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Author: Richard L Dayringer Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1136434518 Category : Family & Relationships Languages : en Pages : 146
Book Description
What are the implications of a client’s image of God? Improve your confidence—and your practice skills—by enhancing your knowledge of how individuals are likely to perceive God, and of how those perceptions impact the way they function as human beings. Theologians have long speculated and theorized about how humans imagine God to be. This book merges theology with science, presenting empirical research focused on perceptions of God in a variety of populations living in community and mental health settings. Each chapter concludes with references that comprise an essential reading list, and the book is generously enhanced with tables that make data easy to access and understand. “Liberating Images of God” discusses the constriction and impoverishment of God images due to the traditional restrictions of God images to those that are male and personified. This chapter examines the potential for the client and counselor’s co-creation of images of God which embrace the feminine as well as the masculine, the nurturer as well as the warrior, and the natural world in all its dimensions as well as the human world, to liberate, enrich, sustain, and transform the client’s relationships with God and with him/herself. “Attachment, Well-Being, and Religious Participation Among People with Severe Mental Disorders” examines the relationship between attachment states of mind and religious participation among people diagnosed with severe mental illness. “Concepts of God and Therapeutic Alliance Among People with Severe Mental Disorders” explores the transferential aspects of God representation among severely mentally ill adults. It highlights research on the relationship between a patient’s image of God and that patient’s working relationship with his/her case manager, and discusses the implications for clinical practice of those findings. “The Subjective Experience of God” presents a theory about the psychological basis for the experience of God that argues that this experience is essentially a form of projection and as such is an internal event that does not exist independent of an individual’s psyche. This chapter draws a distinction between faith in a particular belief—namely, faith in the existence of a loving, omnipotent God—and an attitude of faith, which is the basis for experiences of transcendence. “Relationship of Gender Role Identity and Attitudes” presents the results of a study in which nearly 300 Catholic attendees at three university Catholic centers completed the Bern Sex Role Inventory, the Attitudes Toward Women Scale, and the Perceptions of God Checklist. This chapter looks at images of God as masculine or feminine, and at the connection for people between the way they perceive God and the way they relate towards men and women. “Reflections on a Study in a Mental Hospital,” brings you groundbreaking new research on perceptions of God in an inpatient population. This chapter examines the positive effects (as opposed to the negative effects previously portrayed by the psychological community) of religious belief and practice for residential care patients in a psychiatric hospital.
Author: Richard L Dayringer Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1136434518 Category : Family & Relationships Languages : en Pages : 146
Book Description
What are the implications of a client’s image of God? Improve your confidence—and your practice skills—by enhancing your knowledge of how individuals are likely to perceive God, and of how those perceptions impact the way they function as human beings. Theologians have long speculated and theorized about how humans imagine God to be. This book merges theology with science, presenting empirical research focused on perceptions of God in a variety of populations living in community and mental health settings. Each chapter concludes with references that comprise an essential reading list, and the book is generously enhanced with tables that make data easy to access and understand. “Liberating Images of God” discusses the constriction and impoverishment of God images due to the traditional restrictions of God images to those that are male and personified. This chapter examines the potential for the client and counselor’s co-creation of images of God which embrace the feminine as well as the masculine, the nurturer as well as the warrior, and the natural world in all its dimensions as well as the human world, to liberate, enrich, sustain, and transform the client’s relationships with God and with him/herself. “Attachment, Well-Being, and Religious Participation Among People with Severe Mental Disorders” examines the relationship between attachment states of mind and religious participation among people diagnosed with severe mental illness. “Concepts of God and Therapeutic Alliance Among People with Severe Mental Disorders” explores the transferential aspects of God representation among severely mentally ill adults. It highlights research on the relationship between a patient’s image of God and that patient’s working relationship with his/her case manager, and discusses the implications for clinical practice of those findings. “The Subjective Experience of God” presents a theory about the psychological basis for the experience of God that argues that this experience is essentially a form of projection and as such is an internal event that does not exist independent of an individual’s psyche. This chapter draws a distinction between faith in a particular belief—namely, faith in the existence of a loving, omnipotent God—and an attitude of faith, which is the basis for experiences of transcendence. “Relationship of Gender Role Identity and Attitudes” presents the results of a study in which nearly 300 Catholic attendees at three university Catholic centers completed the Bern Sex Role Inventory, the Attitudes Toward Women Scale, and the Perceptions of God Checklist. This chapter looks at images of God as masculine or feminine, and at the connection for people between the way they perceive God and the way they relate towards men and women. “Reflections on a Study in a Mental Hospital,” brings you groundbreaking new research on perceptions of God in an inpatient population. This chapter examines the positive effects (as opposed to the negative effects previously portrayed by the psychological community) of religious belief and practice for residential care patients in a psychiatric hospital.
