The role of a Pastoral intern in Marriage and Family Counseling
A minister needs to be reasonably proficient in all eight varieties of counseling, but he should
acquire a high degree of expertness in three types -- marriage counseling, crisis counseling
(especially bereavement), and counseling on religious-existential problems. In these types he
should be among the most skilled persons in his community. Because of his socially defined role,
he occupies a strategic position of opportunity to help persons in these areas.
In the nationwide mental health survey mentioned earlier in this chapter, nearly sixty percent of
clergy counseling opportunities were family problems (forty-two percent marriage, twelve
percent parent-child and five percent other family relationship problems). (Americans View Their
Mental Health, p. 305.) The clergyman's natural entree to families gives him a major advantage
in this type of counseling. There can be no doubt that skill in marriage and family counseling is
essential for an effective ministry!
There are two basically different approaches to marriage counseling. One method consists of
individual counseling with one or preferably both parties. The goal is to help both achieve
sufficient personal growth so that they can relate more maturely in marriage. The assumptions of
this approach are that problems between people always reflect problems within them (which is
true) and that the problems within must be dealt with to improve their relationship (which is not
always the case). For the pastor, this method has serious drawbacks. It requires extensive training
and ordinarily is highly time-consuming. Distorted feedback between the partners sometimes
damages the counseling relationships. "The minister said . . ." is misused in moments of anger
between the partners. The counselor has the arduous task of keeping strict track of who said
what, so that he does not unwittingly violate confidences. Considerable insight and growth may
be achieved by the better-motivated party without substantial improvement in the sick marriage.
The newer approach is called "role-relationship" counseling or "couple counseling."( A useful
book on this method is Charles W. Stewart's The Minister as Marriage Counselor. Rev. ed.
(Nashville: Abingdon Press, [1961] 1970). This approach tends to be more efficient time-wise
and also more effective in healing a sick marriage by improving the quality of marital
interaction. It usually does not have long-range effectiveness with grossly disturbed persons
whose weak egos and need to act out their inner problems vitiate the effects of counseling. But I
regard it as the method to try first in most marriage counseling. If it does not prove helpful,
individual counseling in more depth or referral to a psychotherapist or a family service
association is in order.
Role-relationship counseling aims neither at basic personality changes nor at depth insight. Its
goal is more modest -- to help the couple make their relationship more mutually need-satisfying.
The marriage relationship itself is sick. It is the patient. The focus of counseling is on the
interaction which occurs in and shapes their relationship. The "between" of a marriage is seen as
far more than the sum of the problems within the two persons. The "couple identity" (see Chap.
9) is a psychological entity which has been created by their interaction. Frequently, significant
improvement in the quality of interaction can occur without basic changes in the underlying
personality patterns. Marital interaction occurs on many levels and can be improved on many
levels. For adults, counseling procedures which aim at improvement on the relationship level are
usually the most helpful.
The Greens are having serious trouble with their marriage. They seek their minister's help. Using
a role-relationship approach, his goals with them will be: (a) To help them reestablish
meaningful communication (that is, on the level of feelings, hopes, and personality hungers) so
that they will have the instrument for working at their problems. (b) To interrupt their negative,
self-perpetuating interaction pattern of mutual attack and retaliation. Because both have been
hurt so severely they probably cannot extricate themselves from this vicious cycle unassisted.
The cycle's momentum can carry a couple into the divorce court. (c) To help them become aware
of the nature of their interaction and the conflicts in the role expectations which each has had for
himself and the other. Most interaction in sick marriage is blind, automatic, and maladaptive. (d)
To assist them in discovering ways to modify their attitudes, role-expectations, and marital
behavior so as to decrease friction and increase mutual need-satisfaction. This includes helping
them decide on some mutual goals (which both desire) and then beginning to work toward them.
(e) To help them learn how to relate with their more mature rather than their more childish
sides. (f) To help them accept the things about their partner which cannot be changed. This
means giving up their futile campaigns to reform each other. When this pressure is removed,
many couples actually begin to change in significant ways.
In counseling with the Greens, the minister is a combination referee, who sees that each gets an
opportunity to voice his views on each issue, and coach, who helps them learn how to play the
marriage game more constructively. After an initial joint interview in which the minister senses
the nature of their interaction, he decides to see each person separately for a few sessions. This
drains off some of the extreme pressure of hurt and anger, which otherwise would block couple
counseling. It establishes rapport with each person and gives each the opportunity to divulge
information or feelings which would not come out in a joint session. After three or four separate
sessions, counseling proceeds mainly by triangular interviews, the couple meeting together with
the minister. He helps them communicate and encourages them to explore specific incidents of
conflict in depth. "How did you feel when that happened?" is directed first to one and then to the
other. Occasionally the minister summarizes how each perceives or feels about a given incident
or aspect of their relationship. The focus is, "What can we learn from this fight (or satisfying
experience) ?" Through practice during the counseling sessions the Greens gradually acquire the
ability to be aware between sessions of what is occurring in their relationship. Awareness of their
patterns of interaction is the first step toward changing these patterns. Couples with a reasonable
degree of ego strength can often acquire the ability to help themselves within as few as six to ten
sessions.
For the minister with strong training in counseling, a method called family group counseling
offers a useful tool for helping families with a disturbed member or with parent-child problems.
