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Stephen P. Greggo and Timothy A. Sisemore, eds. Counseling and Christianity: Five Approaches. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2012. 250 pp. $22. 00, ISBN 9780830839780.
You are a Christian psychotherapist asked to provide consultation on a case. The client in question is a middle-class Caucasian male, a nontraditional college student, and a veteran. He presents you with academic struggles, poor social connections, and doubts about his faith. He also has a difficult family history, poor sleep, PTSD symptoms, childhood trauma, substance abuse, a son he has never seen, aggression toward women, noncompliance with medication, ambivalence about counseling, a possible brain injury, and is dropping hints about suicide. What is going on with this client and how do you help him? That is the daunting task put to five Christian psychotherapists in Counseling and Christianity: Five Approaches. The stated aim of this edited text is to help readers apply the concepts put forth in Eric L. Johnson's previously published Psychology and Christianity: Five Views (2010).3 The views behind the five counseling approaches include levels-of-explanation, integration, Christian psychology, transformational, and biblical counseling. The editors' descriptions of these views are readable and concise, and I found myself referring back to them as I got into the heart of the book.
Chapter 2 squarely aims the book at counseling students and educators. The editors take the time to explain why we should use theory to guide clinical work. The editors also connect to students and educators by imagining four new Christian professionals with different professional identities: social worker, Christian counselor, psychologist, and professional counselor. This encourages the reader to consider how their own (or their trainees') backgrounds and spiritual development will impact their choice and use of a counseling approach. These introductions also seem intended to make the book inclusive of the various disciplines practicing counseling, although as a whole, the book's language, sources, and focus on psychopathology reveal its root in [capital P] Psychology. This chapter wraps up with a description of the case of "Jake," the client described above. I remain a bit baffled why such a difficult case was necessary. It seemed to highlight the five approaches' similarities more than the differences (all five paid heed to the suicidality and brain injury in similar ways). The case...