Carl E.Thoresen, Ph.D.
Carl E.Thoresen, Ph.D., is Professor Emeritus of Education and, by courtesy, Psychology and Psychiatry/Behavioral Science at Stanford University. He has worked in the area of Counseling and Health Psychology for over 30 years. Currently he also serves as a Senior Fellow in the Spirituality and Health Institute at Santa Clara University. His early contributions focused on cognitive behavioral and social cognitive perspectives in helping people learn to manage and solve personal and social problems (e.g., Behavioral Counseling: Cases and Techniques and Counseling Methods with John Krumboltz). These perspectives were applied to a variety of physical and mental health problems, such as sleep disorders (How to Sleep Better with Tom Coates) and coronary heart disease and Type A behavior (Articles in Circulation, American J of Cardiology, and American Heart Journal, with Meyer Friedman, M.D.). He was a founding Fellow in the Society of Behavioral Medicine in the late 1970’s. In the late 1980’s he began examining the role of spiritual factors in health. He established and continues to chair a Special Interest Group within Behavioral Medicine on spirituality ( See Special Issue of Annals of Behavioral Medicine, 24, 1, 2002), He also served an the Expert Panel of Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences in NIH , co-editing articles on Spirituality, Religion and Health published in a Special Section of American Psychologist ( 58, 1, 2003). Author of over 175 articles and book chapters and 8 books (most recently Forgiveness: Theory, Research and Practice (with M. McCullough & K.Pargament, 2000) he continues to lead groups and do research on spiritual practices and health.
Doctor Thoresen on his current interests:
Center stage for me is learning more about spiritual skills and competencies; one might say spiritual abilities or aptitudes. How can we assess and provide the kind of learning situations that will enable persons to understand spiritual skills intellectually as well as experientially and then use them in daily living? That’s the reason why I find Easwaran's Eight Point Program of Spiritual Development so valuable (Easwaran, 1991). Too often spirituality has been reduced to vague theological concepts or thought of as one or two practices, such as prayer or attending services. Spirituality has many dimensions, some viewed as more important than others, depending upon cultural factors. Sometimes a person’s spiritual strivings may contradict each other. We need to be sensitive to the complexities of spirituality, and remain mindful that some spiritual experiences may lie beyond current scientific methods. The danger is that spirituality and its role in searching for and seeking the sacred in life can be oversimplified and thus fail to capture the concept of spirituality adequately.
Spiritual modeling, I believe, is one of the most neglected yet potentially most powerful approaches to help people learn spiritual skills and to grow spiritually. This neglect has been serious as it has prevented people from learning and applying spiritual practices in everyday life. Social cognitive theory offers a useful framework to understand how we can better utilize exemplars (spiritual models) of spiritual beliefs, feelings, experiences and behaviors. One issue of many is the relative lack of consistent opportunities for people of all ages to be exposed to spiritual models. My interest here is not just on spirituality in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Other major religions are important to study, in part because they share more in common: the universality of love, compassion, humility, forgiveness and gratitude. Sometimes, for example, it is easier to benefit from a spiritual model from another religious background and culture than one’s own. For many Christians Gandhi has been such a spiritual model as well as the Dalai Lama.
I am also interested in professional adult education in spirituality. Psychologists, physicians, nurses, and other health care providers could I believe greatly benefit by knowing more about the role of spirituality and religiousness in those they serve. This interest also applies to workplace/business organizations, especially given the questionable ethics and morality of some recent business leaders widely reported in the popular media. Currently I am preparing with Tom Plante a paper for applied psychologists that introduce them to the scientific evidence linking spirituality and health. In it and other articles I make a distinction between spirituality and religion. Both share a great deal in common but spirituality exists at the individual level, at least primarily, and contains the experiential if not the "heart" of religion. By contrast religion is primarily a social institution and all that goes along with human institutions. What is particularly fascinating is the growing number of Americans who identify themselves as "spiritual but not religious". Estimates range from 10 to 30%. I am interested in learning more about this growing segment of our country, such as how they fare in terms of health and well being.
Spirituality and Health Institute
