 While there Boisen organized a Chicago Council for the Clinical Training of Theological Students, functioning effectively until he learned in 1935 Alice Batchelder was dying of cancer.The discovery resulted in his brief hospitalization in Baltimore, Maryland, but in December 1935 he returned to his chaplaincy post at Elgin where he remained as chaplain until 1954, then chaplain emeritus at Elgin until his death.Boisen believed that some mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia, could be interpreted as one's attempts to solve "problems of the soul".