Seminary professor warns of risky
counseling practices and ‘misperceptions’

Pamela Cooper-White

In these days when news of sexual misconduct involving spiritual leaders is in the headlines, a professor who teaches seminary students about pastoral care and counseling has a warning for all clergy.

Professional church leaders should think twice before they decide to counsel someone in-depth who is part of their every day church life. Instead, consider referring such a person to a professional in a better position to maintain boundaries and ethical practices. And be open to having your counseling practices and motives scrutinized by a knowledgeable third party you trust.

The Rev. Dr. Pamela Cooper-White, a doctor of clinical social work and Associate Professor of Pastoral Theology at The Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia, bases her conclusions on her research surveying 83 advanced level clinical social workers and pastoral counselors. Her research and expertise has been the subject of recent stories in US News & World Report and the Minneapolis Tribune. Full results of the study, which was funded in part by the Episcopal Church Foundation, will appear in The American Journal of Pastoral Counseling later this summer.

She is still drawing conclusions from that research. And the results are complex. What are some key learnings? Cooper-White has discovered that the professionals she surveyed tend to believe they have not crossed ethical boundaries in their counseling practices. But many volunteered that they had allowed certain non-verbal behaviors open to ethical question, such as embracing a patient or letting someone sit on their lap. While believing such practices are not unethical, the counselors frequently said the behaviors are a means of expressing care, compassion and concern.

By contrast, one-third of the counselors she surveyed said they had heard of a sexual boundary violation by a peer, and 82 percent of the counselors she surveyed had heard a client report of such a violation by a clergy person.

Cooper-White’s conclusions so far? "Counselors can get lulled into crossing boundaries because they want to be a special helper, a rescuer and a hero," she says. "Counselors of both genders will do this kind of crossing, although with women counselors it tends to take the form of maternal over-involvement, while with men it is often more overtly sexual or aggressive."

She has several recommendations. "In counseling, the focus needs to be on giving a client the tools for their own recovery, rather than focusing on what the client has lost and trying to make up for it in the therapy sessions. This focus on empowering clients emphasizes that the client is not bound into dependency on the counselor."

Second: "Pastors, pastoral counselors and clinical social workers need to be open to consultation and supervision by other professionals. No counselor can see the back of his or her own head. Everyone can profitably benefit from some level of supervision as a means of checks and balances."

Finally, Cooper-White calls for a certain "deromanticization of empathy" in counseling. "Empathy is not just being nice," she says. By enacting such an approach, a counselor uses psychology as a "neutral tool" to "help clients understand themselves more deeply." To guarantee this kind of approach, it is not be a good idea for a pastor to counsel someone he or she has come to know well through daily ministry. "To refer such a person to some other professional does not mean you don’t care," Cooper-White advises. "It means you are trying to help the person discover a safe space set apart from everyday life to resolve some issues."

She said counselors run a risk without supervision of getting too involved with someone whom they are counseling. The risk is in "becoming a special helper" on whom a needy parishioner may become dependent. "And such counselors may see the lending of such support as a means for healing their own wounds," she says. "They enter a gray area where they become focused not on helping someone else to grow but on an unconscious need to minister in which they lose sight of their own behavior and focus on what they need."

The current focus on pedophilia has produced significant good advice for parents and children, she says. That advice includes not allowing a child to be alone with an adult, to have glass doors in classrooms and not to succumb to policies that protect a clergy person rather than a victim. She said she believes that many denominations have enacted vastly improved policies over the past 10 years that have put a clamp on practices of betraying victims and "moving perpetrators around" to new settings.

She said the current concern about pedophilia has produced at least two misunderstandings. One is that sex with an adolescent minor is more excusable than sex with a "prepubescent" child. The second misunderstanding is the misperception that pedophiles tend to be homosexuals. "Ninety-plus percent of pedophiles are heterosexual," she says. "They are often males who are married and have adult relationships with women." She said such perpetrators often have "arrested emotional development. They don’t feel any older than the kids they are abusing." She said such acts "have nothing to do with adults having consensual sex with their peers. The real issue is misuse of authority and abuse of power."