Interdisciplinary Book and Film Reviews

Lay Counseling is a handbook for paraprofessional services. Although the focus is on Christian counseling, the book is important for all clinicians. In this post I review some key features of the book. Lay Counseling is the kind of book that anyone who works in the field of mental health should consider because it provides current information about the counselors, programs, and services that are part of a support network beyond the world of licensed providers. The book offers an explicitly Christian approach to mental health services. The reason it should be read by those outside the Christian community is because Christianity is the world's largest religion and many Christians who seek counseling wish to see a Christian provider. Since many providers are not licensed mental health providers, it is important to understand who is doing what when it comes to this large informal network of paraprofessionals. _______________________________________________ LAY COUNSELING

“The tribal differences that erupt into public controversy typically concern sex (e.g., gay marriage, gays in the military, the sex lives of public officials) and death at the margins of life (e.g., abortion, physician-assisted suicide, the use of embryonic stem cells in research). That such issues are moral issues is surely not arbitrary. Sex and death are the gas pedals and brakes of tribal growth. ... What’s less clear is why different tribes hold different views about sex, life, and death, and why some tribes are more willing than others to impose their views on outsiders (11).” —Joshua Greene ***** MORAL TRIBES: EMOTION, REASON, AND THE GAP BETWEEN US AND THEM by Joshua Greene, New York: Penguin Press, 2013, pp. 422. ISBN: 978-1-101-63867-5 Reviewed by Geoffrey W. Sutton, Springfield, MO ***** I read Greene’s Moral Tribes in 2014. That book along with Haidt’s The Righteous Mind and moral controversies in politics in religion over same-sex marriage, prom