Agnes Mary White Sanford (1897-1982) is considered to be one of the principal founders of the Inner Healing Movement. She was the daughter of a Presbyterian missionary in China and the wife of the Episcopal priest Edgar L. Sanford. Her first book, The Healing Light, is often considered a classic in its field. Sanford was the mother of John A. Sanford (died 2005), the Jungian analyst and author.

Sanford was a key figure in the Charismatic Movement in the United States during the 1960s through to about 1980, mainly through her writing. Her books include an autobiography titled Sealed Orders.

[edit] Education

Sanford attended Peace College, which was at that time a two-year college. Subsequently she applied to Agnes Scott, but did not meet all of their requirements and was admitted as a non-degree (or "special" student) in the class of 1919. She studied there for two years.

[edit] Books

Let's Believe: Harper & Row, 1954

The Second Mrs. Wu: Arthur James, 1966

Healing Gifts of the Spirit: J. B. Lippincott, 1966

The Rising River: Lippincott, 1968

The Healing Power of the Bible: J. B. Lippincott, 1969

Lost Shepherd: Logos International, 1971

Sealed Orders: The Autobiography of a Christian Mystic. Bridge Logos Pub, 1972

Route 1: Logos International, 1975

Healing Light: Ballantine Books, 1983

Oh, Watchman: Trinity Chptr. International, 1978

Behold Your God: Macalester Park Publishing, 1979

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• The Healing Light website

Robert Epstein Ph.D. (born June 19, 1953) is an American psychologist, professor, author, and journalist. He earned his Ph.D. in psychology at Harvard University in 1981, was editor in chief of Psychology Today, a visiting scholar at the University of California, San Diego, and the founder and director emeritus of the Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies in Concord, MA.^[1]

Epstein has been a commentator for National Public Radio's Marketplace, the Voice of America, and Disney Online. His popular writings have appeared in Reader’s Digest, The Washington Post, The Sunday Times (London), Good Housekeeping, Parenting, and other magazines and newspapers. An autobiographical essay documenting his long involvement with the media was published in 2006 in the academic journal Perspectives on Psychological Science.^[2]

In various writings, Epstein has been a strong advocate of the view that people can deliberately learn to love each other. He studied arranged marriages and found that in many of them the partners developed greater feelings of affection for each other than did couples who had married for love.^[3] In 2002 he published a study in which he said that many couples marry for other reasons than love, and develop love in their relationships over time.^[4] He gave students in one of his classes at University of California, San Diego extra credit for taking part in affection building exercises.^[5] At one time he used himself as an experimental subject to investigate this.^[6]

Epstein collected data from over 18,000 people via the Internet for a study on sexual orientation published in 2007. He found a continum between heterosexuality and homosexuality that is skewered by societal influences.^[7] He also found that some people changed their orientation during their lives.^[1]

Epstein has studied psychological maturity and published an online maturity test. He has said that some teenagers are more mature in some ways than most adults and has advocated giving young people more adult responsibility.^[8][9]

In 2012, Epstein publicly disputed with Google Search over a security warning placed on links to his website.^[10] His website, which features mental health screening tests, was blocked for serving malware that could infect visitors to the site. Epstein emailed "Larry Page, Google's chief executive; David Drummond, Google’s legal counsel; Dr. Epstein's congressman; and journalists from The New York Times, The Washington Post, Wired, and Newsweek."^[10] In it, Epstein threatened legal action if the warning concerning his website was not removed, and denied that any problems with his website existed.^[10] Several weeks later, Epstein admitted his website had been hacked, but still blamed Google for tarnishing his name and not helping him find the infection.^[11]

[edit] Books

• Teen 2.0: Saving Our Children and Families from the Torment of Adolescence ISBN 1884995594
• The Big Book of Motivation Games (with Jessica Rogers) ISBN 0071372342
• The Big Book of Stress-Relief Games ISBN 0070218668
• The Big Book of Creativity Games ISBN 0071361766
• Creativity Games for Trainers ISBN 0070213631
• Stress-Management and Relaxation Activities for Trainers ISBN 0070217629
• Cognition, Creativity, and Behavior: Selected Essays ISBN 0275944522
• The New Psychology Today Reader ISBN 078725617X
• Pure Fitness: Body Meets Mind (with Lori Fetrick) ISBN 1570280878
• Self-Help Without the Hype ISBN 0937100005
• Irrelativity ISBN 1884470130
• Notebooks: B. F. Skinner (editor) ISBN 0136241069
• Skinner for the Classroom (editor) ISBN 0878222618
• The Case Against Adolescence: Rediscovering the Adult in Every Teen ISBN 0787987379
• Parsing the Turing Test: Philosophical and Methodological Issues in the Quest for the Thinking Computer (co-editor) ISBN 9781402067082

