How to Talk about Spiritual Encounters

ISBN-13: 9783030452070 / Angielski / Twarda / 2020 / 327 str.

Peter J. Adams

Spis treści

Table of Contents:

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1 Introduction Café Capri

Chapter 2 Describing Encounters

Chapter 3. Trouble Talking

Chapter 4 Making It Happen?

Chapter 5 Collecting Specimens

Chapter 6 The Rhetorical Turn

Chapter 7 Big Devices, Little Devices

Chapter 8 Expressive Vagueness

Chapter 9 Provocative Gaps

Chapter 10 Gaps by Missing Content 

Chapter 11 Gaps by Grammatical Shifts

Chapter 12 Gaps by Metaphor

Chapter 13 Gaps by Marking

Chapter 14 Counting Exercises

Chapter 15 Are they Unique?

Chapter 16 God-Talk

Chapter 17 Reducing Reluctance

Chapter 18 Device Play

Chapter 19 Creating a Description 

Chapter 20 Practitioner Opportunities

Chapter 21 Fostering Gap Talk

Chapter 22 Postscript

Appendix 1

Appendix 2

Bibliography

Notes

O autorze

Peter J. Adams practiced for many years as a clinical psychologist working with adults facing mental health, addictions, violence and life-change issues. He is currently a professor of population health at the University of Auckland in New Zealand..

Blurb

This book develops a new and innovative way of understanding how language is used when people describe their spiritual and mystical encounters. Early chapters provide overviews of the nature of spiritual encounters, how commonly they occur, and the role of language. The book then develops a unique way of understanding the dynamics of talking about spirituality, using original research to supports this perspective. In particular, Peter J. Adams explores how this characteristically vague way of speaking can be viewed as an intentional and not an incidental aspect of such communications because certain types of vagueness have the capacity to engage the imaginative participation of receptive listeners. This expressive vagueness is achieved by embedding missing bits, or “gaps”, in the flow of what is described and these in turn provide sites for listeners to insert their own content. Later chapters focus on practical ways people (including helping professionals) can improve their skills in talking about their spiritual encounters. All content is situated in café conversations between four people each of whom is, in their own way, concerned with the challenges they face in converting the content of their encounters into words.