Classical Pastoral Care: Pastoral Counsel

Overview

Pastoral Counsel deals directly with the nature of the counseling relationship, the metaphors of soul care (from medicine, guidance, and education), the elements of a therapeutic relationship, the timing of good counsel, pastoral discernment, language and silence in counsel, truth-telling and deception, admonition and discipline, care of the conscience, anticipations of modern psychotherapy by classical writers, and dynamics of the self-alienating will.