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PASTORAL PSYCHOLOGY
versed in the theory and practice of the Christian care of souls
have already been emphasised. His psychological training must
include thorough knowledge of normal psychology and a
special study of the psychology of religious experience; he must
be well informed about sociological psychology, psychiatry and
the theory of neurosis. Schou’s recommendation concerning
spiritual advisers in general applies also to the pastoral
psychologist: he should learn psychology and psychiatry not in order to
heal but so that he can recognise mental disease when he sees it
and refer the sufferer to a physician.
There are many indications that pastoral psychology can,
unlike pastoral medicine, become a distinct branch of study;
and that its work can offer a special vocation that will provide
opportunities for service comparable with many other forms of
personal activity that are open to those who have consecrated
their lives to service within the Christian Church for the benefit
of mankind. The whole issue turns on the question whether
Christian men and women are willing to undertake a social and
humanitarian service for which there is evidently the most
urgent need, and to perform it with purity of intention—that
is, from a direct interest in their fellow men and women—
irrespective of whether directly religious results are won or not.
The pastoral psychologist will co-operate willingly with
teachers, child psychologists and social workers as well as with
physicians. Nevertheless he will see his work as an independent
and very responsible profession; and he can defend it fearlessly
because it is not a slender offshoot from the umbraceous tree of
medical psychology, but a direct and constructive development
of an age-old Christian task: the care of souls. It needs no other
justification.
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