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The editorial in the Journal of Medical Humanities expresses gratitude to past editors and highlights the contributions of key figures in the field. The author, Nathan Carlin, shares his personal journey into medical humanities and emphasizes the importance of the field in medical education. Carlin aims to continue the legacy of his mentors by promoting critical approaches and encouraging contributions from clinicians. The editorial reflects a growing interest in medical humanities and the journal's commitment to publishing high-quality material. [Extracted from the article]

Pastoral theological scholarship on moral injury has not yet fully metabolized the liberative trajectory of pastoral theological discourse. To date, the care of those who come home from war remains largely depoliticized. This article argues that the wounds of war are personal and political and that care requires attending to the political dimension. The first section of the article sets the current pastoral theology conversation around moral injury within the historical context of the field around the care of veterans and the depoliticized nature of the clinical literature. The second section of the article argues the liberative trajectory of the field provides not only a basis for a robustly political response but also sets of relevant conceptual categories and care resources for veterans. The third section takes up Ryan LaMothe's concept of "unconventional warriorism" as a basis for reimagining the political agency of soldiers and veterans. The article concludes by sketching out a broad proposal for the integration of politics and care for veterans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pastoral theology has often avoided major approaches to the ecological self. This article traces such avoidance in the field's dependence on classical psychoanalysis, while also pointing toward the formation of the ecological connections to self, particularly probing the heightened and overtly exhibited disruptions of a person from their known environmental context within dislocation. Attending to the ecological self draws from the psychoanalytic examination of environmental dislocation by Arne Næss and Salman Akhtar to uphold relations between embodied experience and ecological personhood. While psychoanalytical roots to care considered unitive experiences of self and culture with religion and nature as problematic, possibilities abound as we care for those dislocated, linking how religious practice orients and activates emotions and bodies to resist ecological depletion and our own ecological displacement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines Herman Melville's novel Moby-Dick using the lens of care and faith, with the aim of depicting a pathological type of masculinity represented by the character of Captain Ahab. I situate Melville's novel in a culture where liberalism, capitalism, and imperialism were dominant semiotic systems that, I argue, served as key factors in shaping and supporting a type of masculinity wherein one possesses a maniacal preoccupation with one's goal or self-interests that is accompanied by instrumentalized, conditional care (if present), and, correspondingly, an instrumentalized and contractual faith. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A statistically significant group in the United States (conservatively, 6% of the population) is engaged in a migration away from prescribed gender strictures and into a realm of what psychologist and preeminent expert in treating gender-diverse youth and their families Diane Ehrensaft has coined "gender creativity." Given the pathology of cultural reactions to transgender and gender-nonconforming persons, this group is also at high risk for developing psychosocial adversities that threaten health, safety, and life itself. This paper argues that a pastoral theology opening doors to genuine gender-diverse dialogue and care creates congregational and seminary environments primed to enhance the resilience needs of gender-creative individuals, such as those who self-reported in a landmark phenomenological study led by Anneliese A. Singh. Moving to affirmative pastoral ministries beyond gender binaries is not only essential for embodying the kinds of expansive care needed in an increasingly gender-diverse world, it also puts all caregivers on migratory trajectories of gender liberation and expansion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human-induced climate change is fast becoming a climate emergency as we near an irreversible point of no return. In our anthropocentric quest to have dominion over all the earth, we are putting all of life at risk, including human life and civilization. The introduction of collapsology serves as a reality check for better understanding the severity and urgency of the present crisis. Moreover, because of the deleterious effects of environmental racism and classism, there can be no climate justice without racial justice as well. It is hoped that in the end there will emerge a more informed pastoral theology and, by extension, a more informed pastoral and spiritual care, guided by the findings of climate science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change evokes many kinds of feelings, including anxiety, inadequacy, guilt, shame, and despair. Scholars have found that hidden desires for reparation may be found in the midst of these eco-emotions. In pastoral care conversations with students, climate change adds extra pressure to the students’ underlying stress. The chaplains, who often represent “parental qualities” to the students, are challenged to navigate complex and powerful dynamics within pastoral conversations, where the sporadically expressed climate change stressors are entangled in other kinds of challenges in student life. These are experienced through a multiplicity of feelings, relations, values, cultures, views