Abstract

This work presents a theoretical construction of a philosophy of pastoral psychotherapy. It takes as its starting point the need to construct a philosophy of pastoral psychotherapy based in the reality of both a religious and psychological dimension to the experience of psychotherapy. The ontological hermeneutics of Hans Gadamer and Martin Heidegger is proposed as an intelligible and adequate ontological edifice upon which pastoral psychotherapy can be understood as an integration of the religious and psychological dimensions of experience in psychotherapy. ;It is argued that a major obstacle to understanding a universal religious dimension to the activity of psychotherapy is the unintelligibility of religious discourse. Therefore, before this study can proceed to establish an ontology for pastoral psychotherapy, it is established that the general cultural appropriation of scientific modes of thought in Western civilization since the age of Enlightenment have made it difficult for Western thought to speak intelligibly about a religious dimension in any sphere of cultural activity, including organized religion. Heidegger's hermeneutic critique of science is employed to establish the limits of modern thought and Heidegger's ontology, along with Gadamer's extension of Heidegger's ontology, is proposed as an alternative philosophical basis for understanding science and religion that overcomes the limits traditional Western thought. ;After ontological hermeneutics is established as an ontology that is intelligible for both scientific and religious discourse, Paul Ricoeur's work to establish hermeneutics as a philosophy of science for the social sciences is used to establish how psychotherapy can be understood as a hermeneutic enterprise. Paul Tillich's "method of correlation," with his proposal that science and religion are both looking at the same reality, being-itself, from differing perspectives, is employed to establish the method of dialogue that can take place between the religious and psychological dimensions of experience in psychotherapy. A pastoral psychotherapist is understood to be a psychotherapist who has displayed a commitment and ability to correlate these two dimensions of experience and who is recognized by a faith group as being able to perform this function