Statement for the reviewed book: “Human Development and Faith” helps combine two fields of knowledge — theology, and psychology. The authors explore how faith and social environment can contribute to the individual’s sense of meaning at each stage of development.
Introduction
This book review’s focus is a work by Felicity Kelcourse, a book titled “Human Development and Faith.” This work’s central theme is the inspection of the interdisciplinary field of pastoral psychology, which is helpful since this domain does not yet have an established theory or methodology for how pastors should approach counseling of their congregations. As a result, this book is a combination of the author’s own experience as a pastoral counselor and some underlying theories of human development and the contribution that families and communities make towards it. Kelcouse is qualified to write on this subject because of her academic and pastoral background. The authors who provided their essays to this editor also have a religious or psychology work background. “Human Development and Faith” by Kelcourse help one explore the context of human development, the specifics of each stage from the perspective of social psychology and development theories, and how faith can contribute to one’s life.
Author’s Qualifications
“Human Development and Faith” is a book about developing a person considered through varied perspectives. It incorporates the development of body, mind, and soul as well as the impact that family and community have on an individual, making it an interdisciplinary work that requires exploration by professionals who have academic and practical experience of working in these fields. Although Kelcouse is mentioned as the main contributor to the “Human Development and Faith,” she is not a sole writer, hence, both her qualifications and those of other contributors must be considered when evaluating the content of this book. Felicity Kelcource is an academic, working as a director of a Pastoral Program at Indiana University (Kelcource, 1). As mentioned in the first paragraph of this book, the author aids people by offering pastoral psychotherapy consultations, which implies that she has a background not only in religious studies by in psychotherapy as well.
Practical work as a pastor, professor, and counselor is a central element of Kelcourse’s qualifications. As a Quaker minister, she has severed in multiple ministries in the United States abroad (Kelcourse, 1). Finally, another factor that proves that this author is qualified to provide advice in this book is that she co-wrote and co-edited several other publications on human psychology and faith. This shows that Kelcourse knows the theories of human development, Jungian psychology, Freud’s theory, Erikson’s stages of development, and other theories that help explain how people go through different stages of life. Therefore, the author and editor of this book is an academic with experience in teaching and providing counseling and writing other publications on similar topics. This means that the material in this book was prepared and reviewed by a professional with a theoretical background and practical experience.
Apart from Kelcource, this bok features excerpts from multiple works by other authors, all of which are unified by a single purpose — to integrate faith into the understanding of human development. This means that the content was reviewed by peers, further proving its validity. Hence, this book is a good source of information on human development, with the main focus on spiritual growth and how it impacts individuals. In total, sixteen authors were included in this book (Kelcouse, XVII). Wimberly, who is a Pastoral Professor at the Interdenominational Theological Centre in Atlanta, Senter, who is a licensed clinician with over 25 years of practical experience or Gibson, who is a pastoral psychotherapist and has a diploma in Jungian psychotherapy. The other authors have similar qualifications, they work as either advisors, ministers, clinical specialists, or any adjacent fields of ministry or psychotherapy. Their experience and academic credentials contribute to the author’s belief that these individuals are qualified to write on the topic of pastoral psychology and human development. Therefore, the writers are eligible to write on this subject because they have practical experience in exploring human development in both theory and practice and experience contributing to their communities by working as pastors.
The premise for Writing this Book
The authors and the editor communicated the premise for writing this book in the Introduction section. When outlining the goal of the work, Kelcourse noted that “if human development describes the normative and hoped-for passages of life, then faith provides the necessary component of meaning, the foundational structures of experience and belief that allow us to weather the storms of change with fortitude and grace” (2). This means that the author aims to combine the theory of human development by exploring the most favorable conditions for it, with faith, as a way of finding meaning in life. As the author notes in the first part of the book, there are two central questions that will be answered (Kelcourse, 2). The first one is the sufficient conditions that aid in normal human development. The second question is the meaning of life in the context of its continuity, or what provides sense to people at different stages of development. Further, in this paragraph, Kelcourse outlines the fundamental concepts that are based on this work, such as human development as a process of unfolding one’s potential throughout the different stages of the lifespan (Kelcourse, 2). Therefore, Kelcourse explains the goal and premise of “Human Development and Faith” in the book’s introductory paragraph.
