Southern Illinois University Carbondale
OpenSIUC
Research Papers Graduate School
Spring 4-13-2009
Spiritually Sensitive Psychological Counseling: A
History of the Relationship between Psycholgy and
Spirituality and Suggestions for Integrating em in
Individual, Group, and Family Counseling
James B. Benziger
Southern Illinois University Carbondale, BradBenziger@yahoo.com
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Recommended Citation
Benziger, James B., "Spiritually Sensitive Psychological Counseling: A History of the Relationship between Psycholgy and Spirituality
and Suggestions for Integrating em in Individual, Group, and Family Counseling" (2009). Research Papers. Paper 1.
hp://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/gs_rp/1
SPIRITUALLY SENSITIVE PSYCHOLOGICAL COUNSELING:
A HISTORY OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PSYCHOLOGY AND
SPIRITUALLITY AND SUGGESTIONS FOR INTEGRATING THEM IN
INDIVIDUAL, GROUP, AND FAMILY COUNSELING
by
Brad Benziger
Bachelor of Arts in English Literature
A Research Paper Submitted in Partial
Fulfillment of the Requirements for the
Degree of Master of Science in Education
Graduate Program in Counselor Education
Department of Educational Psychology
in the Graduate School
Southern Illinois University
Carbondale
May 2009
AN ABSTRACT of the RESEARCH PAPER of
Brad Benziger for the Master of Science in Counseling Degree in Educational
Psychology, presented April 10, 2009, at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.
TITLE: Spiritually Sensitive Psychological Counseling: A History of the Relationship
between Psychology and Spirituality and Suggestions for Integrating Them in Individual,
Group, and Family Counseling
MAJOR PROFESSOR: Dr. Lyle White
The purpose of this study was to research the history of the relationship between
the scientific view of psychology and spiritual one in the West from Plato to the present;
to determine how and why the two views separated; and to explore ways to combine both
in counseling.
i
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I wish to express my deep gratitude and admiration to Dr Lyle White, my advisor
on this research paper. I was concerned that he would not approve this undertaking, that
he might think it was too much or insufficiently evidence based. He approved it and with
his knowledgeable questions, he pushed me to go deeper and learn more than I had
imagined possible.
I also wish to thank Dr Gail Mieling, who was both my first and my last teacher at
Southern Illinois University-Carbondale, and who encouraged me from the start. She has
been my mentor as both a teacher and as my practicum and internship supervisor.
I wish to thank my father, James George Benziger (1915 – 1996) for introducing
me to God in nature, and my mother Patricia Rey Benziger (1917 – 2006) for introducing
me to God in people.
ii
DEDICATION
This paper is dedicated to my ex-wife Georgann Sketoe Benziger, who read some
of the chapters and made helpful suggestions, to my sons Ross and George Benziger, and
to my best friend Rebecca Dougan. I treasure you all.
iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
Chapter I Introduction 1
Chapter II The History of the Relationship Between
Spirituality and Psychology from Plato to the Enlightenment 7
1. Socrates and Aristotle 7
2. Jesus 12
3. The Printing Press and the Reformation 15
4. Francis Bacon 17
5. Immanuel Kant 25
6. Auguste Comte 29
Chapter III The Relationship between Spirituality and Psychology from
the Birth of the Science of Psychology to Freud and Jung 31
1. Monism 32
2. Charles Darwin 33
3. Wilhelm Wundt 41
4. William James 43
5. Freud and Jung 51
Chapter IV The Relationship Between Spirituality and Psychology
in the 20
th
Century: Psychiatry, Behaviorism, Cognitive
and Social Psychology 59
1. Psychiatry 59
2. Behaviorism 61
iv
3. Cognitive Psychology 62
4. Kübler-Ross 63
5. Behavioral and Cognitive Therapy 64
6. Social Psychology 68
7. The Milgram Obedience Experiment 69
8. The Zimbardo Prison Experiment 71
9. My Lai 74
10 Conclusions 78
Chapter V The Relationship Between Spirituality and Psychology
in the 20
th
Century: Humanistic Psychology 80
1. Carl Rogers 80
2. Abraham Maslow 90
3. Transpersonal Psychotherapy 94
4. The Process of Humanistic Psychotherapy 95
5. The Goals and Values of Humanistic Psychotherapy 96
Chapter VI The Relationship Between Spirituality and Psychology
in the 20
th
Century: Existential Psychology 97
1. Husserl and Phenomenological Psychotherapy 98
2. Heidegger and Ontology 99
3. Martin Buber 103
4. Ludwig Binswanger 104
5. Erich Fromm 109
6. Viktor Frankl 113
7. Rollo May 116
v
8. Emmy van Deurzen 124
9. The Process of Existentialist Psychotherapy 126
10. The Goals and Values of Humanistic and Existentialist
Psychotherapy 127
11. Conclusions 132
Chapter VII Group and Family Counseling 135
1. Group Counseling
A. Group Work and Spirituality 135
B. Group Types 138
C. The History of Group Counseling 139
D. Carl Rogers and Groups 140
E. Process-focused Groups 142
F. Facilitator-participant: Equality and Dialogue in Groups 144
G. Groups and Native Americans 146
2. Family Counseling
A. Family and Spirituality 147
B. Family Therapists’ Attitudes and Beliefs 148
C. Satir and Authentic Communication 150
D. Bowen and the Well-differentiated Self 150
E. Challenges to Integrating Spirituality and Family
Counseling 152
F. One Possible Spiritual-Psychological Approach
to Family Counseling 154
3. Conclusions 166
vi
Chapter VIII Contemporary Theories that Combine
Spirituality and Psychology 168
1. Alcoholics Anonymous 169
2. Pastoral Counseling 179
3. Jung and Jungians 188
4. Developmental Counseling and Therapy 200
5. Conclusions 209
Chapter IX The True-Self 210
1. Object-Relations Theory 211
2. Carl Rogers 212
3. Carl Jung 213
4. Alice Miller 213
5. Roberto Assagioli 219
6. The True-Self as Part of a Spiritual-Psychological
Approach to Therapy 224
Chapter X The Spiritual Value of Sadness and Pain 225
1. The Value of Negative Experiences 226
2. Elio Frattaroli and a Falling Down that is Good 234
3. The Meaning of Pain 241
Chapter XI The Spiritual Value of Creativity, Conflict, and Immorality 245
1. The Value of Creativity 245
2. Constructive Conflict 245
3. Revolution 246
vii
4. Anger and Justice 247
5. Knowledge, Experience, Truth, and the True-self 250
6. Moral Deliberations and Outcomes 251
7. Existentialist Psychology’s View of Good and Evil 252
8. Evolutionary Psychology’s View of Morality 252
9. C. S. Lewis’s View of Morality 256
10. The Meaning of Immorality 262
11. A Spiritually Sensitive Approach to Morality in Counseling 262
12. Conclusions 264
Chapter XII Spiritual Health and Development 267
1. Spiritual Health Differs from Traditional
Psychological Definitions of Mental Health 267
2. Spiritual Development Differs from Traditional
Psychological Conceptualizations of Development 269
3. Spiritual Dimensions of Growth 272
4. Conclusions 284
Chapter XIII Research regarding Spirituality 286
1. Spirituality’s Correlation with Physical and
Psychological Wellness 286
2. The Meaning of Spirituality for Clients 289
3. Counselor Attitudes toward Spirituality 289
4. Demographics Relevant to a Spiritual-Psychological
Approach to Counseling 290
5. Conclusions 291
viii
Chapter XIV What I as a Counselor Have Learned from Studying the History
of the Relationship between Psychology and Spirituality 293
Research Question 1: What is the history of the relationship between
the spiritual worldview of psychology and the scientific? 294
Question 2(a): Were the scientific and spiritual views of the world
ever the same? 294
Question 2 (b): When did the scientific and spiritual views diverge? 297
Question 2 (c): What did those who held a spiritual world-view think
of those who held a scientific world-view, and vice versa? 297
Question 2 (d): Does antagonism toward religion still
dominate psychology? 298
Question 2 (e): Is the science of psychology becoming more
open to the value of spirituality? 299
Question 3 (a): What, if anything, is missing from the spiritual view
that the scientific view contributes? 299
Question 3 (b): What, if anything, is missing from the scientific view
that the spiritual view includes? 301
Question 4: Are there approaches to the study and practice of psychology
that include both the scientific and the spiritual perspectives? 303
Future Prospects for the Relationship between Spirituality and Psychology 305
Chapter XV What I Learned regarding Values and Morals in Counseling 307
Research Question 5: What are spiritual values? 307
ix
Question 6: In the practice of psychotherapy, are the spiritual and the
scientific views of human beings (a) cooperative; or
(b) complementary and supportive; or (c) distinct and
non-overlapping; or (d) at odds; or does that answer depend
on the client, the context, and the problem? 308
Moral Deliberations in Counseling as a Precursor
to Spiritual Development 314
A Binocular, Four-Dimensional Perspective 319
Conclusions 320
Chapter XVI: How I Reconciled the Spiritual and Scientific
Worldviews in my Approach to Counseling 322
1. The Nine Spiritual Competencies 323
2. Carl Rogers and Person-centered Counseling 327
Research Question 7: Is there a way to combine the spiritual and
scientific worldviews in one approach to counseling that,
based on my research, class work, and experience, I feel
comfortable recommending to clients? 337
Chapter XVII: A Spiritually Sensitive Person-Centered Approach to Counseling 339
1. Spiritually Sensitive Person-centered Counseling’s
View of the Client 340
2. The Values, Goals, and Results of Spiritually
Sensitive Person-centered Counseling 342
3. Spiritually Sensitive Person-centered Counseling’s
x
View of the Therapist/Counselor 349
4. Spiritually Sensitive Person-centered
Counselor Brian Thorne 350
5. Content vs. Process 354
6. The Process of Spiritually Sensitive
Person-centered Counseling 354
7. Spiritually Sensitive Person-centered
Group Counseling 365
8. Conclusions 370
Chapter XVIII: Concluding Thoughts: Looking Backward and Forward 371
References: 375
Appendix 1: Client-Counselor Service Agreement for
Spiritually Sensitive Person-Centered Counseling 407
Appendix 2: Permissions Received to Include Copyrighted Materials 417
Vita 419
xi
LIST OF TABLES
Page
Table 1 Forms of Verbal Interaction from Benner and Gouthro 183
Table 2 Comparison of Developmental Theories Used in
Developmental Counseling and Therapy 204
Table 3 The Seven Research Questions 293
Table 4 Materialistic Assumptions Compared to Spiritual Possibilities 302
Table 5 Values of Traditional Psychotherapy compared to Values
of Soul Care 313
Table 6 Spiritual Beliefs Common in the West 347
Table 7 Spiritual Beliefs Less Common in the West 348
xii
xiii
LIST OF FIGURES
Page
Figure 1 Circular Causality in Families 154
Figure 2 Assagioli’s Diagram of the Personality 221
1
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
When I first attended college in the 1960s, I was interested in psychology and
would have pursued it as a career but for the fact that psychology then looked at the
world principally through the lens of radical behaviorism or the lens of Freudian
psychiatry. Those lenses seemed too limiting to me. I believed in God and in the reality
of the soul. Freud and behaviorism made no allowance for either.
I thought then that I would not be in a position to integrate spiritual and scientific
concerns in counseling unless I became a minister or priest. I considered taking that path,
but decided against it; because, like counseling psychologist Carl Rogers (Thorne, 1992),
I did not want to tell others how to act, and because, like the 14
th
Dalai Lama, I did not
think it is necessary to believe in God or in any religion to be a good or spiritual person
(Iyer, 2008). In the 1960s, three of the most influential voices in psychology were
atheists: Freud, Skinner, and Ellis. In A Philosophy of Life (1933), Freud had argued that
God is a projection of a childish wish for protection from a cruel and uncertain world.
Religion, he wrote, is a “serious enemy” (p. 219) of the scientific Weltanschauung and a
“neurosis which the civilized individual must pass through on his way from childhood to
maturity” (p. 230). Behaviorist B. F. Skinner was an outspoken atheist who resented the
fact that he had had to attend daily chapel at Hamilton College in upstate New York as an
undergraduate (Boeree, 2008; B. F. Skinner, AllPsych On Line, 2008). In the article
Psychotherapy and Atheistic Values: A Response to A. E. Bergin’s “Psychotherapy and
Religious Values” (1980), psychologist Albert Ellis reiterated the view that, according to
Koenig, Larson, and Larson (2001), was then common in the mental health field that,
2
“the less religious they [people] are, the more emotionally healthy they will tend to be”
(Ellis, 1980, p. 637). In that intellectual climate, most psychologists did not consider
whether of not it is possible to integrate the spiritual and scientific perspectives in the
practice of psychotherapy, or how to do it.
I became a lawyer instead. Lawyers are ethically bound to do their best to obtain
whatever end their clients seek, even if that end is wrong by every independent standard.
Thus, acts and statements that would be immoral in any other profession are considered
right in the practice of law. I was never comfortable with that; so, in 2004, when my
children were grown, I returned to college and entered the Master’s program in Marital,
Couple, and Family Counseling at Southern Illinois University. When I obtain my
degree, I will have trained as an individual counselor, a group counselor, and as a family
and couples counselor. Almost all my training will have been in theories of counseling
that do not mention spirituality. No such classes are available at this university, and such
classes are not available at most public universities (Tisdell, 2003). Nonetheless, when I
graduate and begin work as a counselor, I hope to offer counseling that is both informed
by scientific research and sensitive to my clients’ spirituality. Thanks to the open-
mindedness, encouragement, and knowledgeableness of my advisor, Dr. Lyle White, I
have been able to undertake this paper, which is intended to serve as a foundation for that
counseling and as a source for others who have similar questions.
In this paper I will attempt to answer seven questions about the relationship
between the scientific view of psychology and the spiritual view:
(1) What is the historical relationship between the spiritual and the scientific
views of psychology?
3
(2) Were the scientific and the spiritual views of human beings ever the same? If
they diverged, when did they diverge? What was the nature of that separation: how did
each view the other? Does antagonism toward religion still dominate psychology, or is
the science of psychology becoming more open to the value of spirituality?
(3) What, if anything, was missing from the spiritual view that the scientific view
contributed? What, if anything, was missing from the scientific view that the spiritual
view included?
(4) Are there recognized approaches to the study of psychology and the practice
of psychotherapy that include spiritual perspectives and values? If so, how do those
approaches differ from scientific psychology?
(5) What are spiritual values? How do they differ, if at all, from materialistic,
scientific values? What are the possible goals for the client in spiritually based
counseling? How do those differ, if at all, from the goals of approaches to therapy that are
considered scientific?
(6) In psychotherapy, are the spiritual and the scientific views of human beings
(a) cooperative; or (b) complementary and supportive; or (c) distinct and non-
overlapping; or (d) at odds; or does that answer depend on the client, the context, and the
problem?
(7) Is there a way to integrate the scientific view of human beings with the
spiritual view in the practice of psychotherapy? Is it possible to design an approach that
clients will feel good about regardless of their spiritual beliefs?
I could have added an eighth question: What is spirituality? To avoid debate,
William James began The Varieties of Religious Experience by defining “religion” to
4
mean: “the feeling, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as
they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine”
(1902/2004, p. 39). I will follow his example but not his wording. For the purpose of this
study, I define, “spirituality” to mean “the recognition of the possibility and importance
of a realm of existence that is not material but is real.”
I found only three chapters in three books that addressed the historical
relationship between the spiritual and the scientific views of psychology: two chapters of
42 pages in Richards and Bergin’s A Spiritual Strategy for Counseling and
Psychotherapy (2005); one chapter of 28 pages in Miller’s Integrating Spirituality into
Treatment (1999); and one chapter of 24 pages in Miller and Delaney’s Judeo-Christian
Perspectives on Psychology (2005), for a total of less than 100 pages. In preparation for
writing this paper, I read Hunt’s The Story of Psychology (1993). It is 735 pages long. It
contains no chapter on the relationship between spirituality and psychology. Hunt largely
ignored the spiritual side of important psychologists, like James and Jung. If a
psychological theorist considered spiritual questions, Hunt portrayed that as a threat to
the progress of the science of psychology. This paper could serve, among other things, as
a spiritual companion to Hunt’s book. Because there is so little existing literature
addressing question (1), I have reported what I learned about the history of the
relationship between spirituality and psychology in depth, so that each reader of this
paper can answer each of these seven questions for herself or himself, and so that I can
return to this paper from time to time and reflect in tranquility on what my research
found.
5
In order to answer these seven questions, I will compare the spiritual with the
non-spiritual world-view throughout history. I will begin in Chapters 2 and 3 by
examining the relationship between spirituality and psychology from Plato to the birth of
psychotherapy. In Chapters 4, 5, 6, and 7, I will examine their relationship in the 20
th
Century and today: Chapter 4 will discuss psychiatry, behaviorism and cognitive and
social psychology; Chapters 5 and 6 will consider humanistic and existentialist
psychology; and Chapter 7 will address group and family counseling.
In Chapter 8, I will examine four contemporary approaches to counseling that
combine spirituality and psychology: Alcoholics Anonymous, pastoral counseling,
Jungian psychology, and developmental-wellness counseling, and I will compare each of
them to traditional, non-spiritual psychology. In Chapter 9, I will discuss the meaning of
the true-self, a concept that may be the closest traditional psychology comes to the idea of
a soul.
In Chapters 10 and 11, I will consider values that are missing from contemporary,
scientific psychology since it has attempted to separate itself from spiritual concerns. In
Chapter 12, I will compare spiritual health and development to scientific
conceptualizations of health and development.
Although Freud and Ellis thought of themselves as scientists, their assertions in
1933 and 1980 that God and religion are unhealthy were presented with no supporting
data. In Chapter 13, I will discuss recent research, which has shown a correlation between
spirituality, on the one hand, and mental health and longevity, on the other. It would have
been nice to compare research regarding the effects of spiritually based approaches to the
6
effects of traditional methods of psychotherapy from Freud to the present. But no such
research existed until recently. I found such research only from 1995 to the present.
In Chapters 14 and 15, I will summarize the answers I found to the research
questions. In Chapter 16, I will describe how, in light of my research, I was able to
reconcile the scientific worldview with the spiritual worldview in counseling. In Chapter
17, I will describe one possible integrated approach to spiritual-psychological counseling
that includes care for the spirit, soul, mind, and body, within the individual and in
relationship with others, in a way that respects the client’s worldview and is, therefore,
most likely to help the client. In Chapter 18, Concluding Thoughts, I look back to see
how well the seven research questions have served their purpose in arriving at an
approach to counseling that is sensitive to both worldviews.
In this paper I will focus on the Western philosophies and religions because I am
better acquainted with them. Inevitably I will omit many theorists, and I may interpret
some in ways that others will not agree with. Not everyone will agree with the answers I
arrive at to these seven questions. Not everyone will agree with the approach I suggest to
spiritual-psychological counseling. I look forward to learning from those who disagree as
well as from those who agree. I will continue to adapt my counseling approach to
feedback from clients and colleagues when this paper is done.
7
CHAPTER II
THE HISTORY OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SPITIRTUALITY
AND PSYCHOLOGY FROM PLATO TO THE ENLIGHTENMENT
From the Ancient Greeks to Jesus
According to Hunt (1993), at the time of Homer’s Iliad, in the ninth century B.C.,
there was no word for human consciousness. “Psyche” meant merely “breath.” Ancient
Greeks believed that the gods put thoughts and emotions into human minds. Homer
envisioned an afterlife, but it was dreary and pointless. When Odysseus traveled to the
underworld, Achilles told him:
Rather I’d choose laboriously to bear
A weight of woes, and breathe the vital air
A slave to some poor hind that toils for bread
Than reign the sceptered monarch of the dead.
(Homer, p. 412)
In the Iliad and the Odyssey and in the first books of the Old Testament, few
boundaries existed between the human world and the spiritual world. The gods of ancient
Greece symbolized all the strengths and weakness of humankind, but were often
indifferent to the fate of individual humans. The one God of ancient Israel was
authoritarian and supported his chosen people in battle, although they were often
ungrateful and disobedient (Armstrong, 1994).
Socrates and Aristotle
By the time of Socrates (469 -- 399 B.C.), Plato (427 -- 347), and Aristotle (384 –
322), humans were considered to be conscious beings who could think for themselves.
8
“Psyche” now meant “soul” or “spirit,” although in Ancient Greece, there was no concept
of psychology and no word for it. Until the 1800's, psychology would remain a part of
philosophy. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle no longer deemed thoughts to come from the
gods. They developed contrasting theories regarding the origin of thoughts. Socrates and
Plato believed that some knowledge is inborn, and that we learn by remembering and by
recognizing eternal truths, which exist independently of physical existence in ideal form.
They believed that we increase our knowledge by applying deductive logic to what we
already know. They thought that the five senses are unreliable and cannot be trusted to
accurately convey outer reality to the inner mind.
In contrast, Aristotle thought that humans only learn through the use of the five
senses plus a “common” sense, which recognizes that incoming information originates
from the same common source. He believed that humans are born as blank slates, with no
innate knowledge. Aristotle thought that the soul and body were inseparable and that the
continued existence of a personal soul after the death of the body was unlikely (Brennan,
2002; Durant, 1933, pp. 83 - 84). He thought that people gain reliable knowledge only by
gathering evidence and making inductive generalizations. In The Story of Philosophy,
Will Durant wrote that he was bothered with Aristotle’s insistence on logic:
He thinks the syllogism a description of man’s way of reasoning, whereas it
merely describes man’s way of dressing up his reasoning for the persuasion of
another mind; he supposes that thought begins with premises and seeks their
conclusions, when actually thought begins with hypothetical conclusions
and seeks their justifying premises, -- and seeks them best by the observation
9
of particular events under the controlled and isolated conditions of an experiment.
(Durant, 1926, pp. 101 – 102)
This “observation and experimentation” theory of knowledge would not be explicitly
expressed until Francis Bacon (1561 – 1626).
Socrates and Plato saw their view as antagonistic to Aristotle’s. After Plato’s
death, Aristotle was twice denied appointment as head of Plato’s Academy. So Aristotle
opened his own Lyceum. Plato thought that Aristotle’s view did not take account of the
true nature of human beings, and Aristotle thought Plato was a misguided mystic. Neither
man reached across the rift. Plato and Aristotle started out as friends and collaborators.
They became competitors. They could have continued as collaborators. Each one’s
worldview could have enriched and enlarged the other’s, instead of denying the validity
of the other’s. But the all-or-nothing antagonism that arose between them has continued
to characterize conflicting views of psychology to the present day. Both points of view
reflect important aspects of human experience. It is possible to bridge the rift. Aquinas
explicitly attempted to do so, but few other authors have. There were many commentaries
on Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, but, except for the teachings of Jesus, there was almost
no original psychological thinking in Europe for the next 2000 years.
The careers of Socrates and Plato coincided with the development of democracy
in Athens and with a dawning recognition of the value of the individual’s voice and life,
as dramatized by Euripides (480 – 406) in Women of Troy (415 B.C./2004). That play is
set at the conclusion of the Trojan War, as the women and children of Troy are about to
be taken away as slaves and concubines by the conquering Greeks. It is told
sympathetically from the point of view of the women, who object, to no avail. It was
10
produced during the Peloponnesian War, and is considered a likely commentary on the
capture of the Aegean island of Melos and the slaughter and subjugation of its populace
by the Athenians (The Trojan Women, Wickipedia, 2008).
Hippocrates (460 – 377), who represents a separate stream of thought from either
Socrates or Aristotle, is considered the father of modern medicine and thus of modern
psychiatry. His views endure in the naturalistic assumptions of present, scientific
psychology that all ills can be accounted for by natural causes. He lived on the Greek
island of Cos at about the same time as Plato and Aristotle. He is mentioned by name by
Socrates in Phaedrus; and he is thought to have visited Athens at least once. There is a
possibility that he was many people bearing the same name from generation to
generation. The father of medicine does not appear to have involved himself in the debate
between Plato and Aristotle. Had he been asked to, he probably would have sided with
Aristotle, because Hippocrates turned away from the idea that illnesses were caused and
could be cured by divine action. Instead he used observation of the body as a basis of
medical knowledge and treatment. Prayers and sacrifices did not hold the central place in
his theories. He taught that all diseases, including mental illnesses, had natural causes,
and he prescribed changes in diet, drugs, and keeping the body in balance, that is,
keeping the four humors in balance. The four humors or elements were blood, phlegm,
black bile, and yellow bile. The humors were not, in fact, the cause of anything; but the
idea that there were physical causes to all diseases was progress.
Aristotle taught that the ideal was to achieve happiness in this life by living
according to the golden mean. Socrates believed that there were more important things in
life than happiness. He valued truth over happiness, especially moral truth. He believed
11
that the most important things were to grow in wisdom and character, to figure out who
one was, and to be true to one’s self, even if that meant, as it did in his case, committing
suicide. Socrates and Plato believed in an immortal human soul that pre-exists our present
life and survives it. They thought that one’s place in the afterlife has something to do
with one’s development in this. They hoped that they would be with others whose
philosophical and moral development was similar to their own, and they believed that
their souls would be happy to escape the prison of this mortal, material existence.
Socrates and Plato were dualists: they believed that the soul and body are distinct and that
the soul is more important than the body.
After Socrates and Plato, happiness in this lifetime was the prime good of the
Pagan philosophers. The Epicureans sought happiness in moderation. The stoics sought
happiness by letting go of attachment to earthly things, which is comparable to Buddhism
without a soul. Galen (130 – 201 A.D.) sought to control the emotions through reason, an
idea comparable to today’s cognitive therapy. Although western languages developed
separate words for “spirit” and “soul,” e.g. the Latin words spiritus and animus, most
writers continued to make no distinction between them. One exception was the Egyptian
Neoplatonist Plotinus (205 – 270 A.D.) who experienced mystical trances in which he
saw reality existing at four levels: (1) the supreme level of the divine One; (2) the level of
Spirit, which includes the intellect and is a reflection of the One; (3) the level of the Soul,
which can look upward toward Spirit or downward toward nature and the world of the
senses; and (4) the world of physical reality (Hunt, p. 43).
12
From Jesus to the Enlightenment
Jesus
Jesus re-introduced and greatly expanded the idea that happiness is not the point
of life. Jesus asked people to love God, to love God’s children, and to grow in soul and
spirit while they live on this earth. Each one of these goals may entail failure and pain, as
it did for Jesus and his disciples. Jesus embodied the revolutionary psychological ideas of
loving your enemies, forgiveness no matter what, mercy, and equality. Jesus further
expanded the value of the individual voice and life. He indicated that he would leave the
whole flock to search for one lost sheep (Luke 154:7). He ate and drank with “sinners and
tax collectors” (Mark, 2:16) and, which was unusual for his time, with women as equals.
His disciple Paul wrote, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, neither free nor slave, neither
male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3: 28). Paul is credited
with recommending that wives be obedient to husbands, rather than their equal. These
passages have been uncritically accepted by as well educated a Christian as C. S. Lewis
(1952). Paul did not write all of the “Epistles of Paul,” and some of Paul’s strictures for
women are “best explained as a gloss introduced into the text by the second- or third-
generation Pauline interpreters who compiled the pastoral epistles” by which time there
was
a conscious effort to restrict the roles that women had played in the first-generation
Pauline churches (Hayes, 1997, p. 247). In Reading the Bible Again for the First Time:
Taking the Bible Seriously but Not Literally, theologian Marcus Borg wrote that the
“passages speaking of the subordination of women and wives are all found in letters most
likely not written by Paul” with a couple of possible exceptions (2001, p. 262). Paul
mentioned the names of 40 persons who were actively involved in his missionary
13
enterprise; of these, 16 were women (Koester, 1997). Paul had a great deal of patriarchic
culturalization to overcome. Borg pointed out, “Paul grew up in Tarsus, where women
wore the complete chadar in public, completely covering them from head to foot
(including their faces)” (2001, p. 262). For the first three centuries after Jesus’s death,
women actively sought an equal role in the Christian church. Eventually the Catholic
Church excluded women from the priesthood as it does today (Pagels, 1979).
Christianity added a new meaning to the word “spirit.” The Holy Spirit, Spiritus
Santus, descended on the disciples at Pentecost and is an aspect of the tripartite unity of
God. Many Christians believe that they receive the Holy Spirit at baptism and that they
can call upon the Holy Spirit when they have need. Many believe that they physically feel
when the Holy Spirit enters them.
After defeating the opposing army when his troops wore the sign of the cross on
their shields, Constantine (285 – 337 AD) converted to Christianity and signed the Edict
of Milan, which ended official persecution of Christians, and, sadly, marked the
beginning of a far greater persecution of Christians by each other (Kirsch, 2004). Kirsch
attributed the increased persecution to monotheism’s comparative closed-mindedness
toward differing beliefs. Constantine also began the “transformation of Christianity from
the religion of the oppressed to the religion of the rulers and of the masses manipulated
by them. . . . Christianity, which had been the religion of a community of equal brothers,
without hierarchy or bureaucracy, became ‘the Church,’ the reflected image of the
absolute monarchy of the Roman Empire” (Fromm, 1963, p. 60). Fromm attributed these
changes to the corrupting influence of power and to the human tendency to retreat from
the revolutionary consciousness of people like Jesus into the safety of obedience. He felt
14
that mentally healthy people are those who preserve their revolutionary awareness and
continue to question authority. Constantine convened the Council of Nicaea in 325 to
formally decide what Christians believe and what would go in the Bible. Thereafter, until
around 1600, European thought was expressed mostly by writers who saw themselves as
Christian and Catholic.
From early on, many Church writers have condemned sexual promiscuity and
some have condemned all sexual expression even in marriage. They drove the sexual side
of humans into the shadows where it has exerted enormous irrational power through the
present day. Sexuality is a side of spirituality that must be recognized and included in a
complete theory of spiritual-psychological counseling.
Many Christian writers were comfortable with the abstract ideals of Plato. They
did not, however, accept Plato’s belief in the pre-existence of souls. That belief was
declared heretical. Church writers admired Aristotle’s intellect but they rejected his call
for objective evidence. The Church was the final authority on what was true or not,
including the reality of miracles. Many believed, as did Augustine (354 – 430), that
whatever humankind has learned that is useful is already contained in the Scriptures
(Hunt). A reconciliation of Aristotle and the Catholic Church was accomplished by
Thomas Aquinas (1225 -- 1274). Aquinas attempted to prove the truths of doctrine,
including the existence of God, through reason. He established a two-part epistemology:
human-beings learn as much as they can through experience and reason, but when
revelation contradicts their experience and reason, they must accept revelation. He also
believed in the dualism between the body, on the one hand, and the soul or mind on the
other.
15
The Printing Press and the Reformation
Another giant leap forward in the value of the individual’s voice and life followed
the invention of moveable type and the printing press by Johann Gutenberg in the 15
th
Century. The first book he published, from 1454 to 1456, was a Latin Vulgate version of
the Bible; that is, it was entirely in Latin, with none of the original Greek. In 1522,
Martin Luther published his German translation of the New Testament. The Catholic
Church condemned the book and ordered it burned, on the grounds that laymen were not
qualified to read the Bible and interpret it. The Church would tell the laity what to think.
Luther is still referred to by the New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia as “the leader of the
great religious revolt,” and Luther’s call for “a universal priesthood of all Christians” is
still termed a call for “anarchy” (2007), which, we are told, he regretted toward the end of
his life. To avoid anarchy, the Church was, at the time, burning people at the stake.
Luther founded Protestantism and his Bible formed the standard for the German
language. In 1604, King James appointed a committee of 50 clerics and scholars to write
an English translation of the Bible. In 1611, the King James Version of the Bible was
published. It, along with King James’s contemporaries, Shakespeare and Bacon, set the
standard for the English language (Nicolson, 2003).
The Reformation would have another unforeseen long-term effect. In Medieval
Europe, a Doctorate in Theology took 10 years to earn, far longer than a degree in law or
medicine (Principe, 2006). Theologians had schooling, knowledge, and authority. After
the Reformation, anyone could interpret scripture. Although there are still theologians
with schooling and knowledge in the 21
st
Century, they no longer have authority and their
work is unknown to most people.
16
If Gutenberg had wanted to publish a book on psychology, instead of the Bible, he
could not have done so, because the word did not yet exist. According to Hunt, the term
“psychologia” was first used by a Serbo-Croatian writer named Marulic in 1520. The
same term was used by the German writer Rudolf Goeckel in 1590. The word
“psychology” was first used in English in 1653. According to the Oxford English
Dictionary (2006) it originally meant “the study or consideration of the soul or spirit.” In
English, the “soul” was thought to be the immortal part of the mind. In Latin the words
animus and anima were used more or less interchangeably to mean either soul or mind,
except that “the rational principal in man” was usually connoted by the masculine form
animus, and only rarely by anima, the feminine form (Oxford Latin Dictionary, 1982;
Simpson, 1960). Latin contained the word spiritus, which also meant spirit or soul. Latin
does not appear to have distinguished between the meaning of spirit (spiritus) and soul
(animus/anima).
The Enlightenment
Will Durant commented that, after the death of Aristotle, “for a thousand years
darkness brooded over the face of Europe. All the world waited the resurrection of
philosophy” (1933, p.106). Durant dismisses stoicism and Epicureanism, the philosophies
of Imperial Rome, as the philosophies of masters or slaves, neither of whom could afford
to be overly sensitive. When the Roman Empire passed into the Papacy, “dogma, definite
and defined, was cast like a shell over the adolescent mind of medieval Europe.” Then
in the thirteenth century, all Christendom was startled and stimulated by Arabic
and Jewish translations of Aristotle; but the power of the Church was still
17
adequate to secure, through Tomas Aquinas and others, the transmogrification of
Aristotle into a medieval theologian. The result was subtlety, but not wisdom.
(Durant, 1933, p. 116)
Durant reviewed the progress made in astronomy, magnetism, and electricity in
the 1400s and the 1500s, and described what happened next:
As knowledge grew, fear deceased; men thought less of worshipping
the unknown, and more of overcoming it. Every vital spirit was lifted
up with a new confidence; barriers were broken down; there was no
bound now to what man might do. . . . It was an age of achievement,
hope and vigor; of new beginnings and enterprises in every field; an
age that waited for a voice, some synthetic soul to sum up its spirit and
resolve. (Durant, 1933, p. 117)
Francis Bacon
That voice, according to Durant, was Francis Bacon (1561 – 1626). Bacon did not
create a new philosophy. He created a new approach to knowledge. Bacon believed that
he was building on Aristotle. Aquinas had compromised Aristotle. For Aquinas, if divine
revelation contradicted evidence and logic, divine revelation won. For Bacon, the
priorities were reversed: science and objectively measurable knowledge came first.
Bacon believed that the thinking of Europe was stuck and that a new method was
needed to move civilization forward. That method consisted of observation and
experimental testing of inductive conclusions. Patience and hard work were necessary.
Falsification advanced knowledge as much as confirmation. Bacon believed that the most
important knowledge was knowledge that had a practical application.
18
In order to observe and induce well, it was necessary to clear the mind of all old
assumptions. In The Advancement of Learning (originally published 1603 – 1605), Bacon
warned of three obstacles or “distempers of learning.” These obstacles included
fantastical learning or vain imaginations: ideas that lacked any substantial foundation and
were professed mainly by charlatans, ideas such as astrology, magic, and alchemy. The
second obstacle was contentious learning or vain altercations. This refers to intellectual
endeavor in which the principal aim is not new knowledge but endless debate. The third
obstacle was delicate learning or vain affectations; this was the valuing of style over
substance. The three distempers had two faults in common: they demanded “prodigal
ingenuity” and they yielded “sterile results.” They wasted talent. What was needed was a
program to re-channel creative energy into socially useful new discoveries (Francis
Bacon, The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2007).
In Book II of De Dignitate (his expanded version of the Advancement) Bacon
outlined his scheme for a new division of human knowledge into three primary
categories: History, Poesy, and Philosophy. Concerning this classification The Internet
Encyclopedia of Philosophy said:
Although the exact motive behind this reclassification remains unclear, one of its
main consequences seems unmistakable: it effectively promotes philosophy – and
especially Baconian science – above the other two branches of knowledge, in
essence defining history as the mere accumulation of brute facts, while reducing
art and imaginative literature to the even more marginal status of “feigned
history.” Evidently Bacon believed that in order for a genuine advancement of
learning to occur, the prestige of philosophy (and particularly natural philosophy)
19
had to be elevated, while that of history and literature (in a word, humanism)
needed to be reduced. (2007, unpaginated)
In the Novum Organon (originally published in several parts from 1608 to 1620),
Bacon wrote that people must clear their minds of four errors, or “idols,” to which all
human thinking was prone. Those errors were: Idols of the Tribe, that is, fallacies that
were natural to all humans; Idols of the Cave, errors that were peculiar to particular
individuals due to the distortion of the light as refracted within their private caves; Idols
of the Marketplace, which arose from commerce and association among human beings;
and Idols of the Theatre, which came from past dogmas and philosophers. “These I call
Idols of the Theatre, because in my judgment all the received systems of philosophy are
but so many stage-plays, representing worlds of their own creation after an unreal and
scenic fashion” (quoted in Durant, 1933, p. 145). Idols of the Theatre were most likely to
be encountered in three types of philosophy: “sophistical philosophy” in which a
philosophical system is based on a few casually observed instances; “empirical
philosophy,” in which an entire system is based on a single key insight; and
“superstitious philosophy.” Concerning “superstitious philosophy,” The Internet
Encyclopedia of Philosophy said:
This is Bacon’s phrase for any system of thought that mixes theology and
philosophy. He cites Pythagoras and Plato as guilty of this practice, but also
points his finger at pious contemporary efforts, similar to those of Creationists
today, to found systems of natural philosophy on Genesis or the book of Job.
(2007, unpaginated)
20
By condemning “superstitious philosophy,” Bacon expressly discouraged
integration of the scientific and spiritual world-views. He criticized Plato and explicitly
continued the antagonism between the Platonic world-view and the Aristotelian; he put
science at odds with religion. From now on, literate Western thinkers would have to ask
themselves which side they are on. Some will see all attempts to mix religion and science
as attempts to infect learning with the disease of superstition and as threats to the
progress of the human race. In this paper, I will continue to look for thinkers who
accepted both world-views, and see if they can provide a model for integrating
spirituality and science in contemporary psychology, and especially in contemporary
psychotherapy.
Bacon coined the phrase “knowledge is power” and he helped invent the idea of
progress: the idea that human beings are engaged in a struggle with nature which they can
“win,” and that each victory marks a step forward. Bacon lived at a time when writers
were expected to make regular obeisance to queen (Elizabeth I) and king (James I) and
God. He bowed to all three, but most of his essays were practical, not metaphysical. He
discussed the existence of God briefly in Of Atheism, where he said:
I had rather believe all the fables in the Legend, and the Talmud and the
Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a mind. . . . A little
philosophy inclineth a man’s mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy
bringeth men’s minds about to religion. For while the mind of man looketh
upon second causes scattered, it may sometimes rest in them and go no
further; but when it beholdeth the chain of them, confederate and linked
together, it must needs fly to Providence and Deity. . . . Atheism is in
21
all respects hateful, so in this, that it depriveth human nature of the means
to exalt itself, above human frailty. (Bacon, Of Atheism, 1597/2007)
Bacon did not address psychological questions. He did make aphoristic
observations about human nature and recommended observation and study of individuals
and society. He advocated studying everything, including magic, dreams, telepathic
communications, and psychical phenomena. Durant (1933) concluded:
His philosophical works, though little read now, “moved the intellects
which moved the world” [quoting Macaulay]. He made himself the eloquent
voice of the optimism and resolution of the Renaissance. Never was any man so
great a stimulus to other thinkers. (p. 156)
Bacon defined a quality of the scientific view that the spiritual view was missing: hard-
nosed realism and an objective search for knowledge, which lead to material progress.
The next major thinker who explicitly addressed psychological questions was
Descartes (1596 – 1650). Descartes was a rationalist who started by doubting everything.
He was also a nativist; that is, he believed that the mind produces ideas that are not
derived from external sources. He believed that the idea of God is innate. And he
believed in the dualism of the body and the mind/soul. He believed that the body and soul
are separate but that they interact. Descartes feared excommunication by the Catholic
Church, and therefore moved to Protestant Holland and then to Sweden. He avoided
excommunication, but caught pneumonia in the cold of a Swedish winter and died.
Next in the development of Western psychological thought came the English
empiricists. They lived in seventeenth and eighteenth century England where they were
able to write and publish despite the fact that Thomas Hobbes was an averred materialist
22
and suspected atheist, John Locke was an advocate of religious toleration, and David
Hume was an agnostic even on his deathbed. They were called empiricists not because
they conducted empirical experiments, but because they believed that human ideas arise
from each person’s empirical interactions with their environment. Hobbes (1588 – 1679)
had served as secretary to Francis Bacon (Durant, 1933, p. 157). He believed that reality
is material and that “soul” is only a metaphor. He was accused of being an atheist, but
denied it. He thought all ideas are the motion of atoms in the nervous system reacting to
the motion of atoms in the external world. Simple thoughts arise from experience, and
complex thoughts derive from simple ones by means of a train of ideas. In Leviathan
(1651) he advocated autocratic government, such as monarchy, because without a ruling
power to enforce civilized behavior, life is inevitably “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and
short.” He thought democracies were unworkable because humans are inherently fearful
and therefore dangerous. In a state of nature, Hobbes believed people would not
recognize any natural moral law. Things that we want we call “good;” things that we
dislike we call “bad.” Hobbes believed that “there is no naturally given hierarchy
amongst human beings and therefore everybody sees himself as having a natural right to
anything which he desires even when others want it too” (Thomas Hobbes, Thoemmes
Continuum, The History of Ideas, 2006). Without strong government, humans would
attack each other in pursuit of individual power. Humans seek power to fulfill their
selfish desires and to protect themselves from the anticipated aggression of others.
Hobbes believed that all humans are born equal and will try to gain unequal advantage.
John Locke (1632 – 1704) believed that all humans are born equal and have an
obligation as children of God to care for one another. Locke argued against the divine
23
right of Kings. His position is that legitimate rulers govern with the consent of the
governed. In An Essay Concerning the True Original Extent and End of Civil
Government (1690), Locke wrote:
The state of Nature has a law of Nature to govern it, which obliges every one, and
reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind who will but consult it, that being
all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty
or possessions; for men being all the workmanship of one omnipotent and
infinitely wise Maker; all the servants of one sovereign Master, sent into the
world by His order and about His business; they are His property, whose
workmanship they are made to last during His, not one another's pleasure. And,
being furnished with like faculties, sharing all in one community of Nature, there
cannot be supposed any such subordination among us that may authorize us to
destroy one another, as if we were made for one another's uses, as the inferior
ranks of creatures are for ours. Every one as he is bound to preserve himself, and
not to quit his station willfully, so by the like reason, when his own preservation
comes not in competition, ought he as much as he can to preserve the rest of
mankind, and not unless it be to do justice on an offender, take away or impair the
life, or what tends to the preservation of the life, the liberty, health, limb, or goods
of another. (Book II Chapter 2, Paragraph 6)
Locke thought that people have no innate ideas, that humans are blank slates, or
tabula rasa, at birth. People get their ideas from sensation and reflection. They combine
simple ideas to form complex ones. He thought that it is not possible to determine if mind
is entirely physical or if there is some “thinking immaterial substance” (Locke, Essay
24
Concerning Human Understanding, Bk IV, chap 3, para. 6, 1689). Locke thought that
the idea of God is not innate because some people do not have that idea. We derive our
idea of God from “the visible marks of extraordinary wisdom and power . . . in all the
works of creation” (Essay, Bk 1, chap 4, secs 8 -- 9). He believed that our ideas of right
and wrong are not innate because history shows such a range of moral judgment; and,
therefore, morality must be socially acquired. Although Locke’s style was prolix, his
impact on world thinkers, such as Thomas Jefferson, was immense. After Locke, it was
difficult for writers and speakers to assert that some humans were not of equal value to
some others, unless they defended that position.
Bacon’s optimism that humans could figure out the universe was vindicated by
the career of Isaac Newton (1642 – 1742). Simultaneously with Leibniz, Newton
invented calculus. Newton discovered the laws of gravitation, color, and the three laws of
motion, which until the 20
th
Century were thought, along with the laws of
thermodynamics and Maxwell’s equations relating to electricity and magnetism, to
explain the entire physical universe (Hirsch, Kett, & Trefil, 1993). Newton believed in
God and thought that there was no conflict between religion and science (Seeger, 1983).
Newton took for granted that both the physical and the spiritual realms were real; that
humans sought knowledge in both; that each realm shared its knowledge and cooperated
with the other. According to historian Lawrence Principe (2006), most scientists and
theologians shared this cooperative attitude until science asserted its professionalism and
separate identity in the 19
th
Century.
Rousseau (1712 – 1778) thought even better of human nature than Locke. He
believed that humans are basically good, but that society corrupts them. Rousseau’s ideas
25
inspired the French Revolution; Locke’s the American Revolution. The conflict between
those who think humans are innately selfish and untrustworthy, as Hobbes did, and those
who think that humans are prone to reason and prosocial conduct, as Locke and Rousseau
did, continues today in differing approaches to psychotherapy. Freud believed that
monsters from the id are barely held in check by the defense mechanisms of the ego and
by the autocratic demands of the superego. Carl Rogers, on the other hand, saw humans
as wanting to do the best thing, if given the opportunity. Rogers, whose ideas are
discussed extensively in this paper, was once called “the successor to Rousseau”
(by D. E. Walker in a letter to the Journal of Counseling Psychology, referenced with
refreshing candidness by Rogers himself in A Note on “The Nature of Man,” 1957).
David Hume (1711 – 1776) thought that the idea of soul was an “unintelligible
question” not worth discussing and the idea of an after-life was “a most unreasonable
fancy” (Hunt, 1993, pp. 84 - 85). He was an associationist. He examined ways in which
humans develop complex ideas through a chain of association of simpler ideas. Our
associations are based on resemblance, contiguity in time and place, and cause and effect.
He wrote that we assume causality because one thing customarily follows another, but we
can never prove actual cause and effect. The most we can prove is correlation. This
limitation remains a difficulty for psychology today. One of the first things I was taught
on returning to school to study psychology in 2000 was: Correlation does not equal
causation.
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant (1724 -- 1804) suggested that we cannot know reality through
either pure reason as the rationalists and Platonists contended or from a purely empirical
26
approach since we can never be certain that our senses are providing us with a complete
and accurate picture of other people and things, or even of ourselves. Instead, we know
reality by synthesizing our perceptions. We do this by applying categories to our
experience. We see those categories in the world that our minds are built to recognize. If
our minds did not recognize these aspects of experience, we would stumble blindly.
Those categories are: (1) quantity: unity, plurality, and totality; (2) quality: reality,
negation, and limitation; (3) modality: possibility – impossibility, existence –
nonexistence, necessity – contingency, and (4) relation: inherence and subsistence,
causality and dependence, and community. These categories are not innate ideas. Kant
“argues that the mind provides a formal structuring that allows for the conjoining of
concepts into judgments, but that structuring itself has no content. The mind is devoid of
content until interaction with the world actuates these formal constraints. The mind
possesses a priori templates for judgments, not a priori judgments (Immanuel Kant, The
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2006). Kant said that these categories allow us to
learn, but they also limit what we can know and how we can know it. Kant’s cognitive
categories are similar to Jung’s archetypes, which are also forms devoid of content.
Jung’s ideas are discussed further in Chapters 3 and 8.
Kant arrived at a rule for right action based on pure reason, without resorting to
authority. His categorical imperative requires that we act as if the maxim of our action
will become, by our will, a universal law of nature. It requires us to relate to all humanity,
whether in our own person or that of any other, always as an end and never as a means.
Kant sensed that the human mind and spirit leap upward in an ascending trajectory of
development that seems aimed for a higher spot than our natural lifespan allows us to
27
attain. Based on this and on the existence of the moral categorical imperative, which he
thought most people feel within themselves, Kant argued for the existence of God and the
immortal soul as follows:
1. The summum bonum is where moral virtue and happiness coincide.
2. We are rationally obligated to attain the summum bonum.
3. What we are obligated to attain, it must be possible to attain.
4. If there is no God or afterlife, it is not possible to attain the summum
bonum.
5. God and the afterlife must exist.
(Moral Arguments for the Existence of God, Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy, 2008)
Kant did not consider this a proof that God does exist. He considered it a proof that there
is good reason to think that God may exist. “Kant was a highly religious person, but he
felt that morality should not be reliant upon God, but upon logic” (Mellilot, p. 1, 2008).
Kant did not, therefore, attempt to integrate the spiritual world-view with the
materialistic-scientific world-view as had Aquinas. Instead he attempted to construct an
independent system based on pure reason, which would serve humans whether
God exists or not.
Contemporaneously with Kant, the Englishman Jeremy Bentham (1748 – 1832)
developed the ethics of utilitarianism. Bentham advocated a quantitative utilitarianism,
including a hedonistic calculus. He urged lawmakers to use the greatest happiness of the
greatest number as their standard for enacting legislation. At that time, it was
revolutionary to suggest that legislators should consider any interest other than their own,
28
or their family’s, or the interests of their class, in making laws. John Stuart Mill was a
disciple of Bentham. In Utilitarianism (1887), Mill tried to make utilitarianism more
palatable by suggesting a qualitative hedonism whereby an unhappy philosopher was
deemed more valuable than a happy pig. This approach was criticized as logically
inconsistent. If one happiness is better than another, then that betterness would have to be
judged by some standard external to happiness.
Kant was critical of all utilitarians. He felt utilitarianism devalued individuals
because it would justify sacrificing one person for the benefit of others if the utilitarian
calculations predicted more benefit. Such a sacrifice would treat that person as a means,
not as an end. Happiness is contingent, unstable, and highly variable from individual to
individual. One could predict that certain acts would lead to happiness and that prediction
could turn out to be completely wrong. Therefore, Kant felt that reason was a better guide
to moral action and that the immediate result of moral action might well be unhappiness.
