Religion Psychology

Eleven months after he was liberated from the Nazi concentration camps, Viktor E. Frankl held a series of public lectures in Vienna. The psychiatrist, who would soon become world famous, explained his central thoughts on meaning, resilience, and the importance of embracing life even in the face of great adversity. Published here for the very first time in English, Frankl's words resonate as strongly today as they did in 1946. He offers an insightful exploration of the maxim "Live as if you were living for the second time".

Increasing numbers of people involved in personal transformation are experiencing spiritual emergencies - crises when the process of growth and change becomes chaotic and overwhelming. Unfortunately, much of modern psychiatry has failed to distinguish these episodes from mental illness. As a result, transformational crises are often suppressed by routine psychiatric care, medication, and even institutionalization. When understood and treated in a supportive manner, spiritual emergencies can become gateways to higher levels of functioning and new ways of being.

In Hauntings, James Hollis considers how we are all governed by the presence of invisible forms - spirits, ghosts, ancestral and parental influences, inner voices, dreams, impulses, untold stories, complexes, synchronicities, and mysteries - that move through us through history. He offers a way to understand them psychologically, examining the persistence of the past in influencing our present, conscious lives and noting that engagement with mystery is what life asks of each of us. From such engagements, a deeper, more thoughtful, more considered life may come.

Suicide rates among Army soldiers increased 80 percent between 2004 and 2008, according to a recent report published in Injury Prevention. In the last several years, the number of soldiers returning from the Middle East with mental and physical wounds has continued to climb. According to Dr. Simon Rego, a supervising psychologist at Montefiore Medical Center, "Unlike any other time in history, U.S. military suicide rates now appear to have surpassed those among comparable civilian populations. It is therefore critical that we address this emerging public-health problem."

Dr. Laura Anderson takes an honest look at a side of religion that few like to talk about. Drawing from her own life and therapy practice, she helps listeners understand what religious trauma is and isn't, and how high-control churches can be harmful and abusive, often resulting in trauma. She shows how elements of fundamentalist church life—such as fear of hell, purity culture, corporal punishment, and authoritarian leaders—can cause psychological, relational, physical, and spiritual damage.

Stress is our internal response to an experience that our brain perceives as threatening or challenging. Trauma is our response to an experience in which we feel powerless or lacking agency. Until now, researchers have treated these conditions as different, but they actually lie along a continuum. Dr. Elizabeth Stanley explains the significance of this continuum, how it affects our resilience in the face of challenge, and why an event that's stressful for one person can be traumatizing for another.

If you are like many others living with borderline personality disorder (BPD), you know what it's like to be overwhelmed by intense and fluctuating emotions; to have difficulty with relationships; and to constantly struggle with troubling thoughts and behaviors. BPD can be especially difficult to treat, though there are ways to gain control over your symptoms and live a happier, healthier life.

Moms can feel as if they are sprinting through life, crashing onto the pillow at day's end only to start again the next morning. In Breathe, Mama, Breathe, psychotherapist Shonda Moralis outlines the benefits of daily meditation and shows moms how to do it - in just five minutes.

Two New York Times best-selling authors unveil new research showing what meditation can really do for the brain. In the last 20 years, meditation and mindfulness have gone from being kind of cool to becoming an omnipresent Band-Aid for fixing everything from your weight to your relationship to your achievement level. Unveiling here the kind of cutting-edge research that has made them giants in their fields, Daniel Goleman and Richard J Davidson show us the truth about what meditation can really do for us.

In The Light Beyond, Dr. Raymond Moody, the world's leading authority in the field of near-death experiences, investigates fascinating new case studies. Common patterns emerge from these reports, such as meeting loved ones in the afterlife, being surrounded by a bright beautiful light, reviewing one's life, and being able to view scenes on earth while outside the body. Moody looks at various aspects of the NDE, including children's reports and those of other researchers in the field. He also examines the positive life-changing effects of NDEs.

Trust can be rebuilt in your marriage! With patient, loving, self-sacrificing effort, it's possible that one day your wife will risk her heart with you again. And she may even have more respect and love for you than before. In Worthy of Her Trust, Jason Martinkus relates how he repaired his own marriage after revelations of sexual addiction. Along with Stephen Arterburn, Jason offers exercises and tools to help your marriage begin again.

How do you define “growing up?” Does it mean you achieve certain cultural benchmarks - a steady income, paying taxes, marriage, and children? Or does it mean leaving behind the expectations of others and growing into the person you were meant to be? Here acclaimed author James Hollis guides you through 21 areas for self-inquiry and growth - such as how to exorcise the ghosts of your past, when to choose meaning over happiness, how to construct a mature spirituality, and how to seize permission to be who you really are.

In this introductory guide, Charlie explains how lucid dreaming is a powerful gateway into the subconscious mind and how it can help the listener transform, improve, and heal all areas of his or her life.

When two humans come together as lovers, they mirror the divine union - the most sacred act of creation - and connect directly with the energy of all life. Thus the energy of your sexuality is the source of the greatest "magic" of all, namely the creation of life itself. In The Art of Sexual Magic, you will discover the sacred roots of sexuality not only as an erotic art but as a meditative tradition.

Marion Woodman believes that centuries of “patriarchal thinking” have stripped the soul from our inner and outer lives and placed the world in grave danger. In talks, workshops, and BodySoul Rhythms intensives in Canada, the United States, and Europe, she has urged us to engage with the unconscious energy that erupts beneath the surface of our best intentions, sending us where we may not want to go. In this lecture and through case studies, dreams, and myths, the Jungian analyst explores the hidden causes of compulsion in the lives of men and women.

Neuroscience, Psychology, and Religion is the second title published in the new Templeton Science and Religion Series. In this volume, Malcolm Jeeves and Warren S. Brown provide an overview of the relationship between neuroscience, psychology, and religion that is academically sophisticated, yet accessible to the general reader.

Prometheus Rising describes the landscape of human evolution and offers the listener an opportunity to become a conscious participant. In an astoundingly useful road map infused with humor and startling insight, Robert Anton Wilson presents the eight circuits of the brain model as an essential guide for the effort to break free of imprinted and programmed behavior. Bob writes, "We are all giants, raised by pygmies, who have learned to walk with a perpetual mental crouch. Unleashing our full stature–our total brain power–is what this book is all about.”

In one of the great ironies of the modern world, the science that was expected to solve life’s mysteries has done just the opposite. New discoveries have led to more unanswered questions, created deeper mysteries, and brought us to the brink of forbidden territory when it comes to explaining our origin and existence. New York Times best-selling author and 2018 Templeton Award nominee Gregg Braden crosses the traditional boundaries of science and spirituality to answer the timeless question at the core of our existence.

Everyday life is so frantic and full of troubles that we have largely forgotten how to live a joyful existence. We try so hard to be happy that we often end up missing the most important parts of our lives. In Mindfulness, Oxford professor Mark Williams and award-winning journalist Danny Penman reveal the secrets to living a happier and less anxious, stressful, and exhausting life.

Deep down, most people think that happiness comes from having or doing something. Here, in Alan Watts’s groundbreaking third book (originally published in 1940), he offers a more challenging thesis: authentic happiness comes from embracing life as a whole in all its contradictions and paradoxes, an attitude that Watts calls the “way of acceptance.” Drawing on Eastern philosophy, Western mysticism, and analytic psychology, Watts demonstrates that happiness comes from accepting both the outer world around us and the inner world inside us,