Psychopathic Personality and Neurosis (New York: P. J. Kenedy & Sons, 1958) and is cited in:
Thieme, R. B., Jr.  Emotional Revolt of the Soul.  (Houston: Berachah Tapes and Publications, 1972), 15-17:
Psychopathic personality is a disease of the emotional life.  The normal mature person controls his emotional life by the intellect.  In this way the emotional life blends perfectly with the intellectual life.  In the psychopathic person, the normal subordination of the emotions to intellect is not present … it is deficient and in some cases completely lacking.  It is the emotion that takes over at the expense of the intellect.  Even in neurosis, the same mechanism seems to be the causative factor … that is to say that it is the emotions that control the intellect rather than the intellect controlling the emotions.
The characteristics of psychopathic personality (include): (1) imbalance, (2) instability, and (3) egocentricity.
The key defect is lack of regulation of the emotional life by the intellect.  In the normal person the intellect always knows more or less if the emotional reactions (responses) are adequate or not and is able to maintain a sound balance.  The action of this regulating factor is diminished or abolished in the psychopathic personality.  As a result, the relationships between stimulation and reaction lose all proportion.
The psychopaths lack the ability to evaluate realistically the object of their emotional reactions.  This drive towards a false object becomes so intense that reason no longer can govern their actions.  They lose all objectivity and all intellectual reasoning abilities as they pursue the false object with pseudo-love fanaticism.  This imbalance leads to marked instability and liability of their emotions.  The normal person’s emotional life is controlled by the intellectual life, and this in turn leads to a certain degree of stability.
The psychopathic person in pursuit of his false object by purely emotional “thinking” can change from a violent love response to unreasonable hatred.  This is why the psychopath is unpredictable … can never be trusted.  You can never depend on him.  The psychopath with his incapacity for true love becomes preoccupied with self-gratification.  This egocentricity is typical of most psychopaths.  The true psychopath relates everything to himself.
True love and friendship are unknown to the psychopath.  When they love, it’s for their own sake, and the friendship lasts only so long as it is to their advantage.  A psychopath at times can be exceedingly pious and in fact some psychopaths claim to reach a level of spirituality that gives them supernatural powers, and many become totally involved in mystical existence.  Their spiritual life is determined by what they desire … meaningless babbling, which may be interpreted as “tongues,” disorientation to time, disorganized delusions …
(56)	The culprit in the process is volition.  Poor decisions injure the soul.  Prolonged residence in cosmic living causes friction in the soul which lays a thick coating of scar tissue over accumulated doctrine. This process is described in the Old Testament as “hardness of heart.”
(57)	The result is manifest by the inability to circulate divine thought through the stream of consciousness.
(58)	For example, you have a memory center for certain principles but consistent poor decisions have neutralized them, thus the principle: the rate of forgetting has exceeded the rate of learning.
(59)	Thus doctrine learned is inhibited by the volition turning its attention to false doctrine.  The latter becomes the favored memory trace and is facilitated into a path of least resistance.
(60)	Over time doctrine stored in the soul is ignored in favor of human viewpoint.  There are doctrinal norms and standards available, but the philosophies and rationales of the world have caused the believer to question their relevance.
(61)	There is a biblical frame of reference but the logic of the devil’s world causes the person to question its validity in the “modern world.”
(62)	There may even be a high inventory of biblical wisdom but doctrines of demons have canceled its capacity for discernment.
(63)	At this point the believer cannot be distinguished from the unbeliever and thus enters into the final stage of degeneracy

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