Clinical Theology is a course in clinical pastoral training
and care which makes full use of the resources and techniques of
psychology. It was the first publication of Frank Lake (1914 -
1982), on which the Clinical Theology Association was founded in
1961. Thousands of clergy, ministers, and lay people within the
Church of England have undertaken the two-year course of training in
centers throughout Great Britain.
Lake’s work in pastoral counseling in Great Britain served as a
frontier discipline that related theological and psychoanalytical
data. Archbishop Frederick Temple once wrote that “our theology has
been cast in a scholastic mode….We are in need of, and we are
gradually being forced into, a theology based on psychology. The
transition, I fear, will not be without much pain, But nothing can
prevent it.” After the Clinical Theological Association was formed,
the Bishop of Bradford, Donald Coggan, later Archbishop of
Canterbury, gave Lake and his staff of psychiatrists and clergy his
blessing.
The need for clergy being trained in pastoral counseling and care is
now generally recognized and is offered as part of the curriculum of
most seminaries, but Lake’s pioneering efforts were significant.
While much can be learned from psychiatry and psychoanalysis, Lake’s
unique contribution was his emphasis upon the therapeutic resources
found in certain particular aspects of the life and ministry of
Jesus Christ. He demonstrated that these resources can be like
specific medicines, active against recognizable forms of spiritual
and mental pain. Lake’s full analyses of mental and spiritual
conditions are illustrated with case-histories, some of which
include accounts of the use of abreactive drugs which evoke vivid
memories of birth and the earliest months. This has brought a
striking clarification to the psychoanalysis of many fundamental
issues having to do with mental health and mental illness. His
achievement has been to correlate these with the various patterns of
personality within a theological framework.
Lake cautions against the over-zealous attempt to win approval from
God and shows that this disposition reflects an anxiety disorder
rather than being a Christian virtue. He warned against what he
called “the hardening of the oughteries.”
In the opening chapter, Lake lays out his vision of the counselor as
listener, the mainly silent “witness to the presence of Christ at
the depths of mental pain.”
Thomas Oden has referred to Clinical Theology as a “brilliant
work” (The Care of Souls in the Classic Tradition). "Frank
Lake is considered by many to be the most significant pastoral
theologian in the 20th century."
