Beyond Illustration

Descripción

Here is the Abstract for this book: In his book The Arts in Theological Education, Wilson Yates profiles the presence of the arts in theological schools across America. Yates' survey of pastoral care and counseling curricula finds a total of only twenty-one courses at fifteen schools that utilize the arts. He reports that in all but two of these courses "art is used for illustrative purposes only." Yates then challenges the field of pastoral care and counseling to make better use of valuable resources. If Yates is correct, why is it that pastoral care and counseling, as a discipline, has failed in this way? The reasons are varied and complex, and a full answer to this question (one which deals with the full range of the arts and the range of concerns designated by pastoral care and counseling) is beyond the scope of this paper. The partial answer offered here will be a vision of how contemporary film and the discipline of pastoral care and counseling can be in dialogue with one another. This paper, then, makes a contribution to the surprising gap to which Wilson Yates accurately points. The theory and practice of pastoral care and counseling has been limited by its lack of informed consideration of aesthetic resources in contemporary film. This is a problem because (1) pastoral counselors and caregivers have missed the potential provided by the aesthetic mode for more imaginative and less reductionistic conceptualizations of feelings, issues, and concerns that present themselves in the counseling setting; and (2) persons seeking help have not benefitted from the richness and depth that the use of such resources could bring to their quest for healing and growth. One reason that such resources have been underutilized is that there has not existed a clearly articulated method for using them effectively. On the few occasions when a contemporary film is referenced in the literature of pastoral counseling, it is most often for illustrative purposes, and it is usually done without a consideration of the artistic integrity of the chosen work(s). This contributes to the problem because it seems to say that a dramatic work in contemporary film, taken as a whole, as the meaningful creation of an artistic director, contains little depth of insight, which through contemplation could expand and enrich our understanding of the human condition. The central question I am exploring, then, is this: What can contemporary film offer "beyond illustration?" A method that gives guidance for the use of resources in contemporary film in a way that is authentic to the resources themselves will expand pastoral counseling/caregiving in two directions. First, it will assist the pastoral counselor/caregiver to use such resources to deepen theoretical frameworks in order to better conceptualize the issues in a given problem area for pastoral care and counseling. Second, it will assist the pastoral counselor/caregiver to make good choices for using such resources in a process of pastoral counseling/caregiving with an individual or family or group. First, by way of background, certain key aspects of the theology of Paul Tillich are important in this approach and method, because we begin by considering a pastoral counseling problem or situation, and end with a reconsideration of that same problem after taking time to consider the impact of the relevant film(s) upon the problem or situation. Thus this method has a correlative stance, a "question and answer" style that is essential to its structure. In such a Tillichian framework, then, the correlative method I am proposing could function in two ways. First, it is possible that a contemporary film can open the reality of the human condition in such a way that the pastoral counseling context might provide a realm for the response of faith. This would be an extension to film of the primary way in which Tillich viewed the visual arts, for Tillich felt that they often functioned to reveal in stark honesty the conditions of estrangement in the culture. Extending this idea to the medium of film, we see that a film could articulate patterns of feelings that reveal life's pain, confusion, and the sense of estrangement. Thus it would have the potential, for example, to help the pastoral counselor prepare for a pastoral counseling relationship by getting in touch with these "questions" of life; so as to better serve the client regarding questions to which the pastoral counseling relationship might provide some kind of faithful "answer." Alternatively, making the correlation from the other direction, the realities of any pastoral counseling situation may function to open up the questions of life in such a way that a well-chosen film could offer a window through which the divine response (in Tillich's terms, the faith which "grasps us") may be heard. Second, the perspectives of philosopher Susanne Langer with respect to art and drama (and by extension, film, where film is understood as one form of drama) are also very helpful. Langer’s theory of art and drama helps us realize that spiritual, theological and psychological reflection upon any particular film must be complemented with an assessment of the way the drama portrayed in film shapes “patterns of human feeling” and renders new insights at this level. Langer is very concerned about developing an adequate understanding of all art in relationship to the life of feeling. Thus her views about symbolization and the life of human feeling are carefully integrated into her holistic understanding of the nature of art. Thus contemporary narrative dramatic film, like all art, has the power to expose persons to new ways of feeling that might hold great promise for them. Just as we can lead people at the cognitive level in a counseling situation to new ways of thinking about their situation (sometimes termed "reframing"), perhaps it is also possible to lead them affectively to new ways of feeling about a life context or problem. In Langer's terms, film creates a virtual world before us, one in which we can contemplate the feelings shaped and articulated within. It engages our cognitive, our emotional, and our spiritual life, while clearly maintaining an "as if" quality. Narrative film can expand our intuition by giving it alternative forms of feeling to consider. Thus it has the potential to enlarge the empathic space within us as human beings. Hence, experiencing well-chosen contemporary films may be of great help to pastoral counselors/caregivers who must learn how to become ever more receptive to real life situations of others. In summary, it is my contention that well-chosen works of contemporary film can have an enriching and an enlivening effect upon the human personality. Therefore, they have an important role to play in the pastoral counseling/caregiving enterprise, especially when their potential to move "beyond illustration" and toward revelation is realized. Thus, this paper forms one response to Wilson Yates' appropriate articulation of dismay "that the field [pastoral care and counseling] has failed to engage in any significant dialogue with the arts and their implications for pastoral care."