Hetty Zock

University of Groningen | RUG · Department of Comparative and Historical Study of Religion

The expression of attachment to the divine in certain places among different groups has been documented by anthropologists and sociologists for decades. However, the psychological processes by which this happens are not yet fully understood. This paper focuses on the concept of “place spirituality” (PS) as a psychological mechanism which allows the...

Health care chaplains participated in a multicenter trial to explore an implementation strategy for the Dutch multidisciplinary guideline for spiritual care. The intervention was concise spiritual care training for hospital staff of departments where patients in curative and palliative trajectories are treated. Data were collected in semistructured...

Objectives: Patients value health-care professionals' attention to their spiritual needs. However, this is undervalued in health-care professionals' education. Additional training is essential for implementation of a national multidisciplinary guideline on spiritual care (SC) in palliative care (PC). Aim of this study is to measure effects of a tr...

Background: Spiritual care is reported to be important to palliative patients. There is an increasing need for education in spiritual care. Aim: To measure the effects of a specific spiritual care training on patients' reports of their perceived care and treatment. Design: A pragmatic controlled trial conducted between February 2014 and March...

Background: In the Netherlands, the spiritual dimension in healthcare became marginal in the second part of the twentieth century. In the Dutch healthcare system , palliative care is not a medical specialization and teaching hospitals do not have specialist palliative care units with specialized palliative care teams. Palliative care in these hospi...

The associations between personality pathology according to DSM-IV, symptomatology and God image were examined among a group of 46 psychiatric patients. Features of personality disorders were assessed using the 'Questionnaire to Assess Personality Pathology', a self-report screener. God image was measured by means of the 'Questionnaire God Image'....

De auteurs nemen de onderbouwing van narratieve methodes in pastoraat en geestelijke verzorging onder de loep: vindt zij haar oorsprong in de christelijke traditie of in de postmoderne theorievorming? Ze bekijken de consequenties voor de definiëring van pastoraat en geestelijke verzorging, bijvoorbeeld in het handboek ‘Zorg voor het verhaal’ van Ga...

This article presents the Dutch Questionnaire God Image (QGI), which has two theory-based dimensions: feelings towards God and perceptions of God's actions. This instrument was validated among a sample of 804 respondents, of which 244 persons received psychotherapy. Results showed relationships between the affective and cognitive aspect of the God...

The professional identity of the chaplain in Dutch health care institutions is in need of a new theoretical underpinning. The continued employment of the "spiritual caregiver," as the professional is called in the Netherlands, may be at stake. In former days, she or he was primarily a religious office holder fulfilling ecclesiastical functions. Aga...

This article discusses the common ground between psychological and spiritual care. In the Dutch secularized context, the spiritual caregiver (who was formerly first of all a cleric) is gradually turning into a healthcare professional: an existential counsellor, focusing on the search for meaning and life-orientation of all clients, irrespective of...

This article discusses the common ground between psychological and spiritual care. In the Dutch secularized context, the spiritual caregiver (who was formerly first of all a cleric) is gradually turning into a healthcare professional: an existential counsellor, focusing on the search for meaning and life-orientation of all clients, irrespective of...

This article focuses on the difference between the personal God image and the God image that people perceive as normative, that is to say, the God image they believe they should have according to religious culture. A sample of 544 Dutch respondents, of which 244 received psychotherapy, completed the Dutch Questionnaire of God Images (QGI). In gener...

What role does art play in the life of contemporary, secularized people who are looking for existential and spiritual meaning? This was the leading question in our empirical research on the opera “Dialogues of the Carmelites” by the French composer, Francis Poulenc. First, we will sketch the philosophical debate about the relationship between relig...

By examining the case of a death ritual in a Surinam-Hindu community in the Netherlands, the authors want to demonstrate the usefulness of object-relations theory in the study of religion. Because it focuses on the dynamic interaction between individual and culture, this psychological theory embraces a truly cultural-psychological approach. D.W. Wi...

This article discusses the complex relationship between anxiety and religion in identity formation by analysing an intense, contemporary opera, the Dialogues des Carmélites by the French composer Francis Poulenc. The theoretical framework for our discussion was adopted from what is currently called relational psychoanalysis - and more specifically,...

It is not by coincidence that the key figures in the psychology of religion - William James, Rudolf Otto, Carl Jung, and Erik Erikson - each fought a lifelong battle with melancholia, argues Donald Capps in this engrossing book. These four men experienced similar traumas in early childhood: each perceived a loss of mother's unconditional love. In t...

E. H. Erikson's theory of sexual modes is situated in recent gender research in the psychology of religion. Erikson distinguished two bodily modes of activity, called masculine and feminine because they are linked with male and female procreative organs. Yet both modes are available to men and women. As becomes clear in Young Man Luther (Erikson,...