The second event of the fourth series of online lectures “Time for Action” organized by the Volos Academy for Theological Studies will take place on Wednesday, February 21, 2024, at 7:00 pm (Athens time).
The speaker will be Rev. Dr. Vassileios Thermos, Professor of Pastoral Care at the Supreme Ecclesiastical Academy of Athens and Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist. The topic of the lecture will be “Violence: Individual phenomenon or psychopathology of the society?” The lecture will be given in Greek, and the discussion will be moderated by Dr. Ioanna Georgiadou, Special Educator, systemic psychotherapist and supervisor of the Treatment and Education Center “Poreia Ygeias”. The link for attending via the Zoom platform is https://us06web.zoom.us/j/83122961669.
The lecture will examine the forms of violence, as well as the psychopathological, social and cultural causes behind its recent increase. It will attempt to distinguish types of violence according to their psychological motivation: violence as a “solution” to identity problems, violence as use of the other, violence as a developmental stagnation, violence as a kind of a spell against pain and inferiority, and finally violence as an androcentric attitude. It will conclude with proposals for action, while there will also be short theological references.
Archpriest Vasilios Thermos is a child and adolescent psychiatrist. He holds a PhD from the Faculty of Theology of the University of Athens. He is currently a Professor at the Supreme Ecclesiastical Academy of Athens. He received training as a Visiting Scholar at Harvard University, Boston University, Boston College, and Texas University. His work has been the topic of postgraduate theses at the Theological School of the University of Balamand in Lebanon (which was published in English by the Peter Lang publishing house) and at the Theological School of the University of Vienna. He has conducted and published the first Orthodox research on the psychosomatic health of priests and their spouses. Having dealt particularly with issues of sexual orientation and gender, he is frequently invited as a lecturer by church and secular organizations in Europe and in the USA. In 2018, he received the prize for writing a study on the relationship between spirituality and mental health, in a related competition of the Swiss Jean-Marc Fischer Foundation. Since 2019, he has been collaborating with the National Research Foundation on the relationship between Psychoanalysis and Orthodoxy in the context of the “Science in the Orthodox World” program. He works in clergy and executives training of the Orthodox Church (Greece, USA, Finland), while he also taught for 12 years at the Theological Academy of the Orthodox Church of Albania. He was ordained in 1986 and since then he has been ministering in the Metropolis of Thebes and Levadeia. His books and articles have been translated into English, French, Russian, Serbian, Romanian, Bulgarian, Spanish, and Finnish. Since 2011, he has been the publishing director of the magazine “Psikhis dromoi” (Ways of the Soul). He has also published four books of poetry in Greek and one in English.
