Helping the Good Shepherd

Pastoral Counselors in a Psychotherapeutic Culture, 1925-1975
Erscheinungsjahr 2009
ISBN: 978-0-8018-9047-5
Verlag: Johns Hopkins University Press

Buch, Englisch, 320 Seiten, Format (B × H): 160 mm x 224 mm, Gewicht: 567 g

Reihe: Medicine, Science, and Religion in Historical Context

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.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Myers-Shirk, Susan E

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Religionswissenschaft Allgemein Religion & Wissenschaft
• Geisteswissenschaften Christentum, Christliche Theologie Praktische Theologie Seelsorge, Pastoraltheologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Religionswissenschaft Allgemein Soziallehre und Sozialethik, Pastoral und Seelsorge
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Amerikanische Geschichte
• Sozialwissenschaften Psychologie Psychologie / Allgemeines & Theorie Geschichte der Psychologie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

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

Über Autor(innen)

Myers-Shirk, Susan E
Susan E. Myers-Shirk is a professor of history at Middle Tennessee State University.