Born in Bloomington, Indiana, in 1876, Boisen initially trained as a linguist at the University of Indiana and a forester at Yale, before graduating in theology from Union Theological Seminary in New York City, and being ordained a Presbyterian minister in 1912 (De Bono 2012:41; Nouwen 1968a:53–55). Even in the process of writing his statement of faith, which was part of the process of seeking a call through the Presbytery of New York, Boisen became overwhelmed by delusional fantasies and had a mental breakdown necessitating his being hospitalised at the Boston Psychiatric Hospital. Later, he was treated for schizophrenia at Westboro State Hospital.

As Boisen sought to understand his own situation, he began to see connections between his illness and certain types of religious experiences. He concluded that both were the mind’s attempts at reorganisation (Higgins & Burns 2012:kindle location 374). He noticed that typically, after a crisis which could involve rather dramatic symptoms, there was a moment of transformation or integration which could be interpreted in either psychological or spiritual terms.

This was not the only time Boisen suffered a mental breakdown for which he was institutionalised.⁶ On each occasion Boisen concluded that he was involved in a search for meaning, understanding, and validation of his own experience. This led him to develop an approach to theological education (for Seminary students) that was autobiographical in nature (Higgins & Burns):

Nouwen only met Boisen once, towards the end of Boisen’s life, in August 1964, at Elgin State Hospital (De Bono 2012:155–158), where Boisen was hospitalised after suffering another psychotic episode. Although it is not clear exactly when and by whom Nouwen was first introduced to Boisen’s work,⁷ Nouwen was clearly interested in what Boisen was doing. Nouwen chose Boisen as the subject of both of his doctoral dissertations (incomplete), the first in psychology and the second in theology, both at Nijmegen. Thus, he spent considerable time and effort researching Boisen, as evidenced by the amount of material he collected during his research.⁸ Between 1968 and 1977, Nouwen wrote two articles focussed on Boisen and his work. In addition, he made four explicit references to him in his books published during this same period (Nouwen 1968b; De Bono 2012: 114).

In a chapter of his doctoral dissertation presented to the University of St. Michael’s College, Toronto, Christopher De Bono examined the Nouwen–Boisen connection. His work was the first detailed and intentional study of this relationship. DeBono (2012) discussed how biographies on Nouwen had dealt with the Nouwen–Boisen connection, concluding that, the existing biographical literature:

In Nouwen’s first article on Boisen, ‘Anton T. Boisen and theology through living human documents’, published in Pastoral Psychology in 1968, he focussed on the development of clinical pastoral education, where Boisen made his most important contribution. The article highlighted Boisen’s attempt to bring ministers and priests in training into psychiatric hospitals to serve collegially alongside medical doctors, psychologists, and other healthcare professionals. They were members of a caring team who were trained to consider people who were grappling with the challenges of life as ‘living human documents’. Boisen sought to show how real-life people could be the focus of pastoral academic studies in the same way as books. The study of ‘Living human documents’ was, at its core, a rigorous empirical study of the human condition.

In this article, Nouwen argued that it was impossible to understand Anton Boisen’s innovation of the clinical case method without consideration of Boisen’s personal case, using his own autobiographical approach. Nouwen concluded Boisen himself was a ‘document’ who brought revealed truth and understanding. He was, as such, an ideal illustration of the case method. ‘Chaplain and patient, two identities which seem so different to be together in one man, formed exactly the basis of Boisen’s peculiar personality’ (Nouwen 1968a:50). In effect, a person could be both wounded and still a healer.

Higgins and Burns highlight two aspects of Boisen’s approach that were an influence on Nouwen. The first was the realisation of the usefulness of a study of personal experience in a ‘living human document’ for the study of spirituality. The second and consequent influence was that a person’s wounds were revealing of the state of one’s inner being and thus might assist a caregiver in facilitating healing and integration in the subject (2012:Kindle location 387). Boisen became Nouwen’s first real-life wounded healer and Boisen’s phenomenological approach became his primary method of pastoral interaction in his years of teaching at Notre Dame and Yale.

The ‘wounded healer’ became one of the most important concepts in Nouwen’s thinking. ‘He would refine it, reapply it, and carefully explore the implications for psychology and spirituality’ (Higgins & Burns 2012:kindle location 446–462). Nouwen developed his model for spiritual transformation by listening to the human subjects he encountered (including his own self) and employing Boisen’s methodology.

DeBono’s research also showed how Nouwen’s second article, Boisen and the Case Method, published in 1977, focussed on Boisen and how his books, Intimacy (1969), Creative Ministry (1971) and The Living Reminder (1977) make specific reference to Boisen (2012:114). The last book (chronologically) to mention Boisen, The Living Reminder, makes reference to Boisen only once, but in a critical way.

