What are the implications of a client’s image of God?Improve your confidenceand your practice skillsby 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 m...

Psychology is part of everyone's experience: it influences the way we think about everything from education and intelligence, to relationships and emotions, advertising and criminality. People readily behave as amateur psychologists, offering explanations for what people think, feel, and do. But what exactly are psychologists trying to do? What scientific grounding do they have for their approach? This Very Short Introduction explores some of psychology's leading ideas and their p...

Character" has become a front-and-center topic in contemporary discourse but this term does not have a fixed meaning. Character may be simply defined by what someone does not do but a more active and thorough definition is necessary one that addresses certain vital questions. Is character a singular characteristic of an individual or is it composed of different aspects? Does character--however we define it--exist in degrees or is it simply something one happens to have? How can character b...

Combining cutting-edge expertise with deeply rooted Christian insights, this text from a leading figure in the Christian counseling community offers readers a comprehensive survey of ten major counseling and psychotherapy approaches. For each approach, Siang-Yang Tan first provides a substantial introduction, assessing the approach's effectiveness and the latest research findings or empirical evidence for it. He then critiques the approach from a Christian perspective. Tan also includes hy...

Shame, the quintessential human emotion, received little attention during the years in which the central forces believed to be motivating us were identified as primitive instincts like sex and aggression. Now, redressing the balance, there is an explosion of interest in the self-conscious emotion. Much of our psychic lives involve the negotiation of shame, asserts Michael Lewis, internationally known developmental and clinical psychologist. Shame is normal, not pathological, though opposit...

The Cambridge Handbook of Creativity is a comprehensive scholarly handbook on creativity from the most respected psychologists, researchers and educators. This handbook serves both as a thorough introduction to the field of creativity and as an invaluable reference and current source of important information. It covers such diverse topics as the brain, education, business, and world cultures. The first section, 'Basic Concepts', is designed to introduce readers to both the history of and k...

One of the most powerful factors in therapy is that it involves the intensive relationship between two (or more) human beings. The issues of transparency and self-disclosure therefore become important concerns for therapists; how can they use themselves effectively in their work without transgressing on professional regulations? These issues and concerns are addressed in this new edition of The Use of Self in Therapy by experienced therapists, who share their own wisdom, research,...

This book is a scholarly overview of the modern concepts, definitions, and theories of intellectual giftedness, and of past and current developments in the field of gifted education. The authors consider, in some detail, the roles of intelligence, creativity, and wisdom in giftedness and the interaction between culture and giftedness, as well as how giftedness can be understood in terms of a construct of developing expertise. The authors also review and discuss a set of key studies that ad...

Gratitude, like other positive emotions, has inspired many theological and philosophical writings, but it has inspired very little vigorous, empirical research. In an effort to remedy this oversight, this volume brings together prominent scientists from various disciplines to examine what has become known as the most-neglected emotion. The volume begins with the historical, philosophical, and theoretical foundations of gratitude, then presents the current research perspectives from social,...

Desire, Self, Mind, and the Psychotherapies unifies psychological science with contemporary relational psychoanalysis, arguing that the disciplines can be integrated if the concept of repression is understood as motivated forgetting, creative aspects of unconscious processes are taken into account in cognitive science, and a "new experiences" model of change is acknowledged by psychoanalysts. Such a model of change allows for integration of behavioral, cognitive, visual, and other...

The first edition of The Human Quest for Meaning was a major publication on the empirical research of meaning in life and its vital role in well-being, resilience, and psychotherapy. This new edition continues that quest and seeks to answer the questions, what is the meaning of life? How do we explain what constitutes meaningful relationships, work, and living?The answers, as the eminent scholars and practitioners who contributed to this text find, are neither simple nor st...

Human social interaction is varied, complex and always changing. How we perceive each other and ourselves, how individuals interact within groups, and how groups are structured--all these are the domain of social psychology.Many have doubted, however, that a full-fledged social psychology textbook can successfully be written from a Christian perspective. Inevitably, some say, when attempting to integrate theology and social psychology, one discipline must suffer at...