The Research Sample: Me!!!
On Countertransference in Religious Debates
A man I knew once ate fish at a restaurant. That night, he was admitted to hospital with food poisoning. From that day onward, he discovered his mission in life:
— My friend, perhaps the restaurant was simply bad?
— No. I tried it myself.
— Perhaps that particular fish had spoiled?
— I tried it myself.
— But millions of people have eaten fish for thousands of years.
— My brother, I am telling you: I personally tried it!
Here we meet a rather fascinating problem in the human mind. The man is not lying—and that is precisely what makes the issue difficult.
There is an enormous difference between two statements:
“I ate this fish and became ill.”
“Therefore, fish is poisonous.”
The first is a personal experience that I have no right to deny. The second is a conclusion that does not logically follow from that experience at all.
The problem is not whether the experience is sincere. The problem begins when someone transforms a personal experience from something that happened to one person into a universal truth that must apply to everyone.
A Real Spiritual Experience
Some time ago, I spoke with someone describing his spiritual experience. He said these words to me:
“I spent my whole life doing everything expected of me: serving as a deacon, teaching Sunday school, participating in other ministries, praying, and keeping every fast. Yet I always felt that something immense was missing. My heart remained deeply hungry and thirsty—until I truly met Him and came to know Him personally.”
He went on to say that after this experience, he discovered that many practices he had followed throughout his life were, in his view, contrary to the word of God and were even “the real cause of the separation between Him and me.”
Let me say something that may sound strange: I have no reason to doubt his feelings.
The man may be sincere in every word. He may genuinely have spent years praying, fasting, and serving while carrying a profound emptiness within. Later, he may have passed through a spiritual experience that changed his life, begun reading the Gospel with passion, and experienced God’s love in a way he had never known before.
All of that is entirely possible.
I possess my experience.
I do not possess the universe.
I Am Hungry—Therefore Food Is the Problem!
Psychotherapy has a well-known concept called countertransference.
In its precise clinical meaning, countertransference refers to the reactions, emotions, and thoughts that arise in a therapist toward a patient, some of which may come from the therapist’s own history, needs, conflicts, and personal experiences.
A good therapist must therefore remain aware of these reactions. Otherwise, instead of seeing the patient as the patient really is, the therapist may see the patient through the lens of the therapist’s own story. The American Psychological Association’s definition connects the phenomenon with the therapist’s needs and psychological conflicts, while research indicates that poor management of countertransference can interfere with the quality of the therapeutic process.
Of course, we are not in a clinic here, and there is no therapist or patient. Scientifically speaking, it would be inappropriate to claim that a person in a religious argument has countertransference in the literal diagnostic sense.
But the idea is exceptionally useful as a metaphor.
What happens when I enter a religious discussion carrying my history, wounds, sense of loss, frustration, fear, and the new comfort I have found—then begin reading the histories of other people through my own story?
Something deeply dangerous may happen:
I believe this is one of the most dangerous moments in religious debate. You may think that someone is asking:
“Is this practice biblically correct?”
But the hidden psychological question may sometimes be:
- “How can you fail to see what I have seen?”
- “How can you remain comfortable in the place where I was suffering?”
- Or, more dangerously: “If my experience proved to me that this path was wrong, then the existence of someone living on the same path while genuinely relating to God threatens the interpretation upon which I built my new story.”
This point requires an extraordinary degree of self-awareness.
The Problem Is Not That You Were Hungry
Suppose someone spent twenty years in the Church while experiencing spiritual dryness. That is extremely difficult.
But why did the dryness happen? Here the real questions begin:
- Was the problem the doctrine?
- Or the way it was presented?
- A particular local church?
- The form of ministry?
- The personality of the servant?
- The family environment?
- A negative personal experience?
- Learning the practice without understanding its meaning?
- A stage of life?
- An unseen psychological need?
- Or all these factors in different proportions?
A mind in pain does not always like this long list. It wants one defendant, because one defendant is comfortable:
I was there, and I was thirsty.
I left there, and my thirst was satisfied.
Therefore, “there” was the cause of my thirst.
It sounds entirely logical—until you discover that it is not logical at all.
Cognitive psychology describes a pattern called overgeneralisation. The American Psychological Association defines it, among other ways, as transforming a single event into a fixed rule or extending a conclusion beyond the circumstances that originally support it.
I entered a relationship and was betrayed → all relationships are harmful.
