The Pastoral Counseling and Spiritual Care programs at Loyola have always been interested in advancing research in the areas of Pastoral Counseling, the wider Counseling discourse, areas of the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, and research centered on topics that are applicable to the contemporary situation. The Abstracts for Pastoral Counseling Research and Review for the Social Scientific Study of Religion are compiled and edited at Loyola. The Ph.D. students are among the major contributors to empirical research in a field where there is little hard data available. In 2006 alone, the nine full time faculty produced 44 peer-reviewed journal articles or professional scholarly presentations at peer-reviewed conferences, as well as books and chapters in edited scholarly volumes. 28 of the articles were co-authored by current doctoral students in the program.
In addition to numerous scholarly articles, in the past ten years the faculty has published over 30 books including some of the major works in the field: Pastoral Counseling (Prentice-Hall); Clinical Handbook of Pastoral Counseling Vols. I and II (Paulist Press); and Pastoral Counseling in a Global Church (Orbis Press). The books published have been on three levels: for the professional, as a course text, and for adult readership. The topics have included: psychopathology, spirituality, counseling, research, referral, mariology, health care, treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorders, clinical supervision, sexual abuse, and theology.
For a sampling of articles written by faculty, please see faculty biographies and their present areas of research.
Service
Students provide 40,000+ volunteer counseling hours in over 100 different clinical settings. In order to become pastoral counselors, all students must complete a 1,000-hour supervision intensive internship in agencies throughout the Baltimore-Washington area. Interns work in a great variety of placements, including high school and college counseling centers, hospice programs, sexual assault centers, alcohol and substance abuse centers and working with seniors.
The pastoral counseling program is "supervision intensive" and employs individual supervision, small group supervision, triadic supervision, and an interdisciplinary experience. The goal of supervision is to assist individuals as they seek to become knowledgeable and competent practitioners committed to the counseling ministry while actively helping others.