As Jerome D. Frank says so well: " 'No man is an island' and the degree and permanence of
change in any individual will depend in part on corresponding changes in those close to him and
on support of his wider milieu." (Jerome D. Frank, Persuasion and Healing (New York:
Schocken Books, 1963), p. 234.) The family group counseling approach is useful in cases of
troubled adolescents where intrafamilial communication has broken down. After an initial
conference with the parents to explain the need for family sessions and gain their cooperation,
subsequent sessions include the entire family. The assumptions and goals are similar to couple
counseling. Since the family is an interpersonal organism, the most efficient way to help a
disturbed member is to increase the health of family interaction. The goals are to help them
reestablish meaningful communication, develop awareness of the roles and interaction patterns
of various family members, experiment with modifications in roles and behavior, and, most
important, to allow the family to experience its essential unity and interdependence. The
counselor's presence as referee and coach allows the family to experiment with new patterns of
relationships.
To do family group counseling well, a minister needs considerable skill and sensitivity to
interpersonal relations. Clinical training and participation as a member of a therapy group are
valuable as background training experiences. A minister who wishes to use this approach should
study John E. Bell's monograph, "Family Group Therapy" (Public Health Monograph #64, U.S.
Government Printing 0ffice, Washington 25, D.C. sec also Virginia Satir, Conjoint Family
Therapy (Palo Alto, Calif.: Science and Behavior Books, 1964). and then arrange to have his
work supervised by a well-trained psychotherapist, preferably one who has done family group
therapy. The minister who masters this approach has an invaluable instrument for rendering
relatively short-term help at the source of personality problems.
Supportive and Crisis Counseling
There are at least four varieties of supportive counseling: crisis, stopgap, sustaining, and
supportive growth-action counseling. All four make significant contributions to mental health
through providing supportive relationships.
1. Crisis counseling. Gerald Caplan ("Principles of Preventive Psychiatry (New York: Basic
Books, 1964). shows how a person's mental health is enhanced or depleted by the way he
handles crises. No matter how psychologically healthy a person is there are times when his inner
resources are severely strained by crises such as accidents, illness, bereavement, natural
disasters, unemployment, handicaps, and family traumas such as alcoholism. At such stress-
points, many individuals are helped by a supportive counseling relationship.
In a sizable church, a minister's counseling is often primarily crisis counseling. During a given
week, he may be called to the home where a child has died, asked to appear in court to help a
teen-ager in trouble with the law, consulted by a woman suffering from menopausal emotional
problems, called on by a man who has just learned he has cancer, and another whose self-esteem
is shaken by mandatory retirement. The crisis ministry to such persons may prevent the
development of major personality illnesses. Such a ministry ordinarily combines three things --
walking with the person through his dark valley by maintaining a supportive relationship, giving
emotional first-aid by means of informal counseling and guidance, and watching for possible
signs that the individual's built-in recovery resources may not be adequate. If a person is not
pulling out of the emotional tailspin caused by the crisis, intensive pastoral counseling (if the
minister has the time and training) or a psychiatric referral are in order.
Fortunately most people have latent resources which allow them to handle even staggering
blows. By standing with a person in crisis the minister helps him to mobilize these inner
resources and also to draw on the resources of the religious tradition and community. During
stormy crisis periods, a person's sense of worth and meaning are temporarily depleted, his world
shattered. The support of his pastor can help keep the floundering ship of his life from sinking.
Ordinarily, when the storm's fury diminishes, the ship will right itself.
Bereavement, the universal crisis, strikes an average of two American families per minute.
Active bereavement involves at least a million Americans at any one time. Nearly every feeling
known to man can be involved in this crisis. Sigmund Freud commented on the death of his
father: "He had passed his time when he died, but inside me the occasion of his death has
reawakened all my early feelings. Now I feel quite uprooted." (Ernest Jones, Life and Work of
Sigmund Freud (New York: Basic Books, 1953), I, 324)
The loss of a loved one is a psychological amputation. A part of one's world of meaning and
identity has been cut off. One's response depends on the nature of the relationship. The
psychological mechanisms employed are the same which one uses in coping with other
frustrations. In normal recovery the psyche has an orderly process which it follows in working
through the loss over a period of months or years. Experiences during this process include
feelings of unreality and shock, physical distress, preoccupation with the image and memory of
the lost one, pouring out of grief, idealization of the deceased, guilt feelings, anger, loss of
interest in usual activities, the unlearning of thousands of automatic responses involving the
deceased, relearning of other responses, resumption of normal patterns of living, and the
establishment of substitute relationships.
The minister's role in normal grief is essentially to support, to encourage catharsis of feeling, and
to make religious resources readily available. Proximity to death arouses deep death-fear in the
survivors (including the minister). This existential anxiety can be handled constructively only by
the experience of religious trust. Through his priestly role the minister brings familiar rituals and
theological beliefs to serve as vehicles of trust. He should avoid blocking the natural flow of
grief by implying that it is somehow unchristian to experience or express deep sorrow. Mourning
-- experiencing the awful pain of loss -- is an essential part of the healing-recovery process.
