What Influences Our Views of Agency?

Posted on August 29, 2010

[C. Eric Jones, Ph.D. is our guest blogger for the month of August, and this is his fifth post. Eric is the Director of Undergraduate Psychology and Associate Professor of Psychology at the Regent University School of Psychology and Counseling]

In the final post of August I would like to draw attention to the Society for Christian Psychology conference held in September and its topic of human agency. Perhaps the take home message of social psychology is that most of us underestimate greatly the power of social situations to influence our thoughts and behaviors. We like to think (especially Americans!) we are the masters of our destiny, we can decide what we like, we are true individuals. Social psychology has numerous effects across hundreds of studies that show how wrong we are about our ability to control our social thoughts and behaviors. In fact, some of the classics of the field seem to represent our misunderstanding of our personal agency. For example, the original Milgram shock studies and the later replications suggest we will be obedient to the point of harming others. Rarely do any of us admit we would do such a thing before hearing the results of the study. When I ask students in class before revealing the results, most think less than 10% of people would go beyond moderate levels of shock when the study showed a clear majority did. The helping research by Latané and Darley also force us to consider situational forces that may influence our actions or inaction. The most counterintuitive finding from that line of research may have been that as the number of people present at the site of an emergency increases, the likelihood any person will help actually decreases. Scores of studies point out our personal ignorance concerning the external influences on our social thoughts and behaviors.

So what does all of this have to do with human agency? Let me suggest these findings provide an opportunity to ask ourselves whether our view of human agency is more informed by our collective culture here in the U.S. or more informed by our Christian theology. Said another way, is a Christian view of human agency closer to the message of social psychology or closer to my personal view of human agency? I have argued in previous posts that social psychology provides a somewhat inaccurate view of social thought and behavior because so many social psychologists begin with naturalistic assumptions about people, which I consider to be faulty. Even with problematic starting points, is it possible social psychology may be able to inform us about some serious flaws in our personal views about human agency? Have we conferred on ourselves unjustified levels of volition? I am not arguing social psychology is fully correct on the question of human agency as many social psychologists assume there is no such thing. However, it may serve us well to evaluate our views on the issue. Our view of agency is central to most everything we “choose” to do or “choose” not to do. If we are unclear of what we think or if our view differs from a mainstream Christian view of agency, we should begin rethinking. Below are some questions for us to consider individually and to respond to here on the blog.

1. Can I articulate my personal view of human agency?

2. Can I articulate a dominant cultural view of human agency?

3. Can I articulate a Christian view of human agency and provide Scriptural or theological support?

4. Is my personal view closer to a cultural view or a Christian view?

5. In what ways does my view and a Christian view differ?

I am looking forward to hearing your thoughts on this matter and if you would like to be involved in similar discussions, check out the conference information here on the site and join us in three weeks to hear some great talks and enjoy engaging discussions about human agency.

Our Collective Inspiration

Posted on August 22, 2010

[C. Eric Jones, Ph.D. is our guest blogger for the month of August, and this is his fourth  post. Eric is the Director of Undergraduate Psychology and Associate Professor of Psychology at the Regent University School of Psychology and Counseling]

In my previous posts I have discussed a number of issues related to the centrality of our social nature and compared to metaphysical naturalism how Christianity can provide a better explanatory foundation to investigate human social behavior and thought processes. My background and training is in experimental social psychology. I am not a counselor or clinician, but I very much want to hear others’ thoughts on the questions below though they stretch beyond my direct experience. By keeping this portion of the post brief I hope to encourage you to contribute responses to the questions below or make comments related to the ideas presented in the questions – maybe even read the previous posts before commenting on this one.

I want to propose a simple idea. We in the Christian community are at some level comfortable with the current explanations of human thought and behavior provided the discipline of psychology. I say at some level because if we were all completely satisfied this site would not exist and you would not be spending your time reading this blog on a regular basis. I propose this idea in order that we may all take a few minutes to consider just how different the assumptions of secular psychology are, how different the corresponding explanations of various behaviors are, and how different the assessments, counseling techniques and therapies are from ideally Christian ones. Clearly this is a flight of the imagination, but with the intended result of inspiring us to consider how to move beyond where we are and how much those around us need us to make these advances. Please do enrich others by reading this blog, prayerfully considering these issues, and by contributing your thoughtful comments. Thank you in advance for making this a great forum for everyone looking to press on toward greater understanding of the person.

1. According to your faith tradition, to what extent is the social aspect of humans central to your view of human nature?

2. To what extent does current research and theory reflect a Christian perspective on our social nature?

3. To what extent can Christianity contribute to advancing psychology’s view of our social nature?

4. Is your theologically-based view of our social behavior accurately reflected in the application of your professional experience (i.e., counseling, etc.)?

5. If Christian psychology can influence secular psychology’s view of social behavior and social nature, what degree of benefit would we expect to experience in clinical/counseling areas?

A Call Toward a Flourishing Christian Psychology

Posted on August 1, 2010

[C. Eric Jones, Ph.D. is our guest blogger for the month of August, and this is his first post. Eric is the Director of Undergraduate Psychology and Associate Professor of Psychology at the Regent University School of Psychology and Counseling]

For those in my department, the running joke as we discuss most anything in psychology is that at some point I will say, “everything is social psychology”. To qualify, I understand many important areas of psychological study are not social, but as discussions of humanity or an individual move toward meaning and purpose the social aspects become more and more apparent. As time has passed this “joke” has become less humorous and more of a personal charge to understand the fundamental social nature of humans and how that nature is exhibited in daily life. As you are likely familiar with the idea, let me very briefly assert the theological and psychological centrality of our social nature when defining humans. The creation account notes the purpose of humanity is for communion with God, other humans, and all of creation. When asked which is the most important commandment, Jesus answers very relationally when He says to love God and others. Psychologically speaking, Baumeister and Leary (1995) masterfully present an argument for the centrality of our social nature in their frequently cited article on the need to belong.

Let me get right to the point here. Many of us recognize these ideas when they are brought out in discussion. Many of us have thoughtfully considered these ideas. Not many in our culture live as if we are fundamentally social, however. We certainly have a culture that is social on the surface, but much of our social activity seems more individually directed as our culture dictates. Are we mostly social on the surface or are many of us on the path to the reflected social nature of the Trinity? If we answer the former, we should consider what we as Christian psychologists can do to address such an issue.

As a possible starting point, let me suggest we engage the ideas of the self, social influence, virtues and other social concepts in various fields of study. If Christian psychologists want to change the way social concepts are applied and how people think of their selves, we must do the difficult work of moving beyond the theoretical and we must empirically study social behavior. Empiricism remains the dominant voice in secular psychology today and if we insist on distancing our efforts from empiricism we will not influence those we intend to influence. This is not to say Christian psychology should be completely defined by empiricism, rather empiricism must play a substantial role or we run the risk of being marginalized.

Of course obstacles exist in attempting empirical psychology from a Christian perspective. The potential of empirical data conflicting with Scripture is one commonly discussed problem. Might I remind us all that just as errors are possible when interpreting empirical data, we may make errors when we interpret the “data” of Scripture. It may be our scriptural interpretation is faulty, not that Scripture is faulty. Second, an apparent conflict between the Scriptural and the empirical may be due to the fact the data has provided us with an incomplete picture of the investigated phenomenon. Other explanations can dull the point of this argument, but this and other arguments against philosophically-based Christian research are insufficient to halt our push to conduct empirical studies from a Christian perspective.

Another obstacle for Christian empirical research centers on the question, how do we best perform empirical studies of social behavior? Do we use an integration approach or do we pursue a Christian psychology approach? I answer yes. Much has been written about the differences between an integration approach and Christian psychology approach to empirical psychology. Here I only mean to propose a possible way to move ahead toward a more accurate understanding of social behavior from a Christian perspective beginning with the premise that both an integration approach and a Christian psychology approach are better methods for empirical investigation than any using a philosophical foundation of naturalism.

Although the integration approach better fits the current APA method of discovery compared to Christian psychology, the philosophies underlying integration studies include (some would argue “are tainted by”) non-Christian ideas. The Christian psychology approach provides explicitly Christian philosophies, but rarely extends from the theoretical realm into the empirical arena. A simultaneous two-step procedure may be beneficial for our purpose of establishing a Christian understanding of social behavior.

Integration: Certainly Christians have been performing valuable research from an integration view for years. But without even conducting additional research, we can learn much from empirical evidence based on non-Christian philosophies.  Given the vast amount of existing studies in social psychology and related fields, it could be helpful to simply systematically reinterpret those studies through a Christian framework. In terms of conducting research, the specificity and richness of secular psychological theory allows for potential rapid expansion of integration research efforts. In other words, we can use existing concepts from other philosophical foundations to immediately conduct research that will be accepted by the APA community.

Christian psychology: Although integration research is beneficial, as noted above, it may never produce the promised distinctiveness of Christian psychology research programs. Unfortunately the benefits of a broad, high-quality Christian psychology research program are likely well into the future, if they are ever realized. The main obstacles for this research program are time for researchers in Christian academia to conduct research, sufficient number of research experts to conduct high-quality research, funding for Christian based research, and the development of sophisticated theory and concepts leading to testable hypotheses.

The point here is the immediate benefits of an integration-based approach combined with the pure Christian foundations of a Christian psychology approach over time outweigh the negatives associated with either perspective. Better to rely on two epistemological sources than only rely on one. Instead of focusing on the negatives of each approach, we may have the best of both worlds as time passes if we engage in both approaches at this point in time.

In sum, to offer a reasonable alternative to exclusively philosophical naturalistically-based research we must decide to take action, decide what models will direct our efforts, and decide what area to make specific plans to research. I have suggested we take action, we use both an integration approach and a Christian psychology approach, and we begin with research in the area of social behavior. The big question is, will we take strategically determined steps to produce meaningful empirically-based research as described above? A multitude of other questions bounce around in my head as I consider these ideas and I look forward to hearing your responses, questions, and discussions on the following:

How do we use the existing Christian researchers to move the efforts ahead?

How do we develop the next generation of researchers for this endeavor?

How do we generate funds to support research from a Christian perspective beyond masking the wording and dialogue of our studies (that is giving Christian concepts secular names)?

Is it reasonable to think Christian academics can agree upon strategic directions for research so as to best use our limited resources?

Are the obstacles of time and funding impossible to overcome for the Christian psychology approach?

Is our generation of Christian researchers here to build the runway so the next generation can fly?

 References:

Baumeister, R. F., & Leary, M. R. (1995). The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 117, 497–529.

A New Way of Seeing

Posted on July 12, 2010

[Leslie Vernick LCSW is our guest blogger for the month of July, and this is her second post. Leslie is a licensed clinical social worker, popular speaker and author of 6 books on Christian living. She is the Director of Christ Centered Counseling and you can visit her at www.leslievernick.com or read her weekly blog at leslievernick.blogspot.com]

It was a regular Sunday morning, my husband and I attended worship at our home church. Our senior pastor was on vacation so an associate pastor was preaching.  His text was Psalm 51, David’s prayer of repentance after Nathan the prophet confronted him with his sin against Bathsheba and her husband Uriah.

My pastor began describing the background of what led up to Nathan’s confrontation.  He shared the familiar story about David’s adultery with Bathsheba and how after Bathsheba became pregnant, David covered up their affair by having her husband, Uriah, put in the front lines of battle so he would be killed.  Immediately I felt troubled and I was distracted throughout the rest of the sermon.  Although my pastor’s emphasis was on God’s great mercy and forgiveness not David’s sin, I could not focus.

I have learned to pay attention to those internal moments as Holy Spirit led. This was not the first time I felt sick after a pastor or speaker labeled David’s sin as adultery and his relationship with Bathsheba as an affair. I even cringe when the paragraph headings of my Bible describe David’s behavior in that way.

David’s relationship with Bathsheba was not mutual or consensual.  It was not an affair. It is better described as David’s lustful craving coupled with an abuse of his power.  David took Bathsheba to his bed because he could, he was the king. In the same way he misused his military authority when he later ordered Bathsheba’s husband to the front lines of battle in order to cover up his first sin (For the story read 2 Samuel 11 and 12).

When God’s prophet, Nathan, confronted David, Nathan told him a story describing a rich and powerful man who selfishly used his might to take something from another person who was helpless to stop him.  David didn’t recognize himself in Nathan’s story but became outraged at such injustice. When Nathan said, “You are that man,” David saw himself and his heart broke.

After the sermon was over I told my husband I needed to talk with our pastor. I whispered a quick prayer, approached him and asked if he had a minute. Graciously he responded positively.

 I said, “I know your sermon wasn’t focused on David and Bathsheba but do you think Bathsheba had a real choice?” 

Surprise engulfed his entire face. He humbly said, “I never thought of it that way.” I went on to explain my concerns and how Nathan named David’s sin as an abuse of power, not of sexual misbehavior. Bathsheba is never mentioned because she was a victim, not a willing participant.

I went home hoping that the next time he preached about David’s sin with Bathsheba he would describe it as Nathan did, but the good news is that wasn’t the end of the story.

The next day I received a phone call from another one of my pastors wanting to discuss a marital altercation from the previous evening that he thought was abusive.  He described what happened and then added, “Pastor shared with me what you told him yesterday about David’s abuse of power and I’m wondering if this incident isn’t similar?”

My jaw dropped and my heart rejoiced. Instead of seeing this couple’s problem as sinful anger or marital conflict, he recognized the deeper heart issues. Her husband felt entitled to his wife’s compliance and when she didn’t give him what he wanted, he used his physical power to block her right to choose. Her husband misused his authority as her husband to get his own way and he believed he had every right to do so.

I share my story in this blog for two reasons. First, one of my passions as a Christian leader, counselor, author, and speaker is to educate other Christians about the misuse and abuse of power, especially in a family. Jesus warned his disciples against using their legitimate power or authority inappropriately.

He said, “You know that those who are regarded as rulers over the Gentiles lord it over them and their high officials exercise authority over them.  Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:41-46). Biblical headship never entitles one to misuse that authority simply to get his own way, whether it is in a church, a company, community, or in a family.

At the heart of most domestic abuse is the sinful use of power to gain control over another individual. The weapons used are physical strength, outbursts of anger and verbal threats, emotional battering and intimidation, economic control, sexual pressure or domination, and/or spiritual one-upmanship. One person in the relationship seeks to control the other by using anger, money, and the scriptures. I have seen many hurting individuals and families devastated by inadequate counsel in these situations simply because his or her counselor did not perceive the imbalance of power and control in the relationship. Instead of putting an axe to the root problem, he or she focused on anger management, conflict resolution, improved communication, or headship/ submission issues.