The true measure of a moral person is if that person acts morally when it does not come
naturally and does not lead to immediate good feelings. Kant felt that there are times
when our actions, or the actions of others, lead to immediate gratification but make us
uneasy nonetheless. That uneasiness is an indication that “our existence has a different
and far nobler end, for which, and not for happiness, reason is properly intended” (Kant,
Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals, 1785). Kant wrote, “morality is not
properly the doctrine of how we should make ourselves happy, but of how we should
become worthy of happiness” (Immanuel Kant, Wikiquote, 2008). Using reason as a
guide, in order to make moral choices, may not produce personal happiness, but it will
produce character and, perhaps, ultimately, some measure of contentment.
29
Despite these intellectual feats, Kant did not think that humans can know much
about the nature of reality based on the application of reason alone. He thought of himself
as a realist and a freethinker. He believed that “our knowledge is constrained to
mathematics and the science of the natural, empirical world [and that] it is impossible to
extend knowledge to the supersensible realm of speculative metaphysics” (Immanuel
Kant, The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2008). He urged science to free itself
from the dictates of external authority and to rely on evidence.
Auguste Comte
Auguste Comte (1798 -- 1857) is the founder of positivism, also known as logical
positivism, which contends that sense perceptions and logical inferences based thereon
are the only admissible basis of human knowledge. He was also the father of sociology, a
term that he coined. He influenced the thinking of 19
th
and 20
th
Century scientists. As
recently as 1959, Carl Rogers wrote that positivism “is settled dogma” in psychology
(Rogers, 1989a, p. 232). Comte wrote that the history of science shows that each science
passes through three successive stages: the theological, when humans use supernatural
explanations of events; the metaphysical, when human use abstract ideas and obscure
forces to explain events, such as occurred during the French Revolution, which he lived
through and saw as a disaster; and the positive stage, when the true causes of natural
events are explained scientifically.
Comte saw progress through these stages as inevitable and irreversible. If the
scientific attitude could be applied to all aspects of life, this would lead to a complete and
beneficial restructuring of the social order. Sociology would discover the laws of social
dynamics that would lead to these advances.
30
Thus, at the outset of the 19
th
Century, the century in which psychology was to
emerge as a science in its own right, leading thinkers in France, Germany, and England
were advocating a separation of science and religion similar to the constitutional
separation of church and state that exists in the United States. Once again, little interest
was expressed in seeking ways to combine the scientific and spiritual views of reality into
one comprehensive theory. In the next chapter, I will look at the birth of psychology as a
science and how that affected the relationship between psychology and spirituality in the
19
th
Century and the beginning of the 20
th
Century.
31
CHAPTER III
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PSYCHOLOGY AND SPIRITUALIY FROM
THE BIRTH OF THE SCIENCE OF PSYCHOLOGY THROUGH FREUD AND JUNG
In the first half of the 19
th
Century there was an explosion of research in the
physiology of the sense organs and perception, especially in Germany. Johannes Müller
(1801 – 1858) investigated the properties of optical and auditory nerves and their
connections to the brain. In the early 1830s at the University of Leipsig, Ernst Heinrich
Weber (1795 – 1878) measured just noticeable differences. He asked subjects to lift one
weight, and then to lift a second weight, and to say which was heavier. Weber showed by
experiment that the heavier the first weight, the greater the difference required in order
for a subject to perceive the difference. However the ratio between the greater and the
smaller weight remained a constant; that is, the magnitude of the weight of the first
stimulus divided by the magnitude of the second remained the same. Weber showed that
this held true for all stimuli, e.g. differences in the brightness of two lights and
differences in the pitch of two tones. This is known as Weber’s Law, and according to
Hunt, it was “the first statement of its kind – a quantitatively precise relationship between
the physical and psychological worlds” (Hunt, 1993, p. 114).
Herman von Helmholtz (1821 – 1894) studied under Müller and went on to
investigate perception in terms of the physics of the sense organs and nervous system. He
was the first to measure the speed at which an impulse travels along a nerve. He studied
how humans perceive colors. He theorized that humans learn primarily through trial and
error, rather than by applying inbuilt categories to our sensations. He demonstrated that
this was possible by having people wear glasses that made objects appear to be positioned
32
to their left. The subjects learned to reach to the left. When the glasses were removed,
they continued to reach to the left for a short period of time until their eyes and minds re-
adjusted.
Gustav Theodor Fechner (1801 – 1887) demonstrated that geometrical increases
in the strength of a stimulus were required to produce arithmetical increases in the
strength of the corresponding sensation. For example, “in terms of energy delivered to the
ear, an average clap of thunder is many times as powerful as ordinary conversation; in
terms of decibels – a decibel is the smallest difference in loudness the human ear can
recognize – it is only twice as loud” (Hunt, 1993, pp. 123 –124). Fechner showed that, for
all sensations, the relationship between the increase in the strength of the stimulus and the
increase in the sensation perceived follows a formula now called Fechner’s Law.
Objective measures of stimulus strength already existed. But human perceptions are
subjective. Therefore some had thought, including Kant, that they could not be
objectively quantified and measured. In order to measure the strength of human
perceptions, Fechner developed three methods (borrowing and perfecting two and
inventing a third) of measurement that are still used by experimental psychologists today.
Monism
In 1845, a group of young physiologists, including some students of Weber,
formed the Berlin Physical Society “to promote their view that all phenomena, including
neural and mental processes, could be accounted for in terms of physical principles”
(Hunt, 1993, p. 114). Until now, most thinkers who had considered the mind and the
body were dualists: they thought that the mind was qualitatively different from the body,
and that mind and body could not be studied in the same way. Many believed that the
33
mind is where the physical body and the eternal, non-physical soul meet. Thomas
Aquinas, for example, thought that some of our mental functions, such as the perceptions
of our senses, are handled by a physical, perishable part of our minds, but that the higher
functions of abstract and moral thought are handled by a part of the mind that is spiritual
and will survive our deaths. The German physiologists were monists; they thought that all
human life is physical and can be studied as such. The position of the monists was
strengthened by the publication of Darwin’s The Origin of Species (1859) and The
Descent of Man (1871/1998). Darwin claimed that The Origin of Species was based on
“Baconian principles” (Francis Bacon, The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2008).
For many 19
th
Century scientists, Darwin’s work confirmed that humans are physical and
animal and nothing more.
Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin (1809 – 1882) had studied divinity at Cambridge before
embarking on the Beagle. At that time he had believed in God and in the divinity of
Jesus. Over the course of his life, his beliefs changed. Darwin started The Origin of
Species (1859) with this quotation from Bacon:
“To conclude, therefore, let no man out of weak conceit of sobriety,
or an ill-applied moderation, think or maintain, that a man can search too far or be
too well studied in the book of God’s word, or in the book of God’s works;
divinity or philosophy; but rather let men endeavor an endless progress or
proficience in both.” Bacon: Advancement of Learning. (quoted in Darwin, The
Origin of Species, 1859/1915, vol. 1, p. xii)
34
When Darwin began The Origin of Species, he believed he was researching God’s works
and describing God’s laws. By its publication he was a self-declared theist; so the last
sentence of The Origin of the Species was: “There is grandeur in this view of life, with its
several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into
one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity,
from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been,
and are being evolved” (Darwin, The Origin of Species, vol. 2, 1859/1898, pp. 305 –
306). After the death of his daughter Annie, he lost faith in a beneficent God and by age
40 he was no longer a Christian. He continued to give support to the local church and to
help with parish work, but on Sundays he would go for a walk while his family attended
church (Charles Darwin’s views on religion, Wikipedia, 2007).
By 1873 he was an agnostic and remained an agnostic, but, at his own insistence,
not an atheist, until his death. The Autobiography of Charles Darwin was published
posthumously. Quotations about Christianity were deleted by Darwin's wife Emma and
his son Francis for the stated reason that the statements were deemed dangerous for
Charles Darwin's reputation. Only in 1958 did Darwin's granddaughter Nora Barlow
publish a revised version which reinstated the omissions. The revised Autobiography (C.
Darwin & N. Barlow, 1958) included the following statements:
I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so
the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and
this would include my Father, Brother and almost all my best friends, will be
everlastingly punished. And this is a damnable doctrine. . . .
35
The old argument of design in nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed
to me so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection had been
discovered. We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a
bivalve shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door
by man. There seems to be no more design in the variablity of organic beings and
in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows.
Everything in nature is the result of fixed laws. . . . (p. 87)
That there is much suffering in the world no one disputes. Some have attempted
to explain this in reference to man by imagining that it serves for his moral
improvement. But the number of men in the world is as nothing compared with
that of all sentient beings, and these often suffer greatly without any moral
improvement. A being so powerful and so full of knowledge as a God who could
create the universe, is to our finite minds omnipotent and omniscient, and it
revolts our understanding to suppose that his benevolence is not unbounded, for
what advantage can there be in the sufferings of millions of the lower animals
throughout almost endless time? This very old argument from the existence of
suffering against the existence of an intelligent first cause seems to me a strong
one; whereas, as just remarked, the presence of much suffering agreees well with
the view that all organic beings have been developed through variation and
natural selection.
At the present day the most usual argument for the existence of an
intelligent God is drawn from the deep inward conviction and feelings which are
experienced by most persons. But it cannot be doubted that Hindoos,
36
Mahomadans and others might argue in the same manner and with equal force in
favor of the existence of one God, or of many Gods, or as with the Buddists of no
God. . . .
Formerly I was led by feelings such as those just referred to, (although I
do not think that the religious sentiment was ever strongly developed in me), to
the firm conviction of the existence of God, and of the immortality of the soul. In
my Journal I wrote that whilst standing in the midst of the grandeur of a Brazilian
forest, 'it is not possible to give an adequate idea of the higher feelings of wonder,
admiration, and devotion which fill and elevate the mind.' I well remember my
conviction that there is more in man than the mere breath of his body. But now
the grandest scenes would not cause any such convictions and feelings to rise in
my mind. It may be truly said that I am like a man who has become colour-blind,
and the universal belief by men of the existence of redness makes my present loss
of perception of not the least value as evidence. This argument would be a valid
one if all men of all races had the same inward conviction of the existence of one
God; but we know that this is very far from being the case. Therefore I cannot see
that such inward convictions and feelings are of any weight as evidence of what
really exists. The state of mind which grand scenes formerly excited in me, and
which was intimately connected with a belief in God, did not essentially differ
from that which is often called the sense of sublimity; and however difficult it
may be to explain the genesis of this sense, it can hardly be advanced as an
argument for the existence of God, any more than the powerful though vague and
similar feelings excited by music. (Darwin & Barlow, 1958, pp. 90 - 92)
37
Darwin came to think that the religious instinct and morality were not innate, but
had developed with society. Darwin declined a request by the Archbishop of Canterbury
to join a “Private Conference” of devout scientists to harmonise science and religion, for
he saw "no prospect of any benefit arising" from it (Charles Darwin’s views on religion,
Wickipedia, 2007).
Darwinian evolution highlights one aspect in which science is inherently inferior
to the spiritual world-view as a guide to life: science and evolution are amoral. For
example, in the middle 19
th
Century, many biologists, including Louis Agassiz, thought
that the white race was superior to the other races because of “scientific evidence” found
in comparitive skull size (“craniometry”). After Darwin, many so-called scientists
contended that the white race was more evolved than the other races. Both theories have
been completely discredited today; there is only one human race. Evolutionary biologist
Stephan Gould argued that the above misunderstandings demonstrated bad science
combined with the political motivation of those in power (Gould 1974a, b, & c). Gould
did not consider the following moral aspects of these “scientific” questions: What if the
science had been good; what if one race were defineable as an objectively measureable
distinct “subspiecies,” and what if that subspecies were superior by some objective
standard? Would that have justified mistreating members of other “subspecies”? Would
their souls have been worth less? What motivated Gould to figure out a version of reality
that is both accurate and fair? It seems to me that spiritual values motivated him. Both
Jesus and Buddha taught that all souls are of equal value, whether they be Jew or
Samaritan, Brahmin or untouchable. They taught inclusion of people whom their
religions had excluded. Historically, however, most religions, and most gods, have been
38
“as severe towards the out-group as [they were] moral to the in-group” (Kirkpatrick,
1999, p. 939).
Bacon had added to the value of the individual voice and life; because any human
being, following Bacon’s methods, could improve himself, herself, and the world. Bacon
had continued the split in world-views that began with Plato and Aristotle. For
rationalists, Darwin completed the job of setting them at odds with “vain imaginers and
superstitious philosophers.” Darwin wrote well and is a powerful voice in support of a
non-theisic, non-spiritual view of the world. Since Darwin, the monist point of view has
ruled the study of evolution and biology. In a discussion with biologist Edward O. Wilson
and journalist Charlie Rose on the Pubic Broadcast Service on December 14, 2005, James
Watson, co-discoverer of D.N.A., said that Darwin is the most important person who has
ever lived and that the notion that God has played a creator’s hand in evolution and the
development of D.N.A. is simply “foolishness.” Watson said he does not know a single
serious scientist who believes in God. Wilson agreed that Darwin is the most important
person who has ever lived but thought he might know at least one serious scientist who
believes in God. On July 25, 2006, Rose interviewed Francis Collins, Director of the
National Human Genome Research Institute and author of The Language of God: A
Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief (2006), and asked him about Watson and Wilson’s
claim to know only one God-believing scientist between them. Collins replied, “They
need to get out more.” Collins’s belief that there is more than one scientist who believes
in God is supported by Barbour’s 1997 survey of scientists, which found that 39% of
American scientists believed in “a God to whom one may pray in expectation of
receiving an answer” (Barbour, 2000, p. 1). Nonetheless, to the present day there is little
39
literature discussing dispassionately the possibility that both random evolution and God’s
intentional hand may play a part in human development. Historian of science, Lawrence
Principe (2006) thought that most Christians believe in both creation and evolution, but
that the extreme viewpoints are the ones that demand and get the most attention. One
recent book that does discuss that possibility is Kenneth Miller’s, Finding Darwin's God: A
Scientist's Search for Common Ground Between God and Evolution
(1999). There is almost no
literature discussing the suggestion of biologist Rupert Sheldrake (1997) and psychiatrist
Elio Frattaroli that, if there is a supreme intelligence in the universe, that intelligence
could be a transcendent, non-random organizing principle that draws evolution upward
toward consciousness and intelligence. In that case, human consciousness and
intelligence would be a product of both upward evolution from less intelligent life forms
and the influence of a “morphogenetic” field that operates as a guiding principle in the
universe (Frattaroli, 2001, p. 344 – 345). Frattaroli’s suggestions for integrating spiritual
and non-spiritual concerns in counseling are discussed in Chapter 10.
Writing near the time of Darwin, the romantic poets objected to what they saw as
the shortsightedness of the Baconian approach to knowledge (Durant, 1933). In Auguries
of Innocence (composition date ca 1800 - 1803, publication date 1863), William Blake
wrote of “seeing eternity in an hour and heaven in a wild flower.” William Wordsworth,
poet laureate of England from 1843 to 1850, objected that the “world is too much with
us” (1807a) and that human beings were losing the childlike ability to experience
“intimations of immortality” in nature (Wordsworth, 1807b). When Darwin entered
Cambridge, many naturalists were also ministers of the church. Nature was seen as
demonstrating God’s plan (Charles Darwin’s views on religion, Wickipedia, 2007). After
40
Darwin, many scientists stopped taking that view. If God is real, Darwin had by his own
admission become colour-blind to His/Her/Their work, and, if Wordsworth was correct,
many scientists were becoming deaf to God’s voice in nature and within themselves.
Before Darwin, as early as the 1700s, it was becoming evident from the fossil
record that the Bible, especially the Old Testament, might not be literally true. Those
Christian denominations that did not take the Bible to be a literal history had little trouble
accepting Darwin’s theory of evolution. The Unitarians and Quakers accepted his
theories almost from the start (Reaction to Darwin's theory, Wickipedia, 2007), and, after
prolonged debate, the Catholic Church, speaking through Pope Pius XII in the encyclical
Humani Generis (1950), proclaimed that Catholics could believe whatever science
determined regarding human evolution so long as they believed that God infused an
eternal soul into that mortal body. Those denominations that took the Bible literally had
trouble with Darwin then and now (Bouma, 1996). In a sense, Darwin also came to see
the world literally. He saw deeper into the workings of biological nature than perhaps any
other scientist before or since. So he may have come to believe that what he saw was all
there was and that the questions he asked were the only ones that needed to be asked. For
him the mystery had been solved. All that remained was to gather evidence.
For some theologians the greater problem with Darwin’s theory of natural
selection was that it challenged God’s role as creator of the universe and of everything in
it. Some Anglicans, and members of other denominations with a comparatively open-
minded approach to theological questions, reconciled God and Darwin by supposing that
God may have set natural selection in motion and helped it along occasionally (Bouma,
1996).
41
Wilhelm Wundt
At this point in the development of Western thought, the science of Psychology
was born. The first European to consider himself a psychologist was Wilhelm Wundt
(1832 - 1920). Wundt was perhaps the first person “who can properly be called a
psychologist rather than a physiologist, physicist, or philosopher with an interest in
psychology” (Hunt, p. 128). He did not believe that the mind existed independently from
the body. He consciously tried to develop psychology into a science that used
experimentation and objective measurement. In December 1879, at the University of
Leipzig, in a private room, which would later be designated the university’s psychology
laboratory, Wundt conducted his first experiment. That is the date, according to Hunt,
that most authorities recognize as the day psychology was born. The experiments were
simple. Most involved a stimulus followed by a mechanical measurement of the subject’s
response time combined with a recording of the subject’s conscious sensations and
feelings. For example, the experimenter might drop a ball onto a platform that was rigged
to start a chronoscope at the exact moment the ball hit. The moment that the subject was
aware of the sound, they would strike a telegraph key that would stop the chronoscope. In
addition, the subjects were trained to write down their perceptions and feelings
throughout the experiment. By varying the task of the subject, the experimenter could
determine the different times taken by different tasks. For instance, if the stimulus came
in four colors calling for four different responses, the experimenter could measure the
times required for both discrimination and choice. Wundt trained hundreds of students in
this new science and sent them out into the universities of Europe and America. He
continued teaching until age 85 and continued writing until his death at 88.
42
Wundt rejected the traditional psychological method of introspection, which was
one approach used by William James, whose ideas are discussed next. Wundt thought
that introspection of this sort was subjective and dealt with unmeasurable phenomena.
Wundt’s reaction to James’s The Principles of Psychology, which was generally well
received throughout the world, was: “It is literature, it is beautiful, but it is not
psychology” (Hunt, 1993, p. 139).
According to the Oxford English Dictionary (on-line edition, 2006), by 1879 the
word “psychology” no longer connoted the study of the soul. It had come to mean “the
scientific study of the nature, functioning, and development of the human mind, including
the faculties of reason, emotion, perception, communication, etc.; the branch of science
that deals with the human or animal mind as an entity and in its relationship to the body
and to the environment or social context, based on observation of the behavior of
individuals or groups of individuals in particular, ordinary, or experimentally controlled
circumstances.”
Until the 19
th
Century, most humans had assumed that a person could be a good
priest and a good scientist, that there was no conflict. With the professionalism of science
and the rise of the science of psychology, many scientists adopted a philosophic stance of
naturalism. As a philosophy, naturalism means a “system of thought holding that all
phenomena can be explained in terms of natural causes and laws without attributing
moral, spiritual, or supernatural significance to them” (The American Heritage College
Dictionary, 3
rd
ed., 1993). Principe (2006) pointed out that many scientists who believed
in God embraced and embrace today a naturalistic methodology, but not philosophy. A
naturalistic methodology recognizes that there may be miracles, but that miracles are by
43
definition unexplainable. God may be behind much of what occurs on earth; however, as
a rule, God must manifest Himself/Herself/ Themselves through secondary causes, which
may include the laws of nature and other human beings. God’s presence behind
secondary causes cannot be proven; therefore, both deistic and atheistic scientists must
study secondary causes. Whether or not one believed in God, after the professionalization
of science, it was considered “unprofessional” to say so in published scientific work.
William James
The first person in the United States to consider himself a psychologist was
William James (1842 – 1910). Like Wundt, James had graduated from medical school;
also like Wundt his first job was as a professor of physiology, at Harvard in 1872. In
1875, James offered the first class in psychology taught at an American university.
James’s title was changed from professor of physiology to professor of philosophy in
1880 and to professor of psychology in 1889.
James outlook on life changed from literal as a young man to spiritual as an older
man. At the outset of his career, James was a self-avowed pragmatist; that is, he accepted
as true no more than is necessary to explain the data. If he believed in a soul, he deemed
it irrelevant to the science of psychology, because human states of consciousness and the
human sense of self can be explained without it. Metaphysically or theologically the soul
may turn out to exist, but for psychology it is “superfluous” (James, Psychology,
1892/1948, p. 203). In Principles of Psychology (1890), James posited an empirical-self
composed of the material-self, the social-self, and the spiritual-self; by “spiritual-self” he
meant a person’s inner or subjective sense of being. He thought that this sense of being
arose from human experience and the continuity of each human being’s stream of
44
consciousness. It was not necessary to postulate a soul apart from the body that observes
and maintains a sense of identity.
James was not a monist. He was a “radical empiricist,” a term he appears to have
invented. Like empiricists, he believed humans form hypotheses that they test against
experience. But he asserted that monism is also a hypothesis. He distinguished monism
not from dualism but from pluralism, and he was a pluralist. He believed that there is no
system of rules that works in every situation or at all times. He believed that this
incompleteability characterizes all reality: material and subjective. “Something – ‘call it
fate, chance, freedom, spontaneity, the devil, what you will’ – is still wrong and other and
outside and unincluded from your point of view, even though you be the greatest of
philosophers” (James, 1897, p. 135).
James’s father, Henry James, was a religious man who debated philosophic issues
with his children at the dinner table. Perhaps in reaction against his father, James was a
pragmatic materialist at the start of his career. But he developed into an open-minded
pluralist who wrote The Will to Belief in 1897 describing how a person could rationally
decide to “bet on” God’s existence, and The Varieties of Religious Experience in 1902. In
the latter part of his career, James considered religion and spirituality in more depth than
most psychologists have done before or since. Much of what he had to say could prove
helpful in attempting to think through a contemporary, workable theory of spiritual
psychology. For these reasons, I have quoted from James at length below.
In a letter, James wrote that in preparing The Varieties he had set out “to make the
reader believe, what I myself invincibly do believe, that, although all the special
manifestations of religion may have been absurd (I mean its creeds and theories), yet the
45
life of it as a whole is mankind’s most important function” (Letter to Miss Frances R.
Morse, in The Letters of William James, vol II, 1920, p. 127).
In The Varieties of Religious Experience, James defined “religion” twice. He
defined the subject matter he would be examining. Then, at the conclusion of his
considerations, he defined what he had found. At the outset, he decided to eliminate
“institutional religion” from consideration. He then wrote, “Religion, therefore, as I now
ask you arbitrarily to take it, shall mean for us the feelings, acts, and experiences of
individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation
to whatever they may consider the divine” (James, 1902, p. 39, italics in original).
In the conclusion of the book, he wrote:
Summing up in the broadest possible way the characteristics of the
religious life, as we have found them, it includes the following beliefs:
1. That the visible world is part of a more spiritual universe
from which it draws its chief significance;
2. That union or harmonious relation with that higher
universe is our true end;
3. That prayer or inner communication with the spirit thereof
– be that spirit ‘God’ or ‘law’ – is a process wherein work is really done,
and spiritual energy flows in and produces effects, psychological or
material, within the phenomenal world.
Religion includes also the following psychological characteristics:
4. A new zest which adds itself like a gift to life, and takes the form
either of lyrical enchantment or of appeal to earnestness and heroism.
46
5. An assurance of safety and a temper of peace, and, in relation to
others, a preponderance of loving affections. (p. 418)
In The Varieties James defined two spiritual types: the healthy-minded and the
sick soul. “Healthy minded” persons are born feeling good about God and themselves and
about their fellow human beings. Healthy minded individuals forget sickness and death
when it is not in the same room, and they look upon “evil” as an odd mistake that anyone
would certainly correct if given the chance. A “sick soul” would say that such blithe
spirits have made a religion of naïveté. The “sick souls” can never completely forget the
darkness and pain in their lives and in the lives of others. They are conscious of their own
weaknesses and failures. Because they keep their eyes open, or because their eyes have
been forced open, they have seen natural evil. But, after they become religious, they do
not find natural evil a “stumbling block or terror because it now seems swallowed up in
supernatural good. The process is one of redemption, not of mere reversion to natural
health, and the sufferer, when saved, is saved by what seems to him a second birth, a
deeper kind of conscious being than he could enjoy before” (James, 1902, p. 143).
“Healthy minded” people may never have doubted the existence of God and may never
have questioned their place in God’s kingdom, and they are, therefore, called “once-
born.” There are some people who are so healthy minded that it never occurs to them that
they need religion. And there are sick souls who never seek religion.
James went on to evaluate these two attitudes:
[H]ealthy-mindedness is inadequate as a philosophical doctrine, because the evil
facts which it refuses positively to account for are a genuine portion of reality;
and they may after all be the best key to life’s significance, and possibly the only
47
openers of our eyes to the deepest levels of truth. . . . [S]ince the evil facts are as
genuine parts of nature as the good ones, the philosophic presumption should be
that they have some rational significance, and that systematic healthy-
mindedness, failing as it does to accord to sorrow, pain, and death any positive
and active attention whatever, is formally less complete than systems that try at
least to include these elements in their scope. (James, 1902, pp. 148, 150).
The chapter that follows “The Sick Soul” in The Varieties is titled “The Divided
Self and the Process of Its Unification.” If James were a present-day popular
psychologist, this provocatively titled chapter might include a self-questionnaire,
whereby one could measure how and to what extent one’s self was divided, and a self-
taught course of ten, or so, “easy steps" one could follow to unify one’s divided self.
James did not provide this. He wrote:
Now in all of us, however constituted, but to a degree the greater in
proportion as we are intense and sensitive and subject to diversified
temperaments, and to the greatest possible degree if we are decidedly
psychopathic, does the normal evolution of character chiefly consist in the
straightening out and unifying of the inner self. The higher and the lower feelings,
the useful and the erring impulses, begin by being a comparative chaos within
us – they must end by forming a stable system of functions in right subordination.
Unhappiness is apt to characterize the period of order-making and struggle.
(James, 1902, p. 154.)
James addressed the question of whether the existence of so many sects and
creeds is regrettable. To this he answered “‘No’ emphatically,” and continued:
48
No two of us have identical difficulties, nor should we be expected to work out
identical solutions. Each, from his peculiar angle of observation, takes in a certain
sphere of fact and trouble, which each must deal with in a unique manner. One of
us must soften himself, another must harden himself; one must yield a point,
another must stand firm, – in order the better to defend the position assigned him.
If an Emerson were forced to be a Wesley, or a Moody forced to be a Whitman,
the total human consciousness of the divine would suffer. The divine can mean no
single quality, it must mean a group of qualities, by being champions of which in
alteration, different men may all find worthy missions. Each attitude being a
syllable in human nature’s total message, it takes the whole of us to spell the
meaning out completely. So a ‘god of battles’ must be allowed to be the god of
one kind of person, a god of peace and heaven and home, the god of another. We
must frankly recognize the fact that we live in partial systems, and that parts are
not interchangeable in the spiritual life. If we are peevish and jealous, destruction
of the self must be an element of our religion; why need it be one if we are good
and sympathetic from the outset? If we are sick souls, we require a religion of
deliverance; but why think so much of deliverance, if we are healthy-minded?
Unquestionably, some men have the completer experience and the higher
vocation, here just as in the social world; but for each man to stay in his own
experience, whate’er it be, and for others to tolerate him there, is surely best.
(James, 1902, pp. 419 – 420)
49
Concerning his own beliefs, James wrote:
I think, therefore, that however particular questions connected with our
individual destinies may be answered, it is only by acknowledging them as
genuine questions, and living in the sphere of thought which they open up, that we
become profound. But to live thus is to be religious. . . . We and God have
business with each other; and in opening ourselves to his influence our deepest
destiny is fulfilled. . . . The whole drift of my education goes to persuade me that
the world of our present consciousness is only one out of many worlds of
consciousness that exist, and that those other worlds must contain experiences
which have a meaning for our life also; and that although in the main their
experiences and those of this world keep discrete, yet the two become continuous
at certain points, and higher energies filter in. By being faithful in my poor
measure to this over-belief, I seem to myself to keep more sane and true. I can, of
course, put myself into the sectarian scientist’s attitude, and imagine vividly that
the world of sensations and of scientific laws and objects may be all. But
whenever I do this, I hear the inner monitor of which W. K. Clifford once wrote,
whispering the word ‘bosh!’ Humbug is humbug, even though it bear the
scientific name, and the total expression of human experience, as I view it,
objectively, invincibly urges me beyond the narrow ‘scientific’ bounds. Assuredly
the real world is of a different temperament, – more intricately built than physical
science allows. So my objective and my subjective conscience both hold me to the
over-belief which I express. Who knows whether the faithfulness of individuals
50
here below in their own poor over-beliefs may not actually help God in turn to be
more effectively faithful to his own greater tasks?
(James, 1902, pp. 430, 442, 444)
James is best known today for The Varieties of Religious Experience. It has never
been out of print since it was published in 1902, despite the fact that it is not exactly a
book of religion or psychology or philosophy and it contains no answers. James
acknowledged that people want black and white answers and are very impatient with gray
(James, 1909, p. 510).
James might have developed his pluralistic appreciation of religion and his
classification of religious types into a theory of spiritual psychological counseling that
gave “positive attention” to “sorrow, pain, and death,” and valued shades of gray, but he
did not. He might have envisioned psychologists supporting spiritual development, but he
did not consider that possibility. James was not a therapist. He was, sadly, the first and
the last great philosopher-psychologist.
As a philosopher, James considered moral questions. In The Moral Philosopher
and the Moral Life, he wrote that all moral codes are based on what is pleasing or
displeasing to someone. There is no rational basis for choosing the preferences of one
person or group above another’s. The fairest atheistic approach is utilitarianism, which
uses what is most pleasing to the most people as a guide, but that is a vague standard on
which to base one’s life. James believed that if there is a God, what is pleasing to God
would have a right to preferential consideration, although “exactly what the thought of
the infinite thinker may be is hidden from us even were we sure of his existence”
51
(1891, p. 628). James was one of very few psychologists to consider morality. Since
psychology has ceased to be a part of philosophy, moral questions have been considered
inappropriate for the science of psychology.
Freud and Jung
Sigmund Freud (1856 – 1939) developed the first complete, integrated theory of
psychotherapy. Freud was an outspoken atheist who declared loudly and often that a
belief in God was a delusion and a defense mechanism, a way of denying the reality of
our aloneness and impending death. Freud referred to the teachings of Jesus as
“psychologically impossible and useless for our lives” (quoted in Nicholi, 2002, p. 38).
Freud was also a medical doctor. Thus, the first experimental psychologist,
Wundt, the first general psychological theorist, James, and the first psychotherapist were
all heirs to the non-spiritual, body-centered, practical tradition of Hippocrates. Wundt is
not widely remembered because his accomplishments were narrow. James, although a
folk hero in America in his lifetime, is not well remembered today because his
accomplishments were too broad: he wrote widely concerning psychology, philosophy,
and religion. Neither founded a school of psychology or proposed a grand encompassing
theory. Freud did both. Freud was constantly updating and perfecting his theory, trying to
make it complete. However, he would not allow any of his disciples to make any changes
or additions. If they thought for themselves, they were no longer welcome in Freud’s
circle. In this he differed from Jung, who expected and welcomed new and different
incites. To the present day, Freudianism remains a small tent, while Jungians are a
diverse and growing group.
52
For many years, Freud’s closest acolyte and the man he saw as his eventual
successor was Carl Jung (1875 – 1961). But their differences led to a break. Some of
Jung’s important differences with Freud concerned the following ideas:
1. The Unconscious Mind.
A. Freud thought that the unconscious mind is a personal garbage
dump where human animals suppress their ugly and libidinous thoughts,
and he thought that it was nothing more than that.
B. From his experience with clients and work with his own dreams, Jung
concluded that the unconscious is the repository of much positive material
and energy. It is a garden in which our unlived selves develop and seek
expression: Jung calls them “flowers that open in the night” (Jung, 1931,
p. 478). Jung also believed that there is a Collective Unconscious that is
inborn in each individual and holds symbols that are significant for all
humankind. Jung thought that the Collective Unconscious might be
continuing to evolve. Both the personal unconscious and the Collective
Unconscious contain and are influenced by archetypes. Archetypes
organize human experience into psychological categories, e.g. anima and
animus. “Anima” and “animus” can be translated as the Latin words for
soul (anima) and spirit or mind (animus). In Jungian psychology they are
the male’s feminine side, his anima, and the woman’s masculine side, her
animus, and they are usually unconscious.
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2. Motivation.
A. Freud thought that the main motivation of humans is to fulfill their
drives, primarily their sexual drive.
B. Jung thought that the main motivation of humans is to find and fulfill
their meaning.
3. Development.
A. Freud’s is a psychology of adjustment. His developmental
stages end with the genital stage at around age twelve. Adults deal with
the consequences of mishandled infant stages, and with denial and
sublimation of sexual and aggressive drives. Much of Freudian therapy is
likely to dwell on defense mechanisms and on childhood memories and
relationships.
B. Jung’s is a psychology of individuation. He thought that adult
development continued until the moment of death, and that the most
important development often came in midlife or later. In adulthood,
humans deal with unrealized aspects of themselves that seek conscious
expression. Through this struggle, often painful, human beings become
whole. Jungian therapy is more oriented to present projections and the
future.
4. Dreams.
A. Freud believed that human dreams represent the wish-fulfillment of
repressed aggressive and sexual urges.
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B. Jung believed that each partial aspect of the self that a human being
develops has its shadow: the undeveloped alternative to what he or she has
become. The shadow expresses itself in symbols, projections, and dreams.
Jung did believe in God. He was president of the Guild of Pastoral Psychology,
which was “committed to building bridges between psychology and theology” (Benner,
p. 38). Jung thought it was important to preserve evil as a category of human thought and
not to dismiss it as merely the absence of good. He thought that evil resulted from
consciousness, and the ability to make conscious judgments. When people project
rejected parts of themselves onto others, they see those other persons as evil. Continued
psychological development in adulthood requires moral development. Integration of
one’s shadow means “seeing one’s own moral faults” and is the “equivalent of taking
responsibility for one’s own life” (Stein, 1995, p. 22 – 23).
Jung considered the question of why Psychology suddenly developed in the last
decades of the 19
th
Century and beginning of the 20
th
. Did the psyche not exist before
then, or were people internally blind? In The Spiritual Problem of Modern Man, Jung
wrote that in times past the psyche was external.
For a priest, the psyche can only be something that needs fitting into a recognized
form or system of belief in order to ensure its undisturbed functioning. So long as
this system gives true expression to life, psychology can be nothing but a
technical adjuvant to healthy living. . . . [T]hen we may say that the psyche is
outside and there is no psychic problem, just as there is no unconscious in our
sense of the word. (1931/1971, p. 462)
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In light of scientific discoveries, the old religious stories now sound unreal to
many. They have lost their power to reassure. So people look inside, in the hope of
finding something they can no longer find in the religious rituals of the outside world.
Jung describes the problem as follows:
So also a spiritual need has produced in our time the “discovery” of
psychology. The psychic facts still existed earlier, of course, but they
did not attract attention – no one noticed them. People got along without
them. But today we can no longer get along unless we pay attention to
the psyche. . . . [A]s soon as religion can no longer embrace his life in all
its fullness – then the psyche becomes a factor in its own right which
cannot be dealt with by the customary measures. It is for this reason
that today we have a psychology founded on experience, and not
upon articles of faith or the postulates of any philosophical system.
(Jung, 1931/1971, p. 462)
Priests once cared for the psyche. For many people, priests still provide whatever
care they feel in need of. For those who feel they cannot get reassurance from priests,
there are now psychotherapists, who are viewed as expert repositories of empirical
experience, and not as philosophers or priests.
In the 19
th
Century, when psychology became professionalized, science was seen
as conferring many blessings on humankind. If something was “scientific” it was thought
to be reliable and good. Many people came to equate religion with superstition. Many
others dropped out of church but kept their faith inside and private. Other factors that
contributed to an increased awareness of and concern for the health of individual psyches
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were the industrial revolution, the French and American Revolutions, the rise of
individualism and materialism, and the emergence of the middle class in the West. As
physical health improved and lifespan lengthened, people had more time to worry about
their mental health. In many people’s minds, the blessings of longer life and better
physical and mental health were equated with science, not with religion.
Morton Hunt typifies that scientific attitude. In his thorough and well-written
book, The Story of Psychology (1993), which has provided much of the background for
this chapter, Hunt described the history and development of psychology from the ancient
Greeks to the present. Whenever considerations of spirit and soul were included in the
thinking of any theorist, Hunt characterized those considerations as unfortunate steps
backward in the development of the science of psychology. Hunt did not include any
discussion of the spiritual aspects of the writings of Kant and William James. He had no
in depth discussion of Jung. His chief criticism of Freud was that he may not have been
scientific enough.
Conclusions
Chapters 2 and 3 have reviewed the history of the relationship between the
scientific world-view and the spiritual world-view of psychology from Socrates, in 400
BC, when the concept of psychology did not yet exist, to the beginning of the 20
th
Century, when the science of psychology was new-born. These two world-views appear
to have diverged from each other soon after humans became self-conscious. Socrates and
his student Plato believed in the soul and in life-after-death. They thought that the
purpose of this life, and the next life, was to become one’s true self, even if the process
was painful and the result unpopular. Their student Aristotle disagreed; he did not believe
57
in an immortal soul or in life-after-death. He believed in the pursuit of knowledge by
gathering physical evidence and he recommended the pursuit of happiness in this lifetime
by following the golden mean.
Contemporaneously with Aristotle, Hypocrites, the father of modern medicine,
treated illness based on evidence, not magic. Many of the early psychologists were also
medical doctors; so they were likely to have seen the brain as a physical organ on the
autopsy table in medical school, which might have interfered with their ability to see it as
a repository for the soul, as Aquinas did. Socrates and Plato saw themselves in
competition with Aristotle and with his philosophy. Aristotle reciprocated. Almost no one
has attempted to integrate the two world-views in the 2, 400 years since. Aquinas,
William James, Carl Jung, and a few others have tried.
As enunciated by Francis Bacon (1561 -- 1626), the scientific world-view
contributed a hard-nosed practicality, which made material progress possible, but which
lacked morality to guide the application of that progress.
At the outset of the 20
th
Century, monism dominated experimental psychology
and atheism dominated psychiatry. James believed in the possibility and the importance
of the spiritual realm, but he was nearing the end of his career and he had developed no
theory of psychotherapy that could survive him. Jung believed in God and in the
importance of spirituality in therapy, but he was considered an esoteric maverick, whose
approach was understood only by the cognoscenti. At the outset of the 20
th
Century, in
the competition between the materialistic-scientific world-view of psychology and the
spiritual world-view, the spiritual world-view appeared out-numbered, out-gunned, and
destined for extinction.
58
In the next chapter, I will begin to examine the relationship between the spiritual
and materialistic view of psychology in the 20
th
Century. I will discuss how the two views
remained antagonistic throughout most of the 20
th
Century, until recent signs of
reconciliation beginning in approximately 1990. I will describe in detail the thinking of
the few psychological or religious thinkers who honored both aspects of being human,
and I will describe how they expressed that reconciliation in counseling.
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CHAPTER IV
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SPIRITUALITY AND PSYCHOLOGY
IN THE 2O CENTURY:
PSYCHIATRY, BEHAVIORISM, COGNITIVE AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
In the 20
th
Century, psychology developed on many separate tracks. This chapter
will discuss psychiatry, behaviorism, and cognitive psychology, and their approaches to
counseling. These tracks ignored spirituality or were antagonistic to it. Humanistic and
existential psychology, which are considered in the next two chapters, and group and
family counseling, which are considered in Chapter 7, included some practitioners who
considered spiritual questions. Approaches that embraced spirituality, such as pastoral
counseling, are considered in Chapter 8. This chapter also considers social psychology
and the Milgram and Zimbardo experiments. Social psychology was not antagonistic to
spirituality: longitudinal studies discussed in chapter 13 showed a correlation between
church attendance and long life, in part because of the social support found there.
Psychiatry
From 1900 to the 1960s most psychological therapy was psychiatric and Freudian.
Freud made one important contribution on the subject of death: he theorized that many
people have an unconscious death wish. From 1970 to the present, psychiatrists have
increasingly specialized in prescribing medication. As Freudians and as psycho-
pharmacologists, psychiatrists, with a few exceptions, have been uninterested in
spirituality. Five notable exceptions are Scott Peck, whose ideas are considered below,
Carl Jung, whose ideas are discussed in Chapters 3 and 8, Roberto Assagioli, whose ideas
are discussed in Chapter 9, Elio Frattaroli, whose ideas are discussed in Chapter 10, and
60
Armand Nicholi, author of The Question of God: C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud Debate
God, Love, Sex, and The Meaning of Life (2002), whose ideas are not discussed, because
this paper does not address the question of whether or not God exists. In the 1970s,
clinical psychologists began to replace psychiatrists as the principal practitioners of talk-
therapy. Today, in 2009, counselors with a Master's degree most often fill the role of talk-
therapist. Psychiatry resisted these expansions. When Carl Rogers, who had a doctorate
in Educational Psychology, began counseling in the 1940s and 1950s, some psychiatrists
accused him of mal-practice. Rogers taped his sessions, measured the results, and
challenged psychiatrists to do the same. They did not (Rogers, 1951, 1961).
The term "psychoanalysis" usually means an approach to counseling based on
Freud, who was the most influential psychiatrist of the 20th Century. As I understand it,
psychoanalysis focuses on revisiting relationships of one's childhood, not primarily for
the purpose of repairing those relationships, but for the purpose of repairing damage done
to one's self by those relationships. It does this by working with the client's stream-of-
consciousness, defenses, and projections. In the confidentiality of the therapist's office,
clients can talk freely about what is troubling them. Through free-association, painful
memories emerge from the client's unconscious and are discussed and resolved.
Projection is the process by which clients tend to identify the therapist with other
important persons in their lives, especially parents, and to act with the therapist as they
did with their parents. Psychoanalysis is not developmental nor strengths based, as are the
approaches of Rogers, discussed in the next chapter, and of Ivey, et al, discussed in
Chapter 8. It focuses on the past, instead of the present and future. Since Freud was an
atheist, it does not include a spiritual component, unless the particular psychiatrist takes
61
care to develop one on his own, as did Frattaroli, whose approach is discussed in Chapter
10.
Behaviorism
In universities, academic psychology was mainly concerned with research and
experimentation. In the first half of the 20
th
Century that experimentation was principally
behavioral; in the second half it was behavioral and cognitive. Academic psychologists
were eager to prove that they were true scientists, so they maintained a wall between
science and religion.
Behaviorism arose in the early 20th Century as an alternative to what was called
mentalism: "the belief in mind as a separate essence" (Hunt, 1993, p. 244). Behaviorists
believe that "mind is an illusion; there is no incorporeal self within us; our mental
experiences, including consciousness, awareness of self, and thinking, are only
physiological events taking place in the nervous system in response to stimuli" (Hunt,
p. 244). Encouraged by Darwin's theory of evolution to think of humans as animals, most
behaviorist experiments were with rats, pigeons, cats, and dogs. Behaviorist experiments
were mainly concerned with how humans and other animals learn and how they can be
controlled. By the 1960s, it had become apparent to an increasing numbers of
psychologists that there was something going on inside the mind; for example, Edward
Chace Tolman noted that after a rat had run a maze a few times, it would pause at a point
of decision, look this way and that, and take time to consider its next move as if
performing "vicarious trial and error" in its head (in Hunt, p. 276). Hunt concluded:
By the 1960s, [different] influences began to coalesce into a view of the mind
and behavior known as "cognitive science" -- a mentalism devoid of supernatural
62
entities and based on experimental methods through which reasonable inferences
could be made about mental processes. (Hunt, 1993, p. 278)
Hunt wrote that many behaviorist experiments seem trivial, for example, placing
two different colors of corn kernels in front of chickens, one of which was sweet and one
bitter, and then recording, as evidence of reinforcement, that the chickens learned to eat
only the sweet.
Cognitive Psychology
Cognitive psychology began to gain popularity in the 1970s. For reasons not clear
to me, cognitive psychology in the laboratories of academia meant something very
different from cognitive psychology in therapy. An example of a cognitive experiment
was Treisman's test of attention in which she played two different recorded messages in a
subject's ears, one message in the right ear and a different message in the left. Subjects
were able to report accurately the message they were following and ignore the other
message, even when the message they were following was unexpectedly switched from
one ear to the other (Treisman, 1960). When subjects heard their own names spoken into
the unattended ear they usually heard it and remembered it; thus, what humans hear,
process, and remember depends on two things: attention and pertinence (Ashcraft, 1998,
Norman, 1968). Cognitive psychology in the laboratory is concerned with measuring the
brain as a machine, with an ego. To me, cognitive experiments seem almost as trivial as
the behavioral experiments. But they have important applications. Industrial-
organizational psychologists use the results of attention experiments to design safe
airplane control panels, which pilots can monitor without falling asleep and on which
they can find the most important switches quickly.
63
Kübler-Ross
The most frequently used form of psychotherapy today is cognitive-behavior
therapy. There is no corresponding academic field of cognitive-behaviorism. That may
help explain why Kübler-Ross, author of an important study of what humans do and think
when faced with their own death, did not receive tenure from the university where she
completed that study. In On Death and Dying (1969), Elisabeth Kübler-Ross reported
that people who are told they will soon die tend to pass though the following five stages:
denial and isolation ("This is not happening to me"); anger ("How dare God do this to
me!"); bargaining ("Just let me live this time and I will be a good person in the future");
depression ("I can't bare to go through this"); and acceptance ("I am ready -- I do not
want to struggle anymore") (Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, Wikpedia, 2006). Kübler-Ross based
her book on 5,000 pages of interviews with dying patients that she conducted while she
was a teacher and psychiatrist at the University of Chicago. Although the book was
instantly successful throughout the world, the University of Chicago did not offer her
tenure because they did not consider her work "real medical research. It was not science"
(Kübler-Ross, quoted in American RadioWorks, 2006). So Kübler-Ross went on the road
offering seminars and advising new hospice programs. Knowing what to expect can help
people get through sad and frightening times. But knowing how others have acted does
not provide guidance concerning the meaning of one's own losses, pain, illness, and
death. Kübler-Ross later edited and contributed to Death: The Final Stage of Growth, in
which she wrote, "I have been able to function as a catalyst, trying to bring to our
awareness that we can only truly live and enjoy and appreciate life if we realize at all
times that we are finite" (1975, p. xxii). Death: The Final Stage of Growth also contains
writings explaining different beliefs about death in different cultures and religions. One
64
contributor was Mwalimu Imara, who is now an Episcopal Priest and a professor
emeritus of Ethics and Human Values at Moorehouse School of Medicine. Imara met
Kübler-Ross in 1966 when he was a divinity student and was assigned to attend her
meetings with dying patients. Imara noticed that some patients never reached the final
stage of acceptance. He conducted a study in which he demonstrated that people are more
likely to move through the five stages if they (1) are willing to converse in depth with
significant others about their present experience, (2) meet others on equal terms, and (3)
accept the good and the bad because they have a framework of understanding that gives
meaning to both happy and tragic events (Imara, 1975, p. 160). Imara noted that the
capacity for radical transformation is a characteristic feature of humans. Even people who
are dying can transform. Imara wrote: "Religion has to do with our commitment to
whatever enables us [to] transform our lives in creative ways regardless of the situation"
(pp. 155, 159). "To be transformed, dying patients must be committed to (1) achieving a
sense of their own identity through experiencing their own ongoing awareness or 'original
experience' and (2) committing themselves to a mutual dialogue about the experience
with significant other people" (p. 158). Finally, (3) the patient needs some coherent map
of the world or philosophy of life. Patients who demonstrate these traits are more likely to
accept their death.
Behavioral and Cognitive Therapy
In this section, I will discuss behavioral therapy, then cognitive therapy. The most
frequent approach to therapy today is to combine the two. Cognitive-behavioral therapy
has developed more evidence-based support for its practice than has any other approach
to psychotherapy. There are therapists who assert that to use any but an evidence-based
65
approach is malpractice. That might limit one's goals as client and therapist to things that
can be measured easily, such as "number of drinks consumed in the last week" as
opposed to vaguer existential goals, such as "a sense of personal meaning and value." In
Existential Counseling and Psychotherapy in Practice, van Deurzen (2002) solves this
problem by stating her underlying assumptions explicitly, discussing those assumptions
with clients, and asking clients to choose whether they wish to pursue an approach that
includes uncertainties and pain. Van Deurzen's assumptions, which appear below, are
identical to mine, except that I add the assumptions that there may be a spiritual
dimension to existence that is real and from which help may be available. Van Deurzen
recognizes a spiritual dimension to existence but considers it largely metaphorical. Van
Deurzen's assumptions are:
[Clients] are frequently struggling to accommodate two or more conflicting
views of life. . . . The despair and the sense of futility that clients start out with
is construed as a necessary first step in a quest for meaning. This quest can
only be undertaken if the client is ready to examine the crucial issues and question
her own assumptions. (p. 3)
People try to make it seem as if life can be safe, solid and secure. They have to
learn to tolerate anxiety and uncertainty if they are to rise to the challenge of
their own choices and responsibility. (p. 61)
The client needs to find in herself an inner source of life that she can always
rely on as a safe place where truth can be found, no matter what lies
and deceit go on in the outside world. As long as the therapist tries
to accommodate the client and ease her pain and anxiety, she stands
66
in the way of the client's discovery of this safety in herself.
