영성과 가족체계: 가계도의 목회적인 활용에 관한 연구

Spirituality and Family Systems: A Study of the Pastoral Use of Genogram

Counselors and other mental health professionals have struggled to find meaningful ways to attend the spiritual issues in practice. More recently,many family counselors and therapists have found that spiritual and religious issues of the client often surface in the extended family over many generations. This article explores the notion that spirituality and family systems are mutually intertwined in human life by critically examining the clinical use of family genogram. The genogram has long been the most important clinical tool used by family therapists to gather information about families across multiple generations. Herein, this paper points to the pastoral use of the so-called “spiritual genogram,” which is a tool that plays a vital role in seeing the dynamic links among one’s psychic problems and one’s religious issues, and family-of-origin issues. Used as a tool in pastoral ministry and/or Christian(pastoral) counseling, the spiritual genogram enables to make sense of religious issues in the family, not as purely theological one, but a dynamic construct made from the practical, psychic,and spiritual origins in the family systems. This article also addresses how theologically oriented ministers and/or Christian (pastoral) counselors can actually inhibit or close the door to possible exploration of spiritual experience in the clinical settings. A clinical case is presented that illustrates ways of relocating spirituality both in intrapsychic mechanisms and in the family systems from a systemic perspective. The threefold clinical steps are as follows: (1) exploring God’s images underlying client’s religious beliefs, (2) exploring the spiritual genogram to examine the dynamics of spirituality, and (3) using the systemic thinking to understand client’s spirituality in Christian(pastoral)counseling.

Counselors and other mental health professionals have struggled to find meaningful ways to attend the spiritual issues in practice. More recently,many family counselors and therapists have found that spiritual and religious issues of the client often surface in the extended family over many generations. This article explores the notion that spirituality and family systems are mutually intertwined in human life by critically examining the clinical use of family genogram. The genogram has long been the most important clinical tool used by family therapists to gather information about families across multiple generations. Herein, this paper points to the pastoral use of the so-called “spiritual genogram,” which is a tool that plays a vital role in seeing the dynamic links among one’s psychic problems and one’s religious issues, and family-of-origin issues. Used as a tool in pastoral ministry and/or Christian(pastoral) counseling, the spiritual genogram enables to make sense of religious issues in the family, not as purely theological one, but a dynamic construct made from the practical, psychic,and spiritual origins in the family systems. This article also addresses how theologically oriented ministers and/or Christian (pastoral) counselors can actually inhibit or close the door to possible exploration of spiritual experience in the clinical settings. A clinical case is presented that illustrates ways of relocating spirituality both in intrapsychic mechanisms and in the family systems from a systemic perspective. The threefold clinical steps are as follows: (1) exploring God’s images underlying client’s religious beliefs, (2) exploring the spiritual genogram to examine the dynamics of spirituality, and (3) using the systemic thinking to understand client’s spirituality in Christian(pastoral)counseling.