[edit] Notes

[edit] External links

• Official website
• "How About One Day of Peace?"
• "The Myth of the Teen Brain"
• "Giving Psychology Away"
• "Editor as Guinea Pig"
• "Generativity Theory"
• "Insight" in the Pigeon, Nature 1984

This article's citation style may be unclear. The references used may be made clearer with a different or consistent style of citation, footnoting, or external linking. (September 2011)

Agnes of God is a play by John Pielmeier which tells the story of a novice nun who gives birth and insists that the dead child was the result of a virgin conception. A psychiatrist and the mother superior of the convent clash during the resulting investigation. The title is a pun on the Latin phrase Agnus Dei (Lamb of God).

The play was adapted for a movie in 1985, starring Jane Fonda, Anne Bancroft and Meg Tilly.

The stage play contains a great deal more dialogue than the film and relies solely on the three main characters: Martha, the Psychiatrist; the Mother Superior; and Agnes, the Novice. There are no other characters on stage.

All three roles are considered demanding for the actors playing them.^[1] Martha covers the full gamut of emotion during the play, from nurturer to antagonist, from hard nosed court psychiatrist and atheist to faith-searching healer. She is always on stage and has only three small respites from monologues or dialogue while Agnes and the Mother Superior enact flashbacks to events at the convent.

The Mother Superior must expound the possibilities of miracles while recognizing the realities of today's world, of which she is painfully aware. Agnes is a beautiful but tormented soul whose abusive upbringing has affected her ability to think rationally.

The play has enjoyed a revival among Catholic women's groups, who believe it examines important moral and spiritual issues that Catholic women must face.^{[citation needed]} The issues raised by the real-life incident are just as compelling, though less dramatic.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Plot

Pielmeier's plot features Sister Agnes, a young and ignorant novice of French ethnicity, molested by her mother as a child, who sings in an ethereal voice and was impregnated by an unknown entity, which makes for much of the mystery of the drama. The psychiatrist Martha Livingston interrogates her and narrates the story.

[edit] Background

A few years before the play was written, a similar incident occurred in a convent in Brighton, New York, just outside the city line of Rochester.

Sister Maureen Murphy, a thirty-six year old Montessori teacher, was found bleeding in her room by the other sisters of the convent when she did not come down for meals.

Sister Maureen denied she had given birth; when examined by medical staff, she said she couldn't remember being pregnant. She had covered up the pregnancy by wearing the traditional nun's habit. The baby was found dead in her small convent room in a waste basket, asphyxiated.

The police found ticket stubs and other information in the nun's convent room indicating that precisely nine months earlier she had traveled out of state to an educational conference. During the trial, the father of the baby was never named. It was never suggested that the nun had been raped by a priest.^[2]

At her trial, Sister Maureen waived her right to a jury, and Judge Hyman Maas, a Jew, presided. There was a great deal of controversy about whether a Jewish judge would give a Catholic nun a fair trial. The trial was over in ten days, and Maas found the nun not guilty of all charges by reason of insanity in March 1977. It was reported in several newspapers on March 4, 1977.^[3]

The convent where the murder occurred is adjacent to the still-functioning suburban parish and school. The convent is used to house University of Rochester graduate students. The girl's high school, St. Agnes, where some of the nuns taught, is closed.

[edit] Original Broadway Production

The play opened on Broadway March 30, 1982 at the Music Box Theatre. The original cast was Elizabeth Ashley as Dr. Livingstone, Geraldine Page as Mother Miriam Ruth and Amanda Plummer as Agnes. Plummer received the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play and Page was nominated for Best Actress in a Play. During the run, Elizabeth Ashley was succeeded in her role by Diahann Carroll and Amanda Plummer by Mia Dillon, Carrie Fisher and Maryann Plunkett.

Lee Remick played the psychiatrist in the show's pre-Broadway run in Boston and was advertised for the New York run but left the show prior to the New York opening.

[edit] Other Productions

The National Tour starred Ashley and Mercedes McCambridge. There was also a summer stock production starring Sandy Dennis, Peggy Cass and Susan Strasberg; and a London production starring Susannah York and Honor Blackman.

[edit] References

[edit] Additional References

• Keegan Theatre
• Agnes of God, ISBN 978-0-573-63022-4
• People of N.Y. Vs. Sister Maureen
• Schenectady Gazette March 4, 1977
• Bangor Daily News - March 4, 1977
• Tri-City Herald March 4, 1977
• Sarasota Herald-Tribune March 2, 1977