The Image Of God And The Psychology Of Religion Review

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(More customer reviews)Clinicians who work with religious clientele often hear narratives about the part that God plays in clients' lives. This emotional role that God plays is known as the God image. Sometimes God is more central, other times at the periphery, but usually important. Clinicians often want to address this area in treatment, but they have few resources available to help them make sense of clients' God images.
Richard Dayringer and David Oler have compiled a compendium of works to help shed light on God image work. The majority of the book is comprised of interesting empirical studies. Two chapters explore the largely unchartered territory of the God image and severe mental illness. Another study addresses gender role identity and the God image. A fourth empirical contribution discusses the formation of adolescents' God images. The other chapters are smart, philosophical, reviews of the God image construct that have implications for pastoral counseling and other forms of clinical work.
A central theme that runs loosely through The Image of God and the Psychology of Religion is an openness to understanding the different ways of experiencing God. Authors are careful to not limit the experience of God to any one tradition. Similarly, they advocate closely following the client's own understanding of God as a resource in pastoral counseling. This flexibility takes place in the context of larger theoretical frameworks. Several chapters provide ways of making sense of and conceptualizing the God image. Psychoanalytic and psychodynamic approaches are clearly described with a particular emphasis on projection theory and object relations. Similarly, attachment theory is discussed and empirically evaluated. Finally, behavioral or socialization theories along with cognitive consistency paradigms are also covered.
One limitation of The Image of God and the Psychology of Religion is that some of the chapters are loosely connected to one another. This is often a complaint of compilation works and maybe even more so of this work because it was co-published as a special series in the American Journal of Pastoral Counseling, Volume 7, November 2004. Regardless, however, the editors were clear that their intention was to provide a variety of voices and perspectives - some of which more closely relate to certain contributions than others.
Overall, however, Dayringer and Oler have provided a welcome addition to the God image literature. The contributors have covered fresh ground and added to other areas that were only lightly explored. Readers will find empirical support to help them better understand how certain populations understand and experience God. They will also find rich narratives that capture the complexities of God image work.

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What are the implications of a client's image of God?Improve your confidence—and your practice skills—by enhancing your knowledge of how individuals are likely to perceive God, and of how those perceptions impact the way they function as human beings. Theologians have long speculated and theorized about how humans imagine God to be. This book merges theology with science, presenting empirical research focused on perceptions of God in a variety of populations living in community and mental health settings. Each chapter concludes with references that comprise an essential reading list, and the book is generously enhanced with tables that make data easy to access and understand."Liberating Images of God" discusses the constriction and impoverishment of God images due to the traditional restrictions of God images to those that are male and personified. This chapter examines the potential for the client and counselor's co-creation of images of God which embrace the feminine as well as the masculine, the nurturer as well as the warrior, and the natural world in all its dimensions as well as the human world, to liberate, enrich, sustain, and transform the client's relationships with God and with him/herself."Attachment, Well-Being, and Religious Participation Among People with Severe Mental Disorders" examines the relationship between attachment states of mind and religious participation among people diagnosed with severe mental illness. "Concepts of God and Therapeutic Alliance Among People with Severe Mental Disorders" explores the transferential aspects of God representation among severely mentally ill adults. It highlights research on the relationship between a patient's image of God and that patient's working relationship with his/her case manager, and discusses the implications for clinical practice of those findings."The Subjective Experience of God" presents a theory about the psychological basis for the experience of God that argues that this experience is essentially a form of projection and as such is an internal event that does not exist independent of an individual's psyche. This chapter draws a distinction between faith in a particular belief—namely, faith in the existence of a loving, omnipotent God—and an attitude of faith, which is the basis for experiences of transcendence. "Relationship of Gender Role Identity and Attitudes" presents the results of a study in which nearly 300 Catholic attendees at three university Catholic centers completed the Bern Sex Role Inventory, the Attitudes Toward Women Scale, and the Perceptions of God Checklist. This chapter looks at images of God as masculine or feminine, and at the connection for people between the way they perceive God and the way they relate towards men and women."Reflections on a Study in a Mental Hospital," brings you groundbreaking new research on perceptions of God in an inpatient population. This chapter examines the positive effects (as opposed to the negative effects previously portrayed by the psychological community) of religious belief and practice for residential care patients in a psychiatric hospital.

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