Spiritual Trauma Care: Theology and Psychology in Dialogue
by Deborah van Deusen Hunsinger
2025 Cascade Books, an imprint of Wipf & Stock Publishers.
ISBN: 9781666735178
Pub Date: January 2025
Format: Paperback
Imprint: Wipf and Stock
Bio: Deborah van Deusen Hunsinger is Charlotte W. Newcombe Professor of Pastoral Theology emerita at Princeton Theological Seminary. An ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA), she worked for many years in a ministry of pastoral counseling and now works as a spiritual director and resonant healing practitioner.
Spiritual Trauma Care is the fourth volume in Cascade Books’ New Studies in Theology and Trauma series, edited by Preston McDaniel Hill. Many will recognize that professor Hunsinger is also the author of Bearing the Unbearable: Trauma, Gospel, and Pastoral Care, published by Eerdman’s a decade ago. But for anyone unfamiliar with that book, this one is a fine place to start as there is overlap paired with ten years of practice and further reflection on the topic.
In this review, I will be particularly focused on presenting the contents in conversation with Viktor Frankl’s Logotherapy. While trauma is the primary concern of this book, I would like to bypass this main topic for a moment to highlight Hunsinger’s use of Karl Barth’s concept of the Chalcedonian Pattern in chapters 3 and 4, which is the highlight of the book for me. What is the Chalcedonian Pattern? It is derived from the Chalcedonian creed which was concerned with the question of Christ’s two natures: how could he be fully God and fully man at the same time? Or how can divine nature and human nature coexist in the same person. Barth’s answer is not that both natures exist side-by-side but that one is higher and has priority over the other. That is, the divine nature is higher and has priority over human nature.
A similar question applies in counseling, pastoral care, and therapy: how do we understand the relationship between theology and psychology? Do we treat them as separate disciplines on equal footing? Or does one take priority over the other? Hunsinger writes that these disciplines have “closely related … significant areas of overlap … but they are not the same. They cannot be conceptually integrated with each other without doing violence to the distinctive contribution of each field, as well as potentially mislead those we are seeking to help” (2). Her solution is found in Barth’s Chalcedonian Pattern: just as Christ is both divine and human and the divine nature has priority over the human, so psychology and theology each has a place in healing, but theology has priority for religious counselors.
This accords nicely with Logotherapy which describes humans as having a physical, mental, and spiritual dimension. Logotherapy is directed specifically to the human spirit as the dimension where meaning and healing intersect. So Frankl chose the Greek word nous (νοῦς) to describe this human spirit in philosophical terms and to keep the concept religiously neutral. Frankl also formulated the concept of dimensional ontology to illustrate how a higher dimension can be inclusive of a lower one. Dimensional ontology is illustrated with a cylinder, a cone, and a sphere. On the surface beneath them they each cast an identical shadow of a two-dimensional circle. Seen from the side, however, their shadows are differentiated as a rectangle, a triangle, and a circle.
Despite Logotherapy’s neutral stance on religion Frankl was deeply religious and in Man’s Search for Ultimate Meaning he wrote the following: “A higher dimension, by definition, is a more inclusive one. The lower dimension is included in the higher one; it is subsumed in it and encompassed by it. Thus biology is overarched by psychology, psychology by noölogy, and noölogy by theology.” Thus Frankl describes theology as a higher, fourth dimension, but Logotherapy only addresses the first three. However, when Logotherapy is integrated into pastoral care, the pastoral counselor has further recourse to theology. And this is why Hunsinger’s application of Barth’s Chalcedonian Pattern is really helpful in that it complements Frankl’s thought on the higher status of theology while affirming the pastoral counselor’s theological prerogative.
Returning to the main purpose of this book, which is to bring trauma care into conversation with spiritual care, Hunsinger writes, “our spiritual care needs to be trauma-informed … needs to be explicitly brought into conversation with our theological understanding and practices of faith” (2). It would be short-sighted to think Hunsinger simply means to integrate trauma care into pastoral care. While psychology seeks to deal with and heal trauma, it cannot give meaning to it in the way that theology can. Thus we must see that while psychology and theology should both be employed in the healing of trauma, “they are not the same. They cannot be conceptually integrated with each other without doing violence to the distinctive contribution of each field, as well as potentially mislead those we are seeking to help” (2). Further, we cannot overlook the power of the gospel to address trauma in a way that psychology cannot: “the uniqueness of the gospel is essentially untranslatable … we lose the power of its message if we try to translate it into other idioms” (7).
Chapter 2, “Bearing the Unbearable,” introduces the subject of trauma, what it looks like, and the importance of dealing with it in the Christian context. Spiritual caregivers need to understand the causes and symptoms of trauma in order to minister to those who have experienced it, and in some cases, to be able to refer them to medical or psychological professionals. People can experience trauma and seek solace in the church, but people can also experience trauma in the church. More to the point, the heart of the gospel is that Jesus was crucified, died, and was buried, which is a trauma story. From this point of view, theology can help a person not simply deal with trauma but actually find meaning in it.
Viktor Frankl talked about three ways meaning can be discovered: creative values, existential values, and attitudinal values. This third one, attitudinal values, refers to the attitude one takes over unalterable circumstances. One of Frankl’s most famous quotes in Man’s Search for Meaning addresses this: “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.” Frankl made this statement when describing the valiant behavior of some inmates in the Nazi concentration camps who chose to behave in a high moral fashion despite being reduced to an animal existence.
But more to the point regarding attitudinal values and dealing with trauma, in a footnote in The Doctor and the Soul, Frankl writes: “It must therefore appear all the more remarkable to us when we realize that Christianity has placed in the foreground of man’s moral consciousness the kind of values we have called attitudinal—the third of the three main categories of possible values. For the Christian existence, taken in the perspective of the cross, of the Crucified One, becomes ultimately and essentially a freely chosen imitation of Christ, a ‘passion.’” In Christ suffering can take on meaning. From this we may ponder the meaning of Paul’s words in Galatians 6:17 regarding the many traumas he experienced in ministry, “From now on, let no one make trouble for me, for I carry the marks of Jesus branded on my body” (NRSV).
Chapters 5-7 revisit themes in Hunsinger’s other writings such as koinonia, compassion, and the art of listening. These chapters tie in loosely with the overall theme but especially address various important aspects of pastoral care. Chapters 7-9 speak directly to the Christian therapist/pastoral caregiver. Chapter 10 addresses the importance of repentance in the healing process and, interestingly, references Max Scheler who was very influential in Frankl’s concept of dimensional ontology. Chapter 11, “Our Life Together: Called to Compassion,” brings us back to the themes of chapters 5-7 to address them in the context of worship and congregational activity. And finally, chapter 12 brings us full circle to the theme of trauma with “Spiritual Trauma Care: Lifelines for a Healing Journey.”
I already feel like I need to read this book again. It is certainly a resource worth owning, reading, and then having on hand when needed.
Tom Edmondson for meaninginministry.com
Date Of Review: June 2025