The Practice of Pastoral Care: A Postmodern Approach Review

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The Practice of Pastoral Care: A Postmodern Approach ReviewI was quite disappointed as I read this book. Doerhing does offer some good solid insights into pastoral care, but these are the same old tired concepts. Doehring has a mechanistic worldview, uses tired psychological concepts,fails to stress the importance of pastoral presence, and perhaps worst of all suggests the ineffective method of treating compulsions symptomatically by isolating the behavior deemed compulsive (say overeating) rather than holistically from the root of compulsion. Effecively putting a band aid on a gaping wound.
Doehring treads dangerously close to encouraging pastoral care providers to exploit the pastoral relationship. She says, "Having access to family in ways that mental health professionals don't, Pastors can identify the role of addiction in a family and break the silence" (92). What, now pastors are detectives? What happened to the understanding that until a person/family wants help, they cannot receive it? In this paragraph she is speaking particularly of drug addiction/alcoholism.
Doehring lacks insight into social oppression, into how by noting that suicidality is higher among certain minorities and in so doing she perpetuates the status quo of oppression, rather than suggesting it is worthwhile to assess for suicidality in any person suffering a crisis (84-5).
There is little evidence of a postmodern approach, here. Doehring advocates th linear, isolative (as in isolate the symptom and fix it), mechanistic approach. And as Diarmuid O'Murchu points out anyone who has had a car break down, fixed the supposed problem only to have it break down again knows such approach only works for sometimes. Thus illustrating she buys into much of psychology's misappropriation of systems theory, in which the linear mechanistic approach is anathema.
POSTIVES are: Doehring differentiates between compulsion and addiction, stresses importnace of listening and hearing the story, offers assesment that is mutilayered albeit still linear. Nice couple of pages on power and power dynamics in the pastoral relationship, but falls flat in application later in the book.
Worth the purchase if you are looking for basic pastoral care, although i would still argue Howard Clinebell is still the best. Doehring approaches pastoral care in a modern way adapting some post-modern concepts to a modern paradigm.
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