Dunbar believed that the psyche and soma, body and soul, were intimately connected and the physician must attend to both if the patient is to be fully healed. She saw the patient in their world first and only then integrated this understanding with symptoms resulting in a diagnosis of disease. She drew upon the foundational work of John Dewey and William James, who saw the patients as human beings who were dynamically involved in an environment that formed and transformed them. She was the first to attempt to do research into the efficacy of pastoral care on the healing process. The results, however, were inconclusive. She was unable to put her substantial learning together in service of the rapidly expanding dialogue between religion and psychiatry.