Episode 497 Shared Wisdom: Use of Self In Pastoral Care by Pamela Cooper-White

Welcome to Voices in My Head, the official podcast of me, Rick Lee James. I'm a recording artist, a singer, a songwriter, an author, a worship leader, and an ordained minister in the Church of the Nazarene. The Voices in My Head podcast is where I discuss music, movies, books, pop culture, theology, and more with friends, colleagues, and sometimes just by myself. Now make sure to let me know what you think of today's episode by leaving me a review on iTunes or by tweeting at me @RickLeeJames on Twitter. And please join my mailing list at RickLeeJames.com where you can receive an email every time a new episode is released. And by the way, in case you're interested in a daily dose of kindness and encouragement beyond this podcast, I also run the Twitter account @MrRogersSay where I post daily quotes from Fred Rogers, one of the voices in my head. Well, I guess that's it for the intro, so sit back, relax, and listen to the latest episode of Voices in My Head.

Well, welcome back to Voices in My Head. As always, I'm your host Rick Lee James, and I'm so glad that you're here with me for another episode. You know, today is episode I believe 497, and we are, we are quickly approaching episode 500. Things have been so busy because what it doesn't say in the intro is I am a hospital chaplain full-time for this year. I can't believe I'm already halfway through my time. I just finished my second unit, just starting my third unit out of four before I head back to Loyola University. For classes there. I don't literally head back, I take them online, but life is busy. And so, hoping that episode 500, I'm trying to get a special guest to come on the show, have somebody in mind, and we're trying to make those connections right now. But for today, it's just me, and sometimes what I do on the podcast is to work some things out that I am I am not completely comfortable with yet, but that I am learning about. Things that, like, in my clinical pastoral education that I'm learning right now. And this whole unit is about the use of self. And we're using a book called Shared Wisdom: The Use of the Self in Pastoral Care and Counseling. And the book is written by Pamela Cooper White. And so what I thought I would do today, because I honestly, genuinely feel like it could be a big help to some of you who are listening today. Give me just one moment, please. All right, I'm back. Sorry about that. I'm recording on my iPhone, and I wanted to make sure everything was coming through, hopefully the way it's supposed to be right now. I thought what I would do is, using Pamela Cooper White's own book and own words, not only just from her book, but from articles I read from her online. I try to compile sort of this concept that she presents in her book, Shared Wisdom: The Use of Self in Pastoral Care and Counseling. If that's something that's interesting to you, then today I hope you're going to enjoy the episode. If it's not, maybe you can tell somebody else about it that may be interested this week. But because this is called Voices in My Head, this is definitely something I have been thinking about wrestling with, trying to figure out. And it specifically deals with the use of transference and countertransference— things that other people project onto us, and then things— countertransference— things that we project back to them. So let me just begin by kind of briefly summarizing the book and the concept of Shared Wisdom: The Use of Self in Pastoral Care that Pamela Cooper White talks about. She admittedly is not really a big fan of the title "Shared Wisdom." She wanted to call it just "The Use of Self in Pastoral Ministry." I believe I was reading that publishers picked that title, the "Shared Wisdom," because they thought it would sell better. They were probably right, but she didn't know if the title itself was the best way to convey what this was. So let me try to convey a little bit. It might be helpful just to explain that this method she is presenting, it's really a method for doing pastoral assessment and theological reflection, and it involves the use of transference and countertransference as an integral part of the process, something that used to be frowned on in the field of psychology.— it's now kind of being embraced. So she breaks it down into steps, mainly because she discovered in her teaching that there are some students who have never been taught how to do a theological reflection on a pastoral care case, and don't know where to start. And in addition, there's often very little attention paid to one's own feelings, thoughts, fantasies, and other reactions when formulating a pastoral assessment. So that's what she's trying to help us do through this book, Shared Wisdom, and through the use of SELF. So she summarizes it like this. Here's a brief summary as best as I can get from what Pamela Cooper White is trying to tell us. The pastoral method that she is proposing in her book is 5 steps. Number 1: SELF-CARE. This includes seeking out sources of relational support and consultation as needed.. It includes quiet time to reflect and centering prayer. So self-care is foremost in this process. Secondly, it's an examination of countertransference in the classical sense from Freud, as one's own unfinished business and tender spots in one's own personal history that might distort or impede An empathic understanding of the other's reality. So really, to sum that up, maybe make it a little bit simpler, as I understand it, you're trying to look at unfinished business in a person's own personal history that might distort, it might get in the way of your clinically being able to care for another person. Now the third step is a preliminary pastoral assessment focused on the other's actual needs. These are not things that we are getting through transference or countertransference. These are the actual needs of— if I'm a chaplain, for instance, like I am right now, it's the actual needs of the patient in front of me. Not what they're perceiving through