Review of Alvin Dueck and Kevin Reimer’s A Peaceable Psychology: Christian Therapy in a World of Many Cultures

Abstract

If you care for, counsel or provide psychotherapy for people from cultural backgrounds different from your own, and who does not these days, A Peaceable Psychology is a must read. The authors, Alvin Dueck, the Evelyn and Frank Freed Professor of the Integration of Psychology and Theology at Fuller Theological Seminary, and Kevin Reimer, Professor of Psychology at Azusa Pacific University, have written a most compelling, challenging and at times disturbing book about the role of modern American psychology within the growing multicultural world, both overseas and here in the United States. The authors, rooted in their Anabaptist tradition, challenge us to reflect critically upon the assumptions, values and unconscious motives that drive our efforts to spread American-style psychotherapy around the world. While modern American psychologists believe that they are helping the world by exporting their knowledge, methods and psychotherapeutic delivery systems, we are in fact, in the opinion of the authors, “doing violence,” a cultural violence upon those who we seek to help. We do this violence because in exporting the basic values of the modernwestern psychotherapeutic establishment, like individualism, secularism, scientism and materialism, we are undermining the culture of nonwestern clients and nonwestern cultures in general. The best alternative, according to the authors, is a “peaceable psychology,” a psychology grounded in the radical teachings and servant model of Jesus Christ, which has as its core values assumptions that are often different from modern western psychology. The book is well written, well organized, well documented and loaded with clinical examples, gripping stories and insightful biblical passages. It takes the normal textbooks on cross-cultural psychotherapy “one step further,” suggesting that modern psychology is not the savior of the world, but a new form of cultural colonialism or what the authors call a psychological “Constantinianism,” a repetition of the 4th century merging of religion and power that, in their view, diluted and distorted the radical and healing nature of Jesus’ teachings. Some of the more intriguing points include the idea that modern American-based psychology assumes the importance of the individual, at the expense of the communal. The very fact that we treat people as individuals, in a therapist’s office, challenges the cultural assumptions and norms of many non-westernized clients. They suggest that even our Pastoral Psychol (2010) 59:525–526 DOI 10.1007/s11089-010-0277-8