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Solution Focused Pastoral Counseling
| Our Price |
$ 15.99
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| Retail Value |
$ 19.99 |
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| You Save |
$ 4.00 (20%) |
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| Item Number |
55728 |
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Item Description...
Overview
This approach to pastoral counseling focuses on solutions rather than problems and is typically short-term, requiring only one to four or five sessions.
Gift of Grace Books was established to glorify God in thanksgiving for his abundant grace.
2 Corinthians 4:15 "All this is for your benefit, so that the grace that is reaching more and more people may cause thanksgiving to overflow to the glory of God." |
Item Specifications...
Pages 224
Dimensions: Length: 9.44" Width: 6.34" Height: 0.8"
Weight: 0.98 lbs.
Binding Hardcover
Release Date Jun 1, 1997
Publisher Zondervan Publishing
ISBN 0310213460
EAN 9780310213468
UPC 025986213466
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Availability 1 units.
Availability accurate as of May 25, 2012 10:08.
Usually ships within one to two business days from Johnson City, TN.
Orders shipping to an address other than a confirmed Credit Card / Paypal Billing address may incur and additional processing delay.
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Reviews - What do our customers think?
 | Great Focus For Pastoral Counseling Nov 10, 2006 |
| I very much enjoyed the approach this author took to the subject of pastoral counseling. Turning our focus on the solution to the problem and looking for the clues of how the Holy Spirit is already working in the counselee's life is right on target. I plan on using this matterial for many years to come! | | | | An Attractive Alternative to Problem-Focused Counseling Oct 15, 2006 |
Solution-Focused Pastoral Counseling (SFPC) is a compelling approach to counseling that gains its power from some rather simple, well-known principles-- the power of positive thinking and the power of suggestion.
Without wanting to be dismissive, I think much of what Kollar does is to simply "operationalize" those principles with a counseling model and some associated practical techniques for asking the right questions. Admittedly, he teaches people to count their blessings, but he does so in a way that keeps them from dismissing that too-familiar idea as simply cliché.
In meantime, Kollar offers wide-ranging insights that church counselors should find helpful regardless of approach. Kollar is right, for example, in being concerned about the "rent seeking" nature of the secular mental health industry, where economic incentives favor the need for more and more mental health services rather than the health of clients. So he is right in being cautious about referring Christians into that industry-- an industry concerned, not with the healing of the biblical mind, but with the "healing" of the secular mind-- a mind so intrinsically unsound from a biblical perspective that it's restoration to "soundness" is inherently problematic-- hence the fundamental awkwardness of referring Christians to secular counselors where definitions of failure and success often run counter to Christian values.
Kollar is right in suggesting that complex problems don't necessarily require complex solutions. He is right in challenging the scientific basis for the "disease" categories listed in the APA's DSM-4. He is right in insisting on the profound implications of approaching counseling from the standpoint of solutions rather than problems. And he is right on letting the outcome (health) dictate the process (solution-oriented).
For Kollar, the "deficiency language" of problem-centered approaches is the root of all evil. For counselees, it fosters negative self-perceptions, preoccupation with self, self-fulfilling prophecies, reliance on drugs, frustration, resistance and blindness to solutions, and misplaced trust in experts. Hard data exist to support the relative lack of success for the mental health profession. Experts on mental disorders can easily guide counselees toward solutions that have nothing to do with the reasons counselees seek counseling. The mental health industry tends to transform problems into mental diseases and then give those diseases weight via psychological labeling. Counselees eventually come defend such labeling as part of their identity.
For counselors, "deficiency language" fosters marketing abuses, conflicts of interest, misdiagnoses, an exaggerated sense of competence, over-prescription of drugs, needless investigations into past experiences, preoccupation with defining the problem rather than the solution, reliance on the expertise of the counselor rather than the counselee, and blindness to solutions. Counselors tend to find what they have been trained to spot; i.e., problems or deficiencies. Instead of fixing problems, problem-oriented counselors often simply sensitize counselees to imputed problems, thereby deepening the sense of deficiency within counselees. Deficiency language neglects the resources counselees bring to counseling sessions-- the very things most correlated with success and least-correlated with a problem-centered approach.
Differences between pastoral and secular counseling are wide-ranging. Pastoral counseling focuses on the cognitive side of counseling-- secular counseling focuses on the affective. The cognitive approach has weight, however, in that the connection of emotional dysfunctions with diseases of the brain has not been established. Rather emotions are best seen as signs that counselees are off track. Secular counseling provides "homework" in the pursuit of counselor-defined solutions. SFPC focuses on tasks in the pursuit of counselee-defined solutions. The secular psychotherapeutic concept of resistance has more to do with power and control within counseling relationships than with the unwillingness of counselees to change. In SFPC, resistance is sidestepped in that counselors and counselees "co-create" solutions.
Practical advice abounds in SFPC. Concentrate on what's working and do more of it. Identify what's not working and do less. In counseling, clearly defining the problem is not necessary. Many problems cannot be clearly defined, but that does not mean they cannot be solved. Counselees are the experts on what needs to be changed. They are often simply stuck in their perception of things and need help in changing their perceptions. They need a vision of how life would be like without the problem. How that change will occur is more important than when it will occur. Emphasis on feelings vice doing needs to be turned upside down-- it takes less effort for people to "act" themselves toward a feeling that to "feel" themselves toward an action. Pastors often make bad counselors because they are accustomed to prescribing thoughts and behaviors instead of practicing attentive listening. Counselees may be adept at using deficiency language and inept at seeing exceptions to their deficiencies, so knowing what to ignore and what to attend to in counseling are important aptitudes for counselors. Everyone needs a second chance without the risk of being entangled in the mental health industry.
SFPC is an excellent book. Although it neglects the necessary, tragic, and redemptive significances of suffering, its focus is well-aimed because most of the misery within Western culture is, after all, self-inflicted.
--Bill Brewer
http://historeo.com/wordpress | | | Write your own review about Solution Focused Pastoral Counseling
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