Description
Book SynopsisIn Anton Boisen: Madness, Mysticism, and the Origins of Clinical Pastoral Education, Sean J. LaBat provides a critical re-assessment of Anton Boisen’s life and work. Based in thorough archival research, LaBat argues that Boisen, who suffered from intermittent severe mental illness, was a creative visionary, a mystic who re-imagined pastoral care and envisioned possibilities for the institutionalized other than shame and stigma. He shows how Boisen elucidated new possibilities in patient-centered health care, community care for the mentally ill, and reconciliation and dialogue between religion and science. Boisen explored the borderland of madness and mysticism, illness and inspiration, and practiced an interdisciplinary approach to his craft that is surprisingly modern and more relevant to the practice of medicine and the practice of religion than ever before.
Table of ContentsChapter 1: Visit to a Little-Known Country
Chapter 2: Searching for Meaning in the Madness
Chapter 3: How Boisen Interpreted His Experience and Illness
Chapter 4: My Friends are Coming to Help Me
Chapter 5: Boisen’s Productive “Retirement”
Chapter 6: The Scientific Seer
