New Approach

". . . It was confusing, sickening, exhilarating, exhausting . . . What, really happened was that I was experiencing God's redemptive power in action." Such was the reaction of one ministerial candidate to his twelve-week training course in a mental hospital.

The student was one of 1,288 potential and ordained Protestant pastors who have received nontheological instruction in mental health from the Council for Clinical Training. Last week some of them were on hand at Chicago Theological Seminary as the council met to honor its founder, 73-year-old Dr. Anton Boisen.

The Price We Pay. Dr. Boisen, a Congregational minister, had spent six years in rural church work before serving in World War I as an A.E.F chaplain. At 44 he discovered that mental illness was a part of his own religious experience. A nervous collapse put him in a mental hospital for two years.

On his 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."

To 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.

Sin & Salvation. The students work as many as 13 hours a day at such tasks as interviewing patients and writing case studies. The council draws no denominational lines. Explains red-haired Director Frederick Kuether: "When you find out that all people are confronted with the same problems . . . the differences in theology are not so different ... If a seminary student can learn about the most serious of human troubles ... he can recognize the symptoms when he sees them in his congregation."

At the Chicago conference, Pappy Boisen finally reached for his cane, struggled to his feet, rumbled a valedictory:

"I don't think that clinical training is any new gospel or that it has brought anything new to the theological field . . . It is only a new approach to the central problems and task of the church: the problem of sin and salvation."

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