Page 68 - EMCAPP-Journal No. 8

Christian Psychology as a Challenge

Wolfram Soldan (Germany)

Comment to Wolfram Soldan,

„Christian Community Germany, is a
Physician, psy-
Psychology“ chotherapist and
one of the main
lecturers for cli-
When our new ICP studies with Nicolene began nical psychology
in 2010, it was the first time that I had heard of at the IGNIS-In-
“Community Psychology”. And it was the same stitute.
for my psychologist colleagues. We did not He worked two
even know how we should translate this term years in the DE‘IGNIS-Hospital, about five
into German and initially called it “Gemein- years as head of the former IGNIS-Therapy-
schaftsbezogene Psychologie” [“community or Center.
communion related psychology”] before we His main topics include forgiveness proces-
discovered that Community Psychology also ses, dealing with the Bible in counselling
exists in German under the slightly misleading and sexuality.
name “Gemeindepsychologie”. Translating “Ge-
meinde“ back into English with a dictionary Articles by Wolfram:
leads first of all to “municipality” and then soon http://emcapp.ignis.de/2/#/48
to “parish”, which quickly shows what mislea- http://emcapp.ignis.de/2/#/76
ding or, more precisely, restrictive associations http://emcapp.ignis.de/4/#/6
the term brings with it in German. Since “com-
munity” is understood very broadly as used in
Gemeindepsychologie – usually expressed in
German, therefore, by the term “Lebenswelt” differ strongly in some cases, but also show a
[“sphere of living”, “life environment”] – it is substantial overlapping between Community
therefore of course possible, in principle, for a Psychology and Christian Psychology.
church congregation, too, to be a “subject” in
Gemeindepsychologie, although this was un- For me it was both surprising and gladdening
typical in the short tradition of Gemeindepsy- to see how openly Nicolene discussed such pa-
chologie, usually bearing a strong “progressive radigms of Christian-influenced Community
left wing” imprint. Because of different circum- Psychology as a Trinitarian personal God, an-
stances and special differences between the gels, demons and psychology to exalt Christ. It
South African and German concepts of “social struck me that this is easier to do in an African
ecology”, our students did nevertheless actually culture in which transcendent themes have a
carry out their projects in Gemeindepsycholo- recognised place anyway – and are thus already
gie in (Christian) congregations (Gemeinden), respected in accordance with the principles of
more precisely in congregations with which Community Psychology. In our European tra-
they had no personal familiarity. dition, more marked by agnostic, atheistic or
materialistic thinking, one would express one-
As the responsible tutor, it was my duty and self rather more „indirectly“ and „philosophi-
privilege to refresh completely my ideas about cally“ in order to be taken seriously at all.
this exciting field of psychology. Particularly in-
teresting to me was the principle of the openly- In her graphic of „the entire system“, in which
discussed value-oriented basis of Community this comprehensive perspective is represented
Psychology, which it shares with Christian Psy- following Bronfenbrenner and depicted in con-
chology. In this respect, the value definitions, centrated form, it struck me that the represen-
as the middle part of Nicolene’s article shows, tation could be misunderstood as being duali-

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