how does religion come up in a psychotherapy session?

Sometimes religion enters psychotherapy the moment the client enters the room. This was the case with Nancy. Her bright face and warm smile changed to an urgency as she sat down. Leaning forward on the edge of the couch she clasped her hands and told me that she no longer knew how to pray. Her son had been an ex patriot in Mexico and his life had been threatened by a corrupt official. She had been in daily contact with him and the embassy arranging for immediate departure. She prayed for his safety as fervently as she pursued embassy officials and knew, from all her past experience with prayer, that he would arrive safely. When she was told of his murder, she sunk into grief and a crisis of faith: her prayer had not been answered despite her belief that it would be. The very faith that had sustained her in past losses was threatened. This left her bereft.

Other times it enters in surprising ways by those who had never discussed experiences in anything but secular ways. Ann, an anthropologist, during an intense moment in telling her story in group therapy one night reached beneath her collar to pull a chain to reveal a medallion of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Ann had long since left her nominal Catholic faith and was drawn more to Buddhism , yet, she explained, the virgin had become her mother long after the death of her own manic depressive mother.

Or the therapist may hear something in the client’s voice, cadence or metaphors that suggest something of faith. And with patience and gentleness the therapist without being intrusive may welcome the subtle spirit into the session.

A reasonable question remains. “How can a therapist open therapy to spiritual concerns a person might bring if the therapist shares no common tradition with the person? This is the core question addressed by James and Melissa Griffith in Encountering the Sacred in Psychotherapy . They have found that they can best do this when they “stay in the position of an anthropologist meeting another person in an unknown culture….The skills most helpful for opening therapy to the spiritual and religious domains have been those for preparing our own selves to meet someone not yet known- the fostering within ourselves of curiosity, wonder and openness to the being of the other.”

Henri Nouwen speaks of creating a “friendly emptiness”. In his book Reaching Out, Nouwen uses various phrases to try to capture the essence of hospitality. The therapist with different beliefs from the client may offer hospitality in the way of “friendship without binding the guest and freedom without leaving him alone. Hospitality”, Nouwen explains, “is not to change people, but to offer them space where change can take place.” “It is not a method of making our God and our way into the criteria of happiness,” he writes, “ but the opening of an opportunity to others to find their God and their way.”

Hospitality and patient listening can provide the necessary sanctuary within which one's faith will most likely be expressed.

Click on the image of Jesus and the Samaritan Woman to see more work by the artist

East and West: buddhism & psychology

Below is a link to an article from the Vancouver Sun on Buddhism and psychology. It describes and gives some historical background on the interest of Western psychotherapists in Eastern religion. Douglas Todd, the article's author, sees the potential richness in this fusion but also writes of those who caution against superficial treatment of these disciplines.





The risk of any interdisciplinary endeavor, such as the blending of religion and psychotherapy is of diluting both and thus diminishing them. Each is a discipline and practice in it's own right; and as any serious disciple and practitioner can tell you each is a life long endeavor. Yet, not to seek to draw upon religion because of being committed to psychotherapy would be to ignore a vital source for exploring the interior world. It is best to proceed, but to do so with humility.





http://www.vancouversun.com/Health/Ancient+Buddhism+modern+psychology/1556402/story.html

Thoughts on Good Friday: A compassionate God.

From a Christian perspective Good Friday celebrates God's definitive act of love and compassion . In Jesus' humanity God trades omnipotence for vulnerability. In this vulnerability, God becomes our companion in suffering.


For the therapist with a Christian spirituality, what does this suggest about the therapist client relationship? When a person, anxious and vulnerable, comes into counseling they may see the therapist as the "professional", objective, and with expert advice and interventions. But to stay in a hierarchical arrangement would be to withhold companionship. One of my professors, Emil Soucar, would tells us again and again that counselors must put themselves in a one-down position. This stepping down is a merely a shadow of the stepping down of God in Jesus.

