Psychology for Pastoral Contexts

A Handbook

Jessica Rose

• Publisher: SCM Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780334045526
• eBook ISBN: 9780334049708
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

This clear and accessible book offers a fresh perspective on the application of psychology in a wide range of pastoral activity. It presents a model of pastoral care that is Eucharistic and incarnational – a form of participation in the community. The book goes on to discuss the nature of the unconscious and three core areas in mental well-being: attachment, sexuality and loss. It then addresses specific issues in mental health such as depression, addiction, psychotic breakdown and eating disorder, all within the context of pastoral relationships. A final section explores the nature of betrayal and the meaning of forgiveness. This is an informative and practical book, bringing together the insights of contemporary psychology with a theological understanding of pastoral contexts. The many illustrations from personal experiences ground the theory in real-life situations.

Psychology for Pastoral Contexts

Contents

Acknowledgements

Part 1: The Pastoral Context

1 Pastoral Activity as Participation

Part 2: Some Building Blocks in Psychology

2 Mind, Body and Spirit: The Human Being as a Holistic Entity

3 Nurture, Attachment and Love (1): Attachment as a Natural Impulse

4 Nurture, Attachment and Love (2): Some Pastoral Implications of Attachment Theory

5 Sexuality (1): The ‘S’ Word: What is Sexuality and How do We Talk about It?

6 Sexuality (2): Some Darker Aspects of Sexuality

7 Loss (1): ‘The Art of Losing’

8 Loss (2): When Grief is Overwhelming

Part 3: Some Specific Issues in Mental Health

9 What is Mental Health?

10 Depression

11 Addiction

12 Eating Disorder

13 Schizophrenia and Other Psychotic Disorders

Part 4: Betrayal and Forgiveness

14 Betrayal and Forgiveness

Appendix: Reflecting on Your Pastoral Practice

Further Reading

Index of Authors Cited

Index of Subjects and Biblical Names

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank all those who have been part of the journey that has resulted in this book, especially Fr John Baggley, Chris Beebee, Hilary Caldicott, Revd Angela Forbes, Charles Hampton, Fr Billy Hewitt SJ, Ian Huish, Patrick Parry Okeden, Revd Michael Paterson, Wendy Robinson, Revd Tom Stevens and Rachel Verney. Particular thanks are due to my husband, Alfred Osborne, for his encouragement, support and wisdom.

The experiences of many people have gone into the making of this book. Names and contexts have been changed to preserve confidentiality.

PART 1

The Pastoral Context

1

Pastoral Activity as Participation

What is a ‘pastoral context’?

The word ‘pastoral’ takes us to images with a long tradition in the churches, but which many people find difficult today: images of pastors as shepherds caring for their ‘sheep’, the people. In the contemporary church we are far less inclined to think of pastors and the people in this way.

We can, however, trace this image to Christ saying to Peter, ‘Tend my sheep’ (John 21.16). He says this after the resurrection, shortly before he is to leave the disciples and return to the Father. Three times he asks Peter, ‘Do you love me?’ and three times Peter insists that he does. Each time, Christ responds telling him, ‘Feed my lambs’, ‘Tend my sheep’, ‘Feed my sheep’. At the heart of a pastoral context is the logic of this encounter: loving Christ is not just a two person relationship – it involves caring for those he loves as well. A pastoral context, then, is one in which concern and practical action for others – and each other – is rooted in a common love of Christ.

‘Pastoral’ care also has its secular contexts, particularly in education, where it addresses people’s needs at one remove from the primary purpose of the organization: the listening, supporting, encouraging or befriending that enables people to make use of what the institution has to offer. Similarly in the context of church life, pastoral care is summed up by Alastair Campbell as ‘that aspect of the Church’s ministry concerned with the well-being of individuals and communities’.1 For the purposes of this book, the word ‘church’ is not used to refer to any particular one of the Christian Churches but to discuss aspects of community life that tend to be common to them all.