(van Deurzen, 2002, p. 170)
As a counselor in internship, I usually begin with assumptions that are strengths-based
and person-centered. Rogers did many studies of person-centered counseling to
demonstrate that when it is used, clients do change in positive ways. I ask clients what
their goals are, agree on those goals, and state my spiritual assumptions, if and when that
appears appropriate. If my spiritual assumptions are not stated explicitly, they remain
implicit, which Ivey, et al. (2005) thought was true for many counselors. I must be alert
that these unstated assumptions do not interfere with my ability to go to where the client
is and provide the help the client needs and chooses.
In behavioral therapy, the counselor tries to help clients change their behavior, for
example the counselor can help clients stop drinking by using the behavioral approach of
helping clients recognize and implement their ABCs. "A" represents the antecedent; "B"
stands for the behavior; and "C' means the consequence. In practice this could mean that
every time clients drive home from work they drive past a bar, which is the antecedent;
they stop in and have a drink, which is the behavior; then they arrive home drunk and hit
their spouse, which is the consequence. The client could begin by planning a different
way home that does not pass the bar. Two other types of behavioral therapy are gradual
exposure and extinction: if a client is gradually exposed to his or her fears, e.g. riding in
an elevator, without suffering actual harm, the fear response will eventually be
extinguished. Behaviorists believe that if a client's behavior changes, their thinking and
feelings will eventually fall in line.
67
Cognitive therapists believe that if a client's thinking changes, their behavior and
feelings will fall in line. Two prominent cognitive therapists were Albert Ellis and Aaron
Beck. Ellis called his approach Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy. It involves an
ABCD & an E. In this case "A" means the actuating event (such as driving by the bar);
"B" means the irrational belief ("I can go in and have just one drink"); "C' is the bad
consequences; "D" means that the therapist and client should dispute the irrational belief
("You have never been able to have just one drink"); and "E" stands for the client's
replacing irrationality with an effective philosophy by which to live (Sharf, 2004).
Aaron Beck theorized that depression results from the cognitive triad of a
negative view of oneself, a negative view of the environment, and a negative view of the
future. These negative views often result from cognitive distortions, such as all-or-
nothing thinking, over-generalization, selective abstraction of negative details,
disqualifying the positive, jumping to conclusions, catastrophizing, 'should' statements,
which he called "musterbation," and over-personalization (Nevid, Rathus, & Greene,
2000). The therapist's job is to help the clients stop their automatic negative thoughts,
replace them with alternative, positive self-talk, and become more objective about their
own worth (Sharf, p.370 - 379).
Cognitive-behavioral therapy is the one kind of psychotherapy that courts of law
and probation officers trust. It is designed to get people to act right and think right and
stop making trouble. It is what the Pharisees might have sentenced Jesus to, if they'd had
the chance. One approach to cognitive-behavioral therapy that accepts unhappiness and
anxiety as normal parts of life is Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). ACT is
discussed further in Chapter 10 of this paper.
68
Behavioral therapy is useful, but in my judgment it is shallow: it does little to
address the pain, fear, and isolation that lead to drinking. Cognitive therapy teaches us to
think happy thoughts in place of depressed ones, even though studies have shown that
depressed patients are more realistic than "normal" ones. "Normal" people are
unrealistically optimistic and "exaggerate the control they have over what goes on around
them" (Nevid, Rathus, & Greene, p. 253; Taylor, 1989, p. 214). Cognitive therapy for
depression devalues the client's own valuation. It does not consider that clients may be
sad for good reason and may be able to learn from their sadness. Today, cognitive
therapy is often combined with antidepressant medication, and psychiatrists often
prescribe antidepressants expressly because the patient has good reason for feeling sad,
such as divorce or death of a loved-one. Both behavioral and cognitive therapies devalue
the client's feelings, which are expected to get in line if the client thinks and behaves
reasonably. Both are amoral because whatever makes the client happy is considered
good. Person-centered counseling values the client’s feelings and thoughts as they are
and recognizes that growth is painful. It is discussed in Chapters 5 and 17.
Social Psychology
Social psychology is "the scientific study of how people think about, influence,
and to relate to one another" (Myers, 2002, p.5). Social psychologists Stanley Milgram
and Philip Zimbardo performed two experiments that raised important spiritual and moral
questions and provided disturbing answers. Neither experiment had the results its author
anticipated. I will discuss these two experiments in detail; because what they revealed
may help spiritually sensitive therapists guard against naiveté.
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The Milgram Obedience Experiment
In the Nuremberg trials after World War II, some Nazis had offered the defense
that they had been following orders. Stanley Milgram was a Jewish professor of
psychology at Yale University. In the 1960s and 1970s he conducted obedience
experiments which he hoped would demonstrate that normal, healthy human beings
would not have followed such orders, and that, therefore, something must have been
wrong with the Nazis' character or culture or upbringing. He set up the following
experiment:
• In response to a newspaper ad, a volunteer came to a laboratory at Yale
University;
• At the lab, the volunteer met another volunteer (who was in fact an
accomplice of the experimenters) and an official-looking older man in a
lab jacket, who told both volunteers that the researchers were conducting
an experiment on learning and memory, and that the experiment required
one to teach the other a list of word-pairs and to punish errors by
delivering electric shocks of increasing intensity. To assign roles they
drew slips out of a hat. The volunteer drew a slip, which read "Teacher."
The confederate pretended that his slip read "Learner" and was lead into
an adjacent room. There, the volunteer teacher was administered a mild
sample shock from an electrode and looked on as the learner was strapped
into a chair and had the electrode attached at the wrist.
• Teacher and experimenter then returned to the main room, which was out-
of-sight of the learner.
70
• In the main room was a "shock generator” with switches ranging from 15
to 450 volts in 15-volt increments and labeled "Slight Shock," "Very
Strong Shock," "Danger: Severe Shock," and so on, with the 435 and 450
volt switches labeled simply "XXX."
• The experimenter told the teacher to administer a shock and move the
lever one level higher each time the learner gave a wrong answer. With
each flick of the switch, lights flashed, relay switches clicked, and an
electric buzz sounded.
• If the teacher administered the shocks as directed, he (all participants and
experimenters were male) heard the following reactions from the learner:
at 75, 90, and 105 volts, the learner grunted; at 120 volts, the learner
shouted that the shocks were painful; at 150 volts the learner cried out,
"Experimenter, get me out of here! I won't be in the experiment anymore!
I refuse to go on;" at 270 volts, the learner screamed in agony and
continued to insist that he be let out; at 300 and 315 volts, he screamed his
refusal to answer; and at 330 volts he fell silent.
• If the teacher hesitated or asked to end the experiment, he was told that the
experiment required that he continue and, finally, he was told, "You have
no other choice; you must go on."
Milgram described the experiment to 110 psychiatrists, college students, and
middle-class adults. All agreed that they would disobey and refuse to continue at no
higher than 135; none expected to go beyond 300 volts. Asked how they thought others
71
would do, no one expected any participant to proceed to the XXX level; the psychiatrists
guessed that only one in a thousand would.
Milgram conducted the experiment using 40 men representing a cross-section of
vocations and ages 20 to 50. Sixty-five percent went all the way to 450 volts, the XXX
level. Milgram videotaped some participants, and those tapes are still available for
viewing in university libraries today, where I have viewed one.
After conducting this experiment in the United States, Milgram had planned to
conduct it in Germany to assess the cultural differences. Milgram was so disturbed by the
results that he never went to Germany. Instead he repeated the experiment at Yale
making the learner pretend to be someone who claimed a "slight heart condition," and
making the protests include statements that "My heart is bothering me!" Sixty-three
percent of the 40 new participants went all the way to 450 volts.
When the "learner" was moved into the same room with the teacher, 40% obeyed.
When the teacher was required to force the learner's hand into contact with a shock plate,
30% obeyed. After the results were published, there was a great deal of concern about the
psychological effects this experiment had on the participants. This experiment was one
factor that lead to the requirement of informed consent from participants and to the
appointment of human subjects review boards at all universities, which must pre-approve
all experiments with human participants (Myers, 2002, pp. 211 - 215).
The Zimbardo Prison Experiment
In a 1971, Philip Zimbardo conducted a simulated prison experiment with
students at Stanford University. Volunteers were to spend two weeks playing the role of
guard or prisoner. By a flip of the coin, half the students were assigned to each role.
72
Zimbardo gave the guards uniforms, billy clubs, and whistles, and instructed them to
enforce the rules. The prisoners were locked in cells and given humiliating uniforms.
After a few days, the guards began to disparage the prisoners and some devised cruel and
degrading routines. The prisoners broke down, rebelled, or became apathetic. Realizing
the emerging social pathology, Zimbardo was forced to call off the simulation after only
six days (Zimbardo, 1971; Myers, 2002, p. 138).
Zimbardo revisted the prison experiment and examined the question of evil in The
Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil (2007). In this book he
described the Stanford Prison Experiment in detail. He then considered the Milgram
Experiment and the abuses at the American military prison at Abu Ghraib, Iraq. In the
final chapter of this book, he considered unusual acts of goodness and moral heroism,
including the act of a new graduate of the Stanford psychology department who brought a
halt to his prison experiment when she said, “What you are doing to those boys is a
terrible thing!” (p. 457). The theme of The Lucifer Effect was that humans are not
innately good or bad: situational influences are more powerful than character and have
the power to make any person do good or bad things (p. 445). Zimbardo concluded that
the best answer to evil is for each person to support the social facilitation of good and
refuse to support any group that does not support his or her independence and values.
Zimbado recommended a Ten Step Program to Resist Unwanted Influences. Those steps
are: (1) Admit one’s errors. (2) Be mindful. Use critical thinking. Imagine the future
consequences of any current action. (3) Take responsibility. “Always imagine a future
time when today’s deed will be on trial and no one will accept your pleas of ‘only
following orders,’ or ‘everyone else was doing it’” (p. 453). (4) Do not allow others to
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deindividuate you. Assert your individuality. Make eye contact. (5) Respect just authority
but rebel against unjust authority. (6) Do not value group acceptance over independence.
Do not stay in groups that do not support your independence. (7) Be “frame-vigilant:” be
aware that bad things are often framed in attractive ways. (8) Balance your time
perspective. In addition to considering the immediate effects of your action, consider
future consequences and be “conscious of a past time frame that contains your personal
values and standards” (p. 455). (9) Do not sacrifice freedom for security. (10) Oppose
unjust systems. Zimbardo also recommended that society celebrate moral heroism. He
warmed his readers of the tendency to say, “That is not me. Others may do evil under evil
influence, but not me.” This can result in letting down one’s guard and, thereby,
becoming more susceptive to evil influence. Instead, Zimbardo recommended that each
person say, “It could be me.”
From a spiritual and moral point of view it would have been helpful if both the
Milgram and Zimbardo experiments had asked what aspects of character distinguished
those who did pull the switch and did abuse prisoners from those who did not. Zimbardo
considered this after the fact, in The Lucifer Effect, 2007. He thought then that he could
see no obvious differences between those who were abusive and those who were not; so
he concluded that under the necessary circumstances anyone could become abusive. As a
result of reaching these conclusions, Zimbardo has testified in defense of American Army
Military Police who abused prisoners at Abu Ghraib. The Milgram experiment was so
disturbing that it has not been repeated. The Zimbardo experiment was so disturbing that
it was called off before it was done. An act of evil that was not contained in a laboratory,
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however, took place at My Lai, Viet Nam in 1968, and was considered in depth by
psychiatrist Scott Peck
My Lai
In My Lai, approximately 50 U.S. Army soldiers belonging to Task Force Barker
massacred between 500 and 600 unarmed civilians, including women and children.
Approximately 200 other soldiers witnessed the killings but did not directly participate.
Only three soldiers, stationed in one helicopter, tried to stop the killing. For more than a
year the massacre was covered up. In 1972, Scott Peck and two other psychiatrists were
appointed to a committee by the Army Surgeon General to report on the massacre. The
General Staff of the Army rejected their recommendation for historical research
comparing atrocities committed by American soldiers in Viet Nam and other wars.
Regarding that rejection, Peck wrote:
If we are to study the nature of human evil, it is doubtful how clearly
we will be able to distinguish them from us; it will most likely be our
own natures we are examining. Undoubtedly, this potential for
embarrassment is one of the reasons we have thus far failed to develop
a psychology of evil. (Peck, 1983, p. 215)
Peck went on to consider the question of group evil. It seemed to him that, as a
rule, groups behave more primitively and more immaturely than individuals. This lead
Peck to make some cautionary suggestions regarding group therapy that are noted in the
section on Group Counseling, Chapter 7, in this paper. Task Force Barker was a
specialized group and specialization made matters worse, because it made it easier “to
pass the moral buck.”
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The plain fact of the matter is that any group will remain inevitably
potentially conscienceless and evil until such time as each and every
individual holds himself or herself directly responsible for the behavior
of the whole group. (Peck, 1983, p. 218)
Task Force Barker was especially prone to group evil because its members had
been self-selected and selected by society to kill, and because it was acting under chronic
stress and a feeling of frustration and failure, which all of U.S. society was beginning to
experience in 1968. So, Peck thought, the evil done by Task Force Baker was an
extension of the inadvertent evil American was perpetrating in Viet Nam, which was
done as a result of “ignorance and arrogance.” It was Peck’s opinion that Americans
allowed themselves to be “unwitting villains” because of narcissism and laziness. Peck
saw an on-going threat of evil from the growing role of conscienceless corporations,
government departments, and other large organizations in contemporary society.
In The Road Less Traveled, Peck wrote that “evil is antilove” (1978, p. 279). The
subject of evil, and psychology’s failure to acknowledge or deal with it, troubled Peck so
much that he wrote an entire book on the subject: People of the Lie (1983). He wrote that
as a psychiatrist he has met people who hate the light, or the life force, in other people,
and will do anything to destroy it, just to avoid awareness of their own darkness. These
people completely lack empathy for others, including their own children. When
confronted, these people will always lie. Peck called these people malignant narcissists:
Malignant narcissism is characterized by an unsubmitted will. All adults
who are mentally healthy submit themselves one way or another to something
higher than themselves, be it God or truth or love or some other ideal. They do
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what God wants them to do rather than what they would desire. . . . They believe
in what is true rather than what they would like to be true. (Peck, 1983, p. 78).
Peck concluded People of the Lie with these hopes:
Children will, in my dream, be taught that laziness and narcissism are at
the very root of human evil, and why this is so. They will learn that each
individual is of sacred importance. They will come to know that the natural
tendency of the individual in a group is to forfeit his or her ethical judgment
to the leader, and that this tendency should be resisted. And they will finally
see it as each individual’s responsibility to continually examine himself or
herself for laziness and narcissism and then to purify themselves accordingly.
They will do this in the knowledge that such personal purification is required
not only for the salvation of their individual souls but also for the salvation of
their world. . . . [This] is, of course, a process of education. . . . This book
[People of the Lie: The Hope for Healing Human Evil, 1983] is written in the
hope that someday in our secular as well as religious schools all children will be
carefully taught the nature of evil and the principles of its prevention.
(Peck, 1983, pp. 252 – 253)
The Milgram and Zimbardo experiments and the massacre at My Lai demonstrate
that people who perform evil acts may well be ordinary people. A person does not have
to be evil, or have a history of doing evil, to do evil. There is a capacity for evil in
everyone, as there is a capacity for good. Milgram and Zimbardo and My Lai provide
evidence that a theory of spiritual-psychological counseling is not complete if it does not
define and in some way deal with evil. Psychology should celebrate and study those who
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commit heroic acts of goodness and resistance, such as Sir Thomas More, the three
soldiers who rescued civilians at Mai Lai at the risk of their own lives, the student Sophie
Scholl and Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, who resisted Hitler at the cost of their lives.
The three soldiers are Hugh Thompson, Lawrence Colburn, and Glenn Andreotta, and
they were awarded the Soldier's Medal by the US Army in 1998, thirty years after the
massacre.
A complete education and a complete course of psychotherapy should include
moral discussions, practice in conscientious disobedience, and practice in empathy and
congruence as defined by Virginia Satir and Carl Rogers. Satir's ideas are discussed
below under Family Therapy, Chapter 7, and Rogers's ideas are discussed in Chapters 5
and 17. These experiments and events support the use of psychology and education to
inform and transform values through exposure to and discussion of the recorded
testimonies available from the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation,
documentaries like Forgiving Dr. Mengele (2005), and films such as A Man for All
Seasons (1966), Hotel Rwanda (2004), In My Country (2004), which is a dramatization of
the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings in South Africa, Sophie Scholl: Die
Letzen Tage (The Final Days) (2005), and Valkyrie (2008). Moral learning can be helped
by role-playing and by the psychoeducational approaches discussed below under Group
Counseling. Scott Peck relates this approach:
One fine means of teaching us our potential individual responsibility for group
evil occurs in certain churches on Good Friday when, in reenacting the Passion
according to Saint Mark, the congregation is required to play the role of the mob
and cry out,"Crucify him." (Peck, 1983, p. 253)
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Neither Zimbardo nor Peck provided a bullet list of what specific circumstances
are likely to promote evil beyond the generic dangers of group psychology. Neither
explained why some people give in to those evil influences and others do not. There was
no group influence in the Milgram experiment, although the authority of the doctor in his
white lab coat could be thought of as an authority bestowed by an unseen group. Robert
Jay Lifton, a Jewish psychiatrist and author of The Nazi Doctors (1986) and Genocidal
Mentality (1990), thought that evil was especially likely to arise in a group when
members of that group thought of themselves as superior to members of other groups, as
the Germans and Japanese did in World War II, and as Americans did when they dropped
the Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima. But Lifton does not explain why some Germans,
Japanese, and Americans did not consent. Therapist Brian Thorne (2002) wrote that the
critical thing in spiritually sensitive psychotherapy is not to define evil, but to believe in
the power of therapy to help all clients develop toward an inner and outer light, or
goodness. I will return to consideration of evil in Chapter 15, where I discuss what I have
learned from my research regarding values and morals.
Conclusions
Social psychology has provided important data about why it is difficult for
individuals to live up to spiritual and moral ideals without social support, such as might
be offered in churches. On the other hand, behaviorism, cognitive psychology, and
psychiatry have kept spirituality and psychotherapy strictly apart. Their scientific
approaches to counseling are based on hedonistic values. William Miller assessed the
relationship between spirituality, on the one hand, and experimental psychology,
cognitive-behavioral psychology, and psychiatry, on the other hand, as follows:
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It has been said that during the 20th Century, psychology lost first its soul
and then its mind. Not long after William James (1902) published Varieties of
Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature, the discipline of psychology
began to distance itself from the spiritual side of humanity. Human behavior
came to be viewed merely as the product of lawful principles of learning
and conditioning. Human consciousness, thought, intention, and values were
dismissed as mentalistic epiphenomena. . . . Neuroscience added a new layer
of biological reductionism in psychology, describing consciousness as
a by-product of neural activity and behavior as the sequela of genetics,
evolution, and brain chemistry. (William R. Miller in Judeo-Christian
Perspectives on Psychology, p. 11, 2005)
Miller's criticism did not mention humanistic psychology or existentialist
psychology, which were two approaches to psychotherapy developed in the 20th Century
that offered an alternative to the mainstream. In the next two chapters, I will examine
humanistic and existential psychology to see how they might be helpful in constructing
an integrated spiritual-psychological approach to counseling.
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CHAPTER V
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SPIRITUALITY AND PSYCHOLOGY
IN THE 2O CENTURY: HUMANISTIC PSYCHOLOGY
Humanistic and existentialist psychologists are open to the need to create meaning
out of pain. Humanistic and existentialist psychotherapy are often considered together, as
variations on the same approach. Some therapists, such as Rollo May, claim to be both. If
there is a distinction, it may be that humanists are more likely to believe in the essential
goodness of human beings and to let the client take the lead, while existentialists are
more likely to emphasize the need for the client to find meaning and to face the dark
realities of human existence, including evil. This chapter will examine humanistic
psychology; the next chapter will look at existential psychology.
Carl Rogers
Carl Rogers (1902 – 1987) "humanized psychology and psychotherapy, made the
field more reasonable, more accepting and benign, but never lost the moral fervor that
was ingrained in him as a youth. As was said of Aristotle, he was an extremist in defense
of moderation" (Mindess, 1988, p. 117). Rogers spent his childhood on a farm in Illinois.
He was raised in a religious and ethical atmosphere that was dogmatic and moralistic
(Thorne, 1992, pp. 1 - 4). He entered the University of Wisconsin planning to major in
scientific agriculture and become a farmer. His sophomore year he became convinced
that he had been called to be a Christian minister and changed his major to history. "From
a reading of Roger’s diaries and letters of this time," Thorne concluded that "the
judgmental and awesome God of the Old Testament was gradually being replaced in
Rogers’s experience by a vibrantly human Jesus who offered a new intimacy and
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extended the possibility of a personal freedom which would have been inconceivable in
the context of the evangelical fundamentalism with which Rogers had grown up"
(p. 4).
Rogers was chosen as one of twelve students from the United States to attend a
World Student Christian Federation Conference in China. The trip lasted over six months.
During this time Rogers experienced the depth of group life and learned that "sincere and
honest people could hold very different religious beliefs" (Thorne, 1992, pp. 4 - 5).
During the trip Rogers became ill with a duodenal ulcer. He returned to his parents' home
to recuperate and while at home he enrolled in a correspondence course in introductory
psychology in which William James wrote the principal text.
Rogers graduated in history from the University of Wisconsin and entered Union
Theological Seminary in New York, which was then the most liberal Christian seminary
in the United States. At the seminary Rogers discovered that he was uncomfortable
giving the long sermons that were expected of ministers and he decided that "he could not
stay in a field where he would be required to believe in a specific religious doctrine"
(Thorne, 1992, p. 6). In his second year at Union, Rogers enrolled in several courses at
Columbia University Teachers’ College, which was across the street. He left the seminary
after two years and enrolled in Columbia to study for a doctorate in clinical and
educational psychology, which he eventually received.
Rogers decided to be a psychologist instead of a minister because of his own
religious doubts and because he did not want to tell people what to believe or what to do
(Sharf, 2004; Burger, 2000). He wanted people to figure those things out for themselves.
Nonetheless, one might have expected Rogers to make a place for God in his theoretical
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approach to counseling. But he did not. In a conversation with the existential theologian
Paul Tillich, Rogers explained:
I realize very well that I and many other therapists are interested in the kind of
issues that involve the religious worker and the theologian, and yet, for myself, I
prefer to put my thinking on those issues in humanistic terms, or to attack those
issues through the channels of scientific investigation. I guess I have some real
sympathy for the modern view that is sort of symbolized in the phrase "God is
dead;" that is, that religion no longer does speak to people in the modern world,
and I would be interested in knowing why you tend to put your thinking – which
certainly is very congenial to that of a number of psychologists these days – why
you tend to put your thinking in religious terminology and theological language.
(Rogers, 1989b, p. 72)
Rogers was asking why humanistic psychology and humanistic psychotherapy are
not enough. Tillich answered that Rogers was concerned with human relationships on the
horizontal plane; Tillich was also concerned with our relationships on the vertical plane,
or the plane of the divine and eternal. Rogers wanted humans to be open to their own
inner voice and to the voices of others; Tillich also wanted humans to be open to God.
They agreed on the importance of "unconditional positive regard," which Tillich called
"agape," or "listening love."
Rogers said, "I like that phrase because I think it could be listening within, a
listening to oneself, as well as a listening love for the other individual."
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Tillich responded, "Yes, when I say listening to the situation, I mean the situation
is constituted out of everything around me and myself; so, listening love is always
listening to both sides" (Rogers, 1989b, p. 78).
Rogers made powerful contributions to the practice and theory of therapy. From
the 1940s through the 1960s, he conducted and published intensive case studies of clients
in counseling using his client-centered approach. During these years, Rogers's quiet,
gentle, reasonable voice offered one of the few alternatives to Freudian psychoanalysis.
In the 1960s and 1970s, Rogers began to conduct encounter groups. He modified these
into peace groups, and met with conflicting sides in such places as Soviet Russia, Belfast,
Ireland, and South Africa during the time of apartheid.
Many of Rogers's ideas can be included in a spiritual approach to counseling. He
had enormous respect for each individual client; he believed in the uniqueness and worth
of each individual; and he believed that humans would naturally work toward developing
wholeness. Rogers believed that (a) if there is psychological contact between client and
therapist; (b) if the client feels incongruence between their perception of themselves and
their actual experience; (c) if the counselor establishes a relationship of congruence and
genuineness and shows unconditional positive regard, acceptance, and empathy for the
client; (d) and if the client senses this empathy and acceptance, then (e) the client will
change in positive ways. Rogers thought that these five conditions were necessary and
sufficient: if any one of these conditions was not present, change was very unlikely to
occur; if all five conditions were present, change was very likely to occur. When Rogers
first described his theory of change-through-therapy, his thinking was seen as naive by
many psychologists, who, from 1950 to the 1970s, were likely to be behaviorist or
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cognitive-behaviorist, and by psychiatrists, who were then likely to be Freudian. Since
then, many therapists have come to accept the importance of empathy and listening to the
client. The “client,” a term first used by Rogers, has been given a bigger voice in
deciding upon treatment. Rogers’s ideas and methods are now taught in many counseling
programs as one possible approach to therapy. There is disagreement today between
Rogerian purists and the so-called "supplementation school." Therapists in the
supplementation school believe that Rogers’s conditions are necessary but are not always
sufficient. They feel free to add "desirable supplementations, such as relaxation
techniques, non-systematic behavioral counseling, problem analysis, medical treatment,
and recommending books on philosophical, religious, and spiritual issues" (Thorne, 1992,
p. 93). From my experience as a student counselor, I would suggest a sixth condition for
change: privacy and confidentiality. Many people come to counseling without ever
having experienced a safe and validating environment in which to grow. They are fragile.
Privacy “both permits self-definition, which makes relationships with others possible, and
demands isolation, which makes relationships with others impossible. The individual’s
realization of this ambiguity takes him beyond self-definition to self-realization and self-
integration” (Winslade & Ross, 1985, p. 593). Privacy is the client’s right; confidentiality
constitutes the precautions taken by the therapist to respect that right. Contemporary
counseling ethics would require confidentiality and would probably require a therapist to
explain each additional approach or combination of approaches, especially any approach
that included spirituality, and to obtain client consent.
When change did occur, Rogers believed that the person would naturally develop
toward being a "fully functioning person." Rogers defined a fully-functioning person as
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one who demonstrates openness to experience, living in the here-and-now, trust, freedom,
and creativity. Concerning his view of individual human beings as he had experienced
them in therapy, Rogers wrote:
My experience is that he is a basically trustworthy member of the human species,
whose deepest characteristics tend toward development, differentiation,
cooperative relationships; whose life tends fundamentally to move from
dependence to independence; whose impulses tend naturally to harmonize into a
complex and changing pattern of self-regulation; whose total character is such as
to tend to preserve and enhance himself and his species, and perhaps to move it
toward its further evolution. . . . [M]an appears to be an awesomely complex
creature who can go terribly awry, but whose deepest tendencies make for his
own enhancement and that of other members of his species. I find that he can be
trusted to move in this constructive direction when he lives, even briefly, in a
nonthreatening climate where he is free to choose any direction"
(Rogers, 1989c, pp. 404 – 405, 408).
Rogers contrasted his position with that of Freud and psychoanalytic theorists
who see humans as "fundamentally deficient and evil" (Buber & Rogers, 1997, p. 78). In
a dialogue with the philosopher Martin Buber, Rogers asked Buber if he agreed that
people could be "trusted to be constructive and tend toward socialization or toward better
interpersonal relationships."
Buber answered that he "would put it in a somewhat different manner." He said that
"we counselors" can be friends with good people, but they do not really need us. So he
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was interested in the problematic, sick, and so-called "bad" person. And he experienced
the reality of this person as a "polar reality."
Rogers asked him what he meant. Buber explained:
You cannot say, "Oh, I detect in him just what can be trusted." I would say now
when I grasp him more broadly and more deeply than before, I see his whole
polarity, and then I see how the worst in him and best in him are dependent on
one another, attached to one another. And I can help – may be able to help – him
just by helping him change the relation between the poles. Not just by choice but
by a certain strength that he gives to the one pole in relation to the other, they
being qualitatively very alike to one another. I would say there is not, as we
generally think, in the soul of a man good and evil opposed. There is again and
again in different manners a polarity, and the poles are not good and evil, but
rather yes and no, rather acceptance and refusal. And we can strengthen, we can
help him strengthen the one positive pole. And even perhaps we can strengthen
the force of direction in him because his polarity is very often directionless. It is a
chaotic state. We could bring a cosmic note into it. We can help put order, put a
shape into this. Because I think the good, or what we may call the good, is always
only direction. Not a substance. (Buber & Rogers, pp. 80 – 85)
In an open letter to Carl Rogers, Rollo May interpreted this difference between
Rogers and Buber as follows: "[W]hen you had the discussion with Martin Buber in
Michigan, you said, ‘Man is basically good,’ and Buber answered, ‘Man is basically good
– and evil’" (May, 1989b, p. 248). May went on to say that the failure to confront evil "is
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the most important error in the humanistic movement" (p. 249). In an earlier letter to
Rogers, May had written that he had listened to tapes that Rogers had sent him, and:
While I felt the therapy was good on the whole, there was one glaring omission.
This was that the client-centered therapists did not (or could not) deal with
the angry, hostile, negative – that is evil – feelings of the client.
(May, 1982, p. 21)
Rogers's approach was non-confrontational. He believed that when clients came
to therapy, they carried inside them the harsh voices of parents and school and church,
and their own sense of inadequacy, and they expected to be judged again by the therapist.
Rogers thought that given enough positive regard, understanding, empathy, and enough
time, clients would change from within in ways that were prosocial and self-sustaining,
because Rogers had discovered that the "core of personality is positive" (Rogers, 1961,
p. 90). Rogers called this discovery revolutionary, and defended it against Freudians and
some religious leaders who taught that humans were basically sinful, violent, sexually
aggressive, and untrustworthy. In the 1950s and 60s, one of the few voices who also
stressed the potential goodness in humans was Abraham Maslow, whose ideas are
discussed below. Rogers thought that "to the extent that the individual is denying to
awareness (or repressing, if you prefer the term) large areas of his experience, then his
creative formings may be pathological, or socially evil, or both" (Rogers, 1961, p. 352).
Thus Rogers sought to provide not a content of existing wisdom to his clients but a
climate in which they could gradually allow repressed areas of experience to enter
awareness and, eventually, replace the judgments of others with their own experiences in
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therapy and out. Rather than teaching wisdom, Rogers allowed his clients to become wise
on their own terms.
The issue of reciprocity or equality of therapist and client raised by Buber
continued to trouble Rogers. According to Thorne, Rogers came to acknowledge that
"self-revelation without imposition, can help to bring about the reciprocity of relationship
which engenders mutual respect and avoids the dangers of confused dependence. . . .
Perhaps acceptance of a life-transforming kind can only be experienced at the hands of a
person whose own reality and vulnerability are readily accessible; an acceptant, empathic
mirror or alter ego is not enough" (Thorne, 1992, p. 84). Van Belle has suggested that the
person-centered therapist’s traditional role of facilitation should be rejected in favor of
co-operation (referenced in Thorne, 1992, p. 85).
In a review of the book The Self and the Dramas of History by the theologian
Reinhold Niebuhr, Rogers said he disagreed with Niebuhr’s "notion that self-love is the
fundamental and pervasive ‘sin’" of humankind. Rogers said, "If I were to search for the
central core of difficulty in people as I have come to know them, it is that in the great
majority of cases they despise themselves, regard themselves as worthless and unlovable"
(Rogers, 1989c, p. 211). In Rogers’s conversation with Tillich, Tillich said that people
hunger for self-affirmation and self-acceptance. Rogers said, "Yes, I do feel that the
person does have to gain a real appreciation of or liking of himself, if he is going to
affirm himself in a healthy and useful fashion" (Rogers, 1989b, p. 77). Thus, another
spiritual dimension, or polarity, is Narcissism vs. listening love for others and for oneself.
In his biography of Rogers, person-centered therapist Brian Thorne, who is a self-
identified Christian, wrote, "I see in his work the reemergence of a spiritual tradition
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. . . .that is acutely conscious of the divine indwelling within the created universe and in
each human being. It bears witness to the unconditionality of the love which is poured out
by God on his creation and on the capacity of human beings to internalize that love and
then to give it expression in the relating" (Thorne, 1992, p. viii). Rogers died an agnostic
(Thorne, p. viii) but in his last published account of a therapeutic encounter, Rogers
wrote, "I realize that this account partakes of the mystical. Our experiences, it is clear,
involve the spiritual. I am impelled to believe that I, like many others, have
underestimated the importance of this mystical, spiritual dimension" (Rogers, 1986,
p. 200). From 1945 to 1957, Rogers was head of the Counseling Center at the University
of Chicago, which was the first university counseling center in the U.S. and which some
psychiatrists objected to on the grounds that a psychologist was not qualified to conduct
therapy. While working at the Counseling Center, Rogers tape-recorded thousands of
hours of therapy sessions and analyzed them to measure change and the necessary
conditions of change. That made him the first therapist of any school to record and
evaluate extensively. When psychiatrists objected to his approach, he asked, "Have they
done the same?" One of the original members of the Center was Elizabeth Sheerer. In
1990 she was interviewed by Phillip Barrineau, who asked:
You’ve noted that the [person-centered] approach has gone into so many
areas; are there areas or issues that have not been addressed in your estimation?
Sheerer replied:
Yes, I would like more attention to the spiritual part of the person. . . . Of
course, it’s not missing in client-centered therapy, but it’s not addressed formally.
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It’s not recognized formally. You don’t get into therapy without getting in touch
with the spiritual aspect of the person.
Barrineau:
Do you have a theory about why it’s not addressed formally?
Sheerer:
Yes, I do. That’s Carl. This was an area of difficulty for Carl. We learned
early in the game not to talk about religion with Carl. That was a taboo subject
because it was uncomfortable for him . . . I always had a notion that something
happened while he was in China, that never was spoken of publicly or in print . . .
in the years that he was developing the theory, he just didn’t want any part of
formal religion or, as far as I could tell, any religion. But of course, his work is so
profoundly influenced by his background in Christianity. I don’t think he could
have developed without that background. (Barrineau, 1990, p. 423 - 424)
Thorne felt that secular individuals were most likely to experience transcendence
in person-centered encounter groups than in individual therapy (Thorne, 1992, p. 105).
Group therapy will be considered below in Chapter 7, Group and Family Counseling, and
in my concluding Chapter 17 as an important component of spiritual-psychological
counseling.
Abraham Maslow
Abraham Maslow (1908 – 1970) studied the development of healthy personalities.
He did not concern himself with treating mental illness. He was not a therapist and did
not develop a theoretical approach to therapy. He asked, How can people maximize their
potential? He theorized that humans function under an instinctive hierarchy of needs,
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which are (1) the physiological needs; (2) the need for safety; (3) the need for belonging
and love; (4) the need for esteem, including self-esteem; (5) the need for self-
actualization; and (6) the need for self-transcendence, which includes the loss of self in
peak experiences.
"The gratification of each need in the hierarchy is a prerequisite for attention to
the next" (Frick, 1971, p. 147). The lower needs are stronger and can overpower the
weaker higher motives. Lower needs are deficiency needs: absence of gratification breeds
illness, presence leads to health, and illness can be cured by gratification. Most people are
partially satisfied and partially unsatisfied in all their basic needs.
Underlying all of these needs is the human need to grow, and that need is stronger
in some than in others. People grow naturally. They only require that their development
not be impeded. But some people fill all their lower-level needs for food, safety, love,
and esteem and get stuck. They do not move on to self-actualization or transcendence.
Self-actualized people are primarily growth oriented, with deficiency motivation playing
a very small role. Many self-actualized people do not move on to transcendence and
never have peak experiences. Maslow calls them the "merely healthy" (Maslow, quoted
in Frick, 1971, p. 42).
Maslow thought that some people can advance gradually all the way to the
highest levels of development without serious crises. But "they’re probably less in
number than the ones who have to go into a big turmoil to come through to [higher levels
of integration.]" (Maslow, quoted in Frick, 1971, p. 43). Maslow wrote:
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The process of healthy growth is made up of a never ending series of free choice
situations. At every point throughout life . . . [we] must choose between safety
and growth. (Maslow, 1962, p. 45)
When one risks safety in order to grow, then it follows that sooner or later one will suffer
failure and grief. Maslow stressed that many people make mistakes and that growth is
often a painful process.
States of being exist simultaneously with change and growth. A state of self-
realization is not static or permanent. It will be challenged by changing circumstances
and by a changing sense of self within. The opportunity for growth is constant. In the
self-actualized and the self-transcendent states of being, humans naturally develop higher
values than were possible when their deficiency needs were unmet. Maslow called these
B-Values. The "B" stands for being.
These values are:
1. Wholeness;
2. Perfection;
3. Completion;
4. Justice;
5. Aliveness;
6. Richness;
7. Simplicity;
8. Beauty;
9. Goodness;
10. Uniqueness;
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11. Effortlessness;
12. Playfulness;
13. Truth, honesty, reality;
14. Self-sufficiency. (Maslow, 1968, p. 83)
Maslow said that these values were not invented to fit a pre-existing theory. He
discovered these values in the people he studied whom he believed to be self-actualized.
Note that each value forms an implied dichotomized polarity, such as "wholeness –
shatteredness."
The more developed one becomes, the more totally one may experience oneself
and the environment, including others. The tendency to dichotomize is reduced.
Dichotomies such as us vs. them and good vs. evil are seen to coexist within each of us: I
am – and everyone is -- partly us, partly them, partly good, partly evil. Apparent
contradictions are reconciled by perceiving things just as they are. This perception is
egoless or Taoistic (Maslow, 1987, p. xxix).
As one becomes more developed, one simultaneously develops higher values and
transcends dichotomies. Transcendence of dichotomies is, itself, a spiritual dimension: a
polarity of either-or vs. both-and.
Maslow thought that some people are temperamentally and characterologically
positivistic, in sense meant by Auguste Comte, and some are more humanistic. "I think a
million years from today there are going to be people who like rigor more, and those who
like rigor less, and people who will like a third decimal point and others who are more
global, and some who love warm human relations and some who love cool human
relations" (Maslow, 1962, p. 49).
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Maslow was born in Brooklyn, New York, to poor, uneducated Russian Jewish
immigrants, who pushed their children hard to succeed in school. He received his B.A.,
M.A., and Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Wisconsin, and then returned to
New York to teach at Brooklyn College. There he met many European psychologists who
were immigrating to the United States, including Alfred Adler, Erich Fromm, and Karen
Horney. He served as chair of the psychology department at Brandeis from 1951 to 1969.
In 1968, when Maslow was 60 years of age, he was interviewed by fellow
humanist-psychologist Willard Frick. Maslow had already had one heart attack. He said,
"I hope to do a systematic book if I live long enough, presenting a thorough system of
human nature." He kept a form that he called his "death-defying form," on which he had
written "about 200 propositions and . . . all of the experiments I'd love to do if we had a
200-year life span . . . . If I live to the age of 80, then it is going to be an awfully big
book" (Frick, 1971, pp. 27 -- 28). In these words, Maslow seemed to be expressing the
same sense of reality that Kant had experienced: that human consciousness seems
designed for more than this lifetime can accommodate. He did not write that book. He
had a second heart attack and died at age 62.
Transpersonal Psychotherapy
Maslow’s thinking lead to the creation of transpersonal psychotherapy: a
contemporary approach to therapy where scientific healing and mysticism meet.
Transpersonal psychotherapy recognizes the reality and value of alerted states of
consciousness. Traditional therapy seeks to strengthen the ego; transpersonal therapy
seeks to assist the client in disidentifying with and transcending the ego (Walsh &
Vaughan, 1980, p. 18). Transpersonal therapy seeks "emancipation of awareness from the
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tyranny of conditioning" (p. 19) by the daily experience of enlightment and oneness with
the universe. It values meditation and satori.
In Man’s Search for Meaning (1984), Frankl wrote that the only reliable
happiness available to humans is the happiness of self-transcendence. Frankl's ideas are
discussed below under existential psychology. By "self-transcendence," Frankl meant
losing one's self-preoccupation through work with and for others. Transpersonal
psychotherapy values self-transcendent experiences for their own sake, regardless of
whether they bring one closer to others or carry one to the top of the mountaintop alone.
All self-transcendent experiences are considered opportunities for growth.
Disidentification with ego is considered a dimension of spiritual growth by some
religions. Hinduism recognizes that there are different spiritual paths toward God. Some
people are suited for one path; some are suited for a different path. Direct transcendence
is one possible spiritual path; transcendence through work with and for others is another
(Sharma, 2000, pp. 341 -- 343). A complete theory of spiritual psychology needs to
accommodate different spiritual temperaments and different paths to the divine.
The Process of Humanistic Psychotherapy
A humanistic therapist is not the expert. The therapist follows the client's lead, in
the belief that the client will naturally develop in healthy ways. The therapeutic process is
non-directive. The therapist provides empathetic reflection of feeling and meaning,
allowing the client to feel understood and valued. The humanist-therapist believes that
given the opportunity and incentive to grow, humans will grow, and that all human
growth is positive. The reason for the client's coming to therapy provides the incentive;
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the therapeutic relationship provides the opportunity. Because it is non-directive,
humanist psychotherapy can take longer than more focused forms of therapy.
George Boeree (2006a), professor of psychology at Shippensburg University in
Pennsylvania, wrote, "Humanism is the American version of Existentialism. Like many
things American, it is more optimistic and up-beat and tends to emphasize what is good
about people rather than what is bad."
The Goals and Values of Humanistic Psychotherapy
Both humanistic and existential psychologies value human growth, which can
include spiritual growth. Both humanistic and existential psychology allow for the
possible existence of a spiritual realm, at least metaphorically. The goals and values of
both approaches are discussed at the conclusion of the next chapter, which explores
existential psychology and psychotherapy in depth.
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CHAPTER VI
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SPIRITUALITY AND PSYCHOLOGY
IN THE 2O CENTURY: EXISTENTIAL PSYCHOLOGY
When I was a young man, I found a book about philosophy on my father's dresser
and read it. I cannot recall the title or author, but I remember these words from it: "Ages
of philosophy are defined not by the new answers they give but by the new questions they
ask." The new questions that existentialists asked were, What does it mean to be a human
being from two perspectives that were new when existentialists began asking these
questions 150 years ago. Those who did not believe in God (Nietzsche, Heidegger, and
Sartre) asked what it means to be a human being when God no longer exists to provide
the answer. Existentialists who did believe in God (Kierkegaard, Tillich, and Buber)
asked what it means to be human when one is uncertain of God's existence and no longer
believes in the inerrant authority of the church and Holy Scripture. From both
perspectives, it takes imagination, courage, and often an entire lifetime to work out the
meaning of being a human. An existential therapist helps the client with that work.
Existentialism was a philosophy first. Then it was adapted as an approach to
psychotherapy. At a time when psychology had parted ways with philosophy,
existentialism could provide a philosophy for psychologists. Existentialists asked, "What
is our essential nature as human beings?" The essence of tables and chairs, and
woodchucks, and even of angels, who do God's will without question, is identical to their
existence: they are what they are at the moment they come into being (Boeree, 2006b).
This is not true for human beings. Sartre wrote, "Our existences precede our essences"
(quoted in Boeree, 2006b, unpaginated). This means, "I don't know what I'm here for
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until I've lived my life. My life, who I am, is not determined by God, by the laws of
Nature, by my genetics, by my society, not even by my family. They each may provide
the raw material for who I am, but it is how I chose to live that makes me what I am. I
create myself" (Boeree, 2006b, unpaginated).
Existential psychologist George Boeree observed that reading some existentialist
theorists "can be quite painful. But keep in mind that they were swimming against a
stream of centuries of highly systematic, rational, logical philosophy, and a psychology
reduced to physiology and behavior. What they have to say often seems strange, even
strained, exactly because we have leaned so well to trust traditional logic and science"
(2006b, unpaginated). In this chapter, I will first examine the ideas of Edmund Husserl,
Martin Heidegger, and Martin Buber, the existential philosophers who most influenced
psychotherapy. Then I will discuss the contributions of the following major existential
psychotherapists from the earliest to the most recent: Ludwig Binswanger, Erich Fromm,
Viktor Frankl, Rollo May, and Emmy van Deurzen.
Husserl and Phenomenological Psychotherapy
Phenomenology was developed by Edmund Husserl (1859 - 1938) in reaction to
the failure of science to distinguish between subject and object. The scientific method
assumes an independent, objective observer and an object that is observed. This works
well when the object that is being observed is not us. When humans observe themselves,
the scientific method omits half of the picture that is now available: it omits the
experience of the subject. Husserl began by entering one aspect of human beings that
science had not then or since been able to explain: human consciousness. A
phenomenologist attempts to see the complete picture by experiencing the phenomena of
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the subject's consciousness with as few preconceptions as possible. A phenomenological
therapist attempts to see with open, unprejudiced eyes, to enter the world of the client
subjectively, and to experience it personally. Carl Rogers's person-centered approach
with its conditions of acceptance, empathy, and understanding is phenomenological.
Husserl believed in God and hoped phenomenology would form a bridge between
philosophy and religion.
Heidegger and Ontology
Martin Heidegger (1889 - 1976) entered university on a Jesuit scholarship, but
lost faith in God while living in the harsh reality of Germany following World War I. He
wrote Being and Time (1927), which he dedicated "to Edmund Husserl in friendship and
admiration." After the Nazis came to power, when the fourth edition was published,
Heidegger removed the dedication to Husserl, who was Jewish (Strathern, 2002). Being
and Time may have been the most influential philosophical work of the 20th Century, but
it was called untranslatable and not published in English until 1962. It was "one of the
most difficult books ever written. Both its overall structure and the language in which it is
composed present great problems for the reader" (Inwood, 1997, p.9).
Heidegger was an ontologist, that is, he was a philosopher who considered the
meaning of being. He was a student of Husserl's, and he used Husserl's phenomenological
approach to explore the meaning of being: that is, he asked, "What can I understand about
being from my consciousness and my experience, without any preconceived ideas?" The
first conclusion he came to was that his knowledge of being must be limited to the nature
of what it means to be a human being. His next conclusion was that he could not conceive
of human-being without conceiving that being in the world; therefore, he called human-
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being Dasein. Dasein is one German word for existence; Existenz is another; thus
existentialism. Dasein also translates literally as "there-being." Heidegger chose the word
Dasein to represent human beings and hyphenated it as Da-sein in order to emphasize the
fact that the first thing a human being is aware is this thereness. Unlike other forms of
existence, human existence begins as uncertainty (thus anxiety) and possibility (thus
choice and responsibility). Humans must decide how to be and what to be. Uniquely of
all creatures, humans can also decide not to be, to end their existence.
The next characteristic Heideggar observed was mineness: the being I am
observing is mine. This makes authenticity and inauthenticity possible. The next aspect of
Dasein is temporal: the time of human beings is limited. The next aspect is concern;
because their time is limited, humans become concerned with something: a task, a
physical object, a goal, or another being. If it were not for the limits of time, humans
would not need to be concerned. Humans are characterized by what concerns they choose
to address.
Heidegger wrote:
We shall call this character of being of Da-sein which is veiled in its
whence and whither, but in itself all the more openly disclosed, this "that it is,"
the thrownness of this being into its there; it is thrown in such a way that it is the
there as being-in-the-world. The expression thrownness is meant to suggest the
facticity of its being delivered over. The "that it is and has to be" disclosed in the
attunement of Da-sein is not the "that" which expresses ontologically and
categorially the factuality belonging to objective presence; the latter is accessible
only when we ascertain it by looking at it. Rather, the that disclosed in attunement
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must be understood as an existential attribute of the that being which is in the
mode of being-in-the-world. Facticity is not the factuality of the factum brutum of
something objectively present, but is a characteristic of the being of Da-sein taken
on its existence, although initially thrust aside. The that of facticity is never to be
found by looking.
(Heidegger, 1996, p. 127, italics and quotation marks in original.)
"Facticity" means "the sheer fact that one exists" (Inwood, 1997, p. 138). This
quotation introduces Dasein's next observed characteristic, thrownness, and it
demonstrates that Heidegger is difficult to read. Humans are thrown into a world that is
not of their own making or choosing. They do not know where they came from or toward
what end they are headed; nonetheless, they must become concerned and define
themselves, or let the world do it for them. Humans are thrown into a "there-ness" that is
at least a little alien, and they undergo enormous pressure to go along with the crowd.
Another aspect of Dasein is being-with: the world into which humans are thrown has
others in it. It is impossible to conceive of a human being exiting alone. However, being-
with presents the possibility of defining one's being solely in reference to others. People
who surrender to this "theyness" are likely to say, "They made me do such and such," or,
"They were responsible." One is authentic and performs an Existenzial deed when one
acts in accordance with one's own inner light regardless of social pressures to act
otherwise.
The various ways in which a human being can be in the world are expressed by
the terms Umwelt (the German word for environment), Mitwelt (with-world, being with
others), and Eigenwelt (own-world, one's inner experience and the self-awareness from
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which one sees the world). Van Deurzen (1997) later added Überworld (over-world), to
cover one's spiritual being and ideals. The Umwelt includes one's instincts. Binswanger
and May were critical of psychoanalysis and behavioral and cognitive therapies, because
they deal primarily with the Umwelt and fail to take adequate account of the other worlds
(Sharf, 2004, p. 164).
