Values and the moral context of pastoral counseling

This paper reviews the ways in which psychology has influenced the pastoral counseling movement, focuses, upon how the role and function of the pastoral counselor have lost their unique identity, and offers the construct of a moral context as a means for rediscovering, identifying, reviving, and strengthening the pastoral counselor's professional and spiritual selfimage.This paper was presented at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association in Montreal, Canada, 1980. The author acknowledges, with appreciation, the contribution of Ariel Sylverin in the development of this article.     

Social and clinical factors in the frequency of ambulatory patients visiting a therapeutic club of a psychiatric clinic

Extramural psychiatric facilities such as therapeutic clubs are of major importance for the continuous aftercare of patients with qualitative or quantitative communicative difficulties. This contribution reports on social and clinical factors affecting the frequency with which outpatients of a psychiatric clinic attend such a club. The main objective of the club was to secure most frequent attendance among patients living without partners and who are not or only partly able to practice a vocation (regardless of the nosological and syndromatological diagnosis). This target was achieved. Attendance was less satisfactory among patients who had suffered from serious psychic disorders entailing frequent hospitalization and patients who, during their last stay at hospital, had received only somatic but no sociotherapeutic and psychotherapeutic treatment.