A manager treated me unjustly → all companies are corrupt.
I had a harsh father → every form of paternal authority is oppressive.
I practised church rites without inner life → the practices themselves prevent life with God.
Notice the difference. The first statement in each example describes an experience. The second transforms the experience into a theory.
I Have the Right to Tell My Story—Not to Generalise It
Personal experience is immensely powerful. At times, it is even more powerful than the numbers themselves.
This is not merely an impression. A meta-analysis of dozens of studies concerning anecdotal evidence—individual stories and experiences—found that personal stories can become extremely persuasive, especially when the subject is emotionally charged or touches the listener personally.
Sometimes a person hears fifty studies without being moved, then hears one individual say, “This happened to me,” and the story enters the heart as though it were conclusive proof.
That is entirely understandable. Numbers have no face; a story has eyes, a voice, and tears.
But the fact that a story is more affecting does not make it more capable of supporting a generalisation. On the contrary, research into argumentation and persuasion has found that statistical evidence is more suitable than an individual story precisely when we want to establish a general conclusion.
If someone tells you, “I went to hospital after eating fish,” take the statement seriously. But if the person continues, “From this I discovered the truth the world has overlooked: fish is a danger to humanity,” then you have every right to explain that respecting a personal experience does not require agreeing with the conclusions drawn from it.
The Greater Problem: Reading the Past Through the Lens of the Present
The human mind is not a video camera. We do not store our lives on a hard drive and later retrieve them exactly as they happened.
Our personal memory forms part of the way we understand ourselves and construct our story. The APA defines autobiographical memory as memory of our personal experiences, but it also includes knowledge connected with the self and the image we hold of ourselves.
For that reason, when a major transformation occurs in someone’s life, the past itself may be reinterpreted in the light of the present.
This is not necessarily deliberate falsification; the person may be entirely convinced. But the story is rearranged. After the transformation, everything that occurred before it becomes merely an introduction to the transformation.
- Every earlier period of dryness becomes evidence.
- Every painful incident becomes a sign.
- Every servant who made a mistake becomes a representative of the entire system.
- Every beautiful moment after the transition becomes further proof that the decision was correct.
At this point, another familiar factor enters and makes the problem even more complicated: confirmation bias. This is our tendency to seek information that confirms a conclusion we have already reached, give that information greater weight, and neglect—or fail to search seriously for—evidence that may contradict our view.
The story then becomes airtight:
I suffered while I was Orthodox? Evidence that Orthodoxy is wrong.
I became comfortable after leaving? Additional evidence that Orthodoxy is wrong.
I met an Orthodox Christian with a beautiful relationship with Christ? That person simply has not discovered the truth yet.
I met someone who left the Church, later returned, and experienced a deeper relationship with Christ? That person’s experience must be different.
In this way, “my personal experience” is transformed from one piece of evidence among many into the ruler by which every piece of evidence is measured.
“The Rituals Did Not Change Me”
This is an extremely important statement, but it requires one very small question:
Imagine someone joining a gym for five years but spending the whole time posing for photographs beside the equipment. The person eventually leaves and says, “I tried the gym for five years, and gyms do not build muscle.” There is a very small possibility that the problem was not the bench press.
The same principle applies to any spiritual practice:
- Prayer without repentance can become a habit.
- Reading the Bible without attention can become a duty.
- Fasting without love can become a diet.
- Service without inner life can become a social activity.
But this demonstrates the failure of the way I practised something; it does not necessarily demonstrate the failure of the practice itself. The difference is enormous.
A knife can perform surgery, and it can wound a human being. If a knife wounds you, do not publish a video titled:
“My Testimony: The Shocking Truth About Knives That Surgeons Do Not Want You to Know.”
From “I Did Not Know Christ” to “You Do Not Know Christ”
Here we reach the most dangerous transition. Anyone has the right to describe the result of a personal experience:
- I have not been admitted to hospital since I stopped eating fish.
- I will start my own business rather than allow an unjust manager to control me.
- In my former denomination, I knew more about Christ than I knew Christ personally.
These are all testimonies concerning the person who is speaking, and that person has every right to express them.
What cannot logically be concluded, however, is:
- People who eat fish are admitted to hospital.
- People employed by companies suffer depression because their managers control them.
- People in my former church also know about Christ but do not know Him personally.
Why not?
