Darkness and Light in the Story of Jesus

One of the biggest puzzles is how so many things in our lives are neither wholly good nor wholly bad, but some confusing mixture of the two. It is difficult to hold onto this complexity and there is a strong tendency to simplify things and to see only the good or only the bad. That is what some psychologists call ‘splitting’.

These issues arise in religion as well as in our personal lives, and I can illustrate this from the story of Jesus’ life, and how that is celebrated through the Christian year. When you look carefully, all the key stories are a complex mixture of light and darkness, though there is a tendency to simplify them and to see only one side of the picture.

Read the full article on my website.

Psychology and Spirituality: A House Divided

The relationship between psychology and spirituality is divided within itself. On the one hand there is the psychology of religion, which has recently broadened to become ‘the psychology of religion and spirituality’. On the other hand there is ‘transpersonal psychology’, which largely eschews religion and often seeks to integrate psychology and spirituality.

On the face of things you would expect the psychology of religion and spirituality to be quite close to transpersonal psychology, but in fact there is little connection between them, even some mutual distrust. It is worth examining the reasons for this. There seem to be several factors that make any integration between them quite hard to achieve.

Read the full article on my website.

The Oxford Handbook of Psychology and Spirituality

The Oxford Handbook of Psychology and Spirituality is an interdisciplinary reference for a rapidly emerging approach to contemporary science. It reflects the recent broadening of the field of psychology of religion to include the psychology of spirituality, and engages with some of the post-materialistic assumptions associated with contemporary spirituality. The Oxford Handbook of Psychology and Spirituality codifies the leading empirical evidence in this emerging field This overarching work provides both a foundation and a roadmap for what is truly a new ideological age.

Read about the book in full on my website.

Social Division

Divisions in society are sharper now than for some years, between young and old, left and right, poor and wealthy, immigrants and the indigenous population, leavers and remainers, nationalists and unionists etc. The task of building social consensus seems enormously difficult. There are so many different opinions about everything, and it seems that everyone wants their point of view to be the one that prevails. People seem very willing to pick an argument about anything and everything.

Read about my view on the current social division in the world on my website.