Project News
13-16 September 2010 — Durham, England
Spirituality, Theology & Mental Health: Myth, Authority & Healing Power will begin an ongoing dialogue between theology, anthropology, psychiatry and philosophy, and will be of interest to academics and practitioners (including religious ministers and counsellors) in these areas. It will address issues such as the importance of religion and spirituality in psychiatric treatment of mental illness and the necessity of treating the whole person, and form an ongoing mutually critical engagement between theology and psychiatry. These and related issues will be explored both through academic papers and also through praxis-based workshops such as meditation workshops.
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A working collaboration with the Project for Spirituality, Theology & Health at Durham University has now been agreed and will include a research consultancy with Professor Chris Cook, Project Director. Staff in Birmingham and Durham are very much looking forward to working together. It is hoped that this arrangement will include collaborative research between Birmingham and Durham, as well as joint applications for external grant funding and future joint publications on spirituality and mental health.
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Dr. Marcus Pound will give the inaugural seminar of the Project for Spirituality, Theology and Health, presenting Lacan’s Return to Freud: A Case of Theological Ressourcment.
- 9th March 2010; 4:30-6:00pm
- Dun Cow Cottage
The general format of the Seminars is that of either ‘work-in-progress’ or finished papers by seminar members, followed by discussion, with the possibility also of occasional visiting speakers. In addition, some sessions may focus on a particular text that seminar members commit to reading in advance. Should you wish to offer a paper, please make this known to Professor Chris C. H. Cook, project director.
Eds. Chris Cook, Andrew Powell, Andrew Sims, Royal College of Psychiatrists Press, London, 2009
Spirituality & Psychiatry is a new book published by the Royal College of Psychiatrists. Emerging from the work of the Spirituality and Psychiatry Special Interest Group at the Royal College of Psychiatrists, it considers the relevance of spirituality to clinical practice in psychiatry. It is edited by Chris Cook (current Chair of the Special Interest Group and Director of the Project for Spirituality, Theology & Health at Durham University) along with two past Chairs of the Special Interest Group (Dr Andrew Powell and Professor Andrew Sims). Further information, and the opportunity to purchase the book, is available from the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ website.
The Project for Spirituality, Theology & Health has recently received confirmation of a grant to be awarded over three years from the Guild of Health. The Guild has been working in the field of Christian healing and wholeness for over a century and has a concern, shared with the Durham Project for Spirituality, Theology & Health, to bring together medical professionals and clergy in exploring practices of spiritual healing and the understanding of well-being. We look forward to working closely with the Guild over the coming years.
Forthcoming in Continuum Philosophy of Religion Series, 2011
This new book, by Anastasia Scrutton, will explore the theology of emotion. The current theological climate presents two extremes in speaking of the emotional life of God: passibilism, which affirms the fullness of God’s emotional life, and impassibilism, which asserts that God cannot experience emotions. Likewise, contemporary philosophy of emotion is characterised by the extremes of cognitive views of emotion on the one hand, and non-cognitive, physiological views on the other. Thinking through Feelings suggests more nuanced accounts of both impassibility and emotion, exploring the relationships between emotions and intelligence, emotions and the will, and emotions and the body, and the theological implications of these for divine omniscience, omnipotence and incorporeality.
