resources from behavioral science

by Tom Summers
Board Member, PCNSR

In response to the cataclysm of September 11 and the events thereafter, we pastoral care and counseling specialists have attempted to draw deeply from the wells of our traditional resources.

One such important provision is that which is derived from the concepts and methods in behavioral science.  Historically, our pastoral discipline has shown an appreciation for the profound behavioral contributions from such areas as psychotherapy, personality development theory, family systems, organizational development, and the like.

Hence, the insights that we can glean from them might provide assistance as we go about our pastoral efforts during this indescribable global era of terroristic turmoil.  Below are some of my reflections on several such areas.

As an illustration of the connective thread between behavioral science and our pastoral care/counseling role, we are indebted to some of the highly usable perspectives from the work of Carl Rogers.  For instance, his views on "empathy" stress the need to gain a sensing of another person's internal frame of reference.  An empathic walk in the moccasins of the other implies that pastoral work endeavors to journey with the inner world of other persons.  Such a walk of empathy is intended, therefore, for a citizen of the U.S. lusting for war as well as for a person harboring hatred toward the western world.

An encouragement for showing empathy does not imply that the values of the care-provider must be in agreement with those of another person.  Rather, the most important question in the caring process might well be: Can you deeply imagine what the inward experience of the other person feels like?

The phenomenon of empathy seems to serve as a most critical, and often fragile, gift in the maintaining of that delicate bridge of understanding between persons in the human community.  Without this sensing of the inward direction, we are cast outwardly relying thereby mainly on the exterior surface of another person.  The connective outreach of attempting to feel what other persons/nations feel is a Rogerian essential in the longterm pastoral task of intentional peacemaking with justice.

Secondly, Gordon Allport, in his noted research work on the nature of prejudice, warns about the potential lethality of words.  He uses the term anti-locution ("speaking against") in describing the first stage in how an evolving development of social prejudice can lead ultimately to the extermination of persons.  Such slurs as "infidels" or "evil-doers" thus become early word weapons in the deathly march toward the continuance of violence.

The use of disparaging labels helps to loosen the social soil so that it becomes easier for a progressively dehumanizing process to take root against a targeted social group.  It becomes socially much easier to exterminate objects of derision rather than the persons behind the verbal missile.

Since September 11 casualty-ridden battles have taken place not only in the air and on the ground but also in "a war of words."  In this highly charged verbal atmosphere, the pastoral representative keeps a third ear tuned to the nature of spoken bombs being thrown around in her/his context of care.  Such awareness can aid in pastorally assessing the degree of a global anti-locution influence on that particular setting.

Another resource from behavioral science can be seen in the matter of conflict resolution.  The word conflict literally means "to strike or brush against."  Organizational development leaders, such as those related to the National Training Laboratories or such writers as Speed Leas or Paul Kittlaus, remind us that conflict naturally occurs when more than one person (or group) occupies the same relational space at a given time.  As the various values and cultural features from each disparate unit brush against each other, the task of negotiating the sharing of that given space soon follows.

Projecting this particular perspective on conflict resolution to the current global crisis, we sense a painful and uncertain space crisis erupting in our precious Earth home.  The atrocities of September 11 perhaps have shown dramatically to what extent the terroristic world holds a vengeance for the way that the United States exerts its power in our common earth space.

For example, the U.S. occupies 5% of that space but uses over 25% of its resources.  Also some analysts indicate that the U.S. could greatly reduce, if not eliminate, its dependency on Middle East oil through domestic energy conservation.  If its purchased new cars had gotten five miles more per gallon, the U.S would have no longer required Persian Gulf oil!

Conflict theory proposes that, when undealt-with resentment -- especially where a power differential is present -- is pushed underground, those suppressed energies are likely to explode with great force somewhere in that spatial and relational system.  Needless to say, there were many other complex factors included in the causation of the apocalyptic nightmare of September 11.  But conflictual ingredients between peoples were never more apparent than on that indescribable day when terror spewed forth like an uncontrollable volcano.

An outrageous tragedy is seen in the awareness that, as such horrific conflicts continue to thrive amongst peoples and gobble up resources around the globe, more than 1,000 children die from preventable diseases every hour in our Earth home.

Almost daily in our work, we pastoral care/counseling specialists see conflictual pains present with marital couples, parent-child relationships, and in organizational life.  The crisis of September 11 and beyond call for our pastoral awareness about conflict to be additionally strengthened by a broader systemic need in the U.S.  And that is the urgency of prophetically assisting, from a social justice perspective, this nation to have a less inflated ego.  Many feel that the U.S. needs to be a more understanding performer on the world's stage -- a place where peoples with their various differences will invariably brush up against each other.

The above reflections related to empathy, anti-locution, and conflict represent examples of how the resources of behavioral science are so intricately threaded throughout the opportunities of our pastoral tasks in these perilous times of global uncertainty.  Other areas could just as well be pursued.  For instance, these following themes deserve similar attention: the basic level of security in Maslow's hierarchy of needs; Caplan's focus on danger and opportunity embedded in crisis counseling; the world family as seen from the family system viewpoint of Bowen; Freud's key issue of repression; primary prevention in health care; or Jung's emphases on the shadow and projection.  The reader perhaps could ponder his/her own favorite theories and schools of thought in this effort to understand the nature of our global crisis from a perspective of the kinship of behavioral science and pastoral work.

The treasures from such matters as psychotherapy and personality theory can become helpful underpinnings as we direct our theology and pastoral methods toward the special social justice needs of our critical times.

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