The book of Job as a resource for counseling

The book of Job is commonly considered an exemplary study in the dynamics of suffering and the problem of theodicy. This article considers the book of Job for its insights into the challenge of providing pastoral care to persons in spiritual pain. The dialog between Job and his friends illustrates how spiritual distress challenges the theological assumptions of both sufferer and caregiver. In an effort to maintain one's own spiritual equilibrium, and no doubt out of good faith efforts to comfort the afflicted, the pastoral caregiver may be tempted to cling to theological formulas and religious perspectives which disallow the sufferer's experience of anger and despair. The story of Job affirms the value of authenticity over piety, speaks of the transformative power of suffering, and provides the counselor/pastoral caregiver insights into the pitfalls and promise of caring for persons in spiritual pain.     

On the technology of pastoral counseling

Formal pastoral counseling is developing as a significant and important counseling movement. Yet because of its historical tradition and current secular social climate, the pastoral counselor seems unable to translate theology and the religious model of suffering and illness into a concrete methodology of care-giving. This paper proposes that the priestly function or priest/rabbi/minister-parishioner relationship is a good place for the counselor to start identifying the religious methods and means of being with and caring for suffering individuals. The traditional practice of borrowing the psychology of the day is challenged as undermining pastoral counseling, as clergy men and women give up their own symbolic language for psychiatric jargon.Dr. Mollica will be a Fullbright Scholar at the University of Essex, Colchester, England, from August, 1977–May 1980.     

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.     

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.     

Who will Stir the Water for Us? A Pastoral Retrospective

This essay explores a parish-based pastoral counseling case with a terminally ill woman suffering from crippling memories of childhood trauma. The analysis of the case focuses on the mutual influence arising within relational field, the idealizing transference (Kohut) or archetypal projection (Jung) onto the pastoral caregiver, and the purposeful function of a symbol which arose spontaneously in the work. Recalling the ancient incubation rites of Aesculapius, the article concludes by suggesting parallels for illuminating modern approaches to psychological and religious healing.     

Carrying the Pain: The Journey from Suffering to Transformation—Perspectives from Shakespearean Tragedy and Pastoral Care

This paper proposes an admittedly difficult thesis that emotional pain and suffering can be good news. Rather than denying and running from emotional pain and suffering, we suggest embracing and carrying the pain. Through academic and spiritual writings, an observation of Hamlet’s tragic suffering, an examination of pastoral care case study data, and a B.L.E.S.S. acronym, this paper proposes that within the experience of suffering lies the transformative potential for meaning and fullness.     

Normative MMPI-2 Profiles of Christian Counseling Students: An Investigation of Subculture in Standardized Testing

This research sought to explore whether a normative profile on the MMPI-2 emerged for counseling students in a counselor training program at a seminary in the Midwest and the extent to which this profile compares to those proposed for counseling students or those preparing for pastoral ministry. Normative profiles of master’s level counseling students were compared to profiles of similar samples. Findings indicated that profiles of the current student sample are similar to those of other religious students. Implications of these findings are explored regarding the use of the MMPI-2 with counseling students who are members of the Christian subculture.     

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.     

How Anger Toward Absentee Fathers May Make it Difficult to Call God “Father”

Using parts of the prayer commonly known as the “Our Father,” a reflection is presented in which anger toward absentee fathers is seen as an inhibitor to relatedness to God as father. The way people behave toward and interact with their environment may be indicative of their interaction with the divine. Such attitudes make people question their religious experience and their ability to enter into intimacy with the divine. When people with skeptical attitudes toward father-like figures enter the world of pastoral counseling, ministers or counselors should help these people to explore and come to terms with the thought that God can be identified as father. It requires a willingness to approach the pain of separation. The goal of the counselor then is to help these people make substantial change in their ability to cope with anger and thus enter into relatedness with the divine. Pierre M. Balthazar is a student in the PsyD program in Clinical Psychology at the Illinois School of Professional Psychology.     

A potential peril of pastoral care: Malpractice

The pastoral counselor may be a full-time counselor trained in pastoral care or a clergyman with a congregation, who from time to time serves his flock as a counselor, ministering to the personal needs of his congregation in a manner designated pastoral care or perhaps, more appropriately, pastoral psychotherapy. Once a therapeutic relationship is established, a congregant acquires certain rights and the clergyman, duties. If these duties are breached due to the negligence of the pastoral counselor and this causes the congregant to be damaged in any way, the pastoral counselor may be liable and may be called upon to respond in damages. The cause of action is called malpractice. This paper isolates areas of actual and potential malpractice.Barton E. Bernstein, M.L.A., J.D., is in the private practice of law with Hochberg, Bernstein & Skor, P. C., Dallas, Texas.He has offered professional workshops throughout the United States and Alaska.     

