Pastoral Psychology最新文献

COVID-19 presented a difficult environment for care workers, including clergy, as they sought to address human needs within an often-contentious culture. Unique tasks heightened counseling responsibilities, and management of strained relationships introduced new or enhanced stressors into their jobs. Care worker stressors can lead to compassion fatigue. This study aimed to examine clergy’s unique tasks and stressors during COVID-19 to ascertain causal paths toward compassion fatigue. The results of the structural equation analysis demonstrated role and occupational stressors fully mediated the path from tasks to compassion fatigue. The indication was that it was not administrative tasks (e.g., accommodating health measures, adapting the delivery of ministry) nor care tasks (e.g., providing support and counseling to family and patients of COVID-19 victims) that directly caused compassion fatigue; rather, it was the criticism, conflict, and relationship stressors encountered during the ministry that led to compassion fatigue. Implications and recommendations for clergy and administrative development to mitigate and manage role stress and clergy occupational distress are presented. Overall, the study provides insight into the mechanisms by which clergy job demands during COVID-19 led to compassion fatigue, pointing to stressors as the key mediating factors.

The author argues that the Broadway musical Hadestown sheds light on liberation as a goal and process of spiritual care. Sharp reflects on parenting in conversation with her own experiences of encountering systemic deception with a chronically ill child in medical crisis. She reflects on postcolonializing pastoral care in conversation with Howard Thurman’s theory of liberation from deception, fear, and hatred. Sharp contemplates an iterative creative process in conversation with Hadestown songwriter Anaïs Mitchell. Intertwining reflections on parenting, postcolonializing, and processes of creativity, Sharp casts liberative healing as an ongoing integrative spiral rather than a linear progression from ill to well and from trapped to freed. In sum, this paper connects Hadestown and healing, linking the personal with the professional, weaving parenting into a vocation of partnering in postcolonializing.

This study examined the effectiveness of a spiritual/religious intervention on religious coping and eudaimonic psychological well-being in breast cancer survivors. A quasi-experimental design with pre- and post-tests and a control group was used to study 60 Iranian breast cancer patients. The 14-item Brief RCOPE and the Ryff’s 6-Dimensional Psychological Well-Being Scales were administered at baseline and follow-up. An analysis of covariance revealed that spiritual/religious intervention was effective in increasing positive religious coping and reducing negative religious coping but not in increasing psychological well-being. Implications of the findings for the healthcare of women with breast cancer are discussed.

In this article, I discuss Edvard Munch’s iconic artwork, The Scream, as a contemplation on the voicelessness of intense suffering and the power of lament. I first recall a clinical case in the hospital setting where a patient was lamenting but lacked compassionate witnesses to understand her lament. I then discuss Munch’s iterative process for creating The Scream and explore questions that this masterpiece evokes. Painted in 1893, the work resonates with its viewers, powerfully representing human anguish, anxiety, and existential dread. I review Munch’s biography and upbringing, suggesting that Munch’s painting is his own attempt at having the viewer witness his own lament—a witness he did not have in his childhood. After reflecting on The Scream and Munch’s upbringing, I discuss theologian John Swinton’s work on lament. He asserts that lament is a faithful response to suffering and can restore the sufferer’s faith and relationship with God. I assert that a similar framework, such as asking patients to speak their own illness narrative, should be further explored as an important part of modern holistic medical care.

With ever-increasing demands placed upon active priests in the United States, insight into protecting their mental health may help strengthen vocational resilience for individual priests. The purpose of this study was to examine the association of individual variables, workplace characteristics, and physical activity participation with occupational distress levels among Catholic priests. A 22-question survey consisting of a demographic questionnaire, the Clergy Occupational Distress Index, and the International Physical Activity Questionnaire was employed to collect individual variables, workplace characteristics, physical activity participation, and occupational distress levels of Catholic priests from the Eastern seaboard of the United States. Regression analyses showed that the number of years ordained (β = −.24, p < .01) and number of priests residing together (β = −.11, p = .05) were negatively associated with occupational distress levels. Collectively, these demographic, workplace, and physical activity variables accounted for about 10% of the variances in priest participant occupational distress scores. Findings suggest that novice priests may be more susceptible to occupational distress than veteran priests and that those living in multi-priest households tend to show lower levels of occupational distress. (Arch)dioceses may find the results of the current study useful for planning housing situations for priests or to better help novice priests meet the demands of their vocation.

