Transforming Self And Community
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Overview
Transforming Self and Community describes a holistic and integrative approach for spirituality, spiritual direction, and pastoral counseling that emphasizes the process of transformation and incorporates recent theoretical and research developments. Unlike most current approaches to pastoral counseling and spiritual direction that focus only on the psychological and/or spiritual perspective, the integrative approach provides a psychological, spiritual, and moral perspective for understanding and assisting individuals with their unique, spiritual journey of development.Synopsis
Both spiritual direction and pastoral counseling tend to be partially responsive to client needs and expectations. Many of the theories underlying the practice of spiritual direction and pastoral counseling are based more on psychology than spirituality. They minimize or exclude character and moral concerns and may even unintentionally foster individualism and spiritual narcissism. Transforming Self and Community offers an approach to spiritual direction and pastoral counseling that is holistic, that integrates spiritual and moral constructs with the psychological and emphasizes all aspects of transformation, including social transformation.
The integrative approach in Transforming Self and Community provides psychological, spiritual, and moral perspectives for understanding and assisting individuals with their spiritual journey of development. It describes and illustrates clinically useful guidelines for the practice of spiritual direction and pastoral counseling. It includes case studies as well as figures, tables, and charts that highlight and summarize main text points.Transforming Self and Community is primarily for professionals who practice, teach, or are learning how to do spiritual direction or pastoral counseling. Nevertheless, spiritual seekers, clients, or prospective clients of spiritual direction or pastoral counseling will also find this book enlightening.