Pastoral counseling: In search of a new paradigm

Contemporary pastoral counseling includes three paradigmatic elements: the image of the counselor as priest; the location of the human problem at the organismic-environmental interface; and the diagnosis of the human problem as alienation from self and others. These assumptions ought to be supplemented by the image of the counselor as prophet, by location of the human problemalso at the interface of the self and the ultimate, and by a diagnosis of the human problem as alienation from transcendence. To be adequate as a response to the total human situation, pastoral counseling theory must be expanded to include consideration of the transcendent dimension of human existence, and pastoral counseling method and technique must be modified to overcome alienation from the ultimate by facilitating the actualization of transcendence.His article is a revision of the keynote address he presented to the American Association of Pastoral Counselors at their annual meeting in May 1976.