In South Africa, no occupational or professional councils for pastoral work exist as yet. In order to support pastoral counsellors in their negotiations to obtain professional status in this country, the presumed limitations and ineffectiveness of present mental health systems in South Africa is examined. Pastoral counselling as a possible national health resource is explored with reference to primary health care, freedom of choice, consumer rights, cost-effectiveness, spirituality, social change and reconciliation and multi-cultural application. Arguments are imbedded in relevant theory and supported by vignettes of suffering, survival, and redemption in spirituality. A postmodern, qualitative approach is used. Participants' narratives indicate that they have experienced healing through utilising their religion and spirituality. However, this study does not claim to provide conclusive proof that pastoral work is relevant in this country - it should be seen as part of a process which aims to develop pastoral counselling as a profession. / Practical Theology / M. TH. (Pastoral Therapy)

This qualitative action research was activated at the junction between three sites of operation of modern power: the site of the woman in the family, religious and cultural power discourses and the professional discourses of therapy. Using an action research design for this study focused the research on reaping benefits in real terms for the research participants. The researcher applied a postStructuralist, feminist and narrative approach to the phenomenon of failed personhood as manifested in the lives of two White Afrikaans women. Narrative therapy methodologiElS, steeped in a religious studies ethic were valuable guides on the therapy-as-research journeys, ensuring the exposure and deconstruction of dominant cultural and religious power discourses. In the course of the therapeutic and research journeys, various narrative therapy methodologies were used with positive effect on the life world of the participants. These methodologies included the externalisation of problems and the discovery of unique outcomes that constitute alternative, preferred life stories that contradict problem-saturated life stories of failed personhood. The research participants engaged in individual and communal conversations, relanguaging their self-narratives and religious narratives as part of the coconstruction of their preferred identities of moral agency and hope. Support networks were created for the research participants, Mara and Grace, to strengthen their new self- and religious narratives and to dislodge the power of the normative cultural and religious discourses of rugged individualism. In one instance, the researcher incorporated the healing power of South African bush veld, by inviting a group of women on a series of expeditions into the wilderness as part of Mara's journey. fn Grace's narrative, we utilised the modern technologies of the internet to connect her with a virtual response team and the Anti-Anorexia/Anti-Bulimia League. Storytelling and reflecting conversations formed the basis of the therapy-asresearch processes. The research participants extended therapy conversations beyond the therapy room, by actively participating in their therapy-as-research journeys. In line with narrative approaches, the researcher encouraged them to honour their skills and knowledges on their journeys: Mara extended her therapy by making resistance quilts while Grace assimilated her art, poetry and resistance writing into her healing process. / Religious Studies and Arabic / D. Litt. et Phil. (Religious Studies)

The study describes the counselling journey undertaken with 270 patients at the Family Medicine Clinic at Kalafong Hospital in Atteridgeville, Tshwane, between June 2000 and December 2003. Of these patients 75% were women, 74% were black and 97% Christian, with half of them belonging to born-again churches. A majority of the patients (52%) were unemployed and the others employed in minimum salary jobs. A third of the patients had attemped suicide at least once before, and a third had lost at least one close family member. With these patients a narrative pastoral counselling practice was established. Narrative counselling was practised as a MEET process in which the patients' problem-saturated stories were mapped and their problems externalised; they were empowered through the deconstruction of religious problem discourses, and their alternative stories were thickened by means of religious practices. This was a pastoral practice with a focus on religious discourses as problem discourses, and on the deconstruction of these discourses towards alternatives stories of faith. The first aim of the study was to describe the faces of religious problem discourses. They are (1) power discourses that hold patients captive in divinely sanctions hierarchies of gender and class, (2) body discourses that alienated patients from their bodies, (3) identity discourses that placed the religious identities of patients in conflict with their other identities, and (4) otherness discourses that created barriers between patients and God. The second aim of the study was to describe the externalised faces of the problems ruining the patients' lives. Here Losses, Loneliness and Lack of money were described as problems causing amongst patients feelings of worthlessness, depression, paralysis, body aches and many more. The third aim of the study was to describe the characteristics of the narrative pastoral counselling practice that has been established. This practice (1) negotiates healing between binaries such as Western/African, culture and dogma/lived experience; patient passivity/patient agency; (2) respects the indigenous knowledge of patients as it is embodied in township spiritualities; and (3) aims at introducing patients to a community of care as well as a new community of discourse where they can experience spiritual healing. / Practical Theology / D. Th. (Practical Theology)

