Perspectives from the Second Generation of Pastoral Counselors

The author, representing the second generation of pastoral counselors, reviews and responds to Susan E. Myers-Shirk’s book on the early history of the pastoral counseling movement, entitled, Helping the Good Shepherd: Pastoral Counselors in a Psychotherapeutic Culture 1925–1975. Among other observations, the author comments on the importance and lasting influence of Howard Clinebell and the relationship between pastoral counseling and Christian counseling.     

Trees and Us: Poetic Metaphors and Pastoral Images

This article elaborates on my earlier contention that poetry and pastoral care have a great deal in common (Capps, The Poet’s Gift, 1993) by focusing on Joyce Kilmer’s well-known poem “Trees.” I use this poem to support the metaphorical association of trees and human beings and to advocate for the pastoral image of the upholder. A brief sketch of Kilmer’s life is presented, and parodies of the poem are used to address the question whether pens are mightier than swords (a question that Kilmer’s own life as a poet and soldier also evokes). The article concludes with Denise Levertov’s poem “From Below” which, together with Kilmer’s “Trees,” illumines the image of the pastor as ordained to be the upholder of the community and of the individuals who comprise it.     

Modifying Threat-related Interpretive Bias in Adolescents

Socially anxious feelings sharply increase during adolescence and such feelings have been associated with interpretive biases. Studies in adults have shown that interpretive biases can be modified using Cognitive Bias Modification procedures (CBM-I) and subsequent effects on anxiety have been observed. The current study was designed to examine whether the CBM-I procedure has similar effects in adolescents. Unselected adolescents were randomly allocated to either a positive interpretation training (n = 88) or a placebo-control condition (n = 82). Results revealed that the training was successful in modifying interpretations and effects generalized to a new task. The interpretive bias effects were most pronounced in individuals with a threat-related interpretive bias at pre-test. No effects on state anxiety were observed. The current findings are promising with regard to applying bias modification procedures to adolescents, while further research is warranted regarding emotional effects.     

Expanding the Psychological Imagination in Pastoral Theology: Using Novels to Better Understand Underrepresented Persons and Groups

This essay argues for the effectiveness of using novels to develop a more sophisticated pastoral imagination by discussing the unique contributions the novel can make to pastoral care and using Toni Morrison’s (1998) novel Paradise to demonstrate the power of the novel to expand the author’s own pastoral imagination. Themes the novel raises include the contextual nature of human experience; the value of cultural theories for deeper and more penetrating analyses of human experience than those provided by psychological theories alone; and the resources available among victims of oppression and abuse for communal healing. The essay concludes with a discussion of the lessons that novels and, in particular, Morrison’s Paradise, have to teach pastoral theologians.     

The Theological Contributions of Bishop K. H. Ting to Christian/Pastoral Counseling

As China enters an era of urbanization and change, mental health issues are increasingly becoming a concern of the Christian church. Pastoral counseling is taking new shape as people of faith respond to those in their midst in need of care. Bishop K. H. Ting, a long-time leader of the Chinese church, has stressed the importance of an indigenous Chinese Christianity. This article is based on an examination of Bishop Ting’s theological writing with the aim of eliciting themes that might be foundational in the construction of inherently Chinese models of pastoral counseling. Based on a survey of his work, six themes emerge with particular importance for pastoral counseling: the Three-Self church, God is Love, the Cosmic Christ, ethical responsibility, theological reconstruction, and religion in society. These themes are explored within their uniquely Chinese context and suggestions for application to the practice of pastoral counseling are discussed. Original publication: Wang, P. (Ed.) (2006). Seeking Truth in Love. Nanjing, China: Nanjing Seminary Press. This essay was originally published in a collection of essays honoring Bishop K. H. Ting on his 90th birthday. Bishop Ting has been the head of the Chinese Protestant church for over five decades and his leadership has profoundly shaped Chinese theology and church life. The purpose of this essay is to explore how his collected theological writings might inform a uniquely Chinese approach to pastoral counseling. This article is published with the permission of the original publisher.     

Behind Our I’s: Grief and Loss in the Poetry of Li-Young Lee

This article uses Kenneth R. Mitchell and Herbert Anderson’s (1983) six modalities of grieving as presented in Donald Capps’ (1993) The Poet’s Gift to bring a pastoral theological perspective to bear on Li-Young Lee’s Behind My Eyes (2008), a collection of thirty-nine poems. In specifically focusing on Lee’s poem “To Hold,” it makes the case for a seventh grieving modality, that of preemptive loss. Employing Mitchell and Anderson’s distinction between faithful and unfaithful grieving, it argues that preemptive loss is an unfaithful form or expression of grieving, and notes the irony and sadness in this regard, as this unfaithful response to grief is informed by what is widely considered to be a faithful Judeo–Christian perspective, rooted in the inescapable sinfulness of humanity.     

