Psychology of the Spirit Quotes

“Hierarchy of Hedonic Information Processing Figure 3. Extending “hedonism” (pursuit of pleasure) to mean general happiness or contentment, a hierarchy of hedonic information can be constructed. The higher levels of the hierarchy (bottom) do not “destroy” or “eliminate” the lower levels (top). Rather, the lower levels are integrated into the higher levels and become “transformed.” Right and left brain differences are not absolute since a minority of left-handers are not typically lateralized. PFC: Prefrontal Cortex The”
― John G. Shobris, Psychology of the Spirit: A New Vision of the Soul Integrating Depth Psychology, Modern Neuroscience, and Ancient Christianity

“The number of units this mental space can hold is more or less seven (as indicated earlier), depending on the length and complexity of each unit. The units may be numbers, letters, words, phrases, ideas, and images.”
― John G. Shobris, Psychology of the Spirit: A New Vision of the Soul Integrating Depth Psychology, Modern Neuroscience, and Ancient Christianity

“Long term denial and lack of integration of emotionally painful or cognitively incompatible realities may result in permanent changes to the brain that become more difficult to reverse as the person ages. These processes are responsible for personality and dissociative disorders that are very difficult to treat in psychotherapy. These processes are also similar, if not identical, to the personal unconscious and shadow archetype described by Jung.”
― John G. Shobris, Psychology of the Spirit: A New Vision of the Soul Integrating Depth Psychology, Modern Neuroscience, and Ancient Christianity

“These independent systems of the subconscious may be regarded as complexes in the classic sense. They are islands of unresolved conflict that have been pushed away instead of integrated. Psychotherapy would be the treatment of choice for these complexes, whereby the therapist would help the patient reintegrate all of the emotional baggage he or she has pushed out of focus and awareness. Since mind and brain are two ways of expressing the same underlying reality, even these functional complexes reflect changes in the neural networks of the brain.”
― John G. Shobris, Psychology of the Spirit: A New Vision of the Soul Integrating Depth Psychology, Modern Neuroscience, and Ancient Christianity

“Some processes are unconscious because of deliberate dissociation. In other words, an unpleasant thought or emotion may be dissociated from consciousness not because it is structurally incompatible but because it produces a dissonance with the overall world-view of the person. The unpleasant thought or emotion becomes functionally detached from the rest of consciousness and begins to take on the characteristics of a relatively independent functioning system. Jung regarded this type of unconscious as making up the personal unconscious and, as indicated above, it may also be referred to as the subconscious.”
― John G. Shobris, Psychology of the Spirit: A New Vision of the Soul Integrating Depth Psychology, Modern Neuroscience, and Ancient Christianity

“Conscious In psychodynamics, the adjective “conscious” takes the form of a noun and becomes “the conscious.” Animals and even plants may be said to have a type of conscious. In fact, all matter has an internal and external manifestation. The internal manifestation is a rudimentary conscious. It is not really internal because this term is a spatial reference similar to in and out. In contrast, consciousness itself (consciousness without content) transcends space and time. For this reason, the conscious is not an object that can be detected and dissected in the same way that the brain can be detected and dissected. It is a manifestation of reality that is unrelated to physical matter and energy. Any system that has some kind of rudimentary, connected, and organized processing is conscious on some level. We may even say that subatomic systems, such as ones making up an atom, are rudimentarily conscious.”
― John G. Shobris, Psychology of the Spirit: A New Vision of the Soul Integrating Depth Psychology, Modern Neuroscience, and Ancient Christianity

“The Conscious Space Human consciousness is not very big. The conscious space that we use to process information about ourselves and others is only able to consider between five to seven units at any one time. It is like a juggler who is confined to juggling only five to seven balls. Any more and the juggler will start dropping the balls and fail in his act. Despite this limitation, the information that is accessible to the conscious space is very large and, for all practical considerations, may be infinite.”
― John G. Shobris, Psychology of the Spirit: A New Vision of the Soul Integrating Depth Psychology, Modern Neuroscience, and Ancient Christianity

“the Father is the primordial principle. However, in addition, the Son and Holy Spirit have their own unique principle as well. The Son, as the Logos, is the operating principle. The Holy Spirit, as the Paraclete, is the perfecting principle.”
― John G. Shobris, Psychology of the Spirit: A New Vision of the Soul Integrating Depth Psychology, Modern Neuroscience, and Ancient Christianity

“We do not force Christianity on the reader and we do not condemn non-Christians. Nevertheless, we do acknowledge that Jesus Christ is the Messiah, the only Son of God, and the Logos of all creation. He is uniquely fully human and fully divine. In Greek, the term for this God-man is Theanthropos. It is Jesus Christ who we acknowledge as the most influential person in our life. He colors everything we do and certainly is an integral part of the dynamic psychology we describe here. In fact, the Greek term, dynamis, means “power,” especially the power of God, and reflects the subject matter of this discourse on psychology. It is a power dressed in the context of Eastern (Orthodox) Christianity, a tradition that traces its origins to the early Greek Church. Despite this Christian viewpoint, it is our conviction that the model of the psyche we offer is truly universal in the sense that it combines the contributions of neuroscience and cognitive-behavioral psychology with the psychodynamic insights of Jung, Freud, and other psychologists and scholars.”
― John G. Shobris, Psychology of the Spirit: A New Vision of the Soul Integrating Depth Psychology, Modern Neuroscience, and Ancient Christianity

“This book is written from a clearly Christian point of view. We do not apologize for this. Our approach is based on empirical theology, an approach largely alien to Western Christianity but familiar to the Christianity of the East. Consistent with Eastern Christianity, we believe the Faith is not just a set of beliefs similar to any other perspective on metaphysical entities. We believe spiritual reality is an empirical phenomenon that is independently verifiable by people who are primed to experience the Spirit. From a Christian context, this is the Holy Spirit, the third Person of the Holy Trinity. Spiritual reality is an integral part of the psyche or soul. Consistent with Jung’s vision, the psyche is viewed as an empirical phenomenon that cannot be reduced to anything else. As indicated above, it can be studied introspectively as well as in dreams and mythology. Nevertheless, psychic phenomena are not divorced from the physical world, but are correlated with physical events, especially brain dynamics. It is this correlation that, to some extent, allows psychic phenomena to be verified by our understanding of the brain. If”
― John G. Shobris, Psychology of the Spirit: A New Vision of the Soul Integrating Depth Psychology, Modern Neuroscience, and Ancient Christianity

“vision. The dynamic psychology described in this book largely focuses on the interface of psychology with what Rudolf Otto called the numinous. The numinous is described in light of Orthodox Christian theology as outlined by theologians such as Vladimir Lossky and the Church Fathers. In addition to these developments, Rene Girard’s theory of mimetic desire is incorporated to present a modern version of the Christ as Victor theology of the early Church. Including Rene Girard may seem odd, since he is noted to have criticized Jung. Nevertheless, it is the nature of creativity to help synthesize seemingly unrelated or contradictory ideas. We attempt to do so with Jung and Girard. We”
― John G. Shobris, Psychology of the Spirit: A New Vision of the Soul Integrating Depth Psychology, Modern Neuroscience, and Ancient Christianity