Contemplative Prayer and Psychotherapy

This article discusses what contemplative prayer is and how it may inform psychotherapy more broadly. It presents a psychological ontology of contemplative prayer, originating within primary sources of the Desert Fathers and extending throughout the centuries to the present through contemplative guides across religious orders. This ontology is presented as a way in which people are changed so that they view their lives from the perspective of infinitude. Perceiving that their lives are caught up into an eternal timeline that extends beyond their particular life-span, they are freed from existential dread and emboldened in and through the instillation of hope.