Angst is existential anxiety, which comes from the realization that human beings
are free to choose their essence. Heidegger got the idea from Kierkegard, who wrote,
"Whoever has learned to be anxious in the right way has learned the ultimate"
(Kierkegard, 1844, p. 155). When we accept anxiety we become less afraid of death and
live more authentically. Park wrote, "Becoming aware of our angst is a sign of our
deepening spirits" (1999, unpaginated). Existential psychologists contrast existential
anxiety with neurotic anxiety, which is disproportionate and may arise from repressed
fears. Hypochondriacs, for example, may display neurotic anxiety when they will not
touch the door of a public toilet for fear of germs. There is also existential guilt, which is
a feeling that one has failed to do all that one might have done with the time one has been
given in life, and there is neurotic guilt, which is introjecting blame imposed upon us for
trying to be who we are.
One of Heidegger's students at the University of Marburg was Hannah Arndt.
When the Nazis came to power, Arndt left Germany because she was Jewish. She
remained loyal to Heidegger and taught his ideas in America, where she became the first
female professor at Princeton. Heidegger never apologized to Arndt or Husserl for
becoming a Nazi, which he justified as being true to his "German Being." He merely
wrote to them that he, himself, was not anti-Semitic. Arndt later reported on the trial of
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Adolf Eichmann in Israel. In her report she coined the phrase "the banality of evil." That
phrase suggests that evil can masquerade as ordinariness. That is another reason that a
theory of spiritual psychology needs to acknowledge evil. If it does not, then when evil
arises, one may fail to recognize it, even in oneself.
Not all psychologists were favorably impressed by Heidegger. Jung called him
"the master of complicated banalities" (quoted in Strathern, p. 75).
Martin Buber
Heidegger's world-view was somewhat narcissistic. Martin Buber's (1878 - 1965)
world-view was not. Buber's dialogue with Carl Rogers is discussed in Chapter 5. Buber
was an Austrian philosopher, theologian, educator, re-teller of Hasidic stories, and
Zionist. When the Nazis came to power, he moved to Jerusalem and accepted a
professorship at Hebrew University. There, he advocated a binational solution; that is, he
envisioned Palestine becoming one state in which authority and responsibility were
shared equally by Arabs and Jews.
In I and Thou (1937), Buber wrote that the key existential act is to enter into an
I-thou relationship. Until one has done that, one is alone; and so long as one is alone,
one's existence is without meaning. Buber argued that every human being is at all times
engaged in either an "I-it" or an "I-thou" relationship with the world, with other people,
and with things. In an I-thou encounter two people meet and enter into a dialogue with
each other without any qualification or objectification. One example of such a
relationship is between a human being and God. But on the human level I-thou
relationships are rare and difficult.
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Authentic dialogue is only possible in an I-thou relationship. In an I-it
relationship, the two beings do not actually meet. Each treats the other as an object.
Others are seen in terms of whether or not they can serve one's interests. The I-it
relationship is a relationship with oneself alone: there is no communication, only
monologue. Buber felt that I-thou relationships were few. He thought modern
materialism exacerbated the problem. Rogers thought that his relationships with his
clients were I-thou relationships. Buber disagreed because the situation of therapy
prevents complete reciprocity (Buber and Rogers, 1997). Rogers later wrote that as a
participant-facilitator in groups he risked himself by self-disclosure, and that he thereby
came closer to an I-thou relationship with clients (Rogers, 1970).
Ludwig Binswanger
Ludwig Binswanger (1881 -- 1966) was the first to develop what he called
existentialist--phenomenological psychotherapy. Binswanger studied under Jung, who
introduced him to Freud. Binswanger and Freud remained good friends and
correspondents until Freud's death, despite the fact that Binswanger disagreed with Freud
on many things. Binswanger was the only person who was able to maintain a friendship
with Freud after disagreeing with him. Binswanger developed what he called
Daseinanalyse in reaction to what he saw as a lack of spirituality in Freud's approach.
Binswanger built upon the philosophical ideas of Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger,
and Martin Buber, who were his contemporaries and lived less than a day's train trip
away. For most of his life, Heidegger taught at the University of Freiburg, which is in
southern Germany close to the Swiss border. Binswanger was at the Bellevue Sanatorium
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in Kreuzlingen, Switzerland, which is on the German border and close to Zurich, where
Jung lived. Until they fled Hitler, Buber and Freud lived not far away in Vienna, Austria.
Binswanger's existentialist theory begins by taking the phenomenological point of
view; it views the client's world from the client's point of view and accepts it, which lead
to the remarkable results of Ellen West's psychotherapy, discussed below. Binswanger
combined the care of Heidegger with the love of Buber. For Heidegger, being with others
was important, but, because humans are born and die alone, they can only choose to be
authentic as individuals. If humans attempt to define themselves through others,
Heidegger said they will be inauthentic. Binswanger thought that humans can also be
authentic in and through their relationships with others. Binswanger replaced the
categories of Umwelt, Mitwelt, and Eigenwelt with four categories of relating to others:
(1) The anonymous mode is the realm of I and it. We relate to others as
objects and they relate to us as objects.
(2) The plural mode is the realm of I vs. you. We are engaged with others
competitively. We think of others in terms of winning or losing, seizing or yielding.
(3) The singular mode is the realm of I alone. In this realm we relate to
ourselves. We can become Narcissistic or we can achieve a state of inner harmony and
integrity. We can also relate to ourselves in the plural mode if we have warring factions
within us.
(4) The dual mode is that of intimacy with others. This is the mode in which it
is possible to enter and sustain an I-thou relationship, and it includes the possibility of
relationship with the infinite or God. In the dual mode, "we can transcend nearness and
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farness by the creation of a new and privileged spatial relationship between ourselves and
the elected other" (van Deurzen, 1997, p. 147).
In the anonymous mode, our only source of knowledge is objective. In the I vs.
you mode, there is no knowledge, only tactics. It was this aspect of the practice of law
that dissatisfied me. In the singular mode we have the objective and subjective
knowledge of one person. In the I-and-thou mode, we have two sources of knowledge
and two sources of courage, and if God is real and we invite God to participate in our
lives, we will have three sources of both. Being alone is difficult. But so, it turns out, is
being together; thus the importance of group and family therapy, which are discussed in
the next chapter.
Binswanger was well-known for his long, detailed case studies, of which the best
known is the Case of Ellen West, published in Existence (1958). Since the age of 17,
Ellen West had written poetry expressing her love of death, including this poem entitled
"Spring Moods:"
I'd like to die just as the birdling does
That splits his throat in highest jubilation;
And not to live as the worm on earth lives on;
Becoming old and ugly; dull and dumb!
No, feel for once how forces in me kindle,
And wildly be consumed in my own fire.
Ellen West divided her existence into two worlds: the tomb world, in which she
included her physical existence, and the ethereal world, into which she longed to escape.
She ate very little, used massive quantities of laxatives, and at age 33 she weighed 92
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pounds. She made two unsuccessful attempts to kill herself. She was seen by different
psychiatrists and was diagnosed at different times as manic-depressive, obsessive--
compulsive, melancholic, and finally as schizophrenic. In addition to or instead of those
diagnoses, she would today be diagnosed as anorexic. She was sent to Kreuzlingen
Sanatorium where she lived comfortably with her husband and was treated by
Binswanger. She continued to refuse to eat at the sanatorium. Binswanger met with Ellen
West and her husband together and gave her a choice: she could remain at the sanatorium
and be committed to a closed ward, where she would be expected to deteriorate, or she
could go home. She chose to go home. She was relieved that she would be allowed to
leave the sanatorium and declared that she would take her life.
At home she ate well for the first time in 13 years, took walks with her husband,
read poems, wrote letters to friends, and on the third day following her return, she took a
lethal dose of poison. In death, "she looked as she had never looked in life -- calm and
happy and peaceful" (Binswanger, 1958, p. 267). Binswanger did not judge Ellen West.
He accepted her lovingly. He listened to her and respected her as she interpreted herself,
not as he might have. Binswanger wrote that Ellen West's death was "the necessary
fulfillment of the life-meaning of this existence" (p. 295).
Carl Rogers also tried to accept clients without interpretation; however, he felt
differently about Ellen West. He wrote (1989h) that, in his opinion, Ellen West was
suffering from two forms of loneliness that are particularly common in the modern age:
she was estranged from herself and she had no relationship in which she could
communicate her real experiencing, and hence her real self, to another. A therapist could
have provided her with that relationship, but none did. They had not yet learned the value
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of doing so. Psychiatrists, even Binswanger, had objectified Ellen West through various
diagnoses. Her parents denied her personhood in other ways. At her father's insistence
she broke off her first engagement with a foreigner. She next had a love affair with a
fellow student at age 24 and became engaged to him. At her parents' insistence, she
eventually ended this engagement and married a man her parents approved of, but for
whom she felt no passion. Ellen had learned that she should not trust her feelings or her
judgment.
Rogers wrote: "To make an object of a person has been helpful in treating
physical ills; it has not been successful in treating psychological ills" (1989h, p. 168). A
person-centered therapist could sense what Ellen West is and what her potentialities are,
and would have been willing for her to be both or either. With the support of such a
therapist, Ellen West could have experienced all the contradictions that made up her inner
life, and slowly she could have become her true self. The process would never be
complete because the complexity of existence is infinite and never ending. The
experience would be frightening and painful, but "to be oneself is worth a high price"
(p. 167). This experience of the true self with all its contradictions is similar to the
acceptance of the shadow and the shadow's integration into the Self in Jungian theory,
discussed in Chapter 8.
In his preface to the Torchbook edition of Being in the World: Selected Papers of
Ludwig Binswanger (1967), Jacob Needleman wrote:
The thesis of this study is that no science of the mind is possible unless joined to a
method of description that is free from the metaphysical and epistemological
presuppositions of contemporary natural science. It is argued that these
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presuppositions are historically such as to rule out the reality of the very
phenomena to be explained. Thus, a psychology which attempts to stay totally
within the field of Western science is an unproductively circular enterprise that
can never be sure it is addressing its proper subject matter.
(Needleman, 1963, p. viii)
In other words, the science of psychology has defined the spirit and the soul out of
existence.
Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm (1900 – 1980) was ”so close to being an existentialist that it almost
doesn’t matter” (Boeree, 2006c, unpaginated). He began his studies at the University of
Heidelberg in jurisprudence, but switched to sociology. He earned his PhD in sociology
at Heidelberg in 1922. He completed psychoanalytical training at the Psychoanalytical
Institute in Berlin in 1930 and then began his career as a psychotherapist. He moved to
United States in 1934 to teach at Columbia University.
His family was Jewish and central to his world-view was his interpretation of the
Talmud, which he began studying as a young man. Fromm eventually became what he
called an “atheistic mystic,” and his approach to psychotherapy demonstrates that it is
possible to have a spiritual-psychological theory of counseling and exclude God from the
theory. Fromm distinguished between “that psychoanalysis which aims primarily at
social adjustment and psychoanalysis which aims at the ‘cure of the soul.’” He thought
of himself as primarily a physician of the soul (Fromm, 1950, p. 65). Fromm defined
“cure” in the larger sense of “caring for;” he did not define “soul.” He believed that one
can have a religious experience without believing in God, and that such experiences were
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important. He characterized a person who values and seeks religious experiences as
follows:
(1) They feel wonder. Such a person experiences “life as a problem, as a
question that requires an answer” (Fromm, 1994, p. 139). This attitude begins in awe.
The person experiences the “the pain of separateness from man and nature” and has a
“passionate wish to overcome this separateness and to find at-one-ment” (1994, p. 140).
(2) They feel concern. Such a person has a hierarchy of values of which the
highest is optimal development of one’s own powers of reason, love, compassion, and
courage. This hierarchy makes the worldly life part of the spiritual life, so that the
worldly life is permeated by the spiritual aims. This attitude is felt as “an ultimate
concern with the meaning of life, with the self-realization of man, with the fulfillment of
the task which life sets us. This ultimate concern gives all desires and aims, inasmuch as
they do not contribute to the welfare of the soul and the realization of the self, a
secondary importance” (Fromm, 1950, p. 95).
(3) Such a person views every human being as an end, and never as a means.
Whatever happens, good or bad, is a stimulus to becoming stronger, more sensitive, more
human. Such a person is not seeking to transform the world, but is seeking constant self-
transformation.
(4) They long to feel oneness. Such a person values letting go of ego and
greed. Such a person values being empty in order to be open.
(5) Such a person seeks self-transcendence, “leaving the prison of one’s
selfishness and separateness” (Fromm, 1994, p. 141). Such a person seeks to reduce
Narcissism. “The central problem of man is not that of his libido; it is that of dichotomies
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inherent in his existence, his separateness, alienation, suffering, his fear of freedom, his
wish for union, his capacity for hate and destruction, his capacity for love and union”
(1994, p. 141).
As a “physician of the soul,” Fromm saw therapy as an opportunity to help the
patient “achieve an attitude which can be called religious in the humanistic though not the
authoritarian sense of the word” (1950, p. 93). In therapy, the patient would awaken and
strive:
Man must strive to recognize the truth and can be fully human only to the extent
to which he succeeds in this task. He must be independent and free, an end in
himself and not the means for any other person’s purposes. He must relate himself
to his fellow men lovingly. If he has no love, he is an empty shell even if his were
all power, wealth, and intelligence. Man must know the difference between good
and evil, he must learn to listen to the voice of his conscience and to be able to
follow it. (Fromm, 1950, p. 76)
Fromm wrote that love is a capacity rather than an emotion. Love is “a capacity
for the experience of concern, responsibility, respect, and understanding of another
person and the intense desire for that other person’s growth. Analytic therapy is
essentially an attempt to help the patient gain or regain his capacity for love. If this aim
is not fulfilled nothing but surface changes can be accomplished” (Fromm, 1950, p. 87,
italics in original).
Fromm thought that as one awaked and became more aware, one would become a
revolutionary. He thought that this was one of the teachings of Jesus, Lao Tsu, Buddha,
and all great religious leaders. These aspects of their teachings are inevitably lost when
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new religions became part of the establishment. Fromm wrote that “revolutionary
character,” in the healthy sense, was not the character of a resentful, destructive rebel,
and not the character of a fanatic. A fanatic is Narcissistic and symbolized by “burning
ice. He is a person who is passionate and extremely cold at the same time” (Fromm,
1963, p. 152). In contrast, the revolutionary character, as Fromm envisioned it, is
characterized by passionate independence and loving involvement. Revolutionaries think,
feel and decide for themselves. They identify with humanity and therefore transcend
narrow limits of their own society. They have a reverence for life. Revolutionaries think
and feel in a critical mood. For the revolutionary, power is never sanctified. A
revolutionary can disobey. Disobedience is a dialectic concept: “I may be disobedient to
the laws of the state because I am obedient to the laws of humanity. . . . The question is
not really one of disobedience or obedience, but one of disobedience or obedience to
what and to whom“ (Fromm, 1963, p. 162). In the 19
th
Century, humans had been
controlled by force. But in the 20
th
Century, Fromm saw human beings as increasingly
controlled by manipulation. This has resulted in a situation in which “obedience today is
not recognized as obedience, because it is rationalized as ‘common sense,’ as a matter of
accepting objective necessities. . . . It is difficult to be disobedient if one is not even
aware of being obedient” (1963, p. 164). Fromm equated his definition of revolutionary
character with “mental health and well-being.” This person would be “the sane person in
an insane world, the fully developed human being in a crippled world, the fully awake
person in a half-asleep world” (p. 165).
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Fromm wrote: “In the nineteenth century the problem was that God is dead; in the
twentieth century the problem is that man is dead. . . . The danger in the past was that
men became slaves. The danger in the future is that men become robots” (1963, p. 101).
Fromm was one of the founders of socialist humanism and was active in the
international peace movement. He believed that “even if peace meant only the absence of
war, of hate, of slaughter, of madness, its accomplishment would be among the highest
aims man can set for himself” (1963, p. 203). And he believed that peace in the world
must begin with peace within each of us, in “the experience of ‘at-onement’ with the
world and with oneself” (p. 212).
Viktor Frankl
Viktor Frankl (1905 – 1997) survived the Nazi death camps of Dachau and
Auschwitz. He wrote Man’s Search for Meaning (1959), in which he spells out his
humanistic approach to therapy, which he calls logotherapy, from logos, the Greek word
for meaning. According to logotherapy, the striving for meaning is the principal
motivational force for human beings: more important than striving for pleasure. Pleasure
cannot be pursued directly; it comes as a secondary effect of something else, such as
meaningful self-transcendence. Frankl thought that the main adversary to humanistic
psychology was determinism. For him, freedom and responsibility were the essential
human qualities. People do not discover meaning within; they discover it by self-
transcendence: by losing themselves in the world. Meaning is found in three ways:
"(1) by creating a work or doing a deed; (2) by experiencing something or encountering
someone; and (3) by the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering" (Frankl, 1984,
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p. 115). To be meaningful, self-transcendence must be moral: one must treat oneself and
others well in the face of adversity, not only when all is going well. Frankl did not call
these goals spiritual; but each of these paths to self-transcendence could be included as a
spiritual dimension in a theory of spiritual counseling.
Logotherapy also contained a vertical dimension, which Frankl called "super-
meaning." Frankl asked:
Are you sure that the human world is the terminal point in the evolution of the
cosmos? Is it not conceivable the there is still another dimension, a world
beyond man’s world; a world in which the question of an ultimate meaning of
human suffering would find an answer?
This ultimate meaning necessarily exceeds and surpasses the finite
intellectual capacities of man; in logotherapy, we speak in this context of a super-
meaning. What is demanded of man is not, as some existential philosophers teach,
to endure the meaninglessness of life, but rather to bear his incapacity to grasp its
unconditional meaningfulness in rational terms. Logos is deeper than logic.
(Frankl, 1984, pp. 121 – 122)
Concerning good and evil, Frankl said that after Auschwitz we know what human
beings are capable of. For Frankl, the important thing is not to deny evil but to change it.
Humans are free to change at any point and many do change. He gave the example of Dr.
J., a Nazi who was known as "the mass murderer of Steinhof," a mental hospital in
Vienna from which he sent many inmates to the gas chambers. After the Second World
War, Dr J. was taken prisoner by the Russians and sent to Lubianka prison in Moscow,
where he eventually died. A fellow prisoner at Lubianka related to Frankl that before his
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death, Dr. J. "gave consolation to everybody. He lived up to the highest conceivable
moral standard. He was the best friend I ever met during my long years in prison"
(Frankl, p. 133 — 134).
Frankl wrote that logotherapy takes an attitude of "tragic optimism" toward life.
One can face the triad of pain, guilt, and death with the triad of hope, love, and faith. One
can (1) "turn suffering into a human achievement," even if it is only the achievement of
enduring the suffering well;(2) derive "from guilt the opportunity to change oneself for
the better;" and (3) derive "from life’s transitoriness an incentive to take responsible
action" (pp. 139 – 140). He quoted his colleague Edith Weisskopf-Joelson regarding the
tendency of psychologists to pathologize sadness: "[O]ur current mental-hygiene
philosophy stresses the idea that people ought to be happy, that unhappiness is a
symptom of maladjustment. Such a value system might be responsible for the fact that
the burden of unavoidable unhappiness is increased by unhappiness about being
unhappy" (p. 118).
Frankl took the position that it was not necessary to suffer in order to find
meaning. He said that only unavoidable suffering provided the opportunity for meaning.
If the suffering is avoidable, and we do not avoid it, Frankl believed we were being
masochistic. Frankl's experience of suffering was that of a Holocaust survivor. The idea
that anyone would voluntarily submit to such suffering is obscene. But Frankl did not
consider, as did Maslow, that people living at peace have a need to grow and must take
risks in order to grow. Not all risks pay off. Taking risks is a matter of choice and the
pain that results could have been avoided by making a safer choice. Thus, there is
avoidable pain that can lead to growth.
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Rollo May
Rollo May (1909 – 1994) attended Union Theological Seminary where he became
friends with the existentialist theologian Paul Tillich. He practiced as a Congregationalist
minister and in 1940 he wrote The Springs of Creative Living: A Study of Human Nature
and God, dedicated to Tillich. In that book, May attempted to do what this paper is
attempting: "to bring together the two great streams of the understanding of human
nature, psychotherapy and religion" (May, 1940, p. 8). He wrote that before 1940,
psychology and religion had been hostile to each other, but "increasing maturity on both
sides has brought the realization that psychotherapy and religion are collaborators not
competitors" (May, 1940, p. 25). There has been little progress in that collaboration
since.
May believed that religion and psychology are complementary. He wrote that
"psychotherapy concerns itself with helping straighten out the structure of the meaning of
an individual’s life, and religion is the meaning" (May, 1940, p. 24). Religion teaches us
to love our neighbor, and psychotherapy helps us understand why that is so difficult to
do.
Existential dialectics. May thought that he could do more good as a therapist than
as a minister; so he returned to school and earned a PhD in clinical psychology in 1949.
In 1958, with Ernest Angel and Henri Ellenberger, he co-edited and contributed to the
book Existence, which introduced existential psychology to the United States. May
became the leading voice of existentialist psychology in the United States. Although May
was known for "showing a sharper awareness of the tragic dimensions of human
existence" than his humanistic colleagues (Rollo May, Wikipedia, 2006), he was cheerful
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and optimistic compared to some European existentialists. In 1961, May wrote that
although existential psychology had been prominent in Europe for two decades, it had
been greeted in the United States with "hostility and outright anger" (May, 1961, p. 12).
May noted "the term 'existentialist' is dubious and confused these days, associated as it is
with the beatnik movement at one extreme and with esoteric, untranslatable, Germanic
philosophical concepts at the other" (May, 1961, p. 18).
May thought that human potentials are naturally dialectic. The University of
Chicago Humanities Department defines dialectic as follows: "Generally speaking, dialectic is a
mode of thought, or a philosophic medium, through which contradiction becomes a starting point (rather than a dead end) for
contemplation. As such, 'dialectic' is the
medium that helps us comprehend a world that is racked by paradox" (2006,
unpaginated).
May thought that humans grow not by achieving one end or the other of
opposed qualities, but by balancing and compromising the two. In this process we are
often pulled too far in one direction and compensate by going too far in the other.
One dialectic polarity is freedom vs. determination or control. The ideal is not to
achieve either total freedom or total control. Another polarity is good vs. evil. May
thought it best if we are consciously aware of the potential good and evil that exists
within ourselves and all humans, and do not try to deny their existence. From this
awareness, humans learn humility and penitence (May, 1940, p. 114). The more
conscious humans are, the more freedom they have to choose where on the poles of good
vs. evil and freedom vs. control they come down. Humans are continually in flux and the
tension between polarities is never resolved (1940, pp. 111 – 112). In phrases reminiscent
of Buber, May wrote, "We cannot define the human being by saying, ‘He is this,’ or, ‘He
is that,’ but only in terms of balance and movement between two different poles" (p.
124).
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There are sins of the flesh and sins of pride. "Sin is proof of the upper pole to the
human dialectic" and proof of our freedom. "The worth of human personality lies in the
fact that it has a perfection outside itself by which it is attracted and impregnated" (May,
1940, p. 131). If that standard is not outside us in God, we are forced to make ourselves
the standard of perfection and that leads to a "mire of egocentricity." Jesus, he thought,
made it possible to see the upper pole in a real human. Concerning morality, May wrote:
Every personality problem is, in one sense, a moral problem, as it refers to
that question which is basic to all ethics, "How shall I live?" We can expect that
the creative personality will be distinguished by the ability to negotiate the moral
relations of life adequately, and we can set it down as a basic principle that a
constructive moral adjustment to life is the aim of successful counseling.
(May, 1989a, p. 144)
May believed that people should choose whether to do good or evil, as an act of
free will. If one excludes evil as a choice, one excludes good as a choice. One would
thereby exclude from psychological theory and from the therapy room consideration of
Kant’s choice to do good even though it hurts, and one would exclude from the
theoretical basis of psychotherapy the formation of character that develops from moral
deliberations.
May thought that the most important dialectic was the tension between a
subjective and objective view of oneself. In Psychology and the Human Dilemma, May
wrote:
I have described the human dilemma as the capacity of man to view
himself as object and as subject. My point is that both are necessary -- necessary
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for psychological science, for effective therapy, and for meaningful living. I am
also proposing that in the dialectical process between these two poles lies the
development, and the deepening and widening, of human consciousness. The error
on both sides -- for which I have used Skinner and the pre-paradox Rogers as
examples -- is the assumption that one can avoid the dilemma by taking one of its
poles. It is not simply that man must learn to live with the paradox -- the human
being has always lived in this paradox or dilemma, from the time that he first
became aware of the fact that he was the one who would die and coined a word
for his own death. Illness, limitations of all sorts, and every aspect of our
biological state we have indicated are aspects of the deterministic side of the
dilemma -- man is like the grass of the field, it withereth. The awareness of this,
and the acting on this awareness, is the genius of man the subject. But we must
also take the implications of this dilemma into our psychological theory. Between
the two horns of this dilemma, man has developed symbols, art, language, and the
kind of science which is always expanding in its own presuppositions. The
courageous living within this dilemma, I believe, is the source of human
creativity. (May, 1967, p. 20)
Skinner was a radical behaviorist. By “the pre-paradox Rogers” May was referring to the
Carl Rogers who believed that people are naturally good. Toward the end of his career,
when he worked with groups, Rogers no longer spoke of the inherent goodness of each
member. He wrote, instead, that each member had an inherent potential for goodness.
Some definitions of "dialectic" imply the desirability of reconciling the opposing
poles. May’s definition does not. May's point is that while we are tempted to reconcile
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the contradictions, we should not. We should exist in awareness of the tension between
them, within ourselves and within society. Out of sustained awareness and openness to
both sides, we continue to grow. When we resolve the tension, we may cease to grow.
Concerning this tension, May wrote:
A final unity in the human personality is neither possible nor desirable.
Existence in the Garden of Eden or in the heavens of the blissful and placid type
would mean death to the personality as we know it. For personality is dynamic,
not static; creative, not vegetative. What we desire is a new and constructive
adjustment of tensions rather than a final unity. We do not wish to wipe away
conflict altogether -- that would be stagnation -- but rather to transform
destructive conflicts into constructive ones.
(The Art of Counseling, 1989, p. 35, italics in original.)
Spiritual health and happiness. May equated happiness with psychological and
spiritual health. If people are happy, they will make others happy. If they are unhappy,
they will make others miserable. But how one gets to happiness matters. Taking a pill
will not do. Happiness and love both come from transcending oneself and directing one's
energy outward. Nonetheless, there will come times of disillusionment and
disappointment. Lasting happiness comes from affirming oneself and one's fellow human
beings and affirming the goodness of life in spite of suffering. So happiness for May is a
spiritual choice and an act of will. He was speaking from experience. When May was a
child, his parents divorced and his sister suffered a mental breakdown. As a young adult,
studying for his doctorate, he contracted tuberculosis and was hospitalized for three years
in a sanatorium. He later wrote that this encounter with the reality of his own death was
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the turning point of his life. While he faced the possibility of death, he also filled his
empty hours with reading. Among the literature he read were the writings of Soren
Kierkegaard (Boeree, 2007).
May quoted Alfred Adler, "Healthy living depends upon the person’s courage to
do things in spite of imperfection" (May, 1940, p. 103). "Health for the personality –
which includes mental, physical, and spiritual health – lies in courageously bearing the
tension between what one is and what one ought to be, and directing this tension into
creative use" (May, 1940, p. 127). May added that health also consists of courageously
and creatively bearing the tension between one’s being and non-being. Being and non-
being constitute another dialectic polarity.
May believed that healthy living requires a person to affirm himself or herself, to
affirm society, and to affirm the ultimate meaningfulness of the universe. "If the universe
is crazy, the parts of it must be crazy too" (1989a, p. 166). May believed that learning to
love well is an important part of psychological and spiritual development. How to do that
is discussed next.
Intentionality: learning to choose love. In Love and Will, May wrote, "Man’s task
is to unite love and will" (1969, p. 283). By this he meant something similar to Kant's
summum bonum, that our human goal is to find happiness in the good: if one loves the
good, then one's will will seek the good. How does one get oneself to that point? May
conceptualized a course of development that led from care about another person, which
implies the capacity to love and be loved; to wish; to will; to the decision to act when
one's wishes and will coincide; to the decision to love someone consciously; to the
decision to care consciously for others generally. Heidegger wrote that care was an
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essential part of what it means to be a human being. Until humans care for something or
someone, they are alone and without meaning. For Binswanger, Buber, and May, it was
the caring for another human that made people human, not caring for things. There is no
such thing as meaning in a universe of only one person and many things. When we care
for another, time and death raise the stakes: those we care about are dying. Care leads to
wishes and to will. But, May said, contemporary European-Americans have lost the
courage and self-awareness to wish or will well.
The ideal for a Victorian was to be "the master of his fate and the captain of his
soul." Victorians made a virtue of will power and free will. Freud showed that they were
deluded. Their actions were in fact determined by unconscious, ignoble wishes. May
thought that Freud and other deterministic psychologists had turned troubled, yearning
humans into passive patients who were afraid to assert their wants. Many people deny
and repress their wishes. Many hide the wishes they are conscious of. And, May felt,
many have become afraid to want; some have even developed the goal of "not wanting"
(1969, p. 264). Our will is conscious and expressed in our intentions. Our wishes may be
unconscious and may conflict with our conscious intentions.
Meaningful therapy can begin for many by making their wishes conscious and
deepening their capacity to wish. The therapist can ask clients what they care about and
who matters to them. The therapist can affirm clients' immediate wishes in order to get to
their deeper wishes. The next step is to experience oneself as the person who has these
wishes and who can do something about them. When this happens, clients experience the
meaning and implications of their intentions as part of who they are, and not as
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something imposed by outside authority. Their wishes become an expression of their true
selves and are transformed into intentions.
Clients can act on these intentions by making a conscious decision and taking
responsibility for the results. Such decisions create "a pattern of acting and living which
is empowered and enriched by wishes, asserted by will, and is responsive to and
responsible for the significant other-persons who are important to one's self in the
realizing of the long-term goals" (1969, p. 267). Each decision is an act of one's whole
being and always involves the risk of failure.
May uses the term "intentionality" to express the state in which both one's
conscious and unconscious wishes agree with one's intention. Intentionality is an
approach to oneself and others by which one consciously seeks to become more aware of
one's wishes and to integrate and act on those wishes through acts of will. People can
learn to unite love and will by conscious development, by choosing to integrate their
loving wishes into loving actions, and by choosing to learn from their mistakes. What
should people do with their un-loving and destructive wishes? If they are aware of their
destructive wishes, they can consciously choose not to act on them. If they acknowledge
their destructive wishes, those wishes are less likely to lurk in the unconscious and
sabotage their conscious intentions. May appeared to make the same assumption that he
criticized Rogers for making: that, given the opportunity, humans will choose
constructively. In the case study presented in Love and Will, May helped a client make
his wishes conscious. They included the wish to get even with his father by failing at his
job, the wish to be rescued by his mother or by May, and the wish to work at what he
valued regardless of the risk of failure and his father's negative opinion. May asked the
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client which of these wishes he would choose to act on. With greater self-awareness, the
client chose to continue his struggle for independence from his parents. What if the client
had chosen, instead, to get even with his father and depend on his mother? There is no
assurance that clients will choose well, or that the therapist's definition of choosing well
will agree with the client's. But by following the path outlined by May, therapists can
help clients choose more consciously.
May believed that learning how to love consciously is a critical developmental
task for each person. May felt that contemporary society needed to develop a "mythos of
care," which "says that whatever happens in the external world, human love and grief,
pity and compassion are what matter" (1969, p. 302). Humans cannot will love, but they
can will to be open to love, and they can consciously practice caring.
May was an American existentialist. The American existentialists, including May,
were viewed by European van Deuzen as practicing a form of existentialism which was
too cheery: "The stark philosophical dimension gets so diluted that the original project of
the approach is lost (van Deurzen, 1997, pp. 156- 158).
Emmy van Deurzen
Emmy van Deurzen is a contemporary existentialist psychotherapist. She was
born in the Netherlands in 1951. She obtained both a Master’s degree in
Phenomenological and Existential Philosophy and a Master’s in Clinical Psychology in
France. She moved to London in 1977, where she practiced and taught at the Society for
Existential Analysis, which is coupled with the School of Psychotherapy and Counseling
at Regent's College. She co-founded and currently practices at Dilemma Consultancy, an
organization of psychotherapists, counselors, psychologists, and medical practitioners
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working in the existential tradition (Dilemma Consultancy website, 2008; Emmy van
Deurzen, Wikipedia, 2008).
Van Deurzen takes the position that people are at their best when they are faced
with difficulties and paradoxes. The key paradoxes of human existence are being alive or
dead; being related to others or being isolated; being resolute or desolate in relation to
one's freedom; and being engaged in a search for truth or confronting the absurdity of
existence (van Deurzen, 1997, p. 158).
Van Deurzen believed that the day-to-day challenge that humans face is to learn
to live intensely and openly, not to flee or close down in the face of danger. Diagnoses
and cures are likely to constitute oversimplifications and evasions of the complexity of
life. Living fully takes courage and a willingness to live with imperfection, failure,
contradiction, uncertainty, tension, anxiety, sickness, and pain.
As people struggle to be open to the many challenges that come their way, it helps
to have a map. That is one purpose of Heidegger's ontological dimensions. Van Deurzen
supplements Heidegger's three dimensions with a spiritual dimension. Each dimension
has a positive pole, a negative pole, and an intermediate value; for example, on the
spiritual dimension, meaning is one positive pole, meaninglessness is a negative pole, and
wisdom is the intermediate value (van Deurzen, 1997, p. 101). Van Deurzen does not
conceive of the existential dimensions as dimensions of growth. The point is not to value
exclusively either pole or the intermediate value. The point is to be open to the value of
each pole at different times. If one closes off the negative poles, one is closing off half of
the experience of life. Humans will experience these aspects of life throughout their
lifetimes. People do not outgrow them. As people move from the positive to the negative
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poles of experience, it is natural for them to pass through an emotional cycle. Cycles of
dark and light are part of the nature of the universe. Evidence-based psychotherapy and
psychopharmacology try to control them. Existential theories value being open to the
cycles of nature and experiencing all sides: elation and grief, and occasional numbness.
If a client came to see van Deurzen complaining of sadness, van Deurzen might
look upon the sadness as part of the natural cycle of emotions. Our emotions have a
direction. So van Deurzen would expect the client to pass in time from resignation toward
a renewal of desire. In fact, most clinical depressions pass of their own accord, with or
without treatment, within four to six months, a fact that is almost never acknowledged or
discussed by evidence-based theorists or psyhopharmacologists (DSM-IV-TR, p. 354;
Nevid, Rathus, and Green, 2000, p. 237).
The American existential therapist Irving Yalom will be discussed in the next
chapter under Group Counseling.
The Process of Existentialist Psychotherapy
Existential psychotherapy is a conversation about making sense of the client's life.
The "duty of the existential psychotherapist is to see to it that interpretations are made
within the framework of meaning of the client, rather than within the framework of
meaning of the therapist" (van Deurzen-Smith, 1997, p. 229). In helping clients make
sense of their lives, it helps if the therapist is also open to influence and change. The
process can be rewarding and exciting for both client and counselor.
The purpose of existential psychotherapy is not to diagnose or explain. It is to
experience life in all its contradictions. The key to existential therapy is openness. If a
client were depressed, Freud or a cognitive-behaviorist might try to cure the depression.
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Freud might look into the past for an over-controlling mother against whom the client felt
repressed anger, which Freud would help the client bring to consciousness and express. A
cognitive-behaviorist might look in the present for triggers and so-called "unreasonable
cognitions."
An existentialist, on the other hand, might call upon the client's creative powers
and focus on the future. An existentialist therapist might ask, "What do you value that
makes you sad?" instead of asking, "How can we make you happy now?" An existential
therapist might ask, "Who do you long to be? Can you imagine being that person? Can
you begin to be that person with others outside of this office? Out of your sadness, can
you connect with others with empathy and love? What is standing in your way inside of
you and outside of you? What can you do to help others that will also bring meaning to
your life?"
The Goals and Values of Humanistic and Existentialist Psychotherapy
In Spirituality for Humanists: Six Capacities of Our Human Spirits, James Park
(1999) listed these six capacities of humanists: (1) self-transcendence, self-criticism, and
altruism; (2) freedom; (3) creativity; (4) love; (5) anxiety; and (6) joy. Anxiety is usually
listed as an existential quality, not a humanistic one, and self-actualization is often added
as a humanistic value. "Joy" is more often mentioned in association with religious
experiences. The philosophies of humanism and existentialism overlap, and the values of
both will be considered here. All of the values of humanism and existentialism can be
included in a theory of spiritual psychology.
The most important existential values are authenticity, freedom, choice, openness,
awareness, courage, responsibility, individual meaning, meaningful intimacy, and love.
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Some existential theorists and some humanists add the values of depth, breadth,
individuality, non-conformity, and revolution. Chapter 1 of Park's Spirituality for
Humanists is entitled "Living Deeply in a Superficial Culture." Behaviorist and cognitive
therapies are not likely to deepen a person and they will not challenge a person's values,
unless those values are in conflict with the authorities who ordered the treatment.
Behaviorist and cognitive therapies are not likely to challenge the status quo. They may
depend on the established authorities for funding. Humanistic and existentialist
psychologists believe that conformity is likely to be unhealthy, but that conformity is
taught and rewarded from a young age. May wrote:
William Whyte, in his Organization Man, cautions that modern man's enemies
may turn out to be a "mild-looking group of therapists, who . . . would be doing
what they did to help you." He refers here to the tendency to use the social
sciences in support of the social ethic of our historical period; and thus the process
of helping people may actually make them conform and tend toward the
destruction of individuality. We cannot brush aside the cautions of such men as
unintelligent or antiscientific; to try to do so would make us the obstructionists.
There is a real possibility that we may be helping the individual adjust and be
happy at the price of loss of his being. (May, 1961, p. 21)
The pressure to conform is most strongly exerted in the schools, which teach
reverence for the cultural myths and punish rebels. Concerning this phenomenon, Willard
Frick wrote in the introduction to Humanistic Psychology: Interviews with Maslow,
Murphy, and Rogers that we all tend to be intimidated by our experience and that:
the most institutionalized, rigidly entrenched and destructive form of the
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intimidation of experience is to be found in education, where from kindergarten
through the graduate schools, the control, manipulation, and intimidation of
experience is built into the very essence and structure of the system. In fact, the
smooth and proper functioning of the educational establishment depends upon it
and, therefore, encourages it. (Frick, 1971, p. 6)
In "The Politics of Education," Rogers wrote:
I believe that the following are the major characteristics of conventional
education, as we have known it for a long time in this country and as it is
experienced by students and faculty.
The teacher is the possessor of knowledge, the student the expected
recipient. . . .
The lecture, the textbook, or some other means of verbal intellectual
instruction are the major methods of getting knowledge into the recipient. The
examination measures the extent to which the student has received it. . . .
The teacher is the possessor of power, the student the one who obeys. . . .
Rule by authority is the accepted policy of the classroom. . . .
Trust is at a minimum. Most notable is the teacher's distrust of the
student. . . .
The subjects (students) are best governed by being kept in an intermittent
or constant state of fear. . . .
Democracy and its values are ignored and scorned in practice. . . .
There is no place for the whole person in the educational system, only for
her intellect. (Rogers, 1977, pp. 323 -- 325)
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Rogers envisioned an alternative person-centered, humanistic mode of teaching in
which the teacher shares responsibility for learning with the student, and the only
discipline is self-discipline. This approach is being implemented in the best
psychoeducational groups today, which are discussed below under Group Counseling.
Rogers felt that most people have introjected the values and judgments of others. Most
have conformed to the values of their parents, church, school, and society in order to gain
and then to hold "social approval, affection, and esteem" (Rogers, 1989g, p. 184).
Because these values are not developed within the individual, because they are external,
they are rigid and absolute and not subject to testing. If in therapy clients feel valued just
as they are, as unique and worthy individuals, then they will feel safe enough to begin
questioning and testing these introjected values. Slowly, through the course of therapy,
clients can develop their own set of values that come from within and are growth-
promoting and self-actualizing for them. Deep and helpful relationships with others are
self-actualizing. Rogers saw his clients develop "value directions" as they themselves
moved in "the direction of personal growth and maturity." Those value directions
include:
They tend to move away from façades. Pretense, defensiveness, putting up
a front, tend to be negatively valued.
They tend to move away from "oughts." The compelling feeling of "I
ought to do or be thus and so" is negatively valued. . . .
They tend to move away from meeting the expectations of others.
Pleasing others, as a goal in itself, is negatively valued.
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Being real is positively valued. The client tends to move toward being
himself, being his real feelings, being what he is. . . .
Self-direction is positively valued. The client discovers an increasing pride
and confidence in making his own choices, guiding his own life.
One's self, one's own feelings, come to be positively valued. From a point
of view where he looks upon himself with contempt and despair, the client comes
to value himself and his reactions as being of worth.
Being a process is positively valued. From desiring some fixed goal,
clients come to prefer the excitement of being a process of potentialities being
born.
Perhaps more than all else, the client comes to value an openness to all of
his inner and outer experience. To be open to and sensitive to his own inner
reactions and feelings, the reactions and feelings of others, and the realities of the
objective world -- this is a direction which he clearly prefers. This openness
becomes the client's most valued resource.
Sensitivity to others and acceptance of others is positively valued. The
client comes to appreciate others for what they are, just as he has come to
appreciate himself for what he is. Finally, deep relationships are positively valued.
To achieve a close, intimate, real, fully communicative relationship with another
person seems to meet a deep need in every individual, and is highly valued.
(Rogers, 1964, p. 182)
Rogers believed that he had seen an "organismic valuing base and process" which
naturally emerged within each human (1989f, p. 184) and which might be counted on to
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guide modern people now that they no longer trusted religion to do so; however, Rogers
did not assert, as had Kant, discussed above, and C. S. Lewis, whose views are discussed
below in Chapter 10, that this organismic valuing base might come from God and be part
of our divine nature. Rogers himself developed in these ways throughout his life. He felt
that he had seen these values emerge in all cultures, including "the United States,
Holland, France, and Japan" (p. 181). He hypothesized that these value directions "would
be constant across cultures and across time" (p. 183).
Robert Lindner was a revolutionary psychologist, who wrote Rebel Without A
Cause (1944), a case study of an antisocial personality, from which the James Dean
movie got its title but not its plot. He also wrote Prescription for Rebellion (1952) and
Must You Conform? (1956). In those books, Lindner asserted that psychology and
psychiatry equated mental health with being well-adjusted. But, he wrote, society itself is
sick and to adjust to it is sick. Lindner argued that counselors should help their clients
become healthy revolutionaries, who would raise children who would become healthy
revolutionaries: rebels with a cause. Healthy rebels can learn on their own and discipline
themselves. Spiritual-psychological counseling as I envision it, would value disobedience
in service of authenticity and revolution in service of justice.
Conclusions
Boeree wrote that the scientist may be the model for cognitive and behavioral
psychologists, but "the artist is the model for existentialists" (2006b, unpaginated).
Numbers are the language of scientists. Metaphors are the language of existentialists. If
God is a poet, the behaviorist and cognitive psychologists have no ear for metaphor. If
God is an artist, they are blind.
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Existentialist psychologists do acknowledge the possibility of spirit and the reality
of good and evil. But, as a theory of spiritual psychology, existentialist psychology is
incomplete. Except for the deistic existentialists, such as Tillich and May, God is
optional. The soul and spirit are not defined, and, therefore, cannot be addressed as real
entities. Van Deurzen preferred it this way. She thought religion offers an escape from
reality. If we "let go of the thought that we are the favorite child and have first born
rights, we have to rise to the challenge of being merely part of what is and learn to play
our role. If we are willing to take this more humble position we find a much better place
to be." Van Deurzen thought it is better to view life as a present struggle with
unforeseeable results than as "an apprenticeship for the afterlife" (1997, p. 126). Hers is a
heroic, admirable stance; but, if God and spirit are real, it is an unnecessarily lonely
position.
Both humanistic and existentialist therapies were spiritual in the sense of placing
more importance on meaning and values than on happiness and material success. They
were both non-scientific because they de-objectified the client. Nonetheless, most
humanistic and existential therapists appear to have practiced without taking a position on
whether or not the spiritual and materialistic world-views could or should be combined in
the counseling office. Rollo May was the exception. He can be added to the short list of
thinkers who tried to integrate both world-views. He thought therapy was a process of
making moral choices. He thought the therapist could approach therapy in such a way
that the client would experience the two worldviews as complementary and supportive.
He did not consider that spiritual values and goals might sometimes conflict with
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materialistic values and goals, e.g. personal success vs. personal sacrifice, as pastoral
counselor Benner did. Benner's ideas will be discussed in Chapter 8.
I believe that counselors should not have to choose between the more scientific
approaches of behaviorist-cognitive therapy and the less scientific approaches of
humanism and existentialism. That would be reductionistic. Benner used a neon sign to
explain reductionism. A scientist may think that the sign is completely explained when its
electrical and mechanical properties are known. An artist may be interested only in the
beauty of the sign. A philosopher may be interested only in the meaning of the words.
"Reductionistic explanations are those that assert that only one level of an explanation
represents truth and that all others are, at best, unnecessary or, at worst, illusory" (Benner,
2006, p. 66). It is possible to address different needs of a client through different
therapeutic approaches. Ideally, the client should be informed and consent to all and each
of the approaches being used.
At the beginning of the 20th Century, group and family counseling did not yet
exist. Today, in 2009, they are common. In the next chapter I will explore what each has
contributed to human knowledge and relational skill, and I will consider how each might
be employed by the counselor to benefit the client's spiritual health and growth.
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CHAPTER VII
GROUP AND FAMILY COUNSELING
In this chapter I will consider the present relationship between spirituality and the
fields of group and family counseling. I will discuss aspects of group and family
counseling that can assist in a client's spiritual development and health. I will suggest an
approach to family therapy that combines current theories with a spiritual component. I
will postpone suggesting a spiritual-psychological approach to group counseling until
Chapter 17.
Group Counseling
Group Work and Spirituality
Group work and family counseling are relative newcomers to the field of
psychology. By way of comparison, the American Psychiatric Association was founded
in 1844, and the American Psychological Association in 1892; but the American
Association of Marriage and Family Therapists was not founded until 1942 and the
Association for Specialists in Group Work not until 1973. Rollo May (1989) argued that
one aspect of spirituality is one's ability to transcend one's selfish perspective and relate
to others in a loving, life-affirming way. Both group and family therapy can help clients
learn and practice this aspect of spirituality.
Irvin Yalom has demonstrated that by the process of group dynamics, 11
therapeutic factors emerge in group counseling, almost independently of the intention of
the leaders or members. Those factors are:
1. Instillation of hope
2. Universality
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3. Imparting information
4. Altruism
5. The corrective recapitulation of the primary family group
6. Development of socializing techniques
7. Imitative behavior
8. Interpersonal learning
9. Group cohesiveness
10. Catharsis
11. Existential factors. (Yalom, 1995, p. 1)
Based on their research, Fowler (1981, 2000) and Tisdell (2003) concluded that
hope, universality, and altruism, can contribute to spiritual development. Yalom's
existential factors include sharing with others while facing one's ultimate aloneness,
death, and responsibility for one's own actions (Yalom, 1995). Van Deurzen (2002) felt
that clients grow only when they integrate awareness of these existential factors into their
lives. In group, the members provoke each other and help each other, in ways that are not
possible in one-on-one therapy. The ideal for many clients is individual counseling
combined with group counseling, but few clients can afford both. Today, as a result of the
intersection of three systems: managed care, community mental health, and criminal
probation, some clients can only find or afford group work. It is more cost effective for
the provider.
In my research regarding group counseling, I did not find any discussion of
whether or not the spiritual and scientific world-views should be or could be integrated
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into group therapy, except for Page and Berkow’s article Group Work as Facilitation of
Spiritual Development for Drug and Alcohol Abusers, in which they wrote:
Most theories of group work do not directly address how group dynamics
can help members to become more spiritual or connected with a higher
power . . . . There are few direct references to spirituality or spiritual issues in
the group therapy literature. (1998, p. 286)
A Boolean search of the terms "group counseling and spirituality"" and the terms
"group therapy and spirituality" on the EBSCO search engine of Southern Illinois
University's Morris Library on July 13, 2008, yielded a total of six results: two of those
related to counseling with Native Americans and one related to working with drug and
alcohol abusers. At the outset, I indicated that my research would look principally at
Western-European writers and traditions. I made that choice because my knowledge is
limited; however, my spiritual attitude is ecumenical. I expect to learn from other
traditions. In the light of the limited resources dealing with groups and spirituality, I
examine both of the articles about Native American groups at the conclusion of this
section. Page and Berkow (1998) authored the article relating to drug and alcohol. The
other articles did not pertain to the research questions of this paper. Although Page and
Berkow were writing about their experience working with addicts in groups, they thought
that all types of therapy groups have a spiritual component:
Group work does not have to focus directly on spiritual issues or discussions for
the group to foster the spirituality of its members. Spirituality does not have to be
defined in a group, and exercises related to spirituality do not need to be
conducted, for a group to foster the spiritual development of members. . . . [A]ny
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group that focuses either directly or indirectly on any of the following themes is
fostering the spiritual development of members: caring more for other people,
having just relationships with others, helping others to self-actualize, developing
more positive self-concepts, developing increased awareness of self or others,
becoming free to be oneself, and developing more responsible interpersonal
relationships or relationships with the ground of being (which can be defined in a
variety of ways, e.g., God, Nature, etc.). Any time these themes are addressed in
group work, the spiritual development of members is being affected for better or
worse. (Page & Berkow, 1998, p.290)
Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), founded in 1934, and Narcotics Anonymous,
founded in 1947, have two essential components: individual and group. Each alcoholic or
addict helps another alcoholic or addict, and each attends AA or NA meetings. Therapists
have, therefore, long recognized group work as an important component of drug and
alcohol treatment. In the 1934 book, Alcoholics Anonymous, AA's founder William
Wilson explicitly brought the spiritual and non-spiritual world-views together. Alcoholics
Anonymous and AA groups will be discussed in detail in Chapter 8. Because group
therapy offers individual clients unique opportunities for growth, and because of its wide
availability and comparative affordability, I will consider it now, even though there is
little literature addressing its relationship to spiritual development. In Chapter 17, I will
suggest a spiritual-psychological approach to group counseling.
