Item Detail
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33457
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0
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0
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English
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Religion and Mental Health: A Hermeneutic Reconsideration
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Relgion, Mental Health, and the Latter-day Saints
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Provo, UT
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BYU Religious Studies Center
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281-302
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"In this chapter, Professors Williams and Faulconer offer a serious critique of the modernist methodology that is generally utilized in social science research. In addition to their critique, they also provide what they have defined as a 'hermeneutical' alternative. Inasmuch as modernistic research assumes a cause and effect relationship between variables, Williams and Faulconer assert that this traditional assumption denies the possibility of human agency and morality. Instead of comprehending behavior as being elicited by environmental factors, caused by unconscious 'needs,' or being purely the product of body chemistry or genetics, Williams and Faulconer regard human behavior as an act of agency. They propose both religion and mental health not as variables, but as languages that give the individual perspective and meaning in the world." [Abstract from chapter]