CPSP Press
CPSP Press is committed to publishing books of significance in the clinical pastoral field.
Clinical Pastoral Training, Education, and Transformation
The First 50 Years of Learning through Supervised Encounter with ' Living Human Documents' (Second Edition) '2021'
by Robert Charles Powell
Robert Charles Powell’s classic publication, Clinical Pastoral Education: Fifty Years of Learning through Supervised Encounter with 'Living Human Documents', is reprised and expanded in this first volume of his collected writings, works that span his career of fifty-two years.
Dr. Powell documents the crucial conceptual, organizational, and financial support of Mrs. Ethyl Phelps Stokes Hoyt that fostered two dimensions of the pastoral care, counseling, and psychotherapy movement: Boisen’s early formation and structuring of professional chaplaincy through the Council for Clinical Training, and Helen Flanders Dunbar’s research into the relation of emotions – religious and otherwise – to human healing and wholeness, culminating in her unique contributions to psychosomatic theory.
In this volume, Powell's glimpses into the history of clinical chaplaincy grace his introductions of Rodney Hunter and Edward Thornton as distinguished theologian recipients of the Helen Flanders Dunbar Award for Significant Contributions to the Clinical Pastoral Field.
The volume closes with two brief essays on clinical pastoral care in India and South Africa, suggesting the consequences of extending a clinical pastoral approach to all of healthcare – to the patients, the staff, and the wider community.
Available in hardcover for $16.99, paperback for $14.99 or $9.99 on Kindle on Amazon.
Nine More Clinical Cases:
Case Studies in Clinical Pastoral Care, Counseling and Psychotherapy (2020)
by Raymond J. Lawrence
Introduction by Robert Charles Powell, MD, PhD
Anton T. Boisen, who started the clinical pastoral movement, believed that carefully reviewing cases of actual patients is the only effective way to train chaplains. But what distinguishes clinical chaplaincy in the tradition of Boisen from the work of other religious or spiritual practitioners who might lay claim to the title "chaplain"?
Responding to a second volume of cases published by George Fitchett and Steve Nolan, the distinguished CPE supervisor Raymond J. Lawrence provides alternative approaches to each case, ones that penetrate more deeply into the heart and soul of the patient, offering a more compassionate and meaningful sort of chaplaincy. Like its predecessor volume, Nine Clinical Cases: The Soul of Pastoral Care & Counseling, this book is intended for those who want to move from a service delivery and "prayer warrior" form of chaplaincy to one that is more psychodynamically based. It is also intended for those who train chaplains and aspire to doing so better.
Available in paperback for $9.99 or on Kindle for $6.99 on Amazon.
Recovery of Soul:
A History and Memoir of the Clinical Pastoral Movement (2017)
by Raymond J. Lawrence
The clinical pastoral movement in the 20th century changed the face of American religion. Written from an insider's point of view, the movement's development is candidly presented in this monograph. The book offers a fresh account of the complex beginnings of contemporary clinical chaplaincy and pastoral counseling rooted in one clergyman's psychosis and his emergence from it, Freud and the development of psychoanalytic theory, and the various and contradictory ways that religion in America responded.
Author Raymond J. Lawrence pulls no punches in his chronicle of the movement in its many aspects, from the sordid to the transformative and all that is in-between. From the life and work of founder Anton T. Boisen and his principal collaborator Helen Flanders Dunbar, to key figures such as Wayne Oates, Myron Maddon, Joan Hemenway and Donald Capps, Lawrence provides not just a history but also a revealing memoir of his own 50 years' experience that amount to a "complex, accursed, and redemptive story" of the clinical pastoral care movement.
Available paperback for $15.99 or $8.99 on Kindle on Amazon.
Nine Clinical Cases;
The Soul of Pastoral Care and Counseling (2015)
by Raymond J. Lawrence
An expanded review of George Fitchett and Steve Nolan's book, Spiritual Care in Practice, Nine Clinical Cases is a clarion and redemptive call for the training of clinical chaplains to return to their historical roots. In this work, Lawrence focuses on integrating psychodynamic/psychoanalytical theory and theology. Lawrence's commentaries on these cases reveal the wisdom that comes from his own clinical experience and offers the reader some seasoned and acute perspectives with which to use in his or her work.
Nine Clinical Cases is available in paperback for $9.99 or Kindle for $6.99 on Amazon.
