American Association of Pastoral Counselors

This paper examines the challenges that social constructionism presents to the field of pastoral counseling in light of the skepticism that the concept of social construction exhibits toward any kind of normative psychological theory of human beings and human development. The paper examines this challenge for two psychological theories commonly employed in pastoral counseling: psychodynamic psychology and narrative therapy. The paper moves beyond this analysis to argue that Christian theology provides a genre for thinking and writing that addresses this challenge—apophatic theology. The paper ends with a brief clinical example of the implications of apophatic theology for pastoral counseling.
Keywords psychodynamic psychology, narrative therapy, social construction, apophatic theology, negative theology

Attachment	Date	Size
Changing Discourse.pdf	02/23/09 12:47 pm	168.18 KB