The Heart of Pastoral Counseling

Healing Through Relationship, Revised Edition

Richard L Dayringer

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780789001726
• eBook ISBN: 9781136375712
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

The relationship between pastor and parishioner is the essence of pastoral counseling--a simple truth with profound implications. Dr. Richard Dayringer explores these implications in The Heart of Pastoral Counseling: Healing Through Relationship, Revised Edition to help pastoral counselors understand how to use the relationship to bring about the desired ends in the therapeutic process. Drawing on research from the disciplines of psychiatry, psychology, marriage counseling, family therapy, and pastoral counseling, this book lays the foundation for utilizing the pastoral counseling relationship to bring about positive change as it explores topics such as observation, listening, communication, handling transference, and termination of therapy.Because the interpersonal relationship is the vehicle of therapy, it is critical that pastoral counselors understand the psychological assumptions that play a large part in the characteristics of relationships as well as the factors requiring attention in order to establish a secure counseling relationship. The Heart of Pastoral Counseling will help you attain this understanding as you also improve your knowledge on:

• how pastoral relationships may be applied outside the therapeutic hour in general pastoral work
• eclectic methods for clarifying feelings, developing intellectual insight, interpreting, questioning, and assigning certain behavior
• employing the problem-oriented record in pastoral counseling
• distinguishing relationship from transference and countertransference
• the unique problem that counseling acquaintances presents
• personality traits that attract people to the minister/pastoral counselor
• counselor attitudes that foster relationship
• how a client's view of the counselor has an impact on the effectiveness of therapyThe Heart of Pastoral Counseling brings a solid base of research to pastoral counselors, seminary students, graduate students in counseling, professors of counseling, and specialists in pastoral psychotherapy so that you might better understand the nature of pastoral counseling relationships and how they are helpful and constructive in people's lives. You will be challenged to rethink your role in initiating and carrying out therapeutic change and realize why you should build your ministry on relationships, rather than on friendships.

Part I:
What is the Pastoral Counseling Relationship?

Many therapists agree on the importance of the therapeutic relationship, even though they have different educational backgrounds and subscribe to different schools of psychotherapeutic thought. One writer summarized this conclusion: "The key to the influence of psychotherapy on the patient is in his relationship with the therapist. Wherever psychotherapy is accepted as a significant enterprise, this statement is so widely subscribed to as to become trite."¹

Relationship is the essence of counseling being done by clergy. To be sure, such counseling may incorporate a wide variety of methods and techniques, but the essential component that brings about the resolution of difficulties is the therapeutic relationship between the minister and the counselee. Since relationship is considered to have this importance in all psychotherapy, and since the clergy's vocation centers in interpersonal relationships both human and divine, I attempt here to set forth an adequate concept of the pastoral counseling relationship.

Chapter 1
1 A Philosophical Foundation for the Pastoral Counseling Relationship

The assumptions and attitudes of relationship-centered pastoral counseling are based on Hebraic-Christian thought and rooted deeply in American democratic philosophy and cultural traditions. The blending of the eighteenth-century emphasis on universal human rights with the nineteenth-century values of uniqueness and individuality has created a rich background for this counseling philosophy. Dayton G. Van Deusen summarizes a basic assumption for this philosophy of counseling by stating:

Most of life is constituted of relationship. Gravity is a relationship of bodies, matter a relationship of particles, fire a relationship of substances, logic a relationship of ideas, truth a relationship of realities, love a relationship of spirits, religion a relationship of being.¹

Emotional difficulties are usually rooted in problems in interpersonal relationships. Conversely, people are mentally healthy to the extent to which they are aware of and able to handle their interpersonal relationships. As noted psychotherapist C. H. Patterson argued, the "human relationship is the most powerful psychological behavior modifier known to man."²

In this concept of counseling, it is important not to make conscious the infantile frustrations (Sigmund Freud) or the guiding purpose (Alfred Adler) or the archetypal unconscious (Carl G. Jung), but rather the interpersonal relationship itself. Of course the factors just named are to be considered, but they are subordinate to the actual moment of experience. The therapeutic experience is valuable in its honesty and creativity—benefits that enable counselees to enrich themselves. I agree with pastoral counselor Charles Gerkin, who writes: "The primary goal of a therapeutic relationship is . . . the facilitation of changes in the self in relation to its fragmentation and in authenticity."³

