Unsurprisingly, given Sigmund Freud's understanding of religion, the conversation between Christianity and psychoanalysis has long been marked by mutual suspicion. Psychoanalysis originated within a naturalist, post-Enlightenment context and sought to understand human functioning and pathology--focusing on phenomena such as the unconscious and object representation--on a strictly empirical basis. ...
The tensions often cited between psychology and Christianity are well known. Much worthwhile work has been done to construct theories and frameworks for integrating the two. But how do Christians in psychology actually weave together these strands of their lives and their work. What are their stories? Here Glendon Moriarty brings together twelve of the foremost clinicians and academics in the field ...
Anyone in a helping profession—including professional counselors, spiritual directors, pastoral counselors, chaplains and others—needs to develop effective communication skills. But learning these skills is like learning a new language: it takes time and practice to communicate effectively, and lack of practice can lead to the loss of one's ability to use this new language. Suitable for both beginning ...
On the basis of a theologically grounded understanding of the nature of persons and the self, Jack O. Balswick, Pamela Ebstyne King and Kevin S. Reimer present a model of human development that ranges across all of life's stages: infancy, childhood, adolescence, young adulthood, middle adulthood and elder adulthood. They do this by drawing on a biblical model of relationality, where the created ...
MIDWC Book Award
As our society becomes more socially fragmented, many Christians feel disconnected and struggle to grow spiritually. Common models of spiritual transformation are proving inadequate to address "the sanctification gap." In recent decades, however, a new paradigm of human and spiritual development has been emerging from multiple fields. It's ...
Christianity, at its heart, is a therapeutic faith—a theocentric form of soul care. God's therapeutic agenda begins in the perfect triune communion of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit who created human beings to flourish by participating in his glory. But they are now alienated from God and subject to different forms of psychopathology—sin, suffering, and biopsychosocial damage. So ...
Religion and science have often been at odds. In particular, Christianity and psychology have not always gotten along. Some Christians are still suspicious of psychological findings. But researcher Everett Worthington argues that Christians can know people better--and even know God better--through psychological science. Worthington suggests that the relationship between psychological science and ...
The wide variety of psychotherapies that psychologists and students of psychology face can make for a confusing picture. The level of complexity is multiplied for Christians since they must ask how a particular psychotherapy fits (or doesn?t fit) with a Christian understanding of persons and their suffering. In this expanded and thoroughly update edition, Stanton Jones and Richard Butman continue ...
What is at the root of the problem of humanity? Is it pride or lack of self-esteem? Do we love ourselves too much or too little? The debate about the human condition has often been framed this way in both theological and psychological circles. Convictions about preaching, teaching, marriage and child rearing, as well as politics, social welfare, business management and the helping professions, ...
In recent years researchers in human personality have come to a rarely achieved near unanimous conclusion: human personality is structured around a very few major traits, probably five in number. These factors, sometimes called the Big Five and represented by the acronym OCEAN, are
How ...