Although Nouwen invested considerable time and effort in researching Boisen, in the end, he used very little of what he gathered in his published works. Higgins and Burns (2012: 416) believed that the few references to Boisen in Nouwen’s published materials showed that ‘Nouwen didn’t just read about Boisen; he read Boisen as a living human document’ and integrated Boisen and his methods into Nouwen’s own contemplation and research. He was able to apply Boisen’s case method in a way that corresponded to his phenomenological approach (Higgins & Burns 2012):

The influence of Boisen on Nouwen’s life and methodology is clear. This article hence asserts that Boisen was Nouwen’s first wounded healer: troubled, and broken, yet able to use his wounds to facilitate the healing of many. Boisen also schooled Nouwen in a somewhat unique methodology, in which Nouwen could read even himself as a living document. What he found, he then expressed in his lectures, his interactions with people, and his books. As a wounded healer himself, Nouwen ministered to people who had obvious physical, psychological, social, and spiritual struggles. In them, Nouwen began to see not only their brokenness and struggles, but also their beauty and belovedness as God’s children. By drawing close to them, Nouwen was able to derive inspiration and strength to address his own wounds. Boisen’s example in attending to his mental illness and using the ‘living human document’ method on himself had an influence on Nouwen’s vision of suffering, healing, and spiritual growth. Michael O’Laughlin (2004) summarised Boisen’s influence on Nouwen like this:

Vincent van Gogh was born in Zundert, the Netherlands, on 30 March 1853. His father was a minister in the Dutch Reformed Church (Berry 2019:27) and Van Gogh showed promise as an artist from an early age and eventually worked for an art dealing company in the Hague and in London. He became interested in the Christian faith in England, serving as a Sunday school teacher and lay preacher in Methodist and Congregational churches. He wanted to train as a minister but was refused admission at the seminary in Amsterdam (Penkett 2019:36). He joined the Belgian Missionary Society and was sent on a mission to the poor in the Borinage, south of Belgium in 1878-79. He began to live among people in great poverty as one of them.

His painting, The Potato Eaters, exemplifies Van Gogh’s incarnational evangelism and his compassion. It shows the people to whom he was sent, exposing their tremendous poverty, gathering in community, and sharing what they had. ‘One must paint the peasants as being one of them, as feeling, thinking as they do’ (Penkett 2019:41).

Through his art and letters, Van Gogh spoke to Nouwen at a profound level. In the same Foreword to Edward’s book on Van Gogh, Nouwen reflected on the seminars he taught on Van Gogh at Yale. Nouwen (1989:x) wrote, ‘After such seminars it seemed that we all had been touched in places that no spiritual writer had been able to reach’. Perhaps it was Van Gogh’s expression of solidarity with suffering people and his determination to share their experiences which attracted Nouwen to his work. Penkett believed that in Van Gogh, Nouwen found ‘a kindred spirit, a spiritual brother, whose own brokenness and suffering was to prove an astonishing source from which Nouwen also drew on’ (2019:29).

Like Boisen, Van Gogh also had his wounds: loneliness, anguish, depression, and even psychotic episodes and delusions (Ford 2019:xi; Penkett 2019:39). I believe that he was another example for Nouwen of a wounded healer. His artwork became the instrument of his healing.

Nouwen himself admitted that few writers or painters had influenced him as greatly as Van Gogh did. He believed that the reason Van Gogh facilitated such healing of his own brokenness was likely because Van Gogh himself was so deeply wounded (and gifted) (Nouwen 1989:ix), but Penkett also sees many ‘resonances’ between Van Gogh and Nouwen, especially Nouwen’s interest in compassion. Nouwen was moved by Van Gogh’s ability to express the compassion of God in his art. Nouwen found in Van Gogh a similar focus and meditative spirit to his own, and through his influence, Nouwen’s understanding of compassion became something more than intellectual. Nouwen was able to engage compassionately at a deep spiritual level (Penkett 2019:42).

Chris Glaser (2018), a student of Nouwen who attended some of the Van Gogh seminars, also discerned a connection between Nouwen and van Gogh: ‘I believe that Henri was drawn to Van Gogh because they shared a profound sense of loneliness’, he told me.

While Van Gogh was a kindred spirit to Nouwen and a fellow Dutchman, he also served as a sort of spiritual guide to him (Ford 1999:109). In her book on Nouwen and Van Gogh, Berry identifies compassion as the unifying theme between the two. In the mid-1970s, Nouwen began to research van Gogh at the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo, the Netherlands, and to read the extensive correspondence between Van Gogh and his brother Theo (Penkett 2019:35). This made a profound impact on his understanding of compassion.