Abnormal or pathological grief reactions are like infected wounds which cannot heal. As Edgar
N. Taskson puts it, if working through the grief does not occur at the time of loss, "it will be
done later at a much greater cost to the total personality." (Edgar N. Jackson, Understanding
Grief (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1957), p. 143.) Here are some warning signs which may
indicate abnormal grief: an absence of mourning, increasing withdrawal from normal life,
undiminished grieving, psychosomatic illnesses, severe depression which does not lift,
personality changes, severe undiminishing guilt. It is the persistence of such symptoms over a
considerable period of time that shows most clearly that normal psychological healing is not
occurring. Repressed feelings of guilt, anger, and dependence deprivation are usually involved.
Pastoral counseling and/or psychiatric treatment should be instituted as soon as possible,
hopefully before the problem moves into a chronic, difficult-to-treat stage. The goals are to help
the person in releasing the "emotional tie to the deceased, despite the attending discomfort of
sorrow and subsequently to replace the type of interaction lost." (Henry H. Brewster, "Grief: A
Disrupted Human Relationship" Human Organization IX (195O), 19-22.) The method is to focus
on memories of the loved one, assisting the person to become aware of and resolve his powerful,
conflicted feelings about the loss. The process is painful, but there is no other road to healing.
Medical help should be sought when psychosis, severe depression, or psychosomatic problems
are obvious or suspected.
2. Stop-gap supportive counseling. A seriously disturbed young man contacted a minister in the
town to which he had moved recently. The minister recognized immediately that he needed
psychiatric treatment. Limited financial resources made the community mental health clinic the
only feasible referral. After an initial screening interview, he was placed on the clinic's waiting
list. During two months of waiting, the minister saw him regularly, making no attempt to engage
in insight counseling. He merely allowed the man opportunity to pour out his fears and troubles
in a supportive, accepting relationship. This relationship probably allowed him to remain
functional until psychiatric help was available. In many similar cases, a pastor can render
invaluable stopgap aid to a person in desperate need.
3. Sustaining counseling. For some persons who have low ego-strength or are irreversibly
crippled emotionally an ongoing relationship with an authority figure allows them to continue to
function. The minister's symbolic role makes him a natural supportive counselor. Dependent
persons are inevitably attracted to him because he represents a parental strength upon which they
need to lean. They can identify with him as he functions in various leadership roles (see Chap. 3)
and their dependency needs can be distributed among other leaders in the church organizations.
These factors make it possible for a minister to help sustain a network of dependent persons with
an economical expenditure of counseling time. An occasional counseling contact in which they
tell him "how things are" and he gives them whatever guidance is needed will have greater
meaning to them than many sessions with another counselor. Their awareness that he knows
them and is concerned about them, has an ongoing ego-sustaining effect. Many people are able
to keep going in desperately difficult situations because of this kind of relationship in their lives.
In ascertaining whether dependency relationships are constructive two questions are relevant:
Does the minister need to collect such relationships? Does he do things for people (make
decisions, for example) that they could do for themselves? If both can be answered in the
negative, such relationships are probably not blocking growth and, on the contrary, are serving a
vital need.
4. Supportive growth-action counseling. Supportive counseling with certain people does much
more than simply sustain them. It provides the interpersonal environment in which they can grow
in their ability to handle life constructively, The heart of such counseling is a steady, dependable
relationship with the minister. The person acquires strength, not by achieving depth insight, but
by the exercise of making decisions, taking responsibilities (often small, at the beginning), and
handling the stresses of his life-situation while in a supportive relationship. Self-esteem grows as
the person is helped to hold a job, experience modest success in his relationships, and reduce the
disorganization of his life. In short, the supportive relationship permits the person to function
constructively. From this he gains strength which gradually allows him to function with less
support.( For a more comprehensive discussion of supportive growth counseling see H. J.
Clinebell, Jr., "Ego Psychology and Pastoral Counseling, " Pastoral Psychology (February,
1963), pp. 26-36.)
Alcoholics Anonymous provides a vivid example of a supportive-growth group. By successfully
interrupting the "runaway symptom" of drinking to overcome the effects of previous drinking,
A.A. enables the alcoholic's personality resources to become available to him for handling his
problems in living. It provides a supportive social environment in which the alcoholic's
desocialized, semiparalyzed ego can acquire enough strength, by identifying with an accepting
group, to renew its functioning. This functioning in interpersonal relationships eventually
restores ego strength. Through A.A.'s supportive-growth approach nearly 300,000 "hopeless"
alcoholics have recovered, most of them with no attempt or need to explore the deep personality
conflicts which probably caused the addiction.
In supportive-growth-action counseling, the pastor focuses on present reality, current
relationships, and the practical problems of handling one's life situation more adequately. He is
as interested in what a person does about his problems as how he feels. No attempt is made to
ferret out deep underlying causes. Rather than search in the irrational and immature side of a
person's life the minister relates to his rational and mature side. The goal is to help the person's
adult side (which, as Eric Berne shows,( Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy [New York:
Grove Press, 1961] even the most inadequate person possesses) gain strength by functioning, so
that it will rescue control of the person's relationships from his child side. Such counseling aims
at discovering and activating whatever areas of potential strength and competence a person
possesses. The realization that significant enhancement of a person's general adequacy in living
can occur without anything approaching depth insight opens a wide door of new effectiveness for
the counseling minister.
"Insight" has been the ultimate goal, the magic word in pastoral counseling for too long. For
persons who have the time, money, and emotional resources to acquire self-understanding in
depth, it can be a life-transforming experience. But it is unrealistic to expect this in short-term
pastoral counseling. Many people lack an appreciable capacity to acquire depth insight. Many of
these, and others who have the capacity, do not require insight in order to enhance their
relationships and increase their effectiveness in living.
