Word: boisen
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...During 3½ years as an Anglican parish minister in Canada. Pastor Bruder felt that he was failing some members of his flock through lack of understanding. Then he heard of the Council for Clinical Training, founded in 1925 by a Congregationalist minister named Anton T. Boisen, who had once been a mental patient himself. Anglican Bruder took one of the council's twelve-week courses, found the work with patients so absorbing that he went on to further study in hospitals and prisons...
Like ex-patient Boisen, he was shocked at the casual insensitivity of the clergy who bothered to visit mental patients at all; they would preach on such irrelevant subjects as foreign missions or potentially explosive texts, e.g., "And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out." But there was more to it than simply giving the patients understanding, says Bruder. "I found in what Boisen called 'the wilderness of the lost' you discovered the needs of people at the ground level, naked both emotionally and physically. It was a whole new field...
...recovery, Dr. Boisen concluded that sickness like his was "the price we pay for being men." Ministers, he decided, would have to help "set free the force in men to strive for their true objectives...
...prepare himself for his new mission, "Pappy" Boisen (as he is affectionately known) took psychology courses at Harvard. In 1924 he became chaplain of the Worcester (Mass.) State Hospital, and the following year started to put his ideas to work. Out of them grew the Council for Clinical Training. At first it grew slowly. Many a student-clergyman was reluctant to add the study of psychotherapy to his already heavy theological schooling. But today the council offers training in 26 prisons, hospitals and correctional institutions...
...Chicago conference, Pappy Boisen finally reached for his cane, struggled to his feet, rumbled a valedictory...