The Psychology of Religion and Spirituality for Clinicians

Using Research in Your Practice

Jamie Aten, Kari O'Grady, Everett Worthington, Jr.

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781135224363
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Clinical Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Many therapists and counselors find themselves struggling to connect the research on the psychology of religion and spirituality to their clinical practice. This book will address this issue, providing a valuable resource for clinicians that will help translate basic research findings into useful clinical practice strategies. The editors and chapter authors, all talented and respected scholar-clinicians, offer a practical and functional understanding of the empirical literature on the psychology of religion and spirituality of, while at the same time outlining clinical implications, assessments, and strategies for counseling and psychotherapy. Chapters cover such topics as religious and spiritual identity, its development, and its relationship with one's personality; client God images; spiritually transcendent experiences; forgiveness and reconciliation; and religion and spirituality in couples and families. Each concludes with clinical application questions and suggestions for further reading. This book is a must-read for all those wishing to ground their clinical work in an empirical understanding of the role that religion and spirituality plays in the lives of their clients.

1

The Psychology of Religion and Spirituality for Clinicians

An Introduction

JAMIE D. ATEN, KARI A. O’GRADY, AND EVERETT L. WORTHINGTON, JR.

Perhaps you have a number of clients who are explicitly religious. Perhaps these clients even want you to deal with religious issues. Or maybe you have a number of clients who report not being religious, but they keep bringing up spiritual themes. Even if you are religious or spiritual in your personal orientation, you might find it daunting to deal with these overtly religious clients, or clients exploring spiritual issues, who might have many different beliefs, values, and practices from your own. You might think of turning to a good book on the psychology of religion and spirituality to supplement your knowledge and equip you to deal with religious issues you are not informed or certain about. But, as you heft the books or peruse an online store, you think, “It’s just too much information. I can’t process all of this. And any way, most of it is very, well, scientific. It isn’t directly related to my clinical practice and applied issues.”

In this book, we try to save you time and heartache in finding, digesting, and applying relevant issues from the psychology of religion and spirituality for your clinical practice. We asked experts on topics of the psychology of religion and spirituality to digest the information for you. Instead of wading through a tome of scientifically worded studies or summaries of studies, you can read through the chapters of this book with relative ease. Moreover, the authors have thought through many clinical issues and provide practical applications of these issues by illustrating them with case examples. You can obtain the equivalent of many hours of training and reading in this single volume, written accessibly to enable you to immediately apply the information to your practice. Users of this volume can be assured that the lessons learned are grounded strongly in solid research.

A BIT OF HISTORICAL CONTEXT THAT POINTS TO THE NEED FOR THIS BOOK

Personal Histories of the Editors

Each of the editors of this volume completed their graduate education in psychology at distinct times related to the psychology of religion and spirituality under the larger historical umbrella of psychology. Worthington completed graduate study during a period when religion was talked about only rarely, and if addressed, it often was done so negatively. Aten finished during a period when religion began to gain acceptance in the larger field of psychology by broadening the discussion to include spirituality. O’Grady ended her graduate studies during a period when religion and spirituality truly began to boom.

Overall, a lot has changed in the last 30 years. Religion and spirituality are no longer on the fringe or considered taboo within the larger field of psychology. In fact, research on the psychology of religion and spirituality has surged, and according to many influential voices in the field, religion and spirituality represent one of the five major forces in modern psychology (e.g., Standard, Sandhu, & Painter, 2000).

Psychology of Religion (and Spirituality): Past, Present, and Future

For those versed in the history of psychology of religion and spirituality, this recent wellspring in interest and growth comes as no surprise. Although often overlooked, some of the earliest contributions to the field of psychology grew out of religious movements, religious orders, or religious experiences. For example, in 1902, William James (1961), one of the ancestors of psychology, penned the classic The Varieties of Religious Experience. James recognized the important role that faith played in many people’s lives and brought a scientific lens to studying religious phenomena. During the early 1900s, the Emmanuel Movement also spread across the United States. This movement consisted of collaborations between medicine and the church, with the goal of providing medical and religious education and counseling. What started as a project to address poverty in the greater Boston area turned into a national movement that attempted to unite the best that psychology and piety had to offer at the time, with the hope of providing holistic treatment for the entire person (Caplan, 1998).

Over the next 100 years, many others would follow in the steps of such pioneering thinkers and clinicians. For instance, influential clinical figures, such as former Freudian analyst Carl Jung (1938) and Holocaust survivor and psychiatrist Victor Frankl (1962), made significant contributions that added to the psychology of religion. Yet, on the whole, matters of faith often were depicted in a negative light, as religion was thought by some to be the root of most negative mental health issues. Freud played a major role in ushering in this negative view of religion, beginning with a series of lectures at Clark University that helped to give birth to psychoanalysis in the United States, and within that early message of psychoanalysis, a disdain for religion was spread. This negative conceptualization of religion and mental health would continue and appear almost unquestioned by most clinicians for decades (Blazer, 1998). For instance, other advocates outside of psychoanalysis, such as behaviorist B. F. Skinner and rational emotive behavioral therapist Albert Ellis (Brown & Srebalus, 1996), eventually would emerge who continued to carry the torch that Freud had lit, fueled with a depressing view of religion that would last through the 1970s and into the 1980s.