Authors’ Corner
Raymond Lawrence, DMin, is General Secretary of the College of Pastoral Supervision and Psychotherapy (CPSP), a position he has held since the founding of the organization in 1990.
Raymond has been a clinical pastoral supervisor and psychotherapist since 1969 in general hospital and psychiatric institutions. For 15 years, until his retirement in 2007, he was Director of Pastoral Care at New York Presbyterian Hospital, the teaching hospital of Columbia and Cornell Universities. He has directed clinical pastoral training programs in Texas, Georgia, Virginia, and at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, NJ.
He holds a B.A. from Boston University, M.Div. from Union Theological Seminary (Richmond), an S.T.M from University of the South, and the D.Min. degree from New York Theological Seminary.
Raymond is the author of Recovery of Soul: A History and Memoir of the Clinical Pastoral Movement (2017), Nine Clinical Cases: The Soul of Pastoral Care and Counseling (2015), Nine More Clinical Cases: Cases: Case Studies in Clinical Pastoral Care, Counseling and Psychotherapy (2020), The Poisoning of Eros: Sexual Values in Conflict (1989), and Sexual Liberation: The Scandal of Christendom (2007). He is also the editor and co-author of a book on the famous Bubble Boy case, Bursting the Bubble (2019), where he was the chaplain. He has published in The Annals of Behavioral Medicine, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), Journal of Religion and Health, Christianity and Crisis, The Christian Century, Journal of Pastoral Care and Counseling, The New York Times, Boston Globe, Baltimore Sun, Washington Post, and elsewhere.
Robert Charles Powell, MD, PhD
After earning a bachelor’s degree in the natural sciences, with special distinction in the social sciences, from Shimer College (Illinois), a “Great Books” school, Dr. Powell earned doctorates in medicine and in philosophy from Duke University (North Carolina), within its Behavioral Sciences Study Program (linguistic psychiatry & theoretical biology) and Medical Historian Training Program (European/ American history of science & of ideas).
Following postgraduate work at the SUNY/ Upstate Medical Center (Syracuse) (psychiatry/ neurology/ medicine), and at the Michael Reese Institute for Psychosomatic & Psychiatric Research (Chicago) (clinical research fellowship on adolescence), Dr. Powell earned certification by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. He taught briefly at the medical schools of the University of Missouri – Kansas City, the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee, and Northwestern University (– Chicago).
In late 1998, he was “rediscovered” by the clinical pastoral chaplaincy movement, and once again began contributing to its history, giving major presentations in 1999, 2002, 2005, and 2012, as well as providing relevant essays during the years between and since.
Historically, Dr. Powell’s most popular booklet has been Anton T. Boisen (1876-1965): “Breaking an Opening in the Wall between Religion and Medicine,” 1976; his 2nd most popular booklet has been C.P.E. [Clinical Pastoral Education]: Fifty Years of Learning, through Supervised Encounter with “Living Human Documents,” 1975; his 3rd most popular booklet has been When Death Is Not Theoretical: The Readiness of the Music Group ‘Queen’ for Living with Freddie Mercury’s Dying, 2014; 2nd ed., greatly expanded, 2018.
Historically, his most popular article has been “Helen Flanders Dunbar (1902-1959) and a Holistic Approach to Psychosomatic Problems. I. The Rise and Fall of a Medical Philosophy,” Psychiatric Quarterly 49: 133-152, 1977; his 2nd most popular article has been “The ‘Subliminal’ versus the ‘Subconscious’ in the American Acceptance of Psychoanalysis, 1906-1910,” Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 15: 155-165, 1979 (revised & updated as a chapter in Freudian Concepts in America: The Role of Psychical Research in Preparing the Way: 1904-1934, 2015). An article he most wished had had wider availability is “Psychosomatic Aspects of Affect in Psychoanalytic Theory, 1950-1970,” invited review essay, The American Academy of Psychoanalysis Forum 23 (4): 5-8, 1979.
In mid-2021, a number of Dr. Powell’s clinical studies were collected in one teaching volume:
Listening Closely to Patients: without Jumping to Conclusions {essays on practicing psychiatry}.
[> linguistic/ cognitive DYNAMIC PSYCHIATRY meets neurologic/ nutritional/ endocrinologic PSYCHOBIOLOGY < ]
In late 2021-early 2022, many of his writings on the contiguous clinical pastoral chaplaincy movement and the American psychosomatic movement – including those just noted – were republished in revised, expanded editions by CPSP Press – as will be detailed below.
His website is robertcharlespowell.com