The Art of Listening: Dialogue, Shame, and Pastoral Care

Rating:
Summary: The Healing Power of Graceful Presence
Review: A summary of the core theme of this book could read like this: "The ministry of presence as availability, as confirmation and as Grace has the power to repair our fragmented selves."

"The Art of Listening. Dialogue, Shame and Pastoral Care" by Neil Pembroke is not another skill based approach to the Christian ministry of care, contrary to what its title might suggest.This is not to say that reading it could not change the reader's life. In fact, this book could transform many a reader's perspective on why and how the ministry of presence possesses healing power.But it does so not by suggesting another listening technique, but by going to the heart of our God given capacity to be there for one another. The personal quality of compassion, the attitude of acceptance and the gift of graceful presence, according to Pembroke, form the foundation for pastoral availability. Availability as openness, fidelity and belonging lead into a genuine encounter with one another.
The writings of Gabriel Marcel have focussed Pembroke's understanding on the nature of the human relationship. Marcel describes the unfolding of human interaction in the dynamic tension between communion and communication. True recognition of who two people are with one another, can only arise if Grace is part of the communicative encounter. It is graceful, mutual permeability that creates communion, not the mere words we exchange. Thus, presence as Grace can never be imparted as a technique. We receive it as a gift.

At the core of the ministry of presence lies a twofold purpose: to become totally receptive to another's reality and to be able to substitute the other's freedom for one's own. The latter will only arise out of an encounter of another that is embedded in compassion. Pembroke's reflective journey leads the reader to an exciting reworking of the psychology of empathy into a theology of compassion coming to life from the innermost heart of the Christian tradition. In case we have forgotten, Pembroke reminds us again: The ministry of presence expressed in grace and availability represents a Christian core tradition which calls us to make ourselves available to total receptivity when we meet another. Only if we make a home for the other within our own inner space will we truly encounter her.

But there is another stream of thought that is relevant to the our participation in human relationships. It is expressed most adequately in Martin Buber's notion of "confirmation". His term "confirmation" points to that dimension of the other which captures her uniqueness. Confirming the other means to enable her to grow into the fullness of her unique being and to allow all possible manifestations of her self to unfold. Through confirmation a person's disowned selves are retrieved and enabled to become part of her whole being. The retrieved selves are invited to join the community of recognised and accepted selves. When the ministry of presence expresses itself in confirmation of another's uniqueness, it de-fragments the suppressed and shattered selves and brings them back into their intended shape. This powerful and transformative process may not run without resistance. Shame can be a significant obstacle to this healing process. Yet, shame can elicit two quite different responses: It can end in self-destruction or be embraced as an opportunity for learning and transformation. At this point Pembroke addresses the moral challenge of the ministry of presence - to courageously defeat the destructive aspect of shame and commit to its transformative dimension. There he prompts the reader to reflect on the conception of personal shame-filled experiences. Pembroke then proposes that an awakened conscience that works in conjunction with a positive re-interpretation of shame will lift a person out of habitual neurotic self destruction into a process of spiritual and personal renewal.Even from these brief remarks it is becoming obvious that the ministry of presence as availability, as confirmation and as Grace is able to repair our fragmented selves. I believe that Pembroke's book is an original contribution to the rich tradition of the Christian healing ministry. Readers will not put down this book and return to their pastoral ministry empty handed.

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful Sources--Right Direction--Not Quite There
Review: The best feature of Neil Pembroke's book The Art of Listening: Dialogue, Shame and Pastoral Care (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans paperback, 2002, 218 pages) is that it makes an excellent reference text for supervisors of clinical pastoral education chaplain residents. Its resources and rich bibliographical footnotes at the end of each chapter cite a cornucopia and roll call of such authors--Pembroke's favorites Gabriel Marcel, Martin Buber, Carl Rogers, Heinz Kohut, Silvan Tomkins, Karl Bath, and others Henri Nouwen, Donald Capps, Charles Gerkin, Don Browning, Maurice Friedman, James Dittes, Walter Brueggemann, Irvin Yalom, Carl Jung, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, H. Richard Niebuhr, Robert Karen, Leon Wurmser, Donald Nathanson, Helen Block Lewis, Erik Erikson, James Fowler, Jean Paul Sartre, Augustine of Hippo, Reinhold Niebuhr, Karl Rahner and Paul Tillich. A luxurious brew. Pembroke wrestles with the key contemporary themes of human behavioralism, such as, shame versus guilt. He admirably distinguishes between valid roles of counsellor (his spelling) and clergy (191-192, 201-213, 216, and Buber).

My excited expectations from all this instead then became bewildered, the book failing to deliver what it seemed to promise. First, the weakest feature of Pembroke's book to me is his decrying abstract analysis by, however, his own multiplicity of analysis, possibly due to the difficulties posed by shame. His emphasis on presence distorts the reality that both technique and attitude must operate together seamlessly, as human body with emotions. And his focus on counsellor's shame seems to say "Try harder" instead of how the panorama of emotions really works.

