The Impact of Leaving the Convent on a Woman's Perceived Relationship with God as Viewed Through the Lenses of Attachment and Divorce

Abstract

Beginning with Bowlby’s attachment theory and the Catholic Church’s conception of religious life as a spousal relationship with Christ, this dissertation formulates 1) a in-depth theoretical framework of divorce from an attachment perspective for understanding the challenges women may encounter upon leaving a convent; 2) a description of the course and nature of emotional suffering that woman may experience in her relationship with God after leaving the convent, incorporating written personal accounts, an original case study of one former religious, and attachment-based literature on divorce; and 3) a proposed explanation for why different women may display such widely-differing degrees of struggle in their relationship with God after leaving religious life, based on Bartholomew’s four attachment styles. To the author’s knowledge, this dissertation is the first attempt to provide a serious analysis of these issues from the standpoint of contemporary psychology – or even to give the topic of a woman’s relationship with God after leaving religious life any serious consideration whatever. It also appears to be the first work to treat this topic in a manner that is consistent with the Catholic Church’s own understanding of what religious life is, and thus to interpret the experience of leaving religious life “from the inside,” rather than beginning from a hermeneutic of suspicion and criticism of Catholic consecrated life. Recommendations are made for studies to test the theories proposed in this dissertation, as well as an exploration of various therapeutic models that may prove helpful for women struggling to make this transition.