The Fossett Framework: A Theological–Anthropological Model of Identity Rupture and Re-Formation

Abstract

Identity rupture represents one of the most destabilizing experiences in human life, disrupting relational belonging, narrative coherence, embodiment, and vocational orientation. While theological anthropology has long emphasized the relational and storied nature of the human person, it has offered fewer process-oriented accounts of how identity is reconstituted following profound disruption. This article presents the Fossett Framework as a theological–anthropological model that interprets rupture as an ontological disturbance rather than as a primarily psychological or therapeutic event. Drawing on Christian anthropology alongside interdisciplinary insights from narrative and trauma studies, the Framework articulates four movements—Rupture, Descent, Turning, and Re-Formation—through which the human person undergoes reconstitution rather than recovery. Identity is understood as a dynamic process of becoming, mediated through communal belonging, relational presence, and theological meaning-making. By positioning community as a theological agent in the restoration of personhood, the Fossett Framework contributes a constructive process-oriented account of identity re-formation to contemporary debates concerning relationality, suffering, and human becoming.