Caring for God's People: Counseling and Christian Wholeness

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Fortress Press, 1. jaan 2000 - 336 pages
Culbertson has built his text around the ideal of Christian wholeness and maturity-a healthy interconnectedness of self-within-community. The heart of the book lies in its presentation of the three schools of counseling theory that Culbertson finds most helpful: family systems theory, narrative counseling theory, and object relations theory. Each of these is explained in detail, and then applied to the most common and challenging of counseling situations: pre-marital counseling, marriage counseling, divorce counseling, counseling gay men and women, and grief counseling. Culbertson brings new sensitivities to the counseling scene-a more nuanced grasp of gender, a new sense of families, issues of sexual orientation, a strong sense of the relationship of emotions to spirituality, an empathetic attitude, a pragmatic but professional mix of ancillary theories, and a sense of the relevance of the counselor's own self-understanding.

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Selected pages

Contents

1 Family Systems Theory
10
The Family as System
11
The Nuclear Family
12
Sociometrics and Systems Theory
18
Applying Family Systems Theory
25
Feminism and Family Systems Theory
32
Conclusion
33
Appendix A to Chapter 1
36
Divorce and the Church
181
Normalizing Divorce
183
Conclusion
184
7 Counseling Gays and Lesbians
188
Pastoral Attitudes and Counseling Skills
189
Coming Out as a Developmental Process
191
Orientation Preference or Behavior? Identity and Community
195
Counseling Teens about Gay Identity
197

Appendix B to Chapter 1
40
The Historical Value of Stories
42
The Many Types of Stories
43
The Structure of a Simple Story
44
Multiple Endings Multiple Meanings
46
FAMILY NARRATIVES
47
SELFDEFINING NARRATIVES
56
INTERSUBJECTIVE NARRATIVES
64
Conclusion
67
Assumptions and Adaptability of Object Relations Theory
71
The Formation of Object Representations
72
The Historical Development of Object Relations Theory
75
The Development and Structure of the ObjectSelf
79
Internalizing the ObjectOther
80
Splitting
82
Projection and Projective Identification
85
The Holding Environment
88
Mirroring and Cueing
89
The Inner World of the Primary Parent
91
The Infants World and Transitional Phenomena
93
Connecting Narrative and Object Relations
95
Object Relations and Christian Faith
97
A Trinity of Gods
98
Human Infancy and the ObjectGod
100
Conclusion
105
The Application
109
Who Needs Premarital Counseling?
111
When to Schedule Premarital Counseling
113
Taking Care of Business
115
And the Two Shall Be One
118
The Theology of Marriage
131
Who Should Be Present in Premarital Sessions?
132
Remarriage
133
Conclusion
134
A CUSTOMARY FOR WEDDINGS AT CHRIST CHURCH
137
5 Marriage Counseling
139
The Witness of Scripture and History
140
Is There a Right Way to Be Married?
141
The Destructive Power of Unresolved Issues
143
Marriage as a Developmental Process
144
The Nine Tasks in a Healthy Marriage
146
The Characteristics of a Good Marriage
149
What Makes a Marriage Christian?
150
Counseling Skills for Effective Ministry
152
Conclusion
155
The Shock of Marriage
157
The Reasons for Divorce
158
Divorce Narratives
162
Divorce within Family Systems
163
Cultural Factors in Divorce
165
Divorce Counseling and Divorce Mediation
169
Telling the Kids
170
Divorce and Object Relations Theory
171
The Effect of Divorce on Children
174
PostDivorce Parenting
178
Counseling Married Adults Who Are Coming Out
200
Counseling Gay Couples for Permanency
204
Spiritual Direction with Gays and Lesbians
207
Conclusion
209
A Coming Out Chart
212
Normalizing Death
216
Anticipatory Normal and Acute Grief
217
Death and Human Culture
218
Mourning Rituals
220
The Shape of Grief Work
221
Good Grief and Bad Grief
227
Some Dos and Donts of Caring for Mourners
229
Mourning and Object Relations Theory
232
Mourning and Family Systems Theory
234
Mourning and Narrative Counseling Theory
238
Mourning and Human Development
241
Gender Differences in Mourning
245
Pastoral Care of Those Who Are HIVPositive
246
Mourning a Loss by Suicide
248
Conclusion
249
Staying Safe in Ministry
253
The Art of Counseling
254
Pastoral Care or Cheap Therapy?
255
The Physical Geography of Counseling
256
Intake Counseling
257
ShortTerm Counseling
258
LongTerm Counseling
260
Dynamics of the Counseling Session
261
Levels of Meaning in the Counseling Relationship
269
The Principles of Active Listening
270
Expectations for a Cure
271
Counseling Crossculturally
272
Conclusion
273
Can One Be Too Wounded for Ministry?
275
How Widespread Is Pastoral Woundedness?
276
Woundedness versus Congruence
277
Defining Pastoral Congruence
279
A Second Type of Congruence
283
Nothing Is Foreign to Me
284
The Price of Incongruence
285
Achieving Pastoral Congruence through Ministry Supervision
287
What Clinical Ministry Supervision Is Not
289
SelfSupervision
290
Individual Clinical Supervision
291
Ministry Supervision and the Health of the Larger Church
300
Group and Peer Supervision
301
Gender Issues in Supervision
302
Narrative Theory and Supervision
304
Toxic and Benign Shame during Supervision
307
Conclusion
308
The Supervisory Contract
313
11 CONCLUSION
316
INDEX
321
Copyright

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Caring for God's People: Counseling and Christian Wholeness
Philip Leroy Culbertson
No preview available - 2000

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References to this book

About the author (2000)

Philip Culbertson teaches Pastoral Care and Counseling at St Johns Theological College; Counseling Psychology at Auckland University; Psychotherapy at Auckland University of Technology; and has a private practice in psychotherapy.

He holds a Bachelors degree in Music from Washington University, a Masters degree in Divinity from General Theology Seminary in New York City, and a PhD in Education from New York University. He has done additional graduate studies at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, The Ecumenical Institute of the World Council of Churches in Bossey Switzerland, and at Auckland University of Technology in New Zealand.

Culbertson belongs to the American Academy of Religion, the Society of Biblical Literature, and the New Zealand Association of Psychotherapists.

He is the author of New Adam: The Future of Masculine Spirituality (Fortress Press, 1991) and coeditor, with Arthur Shippee, of The Pastor: Readings from the Patristic Period (Fortress Press, 1990).

Bibliographic information

PealkiriCaring for God's People: Counseling and Christian Wholeness
Integrating Spirituality Into Pastoral Counseling
AutorPhilip Culbertson
PublisherFortress Press, 2000
ISBN1451415990, 9781451415995
Length336 pages
  
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