Review of Counseling in Catholic life and education

Abstract

Reviews the book entitled "Counseling in Catholic life and education" (see record 1952-06958-000 ) by C. A. Curran. This book is a new approach to counseling in a number of ways. It is new in combining an accurate knowledge of modern counseling techniques as they have developed in the fields of psychology and education in America with the Thomistic and Aristotelian concepts of the virtues. In addition, it definitely relates religion and counseling together. In its technical presentation, this book clearly distinguishes counseling from guidance and so opens the way for the use of both types of relationships with persons who come for help. The book is made up of five parts. The first part includes some important recent developments in counseling. The second section delineates the process of personal integration as it occurs in counseling from the point of view of the person who comes for counseling. Part III presents the counselor's side by unfolding the skill of the counselor as it varies throughout the different phases of counseling. Part IV, the approach to counseling, is directed to increasing counselor sensitivity to counseling atmosphere, to disguised expressions of counseling need, and to the ways in which informational and guidance roles may facilitate counseling. The concluding chapter is an integration of counseling with religion. While this book has a definitely Catholic application as its title indicates, yet the title could be misunderstood and therefore misleading. The content of the book would readily be shared, in this reviewer's opinion, by chaplains of any denomination as well as by psychologists, psychiatrists, and educators and, in fact, by any persons who have active religious beliefs and convictions and wish to see how such a religious point of view can be integrated with modern methods of counseling and guidance. A special merit of the book is that it achieves this integration without losing any of the rigor and exactness of a careful scientific study. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)