A GoodTherapy.org Featured Column written by John Rhead, Ph.D.

Click here to contact John and/or see his GoodTherapy.org Profile

Welcome to this column. I hope it will be interesting and valuable to those who read it, and to me as I write it.

Why “integrating” psychotherapy and spirituality? This question seems silly to many people for one of two reasons. Some would say it is silly because the two must necessarily be kept separate, like church and state. Others would say it is silly because they are inherently intertwined and don’t require any effort on our part to be integrated.

I am inclined toward the view that the two are inherently intertwined, but believe that they have been artificially separated by psychology, the discipline that most clearly undergirds most of what we practice in psychotherapy, in its zeal to be scientific. Freud’s disdain for religion didn’t help either. Of course there have always been those, like Carl Jung, who have kept alive the perspective that psychology and psychotherapy have an intrinsic relationship to spirituality. However, this perspective has only moved toward widespread acceptance among psychotherapists in the last few decades, thanks in part to the Journal of Humanistic Psychology, and the Journal of Transpersonal Psychology. Such acceptance in mainstream psychology, as reflected in the American Psychological Association, has only been noticeable in the last few years.

So this column will seek to midwife the rebirthing of the awareness of the inherent interconnectedness between psychotherapy and spirituality. Our attitude will be one of seeking to support a process that is already taking place quite naturally, rather than trying to force or create something new.

We will assume that psychotherapy does more than correct psychopathologies of individuals. We will regard psychotherapy as something that facilitates the client’s emotional and spiritual growth, and will assume that such growth in the client will in some way reverberate positively in the culture in which he or she is embedded. Hopefully this column can facilitate our own emotional and spiritual growth, thereby making us more effective in doing the same for our clients and our species.

Stay tuned.

©Copyright 2007 John Rhead, Ph.D. All Rights Reserved. Permission to publish granted to GoodTherapy.org. The following article was solely written and edited by the author named above. The views and opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by GoodTherapy.org. Questions or concerns about the following article can be directed to the author or posted as a comment to this blog entry. Click here to contact John and/or see his GoodTherapy.org Profile