358 - Reframing: A New Method in Pastoral Care

Reframing: A New Method in Pastoral Care
By Donald Capps
Minneapolis, Fortress, 1990. 195 pp. $12.95.

This is an infuriating, exasperating, and thoroughly captivating book written by a passionate and sensitive pastoral theologian. Throughout his work, the author is relentless in exposing the bankruptcy of three traditional modes of pastoral care: supportive counseling, crisis counseling, and counseling on ethical, value, and meaning issues. They have failed and will continue to fail, contends Capps, because they are based on flawed theologies and faulty images of ministry that are guilty of either complexification (the shepherd) or false profundity (the wounded healer). What he argues for is an image of the pastoral healer as the wise fool who sees the human predicament as actually simpler than it has been perceived to be. Because God is a paradoxical self, Capps maintains that the effective pastoral care giver must see her own life and the lives of others as paradoxical. Consequently, the wise fool views human situations as hopeless but not serious. To cope with such paradox and hopelessness, Capps believes pastors must look both to the folly of Christ and also to the wisdom of God, especially as God relates to the suffering of Job. This theological perspective, he believes, is further expanded and informed by the psychological method of reframing borrowed from neurolinguistic programming. The result of his correlating these two perspectives is provocative and controversial, but the practical implications are clear and made easily available to any pastor who longs for a new method of pastoral care.

Charles E. Brown
Union Theological Seminary
Richmond, Va.