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The College of Pastoral Supervision & Psychotherapy

The College of Pastoral Supervision & Psychotherapy
Committed to Continuing Accountability, Standards of Excellence, and Diversity of Opportunity


The College of Pastoral Supervision & Psychotherapy promotes competency and accountability through an ongoing process of peer review which is a central aspect of our covenant relationship and Chapter life. CPSP is unique among the national pastoral training and certifying organizations in that it is a covenant community. Within Chapter life, CPSP members covenant together to being held mutually responsible to one another for their ongoing professional development and direction. Credential’s held by CPSP members are renewed annually and contingent upon satisfactory participation in Chapter life and the Chapter's recommendation for renewal. CPSP understands its task to be first and foremost theological and that ongoing peer review is centered in the CPSP covenant. Believing that life is best lived by grace, the CPSP community places a premium on the significance of relationships between its members.

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THE WOUNDED HEALER

“The painful irony is that the minister, who wants to touch the center of men’s lives, finds himself on the periphery; often pleading in vain for admission….He never seems to be where the action is.” I wonder if this says more about Henri Nouwen than it does about the minister’s involvement in critical and crisis situations. “ The minister, the story tells us, is sitting among the poor, binding his/her wounds one at a time, waiting for the moment when he/she will be needed. The minister is called to be the wounded healer, the one who must look after his/her wounds and at the same time be prepared to heal the wounds of others.” --- Henri Nouwen. In his article titled “Wounded Healers”, Thomas Maeder quotes a child of psychiatrists (both parents): “I Think my parents were crazy, I think that, somehow, being psychiatrists kept them in line. They used it as a protection. They’re both quite crazy, but their jobs give them really good cover.” It is no secret that the so-called “helping...

The Founding of the College of Pastoral Supervision & Psychotherapy

CPSP was formed out of the memories of our own experience in clinical training. It was not formed around the corporate bureaucratic model, that by its very nature smothers criticism with public relations and undermines collegiality by promoting patterns of domination and submission. We remembered the redemptive process of our own clinical training, an experience that was marked by deep criticism and deep respect and care, an experience that we would never demean or trivialize by calling it skill training. We experienced our own clinical pastoral process as transformative. We sought in creating CPSP to rekindle the transformative process that seemed to be diminishing in our professional lives. We constructed the Chapter model out of our memories of the clinical training group as the best hope for fostering continuing transformation, individually and corporately. Learn more about CPSP: College of Pastoral Supervision & Psychotherapy The College of Pastoral Supervision...

Time to Call the Hospital Chaplain

Sometime ago Don Berwick, MD spoke about 20 improvements that doctors could make in the end of life care of their patients that begins in a simple conversation. Berwick recommended the following considerations as his top three suggestions: Ask yourself as you see patients, "Would I be surprised if this patient died in the next few months?" For those "sick enough to die," prioritize the patient's concerns - often symptom relief, family support, continuity, advance planning, or spirituality. To eliminate anxiety and fear, chronically ill patients must understand what is likely to happen. When you see a patient who is "sick enough to die" - tell the patient, and start counseling and planning around that possibility. To understand your patients, ask (1) "What do you hope for, as you live with this condition,"(a) "What do you fear?," (b) It is usually hard to know when death is close. If you were to die soon, what would be left undo...