Because “I” am not a representative statistical sample of millions of human beings.
The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy places this under hasty generalisation: giving a universal conclusion more confidence than a small or unrepresentative sample permits.
In our case, the sample is sometimes not merely small. The sample is one person—and that one person is the speaker.
Perhaps This Explains Something Strange in Certain Debates
A person says to you with complete love, “I do not want a sectarian argument.” Immediately afterward, the person begins explaining that your practices may separate you from God, that your eternal salvation depends upon investigating the matter, and that you may be like a blind person being led by another blind person into a pit.
The person is probably sincere in saying that no argument is desired. The inner feeling may not be, “I am entering this conversation to win a debate.” It may genuinely be, “I have seen a fire, and I must warn you.”
That is exactly why psychological awareness is necessary.
Good intentions do not eliminate bias.
I may love you deeply while projecting my story onto you.
I may sincerely fear for you while assuming that you suffer from exactly what I suffered.
I may be convinced that I am rescuing you while, without recognising it, I am trying to make you confirm the correctness of the path I chose.
Countertransference is dangerous in therapy for precisely the same reason. A therapist is not necessarily acting with bad intentions. On the contrary, the therapist may urgently want to help. But personal experience can enter between the therapist and the person in front of them. That is why self-awareness and the management of these responses are essential. Meta-analytic research has found an association between successful management of countertransference and better therapeutic outcomes.
What Should We Do with Other People’s Experiences?
We should respect them deeply—and place them in their proper position.
When someone says, “I was in a particular church and I was hurt,” I do not answer, “Impossible. You are wrong.” I answer, “Tell me what happened. I respect your feelings.”
When someone says, “I used to pray without a real relationship with God,” I do not answer, “That cannot be true.” I answer, “That is genuinely serious.”
When someone says, “Then I found a deeper spiritual life,” I rejoice for that person and pray that God may open their eyes and draw them ever closer to Him.
But if the person then says, “Therefore, the doctrine in which I formerly lived is the cause of your separation from God as well,” emotion must pause and calm, honest, humble investigation must begin.
- Bring the biblical texts.
- Bring the history.
- Bring the Church’s own understanding of its practices—not your former understanding of them.
- Bring the writings of its Fathers.
- Bring witnesses who support and oppose your conclusion.
- Place your hypothesis itself under examination.
Then ask the frightening question that the mind sometimes dislikes:
“What evidence, if you encountered it, would lead you to admit that your interpretation had been incomplete or mistaken?”
If the answer is, “Nothing—I experienced it myself,” then we are no longer searching for the truth. We are guarding a story.
A Mark of Spiritual and Psychological Maturity
In my opinion, one of the most beautiful signs of spiritual and psychological maturity is the ability to say:
“My experience is real—but it is my experience.”
I was thirsty, but that does not prove that the well is empty.
Perhaps I did not know how to drink from it. Perhaps the person who taught me did not know how to guide me. Perhaps I was looking in the wrong place. Perhaps there genuinely is a problem with the well.
All possibilities remain open. That is why we investigate.
The most dangerous thing is to emerge from my pain with a final verdict: “I suffered here; therefore, God is not here.” Or to emerge from my joy with an even more dangerous verdict: “I rejoiced here; therefore, God is found only here.”
Experience can tell me where I was. By itself, it cannot draw the map of the world.
Selected References
- American Psychological Association, APA Dictionary of Psychology: definition of countertransference as therapist responses partly connected with the therapist’s needs, conflicts, and psychological experiences.
- Hayes, Gelso, Goldberg, and Kivlighan (2018), Psychotherapy: review and meta-analysis of countertransference research, its management, and its relationship with therapeutic outcomes.
- APA Dictionary of Psychology: definition of overgeneralisation as extending an event or conclusion beyond the range permitted by its circumstances.
- APA Dictionary of Psychology: definition of confirmation bias as the tendency to favour evidence that supports prior expectations and to search less thoroughly for opposing evidence.
- Freling et al. (2020), Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes: meta-analysis of 61 studies comparing personal stories with statistical evidence and examining the effect of emotional charge upon bias toward anecdotal evidence.
- Hoeken and Hustinx (2009), Human Communication Research: experimental research showing that statistical evidence can be stronger than anecdotal experience when constructing probabilistic generalisations.
- Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: explanation of hasty generalisation and the danger of constructing broad judgements from small or unrepresentative samples.
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