To his students at Yale, Nouwen revealed that the closeness he felt with Van Gogh was because he saw in Van Gogh a person who had struggled with deep spiritual questions and consequently, Nouwen believed that Van Gogh could guide people on their spiritual journey. The art and the letters of Van Gogh, even his life story, influenced Nouwen, as he confronted his own struggles. He felt he could trust this wounded healer. Van Gogh became Nouwen’s companion in the same way as in the Roman Catholic tradition, the Saints were considered companions to the faithful (Penkett 2019:36).

This article proposes that having discovered the wounded healer concept in his initial research on Anton Boisen and the case study method while a student in psychology at Nijmegen in the early 1960s, and having explored this concept further as an intern at the Menninger Institute in the USA from 1964 to 1966, Nouwen encountered another example of a wounded healer in van Gogh. When Nouwen explored Van Gogh as a ‘living human document’, Van Gogh became the focus for one of his most popular courses at Yale in the 1970s. Nouwen was still developing the concept and his most persuasive work on this theme was yet to be fully shaped. Nouwen’s most vulnerable project was to explore his own life and come to the conclusion that he too was a wounded healer.

In their 2010 article, Nolte and Dreyer delve into the dynamics at play in the wounded healer motif to illustrate how it may facilitate transformation (2010:3). Citing C.F. Jung, they point to how the concept, which is seemingly paradoxical, results in the healer’s wound facilitating a healing. They then relate the concept to priests, pastors and ministers (as Nouwen did), showing how these ‘helpers’ with all the complexity of their own personalities, relationships and situations, are ‘influenced by their own woundedness’ (2010:3). Helpers should be aware of this ‘and should utilise it to benefit their relationships with others. It is important for pastors to take their woundedness seriously and to consider how it influences specific situations’ (2010:3).

Nolte and Dreyer (2010) express the belief that the wounded healer concept may provide a welcome corrective to more assertive and authoritarian models, based on a positivistic epistemology:

What is most compelling, however, is the way one can observe Nouwen (through his writing) using the ‘living documents’ phenomenological method together with the wounded healer concept in his own life in the seventies and early eighties. Nouwen reflects on his life and struggles, reading himself as a living document and believing that his wounds can be healing for others.¹²

In a paper on the influence of C.F. Jung on Nouwen, de Jong argues that Nouwen’s training in psychology at Nijmegen and at the Menninger Institute would have introduced him to Jung’s writings, and that his notion of swinging between polarities was in fact built on Jung’s psychology (2012:2). In his early book, Intimacy, Nouwen (1968b) seems to validate this claim:

Jung’s self-realisation involved some hard psychological work, discovering archetypes in the unconscious and the subsequent interpretation of these archetypes (De Jong 2012:5) including the persona, the anima and animus, and the shadow. The point of contact between Nouwen’s theory of spiritual polarities and Jung’s psychology is the shadow. ‘The shadow is the inferior being in ourselves, the one who wants to do all the things that we do not allow ourselves to do, who is everything we are not, the Mr. Hyde to our Dr. Jekyll’ (Fordham 1968:24). In addition to the shadow, the psyche is home to a dynamic and self-regulating energy Jung calls libido. ‘The libido flows between two opposing poles’ much like ‘the positive and negative poles of an electric circuit’ (De Jong 2012:9).

Here one discovers a connection between the psychology of Jung and Nouwen’s unique metaphor of spiritual transformation as a movement between (opposing) poles. At first, a person is unable to relate to more than one pole at a time. They identify with one of the poles and turn away from the other which does not fit with the image of themselves (De Jong 2012:9). As one does the hard emotional work of identifying with even the darkness in oneself, healing and wholeness can result. The self can now transcend the opposites (De Jong 2012:10) by first meeting her shadow and learning to live with this daunting and often fear-evoking aspect of herself. Wholeness can only be found when there is a recognition of the opposites. (De Jong 2012:11)

Nouwen’s terminology is different from traditional models, especially those in the classic spiritual tradition, which considered the spiritual life a journey through stages or steps, preferring the model of an ongoing movement,¹³ ‘swinging between poles’ which could be positive or negative (Marchinkowski 2022:256; De Jong 2012:11). Nouwen (1975) explains:

While the default experience of individuals living in the world today may be loneliness,¹⁴ hostility and illusion (1968b:13), it would be a mistake to bypass these poles because they may be the very path to solitude, hospitality, and prayer. To use Jung’s terms, ‘by embracing our shadows can be become fully integrated and authentic spiritual pilgrims’ (Ford 2006:25). The psycho-spiritual work of embrace involves accepting the ‘negative’ pole and understand it as an inner conflict so that the understanding enables it to become a source of growth towards wholeness (Nouwen 1968b:13–14). Nouwen (1996) recognised that the aim was not to dispel darkness but to rejoice in what little of the ‘light’ one still experienced:

Nouwen was influenced by Jung in his articulation of the process of spiritual transformation, not as a series of stages or levels but as a process of swings between seemingly opposing poles wherein the shadow is integrated and the challenging experiences of our lives are continually processed (De Jong 2012:21). Nouwen showed a high level of tolerance for paradox by describing polar opposites not as conceptual ‘enemies’ that need be placed over against each other, but rather as ‘friends’ that could complement each other and lead to spiritual and psychological growth (Hernandez 2012:kindle location 433).

Every person has surely experienced feeling lonely; it is one of the most universal human experiences. Nouwen believed that Western culture had heightened the awareness of human loneliness mainly because western culture creates mechanisms to avoid pain—physical, emotional and psychological (Nouwen 1975:27). One sure sign of human loneliness that could be experienced in everyday life was that conversation often degraded into ‘small talk’. Instead of avoiding loneliness or denying it, Nouwen believed it should be protected and turned into solitude, a positive aloneness that could bear fruit. By doing so, one could “enter into the desert of our loneliness and change it by gentle and persistent efforts into a garden of solitude” (1975:34). In his landmark book on spiritual transformation, Reaching out, Nouwen pointed out an opportunity for personal spiritual transformation in which an individual might move from loneliness, taking a ‘swing’ from this default fearful and disconnected state towards the other pole of solitude. This, he believed, was (Nouwen 1975):

Nouwen believed that this ‘swing’ or movement was intuitive for mystics because they had not only experienced the terrible loneliness of the Dark Night of the soul¹⁵ but also because they knew God as their spiritual home. Ford pointed out that for Nouwen (and for the mystics), loneliness could be equated with homesickness. Mystics were able to identify loneliness as a disconnection from God, an illusion which was to be acknowledged, seen for what it was and embraced as ‘a necessary experience this side of heaven’ (Ford 2018:43). Much has been written on how Nouwen articulated the process of spiritual transformation, as a series of swings between poles. The swings were neither stages for Nouwen nor were the negative poles to be permanently transcended. The spiritual seeker would return periodically to the same experience and challenge implicit in that ‘negative’ pole (such as loneliness). The swing or movement most closely related to personal transformation¹⁶ was the swing between loneliness to solitude (Ford 2018:82). This swing was not intended as a denial of loneliness but a decision for it not to overwhelm the spiritual seeker, to seek to find its cause and in so doing, loneliness will lose its power over them (Nouwen 1996b:36).

Nouwen (1996:36) believed that loneliness could be addressed in many ways, both negative (such as addictions) or positive (such as therapy), but finding solitude was a deeply personal and spiritual journey. Many of his books warn against the fallacy that loneliness can be cured by filling our lives with people or things (Beumer 1997):

By creating the pole of solitude, Nouwen was envisaging a still place in the heart. He was not creating the impression that there was a geographical place to which one might flee, and there retreat into solitude. He had tried on many occasions to seek solace in places like the Genesee monastery in Kentucky, discovering to his dismay that his heart was not still. The only solitude that was possible, was a solitude of the heart, an inner disposition or attitude which did not depend on seclusion (Nouwen 1975:37). The road to solitude might begin with a spiritual seeker adopting practices of mindfulness, contemplation, and a kind of paying attention to the ebb and flow of our hearts. In practising these, a seeker could be present in their own loneliness so that they could then be present in their solitude. Nouwen believed that an attitude of solitude in the heart would facilitate the ability of a person to attentively listen to the stories of others. Alternatively, when people were driven by loneliness, listening became a challenge and people were inclined to select the remarks and events that address the wants and needs of the listener (Nouwen 1975:38).

This mindfulness or contemplation would facilitate the swing, in a process of converting the loneliness of a spiritual seeker into a deep solitude and, a sacred space in which a person’s true vocation would emerge and God could speak to them about their true vocation. Remaining in a state of disconnected loneliness would result in impatience with self and others, and hence an inability to do the spiritual work of transformation; but in solitude, seekers could listen to their inner selves, becoming truly present to who they really were (Nouwen 1975:40–41). In addition, solitude prepared a person for another step, a step towards the other, our fellow human beings. Indeed, another spiritual swing awaited; the seeker could move from personal transformation to interpersonal transformation.