Jesus cautions those of us who do have positions of authority – parents, husbands, pastors, elders, counselors, teachers, and other leaders not to misuse those God-ordained positions for self-centered purposes.  These roles are given to us by God to humbly serve those individuals or groups that have been entrusted to our care, not to have our egos stroked or to get our own way. If my seminary trained pastor had never thought about David’s sin as an abuse of power, perhaps there are some Christian counselors who don’t understand this problem very well either. I’m begging you to spread the word in the spheres of influence you have so that this problem is not only identified, but addressed Biblically.

My other reason for sharing this story is that we are called not only to be wounded healers, burden bearers, and compassionate listeners, but also to use carefully crafted words to be truth tellers. God uses not only his Word, but ours to breathe fresh air into stale perspectives, to shed light in the dark corners of a difficult life circumstance, and to comfort and calm a confused mind.

Our words have the potential to expand well beyond the counseling hour and I’m grateful that I got to see how God used my simple conversation that Sunday not only to change a pastor’s perspective, but to rescue a broken and scared woman from danger.

I want to challenge all of us to use our words about whatever particular burdens that God has put on our heart to make a difference in our church, our school, with our counseling colleagues, and in our community.

I hope we never forget that our purpose is to be like Christ, a compass for radical change, to right wrongs, light the darkness and to always point true north.

The Seduction of Grandiosity

Posted on July 5, 2010

[Leslie Vernick LCSW is our guest blogger for the month of July, and this is her first post. Leslie is a licensed clinical social worker, popular speaker and author of 6 books on Christian living. She is the Director of Christ Centered Counseling and you can visit her at www.leslievernick.com or read her weekly blog at leslievernick.blogspot.com]

So let us realize our limitations. We are something and we are not everything.

Blaise Pascal

As Christian counselors and psychologists we have all witnessed comrades who have been intoxicated by the praise of others. Several months back I was speaking on one of my books at my local Christian bookstore and afterwards two young women eagerly approached me. Rather than purchase my book they wanted me to autograph their arm. I felt silly signing my name on their flesh.

In the past I’ve been asked to autograph programs and napkins (thankfully unused napkins) from events I’ve spoken at. It not only troubles me that people put others on such wobbly pedestals but I’m disturbed when I notice that I’m liking it a bit too much.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with receiving and enjoying positive feedback, but I know myself well enough that positive affirmations can become intoxicatingly seductive and can blind us to our darker side. In our celebrity studded society it is very tempting and easy to become deceived by what I call the “awe” factor.

We have read and listened to tragic stories of athletes, politicians and other leaders who became captured by the lie that they were better than they really were. In my clinical practice I’ve supervised interns as well worked with licensed and respected counselors, pastors, professors, and church leaders who have fallen prey to the praise of humankind and in the process, often stepped over the line of professional and appropriate behavior.

When I’ve worked with these individuals and we’ve examined the steps that led them to cross professional boundaries or abuse their power, we usually find that grandiosity played a significant role. They believed themselves to be above temptation. They thought they were smarter and stronger than they were. They told themselves that they were the lone exception to the normal rules of professional conduct or that their inappropriate behavior would not receive the same tragic consequences as others faced.

 They swallowed the sincere words of their clients and admirers but forgot that much of who they are remains hidden from most people’s eyes. Some individuals still held captive in their remnants of their own delusion later lament, “I can’t believe I did such a thing.” 

“Why is it so hard to believe?” I ask.

Could it be because they’ve forgotten their humanity and they’ve lost sight of their weaknesses and their nature to sin? They can’t believe they could have done such a thing because in their own eyes they should have been smarter or better than that.  

The apostle Paul reminds us, “If you think you are standing strong, be careful not to fall” (1 Corinthians 10:12). In our clinical training we are given tools to develop therapeutic competence and effectiveness, but as Christian therapists, we must pay every bit as much attention to our inner life if we want to guard our heart against the lure of grandiosity. The failure to do so not only hurts us, it deeply wounds those we serve.

Here are a few ways I have found helpful. If you have found other ways to stay sober from the intoxicating effects of praise please share them with me and the rest of us.

Stay Mindful of Your Smallness

I think we can learn some valuable lessons from the life of King Saul.  Initially, Saul felt small and inadequate when God chose him to be Israel’s first king.  He replied to Samuel the prophet, “But am I not a Benjamite, from the smallest tribe of Israel, and is not my clan the least of all the clans of the tribe of Benjamin?  Why do you say such a thing to me” (1 Samuel 9:21)? 

Many of us begin our professional journeys mindful of our smallness and feel scared when God calls us to ministry. We feel grateful and humbled that God would use us to minister his truths to others.

But after Saul became king, he changed. He no longer felt small and his heart grew arrogantly confident.  Instead of consulting with Samuel the prophet of God, Saul began to make decisions on his own and lied to Samuel about following the Lord’s instructions.  Finally Samuel, God’s prophet, confronted King Saul’s deception. He said, “Stop!  Let me tell you what the Lord said to me last night.  Although you were once small in your own eyes, did you not become the head of the tribes of Israel…”  (1 Samuel 15:17, italics added)? 

King Saul’s pride problem is a battle we all face.  Although we may initially recognize our smallness and humble ourselves, we can easily become puffed up by the admiration of others as well as our own accomplishments. We start to think that God is blessed to have us on his team and that it’s all about our gifts and abilities and accomplishments.  In these moments it’s important to remember that all of the good in us is not from us, but rather from God (1 Corinthians 4:7).

 Jesus often uses the illustration of a child to help us understand how crucial humility is to our own spiritual and emotional well-being. Jesus knows that if we forget our smallness we will lose our way in our journey through life. 

Be As Honest With Yourself As You Can

A healthy person isn’t a totally together person but rather someone who is internally free enough to see the good things God has put inside of her as well as the sinful and immature parts that continue to need growth and forgiveness.

I do not enjoy observing myself at times craving more and more praise and affirmation but when I catch myself wanting it and am able to name it for what it is, it protects me from sliding down a very slippery slope. The psalmist affirmed that God desires truth in our innermost being. (Psalm 51:6).

Stay Connected with People in Close Mutual Relationships

It is not possible to be totally honest with ourselves without being connected to other people. The scriptures speak of our proclivity toward self-deception and remind us that God’s word and God’s people help us see ourselves more truthfully.

Real and authentic relationships with people who know us well provide a powerful anecdote to the “awe” factor. It’s hard to stay as wonderful as my clients’ think I am 24/7. My husband is my reality check. His feedback is usually much more accurate than any of my clients.

In addition, I meet with a spiritual director once a month. In order to be honest with him I have to be honest with myself but this has been of great help to me in guarding my heart and staying mindful of my smallness. I also belong to a group of professional women whose lives are like mine. It’s helpful because they experience the same struggles and the same temptations and we are able to talk honestly and freely together and hold each other accountable. I invite them to speak into my life and I listen attentively to what they say.

People who are caught in the web of grandiosity are not willing to be open and vulnerable with their peers, their friends or their family. They either think too highly of themselves to believe that anyone can teach them anything new or helpful, or they are too self-conscious, protecting their false self-image and shielding themselves against wounded pride to seek help.  They’d rather not know or have anyone else know that they aren’t doing so well. Yet the psalmist prayed, “Let a righteous man strike me – it is a kindness; let him rebuke me – it is oil on my head.  My head will not refuse it” (Psalm 141:5).

The opposite of grandiosity is humility. Gary Thomas encourages us to make the necessary effort to cultivate a humble heart.  He says, “Humility is at root a celebration of our freedom in Christ; we are freed from having to make a certain impression or create a false front.  Humility places within us a desire for people to know us as we are, not as we hope to be and not as we think they want us to be or even as we think we should be.  Real growth cannot begin until we come to this point.”

Reference

Gary Thomas, Seeking the Face of God (Nashville: Nelson, 1994), 126

Monitoring Exports: To Favor Group Care?

Posted on June 27, 2010

[Rev. Stephen P. Greggo, Psy. D. is Professor, Counseling Department, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, IL. His interest areas are in counseling and Christian worldview, contemporary clinical practice, groups, supervision and raising up the next generation of mental health professions for kingdom service.  He is the author of Trekking toward Wholeness: A Resource for Care Group Leaders (2008), InterVarsity Press. Dr. Greggo is our blogger for the month of June, and this is his fourth post.]

My inquiring mind surveyed the surrounding crowd standing in the painfully slow line waiting to present our passports at Borispyl Airport outside Kiev. The invitation for spring break 2010 was to teach an intensive course on Christian counseling in theological perspective to pastors, counselors, and ministry leaders from throughout Ukraine.[i] My eyes took in the appearance, attire, and distinguishing characteristics of fellow travelers. Such diversity! What imaginings, products, ideas, and worldviews were about to be introduced by the vast company gathered in this queue? Related to my own assignment and purpose, I contemplated the material I was about to bring within Ukrainian borders.

In the United States, evangelical seminaries and Christian universities offer a vast assortment of professional mental health degrees and lay counseling training. Each may proffer a well crafted vision statement with claims to be biblical, Christ-centered, Spirit guided and/or unapologetically Christian. These academic programs promote a variety of perspectives on the relationship between modern psychology and Christian theology. The differing positions are so critical and distinct that much attention is given to this subject both formally in courses and informally in clinical supervision. Eric Johnson (Ed.) and Inter-Varsity Press (IVP) will soon release a revision of the popular text, Psychology and Christianity: Five Views (2010).[ii] There has been significant advance in recent years within the various views, and progress has been made in facilitating direct communication between position proponents.

There is no hiding that I have considerable enthusiasm to explore the variety of views on how to manage the interface of faith and counseling. Yet, the invitation to survey such matters with Christians around the world is both an awesome opportunity and humbling responsibility. The invitation to travel to Kiev to address this subject matter in a graduate level seminar was an indication that the evangelical church in Ukraine was alert to complexity of this subject. Trends in US seminary education do make their way overseas. Familiarity with the intricacies of the range of positions on psychology and Christianity affords me the awareness that there is a substantial amount of American church history linked with the leanings and arguments of each carefully articulated perspective. The tension that persists between science and theology stems from heated discussions regarding epistemology that are deeply embedded in the USA context. Central to the historical evangelical movement is an understanding of the fundamentals of the faith and how these are to be rigorously defended against the encroachment of modernist, liberal values. The controversies associated with the connection between Christ and Culture is plainly apparent in Christian counseling. Accordingly, when one lifts such discussion from the American context and exports a view of helping to another culture, it is critical to monitor the cultural weight attached to principles purported to be exclusively biblical.

During preparation, prayer was lifted over the issues, content, and passions that I would offer as a representative of a major evangelical seminary and most importantly, of Jesus Christ. The truth of Scripture is the same, yesterday, today, and for eternity. This core conviction does not imply that the theology or ministry principles developed from the Scriptural text are culturally value-free. The course I was to teach would explore the controversies related to the relationship between psychology, theology, and biblical material as these are fused to formulate a technology of helping. In my own approach, an underlying theme would be cultivated under the premise that these learners would benefit from viewing a practical example of a helping technology that is biblically sound, theologically consistent, and pastorally effective. Small care groups are an effective means to shepherd and mediate soul care within a Christian ecclesiology.  Could it be that small group helping methods offer a culturally relevant fit to address the limitless needs so pronounced in local ministries across the globe? Sample group helping endeavors would be included in this particular course as illustrations of how biblical and empirical approaches might be effectively aligned. The three considerations that directed me to mention groups in an international context will be exposed in this blog. Perhaps readers will have reason to dispute these notions, provide clarifications, or offer additional reasons to extend the effort.

First, given the descriptions provided to me regarding the spiritual and mental health needs of evangelicals in the destination culture, raising awareness of group helping approaches was desirable for pragmatic reasons. If the anecdotal ‘need’ assessments that I was given were at all representative, providing support via one-to-one conversation was bound to be a limiting intervention strategy. Second, group methods were given preference due to cultural considerations. The private and individualized counseling session is the modality given optimum attention by Christian helpers in the USA. The popularity of this format could tie to biblical principles or it may be that the one-to-one counseling session is favored due to our own cultural preferences. In a social framework that esteems the collective over the individual, it might be wise to deliver helping technology via small groups where cohesion and unity itself is a vital intervention. Third, groups may offer a less offensive method to distribute information and support due to role distinctions. In environments where those in need of assistance are leery of authority or have past experience with inconsistent levels of commitment from authority figures, it would be reasonable to downplay helper roles that accent the degrees of separation between the specialist/expert and help seeker.

It is evident that there are divisions between Christians in the USA regarding the relationship between psychology as a science and an orthodox theology grounded in Scripture. Have these divisions and distinctions become our standard academic export? Thinking globally, it may be useful to consider the unique history of Christianity within the host culture before exporting specific epistemic tensions regarding specific disciplines. It would be ideal if those of us who train kingdom-oriented counselors in the US and abroad pray earnestly over this question. During this month of June, these blogs have been aimed at stimulating discussion over the place of groups within our Christian helping efforts. In the not too distant future, group approaches may be an area where Christians from other cultural settings will have community-oriented strategies worthy of importing to the US!

As June draws to a close, allow me to express gratitude to Eric Johnson, Scott Holman, and the board of the Society of Christian Psychology (SCP) as well as to Tim Clinton and the leadership of the American Association of Christian Counselors (AACC) for the privilege of blogging for the entire month. It’s truly an honor to spread thoughts on groups as a valid helping approach via the valuable and quality web presence of SCP.

[i] It is important to thank Sergiy Tymchenko of the Research Education and Light Center (REALIS) in Kiev for this teaching opportunity and to Nyack Seminary for its support of this REALIS cohort with a counseling emphasis (www.realis.org).

[ii] Eric L. Johnson, Psychology and Christianity: Five Views, with contributions by David G. Myers,

Stanton L. Jones, Robert C. Roberts & P. J. Watson, John H. Coe & Todd W. Hall, David Powlison, (InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove, IL; 2010).

The Group Option: Follow the Research

Posted on June 20, 2010

[Rev. Stephen P. Greggo, Psy. D. is Professor, Counseling Department, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, IL. His interest areas are in counseling and Christian worldview, contemporary clinical practice, groups, supervision and raising up the next generation of mental health professions for kingdom service.  He is the author of Trekking toward Wholeness: A Resource for Care Group Leaders (2008), InterVarsity Press. Dr. Greggo is our blogger for the month of June, and this is his third post.]