Beyond Disillusionment

Life, it seems to me, is the great academy of spirituality. The most distinguished teachers of whom are the diminishment of aging, and death. This, I hope, is not taken as a morbid sentiment. These things are the great teachers because they give us the opportunity to let go of the things in our life that are not real, essential, and eternal.“From the middle of life onward,” the analyst and spiritual thinker, Carl Jung observed, “only he remains vitally alive who is ready to die with life. For in the secret hour of life’s midday the parabola is reversed, death is born…”

A man whom I shall call Paul keenly felt the “birth of death” late in his 45th year – and he, like most of us, greeted it with dread. Paul was seized with an anxiety that could not associate with any particular event or worry. Mild range physical symptoms were amplified by a sudden awareness of his own aging. A fear of loss of vitality precipitated an actual decrease in energy. Again in Jung’s words, “the second half of life does not signify ascent, unfolding, increase, exuberance but death, since the end is its goal”. During that time of anxiety, Paul’s parents visited his home for the last time before his father’s death. His dad was dying slowly from and insidious malignancy that usurped the blood making process in his bone marrow. Paul’s parents stayed overnight so that the next morning Paul and his dad could go to a conference about the illness. It was strange, Paul recalled, to steer his dad’s steel blue Olds up the New Jersey Turnpike with him in the passenger seat; up until then his dad had always been the driver. Paul was self conscious.

Meanwhile, back at home his mom stayed with his wife and daughters. She had always been petite woman until recently. Her inactivity and eating for comfort increased her girth. She seemed, to Paul, too big for his small house. It angered him in ways he could not explain, and he felt guilty, even as he kept the anger to himself. “How dare she get old and change and what will this demand of me?”, he selfishly pondered. Paul was glad to escape with his father to go to conference. Looking back on this while in therapy several years later he realized that he was not angry at his mom. The demands her aging put on him were small. Paul was angry at aging and diminishment and the life it stole.

Paul was mad because he was afraid. Her aging and infirmity, his father’s dying, his shift to the driver’s seat penetrated his defenses against his awareness of his own aging and inevitable death. On top of everything else, he was disillusioned. He thought that as he grew and matured his faith would grow stronger and he would be wiser. He had hoped he would easily return to his parents the love they had given to him when he had been small and as vulnerable as they were becoming.

So for Paul, the “birth of death” of which Jung speaks was not a pretty thing, nor did Paul experience this event with mature resignation. He simply panicked. “Since the end is its goal…” Jung continues, “the negation of life’s fulfillment is synonymous with the refusal to accept its ending. Both mean not wanting to live…”But Paul does want to live. Whether or not Paul has the courage to really live is another question. To really live, Jung suggests, takes courage to accept life’s ending and thereby embrace life’s fulfillment. “Not wanting to live”, Jung reminds us, “is identical with not wanting to die” because the two are inextricably linked.

Jung draws upon metaphors of the natural world, particularly the heavens, which gave our primitive ancestors their understanding or the cycle of life and, from that, their early impressions of the Holy. Jung believes our unconscious contains a rich store of imprints from these ancient experiences. We contain within us a sort of collective buried memory of millions of rising and setting suns, of waxing and waning moons, and, metaphorically, millions of births and deaths. That is - life and death, living and dying are one. For, Jung explains, “waxing and waning make one curve”.

In confronting the diminishment and deaths of those whom we love, and entering mid-life oneself, one would have to become increasingly defensive not to confront one’s own mortality. To be open, on the other hand, despite one’s fears, is to listen attentively to the great teachers. In listening to them as opposed to defending against them one gets the opportunity to deepen one’s faith. If we are humble and attentive students we cannot help but grow beyond disillusionment to learn what diminishment and death have to teach us about the nature of things.

-The Carl Jung quote is taken from "The Soul and Death", pp. 405-408, from Volume 8 of the Collected Works of C.G. Jung: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche-

Perry Hazeltine,Ph.D.
Samaritan Counseling Center, Lancaster, PA 17601 www.scclanc.org

The Hardest Things To Say

“The most important things are the hardest things to say.”