A teen-ager who has withdrawn from his peer group because of emotional problems becomes
progressively less able to relate to other adolescents because he misses important learning
experiences in relating. His emotional problems are increasingly aggravated by his actual lack of
social skills. A vicious failure-withdrawal cycle develops. If this is recognized early enough and
the underlying emotional problems are not too severe, the most helpful "treatment" is getting him
back into an accepting peer group. Often an emotionally secure teen-ager who "belongs" can be
found to serve as a bridge to such a group. If this is successful, no psychotherapy may be needed.
A school dropout often gets caught in a runaway, self-perpetuating failure cycle- the more he
fails, the more he expects to fail and the less his chances for success. Helping him interrupt and
reverse this vicious cycle by some experience of success is often more useful to him than
psychotherapy. Countless other examples of this could be cited. If taken seriously by the minister
counselor the supportive growth-action approach provides him with a counseling tool which he
is naturally equipped to use and which will allow him to help scores of people who do not
respond to a client-centered approach. Some form of supportive counseling is indicated when
working with persons having weak or rigid personal structures. This includes most alcoholics,
drug addicts, overt and borderline psychotics, those with severe psychosomatic problems,
religious fanatics, rabid "positive thinkers," and those with a protracted history of chronic failure
in adult roles (marriage and job). A supportive, rather than an uncovering (insight) approach is
also the most helpful one with most "senior citizens." Personality structure generally becomes
less resilient with the passing years.
Referral Counseling
Since many people trust his judgment and turn to him spontaneously when trouble strikes, a
minister is in a strategic position to assist them in finding competent, specialized help. A wise
referral is one of the most significant services he can render a suffering parishioner. A family
who, in the midst of a traumatic problem, is guided by its minister to effective help, is usually
eternally grateful to him. A minister can multiply his service to the troubled manyfold by using
all the helping resources of his community to the hilt. It is unfortunate that some ministers feel
that referral is an admission of weakness or failure. Action for Mental Health reports: "The
helping process seems to stop with the clergyman and physician in the majority of cases, and far
more so with the clergyman than with the physician." (Action for Mental Health, p. 104.)
As soon as a clergyman arrives in a new parish, he should begin to assemble a "referral file" of
community resources. If his community has a welfare planning council, it may provide a
directory (or a phone information service) listing health and welfare services. Professionals who
have been in the area for a while are often sources of reliable information. Accurate evaluations
of the relative competence of counselors and psychotherapists may be difficult to acquire except
by firsthand contacts and by observing the results of referrals. It is helpful for the minister to
have personal acquaintance with such persons and with key agency workers before he needs to
make a referral. Having lunch with such persons, attending an open A.A. meeting, or visiting the
local mental health clinic can strengthen one's referral-making ability.
Here are some basic guidelines for referral counseling: (a) Create this expectation -- When the
minister's availability for counseling is presented in the church paper, his function of assisting
persons in finding specialized help should always be mentioned. (b) Mention the possibility early
in any relationship in which one suspects a referral might be in order. The longer one waits, the
more referral will arouse feelings of rejection. If a counselee doesn't improve after four to eight
sessions, he probably should be referred. (c) Use rapport with the minister as a bridge over
which the person can walk into another relationship. This is facilitated if he knows that the
minister knows and trusts the person to whom he is referred. (d) Attempt to remove any
emotional blocks which may prevent him from going to the person or agency suggested. This
may take several sessions or even several months of counseling. When a referral is
recommended, the minister should routinely ask what the person has heard about that person or
agency and how he feels about going there for help. It is essential to search out the fears,
misinformation, and emotional resistances which otherwise will cause many referrals to be
unsuccessful. It is also wise to ask the person to report back, indicating a continuing interest in
his obtaining the best available help. (e) If possible, the person should make his own
appointment. This keeps the initiative where it belongs and also begins a relationship with the
new helping resource. (f) The minister should let the person know that his pastoral concern and
care will continue undiminished after the referral. This will lessen the sense of rejection.
However, it is essential that a person referred for counseling or psychotherapy not also continue
to counsel with the pastor. One counselor at a time!
Short-term Educative and Decision-Making Counseling
In many counseling situations, the minister needs to combine the skills of the educator, the guide,
and the counselor. Effectiveness in such short-term "pastoral guidance" depends on the minister's
wise use of his special knowledge and authority. Awareness of when to use advice, instruction,
and guidance to facilitate rather than block growth is one aspect of the sensitivity of a well-
trained counselor. Lacking this sensitivity, a counselor's advice, like that of Job's "comforters," is
apt to be a burden rather than a blessing.
The pastor's authority is "strong medicine" and should be used in counseling (as elsewhere) with
caution and moderation, under circumstances such as these: (a) When a person's decision-making
ability is temporarily crippled. Encouraging a grief-crushed person to choose a coffin within his
price range is an example. (b) To block a precipitous, impulsive action with serious, irreversible
consequences. A minister is obliged to use persuasion, coercion, and even physical restraint if
necessary to save a person bent on suicide. In cases where any dangerous, impulsive actions are
planned, the minister's role is to interrupt the person's momentum, to encourage him to explore
the probable consequences, and to consider alternatives. (c) With those who are mature enough
(in their relations with authority) to accept or reject suggestions after weighing their merits, it is
relatively safe to advise. Except in an emergency, a wise counselor will never give advice or
attempt to instruct a person until he understands something of that person's inner world.