Despite the apparent historic lack of acceptance of religion within applied psychology (e.g., clinical psychology, counseling psychology) through the 1980s, the psychology of religion movement had been embraced early on primarily by personality and social psychologists. This is not to minimize integral contributions from developmentalists, cognitive psychologists, or health researchers. Applied researchers also have contributed to the psychology of religion, but on the whole, it was the experimental side of psychology that laid the vast majority of the foundation for the psychology of religion. Major contributions by past experimental psychologists like Gordon Allport (1950) to present-day personality psychologists like Robert Emmons (2003) have played a major role in the evolution and sustainability of this subspecialty.

Still, even during periods when most of psychology seemed to be resisting the study of religion (and its inclusion as a psychological subdiscipline), discussions about how religion and spirituality might be integrated into psychotherapy were occurring. For example, during the late 1930s and early 1940s, individuals like Rollo May and organizations like the American Association of Marital and Family Therapists opened the dialogue on existential issues and encouraged conversations between secular therapists and pastoral counselors (Worthington, 2010).

During the 1950s, former seminary student turned psychologist Carl Rogers (1951) began to question the notion that psychotherapy was a value-free endeavor. According to Rogers, psychotherapy was a phenomenological experience, and he advocated for a value-neutral approach. Despite the overall resistance to religion and spirituality held by the larger field of psychology, the writings of Rodgers further ushered in the pastoral counseling movement and sparked interest among religious clinicians to delve more deeply into the psychological sciences. Moreover, during this period, several new professional organizations like the Christian Association for Psychological Studies were formed. Likewise, special interest groups and divisions of the American Counseling Association and American Psychological Association devoted to religious issues also were founded (Vande Kemp, 1996).

In the 1960s and 1970s, an increasing number of both mental health professionals and clients were beginning to more strongly voice a need for religion to be addressed in psychotherapy. As a result, several religious doctoral programs began emerging, most from a Christian faith tradition (e.g., Fuller Theological Seminary, Rosemead School of Psychology). These programs were interested in exploring how faith and psychology might be integrated into the therapeutic process (Aten & Leach, 2008). Likewise, interest increased in Eastern religious experiences, which also began to take a foothold in small pockets of clinicians throughout the country as the countercultural revolution continued to grow in influence in the United States.

During the early 1980s, the negative zeitgeist assumptions about religion started to be revisited and questioned within the larger field of psychology. For example, researcher and clinician Allen Bergin (1980) began to revisit early studies on the negativity of religion on mental health outcomes. He found numerous methodological problems and biases, which had upheld the unfavorable view of religion for years if not decades. During this period, several additional reviews of the literature were written that provided further support and exploration of the role of religion within the context of mental health (e.g., Worthington, 1989; for a history, see Worthington, 2010).

The Tipping Point

In many ways, during the 1990s, the psychology of religion appears to have reached a tipping point, and the popularity and acceptance of religion within psychology began to spread. Stanton Jones’s (1994) prospectus of a model for incorporating religion into psychotherapy, which appeared in the American Psychologist, played a major role in bringing conversations that had largely taken place outside of mainstream psychology directly to mainstream psychology. Likewise, during the 1990s, Edward Shafranske (1996) published Religion and the Clinical Practice of Psychology, giving the American Psychological Association their first book on matters of faith and setting the stage for numerous books on religion and spirituality to follow. More than any decade before, a clear upswing in religious books, articles, professional organizations, and graduate programs emerged (Worthington et al., 2008). What had been largely talked, researched, and written about in experimental circles now was gaining momentum in applied circles as well.

The late 1990s and early 2000s were marked by an even greater openness to religion, which was furthered by an increased interest in spirituality and its relationship to religion. Moreover, over the course of these two decades, more and more applied psychologists began contributing to the psychology of religion field—now the psychology of religion and spirituality field. Likewise, increasing collaboration between applied and experimental psychologists emerged and continued until today. These are just a few of the major events that helped to set the stage for the infusing of what primarily had been an experimental endeavor into a clinical endeavor. Now, onto the present, and onto the need for this book.

The Need for This Book

Despite the merging interests of applied and experimental psychologists, a gap appears to exist between the psychology of religion and spirituality research and the clinical application of this research to practice. The psychology of religion and spirituality has a fruitful history that has led to a vast body of empirical research. The past two decades also have been rich with clinical advances in understanding how to work with religion and spirituality in counseling and psychotherapy. Yet, in many ways, it almost feels as though these advances have been emerging in parallel rather than in unison, with the psychology of religion on one plane and the spirituality of counseling on the other plane. It is our hope that this book will begin to bridge the gap between the psychology of religion and spirituality research and clinical practice, thus helping readers learn to use research in their practice.

