Abstract
This article draws from psychology of religion on the nature of conversion and from pastoral counseling theory on methodizing mystical experiences to explore a previously published case of rapid transformation of a boy’s entrenched grief by means of narrative therapy. It includes additional reflections on the case derived from the author’s personal interview with the therapist.
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Acknowledgments
I wish to thank David Marsten for his gracious willingness to consult with me about his narrative approach with children and others more generally and his work with Danny and Alex in particular. I offer gratitude to W. W. Norton & Company for kind permission to use excerpts from chapter five of Narrative Therapy in Wonderland: Connecting with Children’s Imaginative Know-How. I also want to express genuine thanks to pastoral theologians David Cho, Chris Clements, Danjuma Gibson, Jaco Hamman, Philip Browning Helsel, Jay-Paul Hinds, Jim Horsthuis, Youn Deuk Jeong, Ryan LaMothe, Hyon-Uk Shin, Adam Tietje, and Phil Zylla for their many helpful insights, a number of which I have incorporated here, in conversation around an earlier version of this article. Finally, I offer my gratitude for the ongoing guidance and indefatigable generosity of spirit of Lewis R. Rambo, to whom I dedicate this work, and of steadfast friends in the Group for New Directions in Pastoral Theology.
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Dykstra, R.C. Therapeutic Imagination and the Mystical Moment: Transforming Entrenched Boyhood Grief. Pastoral Psychol 69, 331–351 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11089-020-00904-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11089-020-00904-7