The subject of this book is pastoral counseling as a particular form of pastoral care in the Christian context. Central in the reflection stays the counseling process as dialogue and ethical event, inspirend by thinkers as Levinas, Buber, Honneth, Bakhtin, Vygotsky, Nagy, and others. The first part provides building blocks for an interdisciplinary reflection on different forms and fields of counseling as a qualitative event of conversation. The views on the event of dialogue are illustrated on the basis of different forms and fields of conversation that come from both the pastoral as well as the therapeutic and guidance setting. Contributors to the first part are: Sheila McNamee, Lisbeth Lipari, Marie-Cécile Bertau, Peter Rober, Vangie Bergum, Darcia Narvaez. The second part focuses on the pastoral counselling as ‘event of conversation’ whereby our ‘dialogical human condition’ takes shape in its own manner. Two seemingly contradictory characteristics are linked with each other, namely asymmetry and reciprocity, or better reciprocity in a context of ethical asymmetry, with special attention for the different aspects of responsibility, recognition, power, and visible or hidden forms of violence. The different contributors (Marina Riemslagh, Carrie Doehring, Annelies van Heijst, Axel Liégeois, Annemie Dillen, Roger Burggraeve) indicate stepstones for a pastoral relationship without tyranny. Kenneth and Mary Gergen offer a critical postscriptum on the ‘missing voices’ to make possible a ‘fully relational ethic’ in (pastoral) care-giving and counselling.