of life, and religious beliefs. Such complexities call for a pastoral care that encounters climate matters, requiring that chaplains be capable of moving between theology and psychology while differentiating between self and other, to process healthy and resilient meaning-making. Based on an ethnographic-theological study of chaplains’ pastoral care with students, this article argues that relief and strength may lie within an often implicit “theology of love” taken as the heart of the pastoral care practice. Using Sallie McFague’s theology on “God as Mother” and Melanie Klein’s psychology on the “love” and “reparation” of the “mother,” this article presents a practice-oriented model that may open up deeper understandings of the stress-relieving function of pastoral care in the era of climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Critical pastoral theology has no doubt come to recognize the significance of social formations in the crisis of addiction as a symptom of suffering. This article suggests that how we understand and describe these social formations matters. It argues that our most common approaches to addiction risk reproducing forms of domination via an incomplete notion of freedom in their attempt to clarify the exceptional status of addiction. This can function to obscure the capitalist nature of addiction and the addictive nature of capitalism undergirding our everyday lives. The author argues that addiction is itself a symptomatic expression of capitalist social formations; not merely an individual pathology, addiction names the way our social attachments to objects and to one another become compulsive despite their negative consequences. This critical concept of addiction allows us to see, name, and negate the false promises on which the endurance of capitalism depends. The ultimate aim of this critical approach is to consider how we as caregivers might reflect on and transform these dominating social divisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author offers an introduction to the essays in a book forum on Carlin in Pastoral Aesthetics: A Theological Perspective on Principlist Bioethics (2019). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a parish minister, the author puts Nathan Carlin's correlational work between principlist bioethics and pastoral theology, Pastoral Aesthetics, into conversation with his own experiences in congregational life. Focusing on Carlin's analyses of the pastoral images of the living human web and the living human document, the author argues for combining these two images in order for the intricacies and contradictions of human desire to be taken into account when understanding our motivations around issues of justice and oppression. Specifically, this combination would allow for more truth-telling and self-examination within majority-white communities such as the author's own progressive parish, where white-identified congregants are encouraged to delve deeply into their own formation in racist systems and culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The following offers a response to the essays in this book forum on Pastoral Aesthetics: A Theological Perspective on Principlist Bioethics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pastoral theology carries the potential to refine the engagement between theology and a principlist approach to bioethics, as Nathan Carlin has argued in Pastoral Aesthetics, but it also provides a basis on which to specifically benefit pediatric bioethics by moving beyond simplistic renderings of children that reduce children to their nonautonomous status. Whereas principlist bioethics tends to regard children chiefly in relation to their lack of capacity to make autonomous decisions, pastoral theology's interdisciplinary commitments and attention to relationality create possibilities for appreciating the subjectivity of children in the medical environment, respecting the moral weight of their healthcare experiences, and recognizing their agency to exert influence on the adults who make decisions and provide care for them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author integrates her clinical ethics training, pastoral theology teaching, and postcolonialism research with concepts of experience-distant and experience-near found in self psychology to illumine pedagogies of possibilities. The article affirms Nathan Carlin's call in Pastoral Aesthetics for pastoral theology to inform bioethics in paying more attention to living human experiences in order to liberate more expansive practices of moral imagination. Seeing human experiences of suffering and healing as a common text in both pastoral theology and bioethics, the author considers how students, caregivers, and all people might look back at learning encounters (including clinical encounters) and know that learning happened and that it supported well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pastoral theology can contribute to the discourse on social-political freedom. More specifically, the concepts of care and faith—theologically, existentially, and psychologically understood—provide an innovative and illuminating perspective on the notions of social and political freedoms as well as how they are related. A focus on the dynamics of faith and care vis-à-vis freedom, for instance, also renders a diagnosis of the social-political pathologies of neoliberal capitalism with its atomization of human beings, distortion of accountability, and exploitation of human beings and the earth. To move in this direction, part I of this paper offers a brief overview of some of the salient features of discourses on political freedom in the West, namely, justice, equality, rights, reason, and agency. Noticeably absent is any connection between political freedom and civic care and civic faith. This sets the stage, then, for a discussion on care and faith vis-à-vis social and political freedom, which is developed in part II of this paper. Part II, which will appear in the next issue of this journal, develops a view of freedom relying first on the pre-political space of parent–child interactions and how they relate to the child's emerging experience of and capacity for social freedom. Once this is developed, I shift to differentiating between social and political freedoms, which allows me to reimagine political freedom in terms of the dynamics of care and faith. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on Richard Powers's Pulitzer-winning novel The Overstory (2018), this article explores the limits of human wisdom (or why humans persist in denying what we know about the earth, especially what we knew as children) and wisdom's bounty within the wider world, unknown, untapped, unprotected, and disrespected, with a particular focus on trees. It asks how people (the author included but especially white westerners) have come to disbelieve the intelligence of the nonhuman and, as a consequence, resist the ecological disaster wrought by our cherished obliviousness, and it argues for tree knowledge as a reasonable Christian claim, despite warnings that such claims reflect heresy. Influenced by Powers and Lewis Rambo, the essay asks about conversion—what will it take to convert us?—and suggests that pastoral theology's responsibilities include an embrace of seeing more through fiction and trees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rambo, Adele, and a religion professor walk into a coffee shop. What in the world do they have in common? This essay integrates Lewis Rambo's scholarship on conversion with pop singer Adele's popular song "Send My Love to Your Lover" to understand and redress inequity in individual risk within processes of institutional conversion. The author focuses on practices of inclusion in institutions of higher education using the specific example of theological schools with aspirational school mission statements that embrace equity and diversities. She argues that bringing Rambo and Adele into conversation with anecdotal and published research on institutional (in)justice illuminates four practices that institutions could adopt to better align practice with promise and thereby promote wellness for all who are impacted by institutional health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is written in honor of Lewis Rambo. It is as an expression of gratitude for his years of service to the field of pastoral theology and, at a more personal level, his many acts of kindness to me over the last few years. Inspired by Lewis Rambo's Understanding Religious Conversion (1993), this article attempts to apply his idea of a "crisis conversion" to national and political crises in the history of India. Three moments of crisis are considered here. The first is related to the populist agitation for swaraj (self-rule) and the satyagraha (force of truth) movement. The second is the partition of British India into two new nations, India and Pakistan, that resulted in the displacement of millions of people. The third is a current and ongoing crisis, the advance of Hindutva—the fundamentalist Hindu state—and the abuse of minority religious groups. Mohandas K. Gandhi attempted to turn Indians away from the path of himsa (violence) and lead them to the path of ahimsa (non-violence). It is suggested here that Indian conversion to the way of Gandhi was sincere but incomplete, as evidenced by the events following partition as well as the current climate of religious intolerance. Indians need to periodically reconvert to the Gandhian path of ahimsa by responding to his call for acceptance and respect of "others." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital technologies and artificial intelligence are changing what it means to be human. Given our increasing merger with machines, we have entered an era of unprecedented change. Theological reflection is needed, sooner rather than later, focusing on the potential existential risk and opportunity and what will constitute spiritual experience in an age of increasing technological enhancement. Preserving human spirituality, as we have known it, will require intentional focus on strengthening the neural circuitry associated with attentional control, mindful and compassionate awareness, and social and relational intelligence, even as we put to good use the emerging digital technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using Christopher Bollas's concept of transformational object, the author reflects on George F. Handel's "How Beautiful Are the Feet" as a song that has sustained him and informed his vocational self-understanding as a pastoral theologian. The author reflects on the role of his mother and paternal aunts in fostering a model of care that instilled in him a sense of hope. The author concludes by reflecting on the kinetic quality of pastoral theology and the need to reclaim an agile, even playful understanding of hope. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scientific problems of the twenty-first century involve complex research questions that require an interdisciplinary approach. Educational research suggests that overall student achievement is greater in an interdisciplinary science curriculum than in a discipline-specific science curriculum. Regardless, the secondary school science curriculum in Ontario remains discipline-specific. The Ontario Ministry of Education (OME) released an 'Interdisciplinary Studies' curriculum in 2002; however, it appears to be sparsely implemented across Ontario. The objective of this study is to investigate what guidelines are provided by the OME to help Ontario secondary school science teachers (grades 11–12) design and implement interdisciplinary science courses. A document analysis methodology is used to gather data from selected OME curriculum documents. The results of this study found that interdisciplinary science courses