Dupree

Grace and Psychotherapy: The Relationship of Progress in Psychotherapy to Clients’ Understanding of Enacted Grace

Kelsey Dupree

Abstract

Grace is a burgeoning topic of research within the Christian psychological research community. The doctrine of grace is foundational to Christian faith, and as such ought to have a weighty place within Christian counseling. The term “grace” gives Christian counselors a language to use in communicating the psychological ideas of coping skills, psychological resilience, and non-judgmental acceptance with Christian clients There have been a few studies to date which have studied the construct of grace, determining whether grace is a needed research area, creating scales which measure grace, and defining the parameters of this construct. This study intends to build upon this previous research and answer the question of whether enacted grace (as measured by the Richmont Grace Scale, RGS) is a construct which changes over time, in correlation with a broad construct of mental health (Personality Assessment Screener, PAS). Likely due to a limited number of participants, the findings of this study were not significant, but there does seem to be a trend towards participants having a more robust view of grace over the course of 12 counseling sessions. Further research in this area seems warranted.

Keywords: grace, Christian counseling, therapy, mental health, counseling outcomes