Christian Counseling: An Emerging Specialty

The emerging professional specialty of Christian counseling is examined in light of its development, theoretical underpinning, training, and roles. Also examined are the various approaches to Christian counseling. Finally, a rationale for classifying Christian counseling as a separate specialty is presented.     

Marriage Counseling: A Christian Approach to Counseling Couples

An approach to marriage counseling aimed at Christian couples is described. The theoretical bases of the approach are cognitive behavioral therapy and structural and strategic marital therapies. Techniques are drawn from various schools of marriage therapy. Shared Christian values between counselor and clients are used to promote increased marital commitment, marital satisfaction, and personal spiritual growth. Marital satisfaction might be increased through helping the couple increase their intimacy, enhance their communication, improve their conflict management, and forgive each other for past and present hurts.     

Bibliotherapy as a Counseling Adjunct: Research Findings

Counselors have been prompted to use bibliotherapy, but recommendations for using the technique are rarely based on published research. This article reviews the effectiveness of the technique and is intended to help counselors draw implications for using bibliotherapy in their professional practices.     

Christian Counseling: A Synthesis of Psychological and Christian Concepts

Strong describes an approach to counseling that synthesizes psychological processes of change with theological concepts of the Christian faith. Clients are assumed to be self-directing and responsible for their behavior, including the changes that counseling is intended to facilitate. The counselor's junction is to equip clients to enable them to change. The key objectives in Christian counseling are described and the counseling process is reviewed in the light of these objectives. The author discusses the place of justification, responsibility, forgiveness, grace, sin, responsible loving, and prayer in the counseling process. Francis Mc Guire makes a response to Strong's article from a perspective that views Zen Buddhism as an integrated psychospiritual system capable of offering a critique and a complementary viewpoint. Herman Slotkin 's think piece is an attempt to define and clarify some of the language and goals of moral education and propose a civic, nonsectarian perspective regarding value and moral awareness.     

A Stage Approach to Career Counseling With Christian Women

Almost 75% of married women ages 25–54 years are in the labor force in the United States. Many are in occupations that are below their potential or are not personally satisfying. Lack of role satisfaction can result in depression, but the career issues of women in treatment are often ignored. Christian women may be particularly vulnerable to role dissatisfaction. The authors offer a stage model for assessment of Christian women who present with symptoms of depression, in hopes of addressing issues of role satisfaction from work and lessening depressive symptoms.     

Counseling the Depressed Christian Female Client

Some researchers have suggested that traditional gender-role conditioning for women might relate to depression and, furthermore, that religion has played a major role in defining and reinforcing gender roles. Depressed Christian women, consequently, make up a unique population with special counseling needs. This article addresses these women as a group and offers suggestions for counseling them.     

The Counseling Profession's Response to Sex-Biased Counseling: An Update

Moore and Strickler summarize recent literature on sex bias in the counseling profession and challenge counselor educators to place increased emphasis in their training programs on sex equity.     

Spiritual Formation in Christian School Counseling Programs

This article makes the case that Christian school counselors should be more directly engaged in student spiritual formation. To accomplish this aim, the historical context for the discussion is first explored, followed by a review of contemporary medical and psychological research associating a positive spirituality with healthy functioning across a variety of developmental domains. The argument is then situated within developmental theory and systems thinking as well as the Christian theological—philosophical writings of John Macmurray. Recommendations for improving Christian school counseling practice as they relate to student spiritual formation are included.     

Counseling Battered Women from Fundamentalist Christian Backgrounds

The author examines biblical issues that are of concern to battered women from fundamentalist Christian backgrounds and offers counselors suggestions on how to address them.     

Rethinking Kaplan's 'afterthoughts' About 'That': An Exorcism of Semantical Demons

Kaplan (1977) proposes a neo-Fregean theory of demonstratives which, despite its departure from a certain problematic Fregean thesis, I argue, ultimately founders on account of its failure to give up the Fregean desideratum of a semantic theory that it provide an account of cognitive significance. I explain why Kaplan's (1989) afterthoughts don't remedy this defect. Finally, I sketch an alternative nonsolipsistic picture of demonstrative reference which idealizes away from an agent's narrowly characterizable psychological state, and instead relies on the robust multiply realizable relation between the skilled agent and demonstrated object.When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it wanders through waterless regions looking for a resting place, but it finds none. Then it says, 'I will return to my house from which I came.' When it comes, it finds it empty, swept, and put in order. Then it goes and brings along seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and live there; and the last state of that person is worse than the first. So will it be also with this evil generation.– attributed to Jesus (Matthew 12:43-45, New Revised Standard Version of the Bible)     

Normative MMPI-2 Profiles of Christian Counseling Students: An Investigation of Subculture in Standardized Testing

This research sought to explore whether a normative profile on the MMPI-2 emerged for counseling students in a counselor training program at a seminary in the Midwest and the extent to which this profile compares to those proposed for counseling students or those preparing for pastoral ministry. Normative profiles of master’s level counseling students were compared to profiles of similar samples. Findings indicated that profiles of the current student sample are similar to those of other religious students. Implications of these findings are explored regarding the use of the MMPI-2 with counseling students who are members of the Christian subculture.     

Value Tensions Between Evangelical Christians and Christian Counseling

The evangelical wing of the American Protestant church has maintained an uneasy and uncertain relationship with the recently emerged Christian counseling movement. Whereas many evangelical Christian groups have been able to assimilate Christian counseling into their panoply of ministry tools, significant sections of this faith group remain very suspicious and doubtful that Christian counseling can be trusted. Most of the stated reasons given by these objectors revolve around theological reservations. This article, however, suggests that an even more powerful barrier between the two groups stems from significantly different values held by each. The article enumerates several of these value differences.