Alan Melton, LPC
In an earlier post I shared the traditional way to train for pastoral psychotherapy. That was my training. Today there are alternate ways to train for the profession. You can attend a spiritually oriented college and obtain a masters degree in pastoral counseling. From there you can work toward a state license in one of the traditional psychotherapy professions including psychiatry, psychology, social work, and licensed professional counselor. With such a license added to your pastoral counseling training you can hang out a shingle and open your own private practice as a pastoral psychotherapist. You can also work in a group serting such as a Pastoral Counseling Center or group practice. With a state license in a mental health profession ( usually requiring a masters or doctorate degree), you can also collect third party payments from insurance companies and even teach at the college or graduate school level. When pastoral counselors only worked in local congregations none of this additional training was required. Once they stepped out of the faith community setting and chose to work in the world of the other mental health professionals, they had to have additional degrees and licenses. This happened to me when I decided to step out of the local church setting and took a position at the Valley Pastoral Counseling Center in Waynesboro, VA. I needed to be able to work with patients who had health insurance and wanted to use their insurance. Thus I was required to become a Licensed Professional Counselor in the state of VA in addition to my pastoral psychotherapy training. Because of my interest in psychodynamic psychotherapy as a specialty I further did continuing education and supervision in psychoanalytic theory and technique. Today there are pastoral psychotherapists who have not first become ordained ministers. They are lay people who went to graduate school in pastoral counseling and also obtained a mental health license to practice in their state. Sometimes these practioners refer to themselves as spiritually integrated psychotherapists rather than pastoral psychotherapists. They can also do continuing education through the Association for Clinical Pastoral Education (ACPE), and become an ACPE Psychotherapist. Even in so called secular psychotherapy training there are a growing number of programs that integrate spirituality into the psychotherapy training curriculum. So there are several alternate ways available today to become a mental health professional who integrates spirituality and psychotherapy, and practice as a psychotherapist. Regardless of which path your follow, the more traditional or one of the newer paths, the most important goal is to be fully qualified to practice. This means pursuing didactic education, supervision, and your own personal psychotherapy. This tripartite training will insure your competence to practice as spiritually integrated psychotherapist.