Helping the Good Shepherd Myers-Shirk, Susan E
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Helping the Good Shepherd Myers-Shirk, Susan E. Published by Johns Hopkins University Press Myers-Shirk, Susan E. Helping the Good Shepherd: Pastoral Counselors in a Psychotherapeutic Culture, 1925–1975. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009. Project MUSE. doi:10.1353/book.3344. https://muse.jhu.edu/. For additional information about this book https://muse.jhu.edu/book/3344 [ Access provided at 29 Sep 2021 15:35 GMT with no institutional affiliation ] This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Helping the Good Shepherd Medicine, Science, and Religion in Historical Context Ronald L. Numbers, Consulting Editor Helping the Good Shepherd Pastoral Counselors in a Psychotherapeutic Culture 1925–1975 SUSAN E. MYERS-SHIRK The Johns Hopkins University Press Baltimore © 2009 The Johns Hopkins University Press All rights reserved. Published 2009 Printed in the United States of America on acid- free paper 987654321 The Johns Hopkins University Press 2715 North Charles Street Baltimore, Mary land 21218-4363 www .press .jhu .edu Much of chapter 8 appeared in “To Be Fully Human: U.S. Protestant Psychotherapeutic Culture and the Subversion of the Domestic Ideal, 1945–1965,” Journal of Women’s History 12, no. 1 (2000): 112–136, © Indiana University Press, and is reprinted, in slightly altered form, by permission of The Johns Hopkins University Press. Library of Congress Cata loging- in- Publication Data Myers- Shirk, Susan E., 1958– Helping the Good Shepherd : pastoral counselors in a psychotherapeutic culture, 1925–1975 / Susan E. Myers- Shirk. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-8018-9047-5 (hardcover : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-8018-9047-0 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Pastoral counseling—United States—History— 20th century. 2. Liberalism—Religious aspects—Protestant churches—History— 20th century. 3. United States—Church history—20th century. i. Title. BV4012.2.M94 2009 253.50973'0904—dc22 2008021240 A cata log record for this book is available from the British Library. Special discounts are available for bulk purchases of this book. For more information, please contact Special Sales at 410-516-6936 or [email protected]. The Johns Hopkins University Press uses environmentally friendly book materials, including recycled text paper that is composed of at least 30 percent post- consumer waste, whenever possible. All of our book papers are acid- free, and our jackets and covers are printed on paper with recycled content. For Stephanie Jo Myers, 1968–1990 This page intentionally left blank contents Ac know ledg ments ix Introduction 1 1 Anton Boisen and the Scientifi c Study of Religion 16 2 The Methodology of Clinical Pastoral Education 40 3 The Minds of Moralists 62 4 From Adjustment to Autonomy 86 5 Democracy and the Psychologically Autonomous Individual 102 6 An Ethic of Relationships 122 7 Gendered Moral Discourse 142 8 The Language of Rights and the Challenge to the Domestic Ideal 162 9 Resurrection of the Shepherd 180 10 Christian Counseling and the Conservative Moral Sensibility 206 Epilogue 234 Notes 241 Index 293 This page intentionally left blank ac know ledgments As the setting for one of her Peter Wimsey mysteries, Gaudy Night, Dor- othy Sayers chose an imaginary women’s college at Oxford University. Sayers was familiar with the scholarly life and created a character named Miss Lydgate who had spent a good bit of her academic life writing a history of prosody—repeatedly revising and editing her prose and checking—and rechecking—her facts. Her colleagues fi nally wrested the manuscript from her and carried it off to the publisher, despite Miss Lydgate’s protest “about a footnote on page 97.” I am somewhat in Miss Lydgate’s situation; only through the intervention of friends, family, and colleagues has this work made its way to the light of publication. As a result, I have a rather long list of people to thank and acknowledge. In its original incarnation, this book was a dissertation, and so I want to acknowledge the help and direction given me early in my career by my dissertation director, Sally McMurry, my committee chair, Isabel F. Knight, and committee members Anne Rose and Judith Van Herik, all at Penn State University. My fellow graduate students and dear friends Su-Ya Chang and Bill Blair, and Bill’s wife, Mary Anne, played a criti- cal role in those early years. Once I arrived at Middle Tennessee State University, the Women’s Work Group in the History Department took up where my graduate school mentors and friends had left off. I owe a deep debt of gratitude to Yuan- ling Chao, Martha Harroun Foster, Gina Hames, Mary Hoffschwelle, Jan Leone, Rebecca Cawood McIntyre, and Amy Sayward, who have challenged me intellectually and encouraged and prodded me at various points along the way. I have also been extremely fortunate in the funding I