A seasoned pastor has a wealth of knowledge from his training and experience which counselees
lack and some of which they need as grist for the decision-making process. The minister's
legitimate fear of "playing God" in the lives of other people should not prevent him from sharing
his knowledge when appropriate. He should, of course, be alert to the emotional problems which
frequently lurk behind requests for information. When advice and/or instruction are used in
counseling they constitute only part of the process. They should always be combined with work
on the feeling level. It is usually more constructive to help a person explore alternatives than it is
to suggest one course of action. The counselor should respect people's freedom to make their
own mistakes and their own decisions even when they seem to him to be in error. (He should
shield them, if possible, from mistakes which have disastrous or irreversible consequences.)
There are many things that a person cannot be taught. He can only learn them for himself.
One thing a minister needs is faith in the effectiveness of skilled short-term counseling.
Experience at family service centers has shown that many people can be helped significantly in
one or two sessions at a time of crucial decision or crisis.( From a discussion on April 5, 1963
with Carl Shafer, formerly director of the Pasadena Family Service Association.) An impulsive
decision to initiate divorce proceedings made during the heat of a domestic battle, often proves,
when the smoke has cleared, to be unfortunate. Because of the chain-reaction of lawyers'
maneuvering and mutual recriminations which follows such a decision, the action may be
difficult to reverse. This is why a minister is usually justified in using pressure, if necessary, to
persuade a couple in a marriage crisis to agree to a moratorium on legal action until they have
had several months to explore alternative ways of resolving their conflicts.
Robert Frost's poem, "The Road Not Taken," has a certain relevance to short-term pastoral
guidance. In vocational counseling, for example, a fork-in-the-road ministry may be all that is
needed. A minister who encourages a bright adolescent to take the college fork rather than its
alternative may in one interview have a decisive positive influence on that person's next sixty
years. In many cases, of course, vocational dilemmas involve emotional conflicts which call for
longer-term counseling.
If a counselor expects to be genuinely helpful in a few sessions, the odds that he will be are
improved. The Court of Conciliation in Los Angeles maintains a counseling service for disturbed
marriages. Sixty percent of their couples have already filed for divorce. All couples are seen
from one to three times. For one third of them, this is enough to effect reconciliation. These are
families in which pressures such as loss of job, ill health, in-laws moving in, and so forth, have
knocked the marriage off balance. Their problems snowball. Often this runaway process can be
interrupted and they can be helped to get their marriage back in balance in a short time. The
other two thirds of the couples are disturbed persons who require more extended help. The
remarkable thing about the conciliation service is that in spite of the advanced disintegration of
many of the marriages, an average of sixty out of a hundred couples decide to try to save their
marriages through a "trial reconciliation." Follow-up studies after a year show that three fourths
of these are still together.( This report on results and methodology is from a talk on April 5, 1963
by Meyer Elkin, Director of the Court of Reconciliation counseling service.) One reason for the
success of this service is its atmosphere of hope. The counselors expect to help people and they
do!
The approach of this service has aspects which can be used in short-term pastoral counseling.
Here is what these counselors do: (a) Furnish disciplined listening. (b) Provide ego support. The
counselor helps a couple to keep their heads above water and see what is happening. (c) Help the
couple mobilize their inner resources. They often discover these as they talk with a counselor.
(d) Help them to distinguish an impulse from a final decision. "I want a divorce" may mean "I
don't want a divorce" or "Help me" or "What do I want?" (e) Interpret only conscious material.
The counselor may be aware of unconscious material but he does not deal with it. (f) Use
questions and confrontation. A question, skillfully used, is to a counselor what a scalpel is to a
surgeon. (g) Focus on the marriage relationship, instead of on the inner problems of the
individuals. (h) Use authority constructively. At the conciliation service, seven out of ten couples
actually sign a written agreement which aims at helping them reorganize their role-relationships.
The ritual of working it out is often helpful.
Superego Counseling
In the period when modern psychotherapy was born, many of those seeking help were crippled
by neurotic, puritanical consciences which stifled their creativity and loaded them with neurotic
guilt feelings. The goal of counseling with such persons was and is to decrease the severity of
their hair-shirt consciences and to help them become more self-accepting. The pastor still sees
many people who need precisely this help. But he also sees persons whose inner controls or
consciences are underdeveloped and weak. They have not internalized the culture's major values
and therefore have not learned to control their impulses. Such "character problems" sometimes
stem from homes where weak parents mistook permissiveness for love and were unable to
maintain stable limits or dependable discipline. Many others come from barren, loveless homes
or from homes with a physically or emotionally absent father.
A girl of seventeen came to her pastor to discuss her sexual activities. Her father was an
emotionally nonresident commuter. Although she consciously felt little or no guilt about her
activities, she was fearful of "getting caught." If the minister had responded to her reports of
promiscuity in a passive or permissive way, she would have interpreted this as more of the weak,
detached permissiveness of her father. She needed more acceptance than she was getting at
home, but not more permissiveness! On the contrary, what she needed was for the minister to be
both an accepting and a firm father-figure from whom she could gain strength in controlling her
own behavior and in relation to whom she could establish her own constructive limits. After
rapport was well developed, the minister made it clear that from his point of view, certain
behavior is harmful to persons and therefore morally wrong. Using accepting confrontation he
helped her face rather than avoid the probable consequences of her behavior. Most important, he
helped her become aware of and work through her confused, lonely, rebellious feelings which
provided fuel for the behavior. In reflecting on this experience, the minister realized that the girl
was, by her behavior, pleading for some adult to set limits. In fact, this is probably why she had
come to a minister.
