Guide to Orthodox Psychotherapy

In 2000 the American Psychological Association, in an important attempt to bring religious issues and traditions to the attention of psychotherapists, included in its Handbook of Psychotherapy and Religious Diversity a chapter on psychotherapy with Eastern Orthodox Christians. This chapter discusses the pivotal efforts of Metropolitan Hierotheos and Archbishop Chrysostomos to bring together the ancient teachings of the Christian East with the science of modern psychology. In this work, the relationship between psychology and religion is analyzed. It presents an analysis of the teachings of the Eastern Church Fathers on the world, man, and the psychological aspects of the union of man with God. Archbishop Chrysostomos works into his presentation the extent of his own research as well as the writings of Metropolitan Hierotheos, which include attempts to evaluate the place, significance, and the effectiveness of Orthodox psychotherapy in secular psychotherapy and its application in the clinical setting.

Archbishop Chrysostomos brings to this study of Orthodox psychotherapy impressive credentials as a psychologist and Orthodox clergyman. Nevertheless, his book is happily free of the needless complexities and neollogisms that all too often discourage non-professional readers. He eschews as well the faciles simplifications that would distort and dilute the importance of his topic. Thus, the serious reader has here an accessible, if challenging, introductions to a subject of expanding interest and importance. As this expansion proceeds, I confidently expect thatA Guide to Orthodox Psychotherapy will deservedly become a classic in its field., This new volume from the pen of Archbishop Chrysostomos is perhaps the most sophisticated study in the applied psychology of religious experience to appear in a generation. In the context of the contemporary psychobabble of publications on 'religion as therapy' and 'therapy as religion,' this work stands out for its intellectual breadth, religious depth, and commitment to rigorous empirical standards of turth. This is one of those rare achievements in which an author's gift to his religious tradition is as great as his gift to the scientific community.

Archbishop Chrysostomos is Senior Research Scholar at the Center for Traditionalist Orthodox Studies. He received his Ph.D. in Psychology from Princeton University.