ABSTRACT
The pastoral counselor offers the client a perspective from which wholeness in the human personality is understood as taking place in the context of a relationship with God. The major theological themes guilt, grace, sin, alienation, meaninglessness, death and rebirth are thus open to discussion in the pastoral counseling setting. The founders of this movement wrote eloquently about their hopes for how pastoral counselors might take part in the dialogue of mental health providers. The counseling relationship, once thought to be about the intrapsychic world only, now has everything to do with the relationship in the counseling office and out in the client's world. For the person with bipolar disorder, the reality of medication is unavoidable. The severity of manic episodes coupled with the depths of depression, and the availability of medications to manage these symptoms, make it likely that bipolar clients who come for pastoral counseling will already be on mood stabilizers, antidepressants, and antipsychotics.
