Understanding one's personal issues and emotional reactions— one's "countertransference"— has long been recognized as a core competency in ministry. Now new understandings of intersubjectivity, mutual influence, shared wisdom (both conscious and unconscious), and multicultural dynamics in the caring relationship are bringing promising new possibilities and challenges to pastoral practice.
Employing these insights, in this groundbreaking book Pamela Cooper-White offers a new relational paradigm for pastoral assessment and theological reflection. She uses the caregiver's own responses and feelings as a primary instrument for deepening discernment and better care. She innovatively combines postmodern, psychoanalytic, and theological perspectives with illuminating case studies to illustrate this new use of the self in pastoral care, counseling, and psychotherapy.
Fortress Press Author Receives National Writing Award
Minneapolis, MN (May 20, 2005) — The Rev. Dr. Pamela Cooper-White, professor of Pastoral Theology at The Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia, has been honored with the Distinguished Achievement in Research and Writing Award of the American Association of Pastoral Counselors (AAPC). Dr. Cooper-White, an Episcopal priest and pastoral psychotherapist, was recognized for the depth and clarity of writing about psychoanalysis in her new book, Shared Wisdom: Use of the Self in Pastoral Care and Counseling (Fortress Press, 2004). The honor was presented April 16 during an annual banquet at AAPC's national conference in Fort Worth, Texas.
Shared Wisdom: Use of the Self in Pastoral Care and Counseling is geared for use by parish pastors and pastoral counselors as well as those who are students of psychoanalysis. The award also acknowledges Cooper-White's past writing contributions, including the award-winning The Cry of Tamar: Violence Against Women and the Church's Response (Fortress, 1995), winner of top ten books recognition by the Academy of Parish Clergy in 1995; and Schoenberg and the God Idea (UMI Research Press, 1985). She had also published a small group resource book entitled, Women Healing and Empowering (ELCA Publishing) and numerous chapters and articles on aspects of pastoral theology, women's development, and pastoral care of post-traumatic stress.
An AAPC Fellow, Dr. Cooper-White has taught courses on pastoral care and counseling, pastoral theology and Anglicanism at The Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia since 1999.
