- Pastoral Theology, History Of Psychoanalysis, Narrative Therapy, Pastoral Counseling, Pastoral Care, Death and dying, and 8 moreMulti-cultural populations, Pastoral Care of Clergy, History of Psychiatry, Social Class, Michel Foucault, Neoliberalism, Anti Capitalist Social Movements, and Social Controledit
In this article, the authors set forward a theory of joy built upon adolescent development and describe how anxiety sometimes interferes. They elaborate why adolescence is a time of joy and the type of future-oriented adolescent... more
In this article, the authors set forward a theory of joy built upon adolescent development and describe how anxiety sometimes interferes. They elaborate why adolescence is a time of joy and the type of future-oriented adolescent imagination that fosters joy. Describing adolescent development from neurological, biological, social, sexual orientation, racial identity, and stages of faith perspectives, they show how joy and development are linked in adolescent flourishing. After defining anxiety, showing its prevalence, and distinguishing it from worry they indicate how the existential concerns of anxiety interferes with joy and how mentorship can help. Exploring pertinent Scriptures, they examine some ameliorative effects against anxiety through attachment based play that challenges a competitive culture and mentorship that evokes already-emergent strengths.
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In the Frontline documentary film, interviewer Bill Moyers chronicles the lives of Two American Families over a span of two decades in Milwaukee, WI, to explore the impact of the closing of factories and the rise of a low-wage service... more
In the Frontline documentary film, interviewer Bill Moyers chronicles the lives of Two American Families over a span of two decades in Milwaukee, WI, to explore the impact of the closing of factories and the rise of a low-wage service sector economy.1 One family, the Stanleys, are African American and each parent had jobs at Briggs and Stratton before the factory closed. Once the factory closed, the father took a seven-dollar-an-hour job finishing basements while the mother worked in real estate. They experimented with opening their own business but had to close it because of a lack of interest. Throughout the film, Moyers expertly narrates the rising income inequity, the dissolution of jobs with living-wage pay and benefits, and the social impact on these families’ lives. He notes that all these changes occurred during times of unprecedented growth in the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
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Therapeutic case conferences often take place without clients’ full knowledge and thus disempower them. By contrast, narrative therapy’s definitional ceremonies-drawn from the work of anthropologist Barbara Myerhoff-heighten transparency.... more
Therapeutic case conferences often take place without clients’ full knowledge and thus disempower them. By contrast, narrative therapy’s definitional ceremonies-drawn from the work of anthropologist Barbara Myerhoff-heighten transparency. The article offers an example of the use of definitional ceremonies in the congregational pastoral care of miscarriage and infertility. Rarely does a client ask to view his or her records. However, if one of my clients were to make such a request, I would first explore with the client why he or she wanted to see the records. Next, I would talk with the client about what is written in the records. If this was not satisfactory to the client, I would suggest that I might write a summary of the records. However, if a client continued to steadfastly state a desire to view his or her records, I would comply with this request.
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In this article, the author maintains that place is more than the backdrop for pastoral care, but an active participant. Explaining place attachment and arguing for care shaped by place, the author discusses the importance of place in an... more
In this article, the author maintains that place is more than the backdrop for pastoral care, but an active participant. Explaining place attachment and arguing for care shaped by place, the author discusses the importance of place in an intersectional fashion, engaging racism, sexism, and colonialism to explain the importance of place. Turning to a non-utilitarian view of nature as something worthy of love and engagement, the author explains how attachment to place can lead to flourishing. Drawing examples from his own hospice chaplaincy in a fence-line community facing environmental racism and Hurricane Harvey, he uses examples of disrupted place attachment. The author gives suggestions for utilizing place attachment in pastoral theology.
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The author explains how Trump reinvented his business failures through reality television by inflating his successes and minimizing his failures. The author then shows how the reality television show itself reflects the rituals of... more
The author explains how Trump reinvented his business failures through reality television by inflating his successes and minimizing his failures. The author then shows how the reality television show itself reflects the rituals of neoliberal capitalism, namely, identification with the boss despite the unequal conditions. Finally, the author maintains that those struggling with layoffs use this entertainment to vicariously compare themselves with others. Echoing the needs of the soul and the theological image of God as judge, this media spectacle invites audiences to identify with individual winners rather than taking collective responsibility for systemic inequality.