are based on multiple models of interdisciplinarity; however, the guidelines provided for developing interdisciplinary curriculum, assessment, and teaching methods do not explicitly indicate which type of interdisciplinary model is applied, nor do the documents explicitly consider the degree of integration of concepts and skills from across disciplines/subject areas. Primarily, the results of this study may inform Ontario Ministry science curriculum writers, teachers and educators interested in interdisciplinary science curriculum elsewhere, about what aspects of the selected curriculum documents provide practical information for developing interdisciplinary science courses and components of the curriculum that may warrant potential revisions or additions during future curriculum drafting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As part of a research project on confrontational maneuvering in the spokespersons' argumentative replies at the regular press conferences of China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs between 2015 and 2018, this article analyzes, within the framework of Pragma-Dialectics, how the spokespersons declare a standpoint at issue unallowed or indisputable in order to avoid having to resolve a difference of opinion as it is, according to the questioning journalist, presented by their immediate opponents. Starting from the various rationales the spokespersons presuppose to be understood and regarded acceptable by the questioning journalist and the international general public, three subtypes of declaring a standpoint unallowed or indisputable are differentiated: the "Necessity Rationale" subtype, the "Desirability Rationale" subtype, and the "Feasibility Rationale" subtype. The confrontational maneuvering by declaring a standpoint unallowed or indisputable carried out by the spokespersons is directed both at the immediate opponent and at the international general public. However, it is the international general public that the spokespersons primarily intend to convince. For this purpose, they make in all three subtypes of the unallowed or indisputable declaration an effort to adapt their response to their primary audience's demand by making strategic choices from the available topical potential and the available presentational devices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article contends that penal substitutionary atonement, and its necessary connection between sin, wrath, and punishment, influences the political discourse and practices around America's wars on drugs. In this work, the author is guided by Ryan LaMothe's proposals for pastoral political theology. She suggests that his initial question of "what's going on" in the political realm could include surfacing theology's influence upon political discourses and practices. The author begins by reviewing the history of assigning a spoiled moral identity to marginalized groups through America's wars on drugs. She pays special attention to the current conflation of immigration and drug rhetoric targeting Hispanics. She then considers penal atonement theory and its connection to punitive justice. The author suggests three aspects of the worldview surrounding this theory that motivate a distinct lack of care for those who commit acts deemed immoral: (1) no mercy outside of punishment, (2) pain is essential to justice, and (3) the law is implacable to commonsense reasoning. The necessity of punishment, including the animus of God's personal wrath against the sinner for affronting God's holiness, smooths the way for "tough on crime" stances against those stigmatized as morally corrupt. The apparent commonsense connection between sin and punishment hampers responses to drug selling or using that could engage alternative forms of care and justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author engages in practical theological reflection on her ministry experience with a fourth-grade boy and his family. A thick description of the experience is placed in interdisciplinary conversation with constructivist psychology, self-determination theory, positive psychology, postcolonial theology, and practical theologies of children and families. This leads to a self-reflective reframing of the author's practical theology of pastoral ministry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article traces developments in the 25-year history of a metaphor that has shaped the late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century discipline of pastoral theology in the United States. It looks back at the ‘living human document’ as a pivotal image and then identifies three trends behind the appearance of the ‘living human web,’ its key attributes, four divergent ways the metaphor has been used, and tasks ahead. The article argues that while the living human document addressed the challenge of irrelevant theology, the living human web responded to the challenge of social injustice. But both metaphors share a common aim endemic to the discipline—to expand empathy, whether for the individual or the wider context, in order to respond to people in need. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will examine the curative effects of art and the reorienting perspective of poetry in the aesthetic pastoral theology of Donald E. Capps by exploring two key volumes, The Poet’s Gift and At Home in the World. The paper identifies some of the key contributions of Capps’s exploration of art and poetry including the recovery of perception, the advancement of reframing perspective, the notion of embodied pastoral conversation and the roots of religious sensibility. The therapeutic effect of the imaginative aesthetic pastoral theology in these two volumes is further developed by integrating three corollary themes in Capps’s particular orientation to pastoral theology, namely hope, freedom and authenticity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years there has been increased interest in understanding the cultivation of effective pastoral ministry. Many theories have been postulated based on individual experiences, but what has been lacking is a robust body of comprehensive and rigorous research regarding the issue. The purpose of this study was to explore the lived experience of long-tenured senior pastors of Christian churches with an eye toward the insights participants' experiences could offer to pastoral education. Final analysis of the data affirmed current research on resiliency in pastoral ministry and extended previous research through the discovery that participants understood the convergence of ministry, tenure, and efficacy as a cyclical process sustained by the interconnected experiences of fidelity to the pastoral call and the cultivation of authenticity in community. This understanding forms the basis of a new theory of pastoral efficacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that a pastoral sensibility that takes into account research into 'gender creativity' (the term coined by Diane Ehrensaft, adapted from Donald W. Winnicott's phrase 'individual creativity') in children allows places of worship to be better sanctuaries for authentic living. One way this pastoral sensibility can be expressed is through a gender-creative reading of scripture, demonstrated here by positioning the visit of the Canaanite woman to Jesus in Matthew 15:21-29 as a model for advocacy on behalf of gender-nonconforming children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is a reflection on pastoral method in light of the metaphor of madness. I consider the notion of madness in terms of how it is represented in Western thought and take these representations as prisms to reflect on the attributes of pastoral methodology. More specifically, I use the notions of unreason, otherness, creativity, rage, and folly to think about the strengths of pastoral method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay explores the academic writing life through narrative and practical strategy. It attempts to get at larger questions of method in pastoral theology through the concrete subject matter of how I (and others) go about writing, illustrating in both content and procedure key methodological assumptions that guide work in pastoral theology, such as reflexivity, concern for the daily, demand to perform well the practice we study, and commitment to deeper transformation. I argue, among other things, that writers (in pastoral theology and beyond) manage the challenge and lure of writing through intentional crafting of everyday patterns in time and space. Ultimately, the material disciplines of writing open up into important vocational and spiritual questions and habits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Visual culture deeply influences those whom pastoral care providers serve, and contemporary practices with images complicate images' contribution to personal or social suffering. I begin by describing the mobile, networked dynamics of contemporary visual practices, which include receiving but also creating, curating, and sharing images in emergent and shifting visual communities. I then utilize visual studies theorist Gary Shapiro's concept of visual regimes, outlining how images work as a kind of soft power that influences the social construction of meaning. I illustrate these practices through a selection of images surrounding the police shooting of Michael Brown by officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri, and the protests and online debates that arose from that tragic event. I suggest throughout this paper that images play a major part in the social construction of subjective worlds and thus contribute both to our suffering and to the meaning we make from our suffering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing upon Anton Boisen's image of the living human document and Bonnie Miller-McLemore's idea of the living human web, this paper explores the librarian as an image of pastoral care. By paying attention to the testimonies of a number of librarians and to my own experience as a pastoral theologian and a library worker, I suggest three areas of intersection between pastoral theology and librarianship: attention to individuality, a sense of impartiality, and kindness. The paper concludes by pointing out that the librarian and the pastoral theologian share the task of defending the uniqueness of individual experience in a culture that tends toward conformism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay recounts the story of a pastoral interaction with a man who tried to rob a local church on a Sunday morning. The individual had recently been released from prison and found himself in a position where he could not find employment. Lacking basic supplies and frustrated by his inability to take care of his family, he almost fell back into familiar patterns of criminal activity. Turning to a variety of sources, this essay reflects on the ministry of listening, the human need for emotional connection with others, and the eschatological hope found in the Christian tradition. In providing room for the narratives of those we serve, pastoral theologians provide a gracious space wherein the Spirit moves upon the teller of the tale as well as the listener. Together, we are transformed as we follow the path of God's plot that unfolds chapter by chapter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following a brief discussion of Erik H. Erikson's (1958) reflections on Martin Luther's redefinitions of work, this article focuses on the theology of work as presented in Marie-Dominique Chenu's (1955, 1963) The Theology of Work. It suggests that Chenu's theology of work provides a valuable foundation for a pastoral theology of work in that it emphasizes the role of work in releasing the potentialities inherent in the material world and in the individual who is engaged in this creative