About the Center
Dr. Piedmont received his Ph.D. in Personality Psychology from Boston University. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the National Institute on Aging, where he was trained in taxonomic models of personality and their relevance for understanding mental and physical outcomes. Dr. Piedmont was a full professor in the Department of Pastoral Counseling at Loyola University Maryland and is now the Managing Director of the Center for Professional Studies. His current research interests focus on the measurement of Spiritual Transcendence, a construct that represents a broad, nondenominational, motivational measure of spirituality. He has demonstrated the predictive value of this construct in both normal and clinical contexts, using both American and cross-cultural samples. Dr. Piedmont is extensively published in the scientific literature and is on the editorial boards for Measurement and Evaluation in Counseling and Development, Assessment, and Journal of Personality Assessment. He was the founding editor of the new APA journal, Psychology of Religion and Spirituality. He is a fellow of the American Psychological Association and a member of the American Counseling Association (ACA). He is also very much involved in Division 36, the Society for the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality for the APA and ACA’s Association for Spiritual, Ethical, and Religious Values in Counseling.
Selected Publications:
Piedmont, R. L., & Wilkins, T. A. (2020). Understanding the psychological soul of spirituality: A guidebook for research and practice. New York, NY: Routledge.
Piedmont, R. L., Fox, J., & Toscano, M. E. (2020). Spiritual crisis as a unique predictor of emotional and characterological impairment in atheists and agnostics: Numinous motivations as universal psychological qualities. Religions. https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/11/11/551/pdf
Fox, J., & Piedmont, R. L. (2020). Religious crisis as an independent causal predictor of psychological distress: Understanding the unique role of the numinous for intrapsychic functioning. Religions, 11. doi:10.3390/rel11070329
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Mission Statement
The Center for Professional Studies (CFPS) is dedicated to supporting the development of innovative technologies for clinical work and actively seeks to disseminate new knowledge surrounding the social science’s efforts at understanding people and effectively intervening in their lives. To accomplish this, the Center is active in supporting cutting edge research in clinical assessment and related applications. It leverages this interest by conducting clinical training seminars, consultative support to organizations through its program evaluation efforts, and offering clinical professionals access to the latest assessment tools in the field. The Center’s goal is to advance the scientific agenda of the social sciences by offering comprehensive conceptual and empirical models of human psychological functioning that promotes insight, supports effective assessment, and provides a foundation for the development in clinical techniques that can not only resolve clients’ issues surrounding psychosocial adaptation, but also encourage personal transformation and ultimate flourishing.
Founded in 2018, the Center for Professional Studies was tasked with the goal of enhancing the social sciences through the conduct and dissemination of cutting-edge research aimed at expanding the social science’s understanding of human functioning. The core of this effort centered on research examining the numinous, a new domain of constructs that capture those essential psychological qualities that define the human species. The numinous is a foundational aspect of our mental lives that seeks to create an ultimate senses of sense, direction, and personal integrity. The numinous represents psychological qualities very distinct from those commonly employed in the field.
Based on the work of Ralph L. Piedmont, Ph.D., the Center aims to disseminate the conceptual and empirical utility of the numinous and its important role in helping individuals find ultimate value for their lives. As a result, the Center offers clinicians and researchers access to well-developed, psychometrically useful tools that capture aspects of the numinous that are interpretively useful and of practical value.
The Center also provides innovative strategies for clinician’s to use in managing more complex psychological dynamics, such as couples and marital satisfaction, personality disorders, and systematic clinical assessment. The Center also offers training in the use of its models, methods, and measures in an effort to enhance clinicians’ therapeutic tool belt.
The Center is also involved in program evaluation research, helping organizations better understand the effect of their services on their consumers. Of special interest are organizations that provide services to marginalized communities and educational institutions, and to provide affordable services that can help improve their efficacy and to develop the fullness of their own missions.