Interdisciplinary Book and Film Reviews

The Book: Couple Therapy:  A New Hope-Focused Approach By Jennifer S. Ripley  and  Everett L. Worthington Jr. Reviewed by Geoffrey W. Sutton My connection to Couple Therapy I’ve studied hope in Christian samples for several years and find it a powerful motivational dimension of human functioning. Level of hope predicts counseling outcomes. The contents of this book fit well with my view of couple counseling. Disclosure: I know both authors but I got my book from the Encounter Journal for purposes of writing a review. What’s Couple Therapy About? Couple Therapy is an approach to couple therapy grounded in the belief that a Christian’s faith in God leads to hope and that this combination of faith and hope can lead to loving relationships. The book is written for professional counselors, pastors, and lay counselors, but the authors also note that married couples may benefit from the principles and interventions covered in the

unclean Meditations on Purity,  Hospitality, and Mortality  By Richard Beck Reviewed by Geoffrey W. Sutton My connection to Unclean By the time I found the book Unclean, I had spent the better part of two years writing a book about moral psychology and Christianity ( A House Divided ). It just so happened that philosopher, Doug Olena who co-leads a group I attend, chose Unclean for our discussions and as is usual in our group, Doug asked for volunteers. I ended up with a couple of chapters but I quickly read the entire book and found a lot of overlap with the literature I had been reading on disgust psychology—that’s a good thing because it shows Beck was in touch with the research supporting his thesis. The hook “Imagine spitting into a Dixie cup. After doing so, how would you feel if you were asked to drink the contents of the cup? (p.1)” Beck opens with this classic example of disgust on page 1. It comes from experiments by “Dr. Disgu