process. It notes Chenu's emphasis on the historical transformation from a craft-oriented to a machine-oriented work environment, on the emergence of a conscious awareness among humans of the effects of work, on Christian understandings of humans as co-creators with God, on humans' creative role in the transformation of the material world, on the role grace plays in the creative process, and on the role of work in human liberation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the sermon 'The Symmetry of Life' by Phillips Brooks (1881), a late-18-century American clergyman who was known for the depth and inspirational quality of his sermons. To set the context for consideration of the sermon, I discuss the religious journey of young men as presented in Striking Out (Capps 2011b) and my related article on Ernest Thayer (Capps 2015b); my psychobiographical study of young clergymen (Capps 2005) and employment of Levinson's (1978) life structure model in my interpretation of Brooks's young adulthood; the implications of preaching and the sermon structure for pastoral counseling (Capps 1980); and William James's (1987) positive view of Brooks. Following brief commentaries on Brooks's preaching style (Scarlett 1950) and a presentation of the sermon itself, I note several parallels between the implicit developmental model presented in the sermon and Levinson's developmental model. I conclude with a brief discussion of Benjamin Franklin's (1964) empirical study of the potential impact of George Whitefield's preaching and the methodological implications of this study for pastoral theology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Moral stress arising from student debt is defined here as a psycho-spiritual stress response to the North American dream of achievement through individual hard work, which implicitly blames students for educational debt, exacerbating shame about aspects of their identity (their race, social class, gender, sexual orientation). A critical correlational method brings psychological research on moral stress, moral emotions, and religious struggles into dialogue with pastoral theologies of intersectionality and lived theologies of the North American dream in order to construct a compassion-based relational process of theological reflexivity fostering spiritually integrated financial resilience among students, staff, faculty, trustees, and denominational partners at theological schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Postcolonializing role play represents a pedagogical strategy in pastoral theology to support emerging communal-contextual and intercultural paradigms. This article reviews the pedagogical function of role play within pastoral theology. Postcolonializing role play is then situated within a larger project of decolonizing theological education. The article describes two examples of postcolonializing role play from the author's pastoral theology pedagogy. Finally, the author proposes four questions and subsequent practices for debriefing postcolonializing role play in order to empower more liberative pastoral theology pedagogy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article consists of two thought experiments on pastoral theological implications of resurrection accounts in the Gospel of Luke. Emphasis in both biblical narratives on the pathos of Jesus' life and the material presence of his resurrection body is interpreted to promote the therapeutic relevance for individuals of revisiting their embodied childhood shame as a path to greater hope and vitality. The risen Jesus models for his followers an intentional eisegesis, whereby readers may be encouraged to overcome psychological impediments to exploring their own archaic sorrows and to read their childhood suffering into the story of God. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay answers the question of the meaning of life. It does so from the perspective of pastoral theology by turning to a children's story: William Joyce's award-winning The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore. After the introduction, this essay has two basic parts. The first part describes the context of The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, summarizes its narrative, and explores its reception. The second part articulates three ways in which The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore is suggestive for pastoral theology with regard to questions of meaning-existentially, psychologically, and morally. In doing so, the essay builds on Donald Capps's insights in The Poet' s Gift, assumes the perspective of Victor Frankl as articulated in Man' s Search for Meaning, and suggests that the reframing technique of dereflection is especially useful with regard to the preservation of meaning. This essay also includes a considerable amount of primary source material from an interview with William Joyce conducted by the author. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article, part of a larger project examining the significance of Donald W. Winnicott's contributions to research, teaching, and clinical care across psychology, religion, and theology, is written with this broad question in mind: What are Winnicott's writings about? I draw from a study I carried out that concludes that Winnicott's writings can be understood in terms of two 'readings' (Ricoeur )-expressing (a) a developmental-existential point of view and (b) a notion of being religious-of a network of six 'theoretical ideas' (Stausberg ): early experience in infancy, transition, connecting and disconnecting, creative space, holding (and being held) and holding onto, and facilitating. This article outlines the contours of these two readings of the fifth set of theoretical ideas-holding (and being held) and holding onto-and spells out some implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article enumerates and critiques the various forms of occult violence associated