Author: Robert Charles PowellPublisher:
ISBN: 9781957994079
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
{a collection of 3 essays, from 1977. 2012, & 2012; includes a bibliography of other of Dr. Powell's essays on Anton Theophilus Boisen and Helen Flanders Dunbar that are not included in the volumes of this series}Anton Theophilus Boisen (1876-1965) "invented" - in 1925 - "clinical pastoral chaplaincy" - the notion of a professional chaplaincy - initially for hospitals, prisons, the military, and other institutions - but soon also for community parish settings. These specialized chaplains minister to all who are suffering, bewildered, or vulnerable - providing clinical pastoral care, counseling, or psychotherapy, as appropriate.Boisen definitely was interested in, practiced, and taught psychotherapy. That being said, Dr. Powell has been among the first to portray - in detailed manner - Boisen in his role as a clinician.One part of the problem, of course, is that Boisen already is viewed as a sociologist/ psychologist of religion and as a theologian/ psychiatric investigator - not to mention as a language-teacher/ translator/ forester. Another part of the problem is that Boisen believed in treating "official" patients and novice theologs in the same manner. He believed in trying to point those who were suffering, bewildered, or vulnerable - for whatever reason - in the right direction - in fact, in trying to get them to aim high - but he was not going to do the work for them or to hand them ready-made answers. Becoming one's best as a clinical pastoral chaplain, Boisen believed, was an individual task, albeit one that benefited the entire world. Too many would-be clinical pastoral chaplains, he believed, wanted "to be told at once what to do" - and wanted "rules of procedures ? [to] apply". He believed that chaplains should discover for themselves the meaning of the different forms of illness - and that psychotherapy depended less on technique than on caring relationships between people. Boisen encouraged "genuine interest in the patient and his [or her] problems - as well as [in] the discovery and solving of the patient's actual difficulties".