Ego psychology and pastoral counseling

Conclusion Implicit in this entire consideration is the recognition that pastoral counselors need a differential methodology, and that the major divisions of such an approach are insight and supportive counseling. Skill in both insight and supportive counseling will markedly enhance the pastor's ability to be a therapeutic agent in the lives of those who seek his help.     

Short-Term Pastoral Counseling and the Use of Reframing

The purpose of this article is to deal with the advantage of combining short-term counseling with reframing techniques. Short-term counseling states that a) focusing on only one problem, and b) agreeing on a fixed amount of sessions will make the counselee more eager to change before the amount of sessions are spent. The thesis of the paper is that those counselees that engage in short-term counseling will be more resistant to change than the criteria of short-term counseling suggests. Some counselees want to initiate a power struggle with the counselor about the impossibility of change. Rather than giving in to such a struggle, the counselor should use reframing techniques to make the counselee see the problem from a new perspective. Reframing techniques are more likely to make the counselee solve the problem.     

Do pastoral counselors have a duty to report clergy sexual abuse done by their clergy clients?

What does a pastoral counselor do when a clergy client reveals that he or she has been sleeping with a parishioner? Does the counselor have an ecclesiastical duty to report this offense to a church official; or does the pledge of confidentiality trump any disclosure? Some ecclesiastical bodies require their clergy to bring knowledge of these offenses to church authorities. Does this requirement apply to pastoral counselors? The authors have been confronted with these questions in their ministry of pastoral counseling and have struggled with producing a faithful, professional response. Along the way they have not received clear direction from judicatories or professional organizations. This article is the authors' attempt to answer the questions raised above as well as to challenge professional and ecclesiastical bodies to confront more forthrightly the dilemmas these situations cause for pastoral counselors who seek to protect the welfare of the Church as well as protect the pledge to maintain confidentiality.     

Ken Wilber's Transpersonal Psychology: An Introduction and Preliminary Critique

Ken Wilber is unquestionably the leading figure in the developing field of Transpersonal Psychology, and his work deserves serious engagement by pastoral theologians and pastoral counselors who seek to find their place in today's postmodern, post-Christian culture. This article summarizes the key concepts of Wilber's model of Transpersonal Psychology, provides an elementary pastoral and theological critique of his ideas, and suggests contributions that Wilber's thought can make to the field of pastoral theology and pastoral counseling.     

The voice of the counselee

Conclusion Unfortunately, case excerpts and histories in which the voice of counselee is largely ignored appear very frequently in the pastoral care and counseling literature. More unfortunately, these excerpts are often lifted up, as is the one discussed in this article, as examples of very good counseling. The plea from the counselees, which can be heard very clearly through these excerpts and histories, is quite simply that their voices be heard and their experiences of their own suffering validated.     

Career Information: A Critical Review

This article describes sources of occupational information available to the counselor in the field and indicates the advantages of each. The importance of career counseling in today's uncertain job market is discussed, especially the counselor's responsibility to discuss with the counselee the discrepancies between aspirations and aptitudes. Major schemes of classification in the world of work are identified: socioeconomic groups, interests, life span, and primary focus of activity and level of function. Each scheme is illustratively developed. Possible uses of the information derived from a counseling relationship are discussed. The request from the counselee for information is seen as the starting point of the counselor-counselee relationship, in which many problems can be worked through.     

Cross-cultural pastoral counseling: Method or hermeneutic?

This article explores some of the meta-questions that emerge when talking about “cross-cultural pastoral counseling.” Is it a distinct counseling method or a practical hermeneutic that prompts the counselor to examine his or her therapeutic approach? The author argues that “cross-cultural pastoral counseling” is really a hermeneutic that challenges the pastoral counselor to an ongoing evaluation of how and to what extent his or her approach to pastoral counseling may be guided by dominant social convention versus the gospel mandate of Matthew 25: 31–46 [RSV]. The article reviews relevant literature, discusses three fundamental changes (“conversions”) that are necessary for the pastoral counselor in order to do cross-cultural pastoral counseling, and presents a case illustration involving a multi-cultural pastoral counseling intervention.     

