A psychological ynooei of rape for victim ank offender
6.2. THE CHALLENGES, DIFFICULTIES AND SHORTCOMINGS OF THIS THESIS
Firstly, I can say, that the production of this thesis had a transforming effect on me.
Transforming not only to my personal knowledge and emotions but also transformative of the aims that I initially held for this thesis. After starting off with this thesis, I came to realize the enormity of what I first aimed to achieve. Firstly I expected to look into and come up with one integrated exploration and response to the question of reconciliation through V.O.M. I thought I would look at the judicial, financial, social, law and order, psychological and spiritual aspects of reconciliation in V.O.M.P.'s. I even thought at that time that I would be able to come up with a list of scriptures that I could use in the form of a manual, with which I could practically help empower and counsel victims and offenders. I soon discovered that even the legal aspect of reparation in crime involved complex arguments.
I soon realised that I needed to narrow down my focus to the psychological and spiritual aspects of V.O.M. for reconciliation. But even then I realised that the psychological aspect would be quite extensive in dealing with victims and offenders, especially with regard to rape.
So even here, I had to narrow down my aims with regard to the psychological aspects, for this thesis.
I discovered that the psychological information and concerns at my disposal were not only
extensive but also in many cases fairly technical, couched in terms and methodologies of psychology, which I could not get to grips with, because of my lack of formal training in psychology. I realized then that I could not make a claim to speak with much authority for the psychological aspects of victims and offenders in rape, nor for the psychological
transformation that they would undergo in V.O.M. for reconciliation. This turned out to be disappointing, especially because I saw the lack of ability to apply empirically sound
techniques of research and methodologies as limiting. Thus the psychological aspects could have been empirically more thorough had I undergone some formal training in psychology.
This led me to further realize that the strength of my contribution to the debate in
reconciliation between victims and offenders, could really only lie in the spiritual aspects and in regard to an examination of the New Testament texts in particular.
If I can claim any particular substantial input into the debate, then I can only say that this contribution is in the area of contextualizing certain New Testament texts, for the problem at hand. This conclusion may seem obvious perhaps to the reader but for me it was not a conclusion mentally deduced. Rather it was one of practical discovery, in the process of my research.
Part of my initial optimism for a wide study, though, I think was borne out by my practical Pastoral work. This involves Pastoral counselling, exegesis of scripture for teaching and preaching, "social work", "legal advice", etc. Thus the practical need for an integrated approach to the challenge of reconciliation via mediation, addressing the problem from all of the above angles, looked appealing to me. However, a gradual whittling away of areas of research for this thesis was not a humiliating or dis-empowering one. Rather, it was a positively humbling experience, that my theoretical research and practical ministry must go on!
The next challenge that I found myself facing, was that of finding willing and available subjects to be interviewed. In fact I came to regard it as a difficulty eventually. I have, however, already mentioned the practical difficulties of obtaining subjects to talk to [pg. 7].
One big disappointment that I had as far as the interviews were concerned, is that the one offender who did agree to talk to me, painted himself as a "victim" throughout the interview.
This proved frustrating to me because I wanted "first - hand" data from a rapist, who could be open to divulging his rape experience. I mentioned earlier, though, that Volgelman (1990:9) also laments that sample sizes for research with rapists are usually "small". He also
mentioned, as I partially discovered, that "complex methodological problems" have to be also overcome.
This small size of my sample challenged me further. My initial aim was to provide a fair reflection of the problem with a narrow socio - cultural profile. While I in fact did manage to keep to the profile, the number of subjects interviewed was too small, I think, for me to speak with authority on behalf of such a socio - cultural profile, based on the findings of my thesis.
Thus I conclude and readily admit at the end of this thesis that my sample merely provided a means for practically testing "what the answers may be " for this socio- cultural group to the questions I raised in this thesis. For this reason, I constantly mentioned in Chapter Five, that my conclusions for the relevancy of the texts, were only for "my sample" or I would say "this sample of subjects".
I mentioned in Chapter One [pg. 7] that I had to provide an edited form of transcript of the interviews and I explained the reasons for this. I touched on how I had to clarify questions and answers a number of times in some instances, so that I could come up with an intelligible response to my questions. I came to the conclusion then that the questions that I was wanting to examine in this thesis, meant that the subjects themselves had to have a certain level of understanding, literacy or even education - if I may say so. Sometimes my questions could not be understood even the third time around! In some instances I sensed frustration and
irritation on the part of the subjects, when I pressed them for a "proper" (not "correct"!) answer. I came across this for example when I challenged the reader that their response could not actually be gauged on the basis of the texts alone, as it appeared before them. This was a new way for the subjects to look at the texts because they brought a general symbolic and thematic understanding "from across the Bible" to bear on the texts under consideration. It was not unusual to sense a growing irritation, at my persistence and attempts at clarification. I sometimes postponed the question or abandoned it altogether.
The problems associated with this kind of participatory research became increasingly obvious to me. Since I have presented " edited interviews", for reasons I explained in Chapter One and
the above paragraph, I realize that I am open to criticism of my data and the method of collation. I too would agree that in some measure, by editing and clarifying the subjects' answers, I have altered the results from an ideal verbatim. However I will counter by saying that I aimed throughout the process of acquiring and collating the data, to keep the integrity thereof Furthermore the advantages of the way in which I finally acquired and collated the data, far outweigh the disadvantages. I have already explained the daunting task of
transcription of these interviews [pg. 7]. I will add here that such transcripts would be even more daunting for a reader!
As I mentioned earlier, I eventually came to the understanding that my research would have to be centred on an actual critical examination of Paul's texts for reconciliation. This explains why I never went into great detail to critically analyse and develop comparatively, a
psychological model of victim and offender in rape and recovery. This lack of comparative research for my psychological model in Chapter Three, must be seen in the light of what I eventually had to concentrate on : a creative contextualization of Paul and its practical relevancy as opposed to an in-depth, critical psychological model of victim and offender in rape and recovery. Besides, as I discussed earlier in this chapter, I am very aware of my
shortcomings in the field of psychology. Chapter Three then at times takes the form of a series of abstracts from Lewis Hermann and Vogelman. But this is simply because I wanted to use authoritative work already produced, from which to launch my Biblical work. And it is in the area of Biblical work that my expertise lies.
To a certain measure, I also used Ridderbos in this way in the first half of Chapter Four. The idea was merely to create some formal theological framework of Paul's thought, which would then illuminate my exegesis and contexualization of the texts. Once this psychological and theological framework was set up, my own creativity of exegesis and contextualization started to flow. Most of my exegesis and all of my contextualization thereafter, was my own original work. It was the area of my thesis that I most enjoyed.
It may be argued that the flow of this thesis in Chapter Two seems to get "bogged down", with the definition of the key words. I found the construction and descriptions of these definitions laborious. In fact this section was the section that I least enjoyed putting together for this thesis. Nevertheless, I believe that it was crucial to clarify the understanding of the key terms on which this thesis is based. There also seemed little point in me getting into an etymological
discussion of the key words in their English usage. The challenge rather, for me, arose in how people applied them to reconciliation in serious crime.