Otto Rank, the philosophical psychologist who defected from Freud, brought the therapeutic concept of relationship into view as a determining consideration, both in therapy and in personality development more generally. He emphasized relationship rather than interpretation in counseling. Rank's approach was novel because material produced, during analysis was to be understood not by reference to the past but only as it related to the relationship between client and therapist. Therefore Rank's therapy remained almost entirely on the feeling level, where emotional experiences are central and where spontaneous expressions of unique individuality are complemented as a sign of a growing will and as a way of understanding oneself.⁴

Such a therapeutic relationship is also the essence of more recent theoretical approaches to psychotherapy, including behavior modification, Gestalt therapy, object relations therapy, transactional analysis, and systems theory in marriage and family therapy. These theories do not all emphasize insight as the key to personality and behavior change. The interpersonal relationship between counselors and clients is the basis of therapy.

An Understanding of Individuals

Ministerial counselors naturally look to the teachings of Jesus Christ for an understanding of people. They also study in the fields of philosophy, psychology, and sociology. My understanding of individuals, a synthesis of these influences forged with personal experience, can be summed up in these axioms:

1. Individuals have intrinsic worth and dignity. This is the "image of God" in persons. It is apparent in the ability to communicate intelligibly, to transcend oneself, to contemplate the future, to choose responsibly, and to experience humor.
2. Individuals have supreme value. People have supreme value over institutional, moralistic, or any other values. Individuals should not be underrated either in terms of their complete selves or in their place in the society of which they are a part. People should not use one another merely as a means to an end, but should relate to one another according to Martin Buber's notion of "I and Thou."⁵ Human beings constitute God's supreme creation.
3. Individuals have needs. Every person has certain inherent needs. The catalogs of these needs (motives, instincts, drives) may vary. Ecclesiasticus 39:26 reads, "The basic necessities of human life are water and fire and iron and salt and wheat flour and milk and honey, the blood of the grape and oil and clothing."⁶ The following list probably encompasses most basic needs: air, drink and food, rest and sleep, movement and exercise, cleanliness, fellowship and communication, love and sex. These things are not optional; they are necessary for survival and well-being. The optional things are the methods people employ to fulfill these needs. The well-known hierarchy of needs by Abraham Maslow may be studied in Figure 1.1.⁷
   

   FIGURE 1.1. Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs
4. Individuals have goals. People place different values on things, and in striving for the things they value, they set goals for themselves. People cannot be understood psychologically apart from these goals, because mental processes and their resultant physical activity are always oriented toward goals that offer some promise of value.
5. Individuals relate to one another. Relationality assumes the need for interaction as the state in which individuals realize their personhood. Paul Johnson noted that it "is doubtful whether human personality would develop at all if one were completely isolated from other persons."⁸ Virtually everyone born into the world has the capacity for forming interpersonal relationships. People seem to need to have such interactions daily. Even voluntarily denying interpersonal relationships out of a desire for intense and prolonged meditation or study, as in monasticism, seems unnatural and can be very difficult. Prolonged isolation is considered so formidable that solitary confinement is used as a form of special punishment in prisons.
6. Individuals have freedom. Each person has the inherent right to make decisions and to lead a private life. Individuals have the potential to choose wisely and to live a self-directed, self-fulfilled, and self-transcended life.⁹ People even have the right to be wrong. Of course, this freedom can be controlled or curbed by social institutions such as government.
7. Individuals have responsibility. Each person is responsible for each personal choice made. People are responsible for their lives and responsible to God and to their fellow humans for every decision. Thus people are responsible for participating in and maintaining their relationships, both human and divine.
8. Individuals grow through love. For centuries love has been the theme of prophets, teachers, and poets. More recently, behavioral scientists have suggested that life without love is fatally flawed. The unwanted child, the juvenile delinquent, the neurotic adult, and the senile elder represent a straight line of loveless despair. Paul Johnson points out that when love is available, tragedies like these may be avoided, but when love is lacking, psychological growth is stunted or distorted.¹⁰
9. Individuals have access to divine relationship. As they mature in their understanding of human relationships, people often become aware of the potential for developing a personal relationship with God. Guilt may motivate people to seek such a relationship because of the divine forgiveness that is implied within it.

These nine axioms represent some basic philosophical assumptions necessary for understanding people. Next I will discuss diagnostic and therapeutic ways for pastoral counselors to understand their clients.