A Cross-Cultural Case for Convergence in Pastoral Thinking and Training

This article argues for convergence of pastoral training models as a consequence of the pluralistic nature of contemporary life. It proposes a more active partnership between pastoral disciplines in an attempt to bring wholeness to pastoral service and to pastoral education in a multicultural context. Pastoral counseling, pastoral care and pastoral ministry are presented as mutually complementary and as under girded by the same pastoral theological principle of genuine encounter. Since pastoral theology is informed by personal experience, the author illustrates his points by reference to personal cross-cultural experience. This article is an adaptation of a paper delivered at a multicultural conference in Seoul, Korea in November 2008.     

Integrity in Pastoral Counseling

This essay suggests that pastoral counseling involves a spiritual and emotional quest for wholeness. The personal quest of the pastoral counselor has a parallel impact upon the quest of those who seek his or her counsel. The essay presents the view that faith must be established in the life of the pastoral counselor in at least four areas: in community, in the use of one's spiritual gifts, in the love of mercy and the doing of justice, and in communion with God.     

Self-Discovery and the Role of the Counselor

The major thesis of this philosophic treatise is that unless the counselor realizes in his own life the full import of the search for meaning and self-understanding, he will be unable to empathize adequately with the struggles of another human being who likewise seeks to realize his highest potential. Hindering our self-discovery are the problems of meaninglessness, alienation, and the loss of our freedom. The path toward breaking out of our insulated selves is: (a) to accept fully, on a personal level, a sense of responsibility for what we are, and (b) to realize that self-fulfillment occurs within a social context. The former involves a sense of personal integrity and the latter gives a contextual frame of reference to our search for meaning. The path to self-understanding is difficult and threatening, but as the counselee perceives—on both the intuitive and operational levels—the counselor's sincerity in his own quest for fulfillment, the goals we seek to achieve in the counseling relationship will be facilitated.     

Understanding homosexuality: A symposium

A psychiatrist, an ethicist, and a pastoral counselor comment on the ways in which they conceive of homosexuality in their work, reflection, and efforts at counseling. Although each writes in isolation from the others, a surprising degree of consensus emerges. All three cite the problem of unclear terms and the peril of labeling. Each distinguishes between homosexuality as a state of being and homosexual acts or behavior. Mansell Pattison, the psychiatrist, comments on prejudice, norms, sickness, and deviancy and their relevance for understanding homosexuality, before suggesting a model himself. Stanley Hauerwas, the ethicist, seeks a context that will allow us to think seriously about homosexuality from an ethical point of view. John Patton, the pastoral counselor, argues that the major contribution of a counselor is to avoid labeling and preconceived notions about homosexuality and to relate to the counselee in such a way as to help him clarify what he seeks.     

Core considerations in the process of evaluation for pastoral counseling

Conclusion We have been pointing to an essential fact of evaluation in pastoral counseling: the goal of the evaluation process is a decision regarding (a) the applicability of formal counseling in a given situation, (b) the readiness of the person to assume such a role and (c) the readiness of the pastoral counselor to offer a counseling relationship. As we have indicated, intellectual understanding and empathy are not enough if they stop short of answering the questions: what does this person want? and, can I offer it to him? In diligently pursuing the answers to these questions the pastoral counselor will not only fulfill his professional responsibility to meet the true needs of the person (s) seeking help but will in the long run enable himself to establish more fruitful and therefore satisfying counseling relationships with those whom he is called to serve.     

Possibilities and pitfalls of pastoral diagnosis

Models of pastoral diagnosis have been proposed in recent literature as a way of enhancing the effectiveness of pastoral care and giving the discipline of pastoral care increased distinctiveness. The authors attempt an analogical comparison of ministerial assessment and the risks and benefits of diagnosis within the context of medicine and psychiatry, in an effort to point out what might be conceivable positive possibilities as well as pitfalls of such models of pastoral diagnosis.The authors wish to acknowledge the helpful comments and review by E. Mansell Pattison, M.D.     

