Raymond Paloutzian, Ph.D.
Raymond F. Paloutzian, Ph.D., is a national and international expert in the psychology of religion and spirituality. He received his doctoral degree in 1972 from Claremont Graduate School and has been a professor of experimental and social psychology at Westmont College, Santa Barbara, California since 1981. He has been a visiting professor teaching psychology of religion at Stanford University, and Guest Professor, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium. He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association (divisions of general, teaching, social issues, psychology of religion, and international), the American Psychological Society, and the Western Psychological Association, and has served as President of APA Division 36 (Psychology of Religion and Spirituality). The Division honored him with the 2005 Virginia Sexton Mentoring Award for contributing to the development of other scholars in the field. His wrote Invitation to the Psychology of Religion, 2nd ed., (Allyn & Bacon, 1996, 3rd ed. forthcoming) and was editor with co-editor Crystal Park of The Handbook of the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality (Guilford, pub. July 2005). He is currently writing chapters on religion and spirituality for handbooks by Oxford University Press and Blackwell Publishers. His current research focuses on religiously motivated child abuse and medical neglect and on a systematic review of the literature on spiritual well-being. Dr. Paloutzian is editor of The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion.
