This article explores contemplative prayer and God representations in Polish Catholics, both charismatic and non-charismatic practitioners. Drawing on dedicated interviews and publicly available data, the study investigates the representations of God’s where-being, particularly in terms of transcendence and immanence (close, all-permeating, indwelling and sacramental aspects), and their...
This article offers a clinical-theological response to Bland and Hoard’s Lacanian account of Christian perfectionism. I engage with Earl’s clinical work with patient Lucas for exploring the limits of the Christian filter embedded in his Evangelical Christianity. Drawing on Christian mysticism and Bion’s concept of “O,” I suggest that Evangelical Christianity may be enriched by a greater...
This study provides empirical evidence to validate a new psychometric tool, the Centering for Wisdom Assessment (CWA), aimed at assessing the relationship between contemplative practices and the cultivation of the virtue of practical wisdom. In this article, we first describe the theoretical foundations of the CWA. Next, we present the results of five empirical studies that provide evidence of...
This historical examination focuses on dreams at a time when these manifestations of sleeping consciousness first drew the interest of the new psychologists in addition to that of philosophers, clergy, and laity. The data is the dream literature from 1860 to 1910, reflected primarily in popular magazines. The author summarizes the dream articles in religious magazines and by the clergy,...
In the process of Christian verbal prayer there are two basic categories: petitionary prayer and prayer of relationship. In contrast to the stereotype of most prayer as petitionary, in this study of 345 subjects, members of a non-denominational program called A Search For God, prayer of relationship made up a substantial part of the typical prayers of both those who identified themselves as...
The use of Christian contemplative prayer as an adjunct to psychotherapy was investigated It was hypothesized that (a) the use of contemplative prayer would he associated with improvement in psychotherapy; (b) the use of contemplative prayer would result in an enhancement of spirituality. A time series quasi-experimental design was used in which cacti subject served as his or her own control....
A comprehensive theoretical model of contemplative prayer and its use as an adjunct to psychotherapy is presented. The model is based on a review of the literature on prayer, mysticism, and meditation because contemplative prayer is related to all three areas. Contemplative prayer is defined as a particular form of Christian prayer in which one gives one's full attention to relating to God in a...