In this chapter of Christian Counseling, Maloney & Augsburger articulate the differences between those who want explicit Christian counseling and those who want Christians who counsel. They detail many reasons why clients seek out Christians. Continue reading
Category Archives: christian psychology
What is Christian Counseling? Chapter 2
Filed under book reviews, christian counseling, christian psychology
What is Christian Counseling? Chapter 1
Returning to Maloney & Augsburger’s, Christian Counseling: An Introduction (see initial post on 5/22/07) we see them tackle the topic of what makes Christian counseling Christian. This chapter sets an overview for the remaining chapters in this section on foundational assumptions. Here are some points they make: Continue reading
Share this:
Filed under book reviews, christian counseling, christian psychology
What is Christian Counseling, anyway? A review
Today I’m going to start a careful review of a new book by H. Newton Malony and David Augsburger entitled, Christian Counseling: An introduction (Abingdon Press, 2007). Malony and Augsburger are well established professors at Fuller Seminary. In this book they attempt to answer the question, What should Christian Counseling look like? How will they try to answer this? “We have no intention of doing a survey and, on the basis of the results, describing what Christian counselors do. In an unapologetic manner, we intend to detail the parameters of what we firmly believe should be the foundations and applications of Christian counseling” (viii). Since this is a question that has been on many students minds, I’d like to summarize and comment on their short book of 14 chapters (some 160 pages of text).
I’ll start with their preface… Continue reading
Share this:
Filed under book reviews, christian counseling, christian psychology
Check out the Society for Christian Psychology Blog
The Society for Christian Psychology (SCP), a division of the American Association of Christian Counselors (AACC), has a new web-page and blog. For those of you interested in the theoretical and practical tasks of a Christian psychology, you ought to check it out. Yours truly will moderate the blog. Several authors will post their thoughts and ideas on a weekly basis for a month at a time. First up is the SCP director, Eric Johnson. His first post gives a bit of the background to the Society and why it exists. You may want to look around and see some of the articles, PowerPoint slides, bibliographies and the upcoming conference this September.
Share this:
Filed under christian psychology
What’s hot in Christian psychology?
Based on the number of presentations (plenary and breakout), forgiveness (research and practice) is the hot topic. Seems everyon wants to talk about forgiveness. Probably a good idea because so much of counseling has to do with needing to forgive and be forgiven.
Two interesting points from last night’s plenary on couple therapy by Jen Ripley (Regent U.)
1. Couples who show adequate influence/acceptance have healthier marriages. When husbands indicate a willingness to be influenced by their wives feelings and opinions, couples do better. When husbands or wives are unwilling to accept the flaws of their spouse (e.g., their lateness habits), they remain perpetually unhappy leading to negative future prospects for the marriage.
2. Some of the domestic violence research suggests therapists need to differentiate between common couple violence and terrorism/control violence. The first is more treatable in counseling while the latter is not. The first has been observed in 20% of the couples in the prior year. This kind has no injury but there is mutual pushing and shoving. Both are bad, but the first kind may be addressed in couples counseling without increasing the danger.
Share this:
Filed under christian counseling, christian psychology
CAPS conference break the rest of the week
I’m attending the national conference of the Christian Association for Psychological Studies (CAPS) the rest of this week. So, I’ll not be posting much until Monday. However, these kinds of things tend to stimulate my thinking and so one never knows…
I’ll be presenting with a colleague from Eastern Univ. on the fun topic (really, it is!) of teaching the history of Christian psychology. For those interested in see the slides on the page above, articles slides, etc.
Share this:
Filed under christian psychology, counseling science
How people of faith messed up psychology: A cautionary tale for those who want to save Christianity from destruction
I’ve been reviewing the history of psychology and Christians in psychology because I’m going to be presenting with a colleague on the topic next week at the National conference of the Christian Association of Psychological Studies (CAPS). Psychology is as broadly defined as the planet and what normally gets told is the celebration of theories and advances of “great men” from Rene Descartes to Darwin to Freud to Skinner to modern professional, clinical psychology. Modernist philosophies of science abound in the “story” of psychology and empiricism reigns as King. Faith and belief have little mention in the story other than science’s emancipation from theology that came during the enlightenment.
We people of faith have a tendency to look at the evils of secularization and the refusal to admit belief biases in the sciences. It would be easy to blame those bad unbelievers. Yet, as I look at the history of psychology, it seems to me that faithful people made most of the significant decisions to advance the field while protecting their private faith. That the effort to maintain faith in light of empiricism as the primary way of knowing, these individuals made significant decisions that still impact how we treat the mentally ill today. Continue reading
Share this:
Fighting anxiety on 3 fronts
Anxiety (panic, OCD, PTSD, Generalized, phobias, etc.) is a multidetermined event. Any attempt to simplify down to either physiology or spiritual will be problematic. It is always a bodily event (everything we do is mediated through the cells), and it is always a spiritual event (nothing we do is neutral, everything either glorifies God or self). Multidetermined problems need multifaceted attacks. I think we do best to challenge our anxiety on these three fronts. Each front requires both body and soul so be careful not to think that one of the fronts is spiritual, one psychological, and one physical. All are involved in each front. Continue reading
Share this:
Filed under Anxiety, biblical counseling, christian psychology
The impossible gift of forgetting wrongs done to you
Sorry for the brief hiatus from The End of Memory. Starting a new semester plus am looking at two books that I may review in some detail right after (Jimmy Carter’s new book on the Palestinian/Israeli conflict and Ed Gilbreath’s book on being a black man in white evangelical organizations–both have to do with dealing with longstanding conflict and hurts).
Volf in Chapter 7 begins a new section entitled, How Long Should we Remember? Continue reading
Share this:
Science Monday: Meds for kids and the counselor’s role
Recently read a NY Times article on the issue of giving children multiple psychiatric medications to manage mood, behavior, and concentration. You can read the article here. The article states that 1.6 million children (280,000 under the age of 10) were given multiple psychiatric meds last year. There is a little graphic that lists the number of people (ages 0 to 19) taking each class of medication in 2005 (with the percentage in parenthesis of those taking that class who ALSO take another class of psychiatric medication):
|
Stimulants |
3,600,000 |
28% |
| Anticonvulsants |
830,000 |
62% |
| Antidepressants |
1,980,000 |
56% |
| Antipsychotics |
540,000 |
86% |
| Anxiolytics |
475,000 |
36% |
| Sleeping aids |
190,000 |
45% |
As you read the article and the parents’ stories of trying and suffering with and without the medications, you have to feel their pain. No parent wants to have to put their kids on medications but some feel they will lose their children if they do not. Continue reading
Musings on Faith and Psychology 