
Helping the Good Shepherd
Pastoral Counselors in a Psychotherapeutic Culture, 1925–1975
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
Helping the Good Shepherd
Pastoral Counselors in a Psychotherapeutic Culture, 1925–1975
About this book
This history of Protestant pastoral counseling in America examines the role of pastoral counselors in the construction and articulation of a liberal moral sensibility. Analyzing the relationship between religion and science in the twentieth century, Susan E. Myers-Shirk locates this sensibility in the counselors' intellectual engagement with the psychological sciences.
Informed by the principles of psychology and psychoanalysis, pastoral counselors sought a middle ground between science and Christianity in advising anxious parishioners who sought their help for personal problems such as troubled children, violent spouses, and alcohol and drug abuse.
Myers-Shirk finds that gender relations account in part for the great divide between the liberal and conservative moral sensibilities in pastoral counseling. She demonstrates that, as some pastoral counselors began to advocate women's equality, conservative Christian counselors emerged, denouncing more liberal pastoral counselors and secular psychologists for disregarding biblical teachings. From there, the two sides diverged dramatically.
Helping the Good Shepherd will appeal to scholars of American religious history, the history of psychology, gender studies, and American history. For those practicing and teaching pastoral counseling, it offers historical insights into the field.
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Information
Table of contents
- Cover Page
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Anton Boisen and the Scientific Study of Religion
- 2 The Methodology of Clinical Pastoral Education
- 3 The Minds of Moralists
- 4 From Adjustment to Autonomy
- 5 Democracy and the Psychologically Autonomous Individual
- 6 An Ethic of Relationships
- 7 Gendered Moral Discourse
- 8 The Language of Rights and the Challenge to the Domestic Ideal
- 9 Resurrection of the Shepherd
- 10 Christian Counseling and the Conservative Moral Sensibility
- Epilogue
- Notes
- Index