The Lessons of Art Theory for Pastoral Theology

This essay applies art theory to pastoral theology, using Rudolf Arnheim's views on the compositional structure of paintings to propose models for expressing the relationship of theology and psychology. From a structural feature of paintings, namely, their possession of a depth dimension and a frontal plane, two primary models are derived, convergence and juxtaposition. The viability of a third, structural uniformity, is also recognized. The larger purpose of the essay is to contend for a recovery of pastoral theology's mid-century emphasis on perception. Pastoral Theology at     

The Sweating Cognitions Inventory: A Measure of Cognitions in Hyperhidrosis

Primary hyperhidrosis is a dermatological condition involving excessive sweating. Little research has been conducted on the psychological processes associated with this condition. A cognitive-behavioral approach would suggest that negative beliefs about the nature and consequences of sweating paradoxically increase sweating, and therefore maintain hyperhidrosis. The present research reports on the development and psychometric evaluation of the Sweating Cognitions Inventory (SCI), a self-report measure that assesses dysfunctional beliefs in hyperhidrosis. The SCI was administered to a clinical sample of patients diagnosed with hyperhidrosis (N = 226) as well as a student comparison group (N = 482). The SCI demonstrated good internal consistency and a stable, unidimensional factor structure in both samples. Sweating cognitions differentiated between the two groups, indicating discriminant validity. Correlations with comparison measures indicated that sweating cognitions were strongly related to sweating severity, and also to social anxiety and anxiety sensitivity. These results are consistent with our conceptualization that dysfunctional sweating cognitions can maintain and exacerbate excessive sweating. A cognitive-behavioral conceptualization of hyperhidrosis could advance our understanding of the condition and could lead to novel treatment approaches.     

Referrals to chaplains: The role of religion and spirituality in healthcare settings

Given the increasing importance of understanding how healthcare workers interact with the principal person designated to meet patients’ spiritual needs— the chaplain— the current study provides an inter-disciplinary perspective of the role of chaplains (and spirituality) in patients’ emotional, physical, and spiritual health. The study surveyed a randomly selected national sample of hospital directors in four disciplines: medicine (n?=?278), nursing (n?=?230), social services (n?=?229), and pastoral care (n?=?470). Participants rated the importance of referring patients to chaplains for four different areas: pain/depression, anxiety/anger, treatment issues, and loss/death/meaning. Results revealed significant differences in referral patterns for type of hospital, professional discipline, the hospital's religious affiliation, and self-reported spirituality. Results are discussed in relation to historical views of spirituality and religion within the different disciplines.     

Gregory the Great’s Metaphor of the Physician of the Heart as a Model for Pastoral Identity

The identity of the Roman Catholic priesthood remains in serious crisis. Scholars have called for a return to traditional sources to find possible solutions, including the Early Church Fathers and the Hebrew Bible. Following Oden, this article further explores Pope Gregory the Great’s The Book of Pastoral Rule and his ideals regarding pastoral identity. Of unique importance is his notion of the pastor as a “physician of the heart,” unrecognized previously as central to his project.     

Personal wholeness and political creativity: The theology of liberation and pastoral care

The writer questions whether it is legitimate to take the institutional, ecclesiastical, and ecclesiological settings of pastoral care as a starting point for understanding it. He responds negatively since the struggle for liberation is a social, economic, and political one and mental distress reflects the individual's relation to this world. Thus the relation between the institutional church and the sociopolitical realities is ambiguous and it sometimes obscures the conflict between the rich and the poor, the powerless and the powerful, and so on. There follows an analysis of the institutional setting of pastoral care as it functions to mediate grace, provide interpretations, and give moral advice, with an attempt to discern to whom this care is offered. Several observations are made on the ways a theology of liberation might delineate the problems of pastoral care. The area must be understood politically as communal creative activity, aiming, in the midst of shared suffering, to transfigure the world.He is an acknowledged spokesman for the theology of liberation and has publishedA Theology of Human Hope andTomorrow's Child (Harper, 1972).     

