ROBERT
POWELL
Bio
“WORKING WITH THE CLINICAL PASTORAL CHAPLAINCY COMMUNITY FOR OVER 50 YEARS”
“I began this research program in 1968 with a clear and simple historical question: ‘Why did the founder of the American psychosomatic movement have a theology degree?’ [She also had three doctorates.] It also seemed intriguing since I was about to embark on my own six-year M.D./ Ph.D. program as a Macy Fellow in the History of Medicine and the Biological Sciences. At the time that I first formulated this historical question, I did not know that Dunbar’s medical, philosophical, and religious research, too, had been generously supported by the Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation.” Healing and Wholeness: Helen Flanders Dunbar (1902-59) and an Extra-Medical Origin of the American Psychosomatic Movement, 1906-36. (1974, 2022) “Introduction,” p.2, ftn.*1.
The rest is history. Dr. Powell’s first manuscript submitted for publication in 1973 (1975, 2021) concerned “The Joint Committee on Religion and Medicine”. His earliest still widely cited articles concerned Anton T. Boisen’s “Psychiatric Examination: Content of Thought (c.1925-31): An Attempt to Grasp the Meaning of Mental Disorder” (1977, 2021), “Helen Flanders Dunbar (1902-1959) and a Holistic Approach to Psychosomatic Problems. I. The Rise and Fall of a Medical Philosophy” (1977, 2021), “… II. The Role of Dunbar’s Nonmedical Background (1978, 2021),” and “The ‘Subliminal’ versus the ‘Subconscious’ in the American Acceptance of Psychoanalysis, 1906-1910” (1979, 2015). He continued to lecture and publish on “religion and medicine” across the decades.
More recently, Dr. Powell published, When Death Is NOT Theoretical: The Readiness of the Music Group ‘Queen’ for Living with Freddie Mercury’s Dying (2014, 2018), and Listening Closely to Patients: Without Jumping to Conclusions. {Essays on Practicing Psychiatry} (2021).
He has contributed essays to the clinical pastoral chaplaincy community since 1999 — essentially non-stop since 2007.
Testimonial
“You don’t have to be brilliant. You just have to be curious.”
Anton Theophilus Boisen’s Most Famous and Most Cited Psychiatric Study:
“Personality Changes and Upheavals Arising Out of the Sense of Personal Failure” (1926)
Anton Theophilus Boisen's Most Under-Appreciated Book:
Religion in Crisis and Custom: A Sociological and Psychological Study (1955).
One of the Last Books Clearly in the Boisen Tradition -- by Boisen's close colleague, Carroll A. Wise:
Pastoral Psychotherapy: Theory and Practice (1977) [perhaps you can think of others]