For decades, psychologists have been interested in the question whether, and how, religious and spiritual behavior, in terms of beliefs, attitudes, practices, and belonging, could be scientifically studied and assessed in terms of their relative good, or ill, for human well-being. This article considers contributions of religious commitment and spiritual practice to well-being and cognitivedevelopmental theoretical models and related bodies of empirical and clinical research regarding religious and spiritual development across the life cycle, with particular attention to questions related to positive adult development.

The narrative approach to the study of moral development is based on central theoretical assumptions about self that are described in this article. Careful attention to narrative yields an approach in which language plays a much larger role in structuring moral life, generating moral experience, and shaping a far more social kind of self than assumed by the cognitive-developmental approach. The narrative approach entails a move away from a paradigm of cognitive representations and internally held principles, in which the self is regarded as a disembodied, transcendental, epistemic subject, toward a paradigm of social construction and intersubjectively possible forms of discourse, in which selves are assumed to be embodied, relational, and thus fundamentally dialogical.

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It has been recently demonstrated that mindfulness-based intervention may be particularly suitable for addressing sexual difficulties in women. Although the FiveFacet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ) is currently one of the most widely used scales to assess mindfulness, no adaptation and validation of the FFMQ to measure female sexual functioning has been published. The main aim of this study was to develop and validate a sexual version of the Five Facets Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ-S) to specifically measure mindfulness in the context of sexual encounters. A total of 251 healthy, French-speaking female volunteers were administered the FFMQ-S, the original FFMQ, and the Female Sexual Distress Scale (FSDS-R). Confirmatory factor analyses indicated that the FFMQ-S exhibits a five-factor model, as implied by the original FFMQ. Good scale reliability was observed. The FFMQ-S showed significant correlations with the FSDS-R and the usual FFMQ. Scores on the FFMQ-S correlated significa... It has been recently demonstrated that mindfulness-based intervention may be particularly suitable for addressing sexual difficulties in women. Although the Five-Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ) is currently one of the most widely used scales to assess mindfulness, no adaptation and validation of the FFMQ to measure female sexual functioning has been published. The main aim of this study was to develop and validate a sexual version of the Five Facets Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ-S) to specifically measure mindfulness in the context of sexual encounters. A total of 251 healthy, French-speaking female volunteers were administered the FFMQ-S, the original FFMQ, and the Female Sexual Distress Scale (FSDS-R). Confirmatory factor analyses indicated that the FFMQ-S exhibits a five-factor model, as implied by the original FFMQ. Good scale reliability was observed. The FFMQ-S showed significant correlations with the FSDS-R and the usual FFMQ. Scores on the FFMQ-S correlated significantly more negatively with the total FSDS-R score than with the total score of the original version of the FFMQ. These findings clearly support the relevance of developing a version of the FFMQ tailored to sexual functioning.

Throughout the history of psychology, scholars and practitioners have sought to understand religious/spiritual (R/S) development and its intersections with well-being. Several models of R/S development have been proposed, but they have neither been well-integrated with each other nor studied and applied broadly in the field of positive psychology. This chapter’s purpose is to draw on existing longitudinal research on R/S development to propose an integrative theory that can guide developmental science and practice on religion, spirituality, and positive psychology. This Positive Religious and Spiritual Development (PRSD) theory posits that people’s religiousness/spirituality (a) is motivated by goals designed to meet psychological needs (e.g., for acceptance, predictability, and competence); (b) consists of mental/neural representations (stored beliefs, emotions, action tendencies, and physiological responses) and R/S habits that develop and change through relational experiences at the micro-, meso-, and macrolevels; (c) is influenced by numerous contextual factors (e.g., age, sex/gender, culture, and faith tradition), including personal and sociocultural assets and liabilities (risk and resilience factors); and (d) interacts bidirectionally with people’s holistic well-being via psychological, social, behavioral, and physical pathways. We offer illustrative examples of PRSD theory, highlight some of its caveats and limitations, and discuss its applications for clinical practice and religious ministry.

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