[Authored by Dr. Eric Johnson, SCP Director, and professor at Southern Seminary]   Some Christians in the field of psychology and counseling have been waging a cold war with each other for over 40 years—proponents of particular approaches who have been deeply distrustful of those who hold other positions.   Nearly a decade ago, Stan Jones and I helped to put together Christianity and Psychology: Four Views (Johnson & Jones, 2000). This book allowed representatives of the four major approaches that Christians take to psychology to present their positions and interact with one anothe... [read more]

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[This post is submitted by the Society director, Dr. Eric Johnson (Southern Seminary)] Last week I began considering a fascinating theory by Carol Dweck, based on an amazing research program that she’s been working on for over 30 years, that has focused on two theories that people form about themselves and others in many domains. You can see a brief discussion of them in last week’s blog, and a nice summary of her work at www. psychologicalscience.org/observer/getArticle.cfm?id=2187. Today I want to consider some of the implications of her work for a Christian psychology.   It seems l... [read more]

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[This post is written by the Society's Director, Dr. Eric Johnson (Southern Seminary)] For many reasons—both practical and clinical—how we understand the psychospiritual development of the Christian is extremely important. There are many facets of such development that distinguish Christians from non-Christians, including the activity of the Holy Spirit, the experience of communion with God, and role of faith, and the (paradoxical!) growing recognition of one’s sinfulness. However, God has so constituted human life, that much of its development is common to all humans, regardless of t... [read more]

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Posted by Society Director, Dr. Eric Johnson: We recently held the 4th annual Society conference, and it led me to do some reflecting. First, I am not given to hype, but I honestly feel that this was the best conference we have yet had. An important reason for this was an incredible team of laborers. Eric Jones, the administrative director of SCP, did a great job both organizing the conference and serving as the conference emcee. Valerie Murphy helped with Chicagoland publicity, working out worship details, and set a special spiritual tone for the entire conference. Her husband, Michael, se... [read more]

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[This is the fourth and final post for September 2008 from Society members at IGNIS (Germany). This post is authored by Wolfram Soldan.] Feelings of guilt and the struggle to know how to respond to it are common problems faced in counseling. We would like to help clients with these problems by wishing them “joy of the Lord” to encourage them, give them strength and a new start (like the “reset button”). But instead we know that in many situations this biblical advice does not seem to work. Nevertheless, Nehemiah achieved success in leading the people of Israel through destructive gu... [read more]

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[This post is written by Dr. Wolfram Soldan, member of this Society, and colleague of Kathrin Halder, of IGNIS, Germany.] In practical psychology, there exist two terms: guilt culture (common in the west industrialised countries) and shame culture (known in the east and more original cultures). The comparison of these two terms has its origin in the 40s and 50s of the last century, either it is attributed to the US – American cultur anthropologist Ruth Benedict, or to the Oxford philologist Eric Robertson Dodds (wikipedia). Since then the comparison of shame and guilt culture plays a r... [read more]

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[Kathrin Halder, of IGNIS (a Christian psychology educational center in Germany), and fellow Society member provides us with some thoughts on the role of experience in the Christian life.] I don’t know about you. But in my Christian upbringing I was trained to cherish the Word and Christian doctrine over everything. I was urged to read the Bible, to bathe in it, to have my entire mind filled with it and to trust it more than my feeble human experience (so e.g. never saying that miracles could not happen, even if I had never experienced it so far). Well, no Christian would probably want to... [read more]

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[For the month of September 2008 we will be posting entries from Society members, Kathrin Halder and Wolfram Soldan of Germany. Regular readers will remember that Kathrin and Wolfram are colleagues at IGNIS, a training institute for Christian psychology. This post is written by Kathrin and explores the pros and cons of focusing on change methodologies.] Have you ever had people in your life, church and esp. your classes that come up wanting to know how life works, what they can do to solve a problem in their or somebody else’s life, looking for some methods, strategies, steps to make it a... [read more]

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[This is the 4th and final post by Dr. Sam Williams of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary] Differences regarding how to teach Christian Counseling struck me about 2 years ago during a meeting with the chief counseling professor in an educational institution in which I had been teaching as an adjunctive professor. Leadership of this institution had changed hands and while I previously had carte blanche about what and how to teach, the new regime handed me a protocol, kind of a combination of curriculum and syllabus, from which they hoped I would teach. My initial reaction was a bit ... [read more]

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[This is the third blog entry this month by Dr. Sam Williams of SEBTS] OK, picking up where we left off – CC, is distinctively Christian when it is properly related to and properly belongs to Christ, the person whose name it bears. Maybe we could assert that Carl Rogers was not the originator of Person-centered counseling, God is. Our definitive text, the Bible, is a collection of books and letters to persons, written by persons, from a Person, about a Person. And, as Christians we believe that lives are transformed, not by principles but by a Person. We believe that a powerful Per... [read more]

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