Understanding one's personal issues and emotional reactions- one's "countertransference"- has long been recognized as a core competency in ministry. Now new understandings of intersubjectivity, mutual influence, shared wisdom (both conscious and unconscious), and multicultural dynamics in the caring relationship are bringing promising new possibilities and challenges to pastoral practice.
Employing these insights, in this groundbreaking book Pamela Cooper-White offers a new relational paradigm for pastoral assessment and theological reflection. She uses the caregiver's own responses and feelings as a primary instrument for deepening discernment and better care. She innovatively combines postmodern, psychoanalytic, and theological perspectives with illuminating case studies to illustrate this new use of the self in pastoral care, counseling, and psychotherapy.