An Eclectic View of Counseling

Counselors who describe their theoretical position as "eclectic" have selected what they think is best from various systems of counseling. Taken literally, this ascription seems to place such counselors in a rather favorable light, assuming that a composite of what is best from many sources might reasonably be expected to turn out well. In the field of counseling or psychotherapy, however, eclecticism formerly had unfavorable connotations. Until recently eclectic counselors were considered by their professional colleagues to be either muddled or "unsystematic." Most therapists were strongly urged to identify with the "party line" of a particular therapeutic club.

Frederick C. Thorne, who has doctorates in both medicine and psychology, has written: "There is an urgent need for a comprehensive integration of all scientific data into a 'system' of practice which would be genuinely eclectic and provide a basis for the standardization of practice throughout the world."¹¹ Thorne attempted to set forth such a "system," but it has not been accepted as the standard for counseling around the world. Perhaps the truly urgent need is for all individual counselors to integrate comprehensively the scientific data available to them into an eclectic "system" of practice that fits their personality. This system would provide the basis for each counselor's practice anywhere in the world. In other words, since the theory of individual differences implies that theory and practice will be personalized, counselors might as well admit it.

Modern psychology has spawned a large number of systems or schools of psychotherapy that have originated from diverse philosophicar and methodological viewpoints. Robert Harper easily identified three dozen systems,¹² but more than 250 different therapies have been described.¹³ Patterson, however, argued as early as 1971 that the "days of 'schools' in counseling and psychotherapy are drawing to a close."¹⁴ In 1986, he published his book, The Therapeutic Relationship: Foundations for an Eclectic Psychotherapy.

William Oglesby suggests a helpful grouping of three types of psychotherapies: those that give priority to knowing, those to doing, and those to being. Psychoanalysis and transactional analysis are knowing therapies; reality therapy and behavior therapy are doing therapies; and client-centered and Gestalt therapies are being thera-pies.¹⁵

By contrast, J. Harold Ellens divides all theories into four types: rational, emotional, relational, and biological. Rational-emotive therapy would be an example of the first, client-centered therapy the second, Gestalt therapy the third, and behavior therapy the fourth.¹⁶

A comparison of these systems of psychotherapy reveals considerable variation in aspects of counseling that could affect the counselor-client relationship. For example, there is a difference of opinion as to how ambiguous the role of the counselor should be. Freudians are at one end of this continuum and directive counselors at the other. A second difference is counselor warmth or aloofness. Here Carl Rogers and Freud stand at opposite ends of the spectrum. Third, some tell clients to work at remembering the past (Freud), and some instruct them to aim at solving present problems (Frederick Perls). A fourth difference is the activity or passivity of particular counselors; this mode ranges from directive counselors to the Rogerians. Fifth, some counselors focus more on the affect (emotional tone) of their client than on cognition. Rogerians and Freudians join at one end of this continuum and the cognitive therapists at the other. A comparison of four psychotherapeutic systems is shown in Figure 1.2.

Eclectic counselors, realizing the current limitations of systematic theory, struggle to integrate and rationalize the elements and conflicts among the theories of psychotherapy on the basis of their personal experience. They try assiduously to organize their observations and hypotheses into a flexible but workable and consistent position that they are willing to revise in the light of new factual data.

FIGURE 1.2. Comparison of Therapeutic Relationship in Five Therapy Modalities

By 1982, one study indicated that the majority of psychotherapists were eclectic,¹⁷ The following authors, whose works are listed in the bibliography, have stated their eclectic positions: Lawrence M. Brammer and Everett L. Shostrom, C. W. Brister, Robert R. Carkhuff and Bernard G. Berenson, Albert Ellis, Jerome D. Frank, Frieda Fromm-Reichman, Bernard G. Guerney, Jr., Harrison V. Ingham and Lenore R. Love, Edgar N. Jackson, J. C. Norcross, Wayne E. Oates, C. H. Patterson, William U. and June B. Snyder, Bernard Steinzor, Frederick C. Thorne, Leona E. Tyler, and Leslie D. Weatherhead.¹⁸

Some writers ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• PART I: WHAT IS THE PASTORAL COUNSELING RELATIONSHIP?
• PART II: HOW IS RELATIONSHIP USED IN PASTORAL COUNSELING?
• PART III: WHAT ARE THE IMPLICATIONS OF RELATIONSHIP FOR PASTORS?
• Appendix A. AAPC Membership Information and Requirements
• Appendix B. AAPC Code of Ethics
• Appendix C. Multiaxial Evaluation Report Form
• Appendix D. Global Assessment of Functioning (GAF) Scale
• References
• Bibliography
• Index