Group Types
There are four kinds of groups: task groups, psychoeducational groups,
counseling groups, and therapy groups. Task groups are formed for a specific purpose;
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they often have a chairperson; and they go out of existence when they have completed
their assigned task. Task groups have existed at least as long as the word committee has
been a part of the language, which, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is since
1621.
Educational groups have existed since the late 1800s. They were used to dispense
information and provide educational and vocational guidance. Because of the power of
group dynamics, psychoeducational groups can be conducted as person-centered process
groups in which the members learn from each other. However, many psychoeducational
groups limit themselves to dispensing knowledge.
To the present day, many so-called psychoeducational groups serve principally to
dispense information, and nothing else. In such groups, the leaders act like
traditional educators: they lecture and hand out materials, which may consist of a
few exercises. It was recognized, however, that the power of groups to facilitate
development and learning extended to psychoeducational groups.
(Gladding, 2003)
History of Groups
When working with tuberculosis outpatients at Massachusetts General Hospital,
Joseph Henry Pratt recognized the therapeutic power of groups as far back as 1905, but
psychotherapeutic groups did not come into widespread use until the 1960s. Before then,
the focus of psychology and therapy had remained on the individual. (Gladding, 2003.)
Group therapy became very popular in the 1960s and 1970s. Both practitioners
and clients saw it as a way in which normal people could experience psychotherapeutic
benefits. Counseling groups are distinguished from therapy groups by the seriousness of
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the problems faced by their members; that is, therapy groups are more likely to work with
members who share a specific DSM-IV diagnosis. Since the 1970s, group work has been
extensively researched and various theories have been articulated. One important aspect
of groups is their power. A group has inherent power to bring about growth and change,
which, it is hoped, will be healthy. The group craze died down in the 1980s. Marathon
groups left some people burned out. Some group gurus had been self-promoting and
immodest in their claims. That is a shame, because a well-run group is a wonderful and
positive experience in personal growth and social learning.
Carl Rogers and Groups
Carl Rogers, whose PhD was in Educational Psychology, came to believe that he
may never have taught anyone anything. “I have come to conclude that the only learning
which significantly influences behavior is self-discovered, self-appropriated learning.
Such self-discovered learning, truth that has been personally appropriated and assimilated
in experience, cannot be directly communicated to another. . . . As a consequence of the
above, I realize that I have lost interest in being a teacher. . . . I realize that I am only
interested in being a learner, preferably learning things that matter, that have some
significant influence on my own behavior” (Rogers, 1989e, 301 – 302). Rogers came to
believe that as a co-learner in a group he could help others and facilitate change and
learning in others at the same time that he, himself, learned and changed. The first quality
demanded of a good facilitator was “realness” (Rogers, 1989f, p. 306). Thus, in a well-
facilitated therapy group or psychoeducational group, or classroom, members of the
group are students and co-learners, who simultaneously teach themselves and each other.
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This requires that the facilitator have the skills and knowledge necessary to engage group
members in the learning process.
Rogers was an early leader in group practice and research. He called his first
groups “encounter groups,” a term which was coined at a conference on small group
process put together by Rogers and May in Santa Rosa in 1962. Rogers understood the
term to mean that individuals would “come into much closer and direct contact with one
another than is customary in ordinary life” (Rogers, 1967, p. 270). Rogers endeavored to
be both a facilitator and participant in the groups he lead. This role and his belief in the
importance of realness and trust, lead him to change two aspects of his approach. When
he conducted groups, he confronted more and disclosed more than he had done in one-
on-one therapy (Rogers, 1971; Gladding, 2003).
Person-centered counseling and therapy groups, based on Rogers’s theory and
example, emphasize the values of congruence, being present in the here-and-now,
awareness of oneself and of others, valuing oneself and others, and finding value and
meaning in life. Person-centered therapist Brian Thorne felt that secular individuals were
most likely to experience a spiritual sense of transcendent connection with others within
person-centered encounter groups (Thorne, 1992, p. 105). Person-centered groups are
based on the belief that “individuals have within themselves vast resources for self-
understanding and for altering their self-concepts, basic attitudes, and self-directed
behavior; these resources can be tapped if the definable climate of facilitative
psychological attitudes can be provided (Rogers, 1980, p. 115). If the members trust the
facilitator and the group, then the group will promote the positive growth tendency that
resides within each of the individuals (Gladding, p. 373). This should be done without the
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facilitator directing the group toward any specific goal (Rogers, 1970, p. 45). Facilitators
should give and receive feedback and should encourage members to give feedback to
each other.
The person-centered group is not based on a belief in the underlying goodness of
each individual member. Rather it is based on a belief in the underlying capacity of each
member to grow in good ways, and the belief that, within the social context of a group,
each member will tend to develop in moral, pro-social ways. Implicit is the recognition
that each member has the capacity to develop in good or in bad, anti-social ways.
Members of a successful person-centered group will experience movement toward self-
actualization, greater awareness of themselves and others, greater intimacy and comfort
with intimacy, greater openness to experience, and less alienation.
Process-focused Groups
Chen and Rybak (2004) wrote that there are six assumptions underlying what they
call a process-focused group: (1) most problems are interpersonal in nature; (2) family
experiences are the primary source of interpersonal process; (3) a group will reactivate
people’s interpersonal processes; (4) here-and-now relationships within a group can bring
about change and healing of past and present psychological damage; (5) in order to
endure, interpersonal learning must be experiential; and (6) sustained change can happen
within a short time. “Process” or “processing” means the here-and-now interactions
between individuals in the group. This interpersonal process perspective could also be
applied to appropriate psychoeducational groups, e.g. an anger management group.
Emotions can run very high in a process-focused group. Therefore, one characteristic of
an effective group leader is “self-differentiation,” which Chen and Rybak define as “the
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degree to which one can differentiate feeling from thinking and, at the same time, balance
both. . . . Self-differentiation is the index of a person’s emotional, mental, and spiritual
development. . . . The best way to increase one’s self-differentiation is by learning to face
one’s own anxiety, and learning to face it without trying to escape.” If we are well
differentiated, then we can distinguish between our own “stuff” and what occurs in the
group (Chen & Rybak, 2004, pp. 42 - 43). Self-differentiation is discussed further below
under family therapy theorist Murray Bowen.
Another giant of group theory is Irving Yalom, the American existentialist
psychiatrist and author of The Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy (1995).
His groups were processed-focused. Yalom defined the eleven therapeutic factors that
occur within the lifetime of a group, which are listed above. Bernak and Epp (1996)
added the therapeutic factor of love. Given time, all of these factors will arise naturally as
part of a group’s development. A group facilitator can work with these factors to help the
members heal, if they are sick or wounded, and to help them grow and learn, whether
they are sick and wounded or well. Yalom originally called these factors “curative
factors,” which may have resulted from his training as a doctor and psychiatrist. Van
Deurzen wrote regarding Yalom that “the medical model dominates. . . . Yalom views
human life as something that needs to be cured and made well rather than as a
paradoxical challenge to which we need to rise” (van Deurzen, 1997, p. 158).
A group leader-facilitator has four roles to play: energizing or emotional
stimulation; executive function or organizing; meaning attribution; and caring (Gladding,
p.81). Caring means that the facilitator desires the growth and welfare of each group
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member, but does not desire any member sexually. If such desire arises, it must be
sublimated.
Facilitator-participant: Equality and Dialogue in Groups
Groups provide an opportunity to practice equality and dialogue as defined by
Benner, whose views are discussed under Pastoral Counseling in the next chapter. In
Group Leadership Skills (2004), Chen and Rybak take the position that the ideal role for
a group leader is the role of facilitator-participant, giving as much power to the members
as possible. This, they believe, will maximize member learning and change. This
recommendation is supported by the experience of Page and Berkow who thought that
the spiritual development of group members was maximized when “the leaders primarily
responded in a helpful way to what the members wanted to discuss in the group. . . . This
type of leader behavior can be contrasted to behavior in which the leader brings up most
of the topics to be discussed and . . . most of the important issues in the group” (1998,
p. 295). The role of facilitator-participant in a group is the closest Carl Rogers got and
may be the closest a professional counselor can get to working with a client on an I-thou
basis and thus overcoming Buber’s objections. Additional spiritual qualities of a group
are that members can experience the uniqueness of other members, as well as their
commonality. In appropriate groups, with the consent of all, one can pray with others and
for others.
In People of the Lie: The Hope for Healing Human Evil, psychiatrist Scott Peck
wrote of the dangers of groups, and supported the idea of the group leader being an equal
facilitator-participant:
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Individuals not only routinely regress in times of stress, they also regress
in group settings. . . . From the standpoint of a therapist who leads a therapy
group, this regression is not welcomed. It is, after all, the therapist’s task to
encourage, foster, and develop the maturity of his or her patients. Hence, much of
the work of a group therapist will be to confront and challenge the patient’s
dependency within the group, then to step aside so that the patient may risk
assuming a leadership position and thereby learn how to exercise mature power in
a group setting. A therapy group that has been successfully led will be one in
which all the members have come to share equally in the leadership of the group
according to their unique individual capacities. The ideal mature therapy group is
a group composed entirely of leaders. (Peck, 1983, p. 223)
Compare this caution to Rogers’s almost naive sounding enthusiasm for groups:
If the individual or group is faced by a problem;
If a catalyst-leader provides a permissive atmosphere;
If responsibility is genuinely placed with the individual or group;
If there is basic respect for the capacity of the individual or group;
Then, responsible and adequate analysis of the problem is made;
responsible self-direction occurs; the creativity, productivity, quality
of product exhibited are superior to results of other comparable methods;
individual and group morale and confidence develop.
(Rogers, 1951, pp. 63 – 64)
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A person-centered group avoids the evils of which Peck warned through the
facilitator’s demonstration of acceptance, empathy, and positive regard for all members.
As a result, members come to feel acceptance, empathy, and positive regard for
themselves and for each other. Person-centered groups will be discussed in more detail in
Chapter 17.
Groups and Native Americans
Dufrene and Coleman wrote that many Native American cultures value
cooperation over individualism. “The role of group leader or facilitator can be compared
to an elder, clan leader, or medicine person leading a Native American group. In the
Naïve American culture, group discussions are held in a circle with each person having
an opportunity to participate” (1992, p. 232). They recommended that, when working
with Native Americans, the group facilitator “respect the spiritual dimensions of Native
American culture.”
Group sessions should begin and end with a prayer that would be
acceptable to most Native American tribes represented in the group.
A prayer indicates acknowledgement of higher powers that play a role in
our physical and mental well-being. Native Americans believe that healers can
only be successful if they seek the aid of spiritual forces.
It is preferable that counseling be conducted by a Native American mental
health professional. (Dufrene & Coleman, 1992, pp. 232 – 233)
Dufrene and Coleman recommended that the group facilitators determine which spiritual
techniques and approaches to use “based on consultation with group members” (p. 233).
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Heilborn and Guttman (2000) facilitated groups for sexually abused women. The
groups contained members who were First Nations women and members who were not.
The writers suggested that group counseling might be a better fit for First Nations clients
than one-on-one counseling, because of the culture’s emphasis on community and
cooperation. They started each group with a “healing circle.” Members stood in a circle
while one of the First Nations women performed a “purification ceremony,” burning
sage, sweet grass cedar, and tobacco in a shell. Then the members linked hands while one
of them recited a prayer to the Creator, giving thanks and asking support and guidance for
the members. There was also a closing prayer. The writers thought that these spiritual
practices provided the members with a shared sense of belonging that supported inner
healing and outer behavioral changes.
Freudian psychoanalysis focused on repairing damage done to one’s ego by one’s
family. One purpose of group therapy is to repair damage done to one’s social-self and
inner-self by family. I will now examine contributions that psychology has made to
repairing the family itself.
Family Counseling
Family and Spirituality
Family is the source of religion and values for many people, and family has
spiritual value in most religions. In Spiritual Literacy: Reading the Sacred in Everyday
Life (1996) Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat wrote:
Relationships with other people form the spiritual web of our lives,
with crucial strands being marriages, partnerships, family, and friends.
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According to many religious traditions, our deepest values are expressed
through these essential bonds. (p. 419)
Being a meaningful family member requires love, sacrifice, and transcending
one's self. It requires ties to the past and investment in the future. The most significant
moral decisions that most people make involve their families: how to raise their children,
whether or not to get divorced, how to stay married and at what cost, and what
relationship to have with one's ex-spouse and one's children if one does get divorced.
Such questions often underlie clients' decisions to come to therapy, although these
problems may not yet be consciously realized or fully articulated.
Family Therapists’ Attitudes and Beliefs
In a meta-study of 5,759 therapists, Walker, Gorsuch, and Tan (2004) found that
marriage and family therapists consider spirituality more relevant and participate in
organized religion to a greater extent than do therapists of any other type. Carlson,
Kirkpatrick, Hecker, and Killmer (2002) surveyed 1,200 randomly selected clinical
members of the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapists. Forty-five
percent chose narrative therapy, in which the family constructs its own story, as the most
helpful theory when dealing with issues of religion and spirituality. Participants
responded to five scales measuring their views on various aspects of spirituality. Ninety-
six percent agreed or strongly agreed that there is a relationship between spiritual health
and mental health. Eighty-eight percent agreed or strongly agreed that there is a
relationship between spiritual and physical health. The following percentages agreed or
strongly agreed that it is appropriate for a family therapist to engage in the following
activities: 66 % thought it appropriate to ask clients about their spirituality; 42 % to help
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clients develop spiritually (20 % were neutral and 13 % disagreed); 50% to pray for
clients (18 % were neutral and 21 % disagreed); 17% to pray with a client (33 % were
neutral and 51 % disagreed); 66 % to ask clients about religion; 18% to discuss the
therapist’s religion (37 % neutral, 46 % disagreed); 47 % to talk with a client about God,
(31 % neutral, 22 % disagreed).
One aspect of couples and family therapy that might make it open to spirituality is
its historical roots:
"[In the 1930s] many members of the marriage counseling movement were
clergy, who focused on couples and marital distress decades before the
development of the discipline of systemic family therapy. . . . This early influence
waned, however, as professional and academic influences increased, and the
American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy grew in stature and the
field stressed being taken seriously as a bona fide mental health discipline. By the
1970s and 80s, little mention was made of the role of spirituality and religion in
clients' lives and in clinical practice. (Helmeke & Bischof, 2007, p. 168)
Still today, when pastors and lay-pastors counsel couples in church or temple before and
after marriage, both spiritual and non-spiritual concerns may be addressed openly.
In their article Integrating Religion and Spirituality in Marriage and Family
Counseling, Wolf and Stevens "found relatively little literature regarding the integration
of religion and spirituality in marriage and family counseling" (2001, p. 66). They noted
that:
This dearth is perplexing, given that marriage and family counseling may,
in fact, be one of the most responsive mental health disciplines to this integration.
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One central reason for marriage and family counseling's openness to clinical
integration is that the field has historically dismissed traditional theories of
psychology and psychiatry. Instead, the discipline emerged from many diverse
influences, including anthropology, computer science, biology, and sociology,
all of which are concerned with the nature of systems. Thus, antireligious bias
promoted by the medical model and early psychological thought has much less of
a foundation in marriage and family counseling. (Wolf & Stevens, 2001, p. 69)
Satir and Authentic Communication
Spiritual growth requires communication in order to share with others and to learn
from them. Family therapist Virginia Satir valued communication that is congruent and
contains connecting energy. Incongruent, separating communication is placating,
blaming, super-reasonable, or irrelevant. Congruent, connecting, constructive
communication is harder to define, understand, and practice. Brothers (1991) said
“‘Congruence’ is no more, and no less, than being all of who we are at a given point in
time with another human being. Congruent communication is a committed, active pursuit
of clarity of meaning with another person.” Satir (1975) said that congruence begins with
acknowledgment of feelings and that “all feelings are honorable.” Satir (1972) pointed
out that communication requires both talking and listening. Effective listening requires
valuing others in their uniqueness and with all their differences.
Bowen and the Well-differentiated Self
Murray Bowen, M.D. was educated as a psychiatrist. He found that the individual
focus of psychoanalysis was of no use in dealing with families. He attempted to develop a
theory of the whole person that he could also apply to the family. He called his approach
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“family systems theory.” He believed that each member of a family faces natural anxiety,
which comes from the need to balance the demands of intimacy vs. independence and
feeling vs. thinking. This anxiety is resolved by differentiation of self. People are
differentiated to the extent that they can distinguish between the intellectual process and
the feeling process they are experiencing. “Differentiation of self is demonstrated to the
degree to which a person can think, plan, and follow his or her own values without
having his or her behavior automatically driven by the emotional cues from others”
(Goldenberg & Goldenberg, 2004, p. 187). Ideally, well-differentiated people are free to
commit themselves to intimacy without feeling that their selfhood is threatened and
without being swept away by emotional upheavals within the family. On the other hand,
an adult with a strong sense of self may feel that he or she cannot compromise her or his
self, even if compromise is the cost of continuing the marriage or family. Edwin
Friedman (1991), a rabbi trained by Bowen, was able to apply family systems theory to
pastoral counseling.
Chen and Rybak (2004) thought that self-differentiation is one characteristic of an
effective group leader. Hoogestraat and Trammel argued that self-differentiation is
necessary for a therapist to effectively integrate spiritual and religious discussions into
therapy. They speculated that: “Family therapists with lower levels of differentiation
experience more anxiety and have difficulty addressing value-laden issues . . . and
accepting differences in others,” including spiritual and religious differences (2003,
pp. 413 – 414).
Although Bowen maintained otherwise, his theory of self-differentiation appears
to distrust feelings and to judge them of lesser value than thoughts. Jung defined four
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psychological types: feeling, thinking, intuition, and direct perception. He called both
feeling and thinking the “rational functions,” because people use both to evaluate their
experience. Feeling types who think with their hearts might feel slighted by Bowen’s
conceptualization. I think it is important that spiritual development balance thoughts and
feelings. One goal of Jungian therapy is to become a more complete and balanced person
by use of the transcendent function (Jung, 1957/1971). As people become more balanced,
they inform their feelings with thought and their thoughts with feeling, before judging or
acting. In The Thought of the Heart and the Soul of the World (1992), Jungian
psychologist James Hillman argued that contemporary society values Aristotelian
displays of intellect but devalues the thought of the heart, which is Aphroditic. The
thought of the heart, he wrote, is evidenced in compassion, imagination, and authenticity.
Its characteristic action is sight and its response is aesthetic. The spiritually developed
heart, therefore, finds evil ugly (Hillman, 1992, p. 62).
Challenges to Integrating Spirituality and Family Counseling
Many of today’s families are non-traditional. In the program in which I study at
Southern Illinois University in 2009, the words "marriage and family" have been changed
to "Marital, Couple and Family Counseling" in recognition of the fact that today many
couples are gay and lesbian, unmarried, or re-married. A spiritually sensitive approach to
families should be inclusive. Another problematic aspect of discussing spirituality within
a family is that family members may have very different spiritual beliefs. Another
problem is that family therapists have only recently begun to ask how to include
spirituality in family counseling. Helmeke and Bischof wrote that the integration of
couple's therapy with spirituality and religion has been characterized by three waves: (1)
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from 1990 to 1994, articles set forth arguments for why spirituality should be integrated
into therapy; (2) during the second wave, 1995 - 1999, publications focused on the ways
that including spirituality could enhance or harm the therapeutic process; and now (3) in
the third wave, from 2000 to the present, "there is agreement that spirituality needs to be
included, [but] there is still no general consensus on how it is to be addressed" (2007,
p. 172, italics in original). Helmeke and Bischof recommended that future writers
consider how to integrate existing theories of family counseling with a spiritual
component. A final difficulty with integrating spirituality and family counseling is that
one well-recognized approach to family therapy is "general systems theory:" "Seeking a
scientific model, family counselors were attracted to general systems theory, proposed
earlier by biologist Ludwig von Bertalanffy and others, with its emphasis on the unity of
living systems, especially its attention to the interaction of component parts" (Goldenberg
& Goldenberg, 2002, p. 24). As far as I know, there is no recognized spiritual equivalent
of general systems theory; however, there is no reason that the family could not be
conceived of a one spiritual whole, with the spiritual health of the whole depending on
the spiritual health of each part. This perspective has the spiritual advantages of being
non-judgmental and holistic. On the other hand, it seems to me that systems theory has
the built in drawback that it values the means over the end: the goal is to get the family to
function, whether or not the family forms a sound base for spiritual growth.
Systems theory emphasizes circular causality, as opposed to linear causality.
Circular causality is illustrated in figure 1, page 154. In this figure, the Daughter
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affects the Father, who affects the Son, who affects the Mother, who affects the Daughter,
and vice-versa. Effects are also experienced across the circle and within coalitions, which
tend to form in all families.
Figure 1. Circular Causality in Families
A. Daughter
B. Mother D. Father
C. Son
One Possible Spiritual-Psychological Approach to Family Therapy
A complete theory of spiritual-psychological counseling should include a family-
counseling component. I will begin to construct one here and I will continue that work in
Chapter 17. I call my approach spiritually sensitive person-centered family counseling. In
Towards a Family-centered Therapy: Postmodern Developments in Family Therapy and
the Person-centered Contribution, family therapist David Bott observed that while most
family therapists he knew were warm and optimistic, their theories appeared to give
“primacy to the system over the thoughts and feelings of individual family members”
(Bott, 2001, p.112). Bott continued:
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Family systems theory . . . was not only philosophically cold and obscure but also
had a potential to dehumanize those it set out to help (p. 113). . . . It can be argued
that the core conditions: unconditional positive regard, empathy and congruence
(Rogers, 1961), provide us not only with an antidote to modernist arrogance but
also with the means to model the manner in which family members might more
constructively respond to one another (Bott, 2001, pp. 116 – 117).
Bott argued that there is a need for what he called a “family-centered therapy” based on
Rogers; however he did not, in this article, describe in detail what that approach would
look like. What follows is my attempt to describe such an approach and to include a
spiritual aspect. Bott did point out one possible limitation of the person-centered
approach:
What Rogers describes as the necessary and sufficient conditions for change
in work with individuals, while necessary with a family group, are far from
sufficient. Empathizing with one family member may be at the expense of
alienating another. Equally, the therapist needs to guard against the naive
tendency to ‘rescue the victim from the family’ in identifying with a particular
family member. (Bott, 2001, p. 117)
The core conditions that Rogers believed would lead to development in the client
are:
1. Psychological contact.
2. Incongruence on the part of the client.
3. Genuineness on the part of the therapist.
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4. Unconditional positive regard and acceptance, non-possessory love, agape,
“prizing the client as a person of worth” (Rogers 1961, p. 375).
5. Empathy.
6. Perception of the counselor’s empathy and acceptance by the client.
7. Understanding.
8. Tenderness.
9. Privacy and confidentiality.
10. Optimism.
The first seven conditions come from Rogers, although understanding is often
elided with empathy. I list understanding separately because it is such an important part
of the process. Person-centered therapists have found (Hobbs, 1951; Rogers, 1951;
Gendlin, 2002) that if they re-stated the client’s meaning as accurately as possible,
without adding any content or feeling, without adding evaluation or direction, and then
checked with the client regarding the accuracy or inaccuracy of the therapist’s statement,
the client would then re-state his or her own meaning, changing it slightly and going a
little deeper cognitively and emotionally. The client would continue to go deeper so long
as this process is not interrupted by interpretation or direction from the counselor.
Therefore, three intervention tools I use as a person-centered family therapist are (A) to
re-state each clients meaning, (B) to check with the client regarding the accuracy of my
understanding, and (3) to ask each family member to re-state the meanings of the others.
In his book Person-centered Counseling: Therapeutic and Spiritual Dimensions
(1991), spiritually sensitive person-centered counselor Brian Thorne added tenderness.
Based on my experience with clients in practica and internships, I added the need for
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privacy in Chapter 4 and I added optimism, for reasons explained below. Rogers thought
that the application of these conditions would lead to change in clients that was both
prosocial and self-syntonic (that is, the growth was perceived by clients as consistent with
their “true selves”). When Rogers wrote that these conditions were necessary and
sufficient for positive change, he meant that if the client continued to attend counseling,
at some point the client would begin to change. But counseling is often painful and
frightening and many clients do not stick with it. I argue below that if these ten core
conditions are met and if the family maintains contact and continues to attend counseling,
those conditions will sooner or later prove necessary and sufficient.
A spiritually informed family therapy might integrate the approaches discussed
above in this chapter with Rogers’s person-centered therapy and look like this: The
family comes to counseling because it is experiencing “incongruence” between the
family’s idealized picture of itself and its actual experience, or because some family
members are not allowed to express themselves congruently within the family. Rogers
defined “congruence” to mean an “accurate matching of experiencing and awareness”
and it may be “further extended to cover a matching of experience, awareness, and
communication” (Rogers, 1961, p. 339). Congruent people are honest with themselves; if
they communicate congruently, they are honest with others. Rogers transformed this into
a general law of interpersonal relationships, which also applies to families. That law
states:
1. “Any communication of Smith to Jones is marked by some degree of
congruence in Smith” (Rogers, 1961, p. 342). Smith’s communication is congruent if it
matches his experience and awareness. Rogers continued to use Smith and Jones, but for
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the rest of this discussion, I will change Smith and Jones to husband and wife. I could
have used father and son, or any other human relationship.
2. The greater the congruence of experience, awareness, and communication
in husband, the more it is likely that wife will experience it as a clear communication.
3. Consequently, the more clear the communication from husband, the more
wife responds with clarity.
4. The more husband is congruent in the topic about which they are
communicating, the less he has to defend himself in this area, and the more he is able to
listen accurately to wife’s response. Husband has expressed what he genuinely feels and
is therefore more free to listen. The less he is presenting a façade to be defended, the
more he can listen accurately to what wife is saying.
5. To the degree that husband listens accurately to what wife is saying, wife
feels empathically understood.
6. For wife to feel understood is for her to feel positive regard for husband.
To feel understood is to feel that one has made some kind of positive difference in the
experience of another.
7. To the degree that wife (a) experiences husband as congruent or integrated
in the relationship; (b) experiences husband as having positive regard for her;
(c) experiences husband as being empathically understanding; to that degree the
conditions of a therapeutic relationship are established.
8. To the extent that wife is experiencing these characteristics of a
therapeutic relationship, she finds herself experiencing fewer barriers to communication.
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Hence she tends to communicate herself more as she is, more congruently. Little by little
her defensiveness decreases.
9. Having communicated herself more freely, with less defensiveness, wife is
now more able to listen accurately, without a need for defensive distortion, to husband’s
further communication. This is a repetition of step 4, but now in terms of wife.
10. To the degree that wife is able to listen, husband now feels empathically
understood; experiences wife’s positive regard; and finds himself experiencing the
relationship as therapeutic. Thus husband and wife have to some degree become
reciprocally therapeutic for each other.
11. This means that to some degree the process of therapy occurs in each and
that the outcomes of therapy will to that same degree occur in each; change in personality
in the direction of greater unity and integration; less conflict and more energy utilizable
for effective living; change in behavior in the direction of greater maturity.
12. The limiting element in this chain appears to be the introduction of new
threatening material. (Adapted from Rogers, 1961, pp. 342 - 343)
Rogers summarized this law of interpersonal relationships as follows:
Assuming (a) a minimal willingness on the part of two people to be in
contact; (b) an ability and minimal willingness on the part of each to receive
communication from the other; and (c) assuming the contact to continue over a
period of time; then the following relationship is hypothesized to hold true:
The greater the congruence of experience, awareness, and communication
on the part of one individual, the more the ensuing relationship will involve
a tendency toward reciprocal communication with a quality of increasing
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congruence; a tendency toward more mutually accurate understanding of the
communications; improved psychological adjustment and functioning
in both parties; mutual satisfaction in the relationship. (Rogers, 1961, p. 344)
This law might be called Rogers’s necessary and sufficient conditions for positive
and self-syntonic change in interpersonal relationships, including marriages and families.
Rogers saw this law as giving each person in a relationship an existential choice: “Do I
dare match my experience, and my awareness of that experience, with my
communication? Do I dare to communicate myself as I am or must my communication be
somewhat less or different from this?” (Rogers, 1961, p. 345.) Rogers concluded:
To communicate one’s full awareness of the relevant experience
is a risk in interpersonal relationships. It seems to me that it is
the taking or not taking of this risk which determines whether a given
relationship becomes more and more mutually therapeutic or whether
it leads in a degenerative direction. . . .
I cannot choose whether my awareness will be congruent
with my experience. This is answered by my need for defense, and
of this I am not aware. But there is a continuing existential choice as
to whether my communication will be congruent with the awareness
I do have of what I am experiencing. In this moment-by-moment choice
in a relationship may lie the answer as to whether the movement is in one
direction or the other. (Rogers, 1961, pp. 345 – 346, italics in original)
In other words, Rogers was saying, I may have unconscious hang-ups that obscure
my awareness, but I can choose to express my awareness as clearly and as honestly as I
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can. Then I can ask for feedback: I can ask my spouse or son or friend: “Do you
understand me? Do you see it the same way? How do you see it?” Then I can repeat my
understanding of the other person’s point of view, trying to empathize with them.
Feedback would help people become conscious of their unconscious hang-ups. If done
non-judgmentally and lovingly, persons receiving feedback might be able to integrate it
into their conscious self-structure. Rogers suggested an exercise to test and strengthen
one’s ability to listen and understand:
The next time you get into an argument with your wife, or your friend, or
with a small group of friends, just stop the discussion for a moment and
for an experiment, institute this rule. “Each person can speak up for
himself only after he has first restated the ideas and feelings of the
previous speaker accurately, and to that speaker’s satisfaction.” You
see what this would mean. It would simply mean that before presenting
your own point of view, it would be necessary for you to really achieve
the other speaker’s frame of reference – to understand his thoughts and
feelings so well that you could summarize them for him. . . .
This procedure has important characteristics. It can be initiated by one
party, without waiting for the other to be ready.
(Rogers, 1961, pp. 332, 336, italics in original)
This is a second existential choice: in the first choice one takes risks to understand
one’s self and attempts to communicate that understanding. In the second, one risks that
self in order to understand and validate the ways in which the other person’s self is
different. Making this choice “takes courage,” because “if you really understand another
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person in this way, if you are willing to enter his private world and see the way life
appears to him, without any attempt to make evaluative judgments, you run the risk of
being changed yourself” (Rogers, 1961, p. 333). I hypothesize that if all family members
make both choices and keep coming back, they will change in ways that are prosocial and
self-syntonic for all members. On some occasions, that may mean ending the family
through divorce. But that would be a choice based on mutual respect and understanding.
The family cannot remain a psychologically and spiritually healthy place for the
development of all members unless all members are willing to make both existential
choices and take both risks.
Rogers saw intrapersonal and interpersonal problems in terms of failures of
understanding and communication:
The emotionally maladjusted person, the ‘neurotic,’ is in difficulty because
communication within himself has broken down, and second because, as a result
of this, his communication with others has been damaged. . . . The major barrier
to mutual interpersonal communication is our very natural tendency to judge, to
evaluate, to approve or disapprove, the statement of the other person or group.
(Rogers, 1961,p. 330).
Real communication occurs when one accurately listens to and communicates one’s true
self and asks if one has been understood. Real understanding occurs when one listens to
and appreciates others without evaluating them.
From a person-centered perspective, each member of the family (or couple) is
seen as having the potential and yearning to become a fully functioning individual and a
fully functioning family. In individual therapy, fully functioning persons are those who
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can meet their need for positive regard from others and have positive regard for
themselves (Sharf, 2004, p. 208). In family counseling each member needs to learn to feel
and show positive regard for the other members, and each member needs to be seen to
show that regard. To help the family achieve this, the counselor must listen attentively
and show empathy by making loving restatements of the clients’ concerns. The counselor
must demonstrate unconditional positive regard, and acceptance for each member and for
the family as a whole. The family therapist must draw out member’s strengths and
validate those strengths; and the therapist must be felt by the family members to be
genuine. In Chapter 5, I suggested that “privacy and confidentiality” be added to
Rogers’s six necessary and sufficient conditions for change. I would now suggest
another: optimism. In today’s climate in which many families fail, and in which family
counseling is sometimes the penultimate step before divorce, it may give the clients cause
for hope if they see that the counselor believes in them as a family and believes in the
efficacy and meaningfulness of family counseling. The family might be further helped to
demonstrate positive regard, patience and forgiveness for each other if they understand
the circularity of causation; that one person, often called the “identified patient,” tends to
get the blame for problems that can be addressed systemically (Goldenberg &
Goldenberg, 2002, p. 24.)
Growth as a couple and as a family requires communication that is non-
judgmental and congruent (Rogers, 1961), and that is authentic and contains connecting
energy (Satir, 1975). Satir was asking that family members learn to communicate with
the same genuineness that Rogers asked of person-centered therapists. Genuine,
congruent, empathic communication that demonstrates unconditional positive regard
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begins with the counselor. The experience of therapists who facilitate person-centered
groups is that, so long as members maintain contact with the group, they will begin to
demonstrate toward other group members the same congruence, empathy, and
unconditional positive regard that has been shown to them by the facilitator (Rogers,
1970; Thorne, 1991). It seems reasonable to hope that such leaning would extend to a
family group. The counselor can model these attitudes and skills and can help the family
members practice them inside counseling and as homework. One approach is the exercise
in understanding suggested by Rogers, which appears above. Another approach is the use
of “I” statements. For example, instead of saying, “You are a lazy bum; you never wash
the laundry!” one could say, “I feel sad when I get home and the laundry isn’t done.”
Communication requires both talking and listening. Effective listening requires valuing
others in their uniqueness and with all their differences, and it requires recognizing that
we are all incomplete and imperfect. We all have strengths and we all have weaknesses.
In attempting to practice person-centered family counseling as an intern I have
experienced the problems Bott mentioned: I have tended to take sides, to empathize
mainly with one family member. I am learning to empathize with both and to emphasize
in my mind all the assets of the client with whom I empathize least. This is still a learning
process for me. I will probably never be perfectly empathetic with all members of a
family or with all individual clients; but I do not see that as a reason not to try. Each time
I try, I grow; and I hope the clients do. I have encountered one problem in addition to
those mentioned by Bott: Person-centered counseling was first called non-directive
therapy. It was based on the idea that the client took the lead: the therapist provided the
process, but the client provided the content. As an intern learning to practice as a non-
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directive family therapist, I have sometimes found the process getting stuck: the clients
are at odds and I am doing nothing to encourage them to move in one direction or
another. I am attempting to reflect accurately the meaning of each without siding with
either. At such times, I have attempted to re-center the session on the clients by asking
them to try the communication exercises discussed above, and adding, “I understand that
some families have found these helpful.” However, I recognize that I need to keep all the
skills and approaches I have been taught in the Master’s program available to be called
upon in a collaborative approach as may be needed. As a person-centered counselor I do
not want to be as doctrinaire.
By taking the approach described above, I hope I have realized Bott’s goal, which
was:
Person-centered therapy becomes family-centered therapy at the point where
the core conditions are put where they belong – in the family. Put in ‘non-
glamorous’ everyday language: empathy becomes understanding and the
basis of forgiveness; congruence translates as respect and honesty; and
what is unconditional positive regard other than love? Thus, family-
centered therapy describes a process where the therapist approaches the
family with respect, understanding and affection and encourages family
members to respond to one another in a similar manner. This is not for
one moment to suggest that this is not characteristic of much of family
therapy practice but rather that therapeutic activity is seldom described
in these terms. (Bott, 2001, p. 117)
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Spiritual and psychological growth, within a family, within one’s self, and within
society, entails balancing the demands of intimacy with independence, balancing feeling
with thinking, and honoring both intuition and facts. Murray Bowen’s ideal of the well-
differentiated individual can be adapted to include Jung’s life-long developmental goal of
the complete Self, which meant valuing and developing one’s feelings, thinking,
intuition, and direct-perception. Families and individual clients can learn to use their
differing abilities constructively and synergistically. They can use them alone (in an
introverted manner) or in relationship (by extroverted collaboration). They can lean to
value their inner truth and the true-selves of others. They can learn to value their own
feelings, thinking, intuition, and direct perception, and they can learn to value these
capacities in others. They can forgive themselves and others when these capacities are
lacking, and, to the extent of their abilities, they can help each other when help is needed.
Although at times each family member may feel complete, neither she nor he will ever
feel completed. Life is a process. There is always more to learn. Ideally every family
member will be open to continuing to learn within the family and outside it.
Conclusions
Neither group nor family therapy has articulated a complete approach to
counseling that acknowledges and values both the scientific and spiritual world-views,
except for Alcoholics Anonymous, which I discuss in more detail in the next chapter.
Nonetheless, both therapies contain much that can be salutary to the spiritual health and
development of clients, alone and in relationship with others. In this chapter, I have
begun to make suggestions for combing spirituality with family counseling. In Chapter
17, I will make suggestions for a spiritual-psychologal approache to group and individual
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counseling. At the outset of this study, one of my research questions was: Has anyone
already done this work -- the work of interweaving these two world-views into one
coherent approach to counseling? The answer is that some have. In the next chapter I will
discuss what I have found and what I have learned from those who went ahead.
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CHAPTER VIII
CONTEMPORARY THEORIES THAT
COMBINE SPIRITUALITY AND PSYCHOLOGY
In this chapter I will examine work that others have done to arrive at the same
destination I set out to reach: an approach to counseling that interweaves the spiritual and
scientific world-views. In trying to bring these perspectives together, each of these
theorists has gone against the prevalent attitude of the last 2,500 years, which has been
that the two world-views should be kept apart. I will examine four contemporary
approaches to counseling that combine spirituality and psychology: Alcoholics
Anonymous, pastoral counseling, Jungian psychology, and developmental-wellness
counseling. I will describe the differences between each of these approaches and
traditional psychology.
I am looking for an approach to integrating spirituality and psychotherapy that
meets the following criteria, which are consistent with my beliefs:
(1) The approach would recognize the possibility of a realm of existence that is
non-material but real.
(2) The approach would be spiritual but non-religious; that is, it would be open to
all religious and spiritual beliefs but not bound to any one.
(3) It would be adaptable to both spiritual and non-spiritual milieus and to
spiritually inclined and non-spiritually inclined clients.
(4) The approach would fulfill the potential of William James’s ideas, as if he had
become a therapist. It would be pluralistic. It would value the healthy minded
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and the sick souled. It would pay positive attention to sorrow, pain, and death
and value shades of gray.
(5) It would include a process by which the spiritual aspect of humans can be
accessed and nurtured.
I will compare each theory discussed in this chapter to these criteria. In the next
chapter, Chapter 9, I will examine the meaning of the true-self, which can add a spiritual
dimension even to traditional counseling.
Since 1939, one approach to treating psychological pain that sees humans as
“more than intellect, emotion, and two dollars worth of chemicals” is Alcoholics
Anonymous (Letter from AA founder William Wilson to Dr. Carl Gustav Jung, January
23, 1961).
Alcoholics Anonymous
AA is based on the book Alcoholics Anonymous (1939), which was written by
William Wilson, or Bill W. (1895 – 1971) in collaboration with Dr. Robert Smith (Dr.
Bob). The book contains the philosophy of AA and the stories of several alcoholics.
Wilson got some of his ideas from William James’s The Varieties of Religious
Experience (1902) and from the works of Carl Jung, which Wilson had read while
hospitalized for the fourth time for alcoholism. The organization Wilson and Smith
founded has provided a pathway out of addiction by means of spiritual-psychological
guidance and supportive fellowship.
In 1961, Wilson wrote a “very long overdue” letter of appreciation to Carl Jung.
Wilson explained that an early member of AA had been able to stop drinking when he
was a client of Jung’s. Jung had told him that his case was hopeless so far as medical or
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psychiatric treatment was concerned, and that his only hope might come from a religious
experience. Wilson’s letter included the following statements:
If each sufferer were to carry the news of the scientific hopelessness of
alcoholism to each new prospect, he might be able to lay every newcomer wide
open to a transforming spiritual experience. . . . Because of your conviction that
man is something more than intellect, emotion, and two dollars worth of
chemicals, you have especially endeared yourself to us. (Letter from Bill W. to
Dr. Carl Gustav Jung, January 23, 1961)
Jung sent a letter of acknowledgment, in which he wrote that he remembered the
client Wilson referred to. Concerning this client, Jung had thought that his “craving for
alcohol was the equivalent on a low level of the spiritual thirst of our being for
wholeness, expressed in mediaeval language: the union with God.”
Alcoholics Anonymous contains the twelve steps, which help individuals gain and
maintain psychological and spiritual health. The twelve steps are as follows:
1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol – that our lives had become
unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our live over to the care of God, as we
understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God and to ourselves, and to another human being the exact
nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
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7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make
amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people whenever possible, except when to do so
would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly
admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact
with God as we understand Him, praying only for knowledge of His will
for us and the power to carry it out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to
carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our
affairs. (Alcoholics Anonymous, pp. 59 – 60, italics in original)
The twelve steps can be used as an approach to any addiction or to any problem that has
both a psychological and a spiritual component, e.g. anger.
Alcoholics Anonymous and Spirituality
Tonigan, Toscova, and Connors analyzed the spiritual aspects of Alcoholics
Anonymous. They found that five spiritual beliefs, four spiritual practices, and three
spiritual experiences lie at the heart of Alcoholics Anonymous. The five spiritual beliefs
are: a “higher power,” God, exists; it is possible to establish a personal relationship with
that higher power; miracles occur; conscious spiritual renewal should occur each day; and
discord sets one on the path of spiritual growth. Tonigan, et al. said:
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The final spiritual truth in 12-step programs is that every time a person is
disturbed, no matter what the cause, there is something wrong with that person.
. . . Distress, then, is identified as a signal of one’s incongruency with the plan
of a higher power. Discord and conflict may arise in the course of social
interactions because of self-serving motives, but it also may arise because of lack
of acceptance of current circumstances.
(Tonigan, Toscova, & Connors, 1999, p. 119)
This is comparable to Carl Rogers’s person-centered therapy, which requires, as a
condition of therapy’s effectiveness, that clients experience distress because of
incongruence between their self-perception and their experience. Rogers did not think
that this personal distress was due to incongruence with “the will of God.” Rogers left the
seminary to study educational psychology because of his own religious doubts and
because he did not want to impose any set of beliefs on clients (Sharf, 2004, p. 203;
Burger, 2000, p. 313). He believed that individuals are essentially good and, if
encouraged, will grow in socially productive ways. AA believes that humans sometimes
need the encouragement, support, and guidance of God and others in order to grow in
socially productive ways. AA believes that discord within one’s self or discord between
one’s self and society or the universe is often a prerequisite to psychological and spiritual
growth. In The Varieties of Religious Experience, William James had made the similar
observance that “sick souls” often grow more than those who start out as “healthy
minded,” and Jung had written that it is necessary to bring our inner shadow into the light
in order to grow as adults. Openness to and appreciation for the dark side of experience is
not part of what James called the “healthy minded” approaches to spirituality, nor is it
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valued by traditional psychology. Many approaches to spirituality and to counseling
concentrate exclusively on the light.
AA asks members to open themselves to both the horizontal plane, that Rogers
alluded to, and the vertical plane, that Tillich alluded to in Chapter 4. Tonigan, et al.
listed the following four spiritual practices of AA: Praying and meditation; making
amends; working on personal relationships; and giving service. They list the following
subjective spiritual experiences that members may have: humility; gratitude; and serenity,
which is the feeling of no longer being in conflict with the will of God. Rogers would call
this the feeling one attains when one becomes a fully functioning person. The five
spiritual beliefs, four spiritual practices, and three spiritual experiences that lie at the
heart of Alcoholics Anonymous could be included in any practice that combined
psychotherapy and spirituality.
AA’s effectiveness was demonstrated by Keith Humphreys (1999) in a study of
3,018 male veterans who were involved in three different inpatient treatment conditions:
cognitive-behavioral (CB), 12-Step, or mixed CB and 12-Step. The participants were in
inpatient treatment for 21 to 28 days. On release, all participants were referred to 12-Step
outpatient group meetings. They were contacted one year later and were asked about
continued involvement in 12-Step treatment, including attendance and incorporation of
the steps into their lives. There was no difference in the extent of involvement between
those who had been treated in the 12-Step inpatient program and those in the eclectic
program. Those who had received only CB inpatient treatment reported significantly less
12-Step involvement following release.
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The researchers also measured success of treatment at one year, using four
outcome variables including abstinence from drugs or alcohol and no substance abuse
related problems. Those who had been involved in 12-Step inpatient treatment were 1.47
times more likely to be abstinent at 1-year follow-up than patients treated in CB programs
(p= < 0.00001). When self-help 12-Step group involvement was equalized, that is, when
CB inpatients who involved themselves equally in 12-Step outpatient work were
compared to AA inpatients, the difference reduced to 1.12 and was no longer significant
(p = 0.26). Those in the AA inpatient condition were 1.19 (p = 0.09) less likely to have
experienced drug or alcohol related problems at one year. When outpatient 12-Step group
involvement was equalized, this difference was reduced to 1.03 (p = 0.78). Humphreys
concluded that if the inpatient program was not oriented toward the 12-Step philosophy
and practice, clients were significantly less likely to participate in 12-Step groups after
release and were significantly less likely to remain substance free.
Conclusions regarding AA
Substance abuse counselors have lead the way in recognizing and incorporating
spiritual issues in treatment. In part, that is due to AA. Today, the BPSS approach to
treatment is commonly taught in college courses relating to drug and alcohol counseling.
BPSS stands for the ideal of combining biological, psychological, social, and spiritual
aspects in a holistic view of the client and the client’s treatment. Nonetheless, some
substance abuse professionals disapprove of mixing spirituality and treatment. Keith
Humphreys and Elizabeth Gifford co-authored a chapter entitled “Religion, Spirituality,
and the Troublesome Use of Substances” in Rethinking Substance Abuse: What the
Science Shows, and What We Should Do About It (2006), a book about substance abuse
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treatment. There were 18 Chapters in the book; only Williams and Gifford’s chapter dealt
with “S” for spirituality. The other chapters dealt with B (body), P (psychology), or S
(social). When the authors told a “prominent addiction researcher” about their chapter,
that researcher said that the idea of including a chapter on spirituality “made his skin
crawl” (p. 261). Integrating spirituality into mental health treatment is not commonly
taught in the psychology or counseling departments of universities, unless the school is
affiliated with a religion. Because of the current emphasis on certification and evidence-
based treatments in the substance abuse field, there is a danger that the human spirit and
God will be excluded or side-lined in addiction treatment planning, at the same time that
the fields of psychology and counseling are beginning to take spirituality seriously.
William Miller, one of the editors of Rethinking Substance Abuse: What the
Science Shows, and What We Should Do About It (2006), believed in the importance of
including spirituality in counseling, but the use of the word “Science” in the title seems
defensive. One of the pervasive themes of Integrating Spirituality into Treatment (1999)
and Judeo-Christian Perspectives on Psychology (2005), edited by the same William
Miller, is an attempt by each of the contributors to conceptualize ways in which
spirituality can be effectively instrumentalized and operationalized so that it can be
studied and evaluated in traditional scientific, academic ways.
Koch and Benshoff (2002) surveyed 86 rehabilitation professionals, including 55
counselors, and found that more than 70% referred clients to AA and 59.5 % believed
that clients who participate in AA tend to do better in their overall rehabilitation program.
45.3 % claimed to know the 12 Steps; however, only 29.1 % had a copy of the 12 Steps
in their office and only 18.6 % had read Alcoholics Anonymous.
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Davis, Benshoff, and Koch (2006) surveyed 151 students enrolled in substance
abuse counselor training courses regarding their attitudes toward spirituality in substance
abuse counseling and the principles of AA: 88.1 % of students surveyed believed in a
higher power, 79.5 % thought of themselves as spiritual, and 53.0 % believed that
spirituality should be included in treatment. But only 35 % of those same students agreed
with the first step of Alcoholics Anonymous, which is that alcoholics are powerless over
alcohol, and only 26 % agreed with the third step, which is that alcoholics must turn their
lives over to a Higher Power in order to be in recovery. Only 44.7 % of the students felt
that alcoholics benefit more if they attend AA meetings. The authors of the above studies
asked: How well will counselors coordinate with AA if they have not read Alcoholics
Anonymous and do not agree with some of steps?
Page and Berkow (1998) pointed out that the assumption that addicts must view
themselves as powerless over their addiction “tends to create a conflict between the
values of the AA approach and the generic values of counseling in Western cultures.
Counseling tends to help people to conceptualize themselves as adequate and to empower
themselves” (p. 286). Page and Berkow contended that:
A limitation of the AA Twelve Steps is that it does not present a means
to conceptualize a developmental movement toward complete healing of
the individual after the individual acknowledges that his or her current
sense of control is based on denial. More complete healing would involve
establishing a sense of control that is noncompulsive, nondependent,
and not based on denial. Such a concept of healing could help a recovering
addict to move from a dualistic conceptualization of the healing power as outside
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the self and higher than the self, to a more integrated conceptualization that
healing power is not separate from the self. The higher power would not then be
defined as existing apart from the individuality or self of the person’s locus of
consciousness and responsibility. Because therapy groups encourage personal
responsibility, they can be viewed as helpful in assisting addicted people to
develop an integrated sense of healing power. Spiritual development can be
conceptualized as growth that occurs as individuals are able to integrate
constructive and healing energies of the self. That is, healing power that
was unconscious or disassociated becomes conscious and integrated
with the sense of self. (pp. 287 – 288)
Thus, group therapy might be considered as a useful means for addicts to
recognize that the healing power they had conceptualized as higher than
themselves is also within themselves and enhanced between themselves and
others. (Page and Berkow, 1998, p. 295)
I disagree that clients necessarily need to outgrow Step 3. I have known people who
appeared to be able to turn themselves over to God and continue to develop individually
and socially. It is also likely that different clients will have different needs: for some,
regaining personal control over their lives will be the priority; for others different needs
will take priority.