Second, any counsellor who tries to keep up with Pembroke's many categorizations does the very thing he decries. Practical helpful Twelve-Step Group factors are omitted. Writing of various sub-selves with the self (80, 89-106, 216), Pembroke ignores the brilliant study and practice of same in Northwestern University Family Therapy Institute's Richard C. Schwartz in his book "Internal Family Systems Therapy" (New York: Guilford, 1995). P>Third, Pembroke exhibits the greatest difficulties and shame ironically in dealing with the obverse of his version of compassion as "availability" (Chapter 1, Marcel) and "confirmation" (Chapter 2, Buber), both of which are dynamics of "flexibility" as opposed to rigidity, and that obverse is shame itself. Shame simply has the function, as does pain, to alert and alarm. Never mentioning transference and counter-transference, he never considers that the shame felt by the counsellor is often "contagion" (S. Tomkins) from the client's burden of shame, and therefore the threshold of therapeutic healing. How else can a counsellor improve unless experiencing this? Shame often is not as problematic as when exacerbated with fear, one of its triggers. (S. Tomkins) He ignores the critical "compass of shame" how shame is expressed--attack self, attack others, avoid, withdraw (D. Nathanson), and so cannot deal with its reduction and remains abstract and avoiding.

Pembroke does, however, move on to explore and does well on the next stage of compassion--exploring the sensing these from and with the client (Marcel).

Understanding Pembroke's predicament--he sees the problems, the reader reviewing his resources will be better prepared, if only to know how much patience therapy requires. (James 5:7-11)

The ...

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful Sources--Right Direction--Not Quite There
Review: The best feature of Neil Pembroke's book The Art of Listening: Dialogue, Shame and Pastoral Care (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans paperback, 2002, 218 pages) is that it makes an excellent reference text for supervisors of clinical pastoral education chaplain residents. Its resources and rich bibliographical footnotes at the end of each chapter cite a cornucopia and roll call of such authors--Pembroke's favorites Gabriel Marcel, Martin Buber, Carl Rogers, Heinz Kohut, Silvan Tomkins, Karl Bath, and others Henri Nouwen, Donald Capps, Charles Gerkin, Don Browning, Maurice Friedman, James Dittes, Walter Brueggemann, Irvin Yalom, Carl Jung, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, H. Richard Niebuhr, Robert Karen, Leon Wurmser, Donald Nathanson, Helen Block Lewis, Erik Erikson, James Fowler, Jean Paul Sartre, Augustine of Hippo, Reinhold Niebuhr, Karl Rahner and Paul Tillich. A luxurious brew. Pembroke wrestles with the key contemporary themes of human behavioralism, such as, shame versus guilt. He admirably distinguishes between valid roles of counsellor (his spelling) and clergy (191-192, 201-213, 216, and Buber).

My excited expectations from all this instead then became bewildered, the book failing to deliver what it seemed to promise. First, the weakest feature of Pembroke's book to me is his decrying abstract analysis by, however, his own multiplicity of analysis, possibly due to the difficulties posed by shame. His emphasis on presence distorts the reality that both technique and attitude must operate together seamlessly, as human body with emotions. And his focus on counsellor's shame seems to say "Try harder" instead of how the panorama of emotions really works.

Second, any counsellor who tries to keep up with Pembroke's many categorizations does the very thing he decries. Practical helpful Twelve-Step Group factors are omitted. Writing of various sub-selves with the self (80, 89-106, 216), Pembroke ignores the brilliant study and practice of same in Northwestern University Family Therapy Institute's Richard C. Schwartz in his book "Internal Family Systems Therapy" (New York: Guilford, 1995). P>Third, Pembroke exhibits the greatest difficulties and shame ironically in dealing with the obverse of his version of compassion as "availability" (Chapter 1, Marcel) and "confirmation" (Chapter 2, Buber), both of which are dynamics of "flexibility" as opposed to rigidity, and that obverse is shame itself. Shame simply has the function, as does pain, to alert and alarm. Never mentioning transference and counter-transference, he never considers that the shame felt by the counsellor is often "contagion" (S. Tomkins) from the client's burden of shame, and therefore the threshold of therapeutic healing. How else can a counsellor improve unless experiencing this? Shame often is not as problematic as when exacerbated with fear, one of its triggers. (S. Tomkins) He ignores the critical "compass of shame" how shame is expressed--attack self, attack others, avoid, withdraw (D. Nathanson), and so cannot deal with its reduction and remains abstract and avoiding.

Pembroke does, however, move on to explore and does well on the next stage of compassion--exploring the sensing these from and with the client (Marcel).

Understanding Pembroke's predicament--he sees the problems, the reader reviewing his resources will be better prepared, if only to know how much patience therapy requires. (James 5:7-11)

The ...