Addiction & Grace: Love and Spirituality in the Healing of Addictions.

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Recommended: Essay on the psychology of addiction

In the book, Addiction & Grace: Love and Spirituality in the Healing of Addictions, May explores how addiction develops and can be treated from a psychological, physiological, and spiritual standpoint. This theme is clearly shown through out the text as it shows addiction from a whole person view. The book covers the development of addiction from desire through the experience of addiction. The key focus on looking at the matter of addiction from multiple stand points in then broken down by explaining how addiction is an issue psychologically, physiologically, and spiritually. By focusing on these three areas the author is able to present the reader with a clear understanding of addiction from all sides of the problem. This is then followed by insightfully exampling the treatment process, specifically through grace as a key focus of overcoming addiction.

May focuses heavily at desire as the main cause of addiction. He sees addiction as a way to fulfill a universal need that all people have. The text focuses on how we all have this need we want met and that we desire to have more in life. The author looks at how through our desire we all fall victims to addiction because of the fall. In chapter one it speaks about how Adam and Eve’s desire for more was what lead to their sin. As a result there is this understanding of how we all have addictions through our addiction and that we all have these problems however some peoples are bigger than others. The text then focuses on how this attachment is the key issue with addiction after we fall to out sinful desires. The book then introduces the understanding of grace as an avenue for detaching ourselves from our addictions. There is also an understanding of hope. The text then further...

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...ial. Overall, I found this book to be very interesting because of it “whole person” approach.

Work Cited

May, G. (1988). Addiction & Grace: Love and Spirituality in the Healing of Addictions. New York, NY: HarperCollins.

Author Information

The author of Addiction & Grace: Love and Spirituality in the Healing of Addictions is Dr. Gerald G. May. Dr. May was born in 1940 in Michigan. He went on to become an Air Force Psychiatrist during the Vietnam War. Dr. May went on to be a psychiatrist and spiritual counselor in Maryland. He was also a Senior Fellow in Contemplative Theology and Psychology at the Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation in Bethesda. Some of his other work includes, The Dark Night of the Soul, The Awakened Heart and many other books specifically focused on the psychological and theological areas. Dr. May passed in 2005 in Maryland.

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