Every minister represents the value structure of the community. This is an aspect of his socially
defined role which is essential to the mental and moral health of our society. He should never be
afraid, in any relationship, to stand for the things he regards as right. If his acceptance of feeling
is mistaken by counselees for acceptance of their person-hurting behavior, they will be confused
and letdown by him. His role as a value-symbolizer keeps some troubled persons from seeking
his help. But for the many who come suffering from either weak or punitive consciences his
symbolic role provides a tremendous counseling advantage. In using confrontation and firmness
with those who have underdeveloped consciences, it is essential that the minister "speak the truth
in love." If he has achieved reasonable awareness and self-acceptance of his own weaknesses and
sin, he will be better able to stand for what he regards as right without being self-righteous,
moralistic, or rejecting of other sinners.
Edmund Bergler has written that "a feeling of guilt follows every person like his shadow,
whether or not he knows it."( The Battle of the Conscience [Westport, Conn.: Associated
Booksellers, 1948], p. vii.)
As indicated in Chap. 2, human guilt is of two intertwined varieties -- normal, resulting from
hurting persons; and neurotic, resulting from breaking puritanical mores. Normal guilt is healed
by confession, making amends, and experiencing forgiveness. As a religious leader, the minister
counselor can use the healing symbols of Christianity by which such guilt can be transformed.
Neurotic guilt can be alleviated temporarily by compulsive self-punishing atonement devices. It
can be removed by the maturing of the person's conscience through depth counseling.
Informal Counseling
The idea of the psychotherapist who sits in his office seeing clients for fifty-minute hours is
inapplicable to much of a clergyman's counseling. Many of his best counseling opportunities
occur informally, as a part of his general pastoring. One aspect of the uniqueness of the pastoral
office is the opportunity to apply counseling sensitivities and insights in the ordinary encounters
of parish life. It is well to recall that the counseling of Jesus apparently occurred in such informal
settings as by a well with a Samaritan woman. The minister should develop the skill of turning
pastoral calls and chance conversations into counseling opportunities, formal or informal. Unless
he does this, he will miss many who need help but are afraid to seek it directly.
Some people who cannot overcome their resistance to admitting their need for counseling can
pause for a few minutes after a meeting to tell the minister something about a situation. They
may or may not move into a formal counseling relationship. Even if they do not, they can receive
some supportive help and guidance from occasional informal contacts. Counseling-shy persons
sometimes edge into counseling by coming to discuss other matters and then in an offhand way
bring up the real problem.
In informal counseling many of the approaches of short-term formal counseling are useful --
sensitive listening, reflecting feelings, seeking to understand empathetically, giving ego support,
summarizing the person's perception of the problem, asking questions, examining alternatives,
giving information, and, occasionally, advice. If a serious problem is evident, the minister should
make every effort to continue the counseling. One Sunday morning a middle-aged parishioner
paused after the other worshipers had left to mention that she was planning to seek a divorce.
After listening for several minutes, the minister said, "Let's step over to my study where we can
talk about this more fully." (If this had not been convenient, he could have said, "I'm going to be
over your way this afternoon about two o'clock. If it's convenient, I'll stop by so that we can
discuss it more fully.")
Creative pastoral calling gives rise to many opportunities for informal counseling, particularly in
cases of shut-ins, the sick, the unemployed, the aged, and the rootless who move frequently in a
futile effort to escape themselves. To make the most constructive use of his calling time a
minister might maintain a "Special Help List" of the names of those whom he knows or suspects
have special needs. In addition to those just mentioned, the bereaved, the alcoholic (hidden or
open), the handicapped, and the vocationally or maritally maladjusted have a place on such a list.
The minister does well to invest a greater than average amount of pastoral time in these members
of his flock. His aim will be to allow a strong bridge of rapport to grow with them so that they
can walk over it (psychologically) to seek his help. If they do not do so, and the relationship is
strong or the need great he should not hesitate to take the initiative in offering help.
How does one keep pastoral calls from being merely pleasant social visits, dominated by the
usual social "chitchat"? The minister can offer opportunities for the communication to move to a
deeper level. John Sutherland Bonnell used this question to open doors of pastoral opportunity:
"How are things going with you spiritually?" Subtle distress signals such as a catch in the voice,
a slip of the tongue, tension in a marriage relationship, or a change in the pattern of church
participation can often be picked up if the minister has his psychological antenna out to catch
these cries for help. If a parishioner sounds burdened or despondent, simply saying, "You sound
as though you're feeling discouraged," often opens the door to counseling.
Group Counseling
Much pastoral counseling now done on an individual basis could be done more efficiently and
effectively in small groups. In his volume on group counseling in the church, Joseph W.
