PASTORAL PSYCHOLOGY: STRESS OF BIASED ARBITRATION?

Religion and personality

Some studies have examined whether there is a “religious personality.” Research suggests that people who identify as religious are more likely to be high on agreeableness and conscientiousness, and low on psychoticism, but unrelated to other Big Five traits. However, people endorsing fundamentalist religious beliefs are more likely to be low on Openness.^[80] Similarly, people who identify as spiritual are more likely to be high on Extraversion and Openness, although this varied based on the type of spirituality endorsed.^[81]

Religion and mental health

Evidence suggests that religiosity can be a pathway to both mental health and mental disorder. For example, religiosity is positively associated with mental disorders that involve an excessive amount of self-control and negatively associated with mental disorders that involve a lack of self-control.^[82] Other studies have found indications of mental health among both the religious and the secular. For instance, Vilchinsky & Kravetz found negative correlations with psychological distress among religious and secular subgroups of Jewish students.^[83] In addition, intrinsic religiosity has been inversely related to depression in the elderly, while extrinsic religiosity has no relation or even a slight positive relation to depression. ^[84] [85]

The link between religion and mental health may be due to the guiding framework or social support that it offers to individuals.^[86] By these routes, religion has the potential to offer security and significance in life, as well as valuable human relationships, to foster mental health. Some theorists have suggested that the benefits of religion and religiosity are accounted for by the social support afforded by membership in a religious group.^[87]

Religion may also provide coping skills to deal with stressors, or demands perceived as straining. Pargament’s three primary styles of religious coping are 1) self-directing, characterized by self-reliance and acknowledgement of God, 2) deferring, in which a person passively attributes responsibility to God, and 3) collaborative, which involves an active partnership between the individual and God and is most commonly associated with positive adjustment.^[88][89] This model of religious coping has been criticized for its over-simplicity and failure to take into account other factors, such as level of religiosity, specific religion, and type of stressor.^[90] Additional work by Pargament involves a detailed delineation of positive and negative forms of religious coping, captured in the BREIF-RCOPE questionnaire which have been linked to a range of positive and negative psychological outcomes.^[91][92]

Spirituality has been ascribed many different definitions in different contexts, but a general definition is: an individual’s search for meaning and purpose in life. Spirituality is distinct from organized religion in that spirituality does not necessarily need a religious framework. That is, one does not necessarily need to follow certain rules, guidelines or practices to be spiritual, but an organized religion often has some combination of these in place. People who report themselves to be spiritual people may not observe any specific religious practices or traditions.^[93] Studies have shown a negative relationships between spiritual well-being and depressive symptoms. In one study, those who were assessed to have a higher spiritual quality of life on a spiritual well-being scale had less depressive symptoms.^[94] Cancer and AIDS patients who were more spiritual had lower depressive symptoms than religious patients. Spirituality shows beneficial effects possibly because it speaks to one’s ability to intrinsically find meaning in life, strength, and inner peace, which is especially important for very ill patients.^[95] Studies have reported beneficial effects of spirituality on the lives of patients with schizophrenia, major depression, and other psychotic disorders. Schizophrenic patients were less likely to be re-hospitalized if families encouraged religious practice, and in depressed patients who underwent religiously based interventions, their symptoms improved faster than those who underwent secular interventions. Furthermore, a few cross-sectional studies have shown that more religiously involved people had less instance of psychosis.^[96]

Religion and meditation

The large variety of meditation techniques shares the common goal of shifting attention away from habitual or customary modes of thinking and perception, in order to permit experiencing in a different way. Many religious and spiritual traditions that employ meditation assert that the world most of us know is an illusion. This illusion is said to be created by our habitual mode of separating, classifying and labelling our perceptual experiences. Meditation is empirical in that it involves direct experience. However it is also subjective in that the meditative state can be directly known only by the experiencer, and may be difficult or impossible to fully describe in words. Meditation can induce an altered state of consciousness characterised by a loss of awareness of extraneous stimuli, one-pointed attention to the meditation object to the exclusion of all other thoughts, and feelings of bliss.^[105]

Controversy

Many psychologists reject religion. For instance, Sigmund Freud viewed religion as an illusion, a sign of psychological neurosis. Additionally Eric Fromm’s humanistic psychology centers on man and rejects authoritarian religion.^[106] However, religious scholars and psychologists advocating the study of religion have contested such views. Paul Vitz critiqued Fromm’s self-centered approach to psychology and labeled humanist psychology as a religion, unsupported by scientific inquiry.^[107] Reber asserted that exclusion of the study of religion only limits psychology’s understanding of human behavior.^[108] Others argue that a psychological study of human personality necessitates, at minimum, an acknowledgment of the impact religion has on many humans.^[109]

Other views

A 2012 paper suggested that psychiatric conditions associated with psychotic spectrum symptoms may be possible explanations for revelatory driven experiences and activities such as those of Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Saint Paul.^[110]

Religion and psychotherapy

Various forms of explicitly religious psychotherapies that maintain the traditional psychological framework have recently become more prevalent. Clients’ religious beliefs are increasingly being considered in psychotherapy with the goal of improving service and effectiveness of treatment.^[111] A resulting development was theistic psychotherapy. Conceptually, it consists of theological principles, a theistic view of personality, and a theistic view of psychotherapy.^[112] Following an explicit minimizing strategy, therapists attempt to minimize conflict by acknowledging their religious views while being respectful of client’s religious views.^[113] This opens up the potential for therapists to directly utilize religious practices and principles in therapy, such as prayer, forgiveness, and grace.

Pastoral psychology

One application of the psychology of religion is in pastoral psychology, the use of psychological findings to improve the pastoral care provided by pastors and other clergy, especially in how they support ordinary members of their congregations. Pastoral psychology is also concerned with improving the practice of chaplains in healthcare and in the military. One major concern of pastoral psychology is to improve the practice of pastoral counseling. Pastoral psychology is a topic of interest for professional journals such as Pastoral Psychology, Journal of Psychology and Christianity, and Journal of Psychology and Theology. In 1984, Thomas Oden severely criticized mid-20th century pastoral care and the pastoral psychology that guided it as having entirely abandoned its classical/traditional sources, and having become overwhelmingly dominated by modern psychological influences from Freud, Rogers, and others.^[114] More recently, others have described pastoral psychology as a field that experiences a tension between psychology and theology.^[115]