transference or what I'm perceiving from them through countertransference. So the fourth step is, it's a further examination of one's own countertransference in the contemporary sense, including not just our own neurotic baggage that hinders care, but all the thoughts, the feelings, the fantasies, the associations, and even the physical sensations that come in relation to the other who has come for help, or who we are going to, to provide help. "This sense of countertransference, it recognizes that one's own subjective feelings and experiences of the other may be arising from the intersubjective space between ourselves and the other, especially at the unconscious level, thus offering an empathic glimpse into the other's experience." So we're really getting into this idea of countertransference here, what we might be projecting onto the other who has come to us for help, or to whom we are going to for help. And finally, theological reflection, which is really where she ends her book. Theological reflection beginning with a free association— associative, rather— a free associative process, rather than, than beginning with some sort of fixed biblical or theological proposition. She really does mean like a free association just kind of, you know, sitting with your thoughts and seeing what comes to mind. And she says that the practitioner reflects on the question: what spiritual, biblical, or theological theme comes up as I hold this person in mind? But then allows whatever comes to mind to come, however seemingly unreligious or irrelevant, trusting that it does have meaning, much like dream images when they first here. It has been Cooper White's experience that through this associative process there can be a new openness to previously unconsidered dimensions of this unique pastoral relationship, and this leads to expanded possibility for pastoral practice, expanded possibilities. The actual choices we make about interventions to try things, things we say and do not say that this theological reflection can help us with that. In a sense, I feel like this is asking the Spirit to guide us in the process. And throughout this process, the particularity of each pastoral connection or encounters, as we like to say in chaplaincy, is honored. So there may not be one solution There probably is not one solution or even a single understanding of the problem. The pastoral process, the process of pastoral reflection itself, is to be revisited again and again as feelings are stirred and new meanings mutually emerge in the pastoral relationship. So over time with practice, what really happens, of course, is that the process becomes second nature. It simply flows. You don't have to— you actually don't have to take it in a particular order like I just laid out in those 5 steps. But doing this sort of reflection is what gets us to where we need to go. And it's also not Pamela Cooper White's intention to suggest that one would undertake this process while sitting in the room with a parishioner or a client or a patient. The best time for making use of theological and theoretical reflection and considering technique is before and after the sessions with the patients, not during necessarily. So it's something that you carry with you and think about. So you don't ever want to theologize or theorize as a primary activity in the presence of a patient. It's to be done elsewhere. So reflection is akin to what she says Patrick Case— Patrick Casement describes as a process like the musician who practices scales, and what happens in the moment of actually making music is thereby both informed and spontaneous. I understand this analogy as a musician. You spend so much time practicing You spend so much time getting ready. You run the scales, you play with a metronome, you do things that help your timing, and in the midst of it you're wondering, is this ever going to all come together? But it's in doing that, in the practice, that when it actually comes time to do the playing, that there is a freedom that is there. And she says too that this process is not only interpersonal, but it's profoundly political. Especially in our privileged North American context. It means valuing cultural, gender, and sexual differences, and coming face to face with our own internal participation in the inertial forces of cooperating with oppression. Because of socialization, and also the benefits we prefer not to admit we accrue. So, we're in essence asking the question, "What are the projections?" the projections we cast onto others, as splitting pervades not only our own personal selves, but the collective selves of our society. And then one other question that she asks is, to what extent are we also ready to see God transformed in the process? Now that may sound heretical for some of you who are listening when you first think about this, but is God transformed in the potential space of our encounters with otherness? As well as we ourselves. And this is for people who reject the notion that God is an impassible, unfeeling, magisterial God who is sovereign but unmoved by the doings of creation. This is for people who believe that God truly loves and cares, and loves with so much depth that God's heart can actually be shaken by the sufferings and the convulsions of the world. These are like places in Scripture where we see God say, "I have heard the cries of my people," or places where God changes his mind and relents that we see throughout Scripture, which, you know, a lot of people don't like to admit they are there, but they are part of the text. They are part of the Bible where God is moved. And so we're asking where God is moved and moving, if I'm understanding— if I'm understanding Dr. Cooper White correctly in this. And so this is a lot, I know, to throw at you, and this doesn't even really get into everything in Shared Wisdom, but I do feel like this is a good way for me to kind of get out things that I'm thinking through and reading about, studying, ways that I'm thinking about using self, and this whole idea of transference and countertransference, what we