Author: Richard Lints Publisher: InterVarsity Press ISBN: 0830898492 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 197
Book Description
One of Desiring God's Top 15 Books "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them." (Genesis 1:27) Genesis 1:26-27 has served as the locus of most theological anthropologies in the central Christian tradition. However, Richard Lints observes that too rarely have these verses been understood as conceptually interwoven with the whole of the prologue materials of Genesis 1. The construction of the cosmic temple strongly hints that the "image of God" language serves liturgical functions. Lints argues that "idol" language in the Bible is a conceptual inversion of the "image" language of Genesis 1. These constructs illuminate each other, and clarify the canon's central anthropological concerns. The question of human identity is distinct, though not separate, from the question of human nature; the latter has far too frequently been read into the biblical use of image. Lints shows how the "narrative" of human identity runs from creation (imago Dei) to fall (the golden calf/idol, Exodus 32) to redemption (Christ as perfect image, Colossians 1:15-20). The biblical-theological use of image/idol is a thread through the canon that highlights the movements of redemptive history. In the concluding chapters of this New Studies in Biblical Theology volume, Lints interprets the use of idolatry as it emerges in the secular prophets of the nineteenth century, and examines the recent renaissance of interest in idolatry with its conceptual power to explain the "culture of desire." Addressing key issues in biblical theology, the works comprising New Studies in Biblical Theology are creative attempts to help Christians better understand their Bibles. The NSBT series is edited by D. A. Carson, aiming to simultaneously instruct and to edify, to interact with current scholarship and to point the way ahead.
Author: Zenon Lotufo Jr. Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA ISBN: 0313396124 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 201
Book Description
This enlightening analysis of the image of a cruel God sustained by conservative Christianity reveals how this image formed, the psychological effects of this concept, and the ways in which it has guided religious individuals—in both positive and negative ways. This book is born, in large measure, as a result of a writing by contemporary theologian J. Harold Ellens. In his essay "Religious Metaphors Can Kill" from Praeger's The Destructive Power of Religion, Ellens espouses that theological doctrines are rooted in a model of God that determines all the aspects of those doctrines, and strongly influences the cultures into which it is inserted. Conservative Christianity in the Western world, says Ellens, has at its center the image of a cruel and wrathful God. The juridical atonement theory of Anselm is a result of such an image of God, and has an important role in justifying the resort to violence in human interaction. Starting from these considerations, Cruel God, Kind God: How Images of God Shape Belief, Attitude, and Outlook analyzes three general topics: how two very different kinds of Christianities have emerged from these disparate images of God; how the doctrines of "original sin," "the plan of salvation," and "penal substitution" can be explained by psychological factors, as can the wide dissemination and acceptance of these doctrines; and how the image of a cruel God affects mental health, atrophies personality, and produces guilt and shame.
Author: Stanley Leavy Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 9781138462250 Category : Languages : en Pages :
Book Description
In the Image of God is a compilation of lectures by Stanley Leavy, a psychoanalyst approaching retirement, reflecting on his experience as a follower of Freud and his method and also as a lifelong, faithful Episcopalian. The overarching idea linking the individual lectures is Leavy's belief that "the deliberate study of the operations of the mind must yield results that are not just compatible with religious faith but amplify it," eschewing the faith versus science argument for a more inclusive worldview.
Author: Edward F. Edinger Publisher: Chiron Publications ISBN: 0933029985 Category : Image of God Languages : en Pages : 229
Book Description
C.G. Jung saw in the cultural history of Western man a progressive evolution of its God-image. During the last ten years of his life, he wrote a series of remarkable letters about the new God-image which is now emerging through the discoveries of depth psychology. Edinger discusses fourteen of these letters with respect to the epistemological premises--modern man's new awareness of subjectivity; the paradoxical Godthe nature of the new God--image as a union of opposites; and the continuing incarnation--how the new God-image is born in individual men and women.
Author: Hector A. Garcia Publisher: Prometheus Books ISBN: 1633880214 Category : Psychology Languages : en Pages : 247
Book Description
This book uses evolutionary psychology as a lens to explain religious violence and oppression. The author, a clinical psychologist, examines religious scriptures, rituals, and canon law, highlighting the many ways in which our evolutionary legacy has shaped the development of religion and continues to profoundly influence its expression. The book focuses on the image of God as the dominant male in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. This traditional God concept is seen as a reflection of the “dominant ape” paradigm so evident in the hierarchical social structures of primates, with whom we have a strong genetic connection. The author describes the main features of male-dominated primate social hierarchies— specifically, the role of the alpha male as the protector of the group; his sexual dominance and use of violence and oppression to attain food, females, and territory; in-group altruism vs. out-group hostility (us vs. them); and displays of dominance and submission to establish roles within the social hierarchy. The parallels between these features of primate society and human religious rituals and concepts make it clear that religion, especially its oppressive and violent tendencies, is rooted in the deep evolutionary past. This incisive analysis goes a long way toward explaining the historic and ongoing violence committed in the name of religion.
