SACRED HEALING OF MARRIAGE: Does Prayer Make A Difference?

by Timothy A Heck

Overview

Marriage as an institution in contemporary culture is in a state of distress. A significant challenge for the marriage clinician is effecting positive change on the level of satisfaction perceived and experienced in the relationship. Other research has demonstrated the effectiveness of prayer as a medium for cognitive change toward optimism and increased health, both emotional and physical. This study explores the effect of specific spousal prayer in the lives of Catholic and Protestant Christian married couples on their level of marital satisfaction by using a nonrandomized control group pretest-posttest design. Dr. Timothy Heck has a keen interest in matters of faith and spirituality. As a licensed marriage and family therapist with over thirty years experience in the field working with troubled marriages, he has drawn heavily from the strongest empirically-supported-treatments (EST), while also integrating the spiritual practice of prayer for his client couples. In this research study he attempts to build support for the position that regular prayer can make a strong and positive difference in a couple's relationship. People of faith have always believed in the power of prayer. Now there is a growing body of research that supports that belief. Learn more about those studies and find out if prayer can make a difference in your marriage.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780578426068
Publisher:	Leitourgia Press
Publication date:	11/29/2018
Pages:	236
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Dr. Timothy Heck is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist with over thirty years experience in the counseling field. Through his work as clinician, researcher, professor and author, he brings together research and faith in the tradition of St. Thomas Aquinas, always trusting that God is personally involved in the struggles of our lives.

Table of Contents

Contents

Introduction to the Problem.. 6

Background of the Study. 9

Statement of the Problem.. 10

Purpose of the Study. 13

Rationale 15

Research Questions and Hypotheses 17

Significance of the Study. 20

Definition of Terms 22

Assumptions and Limitations 24

Nature of the Study. 26

Design of the Study. 27

Literature Review.. 29

The Gottman Model 36

The PREP Model 52

Behavioral Marital Therapy. 63

Summary Comments on Marital Therapy. 71

Religion, Theology, Spirituality. 73

and Psychotherapy. 73

Background Studies on Integration. 78

of Religion and Healthcare 78

Integration Models Found in the Literature. 79

Ethical Issues and Concerns in. 91

Faith-Based Counseling and Research. 91

Empirical Research in Support of Integration. 94

Prayer as a Treatment Intervention. 98

Prayer as a Cognitive Psychological Intervention. 101

Types of Prayer and a Rationale for Scripted Prayers as a Marital Intervention 108

Conclusion. 111

Methodology Research Design. 114

Description of the Intervention. 116

and the Control Group. 116

Sampling. 122

Instrumentation (DAS) 127

Data Collection Procedures 132

Data Collection and Analysis 136

Preliminary Analyses 151

Hypotheses 164

Exploratory Analyses 171

Results, Conclusions and Recommendations. 176

Results of the Research. 177

Limitations 188

Conclusion. 190

Recommendations for Future Research. 191

References 196

Appendix A. 246

Appendix B. 247

An Experiment in Marital Satisfaction. 247

Appendix C. 250

Appendix D. 251