Journal of Pastoral Care & Counseling
August 27, 2026
Gaurav Rastogi, Zachary Ginder
This theoretical exploration examines Hindu spiritual practices within their historical and philosophical context, focusing on their application to the threefold afflictions of human experience: superhuman/situational, physical, and mental/spiritual. Drawing on classical Hindu texts and interdisciplinary literature, it considers how Vedic astrology, Ayurveda, yoga, meditation, and devotional...
Journal of Pastoral Care & Counseling
March 1, 2023
Jeff Clyde G Corpuz
In major world religious/spiritual traditions, death is accepted as a natural end of life and a point of transition into the unknown. In this paper, I reflect from my personal experience as both a survivor of a Near-Death Experience (NDE) and as a theologian doing pastoral care and counseling. NDEs foster an internal sense of connection to the divine and to something greater or higher than the...
Journal of Pastoral Care & Counseling
December 1, 2022
Nazila Isgandarova
1 citation
This article addresses common interpretations of jinn possession among health care professionals. The author addresses the following questions: How do mental health providers interpret jinn possession? How do they view traditional healing practices, such as prophetic medicine, and folk medicine, to explain the phenomenon of jinn possession? The aim of this paper is to contribute to theoretical...
Journal of Pastoral Care & Counseling
November 13, 2021
F. Gelo
Genre: Documentary Run Time: 1 h 21 min Director Louie Schwartzberg Writer: Mark Monroe Producer: Louie Schwartzberg, Lyn Davis Lear, Elease Lui Stemp I enjoy films that entertain. I relish films that introduce me to a larger world. Above all I prize films that introduce me to the unknown and challenge those powerful interests that evaluate and control the flow of knowledge for their own...
Journal of Pastoral Care & Counseling
March 1, 2019
Jeffrey Kaldahl
Elizabeth Kubler-Ross wrote the book On Life After Death to give her findings on what happens when a person dies. Over the course of 20 years, she found that no matter age, sex, religion, or culture, everyone spoke of the same things happening upon death. The insights and revelations that Kubler-Ross talks about will give a minister help when they speak with someone who is dying or has had a...
Journal of Pastoral Care & Counseling
December 1, 2017
Shawn Lucas
In our experience, being able to differentiate between mental illness and transcendent experiences has led patients to remain engaged in treatment. This is important since those who have experienced religious preoccupation are the least likely to seek out mental health care. We have developed a "Transcendent Assessment Tool" to assist clinicians and clients in discerning whether an experience...
Journal of Pastoral Care & Counseling
March 1, 2014
Robert Prue, Richard W. Voss
11 citations
This essay frames an invitation to pastoral counselors and pastoral theologians to examine connections and perhaps interactions between themselves and traditional shamanic healers who use ayahuasca in their healing ceremonies. Indigenous people in South America have used ayahuasca for centuries, and the ritual has become common among the mestizo populations in urban areas of the Amazon,...
Journal of Pastoral Care & Counseling
September 1, 2009
Karen L. Kuchan
An epistemological web invites critical reflection and the possibility of new ideas emerging in the space between experience and different ways of thinking. A web offers a postmodern method of a hermeneutic of experience and a way of knowing that creates space for a robust, flexible, dynamic process of critical reflection and discovery. The following article utilizes an inter-textual...
Journal of Pastoral Care & Counseling
2007
Daniel H Grossoehme, Sian Cotton, Anthony Leonard
One hundred twenty-two adolescent psychiatric inpatients with depressive disorders and 80 healthy peers were administered the INSPIRIT, a measure of core spiritual experiences. Healthy adolescents reported a greater frequency of spiritual experiences and a more positive impact of such experiences on their belief in God than did their inpatient peers. Adolescent inpatients reported higher...
Journal of Pastoral Care & Counseling
2006
Xolani Kacela
Mystical experience has intrigued both religious and non-religious persons for centuries. Several elements of mystical experience have been identified by scholars of the psychology of religion. This essay explores those critical elements and appropriates them in developing a theological anthropology. This understanding is expanded using the framework of the mystic, Howard Thurman, who argued...
Journal of Pastoral Care & Counseling
2004
Cullene Bryant
In this essay the author suggests that a deepening of one's spirituality may be the nurture that is required to remain fulfilled when working in the health care professions; and she illustrates this thesis by tracing a young chaplain's deepening spiritual journey in a Clinical Pastoral Education program. As the young aspiring chaplain attempts to minister to Joe, a dying farmer, he embarks on a...
Journal of Pastoral Care & Counseling
2003
Christine Kennedy, Sharon E Cheston
Recent trends in social research indicate a decline in church attendance and a corresponding increased interest in spirituality. With the aging of the population, attention to end of life care, with its corresponding spiritual concerns and distress, has become a prominent issue. Spiritual distress can be difficult to distinguish from psychological and physical distress and indicates the need...