OVERVIEW AND GOALS FOR THIS BOOK

Each subsequent chapter aims to provide readers with a functional understanding of the psychology of religion and spirituality empirical literature, while at the same time outlining clinical implications, assessments, and strategies for counseling and psychotherapy. Having taught psychology of religion courses and spirituality in counseling courses, the authors have heard students voice their struggle with trying to connect the psychology of religion and spirituality research with clinical practice. We also have heard this concern voiced many times by practicing and experienced mental health professionals and academic researchers.

To accomplish these goals, we have pulled together a talented team of respected scholar–clinicians who are able to speak to the empirical particulars and clinical nuances of major psychology of religion and spirituality topics (e.g., religious coping) equally. We have asked each author to bridge research and clinical practice. As a result, each chapter is empirically grounded and clinically rich. The authors have drawn out clinical implications embedded in traditional psychology of religion and spirituality research. Furthermore, each chapter addresses clinical assessment and clinical strategies along with diverse religious and spiritual clinical examples and case studies.

Whether you are a student or seasoned professional, you will benefit from reading this book. Psychology of religion and spirituality students who want to prepare for dealing with religion and spirituality as a multicultural issue can do so quickly without great intrusion into their busy schedule. Overworked professors who teach counseling and psychotherapy courses and want to include religious and spiritual issues within those courses can update their knowledge quickly and rely on the knowledge and timeliness of the summaries and applications provided by the authors of the chapters. This book readily lends itself in many ways to the classroom, from carefully selected topical chapters that fit naturally with the ebb and flow of the semester, to useful aids like clinical application questions and suggested readings and resources that can be used to direct student preparation efficiently.

The experienced practicing mental health professional will find the easy-to-use structure of the chapters useful. Chapters explicitly tease out clinical implications, assessment approaches, and clinical strategies. The user-friendly aids will help the busy clinician by helping facilitate page-to-practice adoption of new ideas and techniques.

The academic researcher will benefit from the sound empirical overview of traditional psychology of religion and spirituality topics that may generate and spark ideas for further research. Typically, researchers are experts in one area, but by reading excellent summaries of other areas, they can deepen and broaden their understanding of the context for their topics of interest. Likewise, these research-oriented readers—even when reading about a field of specialized interest rather than broadening the scope of understanding—will benefit from seeing how their research might be presented to a broader audience and how their research might be more readily applied to counseling and psychotherapy.

Students will benefit from this book’s concise introduction to key topics that have a rich foundation in the psychology of religion and spirituality. Furthermore, students interested in learning how to work more effectively with religious and spiritual issues in their clinical work will benefit from the plethora of assessment and clinical strategies highlighted throughout. Likewise, students interested in doing research, such as a thesis or dissertation on a psychology of religion and spirituality topic, will garner a strong theoretical and empirical background from which to develop their own ideas and studies.

With this book we are not trying to divide the psychology of religion and spirituality under applied versus experimental tents. Nor are we suggesting that one approach is better or weaker than the other, or that one is good and the other bad. Quite the contrary—our primary goal is to offer readers a book that will unite the best of what psychology of religion and spirituality researchers and clinicians who work with religious and spiritual issues have to offer—to provide a more holistic and scientifically informed approach to clinical practice. And we believe our chapter authors have accomplished just that, by making the connections and applications between research and practice more salient and explicit.

CHAPTER OVERVIEW

In this first chapter of this volume, we provide readers with a concise historical overview of the evolution of the psychology of religion to the psychology of religion and spirituality. We also outline the goals of this book, discuss the audiences that will find this book helpful, and explain how readers might apply the lessons learned therein to their clinical practice.

In Chapter 2, Desrosiers discusses how religion and spirituality develop across the life span. Research on spiritual and religious development is highlighted that points to an inverse association between positive spiritual growth and the development of negative psychological symptoms. That is,...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Editors
• Contributors
• 1. The Psychology of Religion and Spirituality for Clinicians: An Introduction
• 2. Development of Religion and Spirituality Across the Life Span
• 3. Developmental and Narrative Perspectives on Religious and Spiritual Identity for Clinicians
• 4. Religious and Spiritual Motivations in Clinical Practice
• 5. Connection Between Personality and Religion and Spirituality
• 6. Client God Images: Theory, Research, and Clinical Practice
• 7. Addressing Spiritually Transcendent Experiences in Psychotherapy
• 8. Religious and Spiritual Beliefs in Psychotherapy: A Meaning Perspective
• 9. Navigating the Storm: Helping Clients in the Midst of Spiritual Struggles
• 10. Processes of Religious and Spiritual Coping
• 11. Forgiveness and Reconciliation Within the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality
• 12. Religion and Spirituality in Couples and Families
• 13. Religion, Spirituality, and Mental Health
• 14. Impact of Religion and Spirituality on Physical Health
• 15. Bridging the Gap Between Research and Practice in the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality
• Index