Therapist as priest ?

Ng, Edward E.

Schwab, Donald F. (2007).

Therapist as priest: 'The spiritual dimensions of the therapeutic relationship. South Bend, IN: Cloverdale Books. Paperback (xxii + 136 pp.) $16.95. ISBN. 978-1-929569-32-8.

Donald F. Schwab began his career in 1972 as an or dained Catholic priest. Having held parish and. educational posts, he became founding Director of Pastoral Care in a large, multi-denominational acute-care setting in Rochester; New York. Dr. Schwab's interest in family systems theory led to a Doctor of Ministry. Later work as therapist and consultant took him to studies in the convergence of adult human development and spirituality. He received his Ph.D. in Pastoral Psychology from the Graduate Theological Foundation.

As a Christian who has received theological training that affirms a place for mysticism in the lives of all Christians, I nodded approvingly as I read Donald Schwab's recent work, Therapist as Priest: The Spiritual Dimensions of a Therapeutic Relationship. It is hard to disagree with much of Schwabs main thesis that "all who seek to guide others to a fuller experience of freedom and growth as humans ... can, through self-awareness and proper practice, avail themselves of that which is fundamentally spiritual both in and among us" (p. xiv). Yet Therapist as Priest can leave one feeling that there is not much that is new in this thesis nor much that advances the self-understanding of a mental health practitioner. Although I was pleased to partake of Schwab's thoughtful prose and focused thesis, his work still read as an initial exploration into the integration of spiritual awareness into therapeutic practice. Therapist as Priest is a lovely work with devotional overtones, but it may have had more punch forty years ago when discussions of the explicit integration of spirituality and therapy were at a greater height in the Christian community. Now it may be that Schwabs background in the Catholic church has allowed him to approach this work with fewer battle scars and burdens than an ordinary Evangelical. Yet in order to contribute to the broader discourse, it is worth wondering how Therapist as Priest presents something new, helps with dialogue, or perhaps, in a twist of good intention, undoes some of the sacred order that Schwab advocates should be acknowledged in a therapeutic relationship.

Schwab lays the foundation of his argument in Chapters 1-3 by comparing the role of therapists to that of priests, noting that both belong to the medieval conceptions of Theology, Medicine, and Law as a basic understanding of what constitutes a profession. This is because along with a host of similarities in training and purpose, they ultimately connote some sense of service to the community. It is in the fourth chapter that Schwab then introduces the idea that this obligation to the community elicits something, or someone, larger than oneself, and therefore, this greater good and higher power can be a "primary context and a consciously available collaborator in the healing process" (p. xxii). In his fifth chapter, Schwab links this possibility to the idea that in addition to the sound theoretical m frameworks, careful training, and preparation that therapists and priests share, both have the opportunity to draw on "spiritual power" whether or not they acknowledge its presence or how "secular it may need to be framed" (p. xxii). Moreover, Schwab claims that not only do therapists and priests draw upon the same source of power, but that this power is the "hinge" (p. xxii) upon which these healing relationships turn. Those with psychodynamic inclinations may find this proposition (familiar as it is in Jung and Hillman) palatable enough, but if Schwabs aim in writing Therapist as Priest was to make reasonable the acknowledgement and use of some Greater Power in the healing professions, he does not endear himself to those with a less enchanted view of the universe. As the audience for this work is not necessarily clear, one may say that if Schwab is addressing the Church that he is preaching to the choir. Yet if he is speaking to the saeadimi, he does not quite provide a basis for their consideration of these claims. Why would an atheist behaviorist need such power when proper conceptualization and technique will do?

Even more, Schwabs thought that therapists and priests are both healers, with the only difference being the explicit spirituality of priests, is unsettling because its underlying assumption is that since therapists and priests are essentially on the same side, they not only can safely draw from each others' resources, but they may also pay homage to the same forces (or Force) that governs the healing process. This seems a rather simplistic hope to keep afloat based on the observation that both therapists and priests have an obligation to the community and therefore to something greater than themselves. There is a vast difference between priests and therapists in what forces they may affirm are at play in human nature and its changing, and it seems overly optimistic for Schwab to make such a connection. In the accessing of "spiritual power," Schwab does not offer an analysis of what spirits or what powers are being accessed, and even opens the door for a communal understanding of "power" that may shift with changes in Zeitgeist.

Even chough I fundamentally agree with Schwabs conclusions regarding the presence of some Other in the healing relationship, he partly undoes his own thesis by insisting on the inclusion of the numinous to a field that is becoming increasingly wary of it by only appealing to the "feelings" that one has. In a sense, the reasoning behind his side project of highlighting the spiritual dimensions of a therapeutic relationship does not seem to progress beyond saying "we all know it exists, so use it," a line of thought that probably will not endear this work to empiricists of any religious persuasion.

What may be even more difficult for both Jungians and Skinnerians to swallow from Schwabs work is that he does not give even the briefest of considerations towards what may be lost when therapists become synonymous with priests. Philip Rieff's theory of culture, as elucidated in My Life Among the Deathworks, was that Western culture experienced a threefold shift: from the pagan animisms of the first world, to the revelatory monotheisms of the second world, to, finally, the relativistic navel-gazing of the third world. The shift from one world to the next is underwritten by a prevailing question of authority: who has it, and why? His main critique in Deathworks was that the severing of humanity from a relationship with God, as seen in a third culture, was the "real Deathworks" (as quoted by Hunter in Rieff & Piver, 2006, p. xxv). According to Rieff, participating in the culture of his third world would bring about the demise of the forces that give vitality to that culture in the first place. If Rieff's observations are correct, the underlying powers and presuppositions of therapy and religion may not be compatible, and more may be lost in attempting to combine them, than in keeping the two as parallel disciplines. In a sense, one could see Schwabs attempt to place therapists and priests as accessing the same powers as an attempt to reconcile living with a burgeoning (if not already dominant) therapeutic culture with a sense of communal purpose and the vertical authority that Rieff's second world culture embraces. However, one cannot help but wonder if conflating the two might be ultimately an unhealthy union, for much of modern psychotherapy is practiced as though the only authority is the way the client feels.

It is because of a lack of critical analysis that Schwabs work falls short of helping clinicians grasp what is at stake when he proposes that the roles of therapist and priest may be interchangeable. There is much good in recognizing the spiritual dynamics of a therapeutic relationship, but there is a great divide between being a therapist and being a priest--if not in form, then definitely in function, for priestly work hinges on being a representative of God to the people, while therapeutic work often turns on being a representative of the individual to themselves. Even if therapists and priests may draw from the common grace of God given to many for their healing, it would take more than rigorous training and a bond of trust with the public to make therapists into priests, even if the priesthood is popularly denigrated in the 21st century and therapists have taken their place as ministers of a kind. What is needed for such a transformation is a shift in the culture itself from one that asserts the right of all to do what is right in their own eyes to one that recognizes authority as a matter of divine bestowal, not as a matter of simply telling us "who's boss," but to allow us to receive the gifts of a relationship with our therapist and with our God with appropriately located gratitude.

Reference

Rieff, P.. & Piver, K. S. (2006). My life among the death works: Illustrations of the aesthetics of authority. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press.

Reviewed by: Edward E. Ng, M.Div.

Reviewer tor This Issue

EDWARD E. NG, M.Div., is from Vancouver, Canada, and is currently a doctoral (Psy.D.) student at Fuller Graduate School of Psychology. His research interests include cultural narrative, bildungsro-man, and the application of Aristotelian catharsis in clinical settings.