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Society for Dialogue of Christianity and Psychology
(Czech: Asociace pro dialog křesťanství a psychologie - ADKP) is a new Czech organization, founded in 2011 by Christian psychologists from Czech and Slovak Republic. Its goal is to promote a nuanced dialogue of Christian faith and the field of psychology and counseling, in settings of a mostly atheist, post-communist country, where such dialogue has no robust tradition. Czech psychologists and students of psychology, even the Christian ones, have not had any accessible education in faith-psychology integration, even though integration has been growing large in some other countries. ADKP is here to fill this gap, bring the ideas from integration discourse, and make room for fresh reflection and generative environment for integrative thinking and dialogue.
In this endeavor, ADKP focuses on several levels, with these respective activities:
Psychology students and candidates of psychotherapy institutes: education in integration perspectives (regular non-curricular teaching lessons), its history and current approaches, networking, mentoring from practicing professionals, internships.
Psychologists and psychotherapists: networking, sharing ideas, building web for professional referrals, additional education and teaching opportunities, supervision, yearly conferences and regular member meetings.
Pastoral counselors and pastors: additional psychological and practical theological education, supervision, networking, referrals, yearly conferences.
In the future, we are planning on creating support groups for Christian clients with mental health issues and their families. This includes supporting raising awareness about mental and spiritual health issues.
Our aim is to be professionally sound (some of our colleagues are much respected in both Christian and secular professional public), to provide up-to-date know-how, contacts with internationally renowned colleagues, authors and practitioners, as well as to make room for building a local web and style of working and thinking, one that would reflect specifics of Czech (and Slovak) Christian and professional milieu. The organization, though created and run mostly by Evangelical psychologists and counselors, is ecumenical, and also open to dialogue across various approaches to helping people grow mentally and spiritually, opening space for multilayered dialogue and interaction of various perspectives on psychology, counseling and research.