For members of the Society for Christian Psychology (SCP), making an informed referral for counseling care is a familiar activity. Colleagues, valued students, family members and even transitioning clients seek endorsements for who and where to go for help. The identified need might be addressed through a range of activities: spiritual formation, pastoral direction, coaching, counseling or psychotherapy. Does a small care group appear near the top of the list as a potential referral resource and viable treatment option? If it does, is there a corresponding group with an appropriate purpose readily available? The degree to which mental health research may have a legitimate bearing on how Christians design ministries for people helping is certainly a matter of debate. For those who decide to follow the research, there is ample evidence that pastors, Christian leaders and mental health professionals would be prudent to strategically network to increase group initiatives.

Not long ago, the American Group Psychotherapy Association (AGPA) commissioned a task force to articulate an established set of scientifically credible, clinical practice guidelines.[1] Mental health professionals are expected to construct treatment plans whenever indicated in accordance with established ‘best practice’ procedures. Evidence-based approaches and empirically supported treatments derived from research trials shape the standards of care. This impressive task force, a virtual who’s who in the relevant literature, was charged with the responsibility of summarizing research findings that are stable enough to conceptually guide real life therapy procedures. For those invested in the utilization of group methods, these guidelines are worth careful consideration when planning, implementing and evaluating. Those with faith convictions rooted in Christianity who operate under professional credentials make a dual commitment. We align with our profession by staying abreast of the latest clinical literature. We reflect our faith priorities by consistently evaluating prominent trends from a Christian worldview thoroughly informed by Scripture. Since the SCP movement strives to separate modern, establishment psychology from a psychology grounded within a biblical and historical Christian theology, let me be clear on this point. Evidence-based approaches represent the epitome of contemporary, mainstream therapeutic thought. These are the source for ‘best practice’ criteria. Thus, it is necessary for Christian practitioners to grapple seriously with the underlying principles.

In the initial section of the task force report on creating a group, there is a fascinating statement that instantly struck a nerve. When a mental health professional considers the launch of a group, two essential audiences must continuously be acknowledged and addressed. The most obvious one without a doubt is the population of clients who could potentially enter the therapeutic endeavor. The other one, though perhaps obscure, is actually the more critical. This influential audience is the network of peers, referral sources, payers and invested caregivers who ultimately make decisions regarding treatment. This audience, for better or worse, is often the silent partner with a vast potency to greatly impact the viability and success of the helping group.[2] The evidence suggests that raising a successful helping group does take an entire village. Productive and sustainable groups require their own support and resource association.

Group methods are a particularly useful option when there is a surrounding social context that values and esteems their existence. Counseling groups thrive when there is an encouraging buzz amongst those who offer therapeutic services to stimulate interest and sustain client investment. Small groups activate and rely on an intense level of interpersonal process. This may be a unique mechanism to produce therapeutic change, but the method itself can challenge and produce strain. As participants encounter these demands, there is a legitimate need for collaborative endorsement from trusted leaders to forge realistic expectations and sustain member commitment. The broader Christian community, reflected in both the academy and the church, could be the ideal informational and social resource to nurture care groups. The church does hold body life in high regard and vital fellowship is valued. The gospel narrative has much to say on the subject of how members function within social groups. Redemption, sanctification, ecclesiology, family life and the direction/purpose of human development are theological topics that do converge through the way of the cross on how believers relate to others.

Clinicians are trained to follow the implications of the latest research. It is interesting to note what’s happening regarding groups. A special section on group therapy recently appeared in the academic journal Psychotherapy Research (2010).[3] Notice this at the outset. There is sufficient credible group research to warrant this exclusive attention in a clinically oriented, academic journal. The overview to this particular volume was provided by Gary Burlingame, faculty member in the psychology department at Brigham Young University and prolific author/researcher in academic publications on the effectiveness of small group care.[4] For starters, Burlingame reiterated ‘old but gold’ news regarding two nearly undisputed findings based upon decades of clinical research. Granted, general agreement amongst psychological researchers is never simple to achieve. This makes these preliminary statements that form the basis of understanding rather important. First, there is consensus that sufficient empirical evidence does exist to conclude that group is an effective modality when weighed against individualized care. When treatment outcome is important, the research is generally favorable. There is no research-based substantiation for the common practice of downgrading group to ‘economy class’ or maligning this method to a ‘step-down’ service. Second, groups are a constructive option for diverse populations. In other words, group applications are viable across a broad spectrum of severity and range of difficulties. For those with group interests, these findings are worth sharing. This impressive evidence may serve to expand the audience providing leadership support. This is the audience that those interested in purely Christian approaches have good reason to cultivate.

A blog is not the platform to report a review of research. It is a fine forum to bring impressions out into the open to stimulate peer exchange. Here is my observation based upon Burlingame’s overview and the subsequent journal articles. Group research is growing in its sophistication and there are efforts that have improved controls for potential confounding errors. In addition, there is progress in gleaning information on the unique aspects of group treatment itself, namely, the impact of being with others. The hallmark of group is its potential to activate ‘process,’ otherwise known as relational communication. There are efforts underway to establish reliable and valid measurement tools for research and clinical applications to identify the contributions of small group process variables such as cohesion, participation, giving and receiving feedback. When such tools are applied, our understanding of group dynamics is increased, not only in the realm of the academic and abstract, but in the actual medium of client care. Overall, there is ample reason to be confident in group treatment designs and our ability to track growth related to clinical/interpersonal objectives. A related impression will be highlighted in this blog next week- the emerging international collaborative endeavor to expand research into group methods. This important trend is of interest to those who train people helpers to serve across the globe.

Visitors to this web site are dedicated to the exploration of Christian psychology.  It is best that I express my objective directly. What would it take to elevate groups to a higher place on our list of referral resources? Surely, this would require an increase in well designed, targeted leader-directed care groups that have blueprints consistent with contemporary practice guidelines. It would also require that Christians ponder the implications of small group process variables (e.g. cohesion, interpersonal risk taking, participation, and giving/receiving feedback) from a biblical perspective. There is certainly room to add quality research that investigates distinctively Christian fellowship variables within select care groups. Rather than groan over the lack of such systematic efforts that are plainly Christian, it might be worth following the available research. It does offer useful directions to build small care communities that are of considerable interest to those who can see a connection between behavioral change, relational skills, character building and Christ-likeness. To refine our Christian oriented care groups, it would be worthwhile to follow the research.

[1] Howard Bernard, Gary Burlingame, Phillip Flores, Les Greene, Anthony Joyce, Joseph C. Kobos, Moyln Leszcz, Rebecca R. MacNair Semands, William E. Piper, Anne M. Slocum McEneaney & Diane Feirman, “Clinical practice guidelines for group psychotherapy,” International Journal of Group Psychotherapy, 58(4), (2008): 455-542.

[2] Ibid, p. 258.

[3] This journal is a publication of the Society for Psychotherapy Research dedicated to the promotion of scientific research in therapy that is international and multidisciplinary.

[4] Gary M. Burlingame, “Small group treatments: Introduction to special section.” Psychotherapy Research, 20(1), (2010): 1-7.

Seen Any Good Groups Recently?

Posted on June 6, 2010

[Rev. Stephen P. Greggo, Psy. D. is Professor, Counseling Department, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, IL. His interest areas are in counseling and Christian worldview, contemporary clinical practice, groups, supervision and raising up the next generation of mental health professions for kingdom service.  He is the author of Trekking toward Wholeness: A Resource for Care Group Leaders (2008), InterVarsity Press. Dr. Greggo is our blogger for the month of June, and this is his first post.]

Seen any good movies recently? This conventional conversation starter offers a superb connection tactic. An outstanding way to warm up a chat is to discuss freshly viewed films. Two sensible assumptions authenticate the approach. Nearly everyone splurges resources on blockbuster entertainment. Furthermore, an inner voice, resembling that of Roger Ebert, surfaces when viewers are offered center stage to issue sound bite pronouncements on the latest hits from box office. Thumbs up or down, there’s a compelling urge to share the passion, drama, hero worship or absurdity bound up in high tech cinematography. Thus, this entrée into conversation activates the magnets that unify an interpersonal encounter. A lively exchange can draw us out of our shuttered and sheltered selves. Before long, the dialogue achieves a rhythm. Stories are pouring and great moments are relived. Of little consequence is whether the flick thrilled, bored or bombed. Sharing our media experience creates common ground.

Let’s experiment to see if an adaptation of this query can jump-start a blog: seen any good groups recently? What small groups have you experienced within the past seven to ten days that earn the qualifier of ‘good’?

Now if you consider your response and come up blank, there is no need to feel isolated. Even in this wired, digital age, an uneasy sense of disconnection and alienation is more conventional than it is exceptional. A disquieting awareness that one is functioning on the outskirts of the small groups that surround is actually not out of the ordinary. Those likely to frequent this SCP blog may have insights to share about such an observation. How can we make sense of the following remarkable contrast? This observation is of particular interest when it describes those who personally identify with Jesus Christ as Lord. My observation is that Christians frequently report feeling disconnected. It may take far less effort to recall memorable clips from well-crafted, larger than life media stories, than it does to remember intimate interactions with others. Here’s the point. Are believers invested in intimate interpersonal communities where the realities of life are shared, the self is actively crafted, and love for God and neighbor is cultivated? Those invested in Christian psychology do well to ponder the implications of such a trend in light of our biblical anthropology, ecclesiology, and model of sanctification.

Good small groups have distinguishing features. Yalom’s landmark research on the curative factors in helping groups does offer useful categories. Those grand therapeutic concepts depict the forces generated when people gather in intentional high touch settings. For example, relationships within defined small groups can spark a resurgence of hope, provide reassurance that our sensations are not unique, offer a natural forum to impart information or host a prime opportunity to display care for others.[1] For this blog, my intent is to stimulate images of a good group by placing emphasis on a recent experience that just so happens to coincide with this research.

Allow me to respond to my own opening invitation. Yes, I have experienced a good group recently. Honestly, if transparency can communicate via cyberspace, writing this blog is in part a coping method to mourn its passing and celebrate its achievement. This group came to its planned and intended conclusion. When Tuesday arrived, there was no bright and early supervision group to host and guide. Its completion, and the absence of that relational exchange, left an internal void. This was no surprise. A few weeks ago, when traveling overseas in a distant time zone with day and night hopelessly confused, a warming thought entered my awareness during an awakening prayer. “This is a new Tuesday morning Lord. Watch over what’s happening in my supervision group back home. Those exchanges are sure to be rich.” In my mind’s eye, I could visualize the faces of those interns. The strain, growth and ‘truth spoken in love’ that bounces around in all that lush interpersonal space is palpable!

Two basic indications qualify this group as good. Participants had a sense of anticipation and expectancy prior to gathering. “When that happened, I knew I could bring it to group.” Or, “Even though I was unsure how to describe what’s going on, bringing this to supervision group seemed right.” These phrases reveal that members hold the group near even when they are apart. An internal awareness is operating that others are available to listen and support. This sense of support indicates that a productive group is happening. As leader, it was a joy to observe such anticipation and expectancy.

 Another sure sign a group is good is when select meaningful exchanges are revisited like productive flashbacks. Members report, “I remembered what we said in group...” “The conversations here came back to me…” Such replays are refreshing, motivating, enlightening and most often associated with a specific person, sub-group or group event. Sometimes the cherished fragment carried forward is as simple as a hurried yet genuine moment of prayer. Striking interactions from this particular group are presently quite accessible in my memory.

 The identification of this supervision group as ‘good’ is based upon retrospective evaluation. Numerous doubts arose regarding its usefulness during its 30-week life. Still, this group eventually worked. Intriguingly, I facilitated another supervision section with an identical purpose, structure, format, demographics, location, and time frame. While that parallel assembly fulfilled its purpose, it cannot be nominated for the honorable stamp of ‘good’. Consistent peer collaboration was never realized. My mind will linger long over the distinguishing features. Why was one group good and the other merely adequate? What made the member, group, leader and interactive variables unique? What made the presence of the Lord appear close at hand in the one and distant in the other?

 As an academic clinical supervisor, leadership of this cohort was my assignment and professional responsibility. Should the Lord not redirect the flow of my personal life or the grand scheme of history, the opportunity will return next semester. The memories mentioned stir my anticipation for the good groups that lie ahead. Given my role and the innate power differential between supervisor and supervisees, is there anything odd about a professor savoring publicly such highlights from a good group of counselors in training? The answer is, perhaps. From another perspective, while I began the academic year in my formal position to guide a cluster of interns, the experience ended with the Lord granting me the privilege of working in partnership with new colleagues. Now, that’s a good group.

 A few years back an ad hoc gathering of therapists recorded the positive experience they enjoyed as a peer consultation group in a published journal article.[2] The forum these licensed clinicians created was not intentionally therapeutic or supervisory. This group was for the mutual pursuit of skill development. According to reports, two important outcomes of that collegial endeavor were evident: clearer case conceptualizations and tighter intervention applications. Most noteworthy from those recollections is how the sense of Christian fellowship, blessing, and a powerful spirit of unity were so easily and honestly attributed to the movement of the Holy Spirit.

It will be my honor to blog for SCP during June. Group work will indeed be my chosen theme. This accounts for this kick-off question to connect with readers. Seen any good groups recently? My conviction is that guiding others into small groups that move one another towards mutuality are a gospel oriented enterprise. These may inspire serious self-reflection, enhance relational flexibility and most importantly, be the instrument for the redemptive activity of the Holy Spirit. Small groups need not share interesting or stimulating exchanges at only the level of movie reviews to reach common ground. Rather, conversations that stir the passions, drama, hero worship or absurdities bound up in the layers of our lives become a mutual service to encourage one another.  By the Lord’s grace, this pulls participants further into the experience of Christ’s remarkable love. Beyond common ground, this becomes sacred ground. Lord, with gratitude I thank you for this good group I recently experienced!

[1] Irvin D. Yalom and Molyn Leszcz, The Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy, 5th ed. (New York: Basic Books, 2005), pp. 1-18.

 

[2] Sandra F. Anderson, Marion S. Noble, & Helen F. Shaw, “Peer Consultation among Christian Therapists,” Journal of Psychology and Christianity, 24, (2005): 254-258.

How to Walk a Tightrope

Posted on May 31, 2010

[by Peter Hampson, Head of Department of Psychology, University of the West of England, Bristol. Professor Hampson is our blogger for the month of May, and this is his fifth post]

Believing can be a subtle balancing act.  Ludwig Wittgenstein once wrote that “an honest religious thinker is like a tightrope walker. He almost looks as though he were walking on nothing but air.  His support is the slenderest imaginable. And yet it is really possible to walk on it” (Wittgenstein, 1984, CV, 73e). I’ve long intuitively assumed that there is a more than a grain of truth in Wittgenstein’s assertion.  Staying on the tightrope is an achievable skill, slipping off always a possibility, with increasing practice and trust falling becomes less and less likely.  Reasonable faith becomes better balanced.

