At a regional meeting of the ACPE (Association of Clinical Pastoral Education) in Louisville KY, held in the mid 1980�s, I heard Wayne Oats make the statement that �it was quite possible that another organization would need to carry on the work originally begun by ACPE�. This surprised me. I was a supervisor-in-training with ACPE at the time and sensed an amazing amount of energy and vitality in the organization. It was growing rapidly, theology students and clergy were eager for clinical training and many aspired to become supervisors. There were four hospitals in Columbus, Ohio offering supervisory training at that time. I was in an active and engaged supervisory training group.

What was it that ACPE represented for me at that time (and I suspect many others) that gave it the vital energy and made it so appealing? I�m going to suggest that there were at least three factors. Clinical Pastoral Education as practiced by ACPE involved a transformational experience based on a reorientation of personal identity, a new and more effective personal theology, and a people friendly organizational community. I want to address each of these three.

Clinical training became, for many students, an opportunity for identity formation and transformation. It encouraged movement toward �whole self� integration and toward an authentic way of being. CPE was focused toward professional training of clergy. Clergy have often been expected to fit a social expectation of �goodness� measured by the approval of others and standards of moral perfection. Clinical training that encouraged authenticity and whole-self integration challenged this socialization process. Under the influence of psychoanalytic theory, which recognized with nonjudgmental clarity the reality of erotic and aggressive drives, students were confronted with themselves in a new way. This included claiming the �id� dimensions of their lives as a valuable aspect of themselves and in their work of caring. Such self-integration, and self- acceptance increased the power of compassion and the empathic connection made in the caring giving process. The energies of sexuality and aggression profoundly shape the universal human story. The clinical training movement and students discovered that broken and suffering humanity were more open and willing to disclose to care providers who understood their stories, motives, and needs. A listener with some integration of his or her own needs was not shocked or made anxious by the raw elements of the human experience.

Being responsible for the unfolding of my unique personhood with its own beauty and darkness required a supportive understanding community that the peer group and supervisor provided. To engage in a group experience with the trust and acceptance necessary for self-exploration was invigorating and inspiring.

One of the tremendous energies that training brought about was generated by the incredible sense of freedom that emerged as students began to claim and accept themselves and each other. They became free to emerge based on their whole being, not primarily by the mold defined by family, church and social expectation. The liberation and the joy associated with this discovery can hardly be described. Words are inadequate to convey the experience.

Another force of energy that became available in CPE emerged from the psychic forces within each participant. In psychoanalytic terms it is described as �primary process�. The driving energies of the personality are rooted in the two drives/energies described earlier� the erotic and aggressive process. Excessive repression, denial, and projection, often rob the person of creativity, daily life energy and contribute to a depressive life pattern. As clinical training connected students and supervisors to these aspects of themselves� again tremendous energy became available and released.

It is not possible to overestimate the power of these creative and transformational energies. They connect the person to the primitive/primal creative forces of live and the universe. To discover I could embrace all of myself� my imagination, my body, my sexuality, my neurotic quirks, and my worth, and to find a place where the raw power of the psyche is valued and celebrated seemed too good to be true. On top of that, we discovered that owning and valuing these aspects of ourselves could be used as a compassionate force for growth, human transformation and healing� again words fail. It is no wonder that the theological language known to clergy comes to mind, words like; salvation, resurrection, new birth, saved by grace, sacred, holy ground. And since we soon learned that there is risk and uncertainty in this experience, we use words like; faith, hope, courage.

These energies lead to a wildness of being. The founders of clinical training were �wild� men (male for the most part), willing to live on the edge of being, engaging all of themselves, refusing to fit a socially conforming mold. One of the founders was even crazy. These people were authentic, genuine, rough but intensely compassionate and tender. This wildness was evident in passionate discussions, liberal use of alcohol, arguments, card games, and sexy jokes and playful teasing, much of it focused on masculine vulnerabilities. Because this kind of individuality and intense community with energy and acceptance was rare in ecclesiastical cultures, clinical training became highly sought after.

It should be noted that connecting to these forces within the human person and within a liberating community does more than energize and inspire. It is energizing and inspiring precisely because it takes the participant into unfamiliar psychic territory, into a high risk, even dangerous personal and relational process. It tests the strength of the ego to mediate and maintain effective social and personal behavior. Excesses did and would likely occur. This energy is powerful and not always managed well. The adage �trust the process� captured the clinical training and philosophical, positivistic attitude that ultimately, strength of character would prevail, and the risks taken would be worth the benefits gained.

