A pastoral theologian's response to the case study.

This response to a case study of a long-term chaplaincy care relationship between a woman with recurrent leukemia and an experienced oncology chaplain at a comprehensive cancer center expresses a clinical attitude formed within three contexts-pastoral psychotherapy, the supervision of psychoanalytically-oriented psychotherapy, and pastoral theology-through which case studies are to be engaged, concurrently, in multiple ways. Illustrating this attitude, the response outlines four distinct "readings" (Ricoeur) of the case study that express different approaches: a personal engagement that a reader can feel; an empathic openness to the plausibility of the chaplain's account; a recognition of the complexity of the report and of the care as constituted of different disciplines and guilds; and an awareness of the difference and distance between a patient's experience and a caregiver's interpretation of a patient's experience.