ABSTRACT
That piece of sin that is also psychopathology, the sin which generates pain that leads clients to pastoral psychotherapy, is identifiable by rigidity. Its essence is a repetition of unsuccessful solutions, continued because other tactics promise to produce even more pain than is now suffered. The repetition, this unsuccessful but loyally maintained pattern, is sustained by constrictions at every level. Thought content is delimited: the person thinks about the same small array of mental contents. Thoughts follow the same routes in dealing with one problem after another. The same overfocussedness, or vagueness, or evasion of responsibility for outcomes, crops up in response to every situation. The body participates in the rigidity, tightening some muscle groups, atrophying others, to keep unwanted impulses out of awareness and make sure available energy does not exceed what the controlling structures can manage. Facial expressions become habitual, limbs are awkwardly cramped, tension is frozen in muscles, posture is distorted to the point of structural damage, all in service of the required stasis.
