Forgiveness in marital therapy.

Abstract

where his primary teaching responsibilities fall in the area of mental illness and psychotherapy. Dr. Krejci received his PhD in counseling psychology from the University of Notre Dame and completed a clinical psychology internship at the Norfolk Regional Center in Norfolk, Nebraska. For the past 14 years he has been seeing clients through a part-time private practice at a local Roman Catholic church. Dr. Krejci is a practicing Roman Catholic whose therapeutic orientation is influenced by both humanistic and cognitive-behavioral approaches to psychotherapy. He became interested in the use of religious coping in the lives of his clients beginning in graduate school. His research, investigating the acceptance of nontraditional (female) God images, developed as he worked with clients whose use of male God imagery reinforced traditional female/male stereotypes. Dr. Krejci recently served as editor of the Psychology of Religion Newsletter, a publication of Division 36 (Psychology of Religion) of the American Psychological Association.

Including God in Psychotherapy: Strong Vs. Weak Theism

“…Peripheral aspects might include certain moral or ethical values such as altruism, compassion, and humility (VanderStoep, 2003;Sperry & Shafranske, 2005;Jones, 2006); philosophical assumptions such as free will, holism, and transcendence (Richards & Bergin, 2005, chap. 4;Vander-Stoep, 2003); or "spiritual" activities such as meditation, mindfulness, and forgiveness (Hardman, Berrett, & Richards, 2004;Krejci, 2004). Although these characteristics can be closely related to theism, conceptually and historically, they are not uniquely or inherently theistic (Taylor, 2007).…”

“…One possible example of peripheral theism is Krejci's (2004) case study of an "anger-filled" (p. 100) religious couple, in which Krejci incorporates spiritual themes and activities into a marital therapy approach. Krejci is a practicing Roman Catholic with a "private practice at a local Roman Catholic church" (p. 87).…”

“…As an example, Krejci (2004) uses a "model of forgiveness" in which he views forgiveness as a sequential process of ceased resentment followed by understanding, empathy, and altruism (p. 96). It would not be difficult to understand this model from the naturalistic tenets of his orientation, using humanistic and cognitive behavioral principles.…”

“…It would not be difficult to understand this model from the naturalistic tenets of his orientation, using humanistic and cognitive behavioral principles. This kind of naturalism is also likely because Krejci (2004) did not develop his model as a uniquely theistic approach (p. 96). As he explains, religious aspects were incorporated into his model because they were important to the clients-to help them build "something positive" into their marriage (p. 100)-not because they brought God into play and were necessary for change.…”