THE PHENOMENON OF HAPPINESS IN EXISTENTIAL AND CHRISTIAN PSYCHOLOGY

The relevance of this topic is due to the need to understand the deep determinants of such a central concept for a person at all times as happiness. The human need for happiness is fundamental and is one of his main motives. Existential psychology is a field for research here because of its weighty philosophical, phenomenological support, which determines the qualitative depth of research into the content of a given concept. Christian — because it is based on general psychology, and also unreducedly approaches all dimensions of human nature, including the metaphysical (freedom, love, happiness — all these are concepts that presuppose the presence of a soul, the doctrine of which, with its spiritual dimension, is the center of Christian anthropology). It is also important that the representatives of these directions took into account and take into account the research of other derivatives of psychology. This circumstance makes it possible to more objectively and fully understand the laws of achieving happiness and its content.

Introduction to the Special Issue on the Sufficiency of Scripture

This article provides an introduction to the special issue on the sufficiency of Scripture. The special issue examines the biblicist approach to the sufficiency of Scripture and offers alternative understandings or examples of the how the sufficiency of Scripture relates to counseling. The introduction notes the issue includes contributions from integrationist, theological, Christian psychology, and Biblical counseling perspectives that share both a commitment to a high view of Biblical authority and an openness to resources for counseling offered by the contemporary mental health professions.

Psychology of learning and education: the Christian humanitarian paradigm

The monograph deals with the issues of spiritual, moral and intellectual development of the individual in terms of training and education from a position of humanitarian Christian psychological paradigm. Defined methodological basis of Christian psychology education, and its subject, tasks and basic categories; from the position of metaphysical and empirical levels of explanation of the theory of identity as a core category of psychology of education, proposed the concept of intelligence as a core category of psychology training. From the standpoint of Christian psychology education reveals the General psychological and social-psychological basis for learning the major strategies of developmental education, the concept of personality-developing education. Special attention is paid to family education in the context of Christian anthropology and psychology. Of interest to seminarians, students of Orthodox schools, the students of the Higher theological courses, faculty training and retraining.

The Topography of the Subject Field of Christian Psychology

The task of constitutionalization of Christian psychology as a specific discipline pre- sumes methodological enumeration of its population: scientific, educational and practice-oriented projects. Current article presents a tryout of a tool, that allows to to- pographically link each project to certain coordinates on a map of Christian psychology subject field. Analyses revealed uncommon qualities of such a map. The main of these qualities is a topological plasticity, a capacity to adaptively change the metric of zones and fields in order to insert specific project unaltered. Such a procedure allows to describe an individual “methodological profile” of a project. The technology of analyses tested in current work opens up an opportunity for methodological arrange- ment of the subject-thematical field of Christian psychology, which is a necessary condition for its constitutionalization and entering a “critical” phase of its development.

Christian Psychology in Russia: its «History» and «Geography». The Second Article: Marking the Field

In 1990, when after decades of atheistic press Russian psychology was able to return back to discussions on religious problems, a lot of debates broke out concerning the possibility of «Christian psychology». The debates still continue to burst out, while during the past quarter of century Christian psychology grew into a whole variety of different researches, educational programs, psychological services. A demand of methodological reflection of this field, of its «history» and «geography» arose. Specifically, on the one hand, a need in reflection of its developmental stages, and on the other, a map of the subject- thematical regions and methodological approaches in it. The first article of this research was dedicated to an attempt of making periodization of Russian Christian psychology history. The subject of current article is not time but space. An attempt of making a trial typologization of different projects in the field of Christian psychology is held. A «geographical» thesis concerning the marking of the Christian psychology field into several zones, each of which refer to one or another type of project, is proposed.