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This paper describes the process of acculturation for immigrant adolescents using immigration-themed graphic novels. The author’s own experience as a third-culture child is offered as a starting point. The paper explains recent... more
This paper describes the process of acculturation for immigrant adolescents using immigration-themed graphic novels. The author’s own experience as a third-culture child is offered as a starting point. The paper explains recent developments in acculturation theory. It uses vignettes from the graphic novels to show discrimination, ethnic bullying, and cultural self-definition. The article explains adolescents’ life-and-death need to belong in tension with a need to hold onto ethnic pride. It underscores that the painful process of working through cultural identifications is an important part of identity development and faith formation for adolescents.
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Abstract Examines the God-representations of the country-folk singer John Prine in the light of psychological theory about male melancholia, drawing from Donald Capps and Erik H. Erikson. Describes the manner in which songwriting serves... more
Abstract Examines the God-representations of the country-folk singer John Prine in the light of psychological theory about male melancholia, drawing from Donald Capps and Erik H. Erikson. Describes the manner in which songwriting serves as a therapeutic enterprise to ...
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... 11-1 LIVING IN LIMBO: LIFE IN THE MIDST OF UNCERTAINTY Donald Capps and Nathan Carlin. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2010. Soft cover. 127 pp. $17.00 Reviewed by Philip Browning Helsel Princeton Theological Seminary ...
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... He understood it primarily in terms of gnosis (literally ''knowledge''), as directly apprehended spiritual knowledge which the individual encounters and which brings about psychic healing through reconcilia-tion of... more
... He understood it primarily in terms of gnosis (literally ''knowledge''), as directly apprehended spiritual knowledge which the individual encounters and which brings about psychic healing through reconcilia-tion of the opposite poles of one's experience (Melanson, 2002: 168). ...
This paper describes the process of acculturation for immigrant adolescents using immigration-themed graphic novels. The author's own experience as a third-culture child is offered as a starting point. The paper explains recent... more
This paper describes the process of acculturation for immigrant adolescents using immigration-themed graphic novels. The author's own experience as a third-culture child is offered as a starting point. The paper explains recent developments in acculturation theory. It uses vignettes from the graphic novels to show discrimination, ethnic bullying, and cultural self-definition. The article explains adolescents' life-and-death need to belong in tension with a need to hold onto ethnic pride. It underscores that the painful process of working through cultural identifications is an important part of identity development and faith formation for adolescents.
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This essay describes the body’s states of nervous system activation after trauma—focusing on intimate partner violence and sexual assault against women—as signs of resistance and posits that caregivers should attend to these phenomena as... more
This essay describes the body’s states of nervous system activation after trauma—focusing on intimate partner violence and sexual assault against women—as signs of resistance and posits that caregivers should attend to these phenomena as the body’s way of communicating. Trauma triggers nervous system responses. and understanding these responses helps caregivers to read the body language of survivors and thus avoid retraumatizing them in pastoral care. Fundamentally, rather than being seen as symptomatic of a disorder, the aftereffects of trauma should be seen as a survivor’s witness to the profound harm experienced as well as to the image of God in the survivor. This approach offers ritual and social ways of addressing this harm.
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In times of massive economic inequity, why do so many Americans consider themselves mentally ill? Exploring the psychological effects of debt, foreclosure, and unemployment, this book shows how our mental health categories are poorly... more
In times of massive economic inequity, why do so many Americans consider themselves mentally ill? Exploring the psychological effects of debt, foreclosure, and unemployment, this book shows how our mental health categories are poorly equipped to explain the stresses of the current economy. Philip Browning Helsel provides concrete advice to ministers and counselors wishing to help those struggling with the stress of being in a member of the modern working class. 'Pastoral power' is the ability to help people define and resist the suffering that results from an unjust economic system. Helsel argues that psychological labels can reduce people to 'problem-identities' and make them feel internally responsible for their emotional problems. Drawing from the counter-conducts of pastoral power described by Michel Foucault, and highlighting the testimonies of the consumer/survivor/ex-patient movement, this book helps communities resist social class oppression while questioning the oversimplification of mental health pathology.
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Simone Weil’s theology is deeply connected to her experiences with chronic pain. Pain is paradoxical in that it is an essentially private phenomenon yet it simultaneously demands to be shared with another. Weil’s life and thought... more
Simone Weil’s theology is deeply connected to her experiences with chronic pain. Pain is paradoxical in that it is an essentially private phenomenon yet it simultaneously demands to be shared with another. Weil’s life and thought exemplify both aspects of this paradox, demonstrating how her pain alienated her from her own body and from others, and how her thought found full expression as she attempted to share experiences with pain. Weil’s experience of pain was transformed in her passion mysticism, the deep connection she felt with the crucified Christ. In this connection, the most unbearable aspect of her pain, the threat, which it presented to her very self through annihilation, was absorbed into the cross and transformed by God’s love. While this did not necessarily diminish Weil’s pain, the meaning it had for her as a person was transformed through an encounter with Christ crucified, in which she experienced God’s suffering along with her.