But why is the rope so narrow? What is on each side? Why do we wobble?  I once blithely assumed the tightrope to be suspended over an abyss of unbelief, with little by way of solid philosophical support, but now I am much less sure.  It seems more likely that the tightrope charts a route with naïve, fundamentalist belief on one side and naïve rationalism or scientism one the other.  One can fall either way, both are forms of misplaced faith, and only a whisker divides these positions.  And one reason why we wobble from time to time may be that creation is ambiguous and Christianity paradoxical; while these are both strengths, they easily appear as weaknesses, and we’re tempted by the apparent certainty on one side or the other. 

I’ve been recently thinking along these lines having been privileged to talk through related issues with leading theologians in the Radical Orthodoxy group, for whom ‘paradox’ is a fundamental idea.   Christian psychologists, I suspect, could have useful things to say about how we handle paradox and ambiguity, and examples of both paradox and ambiguity are not hard to find in the Christian tradition.

Ambiguity, the possibility of perceiving one thing or event thing in more than one way, is to some extent inherent in the way creation presents itself.  With ontologically naturalist spectacles on we can see the world as nothing but the product of blind physical and biological forces of chance and intrinsically purposeless processes.  Or, through religious spectacles, all appears as gift and donation, somehow bearing the imprint of the Divine Logos.  In reality, of course, the universe is both naturalistically and theologically explicable, but to hold the two accounts in dynamic equilibrium may require a grasp of the philosophical limits of science, and a view of theology that moves beyond fideism.

Christianity is also replete with paradox, where apparently different or seemingly incommensurable things somehow co-exist.  A classic example is the doctrine of the incarnation beautifully expressed at Chalcedon (AD 451) as ‘our Lord Jesus Christ: the same perfect in divinity and perfect in humanity, the same truly God and truly man, of a rational soul and a body; consubstantial with the Father as regards his divinity, and the same consubstantial with us as regards his humanity.’  The definition later asserts that Christ is ‘acknowledged in two natures which undergo no confusion, no change, no division, no separation; at no point was the difference between the natures taken away through the union, but rather the property of both natures is preserved and comes together into a single person and a single subsistent being; he is not parted or divided into two persons, but is one and the same only-begotten Son, God, Word, Lord Jesus Christ.’  The finite, contingent, and changeable ‘joined’ but without admixture or confusion with the infinite, the necessary and the unchanging. 

Humans themselves are also curious hybrid creatures, half brute, half angel.  Virtues, too, have paradoxical qualities.  As Chesterton (1908) points out the courageous person, such as a Christian martyr, desperately wants to live and loves life, but yet holds on to it lightly.  In charity, we somehow manage to love the unlovable.  True humility walks the tightrope between hubris and demeaning, self deprecating behavior.  The list goes on.

So how do we handle paradox, and what psychological processes are involved?   The question is a large one but there are some suggestive pointers.  First, I suspect, paradox is not the enemy of everyday reason at all, but rather shows us its limits.  Physicist and psychologist, K Helmut Reich, for instance, has formally argued that trans domain or ‘relational and contextual reasoning’ of a ‘both…and’ variety is needed to handle paradox (Reich, 2002).  Also, in certain cases, language itself is strained by religious paradox, and its univocal use is better replaced by expressions based on analogy and metaphor.  But I also think that we need to consider other sensory modalities and cognitive functions a little more when reflecting on paradox.  Imagination, illusions, even the kinesthetic sense, may be as important as the verbal and the propositional when ‘intuitively grasping’ a paradox.  There is more to thinking and understanding than words.

After all, Wittgenstein himself was fond of reminding us that good, therapeutic philosophy, helpful when on the tightrope, often involves showing rather than telling, and we know that the auditus fidei invariably gives way to the visio Dei in the classic Christian tradition.  Hearing makes way for imagination and sight, as words fail and fall away. 

The psychology of poetry, not rational thought, may be a good route into this as well, since, “The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens.  It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head.  And it is his head that splits’” (Chesterton, 1908, p. 27).

Reference

Chesterton, G.K. (1908).  Orthodoxy.  London: John Lane, The Bodley Head Ltd.

Reich, K.H. (2002). Developing the horizons of the mind: relational and contextual reasoning and the resolution of cognitive conflict.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Wittgenstein, L. (1984). Culture and value. Trans. Peter Winch, ed. G.H. von Wright. 1977; Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

ACT with Virtue: Whose Values? Which Commitment?

Posted on May 23, 2010

[by Peter Hampson, Head of Department of Psychology, University of the West of England, Bristol. Professor Hampson is our blogger for the month of May, and this is his fourth post]

In my last posting I considered the ‘acceptance’ and ‘mindfulness’ phase of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and tried to make some links with Christian prayer.

 The second key component of ACT is, of course, the commitment phase where the client is assisted and encouraged to act in accordance with key values.  But whose values, to what is the client ‘committed’, and how should that commitment be characterized?  I realize that there has recently been much debate in the Christian psychological community as to the nature of values in counseling and therapy (see especially Hodges, 2009 for an extremely useful recent contribution), but I should like to take another brief, sideways look at these issues.

First of all, ‘whose values’?  More technical accounts of ACT relate the method to its behavioral underpinnings in relational frame theory (ACT-RFT).  Proponents of this interpretation typically criticize related humanist and motivational interviewing approaches for being imprecise in their definitions of value.   By contrast, ACT-RFT locates the technique, fair and square, in a functional analysis of behavior and strives for precision.  So, in a recent account of ACT-RFT we read, somewhat reductively, ‘Values are ‘freely chosen’ consequences of patterns of activity which establish reinforcers for that activity that are intrinsic in engagement with that activity’, (Plumb, Stewart, Dahl and Lundgren, 2009, p. 92).

Of course this a tight definition true to the canons and lore of behavior analysis and doubtless useful as far as it goes.  But a close reading suggests it to be effectively an expression of individual, personal preferences implying a commitment to realizing one’s ‘inner self’ As it stands, not surprisingly perhaps, the behaviorial definition aims to be basically ‘scientific’ and morally neutral (as if such were possible), but in practice it turns into a variety of moral emotivism.  Values are the outcome of activities, the ‘goods achieved’ we might say, which establish reinforcers which then become ‘motivators’ for those activities.  All this sounds perilously like, ‘do it if you are motivated to do it and value it because you find it reinforcing’! 

In reality, things are a little more subtle. We are told, ”Clinically clients are encouraged to examine what matters to them in different life domains.  The client and therapist usually work together throughout therapy to clarify the values of the former.  While working with the client in this way it is not the therapist’s purpose to influence which values the client endorses, but rather to help him or her contact naturally occurring reinforcement for living consistently with his or her chosen  values, whatever they may be.”  (Plumb, Stewart, Dahl and Lundgren, 2009, pp. 94-5).

But here we have it again: if something leads to naturally occurring reinforcement for living in accordance with what I, as client, feel to be right, then, subtext, it is right. One doesn’t have to be a Chomsky to spot the circularity. We have ‘freely chosen’ as values those consequences of activity which establish reinforcers for engagement in that activity, which we then deem valuable, presumably simply because we find the engagement reinforcing.  Values are motivating consequences of actions which we find to be reinforcing; consequences which we find reinforcing are valuable!  We always knew that the Law of Effect was circular.  There’s no harm in that for lever pressing, but once ‘values’ are invited into the circle, we spiral too easily into the abyss of moral emotivism.  Admittedly, therapists assist clients in ‘clarifying’ values, but it seems to be inescapable that at root it is the client’s individual values and preferences, ‘whatever they may be’, which are being affirmed here. In many past and cultures this would have been thought astonishing.  Now, we blithely celebrate it as ‘freedom of the individual’.

In which case, the answer to my second question is straightforward. In one sense, that to which the client is committed is ‘themselves’ and their (individually) defined and desired outcomes.  And how is their ‘commitment’ to such values expressed?  Well, we’re told, there is a need for ‘flexible persistence’.

Don’t get me wrong. There is undoubtedly much that is good in ACT and much, I am sure, that genuinely helps people.  I admit I have deliberately caricatured the approach to accentuate some of its key features.  At its best, used by a skilled and wise therapist, secular ACT-RFT is no doubt a valid affirmation and exploration in act of the client’s sincerely held and philosophically defensible inner values.  But at its worst, I fear, it may reflect an individualized culture which has lost touch with serious Christian moral discourse, has lapsed into moral expressivism, and which equates the good with being ‘true to oneself’.

Can the approach be redeemed?  As a non-therapist I am ill equipped to suggest, bottom-up, how a therapeutic technique such as this should be reformulated, maybe some are already doing so.  But I can offer a top-down, framing, Christian architectonic.  For the Christian, values cannot simply be my ‘individual desires’, or ‘augmental reinforcers’ or ‘inner preferences’; they must be shared, Gospel values.  Moreover, a commitment to act in accordance with them seems to me at least to point inevitably to virtuous action.  We act to realize Christian values by enrolling in the school of virtue. What else is possible? 

Encouraged by this, perhaps we can be even more ambitious and put the two reconstructed components of ACT back together, raising up the first, and redeeming the other.  If acceptance (in ACT) potentially has a prayer dimension, since discernment is required, and action potentially has a virtue component, since it should continually aim for the Good, the True and the Beautiful, do the two parts fit easily together?  I suggest that they do, without remainder, and that to ‘pray constantly, and act resolutely and virtuously with God’s grace’ is Christianity-in-ACT. 

My speculative polemics aside, the Collect of the Monday of the 5th week of Easter in the Roman Lectionary is probably a good place quietly to leave this topic:

‘Father, help us to seek the values that will bring us eternal joy in this changing world.  In our desire for what you promise make us one in mind and heart.’

References

Hodges, B.H. (2009). Realizing values in a complex world: caring for other.  Edification: Journal of the Society for Christian Psychology, 3(2), 2-22.

Plumb, J.C., Stewart, I., Dahl, J. and Lundgren, T. (2009). In search of meaning: values in modern clinical behavioral analysis.   The Behavior Analyst, 32(1), 85-103.

ACT with Prayer

Posted on May 16, 2010

[by Peter Hampson, Head of Department of Psychology, University of the West of England, Bristol. Professor Hampson is our blogger for the month of May, and this is his third post]

Readers patient and kind enough to read my previous two postings may wish quickly to review them before reading this one.  Equally patient readers who have not read my last two postings may find it helpful to do so first.

Fools rush in where angels fear to tread!  I am neither a therapist nor a counselor and approach this topic with some circumspection, but I have been aware for some time of the ‘third wave’ therapeutic approach known as Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT).  As many readers will know far better than I do, ACT is a branch of cognitive-behavioral therapy.  Originally known as ‘comprehensive distancing’, it rests on neo-behavioral approaches to complex behavior and behavior change based on stimulus equivalence and relational frame theory, but has also been influenced by Buddhist approaches to mindfulness. As its label suggests, ACT emphasizes the acceptance and mindfulness of experiential states and commitments to act in accordance with one’s core values (Hayes, Kirk, Strosahl and Wilson, 2003). 

Revealing my ignorance further, I do not know if anyone has yet thought about ACT from a rigorous, Christian psychological standpoint; so I’d like to learn more about this, but it strikes me that the approach, as it stands, has much to offer but is greatly in need of ‘redemption’ by a Christian meta narrative.  Let me suggest, in broad brush strokes, how I think this could be accomplished; others may wish to take this forward.

Consider first the acceptance and mindfulness dimensions.  In an important paper, Hayes, Wilson, Gifford, Follette and Strosahl (1996) introduced the idea of ‘experiential avoidance’ and argued “that many forms of psychopathology can be conceptualized as unhealthy efforts to escape and avoid emotions, thoughts, memories, and other private experiences”, (1996, p. 1152).  They went on to suggest that “experiential avoidance, as a functional diagnostic dimension, has the potential to integrate the efforts and findings of researchers from a wide variety of theoretical paradigms, research interests, and clinical domains and to lead to testable new approaches to the analysis and treatment of behavioral disorders”, (p. 1152).

Instead of repressing, blocking, or otherwise turning away from challenging cognitions and affect, ACT clients are taught to ‘just notice’ their inner life especially unwanted, negatively or emotionally-charged thoughts, images and desires.  One ACT method, for instance, encourages the client to imagine sitting by a river and to think of their thoughts as written on leaves which gently float away down the stream.  The purpose of this and other techniques is apparently to ‘defuse’ otherwise pycho-toxic events by breaking the identity between client and thought, and re-situating the thought in the broader context of the ‘transcendent’ self, itself potentially independent from particular cognitions and affects which might otherwise overwhelm or swamp it

Leaving aside the philosophical mine field that we could enter at this point, and the method’s overall therapeutic efficacy, we can ask what is generally useful about this aspect of ACT and how might it be improved?   What I suspect is good, both psychologically and potentially spiritually, is the openness to and acceptance of experience which it promotes.  Cognitive defusion, acceptance, and contact with the present moment in ACT resonate strongly for me with the honest acknowledgement of all our desires in prayer that I noted two weeks ago. Turner (2001) sees the first step in prayer as the same as the first step in self knowledge: “It is to learn how to trust absolutely in the love of God for us.  And the most immediate effect of that trust is that we will learn how to stop pretending about ourselves, particularly in prayer. This is a quite obvious kind of liberation and has a quite natural kind of attractiveness about it, at least at first, like a sigh of relief at dropping a great weight”, (Turner, 2002, pp. 98-99).

So where’s the difference?  For the Christian psychologist, the self, involved in ACT or otherwise, cannot simply be the autonomous self of secular therapy.  It must, like prayer,  be grounded in God, who is, as Meister Eckhart puts it, “more intimate to me than I am to myself”,  and so  prayer gives back to God not only my desires and confusions but my very self. With this understanding, my unwelcome thoughts no longer float away on a Buddhist or secular stream, but are freely given back on the river of life which leads back to its source.

“If we can manage nothing else in prayer we can manage patience, perseverance and trust.  In the lovely phrase of Simone Weil, prayer is a ‘waiting for God’.  It is a waiting with our wants placed in the presence of his wants: and from that waiting emerges, ever so slowly, a wanting that he should do it, whatever ‘it’ is.” (Turner, 2002, p. 109).