Representing the Good: Pastoral Care in a Secular Age

In ‘a secular age’ (Taylor 2007), pastoral care is no longer exclusively associated with specific religious traditions and communities. Pastoral caregivers who work in secular institutions provide care to religious and nonreligious people alike, and in several Western societies the term pastoral care is used in relation to nonreligious (humanist) care. In secular contexts, the term ‘pastoral care’ is often replaced by the term ‘spiritual care.’ Spiritual care, however, is provided by various professionals, so pastoral caregivers face the challenge of developing adequate and convincing language to explain what is distinctive about their work. In this article, the authors turn to philosophical language in order to develop a conceptual understanding of pastoral care that does not depend on the specific worldview—religious or nonreligious—of either pastoral caregivers or receivers of pastoral care. Using the work of Taylor (1989, 2007) and Murdoch (1970), we explain pastoral care as engaging with people’s attempts to orient in ‘moral space’ and the distinctive quality of pastoral care as ‘representing the Good.’ Murdoch associates ‘the Good’ with a secular idea of transcendence that is both a movement beyond the ego and an engagement with the reality of human vulnerability, suffering, and evil. We argue that pastoral caregivers who ‘represent the Good’ have the task not only of supporting the existential and spiritual processes of individuals but also of promoting dialogue and social justice and of critiquing dehumanizing practices in the organizations in which they work and in society at large.     

The Pastor's role with job-related problems

Summary In the vocational realm a pastor can help a client resolve his problems in a variety of ways. Realizing he has a sympathetic and understanding listener, the client can get a feeling of relief by talking out his problems and expressing his feelings about them. As a less biased observer, the pastor shows him the reality of his situation, and suggests other resources or new plans of possible action. The pastoral counselor might also suggest appropriate religious principles that should improve attitudes and help make smoother relationships with people on his job and elsewhere. Through this kind of counseling help, the client might be led to see his own solution.     

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.     

Inclusion of Religious Behaviors and Attitudes in Counseling: Expectations of Conservative Christians

In this study of 118 religiously conservative Christians' expectations of counseling, participants were randomly assigned to 1 of 2 treatment conditions: a Christian counselor or a counselor whose religious beliefs were unknown. Participants rated their expectations for the counselor's attitude toward their religious beliefs and use of religious behaviors in counseling using the Behavior and Attitude Expectancies scale (C. Belaire & J. S. Young, 2002). Participants also rated their general expectations for counseling using the Expectations About Counseling: Brief Form (H. E. A. Tinsley, 1985). Results showed that participants expected both a Christian counselor and a counselor whose religious beliefs were unknown to be respectful and accepting of conservative Christian religious beliefs and values and to include multiple religious behaviors in counseling sessions. Participants had overall positive expectations of the counseling process.     

Conservative Christians' Expectations of Non‐Christian Counselors

In this study of conservative Christians' expectations of counseling, 100 participants rated their expectations of the behaviors and attitudes of a non‐Christian counselor. Results suggest that highly religious Christians expected more in‐session religious behaviors from a non‐Christian counselor than did moderately religious Christians. Both moderately and highly conservative Christians expected a non‐Christian counselor to display attitudes of acceptance and tolerance for Christian beliefs.     

Observers' Perceptions of a Counselor's Treatment of a Religious Issue

How a counselor treats a client's religious beliefs may affect perceptions of the counselor. Participants (N =102) of either high or low Christian commitment rated a videotaped excerpt from counseling in which a client's religious belief was either supported, ignored, or challenged. Participants' religious beliefs did not affect participants' ratings of the counselor. Results suggested, however, that most college students expect counselors to support a client's religious beliefs or attend to psychological (rather than religious) beliefs rather than challenge a client's religious beliefs.     

The clergy as advocates for the severely demented

The author sets forth the argument that pastoral caregivers ought to consider expanding their traditional role of ministering to dementia patients by pressing the issue of whether appropriate medication might significantly lessen the suffering of these persons. After discussing and documenting the current understanding regarding the nature of pain, the author outlines several advocacy, ethical, and procedural issues that could be included in providing pastoral care to this population, at the same time not miminizing more traditional faith-based activities.     

Pastoral diagnosis: assessing the psychotheological themes of freedom and meaning

This article is an exploration of the psychological and theological themes of freedom and meaning within the world of those who experience emotional pain. The article focuses on how freedom and meaning can contribute to the development of a pastorally rigorous diagnostic protocol. It is in the examination of emotional freedom and the search for meaning that practitioners of the pastoral arts come to an understanding of the nature of suffering. The article offers an overview of the state of pastoral diagnosis highlighting and drawing from those resources that emphasize the need for pastoral psychology to construct a diagnostic protocol that is both theological and resonate with the lived experience of clients.     

The Nearing Death Process and Pastoral Counseling

Philosophic concepts of death are pervasive throughout all societies as shared values, differing in particulars, but similar in general. So, too, is the prospect of a death a consideration for every person, an eventual reality brought most forcefully to mind as it nears. This article explores various mindsets those who provide pastoral counseling will encounter among clients and suggest effective approaches to providing the mental and spiritual solace sought. Further, consideration is given to the psychological and spiritual mein of the pastoral counselor, and how this can affect both client and counselor.