Reflection Paper: The Social Context of Pastoral Care



Reflection Paper: The Social Context of Pastoral Care

Introduction

Pastoral care signifies the tendency of disciplines ranging from general to advance level by following a framework of countervailing surplus. For instance, pendulum displays the discipline passes through one extreme end to another excessive end. Like all cultures and subcultures, perception of pastoral has three points of reference. Cognitive point of reference (what is knowledge? What exist in actuality), cathectic point of reference (what can be perceived as good or bad?), and evaluative point of reference (what displays right? What stands moral?) are the three interrelated types of orientations. All these three types have always existed throughout all the centuries since the birth of this global and compound world. However, one from the three have emphasized over other in different eras.

In this report, the main focus will be on analyzing the first two chapters of the book: “The social context of pastoral care: defining the life situation.” The first chapter with the title of “sociology for pastoral care” underscores a detailed perception of three different orientations to be applied in the worldly life. The chapter examines the moral context of pastoral care. It also signifies differentiation and indicates sociological perspective of pastoral care. Moving forward to the second chapter “the sociology of knowledge and pastoral care”, indicates worldly and spiritual context, along with a comparison between conventional female and contemporary career woman. The focal point of overall chapter is on the prospect of present care seekers selecting religious perceptions to comprehend their lives and setbacks. Religion in the contemporary community directs an unstable and precarious subsistence. The sociology of knowledge will analyze the problems care seekers face “thinking religiously” in today's society.

Summary of Content

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s research illustrated that people shifted towards secular mental health experts, commingled with the movement of away from the church, which signified that people started shifting to the secular therapists and private divisions. Experts and professionals like psychiatrists, social employees, pastoral counselors, and nurses largely extended the practitioners in private sectors. As a result, there was a boost in mental care cost and employers searched out methods to control mental health care costs. Employers who tried to control labor costs placed mental health cost underneath the control of “managed care contractor.” Individuals working as contractors frequently supplied restricted mental health coverage with considerable cost sharing burdens on clients. In addition, dread of overstrained mental health systems and unnecessary boundary from people in non-clinician quality control, in the therapeutic process, constructed an atmosphere where people used to seek for assistance of pastoral counselors and pastors. As business profits subsist to compress by relatively high US labor costs and mental health care and health costs persist to rise, employers possibly to looked to minimize mental health costs. Furthermore, because of omnipresent administration of “Managed Care Organizations (MCOs) there seemed an increasing problem among insureds and providers relating the concern of assured privacy when the MCO is ...