The second feature in ACPE that attracted students and gave it strength was its willingness to embrace and describe such an authentic life as profoundly theological and faithful. Conventional religion often follows the pattern of the pilgrim, doing and patterning behaviors, thoughts and ideas after those that have gone before. Clinical training appealed to another kind of theological/spiritual life, the life of a seeker, an outlaw and risk taker. To the seeker, inspiration may be found not in repressive processes such as fasting and self-denial (as valuable as they may be) but in connecting to the senses, tasting the libidinal juices of life. This approach to a theological/spiritual life was new to many students and paralleled the evolving process of identity formation and transformation. The idea that the authentic life could be a valid expression of faith was revolutionary for many of us.

The third feature that contributed to ACPE�s growth and vitality was its comparatively simple and relationship based organizational process. It began with a deeply personal relationship with one�s supervisor and peer group. Learning what CPE was about was often �found� by experience not by verbal or written explanations or written goals and statements. This forced the student to be responsible for their learning and to tolerate anxiety. Supervisors found community in local/regional/national gatherings. The supportive centralized structure of clinical training was irrelevant to many supervisors� the spirit and power were in the training group and the supervisory relationship.

CPSP emerged from ACPE because 15 people came to see that clinical training began to move away from its original goals and process and began to lose the power, energy and inspiration that had made it so effective and valuable. As ACPE grew, it became more centralized in it administrative structure and began to create and develop standards of measurement for student achievement. It began to measure the growth of the student and validity of training programs through more and more predetermined formal goals. This was defended as an effort to standardize and objectify the certification process. Theory papers became required, reviewed by anonymous readers, assignments were to be completed. Cognitive and behavioral quantifiable measures began to be required. The primary questions of the early clinical training process were �Is the student able to be authentic, genuine, courageous and compassionate, capable of adequate openness and intimacy?� and �Does the student have an integration between their personal self-understanding and their identity as a pastor?� Now the formal structure lead to questions more like �Does the student measure up to certain behavioral and cognitive standards?� Training, which began as a facilitation of the student toward his or her authentic and unique personhood, became �Can we get the student to conform to our expectation of behavior and quantifiable criteria for objective evaluation?� This shift in process was also seen in how training centers were accredited. More and more administrative policies and paperwork emerged with less and less attention given to whether the training center was providing a place for personal growth and understanding the human person in the service of ministry. Supervisors found less and less community in the mist of growing demands for compliance to standards. This communicated the sense that ACPE�s organizational structure no longer served the student and supervisor. Rather, students and supervisors were expected to serve the organization. That confirmed William Campbell�s observation that when an organization�s original noble motives turns to preserving itself at the expense of those it was meant to serve, it becomes evil.

This administrative shift by the organizational structure of ACPE came at a time when health care institutions, primarily hospitals where most training centers were located, were having huge cut backs in support services due to health care costs containment. Hospitals were cutting unnecessary services. Large pastoral care and education departments were being cut back. Now in Columbus Ohio, there are no S.I.T programs with ACPE (one of our hospitals has an occasional SIT student who must travel extensively for a peer group). In my hospital with 830 beds and 6 pastoral care staff (chaplains and supervisor) where Basic ACPE is offered, we haven�t had an office secretary for years. Yet, ACPE�s expectations for details, records and compliance show little adaptation for this profound change in training centers. So not only did ACPE shift its focus of training away from personal integration of the student, it became an administrative burden that no longer made sense.

Although the shift in training goals for students, increasing bureaucracy, and decreasing institutional resources were factors in the split from ACPE, the fundamental energy for this change came from a far more personal motivation. In the mid to late 1980�s the politically correct movement was sweeping the country. Since the early days clinical training had emerged and thrived as a process radically committed to the sacred value of the human person. Challenging and confronting one�s personal bigotry and bias were core features of clinical training. This rich history, however, was not validated or relied on in adapting to the presence of more women in the organization.