Differences between AA and Traditional Psychology
AA includes God as a source of help. It defines God as the client defines Him or
Her or Them. Alcoholics Anonymous has a chapter titled “We Agnostics,” in which the
author wrote that about half the original fellowship were agnostics or atheists, who finally
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had to accept that they could not stop drinking without help from a power greater than
themselves. “When we admitted the possible existence of a Creative Intelligence, a Spirit
of the Universe underlying the totality of things . . . we found that God does not make too
hard terms with those who seek Him. To us, the Realm of Spirit is broad, roomy, all
inclusive; never exclusive or forbidding to those who earnestly seek” (p. 46).
AA is a moral approach in which humans are seen as doing right and wrong, and
personal growth is seen as moral growth. The AA approach requires that each person
catalogue all the wrongs he or she has done and make amends. Other people do wrong
things, too, but AA asks its members to let go of trying to control others. AA values the
moral failings of human beings and takes the position that it is from these failings that
people learn and grow. Traditional psychology, even after the Holocaust and Mai Lai,
remains amoral and uncomfortable with the idea of evil. (There are some notable
exceptions, e. g. Scott Peck, 1971, and Zimbardo, 2007.) A spiritual approach to
psychology and psychotherapy cannot be amoral. To be complete, it must help clients
define and face evil within themselves and within society.
AA believes in miracles. Morality and God and miracles are connected. One
swallows one’s pride and begs God for a miracle because one has hurt others.
William Wilson can be added to the list of thinkers who have tried to integrate the
spiritual and material world-views into one cohesive approach. AA takes the position that
if the two world-views conflict, one must choose the spiritual, by following steps 2 and 3,
or one is likely to repeat past mistakes. Many counselors feel they are able to integrate
AA comfortably into their personal approach to counseling. In part, that has been true
because many counselors were also members of AA.
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Criteria
AA meets criterion 1, above, because it recognizes the possibility of a realm of
existence that is non-material but real; and it meets criterion 2, because it is open to all
religious and spiritual beliefs but not bound to any one, except that it does require a belief
in God. AA is pluralistic. It values the sick souled. It pays positive attention to sorrow,
pain, and death and values shades of gray. It is less adaptable to the needs of the healthy
minded. It does have a process for accessing spirituality: the 12 Steps and meetings. It is
not adaptable to both spiritual and non-spiritual milieus and to spiritually inclined and
non-spiritually inclined clients. Criticisms of AA include its one-size fits all approach and
its lack of flexibility: there is no room for occasional drinking.
Pastoral Counseling
Pastoral counseling was slow to develop, in part because the first instinct of both
ministers and psychotherapists was to stay out of each other’s way. Throughout the 20
th
Century, religion has been on the defensive and has felt the need to demonstrate its
relevance. Therefore, many counselors who were Christian have felt the need to use the
latest techniques of modern psychotherapy and to concentrate on symptom relief. Many
have also embraced the goals of secular humanism. The result is that the old myths have
been replaced by new myths, and “psychotherapists have become the priests of a new
religion of selfism” (Benner, 1998, p. 43). Unless otherwise noted, references in this
section are to David G. Benner, Care of Souls: Revisioning Christian Nurture and
Counseling (1998).
Benner thought that, among traditional theorists of psychotherapy, Jung had the
most to offer soul care providers, because he recognized the importance of symbolism,
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the unconscious as a source of positive creativity, the value of the dark aspects of our
personalities, and the reality of evil. “In contrast to Freud, Jung believed it is not the
presence of spirituality that is pathological but its absence” (p. 72). Jung believed in God
and he allowed for the healthy or unhealthy development of interior symbols of God.
Nonetheless, Jung’s theory did not explicitly include God as an external reality to be
encountered and integrated into human experience.
Benner wrote that if the rejected parts of people that Jung called their shadow can
be brought into the light, these excluded parts can “experience Christ’s transforming
friendship” (p. 236). Jesus shared fellowship with the rejected and unclean, the poor, the
sick and disabled. He can share that same fellowship and transforming love with the
rejected parts of each human being.
The use of secular psychological techniques by those who believe in God and the
soul “has resulted in both great gains as well as great losses for soul care.” The most
important problematic areas are “professionalism, individualism, psychological
reductionism, and the elimination of a moral framework” (p. 46). Professionalism is a
problem because it has led to practitioners who are well-trained in techniques of
interviewing and counseling, but who lack experience in the real world and hide behind a
role in order to avoid a genuine I-Thou encounter with their clients. “It has also led to an
inferiority complex on the part of those not certified by the clinical therapeutic
professionals.” The culture of individualism is a problem because is has led to “the
dominance of therapeutic metaphors of self-actualization, freedom, and growth over
historic soul care metaphors of self-denial, discipline, and service” (p. 47). Benner
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associated the nondirectiveness of Rogers with “naïve attempts to avoid dealing with the
moral dimension” (p. 48).
Benner was a monist in a new sense of that word. He believed in the reality of the
soul and spirit, but he thought that the soul and spirit should be treated as one with the
mind and body. Any attempt to treat one aspect separately “results in a loss of the
fundamental unity of the soul” (p. 57). “Efforts to separate the spiritual, psychological,
and physical aspects of persons inevitably result in the trivialization of each” (p. 62). He
thought people should be treated holistically as somatopsychospiritual beings. Traditional
lay therapies have treated only the body and mind. Spiritual therapists should not care for
only the soul and spirit. Benner believed therapy should care for the entire person. Thus
soul-care can provide the things that normal lay therapy would provide and it can provide
some things that are different. Table 5 is based on Benner’s ideas; it lists the values of
traditional lay counseling on one side and the corresponding but different values of soul
care on the other. It appears in Chapter 15, which discusses the place of values and
morals in counseling.
In addition to working directly with the client, a soul care provider is an advocate
for the individual in the community and an advocate for social action. These are also
goals of community counseling, multicultural counseling, and feminist counseling.
Benner believed that soul care is best provided through dialogue. “Dialogue
involves two or more people talking with each other for no other purpose than to deeply
meet each other. In dialogue each says to the other, ‘This is how I experience the world.
Tell me how you experience it.’ Good dialogue involves sharing of the self, deep
engagement with another self, and the resulting expansion of both selves” (p. 136).
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Benner provided a chart of forms of verbal interaction, based on material developed by
David Gouthro, which illustrates distinctions among dialogue, conversation, discussion,
and debate. This chart appears in table 1 on page 183.
Benner held out Buber’s I–Thou dialogue as the ideal. Benner was aware of
Rogers’s claim to engage in an I-Thou relationship with his clients and of Buber’s
objection that an I-Thou relationship was not possible because the therapist held the
balance of power. Nonetheless, Benner thought that genuine dialogue should be aspired
to in soul care. He believed dialogue could occur if the therapist could answer in the
affirmative to the following three questions: “Am I willing to bring myself, not just my
care [of the client], to the encounter? Can I accept the other as a whole and separate
person, as he or she is? And am I willing to be open enough to his or her experience and
ideas that my own may change as a result of our interaction?”(p. 149). Benner believed
that it is necessary to prepare oneself to engage in dialogue and he suggested eight steps.
Those steps are: (1) Prepare a place of quiet within through prayerful reflection; (2) Set
aside all desires except love; (3) Focus on the inner experience of the one receiving care;
(4) Listen for the embedded spiritual significance in whatever is being discussed;
(5) Listen with respect; (6) Attend to one’s own experience in the dialogue; (7) Invite
moral reflection on the matters under discussion; (8) Don’t be afraid to give judicious
advice, suggestions, or offerings of direction (pp. 152 – 155). One cannot force dialogue,
but one can provide opportunities for it.
In my judgment, Benner has not fully answered Buber’s objections. The exchange
Benner envisioned is not equal because it is still primarily about the client and not about
the therapist. Neither Benner nor Rogers envisioned sessions in (continued on p. 184)
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Table 1 Forms of Verbal Interaction
Debate Discussion Conversation Dialogue
Content Regulated Unregulated
Outcome Win/Lose Win/Win
Trust Low trust High trust
Respect Intolerant of Embraces
differences differences
Interchange Facts and Feelings, values
arguments and construals
Format Statements Questions and
statements
Focus What do I know? What can I learn?
Questions Used to disarm Used to deepen
and disguise opinions understanding
Knowledge Used as a weapon Used as a gift
Risks Avoids risks Takes risks
Goal Prove/ Explore/
Proof Discovery
Listening Rehearsal and Active empathy --
preparation to pounce attempts to
understand and
appreciate
Volition Willful control, Willing surrender,
unwilling to change willing to change
Adapted from material developed by David Gouthro, a Vancouver based consultant with
the firm The Cutting Edge. Used with permission.
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(continued from p.182) which half, or any part, of the session was spent discussing the
client’s life and problems and another part discussing the therapist’s life and problems.
But both Rogers and Benner yearned for the sort of equality of power and control that
Buber defined as an I-Thou relationship. Perhaps the most that can be done in the context
of a therapeutic relationship is to bring one’s complete self to the relationship with an
openness to being changed. One can be open to self-disclosure to the extent the client
invites it or appears to need it. Perhaps Step 8, above, should be amended to read, “Don’t
be afraid to give or receive judicious advise, suggestions, or offerings of direction.”
Ultimately, Rogers found that group-work, in which the counselor facilitated and
participated, was the closest he could come to equality. If a counselor is a real participant
in a group, she or he will, sooner or later, receive advice, suggestions, and offerings of
direction.
Benner thought that dreamwork could provide an enriching part of soul care. He
suggested that we fall asleep inviting God to speak to us in whatever way S/He/They
choose, and expressing a desire to hear what S/He/They have to say. “Samuel’s words,
‘Speak for thy servant heareth’ (1 Sam. 3:10 KJV) can be ours as we prayerfully prepare
for sleep and express our desire in the presence of the God who has no more ceased being
Revelation than he has ceased being Love” (p. 173). Benner suggested writing a report
immediately upon rising before the content of the dream is forgotten. He suggested a
TTAQ format: write a Title for the dream, state its Theme simply, describe the Affect or
feeling tone of the dream, and write down the Questions the dream asks. If there is time
or the dream seems particularly important, one can write down the complete details of the
dream and one’s personal associations with each detail, and one can identify the dream
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ego and conduct a conversation with the dream ego. Jung wrote that everyone and
everything in a dream is us; for example, women appearing in a dream may represent
feminine parts of a male dreamer seeking expression and integration into the conscious
person. It is usually possible to identify a character in the dream who is most like the
dreamer or with whom the dreamer most identifies. This is the dream ego. Jung also
wrote that it is the dreamer’s personal associations that make a dream come alive, not
symbols in a book of dream interpretation. Benner provided detailed examples of such
dreamwork. Those examples could be very helpful to anyone undertaking such work
alone or as a spiritual-psychological counselor.
Differences between Pastoral Counseling and Traditional Psychology
To AA’s inclusion of God as helper, Christian Pastoral Counseling adds God and
Jesus as parents and friends. Parents can offer guidance and unconditional love. Friends
can keep one company and offer encouragement. Pastoral counselors believe that every
day is a miracle.
To AA’s moral accountability, Pastoral Counseling adds awareness of sin and
hope for forgiveness. It makes moral reflection a goal of counseling. Pastoral Counseling
distinguishes between material and spiritual values and between self-centered and other-
centered values. It makes pursuit of these higher values a goal of counseling.
Benner agreed with May that the questions addressed in therapy are moral
questions:
Psychotherapy patients do not separate moral and psychological phenomena in the
way that psychotherapists often do. A questions such as, “Is it okay to feel
angry?’ is not merely a psychological question; it is also very much a moral one.
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The reason it is a moral question is that it is a question of how one should live
one’s life. Questions of whether or not to have an abortion or have an affair or
leave one’s spouse are moral questions, not because abortion, sex, and divorce are
moral topics but because they concern matters of how life should be lived. In the
same way, therefore, questions of how to handle one’s emotions, how to
understand an interpersonal conflict, or how to deal with a terminal illness are all
moral questions, not merely psychological ones, because they deal with how one
ought to live one’s life. (p. 43)
Although Benner thought that moral discussion was an essential part of soul care,
he also thought that soul care and traditional therapy, rather than being in conflict, could
be combined in such a way that they could, potentially, have an additive benefit for the
client. He accomplished this potential effect by being non-judgmental, and by allowing
the client to initiate moral reflection. He did not assert that to have an abortion or an
affair is wrong. He asserted that it is wrong not to consider them as moral questions.
Spiritual development comes, in part, through the process of considering them as moral
questions. “Moral reflection is best initiated by inviting the one seeking care to engage in
such reflection himself or herself. Questions such as, ‘I wonder how you judge the
appropriateness of . . . ? or, ‘How have you approached the ethical or moral aspect of . ?’
are often helpful.” (pp. 154 – 155). Some clients will come seeking moral guidance:
They may have drifted into ethically questionable behavior and wonder how their
moral compass became so flawed as to allow them to get there. Others may have
violated one of their most deeply held moral principles and feel a need to review
their personal moral philosophy. Yet others may simply feel the need for moral
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stocktaking or an opportunity to reflect on their stewardship of life. What better
context for reflection could such people find than a relationship of soul care?
(p. 226)
A client might be more open to hearing a pastor ask such questions and be more
likely to engage in moral self-reflection with a pastor than with a lay counselor. However,
if the lay counselor proceeds carefully to establish that it is the client’s wish to consider
spiritual and moral issues in counseling, then the client may be ready to enter such
discussions.
Benner thought that the values of traditional lay counseling, as shown in table
5, were more materialistic than the values of soul care. He thought of materialistic values
as contrasting with spiritual values, but not necessarily opposing them. He did not say,
for example, that “emphasis on cure” is bad and “emphasis on care” is good. The
counselor can give and the client can receive both. If the client chooses to pursue spiritual
values, spiritual development is more likely to occur than if the client chooses only
materialistic values.
Benner’s open-minded insistence on the inclusion of morality and values in the
therapeutic dialogue is the best reconciliation of the spiritual and material world-views of
morality and values that I have seen.
Pastoral counseling sees the soul as real and eternal. If an approach to spiritual-
psychological counseling is to address content as well as process, the existence and
meaning of God and the soul are likely to be two content issues for clients.
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Criteria
Pastoral counseling does meet criterion 1 but not criteria 2 and 3. It recognizes the
possibility of a realm of existence that is non-material but real. Benner’s approach could
be pluralistic; but it is not clear how easily it would adjust to what James saw as the
human need for a variety of faiths. It is explicitly Christian and would not be easily
adaptable to both spiritual and non-spiritual milieus and to spiritually inclined and non-
spiritually inclined clients. Benner suggests two processes for accessing the spiritual side:
prayer and dreams.
Jung and Jungians
Jung’s theories are presented and compared to Freud’s theories in Chapter 3.
Among the American lay public, Jungian psychology may currently be the most popular
of the traditional psychological approaches, because of its emphasis on growth after
midlife and its acknowledgement of religion as a potentially healthy part of life. Jungian
psychology may also be the approach most feared and misunderstood by traditional
psychologists because of its use of symbol, archetype, dream, the unconscious, and the
collective unconscious, all of which may seem irrational and non-scientific. They violate
a beloved rule of science: parsimony. They seem too complicated. Jung's increasing
popularity upset Richard Noll, Associate Professor of psychology at DeSales University,
so much that he wrote two books in which he described Jungian psychology as a cult: The
Jung Cult: Origins of a Charismatic Movement (1994) and The Aryan Christ: The Secret
Life of Carl Jung (1997).
The Meaning of Soul in Jungian Psychology
Although Jung believed in God and was the president of the Guild of Pastoral
Psychology, his theory did not deal explicitly with God or the soul. Other Jungians have
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written about the soul, including former monk Thomas Moore, Care of the Soul (1992),
June Singer, Boundaries of the Soul (1972), and James Hillman.
Hillman struggled with the definition of soul throughout his career. He wrote that
soul is “a perspective rather than a substance, a viewpoint toward things. . . . [It is]
reflective; it mediates events and makes differences” (1975). In contrast to Benner’s
holistic, somatopsychospiritual approach, Hillman (1989) defined the soul, spirit, and
body as separate perspectives. The perspective of the spirit values the eternal, non-
physical aspects of existence and seeks unity and harmony. Soul is found in the valleys
and depths. Soul mediates between the demands of the material body and the aspirations
of the spirit and helps the spirit respect and learn from the body. Jungians are sensitive to
the shadow aspects of existence. The spirit’s shadow includes ego-inflation and losing
touch with the ground. Distinguishing the spirit from the soul is useful to a theory of
spiritual-psychological counseling. It gives meaning to both words. It fits with the
secondary meanings of the word “soul,” which, according to the Oxford English
Dictionary (Soul, 2007) include deep feeling and sensitivity, and it fits with the
association between the blues and soul music. A counselor can see Benner’s holistic
approach and Hillman’s distinctions as complementary views of the client’s soul.
Consciously alluding to Keats’s phrase, Hillman wrote, “We are all in therapy all
the time insofar as we are involved in soul-making” (1975). When he wrote about “soul-
making,” Keats had been reading two books: one about early American history and the
other about France in the reign of Louis XIV. It struck him that human existence
consisted of suffering whether one was an aboriginal American or endured the “Bailiffs,
Debts, and Poverties of civilized Life.” In a letter to his sister Georgiana and brother
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George, Keats wrote:
Man is . . . destined to hardships and disquietude of some kind or other. If he
improves by degrees his bodily accommodations and comforts – at each stage, at
each ascent there are waiting for him a fresh set of annoyances. . . . I do not at all
believe in . . . perfectibility – the nature of the world will not admit of it. . . .
[S]uppose a rose to have sensation, it blooms on a beautiful morning, it enjoys
itself – but there comes a cold wind, a hot sun – it cannot escape it, it cannot
destroy its annoyances – they are as native to the world as itself: no more can man
be happy in spite, the worldly elements will prey upon his nature. . . . Call the
world if you Please “The vale of Soul-making.” Then you will find out the use of
the world (I am speaking now in the highest terms for human nature admitting it
to be immortal which I will here take for granted for the purpose of showing a
thought which has struck me concerning it) . . . Do you not see how necessary a
World of Pains and troubles is to school an Intelligence and make it a soul? A
Place where the heart must feel and suffer in a thousand diverse ways!
(In Gittings, R., ed., Letters of John Keats, 1970, pp. 249 – 250).
Keats wrote this letter between February and May 3, 1819. In July 1819, he showed the
first signs of tuberculosis. In 1821 he was dead at age 25.
Hillman studied with Jung and was the first director of studies at the Jung Institute
in Zurich after Jung’s death. He was seen as the heir apparent to Jung, but he chose to
leave and return to the United States in 1980. He developed his own theory, which he
called Archetypal Psychology. He emphasized accepting the chaos of experience rather
than attempting to form an integrated self. Western psychology had always served as a
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mirror to the inner self. Hillman re-imagined psychology as a window through which
client and therapist could look out at the world.
Hillman thought that psychologists should pay attention to the souls of their
individual clients and to the soul of the world, which he called anima mundi. He thought
that the world was sick, depressed, and anxious, and that the world’s sickness was the
cause of much human psychological illness. Drob (2007) wrote:
For Hillman, the ultimate psychological value, indeed the ultimate value in
general, is a realization and deepening of the soul in its widest possible sense. The
ultimate goal of psychology, however, is not to find answers and solutions to
problems, but, rather, to deepen our experience of the problems themselves. . . .
Soul, according to Hillman, is most apt to emerge in those chaotic, “pathological,”
moments when we experience the disintegration of our beliefs, values, and
security. (Retrieved from New Kabbalah website, unpaginated.)
In The Soul's Code: In Search of Character and Calling, Hillman wrote:
This book is about calling, about fate, about character, about innate image.
Together they make up the “acorn theory,” which holds that each person
bears a uniqueness that asks to be lived and that is already present before it
can be lived. (Hillman, 1996, p. 6)
This unique calling Hillman called the soul’s code. If a person’s acorn cannot
develop, if it is stifled, it may appear as symptoms. Hillman himself compared this theory
of the soul to karma (London, 2007). He wrote that Alice Miller, whose views are
discussed in the next chapter, was “naive” to think that all of a person’s bad character
derives from bad parenting (London, 2007). Hillman was trying to make the point that
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character has inborn strength that can withstand and learn from bad circumstances.
Hillman was angry at the victim mentality of the age. I heard him say once that he
thought people needed to “get out of the victim’s chair.”
In The Force of Character, Hillman wrote:
My war- and I have yet to win a decisive battle - is with the modes of thought and
conditioned feelings that prevail in psychology and therefore also in the way we
think and feel about our being. Of these conditions none are more tyrannical than
the convictions that clamp the mind and heart into positivistic science (geneticism
and computerism), economics (bottom-line capitalism), and single-minded faith
(fundamentalism). The idea of character is alien to all three. (1999, p. xxiv)
Hillman’s ideas could be included in a non-fundamentalist, spiritual approach to
psychology. However, to some, his theories have seemed even more abstruse and
fragmented than Jung’s. “At times it seems that for Hillman it is the disintegration of
theory and dogma which is creative and interesting and not the new theories that arise in
the old theories' place” (Drob, 2007, unpaginated). Hillman wrote that The Soul’s Code
was based on neither institutionalized religion nor institutionalized science; it “moves
nimbly down the middle between those two old contesting dogmas” (Hillman, 1996,
p. 11). That is nice, but it may not be much help for a lost soul. Hillman never said that
the soul and spirit have any reality apart from their metaphorical and mythological
meanings. If the client agrees, I would prefer to counsel from a working assumption that
the soul and spirit are real. Hillman never acknowledged God, so far as I can determine;
although I have heard him speak in churches twice. He shared the existentialists’ hunger
for meaning, and he shared their sense of aloneness in the universe. If Jesus or
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Mohammed had spoken only in parables, people would hunger for something more
substantial. I assume that clients may hunger for more than Hillman’s abstractions and
symbols. A spiritual approach to psychology, as I envision it, would be open to the
possibly that the spiritual realm is real, although not completely known or knowable.
Despite Hillman’s disagreement with Miller, his idea of the soul’s code and her
idea of the true self are similar. In both cases, the growing person can be damaged if put
under a rock and will benefit from recognition, warmth, feeding, and watering. Hillman is
explicitly non-religious. Miller is anti-spiritual. But, if the soul is real, and not just a
metaphor, it might have much in common with her true self and his acorn.
I have found it useful to combine ideas from Hillman, Plotinus, Rogers, and
Assagioli, whose theories are discussed in Chapter 9, to define “soul” as both a
perspective and the part of humans that has that perspective. First, I distinguish the soul
from the spirit. The spirit is the part of each human that is eternal and completely non-
material. The soul is an intermediary that connects people’s spirit to their material minds
and bodies; it is partly mortal and partly eternal. The soul has important things to learn at
the material level of existence. What the soul learns it teaches the body and the spirit.
Sooner or later, most souls must learn how to keep on loving, even when it hurts, and
how to keep on living, even when one’s material existence seems to have been a failure.
The soul is the eternal component of the true self.
Owning the Shadow
Jung acknowledged evil. Evil can occur when the inflated ego destroys
projections from the rejected shadow. The language of the unconscious is myth: the
rejected parts of one's self become monsters. The shadow is composed of every rejected
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part that does not develop because it is repressed so that other parts may develop. The
shadow of a stockbroker might be his or her creative painter. As people get older, it takes
more energy to repress the shadow, and it is more likely to break through, as in a midlife
crisis. The shadow is often expressed in people's play. So the stockbroker might play at
being a painter on weekends. If the shadow is not allowed to express itself even in play, it
will become more distorted and primitive. It will express itself in dreams and in
projections. People project their shadows onto others in distorted form; so they may see
other painters as foolish and dissolute. The shadow may find expression in one's children:
they may become painters, or, as was the case with one daughter of an accountant, they
may become an art history major. If people completely suppress the shadow, it may lash
out like a caged animal. If people come to fear their shadow in others, they may label
them as "evil" and harm them. They may denounce their own children for becoming art
history majors. They may damage them psychologically and not allow them to grow in
the outer world, as they have prevented themselves from growing within.
The Evolution of Consciousness
Robert Johnson called owning one's shadow a religious process (Johnson, 1991b).
Through the inner work of making the shadow conscious "you take part in a process in
which every element of life, including the dark elements, has a place of dignity and
worth" (Johnson, 1991a, p. 70). Johnson wrote that Hamlet was the first three-
dimensional hero in literature. Hamlet did not move straight ahead unreflectively like a
knight of old. Instead he hesitated, reflected, and wondered about the rightness of his
actions and the justice of his fate. Today every human being is three-dimensional and
confused. Jung believed that we live in an age in which the collective unconscious is
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devoted to the evolution of a four-dimensional consciousness. "The transition from three-
dimensional to four-dimensional consciousness is exceeding painful. Medieval
Christianity called it the dark night oh the soul. . . . The process can be summed up in one
sentence: it is the relocating of the center of the personality from the ego to a center
greater than one's self" (Johnson, 1991b, pp. 83 - 84). This is similar to Maslow's
conception of an egoless transcendence of dichotomies and Frankl's goal of happiness
through self-transcendent work for the benefit of others.
In The Thought of the Heart and the Soul of the World, Hillman suggested that the
spiritually evolved person finds evil ugly; so that in totalitarian societies “beauty is
sequestered into the ghetto of beautiful things: museums, the ministry of culture, classical
music, the dark room in the parsonage – Aphrodite imprisoned” (1992, p. 62). Hillman
was referring to the fact that Jung’s father was a minister and Jung was raised in a
parsonage in which all paintings were kept in one dark room. Hillman cited Plato’s
equation of beauty with virtue and Keats’s lines from Ode on a Grecian Urn: “Beauty is
truth, truth beauty, that is all ye know of earth and all ye need to know” (Keats, 1978,
1982, p. 283). Hillman then argued:
Were there no beauty, along with the good and true and the one, we could never
sense them, know them. Beauty is an epistemological necessity; it is the way in
which the Gods touch our senses, reach the heart, and attract us into life.
(Hillman, 1992, p. 45, italics in original.)
Hillman pointed out that psychotherapy “invites confession but omits prayer. The
religious impulse is provoked and then unsatisfied” (1992, p. 35). He added that the poet
and critic Samuel Taylor Coleridge:
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invented the term self-realization [but] saw that this self of personality becomes
only self-seeking subjectivism unless its ground is “outside” itself in a “person”
that is not the human person and to whom prayer is addressed. . . . His immense
problems with prayer and with his creative imagination perhaps are linked
because he did not accept the intercessory figures which are so essential to the
notion of prayer . . . as a dialogical encounter with such figures. Coleridge could
never release prayer from moral duty to a single high God into prayer as
imagination. (Hillman, 1992, pp. 80 – 81, footnote 31)
Pastoral counselor Benner (1998) also conceived of prayer as dialogical: questions are
asked; responses are heard; thanks is given. Benner did not think of prayer as a purely
imaginary act. Hillman does not say whether or not he does.
In the book Spiritually Oriented Psychotherapy, Jungian therapists Lionel Corbett
and Murray Stein wrote that Jungian therapy is a good fit for “people who wish to
approach their emotional distress in a way that does not separate its psychological and
spiritual dimensions,” for people who are spiritual but abhor organized religion, and for
liberal Christians and Jews (2005, p. 71); because it is open to spirituality but empty of
content. Jungian therapy deals with archetypes, including human beings’ inborn
archetypes for God and the Self. The archetype of the Self corresponds to “the presence
of a spiritual principle at the core of our development and our psychopathology” (p. 53).
It may surprise some who are not familiar with Jungian ideas to hear that his theory is
empty of content. Jungian archetypes are like empty picture frames that can surround
very different pictures. Human beings are born with these archetypes, but Jungian theory
does not take a position on whether or not they correspond to a real God or a real spiritual
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realm. Jungian theory also recognizes numinous experiences (sensations of the uncanny)
and synchronicity (experiences in the outer world that correspond to one’s inner world)
as real parts of human experience. Again it takes no position on whether or not these
experiences correspond with a real metaphysical reality beyond the limits of the material
world.
Corbett and Stein suggested a binocular approach to therapy in which one lens
sees the therapy in traditional terms and the other sees “the transpersonal or archetypal
background. . . . At times one or the other level is at the foreground, but both are always
present, like the warp and the woof of a fabric” (2005, p.60). They add: “For the Jungian
approach, the two are also enclosed in the larger field of the transpersonal Self, a third
presence in the room that is often palpable, although not acknowledged as such by
schools of psychotherapy that do not focus on the transpersonal dimension of reality”
(p. 60).
Corbett and Stein equated the Self with a transpersonal, spiritual self. They made
the extraordinary, almost mystical claim that “we are not really separate from each other;
we feel separate at the levels of the ego, the body, and the personality, but at the level of
the transpersonal psyche consciousness is undivided – the Self is the same in all of us”
(2005, p.72).
Jung invented the terms extroversion and introversion. Jungian psychiatrist
Anthony Storr argued in Solitude: A Return to the Self (1988) that contemporary society,
with its emphasis on relationship and social adjustment, devalues the importance of
solitude. In the Middle Ages, solitude was recognized as a valid pursuit. Some religions
honor the practice of solitude and silence. Spiritual-psychological counseling needs to
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recognize, validate, and nurture an introverted dimension of the spirit, as well as the
extroverted.
Jung and Jungian theorists, such as James Hillman, Robert Johnson, and the poet
Robert Bly, have constituted a branch of mainstream 20th Century psychology that has
been at home with both the positive and dark sides of the unconscious, and the positive
and dark sides of the soul and spirit. It is the branch of psychology most utilized by David
Benner in his work as a pastoral counselor. It agrees with paleontologist-theologian
Teilhard de Chardin and with the Hindu mystic Sri Aurobindo that human consciousness
is still evolving. If that is so, counselors have an opportunity to participate in and
contribute to that evolution, individually and in their professional role. It is consistent
with the hypothesis that human consciousness is evolving from three-dimensional to
four-dimensional consciousness that, for the first time in history, many of the heroes of
the 20th Century were heroes for peace, rather than heroes from war, and that the Nobel
Peace Prize, funded by an arms maker, is now widely considered the most prestigious
award a human being can win.
Differences between Jungian Psychology and Traditional Psychology
Jungian psychology is open to the value of religion. It is “spiritual” as I defined
that term in Chapter 1: it recognizes the possibility and importance of a realm of
existence that is non-material but real. Jung thought that the spiritual self, the soul, and
God were archetypes born in every human, but devoid of content. Society and each
human being define that content. Jung did not insist that God and the soul are real; clients
are free to arrive at their own beliefs. His approach is open to the importance of the ideas
of God and the soul and the need of each person to come to terms with them. Jung’s
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theories are, therefore, open to being adapted and used in a person-centered approach to
spiritual-psychological counseling, in which spiritual questions, answers, and growth
come from within the client, not from a counselor or minister.
Jungian psychology views development as life-long and positive, and as part of
the evolution of human consciousness. It sees the unconscious as a source of positive
inspiration and growth. It recognizes the values and the dangers of the dark side of
experience.
Criteria
Jungian psychology meets the first three criteria: it recognizes the possibility of a
realm of existence that is non-material but real; it is spiritual but non-religious; and it is
adaptable to both spiritual and non-spiritual milieus and to spiritually inclined and non-
spiritually inclined clients. Jungian therapy could be practiced pluralistically. It pays
positive attention to the shadow. Nonetheless, I have not explicitly included Jungian
psychology in the approach to spiritual-psychotherapy that I suggest in Chapter 17;
because it is esoteric and limited. While it recognizes the reality of the spiritual side of
humans, it offers no clear processes for approaching or developing that side.
Developmental Counseling and Therapy
During the last decades of the 20
th
Century, many psychologists and counselors
perceived clients through a medical, illness-based model. Until the client is diagnosed as
mentally ill, no help is available. As soon as an ill client is functioning with minimum
adequacy, help is ended (Ivey, Ivey, Myers, & Sweeney, 2005). This limited perspective
has been applied to more and more clients as managed care and Medicare have been
implemented in the United States. This model included the assumptions that each human
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ill has an identifiable (a) name (diagnosis), (b) cause, (c) best treatment to eradicate the
cause, and (d) technological specialists who are best qualified to provide that treatment.
In the 1980’s, in reaction against the medical model, the counseling profession
began to conceptualize and advocate for a wellness model of mental health care. In the
1990s, the psychology profession began to develop a similar alternative called positive
psychology or health psychology (Ivey, et al., 2005; Masters, 2005). Psychologists
Kohlberg (1958, 1986) and Gilligan (1982) defined moral development and theologian
Fowler defined spiritual development (Fowler, 1981, 1991) as distinct components of
human development.
The wellness model was based in part on the theories of Alfred Adler. Adler saw
humans as having needs that they sought to develop throughout their lifetimes. These
included spiritual needs. Human beings were social, goal striving, and often driven by
unconscious forces. While Freud saw the personality as fragmented and at war with itself,
Adler saw the personality as striving for wholeness and balance. Balance included
balancing the needs of self and community. Wholeness included the development of
one’s spirit (Ivey, et al., 2005). Witmer, & Sweeney (1998) conceived of the Wheel of
Wellness, a holistic, as opposed to linear, model of wellness in which spirituality is at the
center and other life tasks identified by Adler and his follower Dreikurs are shown as the
spokes of the wheel (Ivey, et al, p. 45).
The Wheel of Wellness was based on a hypothesized hierarchy in which
spirituality was the foundation and the most important part of wellness. Myers and
Sweeney developed the Indivisible Self Model (IS-WEL), in response to factor analysis
of Wellness, which showed that each of the five components contributed equally to the
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one overall factor of wellness. These findings are consistent with Benner’s holistic
somatopsychospiritual perspective. The five components were the Essential Self, the
Coping Self, the Social Self, the Creative Self, and the Physical Self. No component
could be considered statistically more or less important than the others. Each component
has sub-components, with the result that there are 17 factors which affect the wellness of
the Indivisible Self. The Essential Self includes the factors of spirituality, gender identity,
cultural identity, and self-care. The Coping Self includes realistic beliefs, stress
management, self-worth, and leisure. The Social Self is composed of friendship and love.
The Creative Self is composed of thinking, emotions, control, positive humor, and work.
Finally, the Physical Self includes nutrition and exercise. Ivey, Ivey, Myers, and Sweeney
(2005) wrote:
Central to the idea of the Indivisible Self is the conviction that positive
change in one area of one’s being can have positive benefits in other areas as well.
Change, then, can be incremental, cumulative, and self-paced in one or more areas
of life but all areas may benefit. (p. 48)
The idea that one may start at any time and at any place and get better is encouraging
news. The goal of the wellness model of mental and physical health is to promote
wellness throughout the lifetime.
Developmental Counseling and Therapy (DCT) was developed by Allen Ivey,
Mary Ivey, Jane Myers, and Thomas Sweeney and was described in their 2005 book
Developmental Counseling and Therapy: Promoting Wellness Over the Lifespan. DCT
combines the most recent theoretical conceptualization of wellness with theories of
developmental psychology. DCT incorporates the cognitive developmental stages of Jean
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Piaget, the psychosocial stages of ego development described by Erik Erikson, and the
stages of faith development described by James Fowler. DCT refers to stages as styles,
which expresses the attitude that no stage is superior and that all are needed for the
complete experience of reality. Table 2, which appears on page 204, compares the
developmental stages of DCT, Piaget, Erikson, Fowler, and the moral stages theorized by
Kohlberg. This table is based on tables in Ivey, et al. I have added the Stages of Care
suggested by Gilligan (1982). In this Table, stages are separated by semicolons and each
new stage, or style, is capitalized. As family therapist Bowen had theorized, the ability of
people to develop healthily is affected by their ability to balance their needs for
attachment and separation, and their needs for autonomy and connectedness. Different
individuals and different cultures prefer different balances of independence and
interdependence. Balance sometimes means compromise between opposing claims.
Human development can be helped by guided introspection, in which people look for
patterns, and take conscious action to continue the positive and discontinue destructive
patterns. Stages have transitions, and it helps to be aware of and prepare for them. Both
vertical and horizontal development occurs: vertical development is movement from one
stage or style to another; horizontal is development within the stage. Sometimes a
counselor needs to be patient and work with a client’s horizontal development. DCT
takes the position that one style is not superior to another. Many clients who have highly
developed cognitive functioning have lost the ability to experience the world through
their senses in the here-and-now and have lost the ability to experience feelings
immediately and concretely. These thinkers analyze every thought and abstract every
feeling. They can benefit from regressing and fully experiencing the “lower” stages. One
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goal (continued from p. 202) of counseling and of life is to be able to experience reality at
all levels, cognitively and emotionally, concretely and abstractly. When a client is ready
to move vertically but is resistant, the counseling office can become an environment for
change. The client should be encouraged to be creative in his or her own life, and may
benefit from thoughtful “perturbation” and caring confrontation.
Human beings develop emotionally as well as cognitively. For each of the four
DCT styles, Ivey, et al, gave a characteristic affect and cognition in Appendix 2 of their
book. For example, the affect for the Early Dialectic/Systemic style is: The client offers a
wide range of emotions and recognizes that they can change contextually; the client feels
that she or he can change and adapt to new situations. The characteristic cognitions at this
stage are: The client demonstrates an ability to coordinate concepts and put together a
holistic integrated picture; the client demonstrates an awareness that the evolving
integration was co-constructed in a dialectical or dialogic relationship with family,
history, and culture (p. 407). The authors wrote that there is no affect without cognition
and no cognition without affect. Therapists can help their (continued on p. 205)
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Table 2: Developmental Stages
Concrete Abstract
Conventional Postconventional
Theory Stage/Style Stage/Style Stage/Style Stage/Style
DCT Sensorimotor Concrete Formal Dialectic/
Systematic
Piaget Sensoritmotor;
Preoperational
Concrete Formal Post-formal
Maslow Survival &
safety
Belonging Self-esteem Self-actualization;
Transcendence
Erikson Trust vs.
mistrust
Initiative vs.
guilt; Industry
vs. inferiority
Identity vs.
role confusion
Intimacy vs.
isolation; Integrity
vs. despair
Kohlberg moral
development
Obey to avoid
punishment;
Obey to get
rewards.
Obey to gain
approval;
Conformity to
society’s rules
and laws.
Obey because
necessary for social
order but recognize
that rules can be
changed; May
violate rules to meet
one’s own
internalized
standards of justice.
Gilligan moral
development
Concern for
oneself and
survival.
Concern for
one’s
responsibilities;
Self-sacrifice &
caring for others.
Concern for
responsibilities to
others and to
oneself, self and
others seen as
interdependent.
Fowler Stages
of Faith
(1) Primal faith:
trust develops
through contact
with parents.
(2) Intuitive-
projective faith:
first conscious
constructs of
God; (3)
Mythic-literal
faith: God
consistent,
caring, but just
ruler; good is
rewarded, bad
punished.
(4) Synthetic-
conventional:
thinking back
and evaluating;
(5)
Individuative-
reflective: more
serious
evaluation and
questioning,
authority for
evaluation firmly
within self.
(6) Conjunctive
faith: humbleness,
awareness of non-
literal, metaphorical
meaning and of need
for multiple
interpretations; (7)
Universalizing faith:
a sense of oneness
and egolessness.
Adapted with additions from Ivey, Ivey, Myers, & Sweeney (2005). Used with
permission.
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(continued from p. 203) clients tie it all together and develop their feeling capacity along
with their cognitive ability. In the book Emotional Intelligence (1995), Goleman pointed
out that emotional intelligence is distinct from traditional IQ. Emotional intelligence is
valuable to the individual and to society, and needs nurturance and development.
DCT is eclectic and integrative. The authors recognized that clients may come
from a culture where they have experienced oppression. Even if they have not, they may
have experienced oppression in their own personal lives. Therefore, DCT counselors try
to relate to the client as an equal and speak of co-constructing the counseling plan. DCT
is committed to the “liberation of consciousness” (p.254). DCT is “strengths based,”
which means that counseling, even for clients who present with severe DSM diagnoses,
begins with an “asset search” (p. 279). DCT theorizes that human development continues
throughout the lifetime and does not stop with childhood. If a client is diagnosed as
mentally ill, the client can still grow psychologically and spiritually, and can still benefit
from counseling.
The authors began their book by saying that wellness and developmental
counseling were developed because something was missing from the medical model of
mental health care. This raises the question of whether anything is missing from the
wellness/developmental model. What does one do when one has lived well and things do
not go well? The authors acknowledge, “When clients are faced with a serious illness, a
death, or other major life issue, usually effective helping strategies such as those used in
cognitive behavioral therapy and other theories may not be sufficient” (p. 372). At these
times the authors suggested searching for the meaning of one’s life through the practice
of “discernment.” Discernment and the Stages of Faith are discussed in the only chapter
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of their book that deals expressly with spirituality. The authors began that chapter with
the following caveat:
With the exception of William James, Alfred Adler, Carl Jung, and the
proponents of the transpersonal psychology movement, spiritual and religious
issues have historically played little part in counseling and therapy. Even today,
only minimal attention is given to this important area of life in counselor and
therapist training programs. (Ivey et al, 2005, p. 366)
At the very least, they say, spirituality should be respected as a matter of
multicultural sensitivity. The authors have found that clients do not want to have
therapists define what spirituality means for them, the clients; so they encourage their
clients to teach them, the counselors, what spirituality means to them. Some clients feel
uncomfortable talking about spirituality, but are open to discussing their values and the
things that have meaning for them. With the agreement of the client, counselors can help
the clients exercise an active search for meaning and transcendence in their lives. The
authors present a chart of questions that can help the client and therapist discern the
client’s meaning and values. They present questions directed toward each of the three
DCT developmental stages (sensorimotor, formal operational, and dialectic) and they
stress the importance for the client of experiencing all of the stages, not just the “highest”
one. The authors wrote that preparation, openness, and “quiet and alone time” can be
critical to discerning one’s life goal (Ivey et al, 2005, p. 373).
Inspired by Kohlberg’s research into stages of moral development, theologian
James Fowler researched stages of faith. He thought that the human need to believe
developed naturally from childhood: “We look for something to love that loves us,
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something to value that gives us value, something to honor and respect that has the power
to sustain our being” (Fowler, 1981, p. 5). As the stages develop, “each stage represents a
widening of vision and valuing, correlated with a parallel increase in the certainty and
depth of selfhood, making for qualitative increases in intimacy with self-others-world”
(p. 274). Faith must confront and deal with certain life-issues at each stage; thus Fowler
envisioned progress from one stage to the next as an upward spiral, circling back as one
rose upward. Individuation culminates at stage 4; then the next stages, 5 and 6, move
back toward oneness and participation, but at different levels of complexity,
differentiation, and inclusiveness. Fowler also thought that each stage of faith is sufficient
for its own time in a person’s life, and that people tend to move on to a higher stage when
they are ready.
DCT re-defines the DSMIV-TR diagnoses. It conceives of the Personality
Disorders as Personality Styles in which a person is developmentally stuck in some mode
of thinking and acting that is less than ideal, because, in some way, this mode helps the
client deal with some past insult or abuse. An example would be a diagnosis of
Borderline Personality Disorder in a woman who had been sexually abused by her father
as a child and whose mother covered up the abuse. As abused children grow, they pass
through Erikson’s sociopsychological stages, but they are more likely to get stuck. If they
move on to the next stage, the positive resolution of the last developmental crisis is less
likely. The same is true for Maslow’s hierarchy of needs: abused children are not likely to
feel a sense of safety or belonging, and are, therefore, not likely to attain self-esteem.
These are deficiency needs; until they are met children cannot move on to seek
fulfillment of the higher needs of self-actualization and transcendence. The authors
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suggest that the best treatment is to support individuation and to re-parent the client in a
positive way. They quote attachment theorist John Bowlby: “Treatment involves treating
the client differently than he or she has been treated in the past” (Ivey & Ivey, 1998,
p. 342). They provide a table of Personality Disorders, showing the positive adjustment
value of each style, the possible family history, and possible treatment approaches. If the
Personality Style continues to serve the client badly, at some point the client’s condition
may change from an Axis II disorder to an Axis I disorder; for example, Borderline
Personality may become Major Depression. The authors provide a table of Axis I
disorders that may result from a failure of the defensive structures of each Axis II
disorder.
Differences between DCT and Traditional Psychology
Development is multidimensional and life-long. Development includes moral and
spiritual development. Clients are seen as stuck, not sick. Even people with DSM
diagnoses can develop.
DCT counseling is strengths-based and begins with an asset search; in other
words, the counselor begins by looking for and explicitly recognizing all that is right with
the client, not all that is wrong.
DCT recognizes that the spiritual realm is important to many clients. DCT does
not define the content of this spiritual realm. It does not explicitly include God or soul. It
suggests that clients tell the counselor what spirituality means to them.
Criteria
Developmental Counseling and Therapy meets the first three criteria. In my
practice, I have adapted the authors’ pluralistic suggestion that I allow clients to define
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what spirituality means to them. DCT honors the client’s symptoms as their best attempts
to express their sorrow and pain. The authors of DCT suggest two processes: writing a
spiritual narrative and practicing discernment, which can be done alone or in dialogue
with the counselor. Discernment is defined as:
Discernment is about finding one’s purpose and mission in life – why
are you living and what difference do you want to make in the world?
When a person has a sense of mission, a vision for the future, problem
solving and action often can more easily follow. Perhaps the key
questions in discernment are “What do you really want to give to
the world?” and “How best can I spend my limited time on earth?”
(Ivey, Ivey, Myers, and Sweeney, 2005, p. 372)
I find these processes limited, vague, and cumbersome.
Conclusions
For reasons I explain in Chapters 16, the approach that I have found most
adaptable to meeting all five of the criteria listed at the start of this chapter is person-
centered counseling. The person-centered counselor listens to the clients, validates them,
and allows them to develop, spiritually and otherwise, as they feel the need and when
they feel the need. In the nurturing, safe atmosphere of person-centered counseling, each
client’s soul and unique, true self can emerge and grow. The “true-self” is discussed in
the next chapter. Although I have not adapted any of the above theories completely as my
own, I hope that my approach to counseling will be informed and enriched by all of them
when appropriate. A spiritually sensitive person-centered approach to counseling is
described in Chapter 17.
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CHAPTER IX
THE TRUE-SELF
The true-self is a term used by all of the theorists discussed below, but not clearly
defined by any of them. I will define the “true-self” to mean the self that emerges and
expresses itself within people and in relationship with others under the following
circumstances:
• When they receive unconditional positive regard, acceptance, and genuine
empathy (Rogers, 1951, 1961, 1975).
• When they feel understood and valued (Rogers).
• When they are given hope that their life has some meaning (van Deurzen, 1997,
2002).
• When they meet their need for positive regard from others, have positive regard
for themselves (Rogers, 1969), and show positive regard for others (Rogers,
1970).
• When they feel seen and valued and loved for who they are (Miller, 1984, 1994).
• When they are at their best (Assagioli, 1971, 1973).
• When they are as they would like to be (Rogers, van Deurzen).
• When they are able to share with others what they value in themselves (Rogers,
1970).
• When they feel simultaneously challenged and competent.
• When they feel at home in their mind and body and in their feelings and their
thought.
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• When they are comfortable in the present moment; when they can see and just
see, hear and just hear (Chödrön, 2009).
• If the soul is real, not merely metaphorical, the true-self accompanies the soul and
develops as it develops.
The true-self in each person is unique. The true-self has unique gifts to give and
unique things to learn. The true-self exists at the center of consciousness. Life often
damages the true-self. People are often unaware of their true-selves. The true-self is not
perfect. It is never complete: it is always partly formed and partly forming, so one’s true-
self can always change, learn, and develop. It is a spiritual concept because, if people pre-
exist this life, the true-self enters life with them, and if people experience life after death,
the true-self accompanies them to that next realm of existence. I have chosen to write the
true-self as a hyphenated word so that when I refer to it, it will be clear that I am referring
to my on-going attempt to make sense of this idea. I invite amendments and additions
from clients and colleagues.
Object-Relations Theory and the True-Self
Donald Winnicott, an English pediatrician, was one of the first modern theorists
to use the term “true-self.” He observed that if infants received dependable warmth and
attention from their mothers, they developed healthy “true-selves.” If infants did not
receive these things, they developed “false selves” that sought to please their mothers
rather then attempting to meet their own needs (Sharf, 2004). Heinz Kohut described a
process between parent and child he called healthy mirroring. The infant is reliably
supported by the parent and encouraged to individuate in gradual steps. If the parent does
not provide empathic support, a damaged sense of self develops (Nevid, Rathus, &
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Greene). The ideas of Winnicott and Kohut contributed to object-relations theory, which
focused on the child’s relationship with her or his first love object(s). Every child needs
to be loved and supported in his or her individuation. For most people this process falls
short of perfection, so that they continue to ask in every relationship: Do you see me? Do
you like what you see? Do you care? Can you provide me warmth and reassurance and
security? Can you help me grow and individuate? And, finally, can you let go of me in
the right way when the right time comes? People may reject parts of their true-selves in
order to please parents. They may compensate by attempting to find these parts in a
spouse, or they may project threatening parts, e.g. anger, onto the spouse, who is then
seen as threatening and angry, while one’s own anger is denied.
Carl Rogers and the True-Self
Carl Rogers spoke of the true-self as a part of humans that is sometimes damaged
by parents or society, and needs validation and expression. Rogers wrote that the idea of
the true-self did not, for him, originate in theory. It was a case of Rogers fitting his theory
to what clients repeatedly said.
[T]hose doing therapeutic work from a client-centered orientation certainly
had no initial leanings toward using the self as an explanatory construct.
