This volume, published as a special issue from "OMEGA - Journal of Death and Dying" presents a number of theoretical and empirical articles on the topic of euthanasia, doctor-assisted suicide and suicide. We have examined the first extended data available in America with regard to the 93 physician-assisted deaths of Drs. Kevorkian and Reding. We examine the roles of biological verses psychological factors in the patient's decision to actively hasten their death. The role of gender, age, so...

Integrate Biblical spirituality into psychotherapy and examine centuries-old answers to modern psychological questions!The Joint Commision on the Accreditation of Hospitals now mandates taking spiritual assessments of all patients. This book is devoted to helping therapists employ Biblical spirituality in the actual treatment program. Biblical Stories for Psychotherapy and Counseling: A Sourcebook organizes the wisdom of the Old Testament into episodes that can shed light on specif...

In Biblical Psychotherapy, Kalman J. Kaplan and Paul Cantz offer a new approach to suicide prevention based on biblical narratives that is designed to overcome the suicidogenic patterns in Greek and Roman stories implicit in modern mental health. More than sixteen suicides and self-mutilations emerge in the twenty-six surviving tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides and countless others occurred in Greek and Roman lives. In contrast, only six suicides are found in the Hebrew Scriptures, in a...

We live in an age when it is not uncommon for politicians to invoke religious doctrine to explain their beliefs and positions on everything from domestic to foreign policy. And yet, many of us would be hard pressed to pinpoint the exact source of these political beliefs in the religious texts that are said to have spawned them. In Politics in the Hebrew Bible: God, Man, and Government, Kalman J. Kaplan and Matthew B. Schwartz offer a genre-straddling examination of the political themes in ...

Living Biblically de-situates biblical wisdom from its formally religious-theological underpinnings and offers it as a guide for fulfilled, happy living. Although over 95 percent of Americans have some sense of a meaning-providing transcendent power, 75 percent of clinical psychologists and psychiatrists lack such belief. Without intelligent, applicable access to biblical wisdom, many unwittingly live out the tragic patterns emerging from classical Greece underlying much of modern life and...

For religious and non-religious alike, the Bible constitutes an important source of cultural heritage, fundamental values, and basic codes of social conduct. This book presents seven Biblical stories ordered to the days of Creation and adapted for children in pre K-5th grades. Day 1: David and Goliath; Day 2: The Tower of Babel; Day 3 Noah and the Flood; Day 4: Abraham Breaking the Idols; Day 5: Jonah and the Big Fish; Day 6: Adam Names the Animals; and Day 7 (The Sabbath): Elijah Rests. C...

An alternative to existing bipolar choices, this book looks at individuals and their distances from the self (individuation-deindividuation) and from others (attachment-detachment). Simultaneously theoretical, empirical, and applied, this book can be reasonably applied to all types of individuals involved in interpersonal situations regardless of culture, age, gender, or sexual orientations. Broken into four parts, In the first part, Definitions and Measurements, the author includes an int...

In The Seven Habits of the Good Life, the authors highlight seven biblical gifts-self-esteem, wisdom, righteousness, love, healthy appetite, prudence, and purpose-and present each one as an alternative to one of the seven deadly sins. Each gift gives readers a chance to enrich their lives by integrating concern for themselves with a healthy concern for others rather than punishing themselves for bad behavior.Incorporating clinical case studies, the voices of real people, a...

An initial play, Oedipus in Jerusalem, related the narrative of Nathan, the biblical prophet, encountering the blinded Oedipus wandering alone outside of Thebes. Nathan brings him to Jerusalem to be tried at the Jewish Sanhedrin. The Greek playwright Sophocles is the prosecutor, and Nathan serves as the defense attorney. Oedipus is acquitted, but he refuses to accept his acquittal, shouting, "I am guilty! I am guilty of patricide and incest."Oedipus Redeemed focuses on Nathan and Sophocles...

While meaning and purpose are often seen as synonymous, this book argues that they sometimes are in opposition, the search for meaning at times suicidal, and living with purpose life-enhancing and invigorating. No people seemed to search for meaning in their lives more than did the ancient and classical Greeks. They were not content with living simple lives but oftentimes took on gargantuan tasks which resulted in a great deal of upheaval and unpleasantness in their everyday lives, and oft...

Oedipus in Jerusalem begins with the unexpected meeting of the blinded Oedipus and the biblical prophet Nathan outside of Thebes. As the play unfolds, Nathan brings Oedipus to the Great Sanhedrin in Jerusalem for a formal trial with regard to his actions of patricide and his subsequent incest with his mother. The author of this play uses the characters and facts that exist in Oedipus Rex, the Athenian tragedy by the Greek playwright Sophocles, but employs the Sanhedrin to reach a dramatica...