Author: Jerry R. Wright Publisher: Chiron Publications ISBN: 1630514977 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 202
Book Description
With the necessary demise and death of antique cosmologies and traditional religious paradigms dependent on external deities and devils, the modern religious challenge involves two simultaneous sacred endeavors: to eulogize, bury, and grieve the theistic and monotheistic god-images and the religions dependent on them; and, secondly, to bring fresh imagination to the meanings of god and religion, which will satisfy both the modern mind and ancient soul. Drawing on the insights of Jungian or analytical psychology, Dr. Wright offers depth psychological analysis of our contemporary religious and political dilemmas, as well as invites readers to be midwives for the emerging religious myth that many believe to be on our collective horizon -- a myth that will be more inclusive, intellectually and scientifically honest, and soul satisfying. The invitation is made urgent by his psychological conclusion: As long as our deities and devils are perceived to be beyond the physical domain and outside the human psyche, our species will continue to do great harm to each other and to our global nest. Combining personal testament and psychological commentary, the author explores heretofore taboo topics and reframes many traditional theological and Christological dogmas, making them more relevant to religious and non-religious alike. Jerry R. Wright, D.Min is a Jungian analyst in private practice in Flat Rock, North Carolina, and a training analyst with the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts. An experienced conference and retreat leader, he has led pilgrimages to sacred sites in Iona, Scotland, Ireland, Peru, and India. Reimagining God and Religion continues his primary interest in bringing the insights of Jungian or analytical psychology to experiences deemed religious or spiritual. This interest inspired Dr. Wright’s doctoral dissertation, Symbols for the Christ in the Gospel of John and the Archetypal Self in the Psychology of C.G. Jung, and his Jungian thesis, Archetypal Thin Places: Experiencing The Numinosum.
Author: Lionel Corbett Publisher: ISBN: 9781630519858 Category : Languages : en Pages : 532
Book Description
This book describes the development of images of God, beginning in antiquity and culminating in Jung's notion of the Self, an image of God in the psyche that Jung calls the God within. Over the course of history, the Self has been projected onto many local gods and goddesses and given different names and attributes. These deities are typically imagined as existing in a heavenly realm, but Jung's approach recalls them to their origins in the objective psyche. This book shows how Jung's approach avoids many of the philosophical problems produced by traditional anthropomorphic images of God and describes the myriad symbolic ways in which the Self may appear, independently of doctrinal images of God. By focusing on the empirical, psychological manifestations of the Self, Jung's approach avoids arguments for and against the existence of a metaphysical God.
Author: T.M. Luhrmann Publisher: Princeton University Press ISBN: 0691234442 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 256
Book Description
The hard work required to make God real, how it changes the people who do it, and why it helps explain the enduring power of faith How do gods and spirits come to feel vividly real to people—as if they were standing right next to them? Humans tend to see supernatural agents everywhere, as the cognitive science of religion has shown. But it isn’t easy to maintain a sense that there are invisible spirits who care about you. In How God Becomes Real, acclaimed anthropologist and scholar of religion T. M. Luhrmann argues that people must work incredibly hard to make gods real and that this effort—by changing the people who do it and giving them the benefits they seek from invisible others—helps to explain the enduring power of faith. Drawing on ethnographic studies of evangelical Christians, pagans, magicians, Zoroastrians, Black Catholics, Santeria initiates, and newly orthodox Jews, Luhrmann notes that none of these people behave as if gods and spirits are simply there. Rather, these worshippers make strenuous efforts to create a world in which invisible others matter and can become intensely present and real. The faithful accomplish this through detailed stories, absorption, the cultivation of inner senses, belief in a porous mind, strong sensory experiences, prayer, and other practices. Along the way, Luhrmann shows why faith is harder than belief, why prayer is a metacognitive activity like therapy, why becoming religious is like getting engrossed in a book, and much more. A fascinating account of why religious practices are more powerful than religious beliefs, How God Becomes Real suggests that faith is resilient not because it provides intuitions about gods and spirits—but because it changes the faithful in profound ways.
Author: Richard L Dayringer
Author: Richard L Dayringer
Author: Richard Lints
Author: Dale Ryan
Author: Zenon Lotufo Jr.
Author: Stanley Leavy
Author: Edward F. Edinger
Author: Hector A. Garcia
Author: Jerry R. Wright
Author: Lionel Corbett
Author: T.M. Luhrmann