Beyond Illustration
A Method for Using Drama and Film in Pastoral Counseling
Here is the Abstract for this book: In his book *The Arts in Theological Education*, Wilson Yates profiles the presence of the arts in theological schools across America. Yates' survey of pastoral care and counseling curricula finds a total of only twenty-one courses at fifteen schools that utilize the arts. He reports that in all but two of these courses "art is used for illustrative purposes only." Yates then challenges the field of pastoral care and counseling to make better use of valuable resources. If Yates is correct, why is it that pastoral care and counseling, as a discipline, has failed in this way? The reasons are varied and complex, and a full answer to this question (one which deals with the full range of the arts and the range of concerns designated by pastoral care and counseling) is beyond the scope of this paper. The partial answer offered here will be a vision of how contemporary film and the discipline of pastoral care and counseling can be in dialogue with one another. This paper, then, makes a contribution to the surprising gap to which Wilson Yates accurately points. The theory and practice of pastoral care and counseling has been limited by its lack of informed consideration of aesthetic resources in contemporary film. This is a problem because (1) pastoral counselors and caregivers have missed the potential provided by the aesthetic mode for more imaginative and less reductionistic conceptualizations of feelings, issues, and concerns that present themselves in the counseling setting; and (2) persons seeking help have not benefitted from the richness and depth that the use of such resources could bring to their quest for healing and growth. One reason that such resources have been underutilized is that there has not existed a clearly articulated method for using them effectively. On the few occasions when a contemporary film is referenced in the literature of pastoral counseling, it is most often for illustrative purposes, and it is usually done without a consideration of the artistic integrity of the chosen work(s). This contributes to the problem because it seems to say that a dramatic work in contemporary film, taken as a whole, as the meaningful creation of an artistic director, contains little depth of insight, which through contemplation could expand and enrich our understanding of the human condition. The central question I am exploring, then, is this: What can contemporary film offer "beyond illustration?" A method that gives guidance for the use of resources in contemporary film in a way that is authentic to the resources themselves will expand pastoral counseling/caregiving in two directions. First, it will assist the pastoral counselor/caregiver to use such resources to deepen theoretical frameworks in order to better conceptualize the issues in a given problem area for pastoral care and counseling. Second, it will assist the pastoral counselor/caregiver to make good choices for using such resources in a process of pastoral counseling/caregiving with an individual or family or group. First, by way of background, certain key aspects of the theology of Paul Tillich are important in this approach and method, because we begin by considering a pastoral counseling problem or situation, and end with a reconsideration of that same problem after taking time to consider the impact of the relevant film(s) upon the problem or situation. Thus this method has a correlative stance, a "question and answer" style that is essential to its structure. In such a Tillichian framework, then, the correlative method I am proposing could function in two ways. First, it is possible that a contemporary film can open the reality of the human condition in such a way that the pastoral counseling context might provide a realm for the response of faith. This would be an extension to film of the primary way in which Tillich viewed the visual arts, for Tillich felt that they often functioned to reveal in stark honesty the conditions of estrangement in the culture. Extending this idea to the medium of film, we see that a film could articulate patterns of feelings that reveal life's pain, confusion, and the sense of estrangement. Thus it would have the potential, for example, to help the pastoral counselor prepare for a pastoral counseling relationship by getting in touch with these "questions" of life; so as to better serve the client regarding questions to which the pastoral counseling relationship might provide some kind of faithful "answer." Alternatively, making the correlation from the other direction, the realities of any pastoral counseling situation may function to open up the questions of life in such a way that a well-chosen film could offer a window through which the divine response (in Tillich's terms, the faith which "grasps us") may be heard. Second, the perspectives of philosopher Susanne Langer with respect to art and drama (and by extension,
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Ediciones (1)
- Beyond Illustration: A Method for Using Drama and Film in Pastoral Counseling (1995)
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