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.     

A Comparison of Perceptions of Love,Guilt, and Anger in Ireland and the United States: Implications for Counseling

This study compared 50 Irish and 50 American graduate and undergraduate psychology and counseling students on the ways they rated feelings of love, anger, and guilt on a semantic differential. A 2 × 2 × 2 multivariate analysis of variance was used in which the independent variables were class, gender, and country and the dependent variables were the semantic differential scales used for this research. It was found that the undergraduate students from Ireland evaluated the concepts of anger and guilt more positively than did the undergraduate students from the United States.     

The Effects of the Fresh Start Program on Native American Parolees' Job Placement

Fresh Start, a career development project in Rapid City, South Dakota focusing on Native American parolees with multiple barriers to employment, was effective in placing 75% of its 1994 group in Jobs. Clients reported that feeling valued and important was the most important aspect of the experience.     

GILSON AND GOUHIER: FRAMING ‘CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY’

Focusing on their approaches to Nicolas Malebranche, this article compares the contributions of Étienne Gilson and his student and colleague, Henri Gouhier, to the debate around the notion of Christian philosophy during the mid‐1920s into the 1930s. Gilson agreed with Brunschvicg's characterization of Nicolas Malebranche as an important representative of Christian philosophy, and both Gilson and Gouhier had a profound understanding of Malebranche's thought. Following St. Thomas that philosophy should strive to be a ‘perfect use of reason’, Gilson posited Christianity's influence as remaining exterior to philosophy itself. More sympathetic to Malebranche's Augustinian approach, Gouhier allowed for religious experience to operate at the interior of philosophy. These different approaches stemmed from fundamental differences as to how the historical method should be employed in philosophy and what it reveals.     

Parents' Religious Heterogamy and Children's Well-Being

This study considers the impact of having parents of dissimilar faiths on children's well-being. Using data from the National Survey of Families and Households, we examine the hypothesis that parents' religious heterogamy has both direct and indirect negative effects on children's well-being. First, we find evidence that religious heterogamy is positively associated with marital conflict and negatively associated with religious participation. Second, our results suggest that children with religiously heterogamous parents are more likely to engage in marijuana use and underage drinking than children with religiously homogamous parents. However, these associations occur only in families where parents' religious heterogamy is a product of greater religious distance (e.g., one parent is not religious or both parents identify with different religions). Religiously heterogamous parents who affiliate with different Protestant groups report similar levels of marital conflict and religious participation as same-faith parents. In addition, the children of these parents report similar levels of delinquency as children of same-faith parents. We find no evidence that religious heterogamy is associated with children's self-esteem, life satisfaction, or grades in school.     

Acculturation,gender, and views on interracial relationships among Chinese Canadians

Acculturation to mainstream and heritage culture has been shown to influence attitudes and behaviors related to romantic relationships. Few studies have examined its influence on views regarding interracial relationships and whether the psychological processes underlying these relations vary across gender. Among Chinese Canadian participants (N = 248), mainstream acculturation, but not Chinese acculturation, was associated with more personal openness to and less cultural values conflict about interracial relationships. Among men, stronger egalitarian gender role ideology mediated the relations between mainstream acculturation and the above interracial relationship variables. For women, fewer concerns about cultural preservation mediated the relation between mainstream acculturation and less cultural values conflict. The importance of understanding cultural influences on interracial relationships through a gendered lens is discussed.     

Effects of self‐disclosure and responsiveness between couples on passionate love within couples

Previous work shows that high‐self‐disclosure interactions between couples can increase feelings of closeness within couples. We investigated whether couple friendships created in the lab through high‐self‐disclosure and closeness‐building activities would boost feelings of passionate love. In Study 1, couples randomly assigned to a high (vs. low) closeness induction task, either alone or with another couple, showed significantly greater increases in passionate love when they were highly self‐disclosing with other couples. Study 2 showed that the responsiveness of the other couple mediated the effects of self‐disclosure on increases in passionate love following high‐self‐disclosure interactions with other couples. The creation of couple friendships may be an additional way to reignite feelings of passionate love in romantic relationships.