The Moderating Effect of Anxiety on Development in Atypically Developing Toddlers

In typically developing children, researchers have found that anxiety disorders are associated with poorer intellectual abilities (Davis et al. Journal of Psychopathology and Behavioral Assessment 30:43–51, 2008). The aim of the current study was to examine the impact anxiety symptoms had on the developmental quotients of toddlers. A total of 170 toddlers ranging in age from 17 to 37 months were selected for inclusion in this study, all of whom were at risk for or had a developmental delay. Two factors indicative of behavioral symptoms of anxiety from the Baby and Infant Screen for Children with aUtIsm Traits-Part2 were utilized as the independent variables and the total developmental quotient from the Battelle Developmental Inventory, 2nd Edition was utilized for the dependent variable. Examination of results revealed that atypically developing toddlers with symptoms of anxiety had significantly lower developmental quotients when compared to toddlers without any anxiety symptoms. A discussion of the implications and limitations of this study are included.     

“For-giving” and Forgiving: Process and Practice in Pastoral Care

This article examines some of the basic psychodynamic understandings of forgiveness including forgiveness as aesthetic, ahistorical, tact, or the ability to for-give that Julia Kristeva (1995, 1989, 1987a, b) presents in her writings on depression and melancholia, analytic process and technique, and love and faith. These are supplemented by more recent examinations of forgiveness in the therapeutic community (Worthington 1998; Watts and Gulliford 2004; McCullough et al. 2000) as they relate to Christian belief, Christian practice and pastoral care. I argue that it is in the context of a caring relationship where and when individuals experience “for-giving” that they develop the ability to accept forgiveness (especially of the self) and thus become individuals who can extend forgiveness to others. Even those entering pastoral ministry who have no desire or little ability to engage in pastoral counseling will be served well if their own abilities to be “for-giving” are cultivated during their theological education. Thus, the application of “for-giving” extends far beyond the analytic process or technique that Kristeva envisions to include pastoral identity formation and pastoral ministry.     

Shared Wisdom: Use of the Self in Pastoral Care and Counseling (Person, Culture, and Religion Group, American Academy of Religion, November 18, 2005)

This article summarizes the method of pastoral assessment and theological reflection detailed in Shared Wisdom, with particular attention to pastoral counselors’ countertransference or intersubjective “use of the self” as a tool for empathic understanding of clients. A model of multiplicity of mind, subjectivity, and God is advanced in contrast to more traditional views. The article concludes with an appeal for messiness, complexity, and kenosis in both psychology and theology.Pamela Cooper-White is Professor of Pastoral Theology at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia, and recipient of the American Association of Pastoral Counselors’ 2005 National “Distinguished Achievement in Research and Writing” Award. She is the author of four books: Many Voices: Pastoral Psychotherapy and Theology in Relational Perspective (forthcoming, Fortress, 2006), Shared Wisdom: Use of the Self in Pastoral Care and Counseling (Fortress, 2004), The Cry of Tamar: Violence Against Women and the Church's Response (Fortress, 1995) which won the 1995 Top Ten Books award from the Academy of Parish Clergy, and Schoenberg and the God Idea (UMI Research Press, 1985). An Episcopal priest and pastoral psychotherapist, Cooper-White is certified as a clinical Fellow in the American Association of Pastoral Counselors, and serves as Co-Chair of the Person, Culture, and Religion Group of the American Academy of Religion.     

State vs trait anxiety: A case study in confirmatory factor analysis

The State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI; Spielberger et al., 1970) originally divided anxiety into two factors: state anxiety, reflecting how an individual currently feels, and trait anxiety, reflecting how an individual generally feels. Recently, however, Spielberger revised his position to separate the presence and absence of anxiety symptoms within state and trait factors, yielding a hypothetical correlated 4-factor structure (Spielberger et al., 1980). Endler and Magnusson (1965) and Endler et al. (1976) have challenged the state vs trait distinction based upon their own factor analytical results. Since both sets of investigations used exploratory approaches, which do not postulate a particular factor structure, these studies do not provide an explicit test of the state vs trait distinction. A confirmatory factor analytic approach was used in the present study to evaluate Spielberger's 4-factor hypothesis. The subjects were large samples of male air force trainees and high school students for whom STAI data were available. The results of these confirmatory analyses indicated that the factors identified in exploratory analysis by Spielberger and his colleagues accounted for the data quite well.     

