Biomedical subjects
Raymond J Lawrence
Publications and source records attributed to Raymond J Lawrence.
College of Pastoral Supervision and Psychotherapy adds its sponsorship to the Journal of Pastoral Care & Counseling.
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Discrete varieties of care in the clinical pastoral tradition: continuing the dialogue.
In the current cultural context, clinically trained ministers, lay and ordained, offer themselves to troubled souls through at least three distinct varieties of assistance: pastoral care, pastoral counseling, and pastoral psychotherapy. This essay delineates three accepted disciplines, emphasizing the importance of ascertaining, and perhaps re-evaluating, the particular needs and desires of persons who are in physical, mental, or spiritual distress. "Pastoral care," "pastoral counseling," and "pastoral psychotherapy" each play an important role in fulfilling the traditional mandate for "the cure of souls."
The witches' brew of spirituality and medicine.
Recent proposals to join spirituality and medicine are facile and ill defined. The notion that physicians have the time or training to make assessments and recommendations about spirituality is misguided. Whenever a physician demonstrates personal caring for a patient, the healing process is likely enhanced, and in that sense, physicians often promote the spirituality of the patient. However, recent proposals to extend the physician's task to that of assessing religion and directing the patient toward approved forms of spirituality are inappropriate. The languages of religion and science are radically different. The cultural body-mind split will not be solved by such simplistic solutions as having physicians endorse spirituality, which will result only in denigration of both medicine and religion. Physicians are encouraged to rely on clinically trained ministers for assistance in understanding the patient's state of mind or spirit and its possible effects on the course of illness and health.
Four fatal flaws in recent spirituality research.
The answer to the question of whether clinical pastoral education and professional chaplaincy need become more scientific should be a Tillichian "yes and no." Pastoral care and counseling is both an art and a science. The field is thus subject ineluctably to scientific examination. However, its artistic dimensions are elusive and impenetrable to scientific scrutiny.