The Art of Biblical Counseling

Under the heading, Consideration of a Tripartite Model of The Human:

There is more to the human mind than the spiritual dimension [which the author had been addressing]. Another dimension can be called the psyche (Doran, 1977, 1981, 1990  Lonergan, 1957, p. 456), which includes emotions, imagery, and memories whic cohere to form personality structures (Helminiak, 1992, 1996)… Differentiation of the psyche and the spirit within the human mind refines the standard model of the human, replacing the bipartite model–body and mind–with a tripartite model–organism (body), psyche, and spirit (Frankl, 1969/1988; Institute of Logotherapy, 1979; Lonergan, 1957, Vande Kempe, 1982). Although the term psych has a wide range of meanings, in this article psyche is a stabilizing dimension of the human mind. Its inclination is to sustain a comfortable homeostasis (Helminiak, 1996). In contrast, the human spirit is dynamic, open-ended, ever unfolding, ever transcending. It fosters transformation, and its ideal goal is to attain, through continued adjustment, in an ultimate coincidence of subjectivity and objectivity, unity with all that is.

The Art of Biblical Counseling: A Comprehensive Guide on How to Counsel Using Biblical Principles (2008: Xlibris Corporation), p. 491 (Kindle edition), by Forshaye Winbush, PhD.

Although Dr. Winbush documents this model of man through secular sources, his description of the trichotomous model of man in a Christian counseling context is welcome.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s