The Discomfort Zone by Jonathan Franzen Page B

is not good enough. The assurances of others are not good enough. Acceptance within a continuing relationship which denies reassurance (it’s usually false anyway) and thereby brings the sufferer to an awareness of his need to evaluate and accept himself—this brings change.
    Benson recounted his treatment of a young woman with severe symptoms of hippiedom—drug abuse, promiscuity, sensationally bad personal hygiene (at one point, roaches come swarming out of her purse)—and he compared her progress to that of Peter, who initially resisted Jesus, then monstrously idealized him, then fell into despair at the prospect of termination, and was finally saved by internalizing the relationship.
    Mutton had first gone to Benson soon after he became an associate minister. He suddenly had so much influence over the teenagers in his charge that he was afraid he might start acting out, and Benson had told him he was right to be afraid. He made Mutton name aloud the things he was tempted to do, so as to make himself less likely to do them. It was a kind of psychic homeopathy, and Mutton brought the method back to his Fellowship leadership supervisions, where, every week, behind closed doors, in the church parlor, he and the advisors took turns making each other uncomfortable, inoculating themselves against temptations to misuse their power, airing their personal issues so as not to inflict them on the kids. Photocopies of Then Joy Breaks Through began to circulate among Fellowship advisors. The Authentic Relationship, as exemplified by Jesus and Peter, became the group’s Grail—its alternative to the passive complicity of drug-using communities, its rebuke to traditional pastoral notions of “comforting” and “enabling.”
    As soon as Mutton entered training with Benson, followingMacDonald’s suicide, the spirit of Fellowship began to change. Part of the change was cultural, the waning of a hippie moment; part of it was Mutton’s own growing up, his diminishing need for seventeen-year-old buddies, his increasing involvement with his outside clients. But after the Shannondale debacle there were no more wholesale rule violations, and Fellowship became less of a one-man show, less of an improvised happening, more of a well-oiled machine. By the time I started tenth grade, the senior-high group was paying small monthly salaries to half a dozen young advisors. Their presence made it all the easier for me to steer clear of Mutton, whose habit of calling me “Franzone!” (it rhymed with “trombone”) somehow confirmed that he and I had no real relationship. It no sooner would have occurred to me to go to him with my troubles than to confide in my parents.
    The advisors, on the other hand, were like older brothers and sisters. My favorite was Bill Symes, who’d been a founding member of Fellowship in 1967. He was in his early twenties now and studying religion at Webster University. He had shoulders like a two-oxen yoke, a ponytail as thick as a pony’s tail, and feet requiring the largest size of Earth Shoes. He was a good musician, a passionate attacker of steel acoustical guitar strings. He liked to walk into Burger King and loudly order two Whoppers with no meat. If he was losing a Spades game, he would take a card out of his hand, tell the other players, “Play this suit!” and then lick the card and stick it to his forehead facing out. In discussions, he liked to lean into other people’s space and bark at them. He said, “You better deal with that!” He said, “Sounds to me like you’ve got a problem that you’re not talking about!” He said, “You know what? I don’t think you believe one word of what you just said to me!” He said, “Any resistance will be met with an aggressive response!” If you hesitated when he moved to hug you, he backed away and spread his arms wide and goggled at you with raised eyebrows,