with the dominance of state-corporate capitalism in United States society. Ways of responding to these forms of violence are also considered. More specifically, using the political notion of care-understood existentially and theologically-I define violence, identify and critique forms of occult violence, and explore the principle of care in proposing possible ways of responding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, the fears and violent fantasies of some of the wealthy elite in the United States have become public. In this article, I claim that these fantasies, which emerge from and are linked to neoliberal capitalistic narratives, are signifiers of a systemic and often hidden social reality of class relations. Moreover, they are social-cultural symptoms of unconscious material, dynamics, and communications taking place between classes. I use the concepts of projective identification and enactment to tease out the psychosocial dynamics and communications of these class-based fantasies and consider briefly the implications of this perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is a contribution to a review forum of Donald Capps's () creative contribution At Home in the World: A Study in Psychoanalysis, Religion, and Art. In his volume Capps expands on previous work in the development of aesthetic pastoral theology. Capps's portrayal of the religious sensibility in works of art follows his three-fold paradigm-a sense of honor, a sense of hope, and a sense of humor-to analyze how selected works of art are closely related to the early experiences of a son with his mother. The careful articulation of the movements of the melancholy self expand on Capps's previous work on Erik Erickson, Sigmund Freud, and William James. In particular, Capps explores how the paintings may reflect the guidance of the melancholy self and how the experience of viewing these paintings can be therapeutic to men's experiences of sadness, melancholy, and homelessness in the world. The article suggests that this new work by Capps represents a shift beyond 'theological reflection' in pastoral theology to 'theological perception.' The article also offers reflections on the importance of Capps's paradigm of the melancholy self for the exploration of grief experiences of men. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the relationship between men and food. Building on James E. Dittes's work, it suggests that men's desire for food is indicative not only of their hunger, but also of an unquenchable sense of hope and a longing for significant relationships. Based on the insights of several biblical scholars and pastoral theologians, this paper also suggests that a greater understanding of how and why men eat can contribute to a more pertinent pastoral ministry with men. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article concerns the methodological issues confronted by pastoral theology students in their writing of a master's thesis or doctoral dissertation. I introduce H. Richard Niebuhr's () identification of five models ( rejection, accommodation, synthesis, dualism, and conversionist) for relating the theological and psychological resources used in their writing. Then, by means of Rudolf Arnheim's art theory (, , ), I identify three additional models ( convergence, juxtaposition, and structural uniformity) and note their affinities with and complications of three of Niebuhr's models ( synthesis, dualism, and accommodation). I argue that these complications can play a positive role in the writing of a thesis or dissertation as they promote a fuller engagement with the empirical reality that is the focus of study. I also note David W. Galenson's () view that his typology of artists as conceptualists and experimentalists is applicable to scholars and suggest that awareness of which type is most characteristic of oneself may enable one to minimize the frustrations that one is likely to experience in writing a thesis or dissertation. I conclude with a brief discussion of Erik H. Erikson's consideration of Martin Luther's redefinition of work in Young Man Luther (chapter 5) and suggest that it makes the case for understanding thesis and dissertation writing as an exercise in liberated craftsmanship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reflects on emotion as an internal state caused by external forces that can result in mood disturbance. It traces the shift from affect to feeling to emotion to mood, following Johann Gottfried von Herder () to Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834) to William James (1842-1910) to Donald Capps (1939-) as mileposts. It reflects on the phenomena of homophobia/heterosexism and heteronormativity as ideological climate and concludes with a proposal for healing the unhealed wound of sexual minorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the stigma associated with mental illness in America, religious leaders and their congregations might be fearful of caring for and worshipping alongside a person with mental illness. This article recounts some of the challenges encountered by the pastor of a small congregation in attempting to provide care for a church member suffering with schizophrenia. It is proposed here that congregations need to grow in courage as they attempt to serve people who struggle with mental illness, just as people with mental illness exhibit courage in venturing out to participate in church life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reviews selected current neuroscientific research on fear and anxiety and sketches three of anxiety's sources: innate/learned, loss of attachment, and symbolic/narrative construction. The article then explores the role of religious communities and practitioners of pastoral care and counseling in offering both antidotes to destructive anxiety and faithful management of normal or 'useful' anxiety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]