The Unedited Self: Fostering Subversive Imagination in Ministry with Boys and Young Men

Abstract

This article draws from the life and work of George Bellows (1882–1925), a noted American painter at the turn of the twentieth century, in relation to his art instructor, Robert Henri (1865–1929), to envision pastoral relationships that foster spontaneous self-expression and the embrace of intrapsychic complexity in contemporary American boys and young men. It examines cultural trends and male psychosexual struggles that bolster undue self-screening at the expense of archaic, semiconscious desires to see and to be seen, to know and to be known. By identifying with artwork, artist, and art instructor, ministers or mentors aspire to evoke and enrich several facets of their own and their protege’s self-experience, designated here the unedited self, the unmanifested self, and the unencumbered self.