RELATIONS BETWEEN GOD-IMAGES AND EARLY MALADAPTIVE SCHEMAS

Our God image not only determines the nature of our relationship with God, it also influences our personality, actions, selfconcept, mindset and social relations. It acts within and through us. Although everyone has a God image - regardless of whether one is a believer or not - same congregation give accounts of diverse God images. Schema is a widely used term in psychology. Schemas describe cognitive structures that filter, encode and interpret the stimuli affecting the person. They can influence the perception of reality, which later impacts the behavior and mood of the individual and in severe cases can result in pathology. The factors influencing the God image and early maladaptive schemas both have proven roots in early childhood and are impacted by the child-parent relationship. Our research focuses on examining the connection between maladaptive schemas and the God image and their relation to parental influence