Knowles writes:
Group counseling is integral to the ministry of the church. The doctrines of church and ministry
reveal the depth nature of a counseling group, and a counseling group can become a means of
grace whereby the church is enabled to be the church. Furthermore, the ministry of the church is
the ministry of the entire people of God. Group counseling can become one means by which the
pastor fulfills his essential function "to equip God's people for work in his service" (Ephesians
4:11-12, NEB), and through which laymen perform their priesthood as members of the Body of
Christ.( Group Counseling [Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, 1964], pp. 7-8.)
Group counseling offers the richest single field for future development within the general
pastoral counseling field. (This underscores the importance of providing training in group
dynamics and group counseling for theological students and ministers.) As indicated in Chap. 7,
the proliferation of small groups in churches all over this country and in many other parts of the
world shows that this exciting development is already well along.
Religious-Existential Problem Counseling
A relatively small percentage of those who seek pastoral help come because of overt "religious
problems" -- problems of belief, doubt, prayer, and so forth. When such problems are presented
in counseling, they sometimes are surface-level manifestations of deeper emotional problems. A
man in his early forties consulted his minister because his prayer life had lost its meaning. In the
course of counseling it became clear that he was suffering from an oppressive load of guilt linked
to the death by suicide of a relative for whom he had felt some responsibility. When this problem
was worked through in counseling, vitality returned to his prayer life. The minister should be
aware that psychological problems, including psychoses, sometimes come disguised as "religious
problems."
It is equally important to be aware of the spiritual emptiness and lack of a meaningful philosophy
of life which are at the root of many neurotic problems. Paul Tillich points out that those who are
empty of meaning are "easy victims of neurotic anxiety"( The Courage to Be (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1952), p. 151) and conversely, that a high degree of neurotic anxiety renders
one hypersensitive to the threat of nonbeing.(Ibid., p. 67) Thus, there is a reciprocity between
neurotic and existential anxiety -- each reinforcing the other.
There is a religious dimension to every human problem in that existential anxiety is inherent in
all human existence. When a person lacks a vital religious life he has no way of handling his
existential anxiety constructively. As noted in Chap. 2, it is only as a person faces his existential
anxiety and makes it a part of his self-affirmation that it becomes a creativity-stimulating rather
than a deadening influence in his life. It is possible to confront existential anxiety only to the
extent that one has achieved a viable personal religion, including a meaningful philosophy of
life, a challenging object of devotion (and self-investment), a sense of mystery and
transcendence, and a deep-level experience of basic trust in God, oneself, others, and life. When
these have been achieved to a significant degree existential anxiety becomes, in Kierkegaard's
words, a "school" -- a source of wisdom and growth.
The basic religious problem consists of finding these four experiences so that one can handle
existential anxiety creatively. Until the middle years many people are able to ignore their
unsatisfied spiritual hungers. But when a person crosses the halfway point in his life, his value
"vacuum" or inner poverty becomes painfully obvious as he moves on the downward slope
toward death. Frequently such persons become depressed with a sense of utter futility. Helping
the person find a religious orientation and dedication is often the central task in counseling with
such persons. Helping him look at his life from a religious perspective can change his basic
feelings about his problems. As a specialist in spiritual growth, the minister should be able to
render unique help to such individuals.
Specialized Ministries Of Counseling
Every church of more than five hundred members should have one minister on its staff with
advanced training in pastoral counseling. (His training should be such as to qualify him for
membership in the American Association of Pastoral Counselors.) (Clinical membership
requirements include: college and seminary degrees, a masters degree in pastoral counseling,
ordination and good standing in a denomination, three years of parish experience, six months of
clinical training and 250 hours of supervision of one's counseling, and personal therapy.)
Here is a job analysis for a Minister of "Counseling":
1. Provide a pastoral counseling service for members and constituents.
2. Develop a group counseling program for those with special needs and those who wish to raise
their level of creativity in relationships.
3. Work with the leaders of church groups with the goal of increasing their groups' abilities to
meet the needs of persons.
4. Develop a long-range program of premarital education and counseling.
5. Provide vocational counseling of youth and young adults.
6. Serve as a resource person for renewal and planning retreats.
7. Work with the Christian Education Committee in developing a parent and family-life
education program, teacher and leadership training workshops.
8. Participate occasionally in the preaching ministry, the leadership of public worship,
ministering to the hospitalized, and speaking to church groups.( This is an amended version of
the goals of the ministry of counseling in which the author engaged at the First Methodist Church
of Pasadena. Not all of these goals were achieved.)
The emergence of pastoral counseling as a specialty within the ministry has been paralleled by
the development of church counseling centers in many parts of the country. There are now 164
of these sponsored by denominations, councils of churches, individual churches, seminaries, and
privately.( Berkley C. Hathorne, A Critical Analysis of Protestant Church Counseling Centers
(Washington, D. C,: Board of Christian Social Concerns, The Methodist Church, 1964) The
majority of these are staffed by clergy counselors; some have interprofessional staffs. These
counseling centers have opened a new, significant dimension in the churches' mental health
ministry. In his study of the Churches and Mental Health, Richard V. McCann states that pastoral
counseling centers "could be at least a partial answer to the need for substitutes for mental health
facilities in small communities." (Churches and Mental Health, pp. 94-95.)