“Pray always, says St Paul (Ephesians 6.18).  He means it, I think, even, or especially when trying out ACT.  For the Christian, experiential acceptance can only logically become prayer.  Only thus can it become self-transcendent. Otherwise, I suspect, it is bound to fall back into the solipsistic, ‘transcendental’ self, in its theologically reductive immanence.

References

Haves, S., Wilson, K.G., Gifford, E.V, Follette, V.M. and Strosahl, K. (1996). Experiential avoidance and behavioral disorders: A functional dimensional approach to diagnosis and Treatment. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 64(6), 1152-1168.

Hayes, S.C., Kirk D., Strosahl, K. and Wilson, K.G (2003). Acceptance and Commitment Therapy : An Experiential Approach to Behavior Change. New York: The Guilford Press.

Turner, D.  Faith Seeking. London: SCM Press, 2002.

On Prayer

Posted on May 2, 2010

[by Peter Hampson, Head of Department of Psychology, University of the West of England, Bristol. Professor Hampson is our blogger for the month of May, and this is his first post] 

What happens when we pray and do Christian psychologists have anything useful to say about it?  This thought prompted me recently to revisit the short and highly readable chapters on prayer in theologian Denys Turner’s excellent Faith Seeking (Turner, 2002).  I’m not thinking of empirical studies in the psychology of religion apparently designed to test the casual efficacy of intercessory prayer.  I don’t wish to enmesh us here in questions of their methodological adequacy or their theological or philosophical probity.  Instead, with Turner, I want to consider what are some important psychological conditions associated with prayer and (briefly) the theological assumptions behind them.

What I find particularly helpful about Turner’s account is that his starting point resonates strongly with my own experience.  He writes: ‘I had never read anything [on prayer] which started from the low levels of good practice from which I knew I started.  So I decided to speak out of my own personal experience of praying within and out of my own mental and emotional chaotic inadequacy’, (Turner, 2002, p. 91).

As an example of honest, clear observation and introspection, informal qualitative analysis, combined with theological sophistication, Turner’s is a model of its kind and a good starting point for Christian psychologists interested in the topic.  His main thesis is that prayer is not in the last analysis ‘talking to God’ or being in a particular ‘state of mind’ or ‘experiencing’ any particular feeling, nor is it in not being in any particular state of mind or feeling, for it is the trusting acquiescence of our will and all that that entails in and to God.

To some extent this is not new. As we know, the tacit models of God and of prayer that we hold can, of course, be barriers in preventing us from having a full and meaningful prayer life.  I say ‘of course’, but it is easy to overlook this.  Think of God as a ‘super-Being’ and we too easily invite Him to meddle as an efficient cause among other causes and thereby reduce his status to a mere being among other beings, and fail to realize that God is the source and final cause of all being.  Think of prayer univocally as ‘talking to God’, and we risk reducing our potential participation in the Trinitarian life, with God, through Christ and the Spirit, to a form of supernatural email.  But in reminding us that prayer involves the proper orientation of the will we are up against another barrier, for as Turner states:

“Prayer is an act of the will, not of thought or feeling, and we do not understand this because in our modern culture we have intellectually lost touch with any usable meaning of the word; we have come to mean something like a tyrannical force at odds with desire, a force opposed to what we want.  It is not surprising therefore that we have lost touch with that power in us which, in older cultures, was called ‘will’.  For the great classical writers of classical and premodern times meant by ‘will’ some thing more like our deepest desires, or sometimes, our ‘hearts’: at any rate, the place where our treasure is.” (Turner, 2002, p. 98).

One consequence of a recovered understanding of the will is that we realize that we have to bring our desires – all our desires – before God in prayer, for only that way do we slowly begin to see their true nature. Indeed, counter to what many of us may have been taught in childhood, distractions, according to Turner, are one of the “effects of prayer, they are how prayer reveals to us where lies the land of the heart, they are the material of what Thomas called the ‘hermeneutic of desire’,” (Turner, 2002, p. 108). Psychologically then, whatever else it is, prayer is clearly an act of acceptance and discernment.  We lay our hearts open before the Lord and learn what is within them.  Warts and all, this is what God accepts. We do not do this to act on all our desires, of course not, but, with God’s grace, we seek to accept, understand, redeem and perfect them.

Theologically speaking, however, prayer cannot change or manipulate God or otherwise control that which holds us in being.  In fact, as Turner reminds us, we do not pray to God so much as God prays through us.  Prayer “is our act only as one with the work of the Spirit within us, when our spirit and the Holy Spirit are, as Bernard of Clairvaux used to say, unus spiritus.  For there is only one prayer, and that is the prayer of the Father to the Son and of the Son to the Father, and that prayer is called by the name of the Spirit”, (Turner, 2002, p. 105).

I cannot do full justice to the richness and sophistication of Turner’s account in a short posting but there is much to ponder on here.  I recommend that readers take time to read and meditate on his reflections, not mine.

Reference

Turner, D.  Faith Seeking. London: SCM Press, 2002.

Unity in the Body of Christ in Psychology and Counseling

Posted on April 25, 2010

[Eric Johnson is the Professor of Pastoral Care at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and the Director of the Society for Christian Psychology. Eric is one of our guest bloggers for the month of April.]

I have had a number of encouraging experiences in the past year that demonstrate that God is building greater unity in the Christian world in the fields of psychology and counseling. I mentioned last year the great time I had participating in a conference of the Association of Biblical Counselors. This was one of the first times that a biblical counseling group had invited someone who is not a self-identified biblical counselor to speak at its conference. It seemed to me to be a breakthrough. They have invited me back to participate in this year’s conference next month (May 20-22).

Then, in February of this year, about 40 leaders in the biblical counseling movement met together to form the Biblical Counseling Coalition (see www.faithlafayette.org/bcc). Biblical counselors from across the spectrum of the movement are joining forces to work together in the common cause of counseling that is based on the Bible. We pray that God will prosper the BCC and cause biblical counseling in America to flourish through this act of unification.

A couple of weekends ago I was also encouraged when I attended the 2010 conference of the Christian Association for Psychological Studies (CAPS). CAPS has been around for over 50 years, seeking to promote a Christian approach to psychology and psychotherapy and counseling, as one of the more academic organizations of Christians in the fields of psychology and counseling. In the past, CAPS has been strongly identified with the integration approach, and that emphasis certainly dominated this year’s conference. However, SCP has been dialoging with CAPS for a couple of years, and in response, the CAPS board has been engaged in discussions that appear to be leading to an official change in their formal endorsement of the integration model to a formal embracing of a more inclusive stance that welcomes all Christian approaches to psychology, including the Christian psychology approach. It appears that CAPS new aim is to become the major “umbrella organization” of Christian academics in the fields of psychology and counseling, something that SCP would very much support.

A number of developments concretely demonstrate their new openness. To begin with, at this year’s conference, a “professional development group” for Christian psychology was officially begun, to be led by Timothy Sisemore, an associate editor of Edification (the SCP journal). Second, CAPS and SCP have both agreed to sanction a membership fee discount for those who are also members in the other organization. We hope to make that change on our side within the next two weeks. And as another sign of good will, Peter Hill, the editor of the Journal of Christianity and Psychology (the CAPS journal), has asked Timothy Sisemore to edit a special issue dedicated to the topic of Christian psychology in 2011. This is a remarkable series of events that also indicates that God is building unity in his body among Christians in psychology and counseling, for which we are very thankful, both to God and to the CAPS leadership.

One other note: I met a Russian Orthodox priest at the CAPS conference, Father Gregory Jensen. He is very committed to the development of Christian psychology from an Orthodox perspective and has the competences to make a real contribution to such a project, and he tells me he has many friends who could also contribute. He was very happy to find out about the Society for Christian Psychology, and I was very happy to find out about him, particularly since we have had so little involvement from the Orthodox community in SCP. I pray that our meeting was a sign of God’s leading in this direction.

So today I am filled with renewed joy and gratitude to God for what he is doing in drawing his people in these fields together. I wonder what he will do next.

Implications of the Resurrection for Christian Psychology

Posted on April 11, 2010

[For the month of April we have a variety of guest bloggers. This week's post is authored by Dr. David Jenkins, Associate Professor of Counseling, Center for Counseling and Family Studies at Liberty University in Lynchburg, VA]

When Eric Johnson asked if I would be a guest blogger, I knew the post would take place a couple of weeks after we celebrated Easter.  I have always appreciated the Society for Christian Psychology and the simplicity of its mission statement.  So my first thought on what this blog’s focus would be was, “What are the implications of the resurrection for the theory, research, and practice of Christian psychology?”  While continuing to prayerfully consider what my contribution might be, I became increasingly convinced that this was the direction to take the discussion.  It was reassuring to have the presentation topic confirmed.  I became a bit unsettled, though, because as I spent time pondering this topic, I realized I had taken it for granted and not really thought through this before-at least not in any kind of systematic way.  “Yikes,” I thought, “I’m supposed to blog on this for public display to the SCP!”

So what follows are some thoughts about what difference the fact of the resurrection of Jesus Christ makes for Christian psychology.  While I hope I can inform to some degree, my intent is more to spur some discussion among you.  I’ll present some general thoughts first and then some implications for the theory, the research, and the practice of Christian psychology.

 General Implications

Because of the resurrection, Christian psychology should be characterized by pervasive qualities of:

 Theory Implications

Higgins (2004) identified aspects of useful theory.  Useful theories are: testable, coherent, economical, generalizable, and explanatory.  Interestingly, he added a sixth aspect beyond these common five-generativity.  Isn’t that fascinating?  Good theory should also “give birth and life” to further theory.  I believe a suitable word to go along with this is “heuristic”-the theoretical work of Christian psychology should guide in the investigation and discovery of who God is, what He’s like, and what that means for those created in His image. 

The resurrection means that what we presently see, touch, hear, smell, and taste is not all there is to this story of being human.  We are not in a “closed” universe, meaning that God has always been and remains active and immanent.  Surely, this ought to stimulate “holy” (i.e., set apart) theory that’s qualitatively different than what modern psychology presently offers.  And as Christian psychology seeks to recover and nurture its historical identity found within biblical Christianity, “resurrecting” that identity after a century of neglect, division, and abuse seems like an appropriate way to describe this effort.  In what ways do you believe the theory of Christian psychology is shaped by the resurrection?

 Research Implications

Jones (2002) described functions of research: modification, illustration, explanation, exploration, affirmation, prediction, and correction.  Although space doesn’t permit elaboration on each of these functions, a couple of examples will clarify this point.  The resurrection “modifies” what I know and believe about persons created in the image of God.  The resurrection “illustrates” the pattern of creation, fall, and redemption present in the universe, but particularly in human beings.  You could construct similar thoughts regarding the other functions of research.

Beyond these implications, the resurrection should affect the “content” of Christian psychology’s research as well as its “process.”  Probably more than any other, the general implication of hope should influence our research.  Topics such as resilience, optimal functioning, and the power of a well-lived life seem uniquely suited to a discipline whose foundational beliefs include the resurrection.  What other research content and process areas do you believe are uniquely shaped by the resurrection?

 Practice Implications

Sizemore (2006) outlined elements of a counseling model derived from a Christian psychology perspective.  He included elements regarding the nature of epistemology, persons, health, pathology, and treatment.  What we believe about what we know and how we know it is radically affected by the resurrection.  Let’s face it-even the apostle Paul identified the resurrection of Jesus Christ as the defining issue of the reality of our faith.  To believe in the resurrection requires us to step outside of naturalistic approaches to our work with persons.  Once again, I believe the general issues of hope, death as a precursor to life, freedom, making God known, transformation, and purpose influence my intentionality as a practitioner of soul care.  How is your work with people affected by the resurrection?

 Conclusion

I love Jesus…and, really more importantly, He loves me!  I am a living example of the resurrection power of Jesus Christ.  Some of you may know part of my story, and the details really aren’t that important to our purposes here.  But just know that God took me from hopelessness, death/destruction, bondage, darkness, distortion, and futility.  He brought me lovingly and radically into hope, life, freedom, knowledge of Him, transformation, and purpose!  I’m certain many of you can testify to the same “resurrection power” in your own life.  May God continue to bless this project of Christian psychology and those who are part of it!

I look forward to your comments and contributions!

 References:

Higgins, E.T. (2004). Making a theory useful: Lessons handed down. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 8(2), 138-145.

Jones, I.F. (2002). Research in Christian counseling: Proving and promoting our valued cause. In T. Clinton & G. Ohlschlager (Eds.), Competent Christian counseling (pp. 641-657). Colorado Springs, CO: Waterbrook.

Sizemore, T.A. (2006). The five domains: A Christian psychology model for counseling. Retrieved August 6, 2007, from Society for Christian Psychology Web site: http://www.aacc.net.net/email/media/scp_2.ppt

Unveiled Faces

Posted on April 4, 2010

[We will have several guest bloggers for the month of April. This first post is by Scott Holman, the SCP Blog Moderator.]

I recently attended a unique mens retreat in which space was provided for the men present to be broken and transparent before God and other men. The result was deep change and healing for many present. As I reflect on the dynamics of the retreat, it occurred to me that a significant factor in being transformed by God into the image of Christ is the level of broken transparency we bring to relationships in general, but particularly with God.

The level of transparent reality we bring into relationship with God and others greatly affects how intimate we are capable of being and subsequently, how much transformation we experience. True intimacy in relationships depends on the trust and safety of exposed hearts, and these hearts are changed as they commune together with God through Christ. There is something healing about exposing your heart to another safe person.

The problem is that we are often “veiled” in our relationships through defense mechanisms, false selves, and sinful habits of hiding and manipulating. If our inner world is veiled to ourselves (through a lack of self-awareness) and others, we are incapable of deep relationships. Out of a sense of self-protection, we often work and maneuver ourselves to maintain distance and control in our relationships. When we make a choice to stop this pattern though, there is great potential for intimacy and healing. We can “un-veil” ourselves before God and others through confession, transparency and authenticity. Such authenticity requires taking risks in our relationships, risks in laying down our false selves in the presence of others. When our inner world is un-veiled to ourselves and others in the presence of God, there is great potential for transformation, healing and growth in Christ-likeness to occur.

As tempting as it is for those who are troubled and hurting (and those of us who counsel them) to make transformation the goal of transparent relating, it is not. Transformation is not the reason we are transparent and authentic – intimacy is – intimacy with God and others. When transformation becomes the goal, our transparency can become manipulation, an attempt to barter with God. A false self that presents itself as authentic can work to earn love. When intimacy is our goal however, transformation is a side effect that is left completely in the hands of our sovereign and good God. God has designed us for relationship, and the more of “us” that is unveiled in the context of safe relationship with him and others, the promise we have from Scripture is that we shall be changed. But this change rarely occurs in the way and at the rate we desire, so it is necessary to stress that deeper relationship is the goal of transparent relating.

