"One. Two. Three. One. Two. Three," I counted slowly and repeatedly in my head as I carefully cleansed my hands. The counting was - at this point - second nature to me; it was part of me. I returned to the waiting area where I lowered my body onto a bench. I could feel the strong scent of incense, burned into the wood. As I waited for my parents to finish their monthly visit to the church psychologist, I couldn't help but think about the magazines that my sister had brought for me. Big bold letters read 'ANXIETY' and "OCD" with pictures of individuals in complete distress. Abruptly, my parents swung the door open and called for me to join them. After a moment I found myself being questioned by the psychologist. He asked a long series of questions about my habits of counting. Eventually, tears ran down my cheeks. The man slowly got out of his seat, hugged me and said a prayer that wasn’t beneficial to my mental health because I didn’t understand faith. As the time dragged on I lost count since I was starting to fear being different. When I was six years old, religion and social media was not the right approach for my obsession. This was due to the fact that I understood neither and hence they never had a significant influence. As I grew older, however, I started to understand my faith and I suddenly realized the importance of those tears. They were the things that made me human, unlike the indifferent emptiness of the magazines' pages. Faith can be a useful technique in mental health treatment. However, bias and lack of understanding that is carried from both sides can often limit progress in mental health.
Faith and psychology have a history of differences. Beginning with Sigmund Freud, much of the mental health field at most a...
... middle of paper ...
...ort in searching beyond themselves for power, hope and understanding (Tepper 2001). At times when psychiatry doesn’t recognize an individual’s faith it can be hard for a patient to find improvement in their illness. Psychiatry for the most part focuses solely on the mind and body but fails to recognize the spirit. Therefore, many individuals feel frustrated and hopeless with tradition psychiatric treatments when they try to find explanations beyond science and physicality. This can lead to potentially dangerous situations in which patients no longer have faith in their psychologist and deny treatment, some turning solely to their faith. If psychologist were to recognize faith and utilize it as a coping method integrated with psychology, patients can feel comfortable when considering recommendations by their psychologist, while maintaining their personal beliefs.
In Psychobabble Richard Ganz characterizes modern psychology as ‘psychobabble.’ Dr. Ganz is a Jewish Christian who, prior to his conversion to Christ, earned his Doctorate in Clinical Psychology from Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. He served in the Clinical Faculty of the Department of Psychiatry at Upstate Medical Center in Syracuse, New York and taught at the university there. After he gave his life to Christ, he was fired from his position, because he could not separate his faith from his practice. He earned a Master of Divinity at Westminister Theological Seminary and worked with Dr. Jay Adams at the Christian Counseling and Educational Foundation.. He has since lectured at major secular universities including Harvard. He is the Senior Pastor of the Ottawa Reformed Presbyterian Church, and the Founder and President of Ottawa Theological Hall, where he is also Professor of Biblical Psychology and Counseling. His other books include: Take Charge of Your Life Before It Takes Charge of You, Twenty Controversies That Almost Killed a Church, The Secret of Self Control, Thou Shalt Not Kill: The Christian case Against Abortion and Free Indeed: Escaping Bondage and Brokenness for Freedom in Christ. Psychobabble develops the biblical counseling theme that pastoral care has been abdicated to secular psychology and the dangers of integrating worldly theories into biblical soul care.
The start of this article focuses on a Christian client named George who is plagued with feelings of worthlessness, depression, low self-esteem, and suicide. His mother had also battled depression, and his father had an abusive relationship with alcohol, which caused his father to have verbally and physically abusive altercations with George and his mother. The abusive experiences that George was exposed to as a child paved the way for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder as an adult (Garzon, 2005). With all of these factors present in this client’s life, a treatment plan was created that involved scripture interventions. The author made sure to touch on the fact that every client is unique in the hopes that counselors would be aware that one type of scripture intervention might work for one client and not work for another. The article highlights three guiding values when considering these types of interventions; “respect for the client’s autonomy/freedom, sensitivity to and empathy for the client’s religious and spiritual beliefs, and flexibility and responsiveness to the client’s religious and spiritual beliefs.”(Garzon, 2005). ...
The models that incorporate the relationship of psychology and theology are explored. The author investigates the spectrum, from no mingling of psychology and theology (antagonistic model) to partial integration (intermediate models) and ultimately to incorporation of the two (integrative model). He provides the reader with an in-depth exploration of this spectrum. Entwistle continues on to provide the argument that the integrative model is the most accurate of the models since ther...
It is estimated that around a dozen U.S. children will die in faith-healing cases each year. Typically associated with Christianity, Faith healing is founded on the belief that certain people or places have the ability to cure and heal sickness, disease, or injuries. Typically this “healing” is associated by a close connection to a higher power through prayer, divine intervention, or the ministration of an individual who claims himself as a healer. Faith has been scientifically proven in the field psychology to yield benefits to health. Although faith has promised a greater wellbeing for many individual’s lives, it has yet to be a significant replacement for medication many people but relaying on faith as a means for medication.
