A Guide to Orthodox Psychotherapy: The Science, Theology, and Spiritual Practice Behind It and Its Clinical Applications

For what the book probably intended to be, it may well deserve five stars. Giving it three simply because I saw the title and quickly got the impression that it was a book on the Orthodox perspective on psychotherapy, but it is not."Orthodox psychotherapy" refers to the healing of the soul, not (necessarily) the healing of the mind or heart. As the author puts it on page 100, "...the aim of Orthodox psychotherapy is, again, not the treatment of psychological maladies or various incidental symptoms of spiritual or existential malaise; its purpose is above all spiritual, and it addresses the concerns of secular psychotherapy only in a secondary sense and by way of curing specific spiritual ills as they are defined by the anthropology and soteriology of the Greek Fathers and Orthodox theology."Both Orthodox psychotherapy (maybe less misleadingly titled, "Orthodox spiritual therapy") and secular psychotherapy, the author argues, have their proper place and can augment each other, but should not be confused with the other; nor, generally speaking, should one to remedy a psychological ill with a spiritual treatment and vice versa.Understood...I just wish I could have said that before buying such an expensive work that was not what I thought it would be.

Beware, a very intense text that requires attentive and analytic reading. This university scholar presents the groundwork of Orthodox Christian understanding of the human person, and reflects the tradition of the Orthodox Christians. More challenging than some undergraduate and graduate level texts!