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Shared Grace

Therapists and Clergy Working Together

• By Susan Bonfiglio, Harold G. Koenig, Marion A. Bilich, Steven D. Carlson

• Price: $24.95
• Binding: Paperback (also available in Hardback)
• Pages: 244
• Published by: Routledge
• Publication Date: 28th July 2000
• ISBN: 978-0-7890-1110-7

About the Book

Learn how theology and psychology can work together to provide effective therapy!

Shared Grace provides a framework within which mental health professionals and clergy can work together to provide people in need with appropriate psychological services and spiritual interventions. Breaking down the walls between psychology and religion, this guide offers you proven and tried methods and models from the authors’collaborative work. Comprehensive and intelligent, this vital book will help therapists incorporate a spiritual dimension to their sessions and give patients successful and effective services.

Shared Grace is also a book about the healing power of love. It is the very personal, intense account of the authors’ work to help a woman who suffered from dissociative identity disorder heal from the effects of her childhood abuse. Through this poignant story, you’ll find that adding a spiritual dimension into psychotherapy brings increased richness and depth to the therapeutic process. Step-by-step practical suggestions for collaboration between therapist and clergy are included.

Issues brought to light in Shared Grace include:

• transforming damaged and dysfunctional images of God
• the establishment of support systems within the religious community
• the use of guided imagery
• the creation of healthy rituals and ceremonies
  
  Shared Grace will help therapists and clergy alike and enable each to obtain the support, education, and training to make interdisciplinary collaboration successful.

Table of Contents

Contents

• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1. Our Story: Beginnings
• Introduction
• Basic Terms
• Basic Clinical and Spiritual Premises
• Teresa's Story
• Our Collaboration Begins
• Chapter 2. Healing the Effects of Severe Childhood Abuse
• Basic Assumptions About Therapy
• Effects of Severe Childhood Abuse
• Goals of Treatment
• Chapter 3. The Benevolence Model
• Principle One: God Is Love
• Principle Two: God Loves Us
• Principle Three: God's Love is Unconditional
• Principle Four: God's Forgiveness Is Always Available to Us
• Principle Five: We Are Called to Love God, Ourselves, and Others
• Principle Six: We Were Created to Be in Relationship with One Another
• Chapter 4. Implementation of the Benevolence Model I: Transforming Images and Experience
• Healing Images of God
• Transforming Experience
• Chapter 5. Implementation of the Benevolence Model II: Healing Through Relationship
• Extending Divine Love into the World
• Holy Regard
• Transforming Power of Love
• Chapter 6. Working Together: Guidelines for Therapist/Clergy Collaboration
• Types of Collaboration
• Benefits of Collaboration
• Guidelines for Therapists
• Guidelines for Clergy
• Overcoming Obstacles to Collaboration
• Chapter 7. Establishment of Support Groups
• Benefits of the Support Group
• Guidelines for Establishing Support Groups
• Guidelines for Support Group Members
• Pitfalls to Avoid
• Chapter 8. Healing Interventions
• Metaphors
• Imagery
• Stories and Parables
• Rituals and Ceremonies
• Chapter 9. Therapists and Clergy Growing Together
• Steven
• Susan
• Marion
• Appendix A: Teresa's Personality Structure
• Appendix B: Resources for Therapists
• Appendix C: Resources for Clergy
• Appendix D: Resources for Support Group Members
• Appendix E: Resources for Survivors
• Appendix F: Resources Guided Imagery
• References
• Index