I share the enthusiasm of his conclusion: "The church counseling centers, in attempting to meet
the mental and spiritual needs of people, seem to be the best way, organizationally, to make this
aspect of the ministry available to people who need it." (Ibid., p. 95)
In the most comprehensive study of these centers now available, Berkley C. Hathorne arrived at
these conclusions:
1. The church counseling centers have restored an historic tradition to the Church by meeting
neglected needs. 2.... provide help for many who would not otherwise get assistance. 3....
perform a significant community service by functioning in part as a referral agency. 4.... may aid
in the prevention of more severe disturbances. 5.... may provide unique opportunities for
personal and spiritual growth. 6.... have fostered inter-professional association and cooperation.
7.... demonstrate another dimension of interdenominational cooperation. 8.... provide a clinical
setting for advanced training in pastoral counseling. 9.... provide a clinical laboratory for
research. 10.... confront American Protestantism with the challenge to extend and expand the
ministry of counseling. (Hathorne. pp. 79-83.)
The specialist in pastoral counseling, whether he works on a local church staff or in a counseling
center, shares many of the counseling advantages of the parish minister and, in addition, has time
and training to do depth counseling or pastoral psychotherapy. This is a salutary development,
since it means that persons with theological training will now be cooperating with secular
disciplines in seeking depth understanding of the human psyche.
Spiritual Healing and Pastoral Counseling
In a survey of ministers from Protestant churches one third had attempted spiritual healing in
some form.( See Charles S. Braden "Study of Spiritual Healing in the Churches." Pastoral
Psychology, Vol. V, No. 44 (May, 1954), pp. 9-15.) The current upsurge of this interest
represents a revival of an ancient but long-neglected ministry. The term "spiritual healing" seems
to suggest that some healing is not spiritual. Since all healing involves the release within a
person of God-given growth forces, all healing is spiritual healing. Actually, what the term
usually describes is approaches to healing making primary use of traditional religious forms and
instrumentalities such as prayer, communion, the laying on of hands (Mark 16:18), and anointing
with oil (James 5:13-16) .
Both the spiritual healing and the pastoral counseling approaches are useful in a local church's
program. Both have the same goal -- the restoration of persons to greater wholeness. Experience
has shown that some persons respond to one approach who do not respond to the other, and vice
versa, while others benefit from a combination of counseling and healing services. Each
approach tends to serve as a corrective of the other.
The physical danger in the spiritual-healing emphasis is that it will encourage persons to delay or
neglect using the resources of medicine. A sound approach, of course, urges the use of all
channels of God's healing, including the full range of medical resources. Psychologically,
spiritual healing may increase unhealthy dependence on the leader and encourage the expectation
of cures from the outside not involving struggle with inner problems. Theologically, this
approach may cause people to feel they are manipulating divine forces to their own end, in a
magical way. If a person is led to believe that enough faith will cure any condition, then failure
to be healed saddles him with a load of guilt for his lack of faith. Enlightened approaches to
healing strive to counteract these dangers. The emphasis is on opening the channels of one's life
to the everavailable healing power of God and on healing of the personality. Physical healing
may or may not be one aspect of this deeper healing of the spirit.
One danger that besets pastoral counseling is that it will lose its awareness of the spiritual
element in all healing and will become infatuated, in an idolatrous way, with the human
cleverness of psychology. The spiritual healing emphasis, particularly in its priestly aspects, can
help a pastoral counselor retain a robust awareness of the vertical dimension in all relationships,
including counseling relationships. It can remind the person enamored with counseling that the
principles of the spiritual universe are much too complex to fit any machine model comfortably.
There is infinitely more that we do not know than we do know about the human spirit and its
relation to the Spirit of the universe.
The emphases in counseling on respect for the orderly cause-effect sequences in the world of the
psyche and on the necessity of a person's growing in his responsibility for his own inner life can
help to counteract any tendency in spiritual healing to function in ways which encourage magic
or the temptation to shift the total responsibility to God. Training in counseling can help a
minister use his authority constructively in healing rituals. Thus counseling and spiritual healing
methods are complementary instruments for enhancing the wholeness of persons.
M
Readings
Alcoholics Anonymous. A. A. Publishing Co., 1955.
Brister, C. W. Pastoral Care in the Church. New York: Harper & Row, 1964.
Clinebell, Howard J, Jr. "Ego Psychology and Pastoral Counseling." Pastoral Psychology
(February, 1963).
Clinebell, Howard J, Jr."Counseling with The Family of The Alcoholic," Pastoral Psychology
(April, 1962).
Clinebell, Howard J, Jr. "Philosophical-Religious Factors in the Etiology and Treatment of
Alcoholism." Quarterly Journal of Studies on Alcohol (September, 1963).
Clinebell, Howard J, Jr.Understanding and Counseling the Alcoholic. Nashville: Abingdon
Press, 1956.
Hiltner, Seward. Pastoral Counseling. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1952.
Hiltner, Scward, and Colston, Lowell G. The Context of Pastoral Counseling. Nashville:
Abingdon Press, 1961.
Ikin, Alice G. New Concepts of Healing. New York: Association Press, 1956.
Irion, Paul E. The Funeral and the Mourners. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1954.
Jackson, Edgar N. Understanding Grief. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1957.
Johnson, Paul E. Psychology of Pastoral Care. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1953.
Oates, Wayne E. Protestant Pastoral Counseling. Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1962.
Rogers, Carl R. On Becoming a Person. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1961.
Stewart, Charles W. The Minister as Marriage Counselor. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1961.
Wise, Carroll A. Pastoral Counseling: Its Theory and Practice. New York: Harper & Row,
1951.