Although there were women involved in the early movement, theological professionals were male for the most part. In the early 1980� many of the most compassionate and eager men sought ways to include women in training and certification. As this occurred a female caucus formed, seeking to further the involvement of women in ACPE as supervisors and students. As the organization underwent the integration of more women and continued its rapid growth, there was a heightened concern that women be made welcome and included. In the midst of the process to include more women there was little thought given to how the authenticity and whole person integration, so essential to CPE, would be used and valued so that women could claim all of who they are. Just as men had found salvation in the clinical method women might as well, maybe the issues would be different maybe not. No doubt the experience of wounds and brokenness being addressed and integrated, which was known by the largely male ACPE organization, could have found a uniquely female equivalent. Instead the organization opted for backing away from those issues in the individual psyche and sought to create a community climate that would allow women to participate without addressing and integrating the raw and rough aspects of being a person (male or female). This adaptation in favor of comfort and avoidance was supported by the larger culture of political correctness. In so doing, the values of authenticity and the exciting contribution of primary process were lost. Criticism emerged toward any direct or public reference to sex, jokes or playful teasing. At this point the men in the CPE movement failed to assert and claim the valued and necessary understanding of whole person authenticity. Maybe the super-ego, shame and distrust of themselves led them to concede this vital and essential aspect of clinical training somehow believing that being themselves in a more authentic way was not acceptable. In this process men and women both lost a vital source of self-understanding, self-acceptance and energy.

It is very important to note that one of the vital elements involved in changing the degree of personal integration, confronting my drives, respecting, recognizing and claiming the primal aspects of myself, is the high need for a trusting community. When these risky aspects of personal life were no longer discussed or shared the need for a highly trusting community decreases. If the need for a high level of trust in a community diminishes the group atmosphere becomes �tame�. What results is decreased energy and weaker group bonding.

Some of the male leaders in ACPE experienced public confrontation and shaming for being too transparent about their primal selves. Some of these leaders had been instrumental in encouraging women to join and participate in the CPE movement. To have this experience of shaming and rejection coming from the organization that had been an accepting and validating community for authentic and whole person integration was wounding and shocking.

The wound was all the deeper as it seemed that a trusting community that had understood expressions of anger and sexuality as a vulnerable reflection of trust and transparency was now rejecting its members and what had been so transformative in life. It was as if salvation was being recalled, judgment was now being levied on the very processes and people that had given the organization its life and energy. The judgmental and social demand to conform, which so many had been freed from in joining the movement, had infected the character of ACPE as it took on the voice of social convention, requiring a false-self in order to participate.

Such wounds and alienation resulted in the natural response of anger. This anger was intense and often expressed in the Underground Report written largely and promoted by ACPE supervisor Raymond Lawrence. In this work he embodied the vital role of prophet saying �the emperor has no clothes�. That anger coupled with the convictions about what made clinical training inspired and transformational led to a determination to do something constructive.

Fifteen clinically trained supervisors and therapists (most if not all were ACPE Supervisors) met in 1990 to articulate the vision and lay the groundwork of the organization we know as The College of Pastoral Supervision and Psychotherapy.
This early CPSP community had the character of the classic rebel. It was heavily influenced by anger and the wounds experienced but fairly quickly (by the second gathering) it began to focus its energy toward the creating and participating in an emerging new community.

The new organization sought to balance its own self-authenticating nature with efforts to engage with collegial organizations in the field of theological education and clinical practice. A significant force for healing was the involvement of several effective women who also valued the process of authentic and whole person integration as a part of preparation to effective care. Phyllis Hicks, an early CPSP president, Beng Imm Low, Dorothy Greet and Susan Lunning were powerful women and did a great deal to validate the idea that the clinical training process known to be so effective for so many men could be engaged in by women with equally remarkable experiences.

By the mid-1990�s a new generation of students and supervisors began to emerge that did not have the history of wounds and rejections of ACPE but had discovered the energy, hope, inspiration, and freedom that this new organizational culture created. This new group of members has challenged CPSP to be more self-authenticating and less reactive to the wounds that continue to emerge from time to time in its interactions with ACPE. We understand that to be reactive is a continuing form of dependence that is counter to what we want this organization to be. This self-authenticating attitude and being assertive in developing relationships with cognate groups has served CPSP well as it seeks its rightful place in the clinical pastoral education field.

Much of what I�ve described as forces and factors that lead to the formation of CPSP can be intuited from reading �CPSP Covenant�. Phrases like �recovery of soul�, being �non-predatory� and the priority of �persons are always more important than institutions� are a direct result of the effort to provide a vital and necessary corrective in the clinical pastoral education movement.