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Ethical Confrontation in Counseling
By John C. Hoffman
Chicago and London, University of Chicago Press, 1979. 125 pp. $10.50.

The question to which this book is addressed, the presumed opposition between healing and moral confrontation or guidance in counseling, is of focal interest to all ministers who engage in pastoral care and to many professional persons in the mental health fields who practice psychotherapy. The author, John C. Hoffman, who is a minister in the United Church of Canada and professor of religious studies and principal of Iona College at the University of Windsor, Ontario, is convinced that the opposition is not absolute, even though there have been some genuine issues which have led many to believe that it is. The disillusionment with moral authority, the development of covert morality under the guise of psychological truth, and the problem of moralism have all contributed to a divorce between healing and morality (p. 5).

Hoffman's approach to this question is to examine the thought of seminal thinkers who have laid the groundwork for our contemporary practice of counseling and psychotherapy and for our understanding of morality. He examines the work of Freud (supplemented to some extent by Franz Alexander) and Carl Rogers on the one hand, and that of Luther and Calvin (as interpreted by Emil Brunner) on the other. He finds Luther and Calvin to be in basic agreement on the three uses of the law - restraint, condemnation, and guidance for the Christian (while admitting that Luther is by no means unequivocal in his endorsement of the third use, preferring to call it "commandment"). In each of these writers he finds a "secondary focus" upon psychology in the theologians, and upon morals in the psychologists, thus providing him with a basis for dialogue.

He finds that both Freud and Rogers condemn the first and second uses of the law as moralistic, even though Freud acknowledges their use in maintaining the order of civilization. Hoffman tried to develop the

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idea of the positive conscience in Freud's "ego ideal" as the basis of aspiration and fear of shame, but noted that it, too, could become a source of tyranny. Neither Freud nor Rogers, he concludes, provided much of a ground for the third use of the law, a deficiency in their positions which has contributed to the moral confusion on the contemporary therapeutic scene.

He then goes on to sketch an outline for a non - moralistic morality, using Tillich's concept of the transmoral conscience - beyond all three uses of the law as the desired outcome of the life of faith based upon grace rather than works. He sees a parallel between the grace of God and grace mediated by the therapist in making this possible, with appropriate disclaimers about the deity of the therapist, who is rather a witness. Hoffman provides his reader with a few anecdotes from his own experience through which he illustrates points at which therapy and morality meet. He concludes that much tension remains between healing and moral confrontation, but that he has been able to show that they are "a part of a larger unity" (p.111).

The assets of this book must include the stimulation that the author has provided us to become more systematic about our thinking concerning the relationship between healing and personal ethics. This stimulation is due primarily to a second asset, the author's command of the primary sources. Although this command can be faulted at points (on the differences between shame and guilt in the psychoanalytic tradition, for instance), in the main it is very solid, and the few points to which exception might be taken do not really affect the central argument. Hoffman is right in believing that the thinkers he chose to treat are still of great importance to our present understanding of the issues he is discussing, and he has enhanced our understanding of them on some key points.

Having pointed to its assets, I must also say that I found the book disappointing. Hoffman is much clearer in showing that therapy and morality do intersect at many points (which needed no demonstration to me, and in our day, to few others - even of the most orthodox psychoanalysts), than in showing how they may constructively intersect. His discussion of this last point is not very clear or helpful, and seems to rely almost entirely on intuition, good will, and "good fortune" (p. 109). He offers us really no strategies related in some responsible way to what is understood to be going on in the counselee, or in the interaction. For example, in the brief case related on pages 108-109, he indicates that the woman contemplating adultery needed no moral rebuke because she was already rebuking herself. Here was a clue toward a strategy which he might have developed. Some people, perhaps most, are already judging themselves, and need only acceptance to hear the self - rebuke (Lowell G. Colston made this point several years ago in his Judgment in Pastoral Counseling). Others may have almost no values and need teaching and guidance (cf. Don Browning's The Moral Context of Pastoral Care). Neither of these involves "confrontation" as such.

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Other points that would have helped in the development of a constructive position include: (1) more than a passing glance at the phenomenon of transference in counseling, and the related issue of the timing in discussing ethical issues; (2) the contexts of psychotherapy and pastoral counseling as making a real difference in the processes, as well as the goals of the helper (a difference in goals is acknowledged briefly on p. 11, but counseling and psychotherapy are treated almost interchangeably throughout the book); and (3) attention to the development of conscience, a question to which considerable attention is being paid at the present time, based primarily upon the work of Piaget and Kohlberg (almost no references are made to works published after 1966).

James N. Lapsley
Princeton Theological Seminary
Princeton, New Jersey