Yet so much of the verbal interchange of therapy had to do with the self
that attention was forcibly turned in this direction. The client felt he was
not being his real self, often felt he did not know what his real self was,
and felt satisfaction when he had become more truly himself. Clinically
these trends could not be over-looked. (Rogers, 1951, p. 136)
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Person-centered counselor Brian Thorne wrote that the “true conscience” is what allows
people to distinguish what is good for their true-selves and for their spiritual growth from
what is not (Thorne, 1991, pp. 118 – 119). Thorne thought that counselors should not
serve as a client’s conscience but counselors can help create an environment in which the
“true conscience can make itself heard” (1991, p. 119).
Carl Jung and the True-Self
Jung spoke of the Self as the part of each human that is unique and distinct from
the ego. He theorized that the Self is an archetype, inborn in every person. Each person,
with the support or criticism of family and society, tries to give that archetype meaning in
his or her own life. Jung believed that the main task of life and of therapy was
individuation, which was the attempt to realize and express the Self, which he capitalized.
This entailed making the unconscious conscious: large parts of the Self are often
repressed because the conscious mind finds them threatening. These repressed parts
become the person’s shadow. In public, everyone wears a persona, which is the name
given to an actor’s mask in ancient Greece (Singer, 1994). Jung wrote that one would
have to be naive to think that he or she did not sometimes need a persona. However, if
people confuse their persona with their Self, they cannot individuate successfully.
Alice Miller, the True-Self, and Justice or Forgiveness
Alice Miller wrote more extensively and explicitly than anyone else about the
injuries her clients had suffered to their true-selves and the consequences. She also wrote
extensively about how to approach treatment in a loving, validating way. Reading her
books, I felt transported back into the lives of her clients, especially their childhoods.
Because she did not favor forgiveness, Miller introduces the subject of forgiveness and
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whether it is better to be just or loving, which I will discuss below in this chapter.
Although Miller is a-spiritual or anti-spiritual, her analysis of damaging parenting could
apply as well to damaging religious upbringing: if children experienced God or religion
as abusive or remote, then as adults they might be forever alienated from religion or they
might put on a false-religious-self, whereby they are seen to go to church but do not
develop spiritually inside.
Alice Miller has doctorates in philosophy, psychology and sociology. Ivey et al,
did not discuss Miller but her writings are consistent with their approach to therapy,
because she thought that childhood mistreatment was the primary cause of every kind of
psychological disorder (Miller, 1994, p. 10; Alice Miller, Wikipedia, 2007). In the
counseling relationship, she did not call herself a therapist; she called herself an
“enlightened witness.” By child mistreatment, Miller meant physical, sexual, and
psychological abuse, and “poisonous pedagogy.” “‘Poisonous pedagogy’ referred to that
tradition of child-rearing which attempts to suppress all vitality, creativity, and feeling in
the child and maintain the autocratic, godlike position of the parents at all costs” (Miller,
1984, p. 18).
Miller practiced in Switzerland, in the latter half of the 20
th
Century. Many of her
clients had been talented, intelligent, and well educated. Many were raised in middle-
class or upper middle-class homes, and they claimed to have lead happy, even idyllic
childhoods. But they were depressed and anxious, or grandiose and Narcissistic. They
appeared to have no direct connection to their own true feelings and no secure sense of
self. Over the course of treatment, it emerged that many had been good children, or had
eventually become good children. They had adjusted to the expectations and demands of
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their parents, whatever those were. A frequent expectation was that the children become
successful, and many had fulfilled that expectation. They were successful, but empty and
unhappy and did not know why.
Sometimes the parents themselves were Narcissistic and saw the child as an
extension of themselves; they could not “imagine that what gives them pleasure could
have a different effect upon the child” (Miller, 1984, p. 6). Sometimes the parents were
depressed and needy. Sometimes a parent was openly abusive, sometimes merely
emotionally unavailable. In many cases, the parents were simply raising their children as
they had been raised. In all cases, the parents had set their own needs above the needs of
their child to be held, talked to, listened to, to be seen as an independent person with
legitimate, separate needs of his or her own, and to be supported in a patient, reliable,
non-violent, loving way. As a result of not receiving this support, the child’s true-self had
not developed. Instead a false self had developed that pleased the parent and society, at
least for the moment. Compare this dynamic to Fowler’s description of the development
of faith. If one was raised in a home in which one was not allowed to see the truth or
speak the truth, then, when one looked for someone to love, one would have found only a
false mirror. One would have developed the “illusion of love” (Miller, 1994, p 57). When
one looked for something to value that gave one’s self value, one would find hypocrisy
and Narcissism, and when one looked for something to honor, one would find a cold
statue. Therefore, until one could confront these lies and break free of them, one could
not deepen in faith: not faith in one’s self, nor in others, nor in the world. At one time,
churches and pastors provided a healthy mirror for some children; and thus strengthened
the children’s faith in their selves, in religion, and in society. That is less often true today.
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If a representative of religion does not provide supportive mirroring, or if the church also
exercises poisonous pedagogy, the adult-child may not trust religion.
As adults, Miller’s clients had no conscious memory of their mistreatment; they
had bought the party line: their parents were wonderful and their childhood was happy.
The only reality children are likely to know is the reality their parents define for them.
Many children have not been allowed to see the truth or to speak the truth; thus, the title
of one of Miller’s books: Thou Shalt Not Be Aware (1984). Sometimes this denial of the
child’s reality is done intentionally; often it is done by unconscious manipulation. Many
children have not been allowed to feel, because they were told what to feel. According to
Miller, the goals of therapy are to see the past accurately and recover it emotionally; then
mourn the lost child; then put the truth into words; and, finally, begin to feel life in all its
complexity in the present moment. The development of the true-self will be painful. The
result will not be happiness. The result will be vitality. “Vitality is the freedom to
experience spontaneous feelings. It is part of the kaleidoscope of life that these feelings
are not only happy, beautiful, or good but can reflect the entire range of human
experience, including envy, jealously, rage, disgust, greed, despair, and grief” (1994,
p. 81). Miller does not favor cognitive-behavioral treatment for depression:
Some psychiatrists, for instance, suggest that the therapist should
demonstrate to the patient that his hopelessness is not rational or make him aware
of his oversensitivity. I think that such procedures will not only strengthen the
false self and emotional conformity but will reinforce the depression as well. If
therapists want to avoid doing so, they must take all of the patient’s feelings
seriously. (1994, p. 81).
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By telling the client what to feel and how to behave, the cognitive-behavioral therapist
may re-enact the role of the poisonous parent and collude with society in keeping the
child unaware.
According to Miller, it is not uncommon for her male clients to speak with pride
of having been severely beaten by their fathers and to tell her that they plan to beat their
own sons “for their own good.” If such attitudes are common, it is no wonder that
Kohlberg’s stages of moral development, which favor justice, would be preferred by
men, over Gilligan’s stages of caring, which value warmth and relationship over justice.
In 1958, Lawrence Kohlberg developed a theory of moral development and tested the
stages on boys and men. Later, when he tested women, he found that adolescent females
tended to reason at a lower stage than males of the same age (Arnett, 2007, p. 122). This
inspired a former student, Carol Gilligan, to criticize Kohlberg’s moral stages as biased in
favor of the a masculine justice orientation toward morality and to undervalue the care
orientation of many women, which emphasizes warmth, solidarity, community, and
caring about one's special relationships.
Kohlberg (Arnett, 2007; Kohlberg,Wickipedia, 2007) and Gilligan remained on
good terms, and he revised his scoring methods as a result of her critique. After that, boys
and girls scored evenly. Any measurement of morality must make assumptions about
what is of moral value. As initially designed, Kohlberg’s tests explicitly gave weight to
equality, reciprocity, merit, and abstract principles. One could just as well have designed
a test that placed more value on other virtues, such as mercy and loyalty. Gilligan
formulated her “ethics of care” based on interviews with women who were deciding
whether or not to have an abortion. She found they were trying to balance needs and
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responsibilities, as opposed to rights and fairness. She called this a morality of
responsibility compared to Kolberg’s morality of rights. James Fowler suggested that the
morally mature person is one who integrates both positions and learns to “deal with the
inevitable tensions and ambiguities that this will involve” (2000, p. 34 - 35).
Miller did not advocate forgiveness. “My own experience has taught me that the
enactment of forgiveness – which 16 years ago, I still believed to be right – brings the
therapeutic process to a halt. It blocks the unfolding of feelings and perceptions” (1994,
p. 21). It sometimes takes years of therapy for repressed memories to come to the surface.
Miller did favor apologizing to one’s own children. She believed that parents who
confront their own past will not abuse, and that children who are not mistreated will not
mistreat their own children.
If one followed a moral system based on justice, one might not forgive an abusive
parent. If one followed an ethics of care, one might forgive in the interest of the
relationship. There is another reason to forgive: forgiveness is an opportunity for spiritual
growth. Miller is not enthusiastic about AA and other spiritual approaches to treatment;
she thinks they let parents off the hook. In When to Forgive (1999), Mona Gustafson
Affinito, a professor at the Adler Graduate School, defined “forgiveness” as “deciding
not to punish a perceived injustice, taking action on that decision, and experiencing the
emotional relief that follows” (p. 11). Forgiveness takes time and hard work. Affinito
believed that forgiveness is usually the right thing to do, but not always. The person who
has the most to gain from forgiveness is the forgiver. If one decides to forgive, Affinito
believed, one is likely to enjoy better health and freedom from enslavement to the
offender. One will be calmer and more loving, and one’s other personal relationships are
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“guaranteed” to improve and grow warmer (p. 15). Affinito saw forgiveness as an
opportunity for personal growth.
Forgiveness begins with seeing clearly the wrong that was done and putting it into
words. In this, Affinito agreed with Miller, but unlike Miller, Affinito suggested that one
develop a forgiveness attitude as a way of life, and look for ways to practice forgiveness
and small acts of kindness in everyday situations, such as traffic and the supermarket line.
I would argue that Miller has over-simplified the complexity of being a parent and of
being a child. If a child received all the warmth and attention that Miller prescribed, the
child might grow up unprepared for the real world and reluctant to leave home. Most
people need both to forgive and be forgiven. Forgiveness and repentance need to be
included in a theoretical approach to spiritual-psychological counseling.
Roberto Assagioli and the True-Self
The Italian psychiatrist Roberto Assagioli (1888-1974) was explicitly spiritual.
His books do not contain the rich descriptions of client’s experiences that Miller
provided, but his description of the true-self was more detailed. Assagioli accepted Jung’s
collective unconscious and added the concept of a higher unconscious, which he called
the “superconscious.” The higher unconscious shows itself in two classes of genius. The
first class is composed of geniuses who have demonstrated both (1) superior abilities and
(2) self-realization. Assagioli named Pythagoras, Plato, Dante, Leonardo da Vinci, and
Einstein as examples. The second class is composed of persons who demonstrated
extraordinary ability at something, but were immature psychologically. He cited Mozart,
who had the social grace of a boor and claimed that he wrote down the music he heard
inside his head, with no idea of where it came from. On occasion, the first type of genius
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is able to function in conscious contact with the higher unconscious. The second type,
never. Assagioli founded the school of psychosynthesis. Its goal was to help people
synthesize all fields of consciousness. Genius is not the only quality that comes from the
superconscious. Noble and moral feelings, altruistic love, self-sacrifice, inspiration, and
some intuitions derive from the higher unconscious. Anyone can seek to gain regular
awareness of their higher unconscious; but this field is accessible only rarely for most
people. God may speak to humans through their higher unconscious. Richards and Bergin
wrote: Theistic realism “affirms the reality and value of intuitive and inspirational ways
of knowing, assuming that in the scientific process many great ideas, creations, and
discoveries are given as insights to scientists through divine inspiration during or after
diligent effort by the scientist” (2005, p. 101). They believed, as did Assagioli, that if we
recognize this aspect of existence, we are more open to it and more thankful.
Another goal of psychosynthesis was to help people integrate their ego and their
higher self. It seemed to Assagioli, as it had to Jung, that the true-self is distinct from the
ego. He wrote:
The conscious self is generally not only submerged in the ceaseless flow
of psychological contents but seems to disappear altogether when we fall asleep,
when we faint, when we are under the effect of anesthetic or narcotic, or in a state
of hypnosis. And when we awake the self mysteriously re-appears, we do not
know how or whence – a fact which, if closely examined, is truly baffling and
disturbing. This leads us to assume that the re-appearance of the conscious self or
ego is due to the existence of a permanent center, or a true Self situated beyond or
“above” it. (Assagioli, 1965, p. 18)
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Assagioli called this self “il sè transpersonale,” the true self, higher self, spiritual
self, or inner teacher. It was distinguished from the ego, or little self, by the fact that the
little self is acutely aware of itself as a distinct separate individual, and a sense of solitude
or of separation sometimes comes in the existential experience. In contrast, the
experience of the spiritual Self is a sense of freedom, of expansion, of communication
with other Selves and with reality, and there is a sense of Universality. It feels itself at the
same time individual and universal (Assagioli, 1965, p. 87).
It seemed to Assagioli that the higher self in each person called to the conscious
ego to be more, to expand its awareness, especially into the super unconscious, and to
become a better person. Some Christians, he wrote, found the symbol of the Christ within
helpful; others did not.
Assagioli saw the goal of therapy and life to be the realization of one’s true-self
and the discovery or creation of a unifying center around that true-self. He drew a
diagram of the personality, which is shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2 6 ☼
1. The Lower Unconscious 7
2. The Middle Unconscious 3
3. The Higher Unconscious or _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Superconscious
4. The Field of Conscious Awareness 7 5 ●
5. The Conscious Self or “I” 4
6. The Higher Self 2
7. The Collective Unconscious _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
1
7
From R. Assagioli, Psychosynthesis (1971), p. 17. Used with permission.
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Most people stop their development at the line that divides conscious awareness
from the Higher Unconscious. They do not explore or bring the Higher Self into
awareness. Assagioli asked clients to visualize themselves as they wish to be. He
encouraged them to take steps to express that ideal in the world, and he helped them take
steps within to develop aspects of the personality that they thought to be deficient or
inadequate for the purpose of becoming the person they wanted to be. The attempt to
realize the true-self is energized by energy flowing in from the Higher Unconscious. A
person’s ideal might be quiet, harmonious, and introverted, or it might be active and
extroverted. A person might hope to be a good parent or to write a symphony. When a
person’s true-self was realized, that person’s “true life” began (Assagioli, 1965, p. 30),
whether at age 22 or age 102. A word of warning may be called for here. Based on my
experience as a lawyer who became a mental health counselor, life does not necessarily
become easy or free from pain when one’s true life begins. Van Deurzen agreed; she
thought that the emergence of the true-self could be painful, and if therapists attempted to
relieve this pain they might interfere with that growth:
The client needs to find in herself an inner source of life that she can always rely
on as a safe place where truth can be found, no matter what lies and deceit go on
in the outside world. As long as the therapist tries to accommodate the client and
attempts to ease her pain and anxiety, she stands in the way of discovery of this
safety in herself. The therapist must avoid playing the role of a drug or a
television set or a kind neighbor. (van Deurzen, 2002, p. 171)
Because of the existence of the transpersonal self, Assagioli agreed with Maslow
that people could fulfill all their material needs and still feel empty, restless, and
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depressed (Assagioli, 1973, p. 106). The transpersonal self calls people to be more. They
can answer that call through the exercise of their transpersonal wills. Assagioli believed
that there is a universal will, with which people can align themselves without losing their
individuality. Assagioli thought that each of Jung’s types (intuition, feeling, intellect, and
sensation or direct perception) was a separate but equal way of knowing reality. Science
operates almost exclusively in the realm of intellect and direct observation. Assagioli’s
descriptions of the psyche and transcendent reality appear to be based on deductive
reasoning applied to his intuition, rather than on empirical research.
Assagioli intuited the presence of a universal mind. He wrote that the highest
“need” of humanity is “harmonization, communion, unification” of one’s personal and
transpersonal will with the universal will (1973, p. 130). In this his thinking is similar to
Kant’s and Rollo May’s. Kant found it difficult to imagine that people operate under a
moral imperative that is impossible to attain. Therefore, Kant thought it likely that God
exists to help people attain it. Similarly, Assagioli found it difficult to suppose that
individual human will did not reflect “transcendent Reality” and an “aspect of the
Universal Self or Being “ (p 126). “If there was no Universal Will, man would possess
something not existing in the universe, and therefore the microcosm would be superior to
the macrocosm – indeed a ridiculous conceit” (1973, p 130). Assagioli wrote:
A difficulty in dealing with this subject is the fact that up until recently this
relationship has been conceived and expressed chiefly in religious terms. At
present such an approach has little appeal to many people, and is even flatly
denied. One might say, in rather irreverent terms, that presently God has a bad
press. . . . This attitude can be understood largely as a reaction against both the
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anthropomorphic images of God and the theologies which have attempted to give
theoretical conception to a Reality which transcends any such formulations. Man
had created god in his own image, attributing to him his own limitations and
imperfections. It is these images and the various theological models of God which
are being refused, which are “dying.” (1973, pp. 123 – 124)
The True-Self as Part of a Spiritual-Psychological Approach to Therapy
The true-self can be equated with the soul; it is the closest thing traditional
psychology has to the concept. Spiritual-psychology can begin with the love and equality
recommended by Benner and with recognition of the client’s true-self. Through use of
listening, mirroring, and empathy, the counselor can demonstrate to the client: “I see your
soul. I like your soul. I care for you. I will show warmth and help you grow, and when
the time comes I will let go.” To the extent that the client has experienced religion as a
rejecting parent, the counselor may serve as a model of open, accepting spirituality.
The true-self, its recognition, liberation, and enhancement were not valued by
traditional psychology. In bringing their true-selves into consciousness, clients may
realize that they value things that traditional psychology and mainstream society do not
value. Helping each client recognize, value, and express those things in positive ways that
enhance the client’s spiritual development can be one undertaking of a spiritual approach
to counseling. Those values may be different for each client. Some important values that
are not traditionally valued are considered in the next two chapters.
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CHAPTER X
THE SPIRITUAL VALUE OF SADNESS AND PAIN
In this chapter and the next, I will enumerate values and goals that I would
include in a spiritual approach to counseling that traditional psychological approaches
usually do not. In my view, a spiritual approach to counseling should value negative
outcomes, failure, creativity, conflict, revolution, anger, justice, knowledge, experience,
truth, and moral deliberation. These are things that I value, but I do not want to impose
my values on the client, nor should I. In bringing their true-selves into consciousness,
clients may realize that they value things that traditional psychology and mainstream
society do not value, or they may find they are content with traditional values. The
client’s values may be similar to the ones discussed in this chapter, or not. My duty as a
spiritually sensitive psychological counselor is to listen to clients and help them
recognize, value, and express their unique selves, whether or not their values are identical
to mine; so long as those values are not immoral. Morality is discussed further in Chapter
15, under Values and Morals in Counseling. Spiritual-psychological counseling should
also promote spiritual health and spiritual development throughout the lifetime. How
spiritual health and development may differ from material health and development is
discussed in Chapter 12. Valuing the spirit may lead to devaluing the body; therefore,
spiritual-psychological counseling needs to include a healthy awareness of and care for
the body.
This chapter and the next are organized into the following sections which appear
on the following pages:
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Chapter 10 contains:
• The value of negative experiences, page 226.
• Elio Frattaroli & a falling down that is good, p. 234.
• The meaning of pain, p. 241.
Chapter 11 contains:
• The value of creativity, p. 245.
• Constructive conflict, p. 245.
• Revolution, p. 246.
• Anger & justice, p. 247.
• Knowledge, experience, truth, and the true-self, p. 250.
• Moral deliberations & outcomes, p. 251.
• The meaning of immorality, p. 262.
• A spiritually sensitive approach to morality in counseling, p. 262.
• Conclusions, p. 264.
A Spiritual-Psychological Approach to Counseling Should Value Negative Experiences
and Outcomes including Sorrow, Pain, and Failure
Scientific psychology traditionally measures wellness, happiness, and success.
Science measures positive outcomes that are consistent with the values of the scientist
and, usually, consistent with the values of society (Richards, Rector, & Tjeltveit, p. 146).
People are likely to need spirituality most when they are in the midst of negative
outcomes and when they are outcast. Human life is full of negative outcomes and it ends
in a negative outcome. There are limits to what human beings can control. Van Deurzen
pointed out (1997) that the universe moves in natural cycles in which dark follows light
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and sadness follows happiness, and, then, light and happiness are reborn. Scientific
psychology attempts to interfere with and stop this cycle, by pills if necessary.
People fear failure. In my mid-forties, I concluded that I was a “failure” in at least
some sense of that word. I found that acceptance to be liberating: I felt free of the
judgment of others and proud to fail on my own terms. When I tried to discuss the
“benefits” of failure with two other people, one left the room and the other was visibly
uncomfortable. I have not brought it up again until now. Sooner or later everyone faces
failure and sickness and death. AA has lead the way in recognizing relapse as part of the
human condition. In scientific studies of AA, Humphreys (1999, 2006) concluded that
AA was successful because a significant number of patients did not relapse. If most had
relapsed, the outcome of the study would have been that AA had failed. But another
important question would have been, “Did AA give the patients a sense of meaning,
fellowship, value, encouragement, and direction even when they failed?” At some point
in life, in some way, everyone relapses, not just alcoholics. Some people are more
vulnerable. Some are more sensitive to the pain in the world. Some relapse in more
socially acceptable ways. AA takes the position that human beings can learn from each
relapse and continue to grow.
Concerning the role of suffering in counseling, Rollo May wrote:
A human being will not change his or her personality pattern, when
all is said and done, until forced to do so by suffering. . . .
Suffering is one of the most potentially creative forces in nature. . . .
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A counseling principal arises here: the counselor should not relieve
the counselee of suffering, but rather redirect the suffering into constructive
suffering. (1989a, pp. 123 – 124, italics in original)
Therefore, May thought that if clients left counseling happier, they might be delaying the
transformation they needed to make. It is more important that clients leave counseling
courageous.
The counselor needs to recognize that spiritual health may not always be
evidence-based and may not always match the medical model’s definition of health.
Masters (2005) pointed out that it is not reasonable to expect God’s existence to be
subject to scientific proof; and, if there are miracles, they will almost certainly arise as
statistical outliers, which means they are likely to be statistically insignificant and
discountable. William James observed that sometimes it is necessary to be spiritually
unhealthy in order to become healthy. There are limits to what scientists can measure. If
life is a spiritual journey, the only map for measuring movement is within each individual
soul.
Sorrow is an honorable emotion. It shows that one cares. But contemporary
psychology has made it almost shameful. The DSMV-TR has pathologized sadness and
pain. The pressure to diagnose and treat clients on the basis of their DSMV-TR diagnosis
has reduced the Beatitudes to a catalogue of mental illnesses: Blessed are the meek, for
they suffer from Generalized Anxiety Disorder. They shall receive systematic
desensitization, gradual exposure, and Xanax. Blessed are the poor in spirit. They suffer
from Dysthymic Disorder and they shall receive cognitive-behavioral therapy and Prozac.
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In The Loss of Sadness: How Psychiatry Transformed Normal Sorrow into
Depressive Disorder (2007), Horowitz and Wakefield wrote that modern psychiatry has
inflated normal sorrow into depressive illness because of adoption of a symptom based
definition of depression by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in
1980. Prior editions had taken account of the cause of the sadness in the definition.
Psychiatry had been criticized because different doctors would diagnose the same patient
differently. The American Psychiatric Association responded to this reliability problem
by defining each order according to a list of present symptoms that could be objectively
observed. The current definition makes only one exception for cause: if the patient’s
sadness is due to recent bereavement, the patient is exempt from the diagnosis.
Horowitz and Wakefield argued that sadness has an evolutionary function, which
the present medical attitude discredits. “Sadness traditionally has been viewed as
humanity’s natural response to death of intimates, losses of love, reversals of fortune, and
the like. It arises, as Shelley says, because ‘the world is wrong!’ (Shelley, 1824/1986)”
(Horowitz & Wakefield, 2007, p.26). The authors defined normal sadness as typified by
three characteristics: (1) it is context specific, (2) it is “of roughly proportionate intensity
to the magnitude and permanency of the loss,” and (3) it persists “in accordance with the
contexts and internal coping process. Normal sadness remits when the context changes
for the better or as people adapt to their losses” (pp. 28 – 29).
The authors argued that sadness has these evolutionary, adaptive functions:
attraction of social support; protection from aggression after status loses; and promotion
of disengagement from nonproductive activities (Horowitz & Wakefield, pp. 47 – 50).
They wrote that sadness can result from social problems. “Recognizing the impact of
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social problems on normal human emotions would suggest that correcting these problems
would be an appropriate initial response” (p. 20), rather than pathologizing the client.
The authors point out that the poet W. H. Auden characterized the period after
World War II as the “age of anxiety,” and that anxiety was then a normal response to the
devastation of war and the dawn of the Nuclear age (Horowitz & Wakefield, 2007, p. 3).
They thought that we now live in an age of depression, but, they maintained, there is no
contemporary cause for depression in society. I disagree. There is a lot wrong with the
world today, and individuals are increasingly less isolated from that wrongness. There is
much to grieve if one is sensitive. Today many people have lost their psychological and
spiritual homes; many are lonely. There are more divorces and less stable church
affiliation. In February 2008, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found:
More than one-quarter of American adults (28%) have left the faith in which
they were raised in favor of another religion -- or no religion at all. If change in
affiliation from one type of Protestantism to another is included, roughly 44% of
adults have either switched religious affiliation, moved from being unaffiliated
with any religion to being affiliated with a particular faith, or dropped any
connection to a specific religious tradition altogether. The survey finds that the
number of people who say they are unaffiliated with any particular faith today
(16.1%) is more than double the number who say they were not affiliated with
any particular religion as children. Among Americans ages 18-29, one-in-four say
they are not currently affiliated with any particular religion. (The U.S. Religious
Landscape Survey Reveals a Fluid and Diverse Pattern of Faith, Pew Forum on
Religion and Public Life, 2008)
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Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), developed by Steven Hayes (2004),
is one contemporary theory of counseling that accepts unhappiness and anxiety as normal
parts of life. As a young man, Hayes suffered frequent, disabling panic attacks (Cloud,
2006). No treatment worked until he decided to accept his fearful thoughts and get on
with his life. Hayes maintained that pain is an unavoidable concomitant of human
language, which allows people to remember the past and plan for the future. Humans try
to control their inner and outer worlds. As an automatic part of this process, they judge
whether or not they have succeeded. Human beings have an enormous advantage over
animals when it comes to controlling their outer world, but language does a very poor job
of controlling the inner world. When people try to control their own thoughts, they
usually make matters worse. To use Hayes’s phrase, they turn pain into suffering.
Through mindfulness, ACT clients practice observing their thoughts without
identifying with them. Then, ACT clients explore their values and work to realize those
values in their lives. This value directed work is the “commitment” part of ACT.
Committed action will result in some conflict and pain, but it will give meaning to that
pain. ACT is a form of individual therapy, but I would suppose that the tendency of
language to create inner conflict and pain carries over to the interpersonal world; so, for
example, one might see people as problems to be solved rather than as unique individuals
to be valued and accepted.
In Mindfulness and Acceptance, Hayes wrote under the heading “A Transcendent
Sense of Self:”
It is not realistic to ask clients to experience private events fully and without
defense without providing psychological space within which that is possible. . . .
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Perspective taking is psychologically critical because it forms a direct
experiential basis for human spirituality. (2004, pp. 20 - 21)
By connecting the idea of a “transcendent sense of self” with spirituality, Hayes might
have meant the same thing as Assagioli, that there is a real universal mind with which our
transcendent self can connect. But Hayes did not reference Assagioli; he referenced only
a 1984 article by himself in the journal Behaviorism, entitled Making Sense of
Spirituality (Hayes, 1984). In that article Hayes attempted to define “spirit” and
“spirituality” in ways that are meaningful whether the spirit is real and immortal or
merely metaphorical and mortal. He began by distinguishing human seeing from animal
seeing. “To non-verbal organisms there is just the world and seeing.” But with language
and self-consciousness, “not only seeing but what we might call ‘seeing seeing’ or self-
knowledge” emerges (Hayes, 1984, p. 102). Seeing seeing is not all there is to
consciousness. There is the experience of perspective. Humans not only see and are
aware that they see; humans also see that they see from one particular perspective, a
perspective that seems unchanging and undying. For a person engaging in that awareness,
it is not possible to see that awareness as an object. “It is only experienceable in its
effects” and through “the feelings associated with it. . . . If you were to see your own
perspective (i.e. as an object) from what perspective would you see it? (p. 103) ” In
everyday speech, people sometimes use the word “you” to mean “you as object,” e.g. “I
saw you asleep last night.” But more often, “you as perspective” is the intended meaning.
People experience themselves at age 10 and age 45, as being the same. For a behaviorist
and materialist those apparent facts are, in reality, fiction. Your body has aged; your
knowledge is greater; your heart has been broken ten times. On the surface, you have
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changed in many ways, but “the locus or context of self-knowledge will not and cannot”
change. “While the content of your life may change, you-as-perspective cannot” (p. 104).
If spirit is that part of humans that is not a thing and is experienced as eternal and
unchangeable, you-as-perspective fits that definition.
Hayes is in competition with the cognitive-behavioral model of Aaron Beck. The
efficacy of Beck’s approach has been demonstrated in many studies. Hayes has been busy
conducting studies of his own approach and authoring or co-authoring some 300 peer-
reviewed articles and 27 books (Cloud, 2006). Thus, while Hayes claimed to value
negative experiences, he was in the position of having to prove the effectiveness of ACT
by demonstrating positive outcomes; for example, he has done studies that found that
depressed clients receiving ACT scored lower on a depression scale than those receiving
traditional cognitive therapy and studies showing that drug addicts reported less drug
abuse with ACT than with a 12-step program (Cloud, 2006, p. 63).
The importance that ACT gives to values gives it a depth that traditional
behavioral and cognitive treatments do not have. However, because “it is the client’s
values that direct therapy” (Wilson & Murrel, 2004, p. 140), ACT leaves two important
questions unanswered: Are all values equal and are any values wrong? These are moral
questions and ACT does not consider moral questions.
Since Darwin, when writers claim an evolutionary approach, as did the authors of
The Loss of Sadness, they mean to convey that their approach is not spiritual. Horowitz
and Wakefield did not suggest that sadness has spiritual value. Yet, the evolutionary
approach to psychology is not, itself, evidence based; it is speculative. Scientists cannot
go back hundreds of thousands of years to watch the development of human
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psychological traits. In his reference to a “transcendent sense of self,” Hayes hinted that
he might see a spiritual value to sadness and anxiety, but he did not develop that idea. I
would argue that sadness, anxiety, and psychological pain have the spiritual functions of
enabling people to see their own limitations, bringing them closer to others, and, if there
is a God, bringing them closer to God. Negative experiences can, thereby, aid people’s
spiritual development.
Elio Frattaroli and a Falling Down that is Good
In Healing the Soul in the Age of the Brain: Becoming Conscious in an
Unconscious World, Philadelphia psychiatrist Elio Frattaroli came closest to expressing
my sense of the value of negative outcomes. Frattaroli wrote:
Let me be clear about what I am suggesting here. I believe that humans
possess a spiritual as well as a physical dimension, and that there are very real
differences between brain, mind, and soul. I think of the soul as the experiencing
self, the “I,” an ineffable whole that integrates processes happening at four
different levels of experience – body, brain, mind, and spirit. In this I disagree
radically with the vast majority of psychiatrists today, who are so entranced with
the powers of modern medication that they concern themselves with symptoms
rather than souls, treating the chemically imbalanced brain but ignoring the
experiencing self. (Frattaroli, 2001, p. 6)
Frattaroli contended that there is “no evidence whatsoever to support” the
assertions of many contemporary psychologists that the mind is entirely a physical
phenomenon and that mental illnesses are solely a matter of chemical changes in the
brain. If the mind is a computer, he wondered, who is sitting at the controls? He wrote:
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They [materialistic assertions] are not statements of scientific fact but
rather articles of quasi-religious faith cloaked in the language of science. No
philosopher, scientist, or psychiatrist ever pretends to have any idea how brain
processes could possibly produce the mysterious and ineffable experience of
human consciousness. Yet the belief that “brain . . . creates ‘mind’” – and the
general philosophy of “scientific materialism” it reflects – is so strongly held by
so many scientists nowadays that it is considered unscientific even to question
it. . . .
[T]here is no logical or scientific reason not to assume that the soul
is a distinct entity, rooted in the brain and dependent on it for consciousness
just as a tree is rooted in the soil and dependent on it for life. If we think of
the soul as the place where experiencing happens, then brain processes would
be a necessary condition (like soil for a tree), but not a sufficient cause, for that
experiencing. For mental illness, this would mean that what goes on at the level
of the brain can never account fully for the illness as it is experienced at the
level of the person; and that even though medication is often quite helpful,
it is never a sufficient treatment for an inner crisis of the soul. . . .
Mental illness cannot be just a chemical imbalance in the brain.
Rather it is a disharmony of body, brain, mind, and spirit within the whole
person: an inner conflict of the soul. Such a disharmony may include
a chemical imbalance in the brain as one of its elements, but the chemical
imbalance itself is not the mental illness, nor does it cause the mental
illness. (Frattaroli, 2001, pp. 8 - 9, italics in original)
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Frattaroli believed that psychiatrists and general practitioners are over prescribing
psychoactive medications and that they often prescribe medications with no talk therapy.
Frattaroli thought of the practice of psychiatry as “healing the soul.”
Healing the soul requires a growth-enhancing personal encounter with
another human being in a psychotherapeutic process. It requires what
Martin Buber called an I-Thou relationship – a “personal making present,”
in which one person recognizes the unique individuality of another, and
the other flourishes in being so recognized. Unfortunately, with the advent
of cosmetic psychopharmacology and managed care, too few psychiatrists
remember, if they ever knew, what a psychotherapeutic process is, and too
few patients realize that healing the soul through an I-Thou relationship
with their physician is a potential treatment option that is no longer being
offered them. In the Age of the Brain, psychiatric treatment has been reduced
to an exclusively I-It relationship, in which patients are objectified, diagnosed
as “cases,” equated with their brains (and genes), and treated according
to standards of statistical science rather than of personal knowledge.
(Frattaroli, 2001, p. 12, italics in original)
Frattaroli thought that psychological pain usually results from inner conflict and
that most inner conflict is moral. Anxiety results from trying to remain unaware of shame
and guilt. Frattaroli called the process of making one’s anxiety, shame, and guilt
conscious “listening to the soul.” It is primarily from becoming aware of our feelings, not
from our thinking, that “we discover who we really are” (p. 19).
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The Medical Model . . . contributes greatly to this problem by catering to
our fear of consciousness. It teaches us to think of anxiety, shame, and
guilt as meaningless neurological glitches, and not as urgent calls to
self-reflection. . . . [I]t promotes the pharmacological quick fix, neglecting
the deepest long-term needs of the soul. (Frattaroli, 2001, p.24)
To illustrate the value of negative outcomes, Frattaroli told of teaching his son to
ride a bike. He and his son had tried to learn without falling down. His son had not
learned. The next day, Frattaroli came home from work to find his son riding his bike.
His son’s friend had told him that to ride a two-wheeler, the first thing he had to do was
fall down a lot. He and his son had assumed that “falling down is bad.” His son had
finally learned how to ride a bike when he made the opposite assumption that “falling
down is good.” Frattaroli compared this outlook to what he called the “swimming pool
philosophy,” which values staying afloat and functioning smoothly without bumping into
other swimmers or the walls. If you do not know how to swim and cannot stay afloat,
falling into a swimming pool is bad. Frattaroli concluded that sometimes falling down is
bad and sometimes falling down is good. He called the falling down is good outlook “the
quest philosophy” (Frattaroli, 2001, pp. 108 - 109).
The quest is an adventurous seeking of a better state. According to the
quest philosophy, the purpose of life is to pursue this higher state –
enlightenment, wisdom, self-actualization – by progressing through
a series of difficult, dangerous trials. The successful mastery of each
trial brings the seeker to the next level in his or her gradual assent
toward the ultimate goal, which, though it may be un-attainable, is
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inherently worth pursuing. But the process of undergoing a trial
inevitably involves some error. You can’t find your way to a higher
level without learning from your missteps. Falling down is therefore
good. (Frattaroli, 2001, p. 110)
Frattaroli believed that the soul needs this quest the way a tree’s roots need water
and good soil. He praised Erikson’s stages of life as coming close to articulating the need
to integrate “emotional equilibrium and social adjustment” with “our larger need for self-
actualization through the struggles of the quest. . . . The one limitation of Erikson’s
theory is that it doesn’t explicitly address the mind-body question – how the neurological
and the spiritual are integrated in human nature” (Frattaroli, 2001, p. 117).
Frattaroli did not include experimental or quantitative data. He discussed his own
experiences and he gave case histories from his practice. Frattaroli had treated a young
woman, Anne, who became suicidally depressed after being raped while in her first year
at college, and, three years later, he also treated her father, Joe, for depression. As
Frattaroli talked with Anne, he found that she was trying to keep up a false image of
herself, a “False-Self.” The rape had shattered her conformist image of a good girl and a
strong woman. She had been good and strong and she had still been hurt. She felt her
parents and society would never accept her. Her depression represented a loss of identity
(a falling down that was bad), and it was an attempt to find a new identity, a genuine
identify (a falling down that was good). When Anne was first hospitalized for depression
she did not inform Frattaroli or her parents of the rape. Her parents did not believe in
mental illness: “As they saw it, being depressed was simply an excuse for being weak
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. . . . They prided themselves on being able to suppress or ignore all painful emotions. . . .
They. . .became openly skeptical of my ‘talk therapy’” (Frattaroli, 2001, p. 122). When
Anne finally told her parents about the rape, they did not blame her, but they still
expected her to be strong, and her father repeatedly preached to her about the necessity of
being tough. Frattaroli was able to support Anne in objecting out loud to her father’s
lectures.
Anne’s depression was the inner result of unexpressed anger and rebellion against
her false self and against her parents and society for whom she had worn a mask. “[I]n
her pain she could recognize the sound of her innermost being crying out for something
more real, more genuinely hers, to care about and live for” (Frattaroli, 2001, p. 119). In
confronting her father, Anne was able to make her unconscious rebellion conscious.
Eventually, after many months, Anne was able to integrate what she valued in her parents
with her own unique self.
Three years after Frattaroli saw Anne for the last time, he received a call from her
father, Joe. Joe was suffering a severe clinical depression and he was unhappy with his
job as an accountant. Frattaroli prescribed an antidepressant to help Joe function. Then
Frattaroli and Joe began to talk. Joe did not like being an accountant. He liked
woodworking, but he had been afraid that if he went into the handyman business on his
own, he would fail and displease his parents. Joe decided to take the chance. He opened a
shop, and he discovered that he liked the work just as much as he had thought he would.
His customers liked his work, too; his depression disappeared; and he was able to
discontinue the antidepressant. Frattaroli concluded:
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I believe that our choice between two models of psychiatry is really
a choice between two competing sets of moral values that will ultimately
determine the kind of society we live in. One is the Psychotherapeutic
Model’s ideal of healing the soul with its values of self-awareness,
autonomy, personal growth, an I-Thou spirit of love, respect, and
compassion for others, and an acceptance of moral responsibility
for our own egoistic impulses and emotions. The other is the Medical
Model’s ideal of the quick fix, with its swimming pool values of
stability and conformity, and an I-It orientation toward material success
and other superficial addictive pleasures. (Frattaroli, 2001, p. 403)
Frattaroli thought that the medical model is often part of the answer, but that it is
rarely or never the complete answer. He thought that therapy for the soul and therapy for
the material mind were complementary in the sense that wave theory and particle theory
are both correct views of subatomic reality, even though they appear to contradict each
other. In subatomic physics, how one chooses to view reality “collapses the function” and
determines present reality. Frattaroli wished psychiatrists to be aware that how they are
choosing to view reality is determining their reality and, to some extent, the reality of
their clients. Frattaroli’s point is that even though the spiritual view of reality and the
material view may appear to contradict each other, they can co-exist and support each
other, rather than denying each other. If a therapist chooses to view reality in this way,
then the medical and the spiritual models are additive; each contributes something
distinct to the client’s possibilities.
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I smiled when I read that Frattaroli’s editor frequently asked him to be less wordy
and polemical. My advisor has had occasion to ask me the same.
The Meaning of Pain
In The Problem of Pain (1940), C. S. Lewis (1898 – 1963) wrote that pain and
evil are natural concomitants of physical existence and of free will, and are unavoidable
in this life. He thought that psychological pain is sometimes God’s way of telling us that
our actions are morally wrong, like thorned buoys in a river guiding us back to the right
course. When he wrote The Problem of Pain, Lewis was 42 and had never been married.
In 1956, he married Joy Davidman, who died of bone cancer in 1960. He then adopted
her two sons and wrote The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe for them. The motion
picture Shadowlands (1993) portrays this part of Lewis's life. At the end, Anthony
Hopkins, who portrays Lewis, says, "Why love, if losing hurts so much? Twice in my life
I’ve been given the choice: as a boy and as a man. The boy chose safety. The man
chooses suffering.”
Moral direction cannot be the meaning of physical disease and physical pain,
which often strike randomly and unfairly. When one’s body is in pain, and God does not
answer one’s prayer, it can be hard to believe in a kind God or in a spiritual reality.
Nonetheless, Lewis argued that it can be even harder “to turn our thoughts to God when
everything is going well for us” (Lewis, 1940, p. 94); pain is sometimes necessary to
shatter our “false self-sufficiency” (p. 101). It may be very difficult to grow spiritually
when one is successful and happy and well. One sees no reason to change.
In the remarkable children’s book Tuck Everlasting (2000), Natalie Babbitt
convincingly dramatized two aspects of life. If human beings are to live forever in the
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material world, they must stop changing. If they stop changing, they will also stop
developing and learning. After much consideration, the protagonists of the novel chose to
continue to change, and thus chose inevitable disease and death.
Humans may choose to be born. In her near-death experience Betty Edie was told
that we each choose life and that God does not judge us; we judge ourselves (Eadie,
1992). At the level of existence where the human spirit is eternal, humans may not be
able to learn and change, or they may learn different things in different ways. People may
choose to be born because they can learn and develop faster at the material level of
existence due to the urgency of time. The urgency of time may also make mortal love
more intense. Because of pain and death, people can also learn empathy for others in a
way that would not be possible in the purely spiritual realm.
Buddhism has the concept of bodhisattvas: people who have developed spiritually
enough so that they do not need to be reborn; nevertheless, they choose to go back and re-
enter the world of pain out of love for others. Some people appear to me to be spiritually
more developed than others. I have observed remarkable differences in wisdom and
kindness even in very young children. These differences appear greater than could be
accounted for by good genes or training: they seem to come from a depth of experience
that precedes this life, as Plato thought. These explanations do not address Darwin’s
concern for the pain of animals. It may be, as Hindus believe, that the spirits of animals
are also eternal, and that their pain in this world is a necessary concomitant of material
existence but only temporary.
One goal of spiritual-psychological counseling, as I envision it, is the client’s
spiritual and psychological growth across the entire life span, as opposed to adjustment to
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current circumstances. Maslow pointed out that continued growth is often risky and
painful (Frick, 1971). When people have the courage to try to expand their personal and
spiritual horizons, they run the risk of failing. Failure can offer more opportunities to
learn than success. Sadness offers more opportunities to empathize with others than
happiness.
From an eternal, spiritual perspective, happiness is important, as May indicated,
because if one is not happy, it is difficult to make others happy. Neither colleagues nor
clients would want to be around a gloomy counselor. A counselor’s genuine smile is part
of the warmth clients welcome that brings them back. Frankl (1959) wrote that there is
only one pathway to happiness in this life: to transcend oneself through work for others.
Frankl could feel some personal happiness amidst the horrors of Auschwitz by doing
little things to help lessen the day’s pain for others. But the pain did not go away, and
Frankl must have felt great sorrow, at the same time that he was experiencing small
happiness. Western thinking tends to see things as all or nothing: one must be either
happy or sad (Hardy & Laszloffy, 2002). One goal of spiritual counseling would be to
expand one’s capacity so as to feel both happiness and sadness at the same time and to
value both. This capacity might be characterized by Alice Miller’s term: “vitality.”
Illness and pain can interfere with one’s ability to transcend self. Some people
turn pain into bitterness. Instead of becoming softer, they harden. Some are exhausted
from pain. But some do not harden or give up; they persevere with a generous smile,
which may be encouraged by faith. A friend and fellow student, who was having trouble
with school, said to me, “Life is often hard. I think that the true measure of our character
is how we handle the parts that are hard” (personal communication, 2008, used with
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permission).
The next chapter will examine the spiritual value of creativity, conflict, and
immorality.
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CHAPTER XI
THE SPIRITUAL VALUE OF CREATIVITY, CONFLICT AND IMMORALITY
It is my position that a spiritual-psychological approach to counseling should
value creativity, constructive conflict and anger, healthy revolution, justice, moral
deliberations, knowledge and truth.
Creativity
Rollo May thought that creativity is a sign of mental and spiritual health even
though it often results from suffering. People are creative when they express their true-
selves authentically (May, 1989a). Stendhal wrote the novel The Red and The Black
(1830) to demonstrate that it is not possible to be both creative and happy. If one thinks
creatively, one imagines alternatives and asks questions. The title referred to the red
uniforms favored by officers of the French cavalry and the black cassocks of church
priests: the two forces most likely to dislike questions. The hero tried both roles and
several others, all unhappily.
Constructive Conflict
Conflict can be positive and constructive or negative and debilitating. If
negative, it “can rigidify the social and cultural system in which the conflict takes place,
and it can lead to a host of other distortions, polarities, and additional conflicts” (Kellett
& Dalton, 2001, p. 10). Constructive conflict, on the other hand, can increase creativity
and deepen understanding of oneself and others, by drawing out alternative perspectives.
Kellett and Dalton took the position that total peace is not a realistic goal,
in the world or in the family, but that peace-making is, nonetheless, a worthwhile pursuit.
Peacemakers promote understanding through dialogue, in which the participants “learn to
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speak from a ‘we’ perspective, as opposed to an ‘I versus you’ position’” (2001, p. 9).
Dialogue is rare because people fear conflict and suppress it within and without (Kellett
and Dalton, p. 11). Freud’s defense mechanisms are an example of the inner suppression
of conflict. Society begins to suppress dissent from an early age in the schools (Frick;
Rogers). Suppression of unpopular opinion continues to be common in adult society, so
that “we all tend to experience a world consisting of the results of compromises,
avoidance, and aggressions” (p. 11). If peace is gained by suppression within or
oppression without, it is not healthy for the individual or society; the conflict will re-
emerge as illness or violence or both. Frattaroli (2001) took the position that inner moral
conflict is a necessary precursor to growth of the soul. If one cares about others and has
values, one will come into conflict with others. If one acts on this conflict, one becomes a
revolutionary.
Revolution
Jesus was a healthy rebel. He did not ask his disciples if they were
happy or well adjusted. Sadly, when the Christian “heresy” gained political power,
further questioning was condemned (Fromm, 1963). Frick (1971) and Rogers (1977)
wrote that the school system, from kindergarten through graduate school, values control,
order, and obedience, and that critical questioning is discouraged by fear and
intimidation. Psychiatrist Robert Linder (1944, 1952, 1956) wrote that Freud, and many
other psychologists, valued adjustment above all. Linder believed that society itself is
sick, and that anyone who adjusts to society becomes sick. James Hillman (1989), Erik
Fromm, Viktor Frankl (1959), and feminist psychologists have concurred in the judgment
that contemporary society can make people depressed and anxious. Linder and Fromm
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believed that, in order to be mentally healthy, people needed to become healthy
revolutionaries. Zimbardo (2007) recommended that people practice saying “No” to
authority and that they leave any group that does not support their independence of
thought. He asked people to imagine standing trail in the future for their every present
action, at a time when they will not be allowed the defense that everyone was doing it or
that they were following orders. Some of the most significant leaders of the 20
th
Century
have been spiritual revolutionaries: Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Bishop Tutu, and the
14
th
Dalai Lama.
Anger and Justice
If one’s values come into conflict with the values of others, one will feel anger. In
Couple Therapy Using a Multicultural Perspective, Hardy and Laszloffy wrote:
Because we believe that rage is a natural response to pain and injustice,
it is never our intention to work toward the elimination of rage. Rather, we
strive to rechannel it. We encourage clients to identify their rage and explore the
underlying roots of it. We also support clients in expressing their rage directly,
although always nonviolently. Other related emotions (e.g. grief, pain, fear, and
shame) may also be explored; we draw attention to how these are often tied to
rage. Finally, we invite clients to consider ways that they can harness their rage
and make it work for, rather than against them. (2002, p. 585)
Tavis warned that if people extinguished their anger completely they would lose
"all sense of caring about community or hope of change" (1982, p. 252). She thought that
people should preserve the ability to feel righteous anger against social and personal
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injustice, but that it is difficult to distinguish righteous anger from destructive anger.
Tavis concluded:
The moral use of anger, I believe, requires an awareness of choice
and an embrace of reason. It is knowing when to become angry -- "this is wrong,
this I will protest" -- and when to make peace; when to take action, and when to
keep silent; knowing the likely cause of one's anger and not berating the
blameless. For most of the small indignities of life, the best remedy is a Charlie
Chaplin movie. For the large indignities, fight back. And learn the difference.
(Tavis, 1982, p. 253)
When people repress and deny their rage, it is likely to come out in other ways
that damage others. Such clients may need help in identifying and expressing their anger.
Hardy and Laszloffy also believed in the “transparency of therapists” (p. 579). Anger
may be an issue concerning which I need to be transparent. In my judgment, I have often
been too quick to anger. The result has always been that I have hurt someone else, and I
have hurt myself. For a while, I tried to become an unangry person. I tried to drop anger
in the same way I had quit smoking. When I felt the urge, I did not give in. I waited for it
to pass. I went for several years without getting angry once. Sometimes my old rage leaks
through, but that is now rare. For me anger almost always masked sadness, including the
sadness of being in a career I did not like. I have tried to go directly to the sadness.