Perhaps it is helpful to differentiate between brokenness and transparency for the sake of clarity. Transparency can be defined simply as the absence of pretense or deceit, an honest acknowledgment of what is in the heart and mind, without any judgment as to the goodness or badness of what is revealed. Brokenness (in a biblical sense) adds to transparency a repentant sorrow for what is in the heart and mind along with a desperate desire for Jesus to grant healing and forgiveness. Broken, transparent intimacy is at the heart of biblical discipleship (e.g., “blessed are the poor in spirit,” and “blessed are the pure in heart” (Matt. 5:3, 8).  This is developed in two key texts, 2 Corinthians 3:16-18 and Hebrews 10:19-25.

“But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.” (2 Cor. 3:16-18 ESV)

The ESV Study Bible note on 2 Cor 3:16 is helpful here – “Just as Moses was able to enter into God’s presence without a veil (Ex. 34:34) so too when one turns to the Lord in faith, the veil of separation from God and incomprehension of him brought about by a hardened heart is removed” (emphasis mine). The more we turn to the Lord in faith, the more we are un-veiled. In Christ, we can come before God and one another without the veils of our false selves and all our sinful attempts to find life without God. These veils have been removed with Christ’s death and resurrection for us.

At Jesus’ death, the curtain or veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom (Matt. 27:51), opening the holiest presence of God to all people who trust in Christ’s sacrifice. Once the most dangerous place for sinners, the holy presence of God is now the safest place for the broken and the sinful because of the new and living way of Christ. The implications of this are staggering for us.

“So, friends, we can now-without hesitation-walk right up to God, into “the Holy Place.” Jesus has cleared the way by the blood of his sacrifice, acting as our priest before God. The “curtain” into God’s presence is his body. So let’s do it-full of belief, confident that we’re presentable inside and out. Let’s keep a firm grip on the promises that keep us going. He always keeps his word. Let’s see how inventive we can be in encouraging love and helping out, not avoiding worshiping together as some do but spurring each other on, especially as we see the big Day approaching. (Heb 10:19-25 The Message)

Through the sacrifice of Christ, we are enabled to come before him without timidity or pretense. Indeed, we are called to come before Him with boldness, transparency and unveiled confession, knowing that we shall be completely accepted, loved and forgiven. We can be “confident that we’re presentable inside and out,” which takes the pressure off us to perform or pretend. As we do this with brothers and sisters in Christ we shall be changed as we together behold His glory – for this is why we were made.

Using Scripture in Christian Counseling

Posted on February 21, 2010

In my mind, Christian psychology’s value comes from being able to develop a solid foundation and praxis of Christian care of souls-something that grows out of careful biblical/theological work as well as the study of human behavior. Those of us who have been talking about and doing Christian counseling for some time must admit that much of what passes as Christian counseling is either superficial Christianity (verses pasted on a theory that exists just fine without the verses) or superficial psychology (a model based on some tidbit of pop psychology research and then morphed in an exquisite but completely fictional science).

Instead of Sunday school applications (where Jesus is the answer to every question) counselors need solid examples of how to engage the Scriptures in therapeutic settings. In a recent issue of our journal, Edification (2:2), I’ve attempted to introduce some practical steps in using the bible in the therapy office. But, truth be told, many have not had good experience in seeing how one might engage the Bible in real life settings. We’re wary of the Band-Aid use of verses, the bible bullets, the superficial applications. So, it makes sense we don’t know how to engage both counseling and Scripture well.

In stark contrast to biblical superficiality, Dr. Mike Emlet has recently published CrossTalk: Where Life & Scripture Meet (2009, New Growth Press). I would encourage every Christian in the counseling world to read it. Mike’s book provides a great introduction to connecting (more of) the bible to real-life human trials and tribulations (e.g., beyond the Psalms!). Though he is a seminary professor and biblical counselor you won’t get bogged down into esoteric discussions of exegesis or genre (though you can see he understands the concepts) or finding a verse for every problem (though you can see he believes that everyone finds themselves in the pages of the bible).  Rather, Mike focuses on “redemptive dialogue” (vs. mere instruction) and how the Gospel is more than belief but the repetitive, transformative meeting with God. 

Here are three gems from the book to whet your appetite.

If you think your counseling training lacked clear teaching on how to think about Scripture and its application to everyday life (beyond timeless maxims and warnings); if you avoid using Scripture in counseling because doing so sounds trite, then I recommend you take up this book and consider how the narrative use of Scripture might enrich your counseling work.

Christian Psychology and Mindfulness

Posted on February 14, 2010

(by Philip G. Monroe. Associate professor of Counseling & Psychology at Biblical Seminary. Dr. Monroe is our blogger for the month of February and this is his third post. Dr. Monroe maintains his own blog at http://www.wisecounsel.wordpress.com/)

Christian psychology exists to promote distinctly Christian study of the nature of persons, problems and solutions. Eric Johnson, our society’s leader, has done a masterful job outlining the nature and foundation of Christian soul care in his 2007 Foundations (IVP) book. Now, the next step is for us to develop detailed conceptions of a variety of common human struggles and helpful interventions.

But Christian psychology need not re-invent the wheel. Other psychologies (e.g., secular, Buddhist, humanist, etc.) have explored common human behavior patterns in helpful ways. One such concept getting a fair amount of attention is that of “mindfulness.” I first read about mindfulness some years ago in the work of Marsha Linehan. Dr. Linehan is the main developer and researcher of Dialectical Behavior Therapy, a research supported treatment protocol for those suffering from Borderline Personality Disorder. Dr. Linehan has referred to herself as part behaviorist, part Buddhist, and part Dialectical philosopher. Her treatment consists of 4 main components, one being based on Buddhist principles of mindfulness. More recently, cognitive therapists have adopted mindfulness as an intervention in place of (or at least alongside of) the core work of challenging cognitive distortions. Since then a number of careful studies employing mindfulness as an intervention seem to indicate that the technique works-possibly even better than techniques designed to challenge or distract from anxious talk. Those who practice it see a reduction of anxious and depressive symptoms.  How might Christian psychologist think about mindfulness practice?

What is it?

Mindfulness is defined in several parallel ways. In short it is conceived of a non-judgmental, present-tense, accepting awareness. [I've blogged on mindfulness before. You can find these additional thoughts here and here]. It is the absence of judgmental attitude with an emphasis on describing rather than categorizing. It is the being focused on the present rather than the past or future. It is an attitude of openness to experience.

 How should we respond to it?

The Christian therapist might rightly have some concerns about mindfulness. Buddhist beliefs about the goal of eliminating desire do not comport with Christian theology. Further, Christians are called to judge between right and wrong. Clearly, relativism isn’t part of Christian doctrine. However, are there facets of the practice that do comport with Christian foundations of soul care? Some integrative counseling models might include mindfulness from a purely utilitarian standpoint: it can be described without emphasizing Buddhist foundations. However, a better process would be to develop a foundation for consciousness and awareness of one’s surroundings using Biblical principles and Christian tradition.

Building a Christian psychology of mindfulness?

A Christian psychology of mindfulness might start by identifying the problem of distorted thoughts, perceptions and judgments and their genesis in the mind and heart. Second, the model of mindfulness might articulate the proper cognitive and attitudinal engagement in an unpredictable and frightening world.

The study of Buddhist mindfulness may encourage the Christian psychologist to re-investigate similar concepts from early Christian writings. For example, one might consider those spiritual disciplines designed to center one’s mind in Christ or to be “watchful” of thoughts. For example, IVP is preparing to release a new book entitled, Life in the Spirit: Spiritual Formation in Theological Perspective. In this book, James Wilhoit (Wheaton College) has a chapter on centering prayer. Building on the writings of Christian forbearers, he depicts a prayerful stance of observing the thoughts. The goal is not emptying the mind but maintaining conscious connection with the Spirit. Such activity opposes “what if” or “if only” kinds of hypervigilant thinking-thinking accompanying depression and anxiety and which hinders contentment.

In a recent phone conversation, Jim Wilhoit described the concept of watchfulness as an “intentional construal of the world” from God’s perspective. In my thinking, this form of mindfulness does not grasp after logical constructions (e.g., Psalm 131) but observes (a) the world as God sees it, and (b) the common but distorted scripts used as substitutes.

While I have not articulated a clear picture of a Christian psychology of the mind, I hope that my ramblings may encourage someone to build a rich model of mindfulness from our Christian tradition that avoids conceiving of the mind as only a logical instrument to talk ourselves out of feelings and perceptions.

Do No Harm

Posted on February 7, 2010

(by Philip G. Monroe. Associate professor of Counseling & Psychology at Biblical Seminary. Dr. Monroe is our blogger for the month of February and this is his second post. Dr. Monroe maintains his own blog at http://www.wisecounsel.wordpress.com/)

Every counseling ethics code in existence includes this principle: Do no harm. This maxim is drilled into the heads of counseling students (and any other medical professional as well). Our work should help, not hurt. Who could disagree?

But pause for a minute and consider how you might evaluate whether an intervention helps or harms. What criteria will you use? From what vantage point will you evaluate the criteria you choose? If a medical treatment extends life for an ill patient that would seem good-unless it keeps them alive and in a vegetative state with no possibility of recovery. Some would then wonder if the treatment was indeed best. Or, is it harmful if marriage counseling encourages truthfulness between spouses leading to the revelation of a terrible betrayal leading on to divorce and financial ruin? If honesty is your criteria for helpfulness, then the intervention is sad but helpful. If stability is your criteria, then such counseling is harmful. We could go on and on. Do we use client interpretation of whether treatment is helpful or counselor observation? Do we consider the difference between short and long term evaluation? And importantly for Christians, do we consider only statistical analyses or do we also consider biblical categories (e.g., intervention “A” leads to increased positive affect but encourages clients to pray to another deity).

Despite the muddy water I just churned up, I want to argue that Christian psychology is well poised to help Christian counselors provide treatment that does not harm. This society includes some of the best philosophers, theologians, sociologists, clinicians, and researchers of our day. These members are interested in looking at how people grow and change, how the bible connects with everyday life, common human struggles and effective interventions, etc.

How then do we go about refining our practices and avoiding harm? Let me suggest some steps we might take:

That would be a good start. Now, I’m not under some delusion that we will agree completely on any one of these issues. But, clarifying agreement, identifying disagreement might bring our work into better focus. I suspect we will find much that ought to be fixed and a sadly needed increase in Christian counselor humility.

Should Christian Psychology Become a Profession?

Posted on January 31, 2010

(by Philip G. Monroe. Associate professor of Counseling & Psychology at Biblical Seminary. Dr. Monroe is our blogger for the month of February and this is his first post. Dr. Monroe maintains his own blog at http://www.wisecounsel.wordpress.com/)

Right now, in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, lawmakers are considering a bill that would place more restrictions on who can provide counsel. Currently, the state has a number of mental health credentials. Among those is the Licensed Professional Counselor credential for those with a requisite master’s degree and post graduate supervised practice. If passed, the new bill will not only protect the title of “Professional Counselor” but also the practice of professional counseling. Per the law, one may not “style” themselves as a counselor unless they are licensed as such.

Who does this effect? This will especially impact the many Christian counselors who are not licensed but practice a form of counseling (aka biblical counseling, Christian counseling, etc.). While these counselors do not provide diagnoses or bill insurances they do collect fees, keep progress notes, maintain confidentiality, and provide counsel for those struggling with issues such as anxiety, anger, depression, marital conflict and the like. So, the 64 million dollar question: Do these unlicensed Christian counselors “style” themselves as professional counselors? And who decides the line between the two? As an aside, the bill does contain an exemption for pastoral counselors. Pennsylvania does not yet define that title but in other locales that title is reserved for those ordained, trained in a pastoral counseling graduate program, and doing work in church-related institutions.

Here’s where the bill gets interesting. It describes what typifies a profession that might overlap with counseling but have a separate (and thus exempted) identity and practice. Here are some of the criteria they might use to discern a separate profession (note my bolded text to emphasize interesting details):

1.  The group’s activity and focus must be based on an identifiable body of theoretical knowledge which, although it may include areas of common knowledge shared with social work, marriage and family therapy, and professional counseling, is demonstrably different, in the aggregate, from the body of theoretical knowledge underlying social work, marriage and family therapy, and professional counseling.

2.  The group must regulate entrance into professional membership by means of standards of knowledge, training and proficiency generally accepted by the profession with which it identifies.

3.  The group’s activity must be guided by generally accepted quality standards, ethical principles and requirements for an independent profession.

4.  The group must exhibit the ordinary accoutrements of a profession, which may include professional journals, regional and national conferences, specific academic curricula and degrees, continuing education opportunities, regional and national certification and awards for outstanding practice within the profession.

Thus, the state will consider whether one is a qualified member of a profession (and in compliance with that profession’s standards) AND counseling only in the scope of this profession.

This leads me to ask two questions. Does Christian psychology fit the definition of a profession? Should we seek to form our own credentials?

Like all good academics, we like to pose questions and avoid answering them. However, I do have some thoughts. First, we do have a theoretical knowledge base that is unique in its scope even if embryonic in its application. Second, while we do not have our own standards of practice, our parent organization, The American Association of Christian Counselors (AACC), does. And other Christian counseling membership organizations do as well. However, our biggest problem is that we do not limit members to only those who meet an observed standard of practice. There are no proficiency exams to hinder some from entry (again the AACC is now working to change this for their organization). Finally, there are many who would resist the separation of Christian psychology or Christian counseling as a distinct profession on the grounds that it would either ghettoize Christian counselors or lead to innumerable ideological authorities (biblical counselors vs. Christian psychologists vs. Reformed counselors vs. Catholic therapists, etc.). It is my opinion that our Society is enriched because we do NOT see ourselves as a profession. Thus, we have philosophers, theologians, psychologists, pastors, biblical counselors and many more within our ranks. We are well suited to avoid groupthink, in my humble opinion.

What do you think? Should Christian counselors seek their own professional identity and licensing body? What are the pros and cons of doing so?

Mary & Joseph: The Overcoming of Psychodynamic fears, Part 1: The Annunciation

Posted on January 19, 2010

[Paul C. Vitz is Professor of Psychology/Senior Scholar at the Institute for the Psychological Sciences and Professor of Psychology Emeritus at New York University. He is our guest blogger for the month of January, and this is his third post].

