Power within the Counselor Identity Development of African American Women in Pastoral Counseling

Abstract

This study explored experiences of power among 11 African American female pastoral counselors-in-training. Limited research exists within the field of pastoral counseling regarding the dynamics of power within the development of minority counselors-in-training. Experiences of power such as microaggressions and empowerment were evidenced in the art created by participants during their qualitative interviews. Use of a heuristic arts-based research design resulted in 6 final essences (major themes): symbolic analysis of the journey of identity development, empowerment, powerlessness, ownership of power, integration, and pervasive spirituality. Practical implications for counselor educators and pastoral counseling programs are provided.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 6 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.