A growing body of research recognizes spirituality as a key element in well-being, but the agency of individual spirituality remains unclear. This study explores the role of embodied knowledge in reality construction and its effect on illness by considering how spirituality as embodied existence shapes reality. Spirituality, as a form of embodied knowing, is shown to reach deeply into the fundamental relatedness of existence. The study argues for a mindbody- spirit unity, making no distinction between self and spirit, emotions and subjective experiences situated in the spirit. As the medium between body and self, spirituality gives form to the felt reality of embodied knowledge and meaning, shaping language, cognition, thought and action towards lived reality. New ways of thinking about eating disorders were stimulated by innovative discoveries through investigating the lived reality of the illness within an epistemology that included subjective experiences as part of reality. While acknowledging the influence of social discourse, the study calls for a recognition of vulnerability in the human condition giving rise to the embodiment of a wounded self or disenabling spirituality, manifested in the development of an eating disorder. It uncovers the anti-spiritual properties involved in the lived reality of people struggling with anorexia/bulimia, evident in social withdrawal and/or self-injury. Behavioural patterns of obsession and repetition underscore similarities to addiction and ritual. The study synthesised pastoral therapy and research. A postmodern approach to illness and a qualitative design with interpretive phenomenology were used. Three young women struggling with anorexia/bulimia participated in semi-structured research interviews. Their narrative accounts provided a chronology of developing, living with and healing from anorexia /bulimia. Emphasis shifted from an approach aimed at fixing the body to focusing on individual experiences of the illness; what she brought to the encounter in her own resources and potential to heal. Healing is envisaged as the ongoing development of a renewed sense of self, an inherently spiritual process orchestrated from within. Previous disassociation of body and self is replaced with reconnection between body, self and other, care of the spirit became care of the body, expressed in harmony and wholeness of being. / Practical Theology / D.Div. (Pastoral therapy)

Text in Afrikaans / Om te luister na mense se verhale is om iets van hulle belewinge en singewing te probeer verstaan. Staatkundige verandering in Suid-Afrika. het die arbeidsposisie van veral die wit werker in onsekerheid geplaas. Saam met die internasionale gemeenskap kan gevolglik gese word: Daar bestaan nie meer iets soos werksekerheid nie. In hierdie studie skets drie wit Afrikanermans en hulle vrouens die invloed en gevolge van onverwagse uitdienstrede op hulself en hul gesinslewe. As gevolg van onsekerheid in die werksituasie het deelnemers bestaande sosiale- en geloofsdiskoerse bevraagteken. Deurdat die deelnemers egter hulle verhale in die teenwoordigheid van persone te midde van dieselfde omstandighede vertel het, kon hulle kom tot die ko-konstruering van betekenis en die skep van alternatiewe verhale. / To listen to the stories of people, is to comprehend something of their experiences and the meaning they apply to it. Political change in South Africa placed the vocational position of especially the white Afrikaner worker in an uncertain position. Together with the international community it can now be said: There is no longer such a thing as job security. In this study three white Afrikaner men and their spouses depict the influence and results of unexpected retirement on themselves and their families. Uncertainty in the job-situation led to the questioning of existing social and faith discourses. By telling their stories in the presence of people amid the same circumstances, participants were however able to co-construct meaning and create alternative stories. / Philosophy, Practical & Systematic Theology / M. Th. (Practical Theology)