‘Man does not live by bread alone’ (Luke 4.4). All the same, from the earliest days of church life as described in Acts, it is clear that as soon as communities are formed human needs emerge and require attention alongside teaching and preaching. There are widows who must be provided with food (Acts 6), ill people needing to be healed (Acts 8.7), matters of church discipline to be settled (Acts 15), and ‘care of the afflicted’ as carried out by a widow thought suitable for inclusion in the church’s financial structure (1 Tim 5.3–16).

How has pastoral activity developed?

There is a sense in which pastoral activity as we understand it today is something that can happen anywhere, anytime. Although it is particularly a function of ordained ministry and teams of people are appointed to see that it takes place, essentially it arises from community where a common life of worship spills over into the practical expression of the love of God. It may be an encounter that lasts five minutes as you invite a stranger to join in coffee at the end of a service, or it may be a relationship over several years as you support someone through a long-term mental or physical illness. Life throws up different needs at different times, and in a pastoral context roles are not necessarily fixed. One week you may find yourself listening to my sadness over a lost job or a dying friend, while the next I might look after your children so that you can have a few hours to yourself.

This is the ‘Early Church’ model: ‘Encourage one another and build each other up, as indeed you are doing’ (1 Thess. 5.11). The Greek word here translated as ‘encourage’ is parakaleite, from the same root as Parakletos, the Comforter who will come after Christ returns to the Father. In the mutual encouragement of the community, we can see, perhaps, the Spirit at work.

It was not until the second century that pastoral responsibility began to be seen particularly as the business of bishops and clergy. This was partly as a function of elaborate penitential systems involving confession and repentance, and partly in relation to the need to understand the place of families in the Church: since the Second Coming had not happened in the first generation it was no longer considered irrelevant to marry and have children.

One of the bishops to pay particular attention to pastoral problems was John Chrysostom (c. 349–407). His sermons on wealth and poverty and on marriage and family life (he was one of the last of the Church Fathers to write about marriage!) are some of the earliest pastoral texts we have.2 The sixth century gives us ‘The Pastoral Rule’ of Gregory the Great, the ‘pastoral pope’ – a treatise for bishops on the care and cure of souls which draws on the lives of the apostles and various Old Testament characters.3

In the earlier centuries, however, the pastoral emphasis was sacramental: confession and absolution, anointing the sick, using offerings at the Eucharist to help the poor. At a later stage, the Dominican and Franciscan orders gave new prominence to preaching, and the Jesuits to education and spiritual direction.

By the seventeenth century, we have George Herbert’s ‘Country Parson’ who is all things to all men, at least on a domestic level. His resources are Scripture and prayer through which he is able to embrace the cross, but it is also right for him to socialize and be humorous since ‘nature will not bear everlasting droopings’.4 He works with what is there: the people’s frame of reference, their festivals and customs. It is a benevolent patriarchy which with the Industrial Revolution begins to include social reform, led by people such as William Wilberforce (1759–1833) and Charles Kingsley (1819–75), author of The Water Babies and a canon of Chester Cathedral.

A further revolution took place in the early twentieth century with the rise of psychoanalysis and other schools of psychotherapy, through which pastoral work developed a psychological frame of reference. Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976), a Wesleyan minister, was one of the first pastors in this country to take Freud seriously. He acknowledged that Christianity as it is lived is open to the charge of infantile neurosis: a flight from reality (God will comfort me); a false sense of physical security (when in fact Christ promised persecution and death); misusing the cross as an escape from guilt (we are ‘let off’ because Jesus died in our stead); and narcissistic holiness (‘designer’ spirituality). Like Freud, Weatherhead saw repressed sexuality as the basis of anxiety. In 1936, he began work at the City Temple seeking out colleagues with a real Christian experience of their own, a psychological qualification and a medical degree. For those who sought their help, a series of six or eight interviews was combined with intercession for healing and simple talks and explanations about psychological processes. The pastoral counselling movement was born.

As pastoral counselling developed, many church pastors learned to speak the language of psychology and use its techniques, albeit applied in a theological context. ...

Table of contents

• Psychology for Pastoral Contexts