Legal concerns of the pastoral counselor

The United States is increasingly becoming a legalized society wherein laws are determining what a pastor providing counseling can and cannot do. The pastoral counselor needs to be cognizant of which laws are helpful and which are restrictive in the counseling which he/she provides. This article was written to provide a beginning understanding of the following issues: confidentiality, privileged communications, clergy privilege, state licsensing and tax-exempt status. The issues of malpractice insurance and third party payments are also touched upon briefly.He is a minister of the United Church of Christ and a Diplomat of the American Association of Pastoral Counselors. His article is based on a lecture at the Denver meeting of the AAPC and is reprinted with his permission.     

The social process of aging: Its implications for pastoral ministry

Aging, in the context of modern American culture, is as much a social process as it is a biological fact. It is because we perceive the characteristics of old age to be threatening to our common values that we relegate the elderly to out-group status and attempt to manage them, much as we do the members of other deviant populations. The result is the creation of a self-abasing elderly role, to which the aging are in many ways forced to conform. If our ministry is to affirm the humanity of older men and women, it is necessary that we cease to look upon them as complexes of typical traits. Only then can we begin to make the healing love of Christ present for them.     

The counselor as metaphysician

Despite their scientific temper of mind, counselors should be interested in metaphysics because of its concern with, among other things, the problem of distinguishing the real from the not-real—obviously, a vital issue to every counselor and client. This article sketches the scope of metaphysical inquiry as this discipline is understood in the traditional philosophical sense. The authors also illustrate the significance of metaphysics for counseling by presenting the principal tenets of one metaphysical position—personalistic idealism—and by delineating some implications for counseling that flow from an adherence to this metaphysical view.     

The counselor as psychoecologist

Counselors may be in need of a new model of practice. Current approaches based on the intrapersonal models of psychotherapy are not congruent with institutional realities. More important, they assume, often falsely, a “disturbed” person who must be adjusted to a “normal” environment. This article suggests that emotional disturbance be viewed as an ecological phenomenon that exists in the transactions among people. The task of the counselor is to alter disturbed transactions in ways that promote individual competence. The implications for practice of viewing the counselor as a psychoecologist are discussed and illustrated through a case study.