2nd Sunday Unitarian Universalist Service – July 12, 2009
Bearing Up
In his pastoral ordination vows, Douglas Larson-Sell promised not to “give any occasion for false security or illusory hope.” What can be learned from the various (and disputed) theories of psychoanalysis that will help us understand what counsel – of an individual or a group – is false or illusory? Douglas will give particular attention to “negative capacity” – the ability of a counselor or leader to bear pain – and to what he calls “the fantasy” that someone can know what is best for another person.
Douglas Larson-Sell took his master’s and doctoral degrees from the Divinity School of the University of Chicago. He recently completed several years of psychoanalytic training at the Minnesota Psychoanalytic Institute. Douglas, his wife, Amy, and seven-year-old son, Jordan, live in Spring Green, where he serves as pastor at Christ Lutheran Church. During especially auspicious moments – when his pastoral duties abate – Douglas enjoys reading, listening to jazz, and thinking about how nice it would be to take the family’s rumbling 1963 Chris Craft Cavalier out on the Madison lakes.
