scholarly journals Shame and Guilt in Christian Children: Interventions with Projective Techniques and Play Therapy

1994 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 377-382 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy Stiehler Thurston

Psychotherapy issues for religiously committed clients have been explored in several recent books and articles. While these works have focused on adults, little has been written on the therapy issues of religiously committed children. Emerging research suggests that children's conceptions of God are quite different than that of adults. Moreover, due to their concrete thinking, children often find it hard to grasp theological foundations to the Christian faith (e.g., salvation by grace) that adults typically assimilate into their world view. While children generally learn of God's grace and mercy in Sunday school, it has been found that some of them nonetheless struggle deeply with issues of guilt and shame. It has been well documented that children do not have the same cognitive and language abilities as adults, and therefore require considerably different modes of psychotherapy. For latency aged and younger children, play therapy is often the treatment of choice. This article will present a case study of a Christian child who participated in a projective assessment and play therapy for healing of shame and guilt issues.

2013 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pernilla Liedgren ◽  
Lars Andersson

This study investigated how young teenagers, as members of a strong religious organization, dealt with the school situation and the encounter with mainstream culture taking place at school during the final years in Swedish primary school (age 13–15 years). The purpose was to explore possible strategies that members of a minority group, in this case the Jehovah’s Witnesses, developed in order to deal with a value system differing from that of the group. We interviewed eleven former members of the Jehovah’s Witnesses about their final years in compulsory Swedish communal school. The ages of the interviewees ranged between 24 and 46 years, and the interviewed group comprised six men and five women. Nine of the eleven interviewees had grown up in the countryside or in villages. All but two were ethnic Swedes. The time that had passed since leaving the movement ranged from quite recently to 20 years ago. The results revealed three strategies; Standing up for Your Beliefs, Escaping, and Living in Two Worlds. The first two strategies are based on a One-World View, and the third strategy, Living in Two Worlds, implies a Two-World View, accepting to a certain extent both the Jehovah’s Witnesses outlook as well as that of ordinary society. The strategy Standing up for Your Beliefs can be described as straightforward, outspoken, and bold; the youngsters did not show any doubts about their belief. The second subgroup showed an unshakeable faith, but suffered psychological stress since their intentions to live according to their belief led to insecurity in terms of how to behave, and also left them quite isolated. These people reported more absence from school. The youngsters using the strategy Living in Two Worlds appeared to possess the ability to sympathize with both world views, and were more adaptable in different situations.


Author(s):  
Eliza Maciejewska

Abstract This case study identifies and examines interactional practices of non-directive play therapists during their therapeutic sessions with autistic adolescents. The study involved two therapists and two adolescents (siblings) on the autism spectrum. The video-recorded sessions took place at participants’ home and were conducted in Polish. Employing insights and tools from discourse-analytic approaches, in particular conversation analysis (CA), the findings show how clients and therapists are both involved in co-constructing therapeutic interactions by orienting to each other’s utterances. CA is presented in this article as a useful tool for recognizing and describing the therapists’ interactional contributions and their local functions. The therapeutic practices identified in the analysis (talk-in-practice) – e.g. mirroring, meaning expansion, recast and scaffolding – are further juxtaposed with theories concerning interactional practices in non-directive therapies (talk-in-theory) in order to provide a more detailed picture of these practices as well as complete them. The findings from this study expand the current state of knowledge of non-directive play therapies of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and carry practical implications for specialists involved in ASD treatment.


2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 61
Author(s):  
Pia Helena Lappalainen

In their role as problem solvers, engineers are expected to take responsibility for the grand societal challenges that require technical expertise and innovation. This urges them to broaden their horizon from the traditional, deeply technological world view to one that examines the surrounding globe with empathy and social responsibility. Such a call for systems intelligence necessitates a novel approach to engineering education to allow students to practice systemic capabilities. As methodology, life-philosophical pedagogy was experimented with in an English language course that was integrated with the Philosophy and Systems Thinking lecture series. Such pedagogy deviates from conventional methodology in that instead of focusing on correcting deficiencies and filling competence gaps, it takes a midwife approach and recognizes the potential in individuals and delivers the abundance in them. The principles of positive psychology and frameworks of socio-emotive intelligence guide the reflective workout in the course, catalyzing, stimulating and rooting new thinking. Ultimately the course promotes self-growth, intentional change and overall life management, while allowing students to rehearse various interpersonal skills relevant for industrial tasks.


Lumen et Vita ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Michael Infantine

What does it look like to cooperate with God’s grace, and what does it look like to hide from it? In 1521, Ignatius of Loyola, an ambitious and promising young soldier in the Spanish army, is shot in the leg and suffers a career-ending injury that sparks his eventual conversion to Christianity. It would appear, looking back on this event, that grace came for Ignatius in a form that could only be recognized at the time as tragedy and senseless suffering. Four hundred thirty four years later, Flannery O’Connor, a young novelist from Georgia, writes the short story of a woman named Hulga who, after losing a leg in a shooting accident as a young girl, recedes into isolation and naked contempt for all those closest to her until one day a mysterious visitor knocks at the door of her family home. For Hulga too, grace may be out to find her in the place she might least expect. This paper will hold up the figures of St. Ignatius and Hulga as a comparative case study in which to examine the working out of God’s grace in the economy of a human life. Ignatius, through his humility and loyalty to Christ in the wake of his injury, is an icon of God’s grace and the conversion to which it calls him. Hulga, in her obstinate scorn and self-proclaimed superiority over all those who seek relationship with her, is the epitome of the one who resists the love of the Other. Even still, there may be hope for Hulga yet by the story’s end.


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