- Stephen King -

Several of my colleagues and I are taking a serious look at how we integrate spirituality and psychotherapy in our practices. Through discussions and reading, I have come to feel that I would like to more intentionally help people to get in touch with the core of themselves; to explore what could be called the psyche or soul. To an agnostic or atheist, this may be a sense that one wants to experience life fully. To one from an eastern belief system this may be the striving for life without illusion. My hope is that therapy would help those with whom I work reach toward what is deepest, truest and most essential within themselves. Though my own experience is rooted in the Judeo-Christian worldview from which I come, the counseling I hope to provide is concerned more with the process of spiritual growth than it is with the religion that shapes ones spirituality. That is, I seek to help people from within their own faith and religion.
The word psyche is used most commonly now to refer to the mind such as in the term “psychology” ( the study of the mind). The word “psyche’, however, has its origin as the Greek word for soul or spirit. As a psychologist, I find it intriguing to think of myself as a “student of the soul”. The soul may be likened to a lens of great clarity and magnification from which we can see deeper and farther when we view our world and experience from this perspective. The things we see through this lens then become poignant to us, are deeply personal and hard to articulate. We tend to be shy when we think about expressing them since they are not discussed in normal conversation. “The most important things,” Stephen King writes, “ are the hardest things to say. They are the things you get ashamed of because words diminish your feelings - words shrink things that seem timeless when they are in your head to no more than living size when they are brought out.” The worst thing, King tells us is “When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear.”
It is, then, a sacred moment when a client takes the risk to speak of these experiences to a therapist who is listening carefully. And, as a therapist, it is an honor to be present with another, one to one, as they find the words that speak of what they see through the lens of the soul and hear themselves tell it thereby gaining insight, comfort and clarity. The spiritual, then, within therapy or any other experience for that matter is not determined by the experience alone but by ones perception of the holy within that experience. A therapist sensitive to the spiritual, may experience the therapy process that way whether the client does or not. The therapist then, with prudence and respect, can discern whether or not the client can benefit from the open expression of this spiritual sensibility. If so, and if it can be done within the client’s own belief system, then the therapeutic experience can be enriched by a shared awareness of the presence of the spirit.
The shift in my practice is not to make it more spiritual, but to be more aware of the spiritual within the human suffering, healing and growth that already occur within therapy. By thinking, praying and writing I heighten my own awareness and sharpen my discernment. By communicating to others through essays such as this, through speaking publicly and through offering workshops and groups, I hope to share my heightened awareness with others and to offer an invitation for potential clients to experience spiritual growth as well as psychological and emotional healing. It is an invitation to myself and to those with whom I work to go deeper and reach higher.
For other perspectives on spirituality and therapy visit our website at www.scclanc.org and click on the Reading Room tab to the left and scroll down to the author section in the Reading Room see Frank Stalfa’s article The Evolution of Pastoral Counseling at The Samaritan Counseling Center in the 2008 Newsletter Issue 1 and Betty Snapp-Barrett’s article Faith- Integrated Counseling in the 2008 Newsletter Issue 2.

Perry Hazeltine, Ph.D., Psychologist
Samaritan Counseling Center 1803 Oregon Pike Lancaster, PA 17601
(717) 560-9969 www.scclanc.org

Perry is interested in helping adults through anxiety and depression during times of transition or loss. He sees great opportunities in mid-life that are often preceded by loss of enthusiasm, or great anxiety such as fears of illness, aging and death. Those interested in their spiritual life can be helped to see these periods of confusion and pain as precursors to personal growth and an opportunity to deepen their interior life. Perry has a bachelor’s in Religious Studies from Villanova University and a doctorate in Counseling Psychology from Temple University. In addition to psychotherapy, Perry offers career assessment and counseling. He also provides psychological evaluations of people entering ministry and conducts fitness-for-ministry tests as well.