This article presents a psychoanalytic and at some points a more general psychological interpretation of some of the motivations of Joseph, Mary and Jesus at two central moments described in the Gospels. The purpose of this interpretation is to demonstrate how a well known psychological framework can contribute to an interpretation of important Christian events in a way that supports and enlarges the traditional theological understanding of them.

The issue of applying psychology to Mary

 The Virgin Mary within Roman Catholicism is understood as conceived without sin and was in her life sinless. And Jesus was not only without sin but also Divine. These unique characteristics raise the issue of whether human psychology of any kind can be applied to either of these two persons.

Although the Virgin was without sin, she nevertheless is assumed to have had normal human emotions – that is, she presumably felt love, fear, anxiety etc. To experience normal emotions even anger is not in itself to sin. To cultivate anger and fear is sinful, but such, it is understood, was not the case for Mary.  If she didn’t have these normal emotions she would be scarcely human. It can be assumed, for example, that the Annunciation by St. Gabriel caused her some fear. To be afraid of death by stoning or of social exclusion is certainly not sinful. Furthermore we assume she had freewill to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to the Angel’s request.  Mary’s “Yes” is an example of faith and courage only if it was made in the face of natural human tendencies pushing in the opposite direction. So it is reasonable to believe that the psychological aspects of fear were experienced by the Virgin at the time of the Annunciation.

The Annunciation

Mary

The first event of interest here is the Annunciation and important psychological meanings that were presumably part of the response of both Mary and Joseph as given in the Gospels. As is well known in the Christian tradition, the Annunciation by the Angel Gabriel informed the Virgin Mary that, if she agreed, she was to conceive and bear a son. The Virgin was astonished by this announcement. She answered “how can this be since I have no relations with a man” (Lk 1:34). She was told not to be afraid and the child would be of the Holy Spirit. She is famous for her response, ‘Behold the Handmaid of the Lord; may it be done to me according to your word’ (Lk 1:38). The Virgin had every reason to be seriously afraid for she knew that if she were found with child that she might be subject to stoning as was the custom at the time. She also knew that if this did not happen, she was still likely to be set aside or rejected by Joseph. This would mean she would be an unmarried mother, socially ostracized and her child would not be considered as a member of the Jewish community. (For a legalistic discussion of this kind of situation in the Jewish world of the time see Jeremias, 1969. p.337-344.)

This kind of fear derived from placing her life and her future in the hands of the male power structure or patriarchy of her world, is a major fear for many women.  In some ways this fear, which is often unconscious, is also related to what Freud called ‘penis envy’ – that is hostility towards men because they have power, fear that this power will be used against them, and envy of or desire for it. Contemporary feminism would say that in some respects this is still the major fear of women. The remarkable and impressive quality of the Virgin’s ‘Yes’ is in large part that she trusted in God in spite of what looked like a coming life of sorrow or even death as a consequence of patriarchal power.   However, Mary had no envy of male power or special hostility toward patriarchy as this would imply the presence of sin, but to fear such power would have been a realistic response. Hence no claim is made here that Mary did experience envy or resentment, motivations characteristic of the Old Eve. Although not found in the Virgin, these responses in most women are nevertheless addressed by her life and example, as the New Eve. Many women who have envy and resentment of male power find an answer to them in the courageous response of the Virgin Mary. It is also quite possible this is one reason why many radical feminists strongly reject Mary as a model appropriate for women.

There are many other reasons to admire the Virgin but certainly her courage and trust in God in this matter is one of them. An example of her trust is that she never presented her case or her religious experience to Joseph to justify herself to him or convince him to accept her. Instead she kept all of this in her heart.  For the Virgin, her “Yes”, was her way of going through the fear of patriarchal power by trusting God to overcome it and thus she was able to transcend this fear and leave it behind. And she serves as a distinctive example for all women in this respect.

            Now, Mary’s proposed psychological fear of patriarchal power and related psychodynamic interpretations does not have to be interpreted as a necessary part of her situation. A conscious realistic fear of death by stoning or of social ostracism certainly is adequate to make her response a courageous and humble negation of Eve’s original “yes” to Satan’s temptation to power, i.e. “You will be like Gods.” (Gen.3:5)

Of course Mary’s general fear is not one just restricted in its primary sense to only women. It may be more characteristic of them, but men also have fear of getting caught up in a legal system and, of course, fear of death. Men also fear saying ‘yes’ to any ambiguous, perplexing open ended serious request, God’s or anyone else’s.

 Joseph

            The other part of the Annunciation event of interest here is the psychology of Joseph, her husband who learns “before they lived together she was found with child” (Mat1:18). Being found with child strongly suggests that one or more adults discovered or learned of her condition, presumably her mother and maybe other family members including members of his family. Thus, Mary’s condition is semi-public at least from Joseph’s perspective.

           Joseph’s first response as a devout Jew was one of justice, namely to consider an official divorce according to Mosaic Law but his next response of a more charitable kind was to avoid public condemnation and likely stoning by putting her aside privately. This second response, unlike the first “justice” response, placed Mary’s and the child’s physical good before any desire he might have for public self-justification and protection of his reputation. That they were betrothed meant in Jewish law that they were essentially married. Even so, for Joseph to set aside his new wife whose condition would soon become apparent might imply cruelty on his part and adultery on her part.

       However, in a dream, he received a message from the “Angel of the Lord” that the child was conceived through the Holy Spirit and that Joseph should take Mary into his home (Mt 1:20-21), which he did. Joseph was not only just but also holy and thus he accepted the message in this dream. Assuming his earlier decision to divorce was not publicly known, his taking her into his home would have avoided that scandal. However, this would not have prevented his personal awareness of the scandalous situation as well as the awareness of those in the family who knew of Mary’s condition. It is also likely that such a “secret” might have been leaked into the community. In any case, most men after they woke up from such a dream would soon begin to doubt it! The Virgin Mary’s “yes” set up for Joseph a very distinctive male fear, namely that he was a cuckold— that he had been sexually betrayed, and he would be raising another man’s child. A related example of the mental cost to Joseph of accepting Mary was his losing the right to name his son. The name “Jesus” was chosen by God and given to Joseph in his dream. It was also given earlier to Mary in the Annunciation. The Jews of the time placed real importance on the naming privilege by a child’s father as being part of his “rightful dignity.” Naming a child was seen as “a creative act since for the ancients the name signified the essence and the calling” of the child (See W. Trilling, 1969 p.10). . But Joseph put all his male fears or “castration anxiety” aside and by trusting in God he overcame and transcended his fear. There is no evidence that his earlier concern in any way affected his commitment to Mary or his fathering role in respect to Jesus.

            Women do not have exactly the same kind of fear that Joseph did of being a cuckold but they can understand Joseph’s fear as the fear of being sexually betrayed by a spouse and of losing status in the community. Such betrayal and loss of social respect is hard to accept by both sexes.

We see here in the preceding two fears a kind of complimentary male and female psychological anxiety, both brought on by the same event, namely the Virginal conception and birth.  However, we assume Joseph’s fear was less strong or deep than that of the Virgin. Granted he is afraid of being a cuckold and all that would mean, but this does not present him with death or social exclusion. In contrast Mary had to overcome both the fear of the possibility of death by stoning and if not that, then a life of public disgrace. Her fiat then was in the face of a greater fear than that faced by Joseph.

It is claimed here that the distinctive fears of Mary and Joseph were overcome or transcended by each one’s trust in God. That is, God is not only showing others that we can trust him when faced with primal fears, but that in trusting God we let go of such fears and through receiving grace we leave them behind.  Perfect love shown through trusting behavior drives out fear. That “Fear is useless” (Mk 5:36; Lk 8:30) is something the Scriptures show us many times.

 

References

Jeremias, J. (1969) Jerusalem in the time of Jesus. Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press. (First published in German, Jerusalem zur Zeit Jesu, 1962)

New American Bible, The. (1991). Trans. Catholic Bible Association of America. Iowa: World Bible Publishers.

Trilling, W., (1969). The Gospel According to St Matthew, Vol. 1. In New Testament for Spiritual Reading. Ed. J. McKenzie S.J. New York: Herder & Herder.

 

Correspondence for Dr. Vitz should be sent to: I.P.S., Suite 511, 2001 Jefferson Davis Highway, Arlington, VA 22202

The Glory of God Composed of Form and Splendor – part 2

Posted on December 28, 2009

[Eric Johnson is our guest blogger for December. Eric is the Director of the Society for Christian Psychology and professor at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. This is his fourth post].

Last week I began a discussion based on a distinction borrowed from the great 20th century Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar, that glory is composed of both form and splendor. I will assume the reader has read that introduction as we explore this week the implications of that momentous distinction.

In art, physical form has to do with spatial arrangement of the features, say, of a statue. A beautiful statue looks good. But we are interested in psychological or spiritual form-something invisible-and therefore not something we can see with the physical eye, but something we arrive at by means of inference and wisdom.

God is the source and measure of glory; indeed, glory is the biblical term for the beauty of God. God’s glory is the “sum of his attributes,” his greatness and goodness, his meaningfulness. God is the essence of perfect, infinite form and splendor. So God’s form is the perfect configuration of psychological and spiritual features: God knows everything (including absolute self-awareness); always thinks clearly; is completely content,  but has emotional richness that corresponds to the rest of reality perfectly (including true empathy); acts determinedly and wisely; and (in the Trinity) consists of strong, loving persons-in-communion.

Last week we defined splendor as the depth dimension of a form, its inner radiance that “shines out” from the form. God is also the essence of perfect, infinite splendor, so he is the deepest of beings: he loves that which is lovely-himself supremely and all creatures, especially insofar as they resemble him-and he hates that which is ugly-sin; he regards all things in proportion to their true value with respect to himself; he always acts according to his preeminent values; and he “sees through” mere appearance and promotes depth in those made in his image.

Being the Son of God in human form, Jesus Christ is the perfect human representation of God’s form and splendor. The Gospels are important because they provide narrative descriptions of his glory, “glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth” (Jn 1:14). Jesus Christ shows the human race flawless human form and consummate depth of splendor. Being increasingly conformed to Christ (in his form and splendor) is the goal of human life (Ro 8:29; 2Co 3:18).

So it is God’s intention that humans made in his image are created to realize the greatest form and splendor of which they are capable as finite creatures. Having good form means having healthy thinking and emotions, well-functioning memory, the ability to freely act so as to realize one’s realistic goals, and good relationships. Modern psychology has explored many of these features.

Having a high degree of splendor means being deep, rather than superficial, being focused on the important things in life: supernatural reality more than natural, people more than things, being and doing good more than simply looking good; but also having regard for the weak, hurting, broken, and sinners, and all creatures in proportion to their actual value before God, yet hating sin. Obviously modern psychology has not focused much on splendor.

This doxological focus (doxa = glory, Gk) makes human development central to God’s purposes. Children obviously manifest God’s glory, but it is good to develop into increasingly well-formed creatures with greater splendor. Because of their limited formal capacities, children necessarily act with less splendor than adults, because adults can do what they do intentionally for the glory of God; children cannot, at least not as fully as adults.

Glory of course is not the possession of anyone except God. To be human is only to be a means of God’s glory; by grace God permits humans to participate in his glory. The more well-formed our souls and the more splendorous their form, the greater glory we are capable of receiving from God in worship, love, and gratitude and expressing in our voices, lives, and relationships.

This glory framework gives Christians a different way of viewing psychopathology.  Sin is the worst kind of psychopathology because it radically compromises our ability to participate in God’s glory. Sin’s essence is anti-glory.  Part of sin’s effects was the damage of the soul’s form evident in distorted thinking, inappropriate emotions, and personality disorders, so this kind of damage should be of concern to Christian counseling, since it can inhibit our ability to participate in God’s glory. However, sin’s effects are most evident in the compromise of splendor. The more sinful we are, the less devoted to God we are and the more focused we are on this creation as an end in itself (so it becomes an idol), so those who live lives distracted by the superficial (fame, fashion, power, possessions) lack splendor. Low levels of splendor, then, is a greater problem than poor form in Christian counseling. Interestingly, having damaged form leads to increased suffering, but suffering promotes our deepening and so our splendor.

Christ came to earth and died and was raised to heal our form and deepen our splendor. Some healing in our form is possible in this life, but its complete healing is reserved for heaven. However, in light of the foregoing, we might expect more healing on earth in our capacity for splendor, as we grow through suffering in worship, wisdom, faith, hope, and love. Christian psychotherapy and counseling is doxological as it participates in the glory of Christ’s salvation by helping to bring healing to the human form and increase human splendor through the resources of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection.

The Glory of God Composed of Form and Splendor

Posted on December 20, 2009

[Eric Johnson is our guest blogger for December. Eric is the Director of the Society for Christian Psychology and professor at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. This is his third post].

Thanks to wonderful teaching I received early on in my Christian life (at Toronto Baptist Seminary, Calvin College, and Bethlehem Baptist Church with John Piper), I have been drawn to think often about how God’s glory is related to psychology and counseling. In an early article, “Self-Esteem in the Presence of God” (1989), I argued that God alone is of infinite worth and that whatever value humans possess has to be vastly secondary and completely derived from God’s worth, since he is the source of whatever worth there is in his creatures. Christian thinking on the psychology of self-esteem needed to factor such a perspective into its theories and counseling. Needless to say, I hadn’t come up with this on my own. I had simply read Jonathan Edward’s classic essay, “The End for Which God Created the World,” which may the best concise discussion of God’s glory ever written (though it is not easy!)[i].

Sometime during the past decade I came across the massive 7-volume work of Hans Urs von Balthasar (1982-1989) on God’s glory (Balthasar is arguably one of the greatest Catholic theologians since Aquinas), called “The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics.” Though daunting in size and erudition, I have learned more about glory in this work. Balthasar there makes makes an important distinction (which he learned from Aquinas) that glory is composed of two dimensions: form and splendor. I would like to spend the rest of this blog explaining this distinction, and next week apply it to psychology and counseling.

Balthasar equates glory with beauty, and he wrote that the form of something is a certain arrangement of its elements, which altogether have a certain complexity, harmony, and proportionality, which constitutes its beauty (consider the form of a strong, healthy horse or Michelangelo’s David) (Edwards, 1989, defined beauty similarly in “The Nature of True Virtue”). The form of the triune God is the most beautiful of all forms, because God is infinitely the greatest being there is, particularly since God consists of the most awesome and amazing arrangement of characteristics and moral virtues that can be. The form of a creature can be no more than a miniscule replica (or image or representation or sign) of the beauty of its infinite Creator, and the ultimate standard of comparison for the replica must always be the original form upon which it is based.