Specific modes of anxiety and arousal

Although it may be oversimplistic to regard the cognitive and behavioral effects of anxiety as simply being due to associated increases in arousal, this is essentially what many theories of anxiety do. Indeed, some theorists go so far as to equate anxiety with arousal. This experiment questions the appropriateness of this assumption by showing that increases in arousal do not necessarily accompany increases in anxiety. First, a 14-item arousal questionnaire was validated using factor analytic and multivariate analysis of variance techniques. Two factors were identified: cognitive activation and somatic activation. The validated questionnaire was then administered to eight very experienced rock-climbers in six different environments, together with a cognitive-somatic anxiety questionnaire. Heartrate and oral temperature were also measured. The six environments were: morning and evening; during a prolonged “bouldering” session; and immediately prior to leading pitches at two grade, one grade and zero grades below their leading capacity. The experimental hypothesis that activation would be increasingly impaired in the latter two conditions while anxiety would continue to increase, was confirmed by a multivariate analysis of variance (p<0.001). The results are interpreted as supporting the sort of two-factor theory of arousal that has been proposed by Gray.     

Don’t Ever Do That! Long-term Duties in <Emphasis Type="Italic">PD</Emphasis><Subscript><Emphasis Type="Italic">e</Emphasis></Subscript><Emphasis Type="Italic">L</Emphasis>

This paper studies long-term norms concerning actions. In Meyer’s Propositional Deontic Logic (PD _e L), only immediate duties can be expressed, however, often one has duties of longer durations such as: “Never do that”, or “Do this someday”. In this paper, we will investigate how to amend PD _e L so that such long-term duties can be expressed. This leads to the interesting and suprising consequence that the long-term prohibition and obligation are not interdefinable in our semantics, while there is a duality between these two notions. As a consequence, we have provided a new analysis of the long-term obligation by introducing a new atomic proposition I (indebtedness) to represent the condition that an agent has some unfulfilled obligation. Presented by Jacek Malinowski     

Behavioral and Socio-emotional Functioning in Children with Selective Mutism: A Comparison with Anxious and Typically Developing Children Across Multiple Informants

We examined differences among 158 children, 44 with selective mutism (SM; M = 8.2 years, SD = 3.4 years), 65 with mixed anxiety (MA; M = 8.9 years, SD = 3.2 years), and 49 community controls (M = 7.7 years, SD = 2.6 years) on primary caregiver, teacher, and child reports of behavioral and socio-emotional functioning. Children with SM were rated lower than controls on a range of social skills, but the SM and MA groups did not significantly differ on many of the social skills and anxiety measures. However, children with SM were rated higher than children with MA and controls on social anxiety. Findings suggest that SM may be conceptualized as an anxiety disorder, with primary deficits in social functioning and social anxiety. This interpretation supports a more specific classification of SM as an anxiety disorder for future diagnostic manuals than is currently described in the literature. The present findings also have implications for clinical practice, whereby social skills training merits inclusion in intervention for children with anxiety disorders as well as children with SM.     

TOWARDS THE POSSIBILITY OF IMPASSIBILIST PASTORAL CARE

Not a few scholars reject the notion of divine impassibility. Contemporary theodicists in particular often see impassibility as impotent in the face of evil and suffering. At best, it is assumed that impassibility has no contribution to make to pastoral practice. At worst, it is argued that impassibility has negative repercussions for sufferers and carers. The purpose of this article will be to argue that impassibility has the potential to positively impact pastoral practice. It will be proposed that a constructive ‘impassibilist pastoral care’ arises from a well defined understanding of impassibility and an awareness of the weaknesses of passibility. Consequently, five principles of pastoral care will be identified. Relationality engenders practice which is mutual. Particularity resists the tendency in much care towards ‘normalisation’. Equivalence challenges the passibilist by submitting that the incarnation provides an ontologically equivalent divine suffering which stands in contrast to the so‐called ‘suffering of God’ thesis. Arationality affirms that human reason is limited and therefore prevents the carer from over rationalising suffering. Otherness arises from the belief that God is ontologically distinct and therefore he alone is the source of salvation. In light of these principles, the proposed understanding of ‘impassibilist pastoral care’ is brought into dialogue with the questions sufferers ask and a positive and effective definition of impassibility is submitted. In sum, this article seeks to bring together philosophical and theological defences of impassibility in order to submit a fresh approach to the care of those who suffer.     

Told in Memory of God’s People: Beloved

The purpose of this article is to show how Toni Morrison’s novel, Beloved, can be used in pastoral care and counseling courses to encourage the development of empathy and to illustrate themes in the communal contextual and intercultural paradigms emerging in the field of pastoral theology.