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.

This book describes the development of images of God, beginning in antiquity and culminating in Jung’s notion of the Self, an image of God in the psyche that Jung calls the God within. Over the course of history, the Self has been projected onto many local gods and goddesses and given different names and attributes. These deities are typically imagined as existing in a heavenly realm, but Jung’s approach recalls them to their origins in the objective psyche. This book shows how Jung’s approach avoids many of the philosophical problems produced by traditional anthropomorphic images of God and describes the myriad symbolic ways in which the Self may appear, independently of doctrinal images of God. By focusing on the empirical, psychological manifestations of the Self, Jung’s approach avoids arguments for and against the existence of a metaphysical God.

In this hypothetical correspondence, Malcolm Jeeves urges Christian students to enter the brave new world of neuroscience ready to have their faith examined and their experiences of God put to the test. When we do this, he argues, being mindful of oversimplifications as we go, the integration of Christianity and psychology becomes possible.

This book uses evolutionary psychology as a lens to explain religious violence and oppression. The author, a clinical psychologist, examines religious scriptures, rituals, and canon law, highlighting the many ways in which our evolutionary legacy has shaped the development of religion and continues to profoundly influence its expression. The book focuses on the image of God as the dominant male in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. This traditional God concept is seen as a reflection of the “dominant ape” paradigm so evident in the hierarchical social structures of primates, with whom we have a strong genetic connection. The author describes the main features of male-dominated primate social hierarchies— specifically, the role of the alpha male as the protector of the group; his sexual dominance and use of violence and oppression to attain food, females, and territory; in-group altruism vs. out-group hostility (us vs. them); and displays of dominance and submission to establish roles within the social hierarchy. The parallels between these features of primate society and human religious rituals and concepts make it clear that religion, especially its oppressive and violent tendencies, is rooted in the deep evolutionary past. This incisive analysis goes a long way toward explaining the historic and ongoing violence committed in the name of religion.

This book contains a comprehensive account of what Jung had to say about the God-image between 1902 and 1961. The author traces the development of Jungian ideas and challenges the popular view that Jung's thought took shape after his break with Freud. He shows the gradual evolution of Jung's ideas and demonstrates the strengths and inconsistencies inherent in Jung's methodology.

This enlightening analysis of the image of a cruel God sustained by conservative Christianity reveals how this image formed, the psychological effects of this concept, and the ways in which it has guided religious individuals—in both positive and negative ways. This book is born, in large measure, as a result of a writing by contemporary theologian J. Harold Ellens. In his essay "Religious Metaphors Can Kill" from Praeger's The Destructive Power of Religion, Ellens espouses that theological doctrines are rooted in a model of God that determines all the aspects of those doctrines, and strongly influences the cultures into which it is inserted. Conservative Christianity in the Western world, says Ellens, has at its center the image of a cruel and wrathful God. The juridical atonement theory of Anselm is a result of such an image of God, and has an important role in justifying the resort to violence in human interaction. Starting from these considerations, Cruel God, Kind God: How Images of God Shape Belief, Attitude, and Outlook analyzes three general topics: how two very different kinds of Christianities have emerged from these disparate images of God; how the doctrines of "original sin," "the plan of salvation," and "penal substitution" can be explained by psychological factors, as can the wide dissemination and acceptance of these doctrines; and how the image of a cruel God affects mental health, atrophies personality, and produces guilt and shame.

Answer to Job, dealing with the transformation of God through human consciousness, contains the essence of the Jungian myth. This down-to-earth study evokes that essence with unequaled clarity. Originally seminars given at the Jung Institute of Los Angeles.