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Open Access 01-04-2018 | Original Paper

Human Development and Pastoral Care in a Postmodern Age: Donald Capps, Erik H. Erikson, and Beyond

Author: Hetty Zock

Published in: Journal of Religion and Health | Issue 2/2018

Abstract

This article discusses Donald Capps’s use of Erik H. Erikson’s life-cycle theory as the basic psychological framework for his theory of pastoral care. Capps was attracted to Erikson’s existential-psychological model, his hermeneutic approach, and his religious sensitivity. Capps’s thought develops from first exploring biblical foundations for using Eriksonian theory for pastoral care to gradually embracing certain postmodern features. The article concludes with reflections on the usefulness of Erikson’s life-cycle theory and Capps’s work for contemporary pastoral care.

“Erikson’s writings in the 1970s are those of a man who had come out of the closet and was seeing the reality around him less as a professional psychoanalyst and more as a man whose outlook was unabashedly religious in tone and scope” (Capps 1996, p. 327).

“… the importance of having a clear sense of orientation in life, a steady image of where we have been and where we are going” (Capps 1983, p. 30).

“The survey was developed in response to some scepticism (expressed by students and others) that the traditional formulation of the deadly sins is viable for late twentieth-century America. Does this formulation really get at contemporary Americans’ sense of dis-ease, their inner sense of wrongness, their sense of being inherently flawed? The only way to respond to such doubts would be, it seemed, to put this matter to empirical test” (Capps and Cole 2000, p. 360). Capps and Cole concluded that the descriptions of the sins are still very relevant.

Hermans sees contemporary tendencies to religious fundamentalism as emotional, defensive counterreactions to the ontological insecurity of the postmodern self in a global world (Zock 2013, p. 20).

Capps states that he wanted “to adapt the traditional deadly sins model to contemporary understandings of the attitudes that are destructive of self and others” (Capps and Cole 2006, p. 520). This implies the need for a different language.

An example is the Spiritual Care Guideline recently developed in the Netherlands: http://www.oncoline.nl/index.php?pagina=/richtlijn/item/pagina.php&id=36577&richtlijn_id=907.

Capps, D. (1979). Pastoral care: A thematic approach. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock.

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Capps, D. (1987). Deadly sins and saving virtues. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock.

Capps, D. (1989). The deadly sins and saving virtues: How they are viewed by laity. Pastoral Psychology, 37, 229–253.CrossRef

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Title: Human Development and Pastoral Care in a Postmodern Age: Donald Capps, Erik H. Erikson, and Beyond
Author: Hetty Zock
Publication date: 01-04-2018
Publisher: Springer US
Published in: Journal of Religion and Health / Issue 2/2018
Print ISSN: 0022-4197
Electronic ISSN: 1573-6571
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10943-017-0483-0

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Human Development and Pastoral Care in a Postmodern Age: Donald Capps, Erik H. Erikson, and Beyond

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