The book of Ecclesiastes has frequently been mischaracterized as a cynical or pessimistic work. Instead, this article recommends Ecclesiastes, following Eunny P. Lee, as contributing to pastoral theology through its embodied and pragmatic... more
The book of Ecclesiastes has frequently been mischaracterized as a cynical or pessimistic work. Instead, this article recommends Ecclesiastes, following Eunny P. Lee, as contributing to pastoral theology through its embodied and pragmatic theology of enjoyment in which practices of joy revitalize the human spirit. However, there are some who are unable to experience satisfaction. The absence of reflection on this problem in Ecclesiastes scholarship is considered the starting point of pastoral theology, and is addressed by a turn to the frequently misunderstood passage in 7:16–18, bringing it into conversation with the topographical model of the human person developed by Freud. At the same time, the interpersonal aspects of enjoyment found in Ecclesiastes critique Freud by suggesting how the fragmented parts of self-experience can be held together in an interpersonal context.
Nick Flynn’s memoir about his troubled relationship with his father is analyzed as an example of desperately practiced spiritual art using the narrative psychology of Michael White and David Epston. Reflections on the history of... more
Nick Flynn’s memoir about his troubled relationship with his father is analyzed as an example of desperately practiced spiritual art using the narrative psychology of Michael White and David Epston. Reflections on the history of autobiography are combined with psychotherapeutic explorations into the significance of telling deeply troubling stories. White and Epston’s metaphors of externalizing conversations, noting exceptions, and recruiting an audience are implemented in the case of Flynn’s identification with his father’s alcoholism, his identification with his father’s writing aspirations, and his identification with his father’s body.
Telling one's story itself brings purpose to ones life, and it is an essential part of coming to grips with death. The book of Ecclesiastes and Warren Zevon’s album The Wind express the hope for social immortality rather than an actual... more
Telling one's story itself brings purpose to ones life, and it is an essential part of coming to grips with death. The book of Ecclesiastes and Warren Zevon’s album The Wind express the hope for social immortality rather than an actual afterlife. Both of them are suffused with a sense of death-awareness, although their location in time and place and the genre of their expressions are quite different. By looking closely at these texts, one is able to ascertain certain aspects of life review which are necessary for wholeness and completion.
The unconventional British psychoanalyst Adam Phillips, who has become a celebrity in the past several decades both for his literary style and reclamation of Freud’s central ideas, has delivered an insightful piece of work that merits the... more
The unconventional British psychoanalyst Adam Phillips, who has become a celebrity in the past several decades both for his literary style and reclamation of Freud’s central ideas, has delivered an insightful piece of work that merits the attention of pastoral caregivers. He provides a conceptual framework for understanding that most essential construct of our discipline, that of sanity–madness.In the first two-thirds of the book, by doing a linguistic archeology of the word sanity, relating it to several common psychiatric diagnoses, developmental issues, and relationships with sex and money, Phillips demonstrates the dependence of the word on its evil twin, madness. He shows how sanity is always being described as the absence of madness, and how vexingly difficult it is to come to a clear definition of sanity. My review will first take the conceptual pieces of Phillips’ argument on their own terms, and then discuss some of the consequences for his work for the practitioner and theori
While social phobia is typically diagnosed in adolescence, the roots of social phobia are found in childhood experiences of shame. When shame occurs because of a failure to meet a child’s need this creates a fundamental uncertainty which... more
While social phobia is typically diagnosed in adolescence, the roots of social phobia are found in childhood experiences of shame. When shame occurs because of a failure to meet a child’s need this creates a fundamental uncertainty which can become internalized in the form of self-contempt. Emotions such as sadness are sometimes forbidden by caregivers, and the expression of natural sexual drives are sometimes prohibited. Such experiences create shame and may keep the person from feeling emotions and drives because shame has displaced the real emotion. The fractures in early relationships can be restored through the healing presence of another. The pastor has access to persons with social phobia who may not be willing to seek psychiatric care and is in a unique position to bring the resources of the church to bear in the lives of persons with social phobia. To do so, she moves away from the extroverted frame of reference within which the church frequently operates.