Physicians and healthcare professionals are tasked with prioritizing their own self-care while also caring for patients and their complex needs within a broken healthcare system. The identity formation they experience can be directly impacted by changes in professional and personal contexts. This article examines the power of a visual work of art to create opportunities for self-reflection, expression, and vulnerability through established constructs of the “third thing in medical education” and museum-based educational approaches such as the Personal Response Tour. I then apply Marcus Bussey’s framework of the ‘future senses’ and anticipatory aesthetics to surrealist painter René Magritte’s 1966 work Decalcomania. With the added lens of personal narrative juxtaposed with Magritte’s visual work, the article delves into the power of anticipatory aesthetics and the future senses as a way to envision new futures and a path forward in the midst of professional identity questioning.

This article investigates the experience of beauty and eco-sorrow with the aim of depicting some painful truths, as well as existential responses to eco-sorrow. The article begins by portraying the attributes of the experience of beauty, relying on an emended version of Christopher Bollas’s notion of transformational objects and Buber’s I–Thou experience. This lays the foundation for explicating the attendant experience of eco-sorrow, which entails the painful recognition of (1) the degradation of the Earth and a loss of beauty, (2) the extinction of other species, (3) human-caused climate disaster, and (4) existential insignificance and impermanence. The latter is further understood in terms of Giorgio Agamben’s notion of the ontological rift, which is produced and maintained by the Abrahamic religious traditions and Western political philosophies. Recognition of the ontological rift, which is a defense against existential insignificance and impermanence, is a key part of the experience of eco-sorrow. The last section explores responses to beauty and eco-sorrow, such as despair, nihilism, forced hope/optimism, flights of fantasy, and, ideally, a categorical demand for inoperative care.

This article claims that the Anthropocene Age reveals the tragic insanity that lies at the core of religious experiences informed by Hebrew and Christian scriptures. In brief, I claim that Western Christianity and its apparatuses produce beliefs, which are an integral part of persons’ religious experiences, that give rise to an ontological rift between human beings and other species. This rift and its attendant beliefs are evident in how religious individuals and communities have (1) overlooked or disavowed the singularities and sufferings of other species, (2) used attendant instrumental epistemologies to justify the exploitation of Othered species (and Othered human beings) and the Earth, and (3) sought to force nature to adapt to human needs and desires. The article addresses the psychological dynamics and consequences of the ontological rift, which further exposes the madness that attends religious experiences that rely on apparatuses of the ontological rift. The article ends with a brief discussion of an antidote, namely, inoperativity.

Dreaming plays a part in many of the world’s religions, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism Christianity, and Islam. However, research into what the actual dreams of religious persons look like is very rare. Within a series of 2,055 dreams recorded over more than 30 years by a Benedictine nun, the frequency and content of church dreams were analyzed. The church dream frequency (11%) was high compared to other samples. The findings indicate that the daily religious practices of the dreamer as a nun is reflected in her dreams, with the most frequent church being “her” church and the most frequent activity related to the church being religious (praying, singing, a church service). Interestingly, the nun’s dreams also included profound religious dreams of inner liberation, insights, and positive feelings. It would be interesting to study the beneficial effects of dreams in other persons who have dedicated their lives to religious practice, whether within Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, or any other faith.

This essay combines autoethnographic narratives along with the films of U.S. film director Wes Anderson to provoke and unlock a buried grief of serving as a pediatric hospital chaplain. Anderson is one of the most well-known U.S. film directors. Even if an individual has not seen one of his eleven feature-length films, his aesthetic, eccentricity, and production design are well known and have reached meme status on social media platforms such as TikTok and Instagram. Buried within the pastel pastiche are themes of grief and trauma. The author moves through these themes alongside Anderson’s cinematic universe and offer possibilities for communal care in an Andersonian manner.