Danielsen Staff-Authored Chapter in Forthcoming Handbook of Positive Psychology, Religion, and Spirituality

Postdoctoral Research Fellow Laura Captari led an invited chapter for publication to the forthcoming Handbook of Positive Psychology, Religion, and Spirituality. This project offers an integration of clinical research in the areas of spirituality, positive psychology, and virtue with diversity and justice concerns. It articulates a framework for clinical practice and research in these areas by incorporating the Danielsen Institute’s dialectical, relational, and multicultural spiritual, existential, religious, and theological (SERT) perspectives in ways that challenge the dominant paradigms in both US mental healthcare and positive psychology. The work for this chapter was supported by the John Templeton Foundation‘s grant to the Danielsen Institute to research virtue and flourishing in psychotherapy. The citation and abstract are below.

Captari, L.E., Sandage, S.J., Vandiver, R.A., & Hook, J.N. (in press). Integrating positive psychology, religion/spirituality, and virtues in psychotherapy. In E.B. Davis, E.L. Worthington, Jr., & S.A. Schnitker (Eds.), Handbook of positive psychology, religion, and spirituality. Springer Press.

Abstract 

Although both positive psychology and religious/spiritual traditions share a common focus on human strengths and holistic development, in mental healthcare, there has been little systematic integration of these fields. In this chapter, we overview key terms and synthesize meta-analytic evidence for spiritually integrated interventions (SIIs), positive psychology interventions (PPIs), and virtue-based interventions (VBIs). Through the lens of virtue ethics, we propose that growth in virtuousness fosters flourishing, which consists of more than the absence of psychological distress and includes greater well-being, meaning in life, relational maturity, and community contribution. We detail a research prospectus guided by virtue ethics to support the development of an integrated line of applied clinical research. In particular, we call for practice-based studies that attend to diversity and equity considerations and address reductionistic misapplications of virtue (which we call virtue bypass). Finally, we discuss innovative clinical and community applications, including the utility of a dialectical and contextual perspective, the need to consider both individual and communal flourishing, and the potential for communities as intervention sites.