Braided Selves: Collected Essays on Multiplicity, God, and Persons

What if we are more multiple as persons than traditional psychology has taught us to believe? And what if our multiplicity is a part of how we are made in the very image of a loving, relational, multiple God? How have modern, Western notions of Oneness caused harm-to both individuals and society? And how can an appreciation of our multiplicity help liberate the voices of those who live at the margins, both of society and within our own complex selves? Braided Selves explores these questions from the perspectives of postmodern pastoral psychology and Trinitarian theology, with implications for the practice of spiritual care, counseling, and psychotherapy. This volume gathers ten years of essays on this theme by preeminent pastoral theologian Pamela Cooper-White, whose writings bring into dialogue postmodern, feminist, and psychoanalytic theory and constructive theology.

Pamela Cooper-White is the Ben G. and Nancye Clapp Gautier Professor of Pastoral Theology, Care, and Counseling at Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, Georgia, and Director of the Atlanta Theological Association's ThD program in Pastoral Counseling. In 2005 she received the American Association of Pastoral Counselors' national award for Distinguished Achievement in Research and Writing. Cooper-White holds PhDs from Harvard University and from the Institute for Clinical Social Work in Chicago. She is the author of Many Voices: Pastoral Psychotherapy and Theology in Relational Perspective (2007), Shared Wisdom: Use of the Self in Pastoral Care and Counseling (2004), and The Cry of Tamar: Violence against Women and the Church's Response (1995).