The Anton Boisen Book Project

The Boisen Book Project:

"The Boisen Books Project will reintroduce Boisen to a new generation in the 21st century. As relevant today as when they were first published, Boisen’s three major books will appear, one-a-year, beginning in Spring 2015, marking the 50th anniversary of his death in 1965."

This is great news for all of us in the clinical pastoral field who have been shaped, guided and inspired by Anton T. Boisen's writings.

No doubt many have been instrumental in launching this enterprise. At this writing we know that CPSP's David Roth, PhD and Robert Charles Powell, MD, PhD were a part of the creation of the Boisen Book Project.

The website for the project pays tribute to Dr. Powell: "The new editions will each include a new Introduction by renowned historian of the pastoral care movement and psychiatrist Robert Charles Powell, MD, PhD, as well as a new foreword and afterword."

Keep checking with boisenbooks.com to learn more and for pre-order information

Read more about the Boisen Book Project on the Pastoral Report the online Journal of the
College of Pastoral Supervision & Psychotherapy

Edwin Friedman Thinking Systems

What I want to do this morning is talk about how congregations function like families. I am going to do it from a variety of points of view. I’m going to begin with a fable. This one is called "Burnout" and it’s about a fish tank with a scavenger fish in it, you know a scavenger fish is supposed to keep the fish tank clean. I’m trying to be as realistic about it in my use of language as possible so I hope that you will appreciate that. Once upon a time there was a scavenger fish that lost its taste for shit. (I don’t think I have to read the rest of the fable. You all got the message already!) It was your normal, garden-variety scavenger and had never previously shown any signs of being different from the other members of its species. It lived in a normal-sized tank with the members of several schools and, from the very beginning of its association with this ecosystem, seemed always to be in perfect harmony with the environment. It never got in the way of the others and th

The Wounded Healer Too Wounded To Heal

“The painful irony is that the minister, who wants to touch the center of men’s lives, finds himself on the periphery; often pleading in vain for admission….He never seems to be where the action is.” I wonder if this says more about Henri Nouwen than it does about the minister’s involvement in critical and crisis situations.“ George L. Buck Ph.D. The minister, the story tells us, is sitting among the poor, binding his/her wounds one at a time, waiting for the moment when he/she will be needed. The minister is called to be the wounded healer, the one who must look after his/her wounds and at the same time be prepared to heal the wounds of others.” --- Henri Nouwen. In his article titled “Wounded Healers”, Thomas Maeder quotes a child of psychiatrists (both parents): “I Think my parents were crazy, I think that, somehow, being psychiatrists kept them in line. They used it as a protection. They’re both quite crazy, but their jobs give them really good cover.” It is no secret that the so

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Clinical Pastoral Education

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