This next text is a chapter in an edited book:
Trower, Ross H. (1993). Military. In R. J. Wicks, R. D. Parson, & C. Capps (Eds.), Clinical Handbook of Pastoral Counseling, v. 1 (pp. 440-451). New York, NY: Integration Books.
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""Counseling" for the military chaplain may well be his chief ministerial function -- at least from the perspective of his commanding officer as well as from the descriptive of what it is that the chaplain does... His place on the "team" (a critical concept in the military denoting both the structure and the dynamics of its societal units) is likely to be as a counselor (Hutcheson, 1975)." (p. 440)In post 390, (in the official Army handbook, by the way) the army does acknowledge that not all chaplains are equally gifted at counseling, but still required of each this task. So they can't get off the hook, I guess, just because it doesn't come easily.
But here this text raises counseling the the forefront, which I haven't seen so much in the texts looked at so far. Maybe we'll see it in other texts, though. If this is the case, though, the military chaplains/H.R. staff at the Vienna mission would have been largely there for this reason perhaps then - to provide a psychological perspective on people and the organization and departments, etc. Maybe they had more knowledge and training than I thought, but if so, than that makes them more deceptive than I thought, even, because they were so off base it was a nightmare.
If they really had a lot of knowledge - say nearing that of a full-time counselor, who would have a master's degree, then that would mean that they were really playing with my mind in suggestive psychology, trying to make me believe I had certain ailments or the like, because culture shock was just so off base it was like a decoy duck and basically served a similar purpose. I can tell you I had inordinate mission-induced stress (which they wouldn't admit to any more than the USSR would admit to Chernobyl causing Anatoly Grishchenko's leukemia (he was one of the early ones who flew over it to contain the radiation by throwing debrit on it from above and he was treated in Seattle where he died and I got to know his wife). Granted the USSR didn't intentionally cause Grischenko's leukemia, whereas the mission did intentionally cause my stress, so that's an unfair comparison and in this case actually reflects poorly on the Soviet Union, strangely enough.
So the thing is that the Vienna mission under no circumstances could have me believing that I was under mission induced stress. So they called it culture shock. And you want to know the really strange thing? When I finally did return to Vienna I picked up exactly where I'd left off attending the Austrian church, etc. and I did just fine there. The mission's stressors were more subtle, but I'd learned that I had to keep everythng to myself so there was a sort of entente, if you will, but it was pretty fragile and based on them not testing me in areas I still would not agree too. My values had not changed any, you see. So if they ever really tested me on anything I'd be toast, but on the other hand, I was humiliated in little ways that made me feel that I was always on the edge, not really secure or safe in the mission. I'm really gettting ahead of myself though, and that's for the autobiographical narrative. It's really painful to think about these things.
Anyway, what I was going to say was that I came back to Vienna and picked up where I was with the Austrian church and everything and the Vienna mission's stressors weren't near what they had been before - they were much more subtle, though. The kind of thing like in a normal office job where you either get the corner office or you don't, only there are other things that can have meanings like that. I never ever did get diagnosed with culture shock. In fact, I tried to find all kinds of things besides anything to do with the present - the mission or Austria to talk about and no one ever tried to push for it so I think I was a puzzle to everyone but it was clear that I was high on anxiety. I never ever talked in counseling about the mission or Austria though. Ever, the whole time. So I talked about the stress from before arriving, childhood stuff, you know. But I wasn't going to fall for this. I worked everything out all by myself as to how I was going to deal with the mission and how I was going to lead a double life. No counselor told me to do that. Who would tell me to do that?
I think maybe I'm going to end for now. This is enough revelation for one post.