Proof of Premise
For an author, one way to prove the premise of their work is through the structure by organizing the material following the thesis statement for the book. In “Human Development and Faith,” Kelcouse proves the premise in the introductory Chapter titled “Overview of Chapters” (14). There, she explains the different sections of this book and the rationale for such division. In the Introduction, Kelcouse explains the human development lifecycle (14). Additionally, she includes a description of different dimensions of faith. The central idea here is that although people are born with innate characteristics, their environment, such as family and community, also shape their development. From a psychological perspective, three primary theories are applied: “depth psychology, cognitive-structural-constructive development theory, and family systems theory” (Kelcouse, 15). The author links each of the three theories to faith development, which proves the essential premise of this book — the connection between psychological and spiritual.
In the following chapters, the focus is on the family as a place where a person’s “self” is formed. For example, clinical psychology, Cooper-White explores the idea of culture affecting a person’s development, while acknowledging that with time, faith can reshape the individual’s beliefs and personal traits (Kelcouse, 20). Further proving the premise of this book, Kelcouse continues to briefly outline the subsequent chapters, including the ones that focus on the Freud’s stages of development and finishing with the exploration of an idea that “death is a loss of self” (Kelcouse, 19). This is notable since, ultimately, death is the final stage in human development, and the exploration of it and ways of integrating faith into one’s spirituality to overcome the fear of death is an important topic.
Some evidence proving that the authors were thorough in their research is the number of theories that Kelcouse and other authors present, apart from outlining their own experiences. For example, Chapters 5 to 13 cover the different stages of human development from infancy to adulthood. The authors present the material as ten stages of human development, based on Erick Eriksson’s theory of eight stages (Kelcourse, 15). Each chapter is accompanied by commentary that linked the religious experiences of the author and some advice on addressing each stage with faith in mind. Moreover, these chapters explore human development from different perspectives. For example, moral development is viewed through the superego, development of consciousness, faith, ethical discernment, and other integral parts of spiritual growth. Physical changes of one’s body are examined from the perspective of how biological evolution impacts the view of self, for example, the differences in the physical capacities of children and adults (Kelcourse, 16). The psychological changes, mainly the sense of psychological dependence and independence from one’s family and community, help explore one of the core questions of this book, which is the impact of others, as well as one’s setting in life from the perspective of time and culture.
Therefore, the author was thorough in her research because she collaborated with fifteen other academics and practitioners, explored the biological and psychological theories of human development, the theological premise of development, and the issue of faith development, as well as a critique of these theories. Moreover, the contributors to this book cite a variety of developmental and psychological theories, which means that their ideas are not based merely on their experience, but rather that they have managed to explore what has been found on this topic previously and how it can be combined with their knowledge of working as clinical specialists or pastors. Therefore, the authors covered a sufficient number of themes, demonstrating a thorough exploration of the topic.
New Truths and Conclusions
With this book, the author was able to expose me to new truths and cause me to rethink several conclusions that I had drawn previously. From the first section, Kelcouse exposes the reader that life implies continuous change, not only for an individual but also for a community. Previously, I believed that communities or environmental conditions have little effect on a person. Their desire to change and the ability to do so result from their efforts and commitment only. However, as Kelcouse notes, there are the “good enough” conditions, or the necessities for children, such as loving families and communities that enable their adequate development. Since human development is a complicated matter that implies not only the physical development of an individual but their moral, psychological and spiritual growth, it is essential to create an environment where these basic conditions are present, and one way to do this is for a pastor to guide their congregations and communities.
As the central premise is to teach people how to lead a more meaningful life, this book proved to me that faith is the central element of this journey. Kelcouse offers an explicit explanation of how life meaning is affected by faith by stating that it is “an attitude of trust and a way of finding meaning in life” (1). Additionally, I was able to educate myself better on the underlying theories. Some psychological theories have become well known to the general public. However, in this book, theories that are less popular were explored as well, for example, Kohlberg’s theory of moral reasoning. According to this framework, there are three distinct ways that people use to reason their choices: the pre-conventional, conventional, and post-conventional (Kellcourse, 43). These stages outline instances when a person does not distinguish right from wrong when they use the fear of punishment or an expectation of a reward based on their choice and the application of broad justice principles. This helps one understand that people may differ significantly in the way they perceive information and make choices because their reasoning strategies differ as well.
