Biography
Amanda Murjan, PhD, is a theologian and researcher with specialist interests in psychology. Her doctoral and postdoctoral research focused on the intersection of theology and psychology — particularly on suffering, positive emotions, and human flourishing. She holds an undergraduate degree in Psychology and a Master’s in Philosophical Theology.
Before entering academia, Amanda worked for eight years as a Substance Misuse Practitioner in the Criminal Justice System, holding BACP certificates in counselling and training in cognitive behavioural techniques, including motivational interviewing and brief solution-focused therapy. She worked with clients with drug and alcohol dependencies across prison and probation services.
She is currently a freelance researcher into human flourishing through religion, spirituality, and psychology.
Amanda has lived experience of clinical anxiety. Her recovery — spanning years of academic study, personal practice, and deep meditation — forms the experiential foundation of her work.
The Approach
A psychospiritual approach works with the whole person — body, mind, and spirit — on the understanding that these are not separate systems but dimensions of a single, integrated being. It draws on the insights of depth psychology, consciousness studies, and contemplative wisdom traditions, bringing them into dialogue with one another rather than applying any single framework in isolation.
Where psychological approaches work primarily with thought, behaviour, and emotional experience, a psychospiritual approach goes further — to the underlying spiritual and energetic structures of identity, perception, and belief that shape everything else. It recognises that the most profound and sustained transformation occurs not at the level of symptoms or strategies, but at the level of being itself: the ground from which all experience arises.
This is not therapy. It is a developmental path — for those who are curious and ready to understand themselves at greater depth.