Francesca Debora Nuzzolese

Just Care: Pastoral Counseling with Socioeconomically Vulnerable Women Francesca Debora Nuzzolese

Grounded in clinical work and analytic observations, this study constructs a model of psycho-spiritual care for women who lack socioeconomic power and resources. Weaving together the pscyhotherapeutic journey of five women, over several years, and the disciplines of psychology (intersubjective theory), economics (political theory) and theology (relational ethics), the model is designed for therapists and helping professionals who are committed to the empowerment of women in the lower classes of our society. The creative therapeutic posture it suggests is the one of friendship (women's friendships in particular), which listens for and seeks to transform women's experience of invisibility, powerlessness, and vulnerability to socioeconomic disparity in one of the most affluent countries in the world. "Just Care" is about offering therapeutic care for women at the three basic levels of their existence (the intrapsychic, the interpersonal and the intersystemic), with the explicit intent that justice be experienced both in the therapeutic process and in all areas of their lives.