Pastoral Care or Therapy? : A Religious Psychological Study of a Pastoral Care and Conversation Clinic in the Swedish Church

Själavård eller terapi? - En religionspsykologisk studie av en själavårds och samtalsmottagning i Svenska kyrkan Pastoral Care or Therapy? - A Religious Psychological Study of a Pastoral Care and Conversation Clinic in the Swedish Church The purpose of this thesis is to increase knowledge about how staff work in a pastoral care and call reception (called the conversation clinic) under the auspices of the Church of Sweden. The empirical material consists of five informants who in one way or another are employed by the parish conversation clinic. This study is carried out as a qualitative study, where the research questions posed problematize how employees work based on psychotherapeutic/therapeutic knowledge and a pastoral care perspective, how the conversation clinic receives people's existential and spiritual needs and how any differences and similarities are expressed between pastoral care and therapy at the conversation clinic. The methodological and theoretical perspective clarifies what characterizes qualitative studies by applying Sharan B Merriam's (1994) case study method. To handle the empirical material Kirsti Malterud's Qualitative Methods in Medical Research (2014) is used. In summary, it can be said that the answers to the first research question is that the conversation clinic is based on a client perspective. The result of the second research question is summed up by the fact that the conversation clinic care about people's existential health and spiritual needs by that fact that the clients always being welcome to the conversation clinic regardless of religious affiliation or outlook on life, regardless of conversations in pastoral care or therapy. The results of the third research question show that the reception works in an intersection between pastoral care and therapy, where the economic factor and record keeping are two clear markers between either pastoral care or therapeutic treatment. Summary conclusions are that the conversation clinic works with a human care and treatment holistic perspective that offers both pastoral care based on theology and various secular therapeutic, psychiatric and psychological theories and models