synecdoches

This paper was previously hosted on postmormon.org, a website which no longer exists. At time of writing, it can still be accessed via the Wayback Machine. However, this article is extremely important to me, and I want it available on the broader internet, and in a place I can readily share with friends. (I'm afraid footnotes won't be functional links, but the numbers will correlate.)

I cannot find much information about Ed Gardiner, Ph.D., but from his writing, he was LDS, and a therapist working with Mormon teens and adults who struggled with addiction.

Shame and the Destruction of Agency

Ed Gardiner, Ph.D.
Published on Oct 19, 2004

"There is no virtue in doing good when there is no other choice."—Anon

Over many years of teaching and counseling adolescents, particularly the youth of the LDS Church, I have become convinced of the connection between the use of shame in efforts to control behavior and the destruction of the agency of the person so controlled. I have seen this be most true with those people who have an innate desire to be good, to have faith and to do the will of God as they honestly see it. A more clear understanding of the development of agency and the effects of shaming control is needed if we are to lovingly assist teenagers into moral and spiritual adulthood. We must be ever more aware of the impact of our controlling efforts on such spiritually important matters as agency, responsibility for behavior and the development of empathic mercy.

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