Clinical pastoral training in an emergency psychiatric service

Summary This paper reports the utilization of an emergency psychiatric service as a new factor in the clinical pastoral training experience. The usual pattern of clinical setting for these students is the hospital ward, where the patient has already been admitted and is making some adjustment to hospital routine and treatment. In such a setting the student misses the opportunity to see the patient at the crisis point of the illness and does not see the large numbers of individuals troubled enough to require psychiatric help but not sick enough to be hospitalized. The latter group constitute the largest portion seen by the parish minister even before psychiatric referral is arranged. During a twelve-week clinical pastoral training program, each student spent a major portion of his time for two of the weeks working on an emergency psychiatric service with a psychiatrist and social worker and seeing a large variety of patients, most of whom were not hospitalized. The experience provided an opportunity to develop evaluative skills and knowledge of appropriate community resources, and offered some experience in brief counseling under supervision. The clinical pastoral training student and the personnel of the emergency service all felt that this was an experience of mutual value and that it should be for a longer period. It is suggested that other clinical pastoral training programs would find it of value to utilize emergency psychiatric clinic settings where available.     

The Tragic and Faith in Pastoral Counseling

This essay uses Edward Farley's notion of the interrelation of tragic vulnerability and creation and Niebuhr's idea of faith in offering a conceptualization of the process and goals of pastoral counseling. Openness, novelty, separation, and change, which characterize creative activity, give rise to anxiety, fear, and suffering as created entities seek to achieve their ends and needs amidst the limits of life. Faith as vital concern—defined as human and transcendent relations marked by reciprocal belief, hope, trust, and fidelity—is a response that represents participation and cooperation in creative activity with its concomitant anxiety and suffering. Pastoral counseling may be understood as an activity that facilitates a response of faith as vital concern. The process of pastoral counseling involves three essential and interrelated tasks. First, the counselor invites the person to experience present and past painful disappointments, losses, and betrayals. Second, the counselor invites the client to explore the types of trust and fidelity that are distorted and diminish his or her capacities for risking intimacy, spontaneity, and freedom. The third task is learning to recognize, contain, and work through the inevitable disappointments, broken promises, frustrations, and betrayals encountered in human relationships. Thus the work of pastoral counseling involves reciprocal experiences of belief, hope, trust, and fidelity, which provide the essential and necessary ground through which persons develop a) the capacities for and experiences of spontaneity, awe, and freedom, b) the ability to handle and work through experiences and perceptions of distrust and infidelity, and c) a sense of subjective and intersubjective identity, continuity, and cohesion.     

Reinterpreting the purpose of premarital counseling

Summary Premarital pastoral counseling is a broader activity than is often suspected, going beyond a set of interviews designed to prepare a couple for marriage. Its purpose is to extend the resources of the Gospel and the Church to a couple at a critical period in their lives. In the case of Bill and Gretchen, this meant reassessing their guilt over having had intercourse prior to marriage and setting it within the context of God's forgiveness. It meant helping Bill's mother to meet certain of her personal needs, and it meant helping Bill to understand his own interpersonal relationships more clearly. Later observation showed that, as a couple, Bill and Gretchen were able to sustain a meaningful relationship with each other and to meet the continuing stresses placed upon their marriage as they tried to help Bill's mother and father.The adoption of the purpose advocated here enables the pastor to avoid the contagion of emergency feelings, to set meaningful partial goals for his work with a couple in various stages of the premarital counseling relationship, and to set premarital counseling squarely within the context of his total pastoral ministry.     

Pastoral counseling and pastoral care: is there a difference?

The author argues that there is little difference between pastoral counseling and pastoral care. Utilizing an evidence-based and narrative approach, he examines the ideas of a variety of historical and contemporary writers to illustrate this thesis. Along with historical and contemporary writings on the topic, the author includes his own clinical experiences and associations to illustrate his conviction that pastoral counseling and pastoral care are more alike than different.     

Toward Effective Evaluation Of the Culturally Deprived

Attention is focused on some of the factors which may result in the invalidation or distortion of both objective and subjective evaluations of students from the lower socioeconomic strata of the population. These factors include: (a) counselor attitude in evaluation; (b) counselee attitude in evaluation; (c) counselor-counselee value systems; (d) test weaknesses such as low reliability and/or validity and inadequate norms; and (e) a lack of understanding by the counselor and/or counselee of the purpose for testing. Evaluation is an integral part of the counseling process; however, the effectiveness of the evaluative process is dependent upon the counselor's knowledge and sense of responsibility as well as the validity and reliability of the tests.