However, an object’s splendor, according to Balthasar, is the depth dimension of its form and refers to the form’s inner radiance and luminescence, we might say, the form’s genuine value that lies, as it were, within it and that shines forth from it. It is what we might call the density of its full beauty. And again, the triune God possesses the greatest degree of splendor imaginable, because God has infinite depth and density of glory, and all creaturely splendor must be measured most truly by the degree of its depth resemblance to the beauty of God.

Form, we might say then, is the beauty evident on the surface of something, whereas splendor is the beauty that lies within. Therefore only the omniscient God fully knows the splendor of something. Splendor is always something of a mystery to humans; we can recognize it generally, but not fathom its depths. Also, while intelligence understands form, it takes wisdom to perceive splendor. Grasping something’s form seems to be mostly a mental or cognitive enterprise, while grasping something’s splendor is more a heart activity, which engages our emotions and entails an appraisal of its worth (in the case of God, love and worship!). But both form and splendor are involved and interrelated in an object’s full beauty.

To illustrate the difference between form and splendor, think of a statue of a living human being. It may be a statue that has great form, identical to the person it represents, but the internal glory or beauty of the human being far exceeds the statue. The human has obvious depth that the statue lacks: the former is alive and has far greater value! For another illustration, consider two siblings who are taking care of their dying mother, one, in order to guarantee a large inheritance, and the other, out of loving devotion. Their actions may have the same form, but their moral splendor is considerably different. Balthasar said that form and splendor are inseparable, and a thing’s splendor is dependent on its form.

I’m sure readers are already sensing the potential here for Christian psychology and counseling. Please respond with your insights this week, and next week I’ll offer a few of my own.[ii]

 

References

 

Balthasar, H. U. (1982-1989). The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics. San Francisco: Ignatius.

Edwards, J. (1989). Ethical Writings (Vol. 8). (P. Ramsey, Ed.) New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Johnson, E. L. (2007). Foundations for Soul Care: A Christian Psychology Proposal. Downers Grove, IL:       InterVarsity.

Johnson, E. L. (1989). Self-Esteem in the Presence of God. Journal of Psychology and Theology , 226- 235.

Piper, J. (1998). God’s Passion for His Glory. Wheaton, IL: Crossway.

 

[i] John Piper (1998) republished Edward’s essay with a great introduction and some helpful footnotes. It is also available in volume 8 of the Yale edition of Edward’s works (1989)

[ii] Most of this discussion is derived from Foundations for Soul Care: A Christian Psychology Proposal (Johnson, 2007, pp. 312-313)

The Manhattan Declaration

Posted on December 7, 2009

[Eric Johnson is our guest blogger for December. Eric is the Director of the Society for Christian Psychology and professor at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. This is his first post].

In this week’s blog I want to call attention to an outstanding document that was recently released called the Manhattan Declaration (http://www.manhattandeclaration.org/). It is a very well-crafted statement on issues of contemporary cultural importance to those committed to historic Christianity, and it is signed by an impressive cross-section of evangelicals, Catholics, and Orthodox leaders. As such, it provides inspiration to us in the Society for Christian Psychology to pursue some of our aims. Let’s briefly consider the three main themes of the declaration.
Life
The Declaration begins with a section affirming human life and actions that support the sanctity and care of all human life, including unborn or abused children, racial minorities, victims of war, and the disabled and elderly. Psychologists and counselors might add to this list those with mental illness, particularly those who are homeless. The authors also criticize governmental policies that advance a culture of death, by increasing the number of abortions or deaths by euthanasia or promoting the destruction of embryos. Christian psychologists can support these goals by working with disadvantaged people and in pro-life clinics and doing research on such topics as war trauma, child abuse, abortion effects, and minority experience.
Marriage
Marriage is defined as a union of one man and one woman, and it is argued that marriage is an objective reality that ought not to be redefined according to personal preferences. The statement insightfully addresses the role of the body in human life. Humans are not mere centers of subjectivity, it is suggested, but embodied beings, and bodies constitute an important part of human reality. Consequently, the one-flesh union of man and woman seals, completes, and actualizes the covenantal union of human marriage. There cannot therefore be “a civil right to have a non-marital relationship treated as a marriage.” The value and dignity of those disposed to same-sex attraction is made clear, and the Declaration rightly acknowledges the church’s sins of judgmentalism as well as complicity in the weakening of marriage through sexual immortality and increased rates of illegitimate divorce among Christians.
Religious Liberty
The authors of the Declaration decry the contemporary promotion of intolerance under the guise of tolerance, and express concern that religious freedom is being increasingly threatened as Christian organizations and individuals are being forced either to violate their own convictions regarding issues of life and marriage in their vocations or ministries or to vacate the public square.

The Declaration concludes with a statement of support for governmental authorities, but also an acknowledgment that Christians must be prepared to obey God rather than comply with injustice.

There are other issues of importance in our day that were not addressed by this Declaration. However, these are among the most momentous. The Society similarly brings together Christians of different faith traditions, but in order to promote distinctly Christian psychological theory, research, and practice. Psychology in our day is a cultural institution and set of practices, as well as a body of literature, shaped by the dominant worldviews of its participants. Mainstream psychology today is a leader in the cultural revolution that the Manhattan Declaration is seeking to address and resist (e.g., see the APA’s resolution this past summer critical of sexual orientation change efforts; http://www.apa.org/releases/therapeutic.html). As a result, the Declaration serves the Society well as a model of the kind of reasoned, principled, and gracious discourse we too need to engage in regarding relevant psychological matters in the public square. There is already tremendous cultural pressure on Christians in psychology and counseling in America to conform to the dominant values in the field. (Someone has quipped that Christians in the field have been heading into the closet, while others have been coming out.) We cannot be silent about these matters, or we may soon find Christian academics, therapists, and counselors being forbidden to express their convictions which are unpopular or risk exclusion from public university faculties, grant awards, public mental health facilities, and licensure. Those in psychology and counseling who are committed to historic Christianity have a voice, and they must use it wisely, but courageously, for they too should have the right to be participants in the field of psychology, regardless of their worldview beliefs and minority status. The Society is committed to such participation.

I added my name to the over 250,000 people who have signed the Manhattan Declaration.

On Hospitality in Christianity and Psychology

Posted on November 29, 2009

[by Peter Hampson, Head of Department of Psychology, University of the West of England, Bristol. Professor Hampson is our blogger for the month of November, and this is his final post] 

Travel, they say, broadens the mind, and a mind-expanding, recent trip to the US allowed me to share ideas with leading figures in Christianity’s engagement with psychology, through meeting representatives of both Christian psychological and integrationist perspectives.  It seems opportune, therefore, to use this, the last of my current blogs, partly as a public thank-you to my hosts, and to reflect on the continuum of approaches to secular psychology by Christian psychologists and therapists working in the US part of the vineyard and beyond.

The welcomes I received in the US were warm, accepting, and exemplary.  All were models of Christian hospitality, and provided opportunities for future collaborative bridge building.  I cannot thank my hosts enough for this.  They will know who they are.  What they may not know is that since returning home I have been thinking about hospitality as an important mode for our engagement both with the world of secular psychology and, of course, with each other.  Why is this?

It’s because I’ve feared at times that unless we consciously and consistently act hospitably in our debates, we may ride roughshod over the valid and important achievements of our secular colleagues in our own justifiable enthusiasm to progress psychology’s Christianisation.  Moreover, exclusive, or rather excluding allegiance to one or other of what is collectively, after all, a partially overlapping set of activities, albeit distinctive ones, namely integrationism, psychology-theology dialogue, Christian psychology and Biblical Counseling, could too easily fuel unhelpful inter-nicene disputes, and distract us from what we otherwise usefully hold in common.  The tragedy then would be were we to be hampered and diverted precisely when we might make a significant and critical collective impact on psychological theory and practice, as well as being hindered in our building of distinctively Christian psychologies and related approaches.

Luke Bretherton’s excellent monograph Hospitality as holiness: Christian witness amid moral diversity has greatly enriched and deepened my theological and psychological understanding here. While appreciating important work done by MacIntyre, Hauerwas and others on the rationality and commensurability of rival traditions, Bretherton is concerned that overenthusiastic use of the notion of rivalry could too easily provoke all too familiar ‘in-group’ dynamics.  This is turn could precipitate a combative, and, so, implicitly un-Christian reaction.  This might seriously affect for the worse the way we deal with our secular colleagues, and, by extension I now suggest, each other.

But Christianity is not an ontology of violence, and our behaviour should reflect this. Good hospitality creates the room and peaceful conditions for feasting, sharing and debating even with those with whom we sometimes vehemently disagree.  Nor need hospitable dialogue involve abandonment of the truth, capitulation, or the otherwise inappropriate ceding of concessions to secularity.  Bretherton suggests we could even consider replacing tolerance as the highest value of pluralism with hospitality for instance, since separation-with-grudging-tolerance frequently leads to indifference and stand off, whereas dialogue-with-welcoming-hospitality affords space for trusting interaction and robust challenge. 

He explains further why this is so, thereby self evidently showing why this approach is so useful for us as Christians in psychology:

It is through the cosmogenic recapitulation of Jesus Christ that we are born again out of our existent chaos and disorder: however, this very chaos, that is our degenerate patterns of sociality, is the very stuff of our new life. It is thus a departure-in-the-midst-of and not a departure-from-the-midst-of a culture.  In other words, being good, pure, holy and moral cannot be secured either by withdrawal from our culture, or assimilation to it.   To withdraw from its cultural context is to deny what the church is reconstituted from, while to be assimilated by its cultural context is to deny what the church is becoming. Hence, we must neither deny our cultural inheritance nor over-freight it with significance [....] In sum, the thought and action of the church and its members [....] is neither  totally alien to any culture (it is not inevitably incommensurable with other traditions) nor is it simply another version of what they know  (it is not self evident), (Bretherton, 2006, p.112).

The different lessons this approach offers to Christian strategies of engagement with psychology, and for their communities interacting with each other, should be self evident: excessive tendencies toward separation and integration may both need to be wisely tempered and carefully balanced, even while each enthusiastically pursues their legitimately different goals, and perhaps all this is best done in a hospitable family context.

I began these blogs asking rhetorically whether I am a Christian psychologist.  I hope it’s clear by now that I am, and that I’m happy to take my appropriate place in the family of Christian approaches to critiquing and enriching secular psychology.

Reference

Bretherton, L. Hospitality as holiness:  Christian witness amid moral diversity.

London: Ashgate, 2006.

Habitus: Toward a Worked Example in Theology-Psychology Dialogue

Posted on November 22, 2009

[by Peter Hampson, Head of Department of Psychology, University of the West of England, Bristol. Professor Hampson is our blogger for the month of November, and this is his fourth post] 

Positive psychology has opened up possibilities far more congenial than hitherto for the development Christian psychology.  Among these is the rediscovery of the virtues.  In positive psychology, there is, however, a tendency to think of virtues as ‘character traits’, and, when adults are assessed psychometrically, virtues may well show up as relatively stable characteristics.  While this can be a helpful way to proceed, perhaps we should not foreclose on other possibilities.  It may be useful to consider the idea that virtues are, in part at least, acquired dispositions, which are not only differentiated as to their type or content, but also related by similar psychological processes in their different, but converging roles in shaping the person, strengthening their cognitions, guiding their desires and managing their emotions, and steering their actions.  This could help shift our attention to the conditions helpful for appropriate (in a Christian sense) person formation.

To this end, I want to re-introduce a term into our CP vocabulary for exploration, namely ‘habitus’.  Habitus receives extensive treatment in the second part of St Thomas’s Summa Theologiae (ST, 1a2ae, Q49-89). It connotes the generally repeated acts through which our good-seeking character is shaped, and becomes ‘strengthened’ and properly or improperly oriented, for good or for ill.  It is the general, primarily ontological concept underlying all virtues and vices, the psycho-theological motor, if you like, through which their strengthening takes place.  In the case of good habits, the virtues, it is the means through which we participate more fully in being.  (There is even room I suspect for those suitably placed to think about this in terms of embodiment and the cognitive developmental neuroscience of neural networks).

But first a warning: it is tempting by way of an easy analogy to assert too direct a connection between habitus and our modern understanding of skill or, without qualification, a habit, and to assume that all we need do is carry over theories and findings from existing literature on skills, habits and expertise to the virtues. Admittedly, habitus bears some family resemblance to skill, and many recent findings on expertise could prove helpful for understanding the virtues (e.g. Anders, Charness, Feltovitch, and Hoffman, 2006).  But it is certainly not correct to reduce it to skill.  Just as, for example, the pre-modern concept of the soul is far richer than the psyche of psychology (Honig, 1993, see also Johnson, 2007), and the emotions as understood by modern physiology and psychology are often conceptually impoverished versions of the passions, affections and sentiments (Dixon, 2006), so too habitus includes the notion of skill, but it is not just a skill.    To see why, we must situate habitus in the wider context of Aquinas’s overall theological anthropology, his account of what people are and how they work in their journey back to God.  Habitus understood as the means whereby dispositions to act in certain ways are formed, has an unavoidable moral component, since acts in this framework are (Aristotelian) motions through which potentiality is actualized away from or toward the good. 

Habitus is a concept we have lost or at least reduced in value over the years, but one which may still have much to offer to psychology.   To be of use it would clearly need to be repristinated and checked against contemporary understanding of cognition, affect and personality for sure.  I am not naively suggesting that we should simply import C13th theological anthropology into psychology without nuance.  Thomas himself would probably not have been that sort of Thomist!  But the linking of character, mind, emotion and morality in a theophanic universe is, I think, worth exploring, and its theoretical possibilities translated into empirical consequences.

Now faith, as I intimated last time is a virtue, i.e. a habitus according to Thomas, through which our knowledge is ultimately perfected and our intellect strengthened, and brought, at last to the visio Dei.    If he’s right, and other strands of the tradition, I realize, may well take a different view, this suggests we can get better at it, we can ‘grow in faith’ and help others do the same – with God’s help of course!  And this is a Christian psychological as well as a theological claim.

References

Ericsson, K. Anders, Charness, N., Feltovitch, P.J. and Hoffman, R. R.,
(eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance.
Cambridge: CUP, 2006.

Dixon, Thomas, From Passions to Emotions: the Creation of a Secular Psychological Category. Cambridge: CUP, 2003.

Honig, Emmanuel, From Soul to Psyche: Memoirs of a Rabbi-Psychiatrist. New
Jersey: Ktav Publishing Inc., 1993.

Johnson, Eric, Foundations for Soul Care: A Christian Psychology Proposal.
Downers Grove, IL: Inter Varsity Press, 2007.

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