Out of the Assumptions: Unique Selling Points of Clinical Pastoral Education

The conference text describes the purpose of the CPE as follows: '(...) professionals in pastoral and spiritual care are being trained and coached to explore their inner world at the service of their spiritual work with patients and clients at various care and church settings'. Also, according to the conference text, spirituality is seen as the core of pastoral work and chaplaincy, which requires the pastor/chaplain to have hermeneutical competencies in order to be able to make the connection between spiritual/religious sources and the life world of patients and clients. In the description of the focal points of the conference, under the heading 'challenges' the benchmarks for the CPE are defined as: 'case study, self-reflection and group dynamic development'.
Regardless of whether these descriptions were and are the principles, objectives and core elements applicable to each CPE center (in the Netherlands and elsewhere), it is necessary when looking back and forward to the CPE to put all these principles and hypotheses under the magnifying glass. The CPE in the Netherlands came into being in the early 1960s, after a few Dutch pioneers had become acquainted (selectively!) with this way of training pastors in the US. This led to choices regarding goals, structure and design, which influence the CPE in the Netherlands until today. In the presentation I want to examine some of these choices and principles from the perspective of the intended and effected professionalization of the participating pastors. Some of these hypotheses were - following the psycho- and group dynamics fashions of those years:
• More self-insight, more insight into one's own internal conflicts and resistances leads to better pastoral care, to better chaplaincy.
• The best training of pastors takes place in the context of psychiatry: there the essence of man is highlighted.
• Residential stays during training encourage the development of group dynamics, and subsequently individual learning.
• There should not be too much focus on theology nor on the organizational context, as participants may escape in that, away from their inner selves.
What was much less taken into account, for example, was the circumstance that the average age of the participants (at least in the Netherlands) was/is between 40 and 45, i.e. about mid-career. Another issue is that the CPE was from the beginning (and later increasingly so) a practicing space where participants from very different religious/world view backgrounds interacted, interreligiosity avant la lettre.
Thus, the key question is to what extent the CPE was responsive to the needs of continuing education/professionalization among pastors, and to what extent the CPE has kept pace with the development of these needs over the years. In this presentation, I offer an initial impetus for these analyses that have so far been missing from reflections on the CPE in the Netherlands. These reflections can provide the first step within CPE for a consistent learning theory, explicit didactics, a common curriculum, and empirical research.