project onto other people, what they project onto us. It really is fascinating to me. And we have to be careful that we don't put our own stuff on other people, and that we help them to perceive us as we are too, and that we are presenting to them the actual thing we are bringing and not the thing that they perceive. We are bringing. I think sometimes I feel like it's this way: somebody comes into the room, they have their assumptions because I'm a chaplain, and they have their own experience with religious leaders. They kind of don't make a distinction between a pastor and a chaplain in a lot of cases, and so sometimes the conversation is over before it even begins when I walk in a room. The person may not know that I'm there to offer non-judgmental, non-anxious presence, but that they may think I'm there to try to convert them in some way, or change who they are, or make them feel uncomfortable. And so sometimes the conversation is over before it starts. But what we're really getting into with this is what Anton Boisson insisted on early with his concept of the living human document., and the correlation theology that we have from people like Tillich and Jürgen Moltmann, and different ones whose words are to be engaged with nothing less than the open wound of life in this world. We are coming to these people, all of us, understanding hopefully as we come into this process that each person we encounter is a living human document. I like to think of it this way: each person is a letter written there by God. I think even the Apostle Paul has some ideas about that. And our task is to do our best to read this letter, to listen, and to see, and help that person be clearly seen so that they can clearly see the things that they need to see in life that can be led about their healing. God has instilled in us things deep in ourselves that are the source of our own healing. If we can get to them somehow. And I don't mean physical healing, although sometimes I think that does happen. There are these things that are connected spiritually with our physical. But I think there are times that the emotional healing we need, the interpersonal healing that we need, the religious healing sometimes that we need, we have these things built into us. And part of our task is to help other people find what is already there. So there's a lot more I could say, and I think there's a lot more that I will say. In the book Shared Wisdom, if you ever want to pick it up, part of it is the fact that there's case studies going on between 4 hypothetical characters she creates. There's Linda, there's Gary, there's Terence, there's Sarah. And each of them are sort of at a crossroads in their ministry. And they could go one way or the other, and based upon the choices they make are going to be completely different outcomes. It could be things that end their ministry, or it could be a new door to new flourishing. And we all have those moments, don't we, where we come to it? And so when we're coming into the work of entering into another person's life and into another person's suffering and relationships and pain, It is what I will end with today. What Pamela Cooper White says, she says that this is a form of kenosis. Kenosis being a word that means emptying. In Christian theology, it's the renunciation of the divine nature, at least in part, by Christ incarnate, who emptied himself to become human, who emptied of himself. And so Pamela Cooper White talks about pastoral theologians, and psychotherapists, and psychologists of religion, that we come to embrace the mess, and that pastoral care and therapy are finally both these processes of kenosis. Empathy, she says, is itself kenosis. It is the self-emptying that relinquishes the need to grasp wisdom or show off one's knowledge, inviting both therapist and patient into an intersubjective realm of exploration. And she says, in this intersubjective space, encapsulated and at times harmful fantasies and projections can be recognized and put in perspective, as mutual understanding can be tried on, practiced, and finally internalized as a habitus that is at once psychological, spiritual, and deeply ethical. Well, I hope today wasn't too esoterical for most of you listening today. I hope that really we're able to find something, especially if you are a minister or pastoral counselor or a chaplain. There's so much more I could say about shared wisdom, so much more. I'm still learning, but I'm kind of doing this podcast as a way to help me go deeper into understanding of what it is and to dive deeper into this pastoral process of using the self in ministry in order to help others and even to heal myself along the way. So thank you for listening to Voices in My Head. I'll look forward to being with you again, hopefully next week if time allows. I'm still trying to get this out on a weekly basis. But thank you for listening. And by the way, if you are one who listens to music quite often, if you don't mind, go to Spotify or Apple Music and add my song 'As I Walk These Halls.' Or that, that one's the one about chaplaincy, but there's another one I'm pushing right now. It's a little over a year old, but it's a song called 'Shine a Light in the Darkness.' And I appreciate if you play that, share that. You hear my heart through both of those songs. God bless you. Thank you for listening to Voices in My Head this week.

Thank you for joining me here this week on Voices in My Head. I hope you'll visit me on my website at RickLeeJames.com, where you can find out more about me, get my music on vinyl and CD, follow my blog, and even schedule me for a concert or a speaking engagement. Better yet, even a book signing in your neighborhood. You can find all that and more at RickLeeJames.com. Also, it would mean a great deal to me if you could write a review of this podcast on iTunes. The more positive reviews that we receive, the more visible this podcast will be online. And now for the benediction: May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope. God bless you, and thank you for listening to Voices in My Head.