
Chris KamAdams State University · Psychology
Chris Kam
Ph.D
About
16
Publications
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Introduction
Incoherent ideas of ourselves crawl around bugging us. Then, a new discovery bites the nerve of our understanding. Electrifying enlightenment. Echoing energy. Empowering epiphanies. The mind spider-senses oncoming coherence as multidisciplinary psychological insight looms around the corner. Intellectual adrenaline starts spiderwebbing connections between branches of psychology that swing us from one building of insight to another.
This approach to psychology informs my teaching and research.
Skills and Expertise
Education
September 2017 - April 2023
Publications
Publications (16)
For victims of childhood abuse, healing their unconscious images of themselves, others, and God is of utmost importance in therapeutic work. Addressing the healing from both a scientific and a spiritual-contemplative approach is ideal in the context of spiritually integrated psychotherapy. Combining the frameworks of divine attachment theory and th...
The Enneagram and Narrative Therapy are two frameworks that have potential for unique integration to combine therapeutic effects for issues related to Adult Ego Development. The Enneagram offers a centuries-tested personality framework that has accumulated ancient wisdom from multiple spiritual traditions. Narrative Therapy offers postmodern insigh...
There has been much progress in the scientific study of wisdom on both conceptual and empirical fronts in the past few decades. Despite all the progress being made, there are still gaps that can be filled to provide even more explanatory power and coherence. Although academic discourse on wisdom has included the ability to integrate issues in a com...
This article explains how psychoanalytic principles, namely Jungian ego inflation, can contribute to distinguishing between the philosophical distinction between willfully ignoring knowledge in a foolish manner and rationally avoiding knowledge in a wise manner.
Political polarization has been growing in many countries, including the United States, within recent years. Scholars note how, if not addressed, growing trends can compromise fundamental pillars of a functioning democratic society. While efforts have grown in researching how integrative complexity can successfully mitigate polarizing tensions in p...
This peer-reviewed book aims to deepen our understanding of the unique contributions of both positive psychology and spirituality to the field of mental health and psychotherapy. This integration will be covered through ten chapters that explore distinct yet complementary angles on this emerging cross pollination of psychospiritual wholeness. The c...
In the context of climate change and its accompanying impact on stress and mental health, we argue that positive psychology (PP) may benefit from an integration of spirituality to better support people’s wellbeing. Starting with an overview of climate change’s impact on wellbeing and health, we explore the paradoxical and complex relationship betwe...
The Enneagram is a personality framework with ancient philosophical underpinnings and cross cultural roots. It outlines nine different pathways of growth for nine different personalities. In recent years, it has started to gain traction in the peer reviewed level of research. Since the Enneagram has a conceptual versatility in addressing various le...
Contemporary models of psychosocial development include domains of development for interpersonal relations and cognitive complexity. Integrating these two domains to conceptualize interpersonal complexity is a useful construct for research purposes. Furthermore, the analysis of interpersonal complexity can benefit from approaching it from both rati...
Personality fixations that have had utility in the past can later become problematic for holistic psychological development. Adult Ego Development research combined with psychoanalytic assumptions provide a way to understand multidimensional maturity through addressing and transforming the unconscious. The Enneagram and Gilbert Durand’s Anthropolog...
Growth in cognitive complexity in the framework of adult ego development has shown to enable sophistication in mental-izing interpersonal emotions. This has implications for cultivating a more multidimensional God Image for spirituality in the Judeo-Christian tradition. The construct of mentalization will be used to understand the integration of th...
There are many theological themes that appear in the Old Testament in Israel’s relationship with Yahweh. These themes contain multiple emphases throughout different times in Israel’s history that can richly inform how the contemporary believer is to relate with God. At times though, these varied themes can seem to cross in opposition with one anoth...
Self-deception can be insightfully studied from both a biblical and Jungian psychoanalytic lens. This
article shows how both perspectives can significantly complement each other on this issue. It will be
argued that insights from psychoanalysis in the past century, particularly from a Jungian perspective,
have the potential to be integrated with Ch...