The study describes the counselling journey undertaken with 270 patients at the Family Medicine Clinic at Kalafong Hospital in Atteridgeville, Tshwane, between June 2000 and December 2003. Of these patients 75% were women, 74% were black and 97% Christian, with half of them belonging to born-again churches. A majority of the patients (52%) were unemployed and the others employed in minimum salary jobs. A third of the patients had attemped suicide at least once before, and a third had lost at least one close family member. With these patients a narrative pastoral counselling practice was established. Narrative counselling was practised as a MEET process in which the patients' problem-saturated stories were mapped and their problems externalised; they were empowered through the deconstruction of religious problem discourses, and their alternative stories were thickened by means of religious practices. This was a pastoral practice with a focus on religious discourses as problem discourses, and on the deconstruction of these discourses towards alternatives stories of faith. The first aim of the study was to describe the faces of religious problem discourses. They are (1) power discourses that hold patients captive in divinely sanctions hierarchies of gender and class, (2) body discourses that alienated patients from their bodies, (3) identity discourses that placed the religious identities of patients in conflict with their other identities, and (4) otherness discourses that created barriers between patients and God. The second aim of the study was to describe the externalised faces of the problems ruining the patients' lives. Here Losses, Loneliness and Lack of money were described as problems causing amongst patients feelings of worthlessness, depression, paralysis, body aches and many more. The third aim of the study was to describe the characteristics of the narrative pastoral counselling practice that has been established. This practice (1) negotiates healing between binaries such as Western/African, culture and dogma/lived experience; patient passivity/patient agency; (2) respects the indigenous knowledge of patients as it is embodied in township spiritualities; and (3) aims at introducing patients to a community of care as well as a new community of discourse where they can experience spiritual healing. / Philosophy, Practical and Systematic Theology / D. Th. (Practical Theology)

In South Africa, no occupational or professional councils for pastoral work exist as yet. In order to support pastoral counsellors in their negotiations to obtain professional status in this country, the presumed limitations and ineffectiveness of present mental health systems in South Africa is examined. Pastoral counselling as a possible national health resource is explored with reference to primary health care, freedom of choice, consumer rights, cost-effectiveness, spirituality, social change and reconciliation and multi-cultural application. Arguments are imbedded in relevant theory and supported by vignettes of suffering, survival, and redemption in spirituality. A postmodern, qualitative approach is used. Participants' narratives indicate that they have experienced healing through utilising their religion and spirituality. However, this study does not claim to provide conclusive proof that pastoral work is relevant in this country - it should be seen as part of a process which aims to develop pastoral counselling as a profession. / Philosophy, Practical and Systematic Theology / M. TH. (Pastoral Therapy)

This qualitative action research was activated at the junction between three sites of operation of modern power: the site of the woman in the family, religious and cultural power discourses and the professional discourses of therapy. Using an action research design for this study focused the research on reaping benefits in real terms for the research participants. The researcher applied a postStructuralist, feminist and narrative approach to the phenomenon of failed personhood as manifested in the lives of two White Afrikaans women. Narrative therapy methodologiElS, steeped in a religious studies ethic were valuable guides on the therapy-as-research journeys, ensuring the exposure and deconstruction of dominant cultural and religious power discourses. In the course of the therapeutic and research journeys, various narrative therapy methodologies were used with positive effect on the life world of the participants. These methodologies included the externalisation of problems and the discovery of unique outcomes that constitute alternative, preferred life stories that contradict problem-saturated life stories of failed personhood. The research participants engaged in individual and communal conversations, relanguaging their self-narratives and religious narratives as part of the coconstruction of their preferred identities of moral agency and hope. Support networks were created for the research participants, Mara and Grace, to strengthen their new self- and religious narratives and to dislodge the power of the normative cultural and religious discourses of rugged individualism. In one instance, the researcher incorporated the healing power of South African bush veld, by inviting a group of women on a series of expeditions into the wilderness as part of Mara's journey. fn Grace's narrative, we utilised the modern technologies of the internet to connect her with a virtual response team and the Anti-Anorexia/Anti-Bulimia League. Storytelling and reflecting conversations formed the basis of the therapy-asresearch processes. The research participants extended therapy conversations beyond the therapy room, by actively participating in their therapy-as-research journeys. In line with narrative approaches, the researcher encouraged them to honour their skills and knowledges on their journeys: Mara extended her therapy by making resistance quilts while Grace assimilated her art, poetry and resistance writing into her healing process. / Religious Studies and Arabic / D. Litt. et Phil. (Religious Studies)