Therefore, this book uncovered some theories that I was unfamiliar with before, mainly some of the theories that guide modern-day psychology theory and practice. This helped me integrate my understanding of religious principles with the way different people view the world and make judgments regarding the morality of their actions. Moreover, it convinced me that religious texts contain the essential truths and moral principles that can help one live a better and more fulfilled life. For a pastoral counselor, this is a fundamental discovery because it helps explain certain events or actions by using scientific theory combined with religious texts.
A vital element of this book is the critique of theories, their justification, and some conclusions arising from these controversies that the authors present. For example, returning to Kohlberg’s theory of moral reasoning, not all of his assumptions were proven to be true by further research. This is connected to the initial design of the study that Goldberg used to make his assumptions, which was an interview with middle-class boys and men only (Kellcourse, 43). Moreover, there is an essential consideration in relation to culture since this study, similarly to many others that become the basis of the psychological theory, is based in western counties and therefore explores Western culture only, making it challenging to apply this theory in different contexts. However, as Kellcouse notes, this does not mean that Kohlberg’s approach is not correct. Instead, one should keep in mind the limitations and be open-minded when applying the theory in practice to ensure that some critical factors are not omitted due to blind adherence to theories and ignorance towards the practical implications. Therefore, this book opened some truths about the way different theories were developed and how one should use them with caution when counseling individuals because each idea has its set of limitations and assumptions that were proven to be untrue in research studies.
Controversial Statements
Although this book is of immense value, the author has made some controversial statements in it. As Kelcourse mentioned in the introduction to the book, “not all developmental theories attend to the inner lives of persons” (2). However, the psychological theories that the author explores, such as the one by Jung, aim to highlight the inner development and how the integration of the different elements of self is essential for a person. As such, the book puts forward the idea that faith is the quality that allows one to live to the full extent since it will enable people to find wisdom and meaning. However, the book does not address faith development for people who do not adhere to a particular religion. Spiritual people who are not religious also search for meaning, but they choose to avoid certain religions’ attributes.
Conclusion
Overall, this book review focuses on the book by Felicity Kelcourse. In it, the author explores human development at different stages of life, both physically and spiritually, the necessary conditions for development and the purpose of life. I would recommend this book to others since it is a valuable source of information that connects human development theories and different stages of it with faith and explains how the latter can guide the former. However, I would recond this book to people interested in various theories of human development in connection to their faith, since the materials that Kelcourse and other authors explore are complex and may be challenging to comprehend for someone without a background in psychology in pastoral studies. For people who intend to become pastors and work as counselors to help their communities, this book presents an immense value because the authors holistically combine major theories of Freud, Jung, Piaget, and Erikson with the questions of faith.
This book helped me understand the class content since it provided an in-depth exploration of the complex multidisciplinary field of pastoral counseling. Moreover, this book focused not only on the issue of faith and how it aids people in different stages of their life, but it also addressed the developmental theories, using Erikson’s strategy as the basis. Moreover, exploring the cognitive-structural-constructive developmental approach developed by Piaget helped comprehend how people use different mental constructs to make sense of the world around them. Piaget’s theory is significant in particular because it focuses on how people perceive information and how they make decisions based on these perceptions. People develop logic in their early childhood, and the stages of development under Piaget’s theory are sequential, invariant, and irreversible. The integration of this theory with the exploration of how people learn to articulate their faith.
More specifically, the concluding chapter that focuses on the Jungian perspectives of death and dying is an excellent finale for this book because it addresses the concern that any advisor for older adults may face and have difficulty in handling. Here, death is viewed as a mystery, and faith to make sense of this process. Instead of viewing it as a catastrophe, the author of the chapter offers to look at death as something that can be transformed by love, God’s love in particular. As Barbe states, “the fulfillment of this healing completion when we experience a greater love that brings us to the mystery of who we must ultimately become” (Kellcource, 303). Overall, this book connects different theories of development, including phycological development, adjustment to social and cultural conditions, and development of one’s morality and reasoning, helping understand how faith can be applied to find meaning.
Work Cited
Kelcourse , Felicity. editor. Human Development and Faith: Life Cycle Stages of Body, Mind, and Soul. 2nd ed. Charlice Press, 2015.