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FOREWORD
As 1Ts title indicates, this book is an attempt to deal with the
problem of the care of souls. While recognising and indeed
insisting that this is an essentially religious task, my concern
has been to emphasise the importance of sound psychological
knowledge in the approach to it because I believe this
knowledge to be an indispensable part of the modern spiritual
counsellor’s equipment.
This opinion is reinforced both by my own experience and
by that of spiritual counsellors in Christian Churches of all
denominations in many countries who are working along the
same theoretical and practical lines.
If this book differs in any way from others that have been
written on the subject, it does so in that I have tried to show
how the spiritual and psychological aspects of the care of souls
are related, so that neither is neglected and both can be used
with understanding.
The views I express about the different phases of spiritual
growth and the forms of spiritual counsel appropriate to them
are the fruits of my own experience, first in many years of
ministerial work that included a period of intensive activity as
Chaplain at a mental asylum; and later—since 1944—in the
course of my duties as Superintendent of the Institute for
Spiritual Counsel and Psychological Treatment of the St.
Luke’s Foundation in Stockholm. There, in company with a
devoted staff of clergymen, doctors and medical psychologists,
I have had opportunities of studying, under clinical conditions,
a great variety of cases of spiritual and psychological illness and
maladjustment, and have developed the methods of treatment
this book describes. Although very few case histories are quoted
in the book, every statement it makes is grounded in personal
knowledge of the kind of human situation to which reference is
made.
It would not have been possible for me to present this book to
English readers without the skilful assistance of my secretary,
Miss Edith Nyman, and of my friend, Mr. Peter Fletcher, of
London. I wish to express my hearty thanks to them both for
their kind help. Also I desire to thank the publishers, Charles
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