have received for this project. First, while the manuscript was still a dissertation, I received a fellowship from the University of Chicago Divinity School Congrega- tional History Project. Two grants, an MTSU Faculty Research and Cre- ativity Activity Grant and assistance from the Louisville Institute for the ix Study of Protestantism and American Culture, allowed me to begin revi- sions in the summer of 1995. In 1997 the Pew Program in Religion and American History at Yale University, directed by Harry S. Stout and Jon Butler, funded a year of work on the project. In the same year, I spent a semester at the Center for the Study of American Religion at Princeton University. I am especially grateful to CSAR director Robert Wuthnow for his encouragement and useful direction and to the fellows that year, Rebecca Kneale Gould, Bernadette McCauley, and Ann Taves, who of- fered me friendship and wise counsel. Cynthia Eller likewise offered sup- port and encouragement, and she skillfully edited the manuscript at a point when I needed some inspiration to continue. At the midpoint of the project, Rodney Hunter encouraged me to continue, and he gave me the opportunity to present my work to his students at Emory University’s School of Theology. Hunter’s Dictionary of Pastoral Care and Counseling was indispensable, as was the consider- able help I received from staff at Emory University’s Pitts Theology Li- brary. The archival work I completed there expanded on the work I had done earlier at Harvard Divinity School’s Andover- Harvard Theologi- cal Library, where the staff were also extremely helpful. A portion of this manuscript was published in the Journal of Women’s History in Spring 2000, and I am grateful to Leila J. Rupp, the journal’s editor at the time, who understood that this work was not just about religion and psychology but also fundamentally about gender. My thanks go to John McGowan and Allen Dunn, who allowed me to participate in the 2001 NEH Summer Institute on Literature and Values in Chapel Hill and who, along with other members of the seminar, especially Miriam Kal- man Friedman, encouraged me to think in new ways about this project. Most recently, the Tennessee Pastoral Care Association, Hospice Alive in Nashville, and the Pastoral Counseling Centers of Tennessee, Inc., have given me a place to present the work as it neared publication and, hence, an opportunity to keep the work fresh. I am especially indebted to Ronald Numbers, the series editor of the Johns Hopkins University Press series Medicine, Science, and Religion in Historical Context, who, having asked me what I was working on, really listened when I answered and then found a place for this book in that series. Many thanks go also to Johns Hopkins University Press editor Jacqueline Wehmueller, who so graciously and kindly helped me navigate x Ac knowledgments an unfamiliar pro cess, and to Anne Whitmore, who so carefully and thoroughly copyedited the manuscript. As long as this pro cess has taken, it has nevertheless been rewarding. I have met good people, read interesting books, and spent time thinking about things that matter. During my graduate studies of Enlightenment Eu rope, the question of the relationship between science and religion fi rst caught my attention. When I shifted my focus to American culture, E. Brooks Holifi eld’s A History of Pastoral Care helped me understand pastoral counseling as the starting point for examining the intersection of science, religion, and liberal thought. I value Holifi eld’s contribution and see my own work in continuity with his. Throughout this pro cess, my family’s support has been unwavering. My parents, Nelson and Faith Myers, and my husband’s parents, Ernest and June Shirk, as well as my sisters, their husbands and children, and my husband’s brother, sister- in- law, and nephews, have been a tremen- dous source of encouragement, even when my work seemed to have no clear relevance to their lives. I fi rst learned about pastoral counseling nearly three decades ago when, as an undergraduate history major at a small, Christian liberal arts college, I decided to take a pastoral counseling class as an elective— in order to be close to a boy, who happened to be a Bible major. As a femi- nist, I should perhaps deplore such behavior, but since that boy has for all the subsequent years of my life loved, encouraged, and, where neces- sary, nagged me, as well as generally made sure I had everything I could want or need, I must dedicate this book to him, David Shirk, with all my love and gratitude. There would be no book without him. Acknowledgments xi This page intentionally left blank Helping the Good Shepherd This page intentionally left blank Introduction “The Deeper Our Religious Faith the More We Feel the Need of Science to Free Us of Sicknesses Which Hamper Spiritual Growth.” —subtitle of “the hard core of counseling,” pastoral psychology,april 1950 n a cold and snowy eve ning in the middle of the nineteenth cen- Otury, “Mrs.