Text in Afrikaans / Om te luister na mense se verhale is om iets van hulle belewinge en singewing te probeer verstaan. Staatkundige verandering in Suid-Afrika. het die arbeidsposisie van veral die wit werker in onsekerheid geplaas. Saam met die internasionale gemeenskap kan gevolglik gese word: Daar bestaan nie meer iets soos werksekerheid nie. In hierdie studie skets drie wit Afrikanermans en hulle vrouens die invloed en gevolge van onverwagse uitdienstrede op hulself en hul gesinslewe. As gevolg van onsekerheid in die werksituasie het deelnemers bestaande sosiale- en geloofsdiskoerse bevraagteken. Deurdat die deelnemers egter hulle verhale in die teenwoordigheid van persone te midde van dieselfde omstandighede vertel het, kon hulle kom tot die ko-konstruering van betekenis en die skep van alternatiewe verhale. / To listen to the stories of people, is to comprehend something of their experiences and the meaning they apply to it. Political change in South Africa placed the vocational position of especially the white Afrikaner worker in an uncertain position. Together with the international community it can now be said: There is no longer such a thing as job security. In this study three white Afrikaner men and their spouses depict the influence and results of unexpected retirement on themselves and their families. Uncertainty in the job-situation led to the questioning of existing social and faith discourses. By telling their stories in the presence of people amid the same circumstances, participants were however able to co-construct meaning and create alternative stories. / Philosophy, Practical and Systematic Theology / M. Th. (Practical Theology)

A growing body of research recognizes spirituality as a key element in well-being, but the agency of individual spirituality remains unclear. This study explores the role of embodied knowledge in reality construction and its effect on illness by considering how spirituality as embodied existence shapes reality. Spirituality, as a form of embodied knowing, is shown to reach deeply into the fundamental relatedness of existence. The study argues for a mindbody- spirit unity, making no distinction between self and spirit, emotions and subjective experiences situated in the spirit. As the medium between body and self, spirituality gives form to the felt reality of embodied knowledge and meaning, shaping language, cognition, thought and action towards lived reality. New ways of thinking about eating disorders were stimulated by innovative discoveries through investigating the lived reality of the illness within an epistemology that included subjective experiences as part of reality. While acknowledging the influence of social discourse, the study calls for a recognition of vulnerability in the human condition giving rise to the embodiment of a wounded self or disenabling spirituality, manifested in the development of an eating disorder. It uncovers the anti-spiritual properties involved in the lived reality of people struggling with anorexia/bulimia, evident in social withdrawal and/or self-injury. Behavioural patterns of obsession and repetition underscore similarities to addiction and ritual. The study synthesised pastoral therapy and research. A postmodern approach to illness and a qualitative design with interpretive phenomenology were used. Three young women struggling with anorexia/bulimia participated in semi-structured research interviews. Their narrative accounts provided a chronology of developing, living with and healing from anorexia /bulimia. Emphasis shifted from an approach aimed at fixing the body to focusing on individual experiences of the illness; what she brought to the encounter in her own resources and potential to heal. Healing is envisaged as the ongoing development of a renewed sense of self, an inherently spiritual process orchestrated from within. Previous disassociation of body and self is replaced with reconnection between body, self and other, care of the spirit became care of the body, expressed in harmony and wholeness of being. / Philosophy, Practical and Systematic Theology / Th. D. (Pastoral therapy)