What Makes Chaplaincy Clinical?
What does a chaplain uniquely contribute to the care of people in crisis—and how can that contribution be understood, practiced, and communicated most effectively today?
A new book by David Roth, PhD
Available NOW
About the Book
Clinical Chaplaincy: Principles & Practice offers concise, integrated answers. Rooted in Anton T. Boisen’s “living human document” and the psychodynamic tradition of clinical pastoral education, it brings developments in affective neuroscience and neuropsychoanalysis, cultural understandings of religion and spirituality, Group Relations and systems thinking, and the realities of institutional life into a single framework.
David Roth presents chaplains as specialists in the care of the soul: attending to feeling, meaning, relationship, and the systems in which suffering occurs. The Right Resource Model he introduces clarifies the chaplain’s distinctive place in providing care, while practical guidance on assessment, documentation, boundaries, as well as education and formation makes this a working book for chaplains, students, educators, and leaders, especially but not only in healthcare.
Advance Praise for the Book
“This book reads like it was written—and re-written—and re-re-written—until there were no extra words—and until each word stood there for a reason. Dive in!”
—Robert Charles Powell, MD, PhD
Historian of the clinical chaplaincy movement and Boisen scholar
About the Author
David Roth, PhD, is a board-certified clinical chaplain, diplomate clinical pastoral supervisor, and founder of ClinicalChaplaincy.org. A former Kaiser Permanente spiritual care leader, he has spent decades practicing, teaching, and supervising psychodynamically informed clinical chaplaincy.
Related Reading
Vision from a Little Known Country
A Boisen Reader
Edited by Glenn H. Asquith, Jr.
Anton T. Boisen transformed pastoral care and the field of chaplaincy by approaching persons in crisis as living human documents. This landmark reader gathers some of Boisen’s most important shorter writings alongside contributions by Henri Nouwen, Seward Hiltner, Fred Eastman, Paul Pruyser, and others.
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Long unavailable, this classic collection restores a foundational voice of clinical chaplaincy for students, practitioners, educators, and scholars.