655 - Care of Persons, Care of Worlds: A Psychosystems Approach to Pastoral Care and Counseling

Care of Persons, Care of Worlds: A Psychosystems Approach to Pastoral Care and Counseling
By Larry Kent Graham
Nashville, Abingdon Press, 1992. 266 pp. $16.95.

In this substantial book by one of the rising leaders in the field of pastoral theology, Larry Graham seeks to develop an approach to action and reflection on pastoral practice that, as the title suggests, juxtaposes concern for the welfare of persons and attention to the social systems that shape their lives. Arguing that all pastoral situations "involve a bewildering set of interconnections between the psyches of persons and the larger forces influencing them," Graham develops the thesis that to care for persons means both to respond to individuals and their expressed needs and to seek to create new environmental realities that support the formation of healthy person-hood. This he calls a "psychosystemic" approach to pastoral care and counseling in contrast to what he believes to be the "existential-anthropological" model of personhood and care that dominates the

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field of pastoral care today. Thus Graham seeks to turn the attention of pastors toward the interconnectedness of all systems and forces that shape human life.

Reality, says Graham, is organized into a complex totality in which everything is related to everything else and the maintenance of homeostatic balance is both crucial and delicately difficult. Human systems are thus forever getting out of balance, and it is because of this that situations arise that require and evoke the care of the religious community. To care for persons means therefore to care for and, when appropriate, change the worlds that the systems surrounding persons have created.

Although he draws heavily on general systems theory, the ideas that anchor Graham's pastoral theology come from the theological thought of Alfred North Whitehead as interpreted through John Cobb and David Ray Griffin. The process of becoming-what Whitehead called the concrescence process-is central to this orientation. Everything comes into existence by means of a process of interaction. Present reality unfolds through the interactions of past reality. The past does not simply repeat itself, however. God is active in the emergent process, as are also the emerging subjects. Choices are made, values are affirmed or rejected, and power is exercised. Competition of values and centers of power are inherent in the process of life at every level. If reality is dynamically organized into interactive systems and processes, then likewise the care of persons must, says Graham, be systemic and multi-leveled in its approach to bringing about creative changes in persons and in their social worlds. The goals of care are thus seen as relief of symptoms of pain and impairment by means of altering the power arrangements in those situations. In this effort, the pastoral caretaker seeks to become an ally with God in the transformation of systemic arrangements. Graham outlines five goals of care seen in this systemic perspective: The first goal is to move from contextual impairment to contextual integrity. Contextual impairment manifests itself in ruptured boundaries, disordered accountabilities and system runaway resulting in loss of control. Contextual integrity must be restored if the system is to turn toward creative change as over against static breakdown.

The second goal of care involves seeking to move from power imbalances to synergistic power arrangements. Power of itself is not evil. It becomes evil when it becomes victimizing, chaotic, unaccountable, intractable, exclusive, and inaccessible. The goal of pastoral care is to restore some appropriate balance in the exercise of power so that subjugation to the power of others is reduced and power is shared.

The third goal of care is, says Graham, to move from destructive value conflicts to synchronized value orientations. Harmonization of values, while always relative, makes possible the attainment of vital wholeness, increase in beauty, and optimal harmonization of experience.

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Graham's fourth goal of care is to move from vitiated creativity to vital creativity. A symptomatic crisis occurs when no creative options are apparent or there is no power to carry out the creative options that exist. Creativity has been denigrated, driven underground, or marginalized. Care has as its goal the releasing of creativity and the overcoming of its negation.

Graham's fifth goal of psychosystemic care seeks to move from transactional impasses to transactional effectiveness. All relating involves transacting and the quality of being within any entity, be it a person or a family, or a community of persons is reflected in the quality of the transactions. Transactional effectiveness means that the transactions that occur are stimulating and affirming.

As I indicated in the first paragraph of this review, the contribution that Larry Graham makes in this book is a substantial one. For readers who are looking for a lucid explication of the contribution of process thought to pastoral theological reflection, there is much here to be pondered that may open up new and creative directions for pastoral ministry. Taken as a whole, the book offers a strong and useful counterpoint to the psychotherapeutic paradigm that has dominated much of the literature of pastoral care and counseling over the last several decades. It provides a strong argument for a larger vision of pastoral care that takes seriously the leadership and advocacy roles of the pastor. Graham's pastor is responsive to the needs of persons, but that response breaks out of the confines of mere empathy. It concerns itself with accountability and decision making, the exercise of the strengths of the help-seeker. Where appropriate, the pastoral response takes on a stance of advocacy on behalf of those who have been rendered powerless in their social situation.

There is also much here to stimulate pastors to become more aware of how the power arrangements to which they and their people are subject tend to control the interactions of persons in ways that may stifle creativity and undermine genuinely human community living. It is a book that stimulates the pastoral reader to become more active, more vigorously involved in exercising pastoral power to empower persons to take charge of their lives. The principles of the theory are well illustrated with provocative case material from a wide variety of conflict situations, including one of a conflicted congregation.

Graham offers a strong argument for the usefulness of a systemic, process-oriented frame of reference for the work of the parish pastor. Properly appropriated, his model goes a long way toward providing pastoral practitioners with a language and way of framing human problems that is both genuinely theological and illuminatingly descriptive. Stereotypes are eschewed as the complexity of human interactions is opened up.

The strength of the book is also, in a sense, its weakness. The critical reader may come to the end and wonder if one has done anything more than simply learn another language about human behavior and

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relationship. Process thought tends here, as elsewhere, to have its own way of speaking. Taken by itself, it can become reductionistic or hegemonic. Taken as a stimulus to more comprehensive thinking about the scope of pastoral theology, it can stir the pastoral reader to expend a greater portion of ministerial energy in efforts directed toward change, change both in persons and in the social systems they have created.

Charles V. Gerkin

Candler School of Theology
Emory University
Atlanta, GA