A difficulty that has occurred commonly is that a definition of spirituality cannot be agreed on. In a broad explanation of both religion as well as spirituality, religion constitutes the organization of faith, implementing prayer, ministry and theology. Spirituality could be viewed as a more individualized experience with a higher being, creator or idea (Walker et al., 2004, p. 70). These expressions allow a vision of client diversity that is found in all counseling classifications. While defining religion and spirituality properly seems trivial, when training counselors to properly apply the use of such variables in their therapies, a concrete explanation is imperative.
David Entwistle's (2010) Integrative Approaches to Psychology and Christianity is geared more towards Christians with conservative evangelical views and provides the reader an outline to different worldview disputes and truth-seeking groundwork that surround the connection that underlies psychology and theology. In addition to analyzing the possible connection of psychology and theology, Entwisle discusses the consideration of integrating Christian faith with the practice of psychology. “Christian understandings of person-hood, the purpose of human life, our need for God, and the ethical teachings of Christian faith are integral to psychology, not merely parallel to it” (p. 199). Entwistle’s viewpoint on this matter is stated clearly. He believes that it is necessary for theology and psychology be integrated in order to fully understand human nature.
Much success has come from religion in therapy. Success has occurred when used to cope with psychological disorders, preventing unhealthy
Worthington, E. L. Jr., Hook, J. N., Davis, D. E., & McDaniel, M. A. (2011). Religion and spirituality. In J. C. Norcross (Ed.), Psychotherapy relationships that work (2nd ed.). New York: Oxford University Press
Entwistle’s book explores the links and integration between psychology and Christianity. As the title explains this book paints a picture of the conflicting worldviews and philosophical foundations that people perceive about how they can be integrated. Entwistle provides research through scholarly reflection and various models that link both psychology and Christianity together. Entwistle remarked by saying “There are many events that raise both theological and psychological questions and such events serve as useful springboards to investigate links between Christian theology and other disciplines” (Entwistle, 2015, p. 8). This statement sets the stage for the readers to understand how some events throughout history have laid the
This is David Entwistle 2nd edition book published in 2010 by Wipf and Stock in Oregon. Entwistle is a Christian and a licensed psychologist; he has affiliations with Molone University in Canton, Ohio serving as chair of the Psychology Department and has taught courses related to his licensed field. This book clearly is not written for any newcomers to religion. However, it was written for those interested in the integration of science and religion. The authors’ purpose for writing this book was to define the relationship between psychology and theology. There are three specific areas this book touched upon to help readers’ better approach psychology and Christianity in a personal and more professional manner: The context of philosophical issues and worldview, to help the readers become aware of assumptions or beliefs- making the reader a more critical evaluators, and to introduce and familiarize the reader with five paradigms for integrating psychology and theology.
This paper will be reviewing the book “Integrative Approaches to Psychology and Christianity: an introduction to worldview issues, philosophical foundations and models of integration, by David N. Entwistle. As the title states, this book discusses how to integrate psychology and theology. It also dives into to why it is so important to be able to integrate the two. Entwistle explains that just because the two are different does not mean they should be separated and that we have to use both our worldviews. “Weaving together perspectives from psychology and Christian theology can help us understand and appreciate humanity more fully than we could either perspective alone.” (p.3)
The Psychology of Religion is composed of a variety of different perspectives, which in certain cases proves difficult in determining both the clinical and pastoral implications of a theory. Modern-day psychology has demonstrated possible beneficial results in religious spiritual individuals, however, much of the current research has avoided questioning the “real” presence of the Divine or a Higher Being. Although a century has passed since his undertaking of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud readily settled the question of religion by declaring it a form of mental illness. While Freud’s Psychology of Religion is that religion only exists as a neurosis, his view provides the three clinical implications of hypnotism, free association, and dream analysis, each of which have also remained a source of criticism.
On the down side there are a limited number of educational programs that adequately deal with the issue of incorporating religion and spirituality in therapeutic/counseling settings. This can be attributed to the fact that counseling is based in psychology, a scientific field, which has traditionally neglected issues of a spiritual nature (Nelson, Kirk, Ane, & Serres, 2011) as well as the practice used within the United States to separate education and religion (Cashwell and Young, 2011). This then results in a significant portion of therapist and counselors who are not prepared to address the issue of spirituality and religion with their clients. One would think that with the value many Americans place on the topic of religion and spirituality that there would come a time when a client would want to address this topic during his or her session.
This article has offered great information into the world of therapy with the incorporated prayer and scripture. However, I believe that more research needs to be completed to prove that incorporating a Christian approach helps people. Since, the unbelievers will attack this method as a waste of time and energy, research must be used to prove its
In the early 1970’s, Betty Neuman created a holistically based, open-system theory to aid nurses in organizing the voluminous information needed to deal with complex client situations (Meleis, 2007, p.307). One component of the Neuman Systems Model is spirituality, which is described as being related to beliefs and influences that are spiritual. It should be noted that this was absent in her initial conceptualization and was developed later (Meleis, 2007, p.307). While utilizing the Neuman framework for client assessment, religion is often applied as a spiritual factor. Using this theory as basis one might conclude that religion and spirituality are synonymous in concept. This begs the question: Are they, in fact, equal in meaning or at the very least required of each other for synergistic forward movement? I am not certain that the answer is clear-cut and I believe that personal observations will allow for objective thought for argument – pro or con.