PY 617 - Advanced Practicum Seminar: Clinical Pastoral Education

This course is a specialized form of Advanced Practicum and is facilitated as a clinical pastoral education experience, providing an action/reflection and/or process experiential model of education in the practice of pastoral care of others’ spirituality within various crisis situations (i.e., physical, mental, social, political, economic, or legal). This is an extremely rare opportunity for the integration of clinical psychology and pastoral care. The experience is inclusive of all spiritual pathways, including non-theistic or polytheistic perspectives, such as (but not limited to) Buddhism, Indigenous African and Caribbean traditions, or Neo-paganism, as well as being inclusive for those wishing to train in the new branch of chaplaincy that is ever increasing in its presence in various settings, humanistic chaplaincy. The word, “pastoral,” is to be understood in a qualitative way of “being-with” others in crisis, particularized to each respective tradition, rather than as denoting the office of a professional cleric. The process includes group discussions of clinical situations based on a “case study” model of education with a hermeneutic of clarifying spiritual meaning, need, and/or care; interpersonal group relations encounters with one’s peers to gain a better sense of who one is in relation to others in group settings; and seminar/classroom didactics related to the particular needs of the group’s participants in their own professional development, relative to each group’s needs at the time of the seminar, and may include (but not limited by) such topics as the theory and practice of spirituality in crisis intervention, traumatic loss, palliative care, explorations of religious or spiritual traditions different from one’s own, spiritual assessment, diagnostics, and therapeutic/pastoral care and counseling from various traditions, interdisciplinary staff relations regarding the spiritual care of staff and those served by staff in particular settings, addressing joint commission requirements of specific institutions regarding the mandated spiritual care of its consumers. (1 credit)

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