Wilmot and Hocker, on the other hand, thought that anger usually results from fear
(2007). All my relationships have benefited from my becoming a less angry person.
Nonetheless, it is important, I think, as Hardy and Laszloffy wrote, not to loose touch
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with one’s anger. I try to use my anger to remind me when something is wrong. Then I
try to identify what is wrong and work on it.
Despite all these noble sounding sentiments, I have lost my temper twice in the
past year. Both times I was exhausted and afraid. I injured no one. I displayed it by
rudeness. As an Intern, I now lead an Anger Management Group. I tell the clients that I
designed this program because I thought I had an anger problem. I had attended an anger
management group and, although I had learned a lot, I thought I could do better; so I
designed a 12 week group in my Group class. I tell my clients I am still learning and
perhaps they can teach me something.
Ultimately, I came to the conclusion that being in touch with one’s anger is as
important as learning to regulate it and express it in non-destructive ways. I think that if
people, including me, lose track of their anger or deny it completely, they will lose one
way in which their true-selves gain important feedback from the world. For me, anger is
one of May's dialectic dimensions in which I seem to move a little too far in one
direction; then adjust and move a little too far in the other. If May is correct that the
underlying nature of existence is dialectic, I will continue to experience anger in this way
for the rest of my life.
I am glad that I no longer tend to express anger destructively. Carl Rogers thought
that if people were truly in touch with their feelings, they could feel anger without being
destructive. Rogers expressly rejected Skinner's ideal of a person who is "happy,
informed, skillful, well-behaved, and productive" (Skinner, 1955-56, p, 47). Rogers's
ideal was a client who can feel the entire range of emotion. He wrote:
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It seems to me that clients who have moved significantly in therapy live
more intimately with their feelings of pain, but also more vividly with
their feelings of ecstasy; their anger is more clearly felt, but so also is love;
that fear is an experience they know more deeply, but so is courage.
And the reason they can thus live fully in a wider range is that they
have the underlying confidence in themselves as trustworthy
instruments for encountering life. (Rogers, 1961, p. 195)
Concerning his own anger, Rogers wrote: "I find it difficult to be easily or quickly aware
of angry feelings in myself. I deplore this; am slowly learning in this respect" (Rogers,
1970, p. 54).
Knowledge, Experience, Truth, and the Client’s True-Self
Human knowledge should include, as Prothero urged in Religious Literacy: What
Every American Needs to Know (2007), the continuing pursuit of spiritual knowledge. I
think that spiritual knowledge should be taught and learned critically; that is, it should be
appreciated and evaluated in the same way as all other types of knowledge. I advocate
critically examining the basis of one’s own beliefs, as well as the beliefs of others.
Spiritual knowledge is not identical to scientific knowledge: it can come from experience
as Plato argued, or from intuition, as Assagioli sensed, or from an inner feeling, as Lewis
felt. One criticism I have of Lewis is that, once he became a Christian, he ceased to be a
critical reader. He accepted all Christian texts as completely and literally true without
examining inconsistencies within them.
Theologian Fowler (2000, 1991, 1981) and educator Tisdell (2003) thought that
people develop spiritually more rapidly when they get away from home and are exposed
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to other religions, cultures, and ideas, even though this experience is likely to be
uncomfortable.
If one’s personal truth has been oppressed, one will feel righteous anger. When
parents, society, and schools have collaborated in suppressing that inner truth, people
may conform without being aware that they are obeying. They may not know that their
true-self is different from their mask.
One of the obligations of a spiritual-psychological counselor is to see the client’s
true-self and re-parent it. Counselors can do this by exercising advanced, additive
empathy, by providing the positive mirroring that the client has been denied, and by
loving the client with the non-possessive agape that Rogers and Tillich spoke of.
Moral Deliberations & Outcomes
Frattoroli (2001) thought shame, guilt, and anxiety are valuable because they are
signs of inner moral conflict. He thought that making this conflict conscious in therapy
was a moral choice. He wrote that one danger of Prozac and other psychotropic drugs is
that they can make clients feel better without their undertaking inner moral change.
At times Carl Rogers appeared to deny, or overlook, the existence of evil in
individuals and societies; for example, he acted as a facilitator of encounter groups of
blacks and whites in South Africa when apartheid was still in effect. His
accomplishments suggest that as a counselor with spiritual concerns, I can approach
individuals and groups with a presumption of underlying goodness. Nonetheless, I
hypothesize, as did Plato, that among individuals evil occurs in a natural distribution; in
other words, some people are better, some are worse, and a very few, the statistical
outliers, are saints and monsters.
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Existentialist Psychology's View of Good and Evil
Existentialist psychologists do acknowledge the reality and significance of good
and evil. Existentialists are more awake to human darkness and, thus, may be more ready
to help clients face their own dark places and help them begin to move toward the light.
They come close to acknowledging that life does not always work. They are the only
mainstream approach to psychotherapy that recognizes the importance of time in the
material dimension of existence.
Existentialists recognize good and evil, but most do not offer a basis for defining
either. May is the exception. He says that without God we do not have any basis external
to ourselves for a moral code; and therefore, without God we would be free to do as we
chose. May does not, however, spell out what he thinks God's moral code is or how
humans are supposed to apprehend it. May thought that immorality is important as one
end of the moral dialectic and that is it necessary to spiritual learning that people
sometimes act immorally. Human beings do not need to fear immorality because it is
mortal, while good is immortal (May, 1989, 1940).
Evolutionary Psychology's View of Morality
Evolutionary psychology is a recent attempt to explain human goodness from a
purely scientific basis. Darwinian evolution posits survival of the fittest. A genetic trait
increases in the population if that trait increases the probability that an individual will
survive and pass down his or her genes to future generations. Traits will decrease and
eventually disappear if they decrease an individual's chance of survival. So how did
altruism evolve and why has it not died out? If one sacrifices one's food, or shelter, or life
for another, it is the other person's genes that are more likely to be passed down, not the
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genes of the sacrificer. E.O. Wilson, a scientific humanist and the originator of
sociobiology, a precursor to evolutionary psychology, framed the problem thus: "Fallen
heroes do not have children" (1978). Evolutionary psychologists have two explanations
of inherited altruism: kin selection and reciprocity (Myers, 2002, pp. 478 - 481). Kin
selection means that not just a person's individual genes, but also the genes of one's kin
are passed down to future generations. So if a mother sacrifices her life for a son, the son
will pass down half of her genes, and, because he is young, he will be more likely to pass
down those genes through his progeny than she will be to pass down her genes through
additional direct progeny of her own. Thus, a family of self-sacrificers might win out in
the evolutionary competition against a family of selfish non-sacrificers. In 1964, William
D. Hamilton proposed Hamilton's rule, which is "cost < relatedness x benefit." This
means that altruism can evolve so long as the fitness cost of the altruistic act to the actor
is less than the degree of genetic relatedness of the recipient times the benefit to that
recipient (Judson, 2007; Evolutionary Psychology, Wikipedia, 2006). Kin selection does
not apply to groups larger than the family, because the effects would quickly dissipate as
the group grew, and group members outside the family would not contain any of the
genes to be passed down. In other words, from the point of view of Hamilton's rule, the
odds are against altruism from the start.
Evolutionary biologist Stephen Gould, arguing against biological determinism,
wrote that regardless of how traits may be acquired genetically, humans are characterized
by an enormous adaptive capacity to learn to behave differently. Rather than blaming
human violence on Upper Paleolithic hunter ancestors, people can learn to be kinder now
(Gould, 1974b & c). Gould's statement highlights one limitation of the evolutionary view
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of psychology: it conceives of humans as having already evolved, and not as continuing
to evolve, as did Jung. From Gould's point of view, humans must make the best of what
they are. From Jung's point of view, humans can change who they are for the better.
Reciprocity means that if one person helps another, that person expects to be
helped in return. If two people help each other, both are more likely to survive and pass
down their genes than are selfish loners. Reciprocity works best in small groups. It has
been scientifically measured by social psychologists. The people of the Cook Islands of
the South Pacific are in fact more willing to help each other than the people of New York
City (Myers, p. 480). So tribes in which reciprocity was the rule might win out over
selfish tribes. But it seems to me that the small kind tribes would eventually be wiped out
by the big warlike ones.
Group selection of altruism. I agree with Peck and Zimbardo that evil is more
likely to emerge under the influence of group thinking. For example, President Andrew
Jackson exiled the Cherokees from their home in North Carolina to Oklahoma (then
called the "Indian Territories"). They had to walk, and many died on the way. To this
day, many Cherokees think of Jackson as an evil man. Jackson could act as he did, and
still sleep at night, because he and the other members of his in-group, Euro-Americans,
saw the out-group as being different and of less value. If Jackson had slaughtered a
community of white settlers in the same fashion he slaughtered several tribes of Native
Americans, or if he has killed his own adopted Indian son in bed, those settlers would
also have seen him as a monster instead of electing him President twice. Today, everyone
would see him as a monster, not just the Cherokees. In the Second World War, the
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Germans and the Japanese committed atrocities against other groups. Both believed that
they were members of a superior race.
Ironically, this group tendency toward racism and xenophobia may have evolved
in tandem with generosity and kindness. Kirkpatrick (1999) thought religion and in-group
morality may have evolved in part because of out-group savagery. People not only valued
warriors but also leaders who could make them feel loved and safe at home after the
battle was won. Groups with high cohesion would have an advantage in war. High
cohesion would be encouraged by kindness and conformity. Thus groups whose altruistic
members were kind to other members might win more wars and pass down more genes
than unkind groups with selfish members.
According to Judson (2007), evolutionists once thought that group selection was
too inefficient a process to result in evolved traits. However, recent studies have shown
that in the Pleistocene Epoch, from 100,000 B.C.E. to 10,000 B.C.E., perhaps 15 percent
of human deaths were accounted for by inter-group wars, and this could have
“represented a significant source of natural selection” (Judson, p. 96). Frequent, lethal
warring between groups of humans may have caused some individuals to evolve to be
more helpful and kind to each other. The same process resulted in what Judson, like
Gould, deemed to be the most important trait of human beings: flexibility. This flexibility
“suggests that we can, in principle, organize society so as to bring out the best facets of
our complex, evolved natures” (Judson, p. 98). If humans have evolved to be capable of
kindness and self-sacrifice on behalf of others within their in-group, they have also
developed the capacity to identify with members of out-groups and to choose to extend to
them the same kindness. This identification can be acquired from experience and
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education. Of the two capacities, love and war, it appears to me that the capacity to love
has made gradual gains in my lifetime. From an evolutionary perspective, wining the war
was the point. From a spiritual perspective, the point is to learn to extend in-group
kindness to out groups. To facilitate this, spiritual-psychological counseling must value
all people equally.
Altruism is an odd characteristic to result from evolution. It is completely lacking
in some people, very strong in others, and found in varying degrees in the rest. The only
other characteristic, that comes to mind, that is similarly distributed in the human
population is musical ability. These may also be the two characteristics that have
developed the most in the 4,000 years of recorded history. The ability to hear harmonic
structure, as opposed to melodic line, appears to have evolved only recently. Harmonic
music first occurs in the 15th or 16th Century, and only in certain parts of the world
(R. A. Johnson, 1991a, p. 105).
C. S. Lewis's View of Morality
Kant and C. S. Lewis thought that morality is built into us as part of the design of
the universe. If that is so, then a person cannot be mentally well and morally ill. If a
person is immoral, then from the perspective of spiritual psychology, he or she will be
incongruent with the design of the universe and will feel and act sick in some way.
Although morality is a condition of mental health, contemporary psychiatry and
cognitive-behaviorist psychology are materialistic and amoral. The humanists Rogers and
Maslow were prone to what van Deurzen called "wishful thinking," because they did not
consider both good and evil.
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Whether or not kindness is an evolved trait that we inherited from our ancestors,
C. S. Lewis thought that we also inherited it from God. Lewis wrote that altruism is
prompted by an inner voice that tells us when we have done wrong. This inner voice, he
thought, is a hint to the meaning of the universe. Writing in England in 1952, Lewis said
that this law is apparent to everyone. If it were not, "then all the things we said about the
war were nonsense. What was the sense in saying the enemy were in the wrong unless
Right is a real thing which the Nazis at bottom knew as well as we did and ought to have
practiced?" (Lewis, 1952, p. 5). Although there has been some moral development and
improvement, Lewis thinks that the moral teachings of all times and all religions are very
similar. A few people have no inner moral sense, just as some people "have no ear for a
tune;" but taking the human race as a whole, the idea of decent behavior is apparent to
almost all (Lewis,p. 5). Morality is nowhere considered a matter of mere taste or opinion.
That inner moral law has validity independent of us, but, Lewis observed, none of us is
keeping the law. Every day we fail to practice what we expect from others. We take
credit for the good we do and make excuses for the bad. Those excuses, Lewis believed,
are further evidence of the independent validity of the moral law. The law tells us to do
things we do not want to do. The moral law is not an instinct; it tells the instincts how to
act. Sometimes we are not fair; sometimes we are not unselfish; but we ought to be and
we know it. From the beginning of history, Lewis wrote, there have been two different
views of the meaning of life and of the universe. The first is the materialist view: that
people and the universe just happened by chance. The second is the religious view: that
there is a conscious purpose, something like a mind, behind the universe, and that that
mind prefers some things and does not prefer others. You cannot find out which view is
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correct by science. Science makes observations concerning objects in the material
universe. "But why anything comes to be there at all, and whether there is anything
behind the things science observes -- something of a different kind -- this is not a
scientific question" (Lewis, p. 23). If there is something behind the universe, something
in the nature of a mind, then it is going to have to make itself known to human beings in a
different way. In answering the question, "What, if anything, is behind the universe?"
humans are limited to external observation of everything except themselves. But we are
not limited to external observation of humans. We are humans. We are in the inside. And
from that privileged position we know that humans "find themselves under a moral law,
which they did not make, and cannot quite forget even when they try, and which they
know they ought to obey" (Lewis, p. 23). If we were only observing humans from the
outside, as some materialistic psychologists do, especially the behaviorists, we would not
know of the existence of this moral law. We want to know if the universe just happens or
if there is some power and meaning behind it. We cannot look behind stones or inside of
the stars. "There is only one case in which we can know whether there is anything more,
namely our own case. And in that one case, we find out there is. If there were a power, a
mind, behind the universe, there is only one way we would expect it to show itself, that
is, "inside ourselves as an influence or a command trying to get us to behave in a certain
way. And that is just what we do find inside ourselves" (Lewis, p. 24). When I look
inside myself, Lewis wrote, "I find that I do not exist on my own, that I am under a law;
that somebody or something wants me to behave in a certain way" (Lewis, p. 25).
Lewis might be criticized for finding just what he wanted to find. Durant had said
of Aristotle that he “supposes that thought begins with premises and seeks their
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conclusions, when actually thought begins with hypothetical conclusions and seeks their
justifying premises, -- and seeks them best by the observation of particular events under
the controlled and isolated conditions of an experiment” (Durant, 1926, pp. 101 – 102).
Lewis conducted no experiments. He was not a scientist or a historian. He was a widely
read professor of English literature. Lewis started with the conclusion that he found an
inner moral law written inside of himself. In The Abolition of Man (1947), he wrote:
Until quite modern times all teachers and even all men believed the
universe to be such that certain emotional reactions on our part could
be either congruous or incongruous to it – believed, in fact, that objects
did not merely receive, but could merit, our approval or disapproval. . . .
This conception in all its forms, Platonic, Aristotelian, Stoic, Christian,
and Oriental alike, I shall henceforth refer to for brevity simply as ‘the
Tao.’. . . It is the doctrine of objective value, the belief that certain
attitudes are really true, and others really false, to the kind of thing the
universe is and the kind of things we are.
(Lewis, 1947, pp. 25, 28 – 29, italics in original)
One cannot arrive at the Tao through instinct or through reason. One cannot arrive
at the principles of the Tao “as conclusions: they are premises” (Lewis, 1947, p. 53).
Lewis continued:
This thing which I have called for convenience the Tao, and which others
may call Natural Law or Traditional Morality . . . is not one among
a series of possible systems of value. It is the sole source of all
value judgments. (Lewis, 1947, p. 56)
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Lewis thought that this natural law allowed for some development, so long as that
development was in the same spirit (Lewis, 1947, p. 58 - 59). He thought that there had
been improvements in the natural law over the course of human history, but that these
improvements had been small. He wanted to know if people had found the same inner
law in different civilizations throughout history. So he conducted qualitative research,
much like the review of literature that William James conducted in writing The Varieties
of Religious Experience (1902/2004). Lewis reported his findings in the Appendix to The
Abolition of Man (1947).
Lewis began the Appendix by writing that this list “makes no pretense of
completeness. . . . I am not trying to prove its validity by the argument from common
consent. Its validity cannot be deduced” (Lewis, 1947, p. 95). By that, I think he meant
that one either feels the validity of the Natural Law in one’s bones and heart, or one does
not. He then gave negative (thou shalt not’s) and positive (thou shalt’s) instances of the
natural law in the following areas: the law of general beneficence; the law of special
beneficence; duties to parents, elders, and ancestors; duties to children and posterity; the
laws of justice; the law of good faith and veracity; the law of mercy; the law of
magnanimity. He quoted sources from ancient and contemporary Egypt, Babylon,
Chinese, Rome, Australian Aborigines Greece, and Jewish, Anglo-Saxon and Hindu
texts. They were all remarkably similar.
In Rogers’s experience, people possess an inborn tendency to develop in healthy,
prosocial ways. Rogers saw his clients under conditions of absolute safety and
unconditional positive regard. Rogers called it a "growth promoting climate"
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(1964, p. 183), comparable perhaps to a greenhouse. What happens after the clients leave
Rogers’s office? When plants are removed from a greenhouse, many but the most hardy
fail to thrive. Peck pointed out that people are most likely to commit evil acts when they
are under stress. He wrote: "Stress is the test of goodness. . . . One measure -- and
perhaps the best measure -- of a person's greatness is the capacity for suffering" (1983,
p. 222).
The opening sentence of Peck's The Road Less Traveled is: "Life is difficult"
(Peck, 1978, p. 15). That book was intended to provide its readers with a spiritual
approach to dealing with that fact. If life is a "test of goodness" some have thought that
there must be a test administrator and that that administrator is God, as portrayed in the
Old Testament story of Job. Some religions take the view that those who pass this "test of
goodness" are rewarded in heaven. By comparison, Buddhism takes the attitude that
people cannot control most events, including whether or not there is a heaven or a God,
but they can control their response to events and possibilities. Buddha taught that by the
attitude one takes to one's suffering, one could remove one’s self from it. The cause of
suffering is selfish desire. The cure is self-less desire for the welfare of all. Those who
attain that state will still feel pain, but they will escape suffering (Smith, 1986,
pp. 152 -- 153). A good life is rewarded not with heaven, but with escaping the cycle of
birth and re-birth, and arriving at nirvana, which is a state of mind more than a place.
Nirvana is sometimes thought of as union with the eternal, in which individuals loose
their individuality. His contemporaries thought of Buddha as a rebel and a saint, because
he was reacting against what he saw as the abuses of Hinduism, such as the privilege and
authority of the Brahmin caste. Buddha was anti-authoritarian. Each individual is his own
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or her own spiritual authority. Buddha insisted that he was not a God and he refused to
speculate on whether or not God exists. Buddha was an egalitarian: every person is of
equal value and of equal potential (Smith, 1986, pp. 135 -- 139; Sikhism Home Page,
2007). In comparison, communion with the eternal, in which individuals retain some of
their individual identity, characterizes the western view of the afterlife.
The Meaning of Immorality
Rollo May argued that morality has meaning and value only if human beings
possess free will and the power to choose to be moral or immoral (May, 1940, 1969,
1989a, 1989b). Van Deurzen took the similar position that "people may evolve in any
direction, good or bad, and that only reflection on what constitutes good and bad makes it
possible to exercise one's choice in the matter. . . . The existential practitioner is less
certain of human goodness [than the humanistic practitioner] and she will take into
account people's weaknesses as well as their strengths" (2002, p. 51).
A Spiritually Sensitive Approach to Morality in Counseling
A spiritual approach to counseling could see individuals as being between
polarities on many spiritual dimensions, including the dimension of good and evil, and as
having the innate potential to move in the direction of either good or evil. The Buddhist
dimension of selfish desire vs. selfless desire could be included. Choice plays a role in
the direction people commit themselves to. People can choose at any point to change
direction. Counselors can help; that is part of the faith of being a counselor. Benner
(1998) argued that it is not essential to arrive at one right answer; the important thing is to
consider moral questions as moral questions. Counselors do not need to be free from sin.
AA has taught that those who have made wrong turns on life's path are often the best
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guides; they are called "wounded healers." Therapists who take a wellness and strength-
based approach may be treating "evil" as nonexistent or of little relevance to a therapist's
work. If one dismisses evil, one may miss the good and fail to celebrate it.
In order to be complete, a theory of spiritual-psychology needs to see the potential
for good and evil within each person. Buber’s ideas can be combined with those of Plato
and James. Plato spoke of misanthropy as a mistake of inexperience. The misanthropist
has been betrayed and misused and has concluded that no one is to be trusted. "Is it not
obvious," Plato asked, "that such an one having to deal with other men, was clearly
without any experience of human nature; for experience would have taught him the true
state of the case, that few are the good and few the evil, and that the great majority are in
the interval between them?" (Plato, 1948, p. 239.) It is also a mistake of inexperience,
and of what van Deurzen calls wishful thinking, to believe that all people are "in the
interval between." James said that the healthy-minded often deny evil, but that the sick
souls cannot: it is part of their experience. Once they have become religious, the sick
souls see evil as natural but not terrifying, because they see good as supernatural. Some
writers make a distinction between natural evil and moral evil (see, for example, Sanford,
1987). For those writers, natural evil is impersonal, like a volcano; moral evil is human
sin. That is not what James meant by natural evil. James meant that humans, as they
naturally exist, sometimes choose to hurt others for the sake of hurting others, that some
humans sometimes take pleasure in doing harm. Buber added that good and evil are a
question of polarities and direction. At any time, most people will be in Plato’s middle.
Most people will be as Rogers sees them: they will want to move in the direction of the
good. But, as Buber pointed out, when they come into therapy, some will be
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directionless, some will not be headed in the direction of good, and some, a very few, will
reject the good and choose the direction of evil. Like Milton’s Satan in Paradise Lost,
they will want to be evil. They will personify Scott Peck’s definition of evil, based on his
experience with real clients: they will intentionally, repeatedly seek to harm or kill the
life force of others without provocation (Peck, 1983).
Evil represents the extreme end of the good–bad continuum. It also involves an
intentional choice of direction away from the good toward the bad. But it is not
supernatural. May wrote that evil is not eternal because it destroys itself (May, 1940,
p. 155). May thought that God, goodness, and love are eternal and supernatural.
Jung valued the dark side, which he called the shadow. He taught the importance
of making the shadow conscious so that it becomes part of the Self. He warned that if
people suppress their shadow, they are likely to project distortions of the suppressed traits
onto others, and, thereby, see them as evil. When we project evil onto others we may do
evil to them.
Conclusions
As a goal of spiritually sensitive counseling, knowledge has the advantage that it
can be measured objectively and incrementally. The other values discussed in this chapter
and the last (negative outcomes, creativity, conflict, revolution, anger, justice, truth, and
morality) cannot readily be integrated into a scientific approach. They are subjective and
difficult to quantify. May (1989a, 1940) and Benner (1998) thought that spiritual
counseling could be complementary and additive to scientific counseling. Corbett and
Stein (2005) thought that counselors could wear bifocals and adjust their eyes in order to
see both the spiritual and the non-spiritual needs of their clients. Counselors could then
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respond to one or the other as needed. Paleontologist Gould (1997) thought that religion
and science were non-overlapping magisteria. The values discussed in these two chapters
appear to overlap and contrast with material, selfish values. Valuing pain and sorrow puts
a client at odds with the normative values of society. Society does not usually value
failures. Creativity, constructive conflict, healthy revolution, just anger, and the pursuit of
knowledge, experience, and truth are likely to bring a client into opposition with others.
Valuing moral deliberations will bring a client and counselor into conflict with the
amorality of science and the non-judgmentalness of 21
st
Century multi-culturalism. Do
the spiritual values in this chapter conflict with materialistic, scientific values in such a
way that they contradict them? Must the client choose one or the other? Are these values
part of a moral code, so that to choose the spiritual values is in some way right and good
and to choose the scientific values in some way wrong and bad? That has sometimes been
the religious view, but it is not my view. In my view these values represent divergences
between the materialistic world-view and the spiritual: they are like Frost’s poem, “Two
roads diverged in a yellow wood” (Frost, 1971), which will be discussed further in the
next chapter. One can choose one road or another. To experience life fully, one must
choose both materialistic roads and spiritual roads at times. For some clients at some
times, the spiritual choices may lead to spiritual development, and the material choices
may stall spiritual development. How that can happen is discussed in the next chapter.
In bringing their true-selves into consciousness, clients are likely to discover non-
traditional values in themselves that I have not considered. The values discussed in this
chapter are important to counseling only if they are important to the client. If the client
chooses to pursue these values, that choice must be made as an exercise of the client's
free will, without interference from the counselor. Like a mid-wife, a spiritually sensitive
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counselor can facilitate the birth of spiritual values out of the counseling process, but the
child must be the client's. Counselors must guard against imposing their values. How to
integrate traditional psychological counseling with spiritual counseling is discussed in
Chapters 16 and 17.
In the last three chapters, I have considered the importance of seeing the clients'
true-selves and helping them realize their true values. That is not all there is to spiritual-
psychological counseling. Page and Berkow wrote that the "process through which an
individual integrates personal growth with participation in a communal or universal
reality is basic to spiritual development" (1998, pp. 296 - 297). As clients begin to feel
stronger and more secure, they will begin the work of expressing their true-selves,
interacting with the world, and integrating feedback. That process will lead to spiritual
development, which is the subject of the next chapter.
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CHAPTER XII
SPIRITUAL HEALTH AND DEVELOPMENT
All prior chapters have been leading toward this one. In this chapter an integrated
spiritual-psychological approach to counseling will begin to emerge. I think that one goal
of spiritual-psychological counseling is the client’s spiritual health and development; and
I think people are spiritually healthy when they are developing spiritually, regardless of
how they are functioning in other realms. Other realms that may be relevant to counseling
are the physical, mental, emotional, and social/relational. All realms affect each other; so,
illness in one, e.g. physical sickness, may lead to spiritual illness, but not necessarily; one
might learn spiritual lessons from physical illness.
Spiritual Health Differs from Traditional Psychological Definitions of Mental Health
Today in America, those who embrace the medical model of psychotherapy
consider a person to be mentally healthy if she or he is not suffering from a mental
disorder as described in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th
edition, Text Revision (Ivey et al, 2005). Managed care service providers usually require a
DSMV-TR diagnosis before they will authorize services; therefore, the pressure to
diagnosis a client, even one who appears normal, is extraordinary if a client needs
financial support for mental health services. Depression and anxiety are the most
common symptoms for which individuals seek counseling services (Young, Cashwell,
Shcherbakova, 2000). Who hasn't felt sad and anxious on occasion? Hillman, Fromm,
and Frankl each took the view that if we possess a healthy sensitivity, contemporary
society will make us sad and anxious. Diagnosis is facilitated by the fact that the
diagnoses available in the DSMV-TR have expanded to cover almost every imaginable
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complaint, including so-called adjustment disorders. The key determinates of most
DSMV-TR diagnoses are unhappiness and maladjustment. Do the symptoms, e.g. the
sadness, make the client unhappy ("depressed mood") or make it difficult for the client to
fit in at work or at home ("marked impairment in social or occupational functioning")?
I would define a spiritually healthy person without reference to the DSMV-TR.
I think of a spiritually healthy person as someone who chooses and attempts to develop
spiritually. I believe, as do Ivey, Ivey, Myers, and Sweeney (2005), that people can
develop spirituality, and otherwise, throughout their lifetime, even when they are
physically sick or “mentally ill.” People can suffer from a mental illness according to the
DSMV-TR and still be spiritually healthy if they are attempting to develop along any of
the spiritual dimensions. Spiritual development and dimensions are discussed in the next
part of this chapter.
I conceive spiritual health to include moral courage. It would be characterized by
thankfulness, unselfishness, altruism, empathy, trust, sacrifice, forgiveness, surrender,
self-transcendence, valuing the dark side of human experience, a healthy interdependence
with others, openness to others, and vulnerability to the suffering of others. A spiritually
healthy person learns from failure and sadness. Spiritual health is realized in one's ability
to love and be loved. Freud was concerned with adjustment in love and work as
indicators of mental health. Spirituality is not concerned with adjustment but with loving
whether or not we are loved and working for others whether or not we are rewarded.
Spiritual health would take into account the health of one's relationship with God,
however one defines Him/Her/Them. On the other hand, people may be spiritually sick if
they regularly block their own or another’s spiritual development.
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Spiritual Development Differs from Traditional Psychological Conceptualizations of
Development
Traditional psychological conceptualizations of development look at cognition
(Piaget) and ego strength (Erikson). Very little has been written about the spiritual
aspects of development. I discuss it at length here, because it forms the foundation of my
approach to counseling. If the client is ready and consents, my goal is for him or her to
develop in both the traditional ways and spiritually. In Healing the Soul in the Age of the
Brain (2001), Philadelphia psychiatrist Elio Frattaroli wrote that he thought spiritual
development involves moral choices and that it is superior to material development. I
agree, but I would not impose my values on the client. I think counseling will benefit the
client and society, only if each client discovers and chooses her or his own values and his
or her own path of spiritual development. This requires allowing clients to move at their
own pace. Frattaroli gave examples of a daughter who began therapy reluctantly and of
her father who delayed three years before coming to therapy; but both came, and both
grew when they did.
Spiritual development is not defined by phases or stages. It is not linear. It is
spiral, “due to the tendency we have to return to old experiences and make new meaning
of them” (G. Miller, 2005, p. 107). Elisabeth Tisdell is an associate professor of adult
education at Pennsylvania State University-Harrisburg. She observed that education and
spirituality are two ways that people make sense of their lives; however, except in
religious institutions, the two areas have, as a rule not worked together. Tisdell wrote:
Typically higher education has focused on knowing through rationality. . . .
Higher education has been primarily about ‘intellectual’ knowledge – the
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rational world of theory and ideas. Furthermore, in North America, we have
argued for and founded our education system based on ‘the separation of Church
and State,’ except of course in the case of religiously affiliated institutions.
(Tisdell, 2003, p. ix - x)
Tisdell believed that education is and should be “transformative.” If education is
going to be transformative, “it must engage learners on a variety of levels: the cognitive
or rational, the affective, the sociocultural, and the symbolic or spiritual level” (Tisdell,
2003, p. xiii). She did not define “transformative.” I define transformation as growth
from one stage to another in any of the lines of development that are illustrated in table 2.
Tisdell interviewed adults involved in adult education concerning their views on
spirituality and their own development. In Exploring Spirituality and Culture in Adult
and Higher Education (2003), she reported on those interviews and wrote that, of all the
sorts of development, it is spiritual development that is most clearly marked by its spiral
nature. She wrote:
For those who value spirituality, spiritual development is strongly related to
claiming of a more authentic identity. It is also about the search for wholeness
and integration. . . . For nearly all I spoke with, this required attempting to
embrace spirituality as a way of life that requires inner reflection and outer action
(p. 108). . . .
There is a lot of pressure in North American culture to spend a lot of time
‘working’ for productivity. But outer work based on spirituality is not about
productivity. It is about an approach to life that integrates spirituality, work,
living, loving, learning, and social activism (p. 110). . . .
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Spiritual development is the integration of the developmental lines and connects
to cognitive development, moral development, and culture and gender identity
development. (Tisdell, 2003, p. 111)
Spiritual development is how people make sense of the other lines of
development. As they develop cognitively, spirituality tells them which thoughts matter.
As they develop emotionally, spirituality tells them who and what are worth caring about.
As they move through Erikson’s stages of ego development, spirituality helps them
resolve each crisis in a positive way that, in the end, gives integrity to their lives. As they
develop morally, spirituality calls them to apply morality in their work and personal
relationships, even when moral action harms the moral actor materially. As they develop
in faith, spirituality helps them decide what to believe and how to act on that belief.
Finally, spirituality integrates all the other lines of development into a meaningful whole.
Although spiritual development does not occur in stages, Tisdell observed that
some crucial turning points in people’s lives tended to occur at the same ages. People
developed more rapidly if they were able to get away and were exposed to other
religions, cultures, and ideas. Some people have only been exposed to one religion or to
none. Moving away and questioning were most likely to occur when people were in their
twenties. Moving away was often accompanied by a period of agnosticism or atheism.
The second crucial turning point in people’s lives was at midlife. Fowler found that
conjunctive faith tended to emerge at midlife, and Tisdell found that adults were better
able to live with paradox and the tension of opposites in midlife and beyond (Tisdell,
2003, p. 108). She also found that, at midlife, many adults began to focus for the first
time on integrating inner spiritual work with outer work.
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Spiritual Dimensions of Growth
I think of spiritual development as marked by growth along spiritual dimensions.
In his discussion with Carl Rogers, in which Rogers took the position that human nature
was essentially positive, Buber contended that human nature is bi-polar (in the sense of
having two opposing poles, not in the sense of bi-polar disorder) (Buber & Rogers,
1997). Buber said that good and bad are a matter of direction along a polar dimension,
and that counselors and theologians should be concerned with getting people moving in a
moral direction. I have extended Buber’s analogy to all spiritual values by grouping them
into the dimensions that follow. Unlike existential development, which is dialectic, I
think of spiritual development as directional; it may be beneficial to experience both
poles, but the ideal it to grow toward one and away from the other. Each spiritual
dimension is composed of opposing values. Spiritual development is measured by
movement along these axes from the value on the left toward the value on the right.
Many of these axes overlap. The 61 axes below do not comprise a complete or
completeable list; they are only some of the possible pathways to spiritual growth.
I cannot have thought of all possible spiritual values. The client is free to add to these,
change them, or disagree with them. These values are not, necessarily, opposites. They
are alternatives. One value may, therefore, be an alternative to more than one other value.
Love dimension:
(1) Narcissism toward Love.
(2) Closed Heartedness toward Empathy (the ability and willingness to feel
the pain of others).
(3) Fear toward Warmth.
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(4) Stinginess toward Community.
(5) Selfishness toward Giving.
(6) Indifference toward Care for the soul of the world.
(7) Anger toward Forgiveness.
(8) Taking no responsibility for one’s misdeeds toward Repentance.
(9) Hurriedness toward Gentleness.
(10) Meanness toward Kindness.
(11) Selfish desire toward Selfless desire.
Soul dimension (the dimension of experience and of choice by which the eternal spirit
learns from and gives value to material, mortal existence):
(12) Cowardice toward Awareness and acceptance of one’s death.
(13) Inflation toward Awareness, acceptance, and nurturance of one’s body.
(14) Harshness toward Softness.
(15) Isolation toward an Expanding Self.
(16) Lost toward Recovering and developing one’s spiritual identity.
(17) False Self toward True-Self.
(18) Submission to the judgment and evaluation of others toward Humble faith
in one’s self and one’s own judgment, with God’s help.
(19) Closed mindedness toward Hearing the voice, evaluation, and point-of-
view of others with an open mind and open heart.
(20) Blindness toward others toward Being able to experience the point of view
of another.
(21) Self-absorption toward Communication.
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(22) Coldness toward Intimacy.
(23) Distrust toward Naiveté.
(24) Frenzy toward Solitude.
(25) Walls toward Touch.
(26) Denial toward Vulnerability.
(27) Arrogance toward Self-doubt.
(28) Snobbishness toward Humbleness.
(29) Disconnection toward Emulation.
(30) Laughing at others toward an Ability to laugh at oneself.
(31) Drudgery toward Fun.
(32) Interrupting toward Listening.
(33) Taking no responsibility for the brokenness in the world toward Taking
actions to repair the brokenness of the world.
Introverted dimension:
(34) Inner noise toward Mindfulness.
(35) Inner deafness toward Hearing within the voices of one’s true-self and the
true-selves of others.
(36) Inner rage toward Inner Peace.
(37) Distraction toward Centeredness.
(38) Fear of loneliness toward Liking one’s own company.
Death dimension:
(39) Obliviousness toward Accepting one’s own death.
(40) Frittering toward Integrating one’s death into one’s life.
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(41) Fame toward Attempting to make one’s life and death meaningful, in this
life and the next, to oneself and to another.
Moral dimension:
(42) Evil toward Conscience.
(43) Control toward Equality.
(44) Egotism toward Patience.
(45) Sociopathy toward Honesty.
(46) Opportunism toward Loyalty.
(47) Judgmentalness toward Mindfulness.
Transpersonal dimension:
(48) Selfish desire toward Unselfish desire for the well-being of the world.
(49) Fretting toward Seeking a higher state of consciousness.
(50) Self-aggrandizement toward Seeking union with the eternal/God.
(51) Materialism toward Seeing the sacred in everyday things and people.
(52) Acquisitiveness toward Following a spiritual path.
(53) Stuck in one’s own fears and pain toward Working with and for others.
(54) Winning toward Transcending dichotomies.
God dimension:
(55) No relationship with God toward A daily relationship with God.
(56) Shallowness toward Spirituality.
(57) Habit toward Imagination.
(58) Solipsism toward Hope and faith.
(59) Falseness toward Beauty.
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(60) Holding on toward Letting go.
(61) Prayer for oneself only toward Prayer for Others.
From my perspective as a counselor, there is no point on the line of any spiritual
axis at which a person is healthy or not healthy. There are people who are moving toward
the qualities on the right, which tends to deepen them and gladden others. There are
people who are moving toward the values on the left, which may sadden or enrage them
and others. And there are people who are stuck and unhappy and do not know why.
Everyone is somewhere in between, including the counselor. Following the leads of Ivey,
et al (2005), and of Structural-Strategic family therapy, as elucidated by Keim and
Lappin (2002), I view clients as stuck, not sick. It is possible to conceive of people as
spiritually sick if they regularly block their own or another’s development along a
spiritual axis. But sickness is not the focus or concern of spiritual-psychological
counseling, as I conceive it. Movement is. Everyone can choose at any time to walk
faster, or to pause, or to walk in the opposite direction. Each axis represents a choice, like
Frost’s road dividing in a wood:
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
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Had worn them really about the same.
And both that morning equally lay,
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way.
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh.
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I ---
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken (Frost, 1971, p. 270.)
For Frost the choice was to stay on the farm in Vermont or to risk everything and
concentrate on writing poems. This poem inspired the title of M. Scott Peck’s The Road
Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth
(1978). The counselor can help the client see forks in the road ahead and can help make
spiritual choices conscious. These spiritual sub-dimensions or axes are also like the two
wolves in a Cherokee story. A grandfather told his grandson about two wolves that live
inside of each of us. One wolf is evil. It represents anger, envy, jealousy, regret, greed,
arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.
The other wolf is good. It stands for joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness,
benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. These two wolves battle
inside of all of us. “Which wolf wins?” the grandson asked. His grandfather answered,
“The one you feed.”
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On some occasions, as Maslow said, one must choose between safety and growth.
If a person keeps returning to the same spiritual intersection, that person may need
courage to try a different path. One key to spiritual growth is one’s willingness and
ability to face those aspects of one’s ego that are damaging or preventing the
development of one’s true-self or the true-selves of others. If clients can stay in that
awareness, they can grow. It will be painful and frightening. Therapists can help.
C. K. Chandler, J. M. Holden, and C. A. Kolander defined “spiritual development to
be the process of incorporating spiritual experience that results ultimately in spiritual
transformation. . . . Transformation is demonstrated by the stable expression of a new
mode of functioning that is characterized by a broader locus of centrism and by greater
knowledge and love” (1992, p.170). Spiritual growth may or may not be precipitated by a
spiritual crisis. Spiritual development is marked by an inner struggle, which is often
painful, toward a Higher Self within and toward union and communion with a Higher
Power without. This struggle and growth bring with them an increased capacity to love
others and self (Cashwell & Young, 2005, p. 4).
Some clients will not need to work on some of these spiritual-value axes. Others
will need to work on many. Those who are most willing to work will probably have the
least work to do. Some will disagree with the proposed oppositions or will suggest others.
The spiritual axes are flexible: one can change them or add to them. The ideal is not to
move toward the right in all directions. The goal is to find the axes that one currently
needs to work on and start. William James described the incompleteability of the spiritual
dimensions. In The Varieties of Religious Experience he wrote about the need for many
different religions and sects, because everyone has different spiritual needs and problems,
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different weaknesses and strengths, and all have different gifts (1902/2004, pp. 419 –
420). People are exposed to different temptations and stresses. The same yardstick cannot
measure everyone. It may be, as the Hindus believe, that there are old souls, that some
people have lived before and have less learning and growing to do. Nonetheless, every
human being can grow spiritually in this lifetime, starting at any age from 2 to 102, and
no one has less to give. Because of life’s infinite complexity and incompleteability, a
person could live many lifetimes and still meet new challenges in the path toward inner
peace and outer love.
The closest anyone has come to defining spiritual maturity is James Fowler in the
seven stages of faith. The stages are shown in table 2. For Fowler, a theologian, the
Stages of Faith were a description of how humans dealt with their aloneness,
powerlessness, and inevitable death. In response to awareness of these conditions, some
people have adopted or formed master stories about their own value, and the value of
others, and about their relationship with the power in the universe that is greater than
them. These stories help people interpret and respond to the significant positive and
negative events in their lives. The stories also disclose the ultimate meaning of people’s
lives (Fowler, 1981, pp. 276 – 277). Some people have responded to these ultimate
questions by becoming atheistic humanists. Fowler thought that development from stage
to stage followed a rising spiral pattern. He explained:
Certain life issues with which faith must deal recur at each stage; hence the spiral
movements in part overlap each other, though each successive stage addresses
these issues at a new level of complexity. Overall, there is a movement outward
toward individuation, culminating in Stage 4. Then the movement doubles back,
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in Stages 5 and 6, toward the participation and oneness of earlier stages, though at
quite different levels of complexity, differentiation and inclusiveness. Each stage
represents a widening of vision and valuing, correlated with a parallel increase in
the certainty and depth of selfhood, making for qualitative increases in intimacy
with self-others-world. Please do not forget that transitions from one spiral stage
level to another are often protracted, painful, dislocating and/or abortive. Arrests
can and do occur at any of the stages. Also I ask you to keep in mind that each
stage has its proper time of ascendancy. For persons in a given stage at the right
time for their lives, the task is the full realization and integration of the strengths
and graces of that stage rather than rushing on to the next stage. Each stage has
the potential for wholeness, grace and integrity and for strengths sufficient for
either life’s blows or blessings. (Fowler, 1981, p. 274)
These words, combined with Rogers’s experience of clients making prosocial
choices, reassure me that I can, and should, allow clients to seek their own level of
spiritual development and move at their own pace. In terms of the stages of faith, Ivey et
al recommend that the counselor “start spiritual counseling where the client is” (2005,
p. 376).
Fowler wrote that Stage 7, universalizing faith, is extremely rare. In his book
Becoming Adult, Becoming Christian: Adult Development and Christian Faith (2000),
Fowler provided only one example of Stage 7: Gandhi. In their book, Ivey, el al cite
Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Mother Teresa. Nonetheless, Ivey el al think that it
is not so rare that someone can experience Stage 7 as a temporary state of being, or “there
is a part of us that can approach it.” They pointed out that people often become
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counselors in part from a spiritual commitment to service to others. “In those times when
you focus your efforts on service to others, you are starting to enter the higher world of
universalizing faith. In this one case, we as authors admit that perhaps ‘higher is better’”
(Ivey et al, 2005,p. 379).
Fowler thought of each circle of the developmental spiral as being larger than the
circle below it. Thus, movement from a lower to a higher stage corresponded with an
expansion of a person’s modes of knowing and valuing. One mode is not better than
another, but one contains more and takes account of more. Fowler did think that one
proper goal for humans is to expand their modes of knowing and valuing, and, thereby, to
become religiously mature. That is one reason I have included knowledge and experience
as spiritual values in Chapter 11. In 1979, Fowler met with other theologians, educators,
and psychologists at the First International Conference on Moral and Religious
Development. Fowler and those who attended, including Lawrence Kohlberg and Carol
Gilligan, contributed to a book entitled Toward Moral and Religious Maturity (1980).
There has not been, so far as I have been able to determine, a second such conference.
That is evidence, to my mind, that spirituality and psychology remain reluctant to
embrace and learn from each other.
Stage 5, individuative-reflective faith, is the first stage at which people
consciously see themselves as acting on their own authority and making critical choices
concerning what to believe (Fowler, 2000, p. 49). Clients may be more open to the
challenges posed by an ecumenical, open-minded approach to spiritual-psychological
counseling, such as I envision, if they are at Stage 5 or higher.
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Stage 7 is very rare. “Many persons in this stage die at the hands of those they
hope to change. Universalizers are often more honored and revered after death than
during their lives” (Fowler, 1981, p. 201). In light of these considerations, Fowler has
been asked if Stage 7 “truly constitutes a normative image for all human becoming? Does
a stage that is attained by so few persons in any tradition and that seems to require the
coupling of a strong mystical dimension with transforming social action qualify as
representing a general vocational ideal?” (Fowler, 2000, p. 58). Some have suggested
that Stage 6, conjunctive faith, be taken as the normative end point of faith development.
Fowler disagreed for these reasons:
Human development toward wholeness is, I believe, always the product of a
certain synergy between human potentials, given in creation, and the presence and
activity of Spirit as mediated through many channels. The most crucial factor
differentiating the quality and movement of a person or group’s development in
faith, therefore, has to do with the conscious and unconscious availability of that
person or group’s potentials for partnership – for synergy – with Spirit. In a
complex range of ways, we can be in either conscious or unconscious enmity with
Spirit. From a variety of factors, the etiologies of which are exceedingly complex,
we can bear deep dispositions that make us inimical to synergy and Spirit. Where
and to the degree that we bear this kind of enmity, growth to and in the latter
stages of faith will be blocked. When one who was previously blocked
experiences the effective breakthrough of Spirit that brings release and new
openness to synergy with Grace, we are in the presence of what Christian
theologians have traditionally called salvation or saving Grace. Christians have
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traditionally called the condition of enmity toward Grace or blockage to synergy
with Grace sin. (2000, pp. 59 - 60).
In theology “synergism” is the doctrine that humans are not saved by either grace, or
faith, or works alone; that the human will can co-operate with divine grace in the work of
regeneration (OED, 2007).
The crucial point to be grasped is that the image of human completion or
wholeness offered by faith development theory is not an estate to be attained or a
stage to be realized. Rather, it is a way of being and moving, a way of being on
pilgrimage. . . . The human calling -- which we take to be universal – is to
undergo and participate in the widening inclusiveness of those who count as
neighbor, from the narrowness of our familial beginnings toward real solidarity
with a commonwealth of being. This calling means movement from the limiting
love of those who love us and on whom we are dependent toward the limitless
love that comes from genuine identification with the source and center of all
being. . . . The goal however is not for everyone to reach the stage of
universalizing faith. Rather, it is for each person or group to open themselves, as
radically as possible – within the structures of their present stage or transition – to
synergy with Spirit. The dynamics of that openness – and the extraordinary
openings that can come with “saving Grace” – operate as lure and power toward
ongoing growth in partnership with Spirit and in the direction of universalizing
faith. (Fowler, 2000, p. 60)
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Conclusions
Spiritual development continues from birth until death. Spiritual development is a
process of learning from sadness and failure, as well as from happiness and success. It
involves becoming a constructive rebel: seeking revolutionary spiritual change within
oneself and in society, as did Buddha, Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, Ghandi, Martin Luther
King, and as do Bishop Tutu and the Dalai Lama. It requires moral self-evaluation and
speaking one’s truth.
Spiritual development is continuous; however, it can be interrupted and it can
stop. It takes courage to grow spiritually, especially if one is stuck. From mid-life on,
spiritual development is likely to be the most important type of development. Spiritual
development is what allows some humans to grow kinder and softer as they age, instead
of becoming bitter and angry on account of past failures, heartbreaks, and illness. One
mechanism for becoming wise instead of mean is to listen to the voice of the true-
spiritual-self in one’s spiritual unconscious and to hear, see, and validate the true-
spiritual-selves of others.
Spiritual development is relevant for all clients, regardless of their beliefs or
doubts, but it cannot be forced upon anyone. It must be chosen consciously and re-chosen
at every spiritual crossroad. Traditional psychology has been silent on the subject of
spiritual development or it has deemed it to be a delusion. Clients are likely to come to
counseling experiencing pain, often expressed as depression, and fear, often experienced
as anxiety. Their developmental may be stuck in any of the traditional ways discussed by
Ivey et al (2005), and their spiritual development may be stuck, in ways discussed in this
chapter. Counselors can help clients use their pain and fear to increase their appreciation
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of spiritual values and to expand their awareness of the spiritual realm of existence.
Through such a process, clients can become unstuck and continue to develop both
spiritually and psychologically. Chapter 17 will offer one possible approach to helping
clients with that work.
In the past four chapters, I have looked at the association between the realization
of the clients' true-selves and true values, on the one hand, and their spiritual health and
development, on the other. In the next chapter, chapter 13, I will look at research which
has shown a correlation between clients' spiritual health on the one hand, and their
physical, mental, and emotional health, on the other.
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CHAPTER XIII
RESEARCH REGARDING SPIRITUALITY
This chapter obstructs the flow of this paper. I would have preferred to compare
research regarding the value of spiritual approaches to research regarding the value of
scientific approaches to human wellness as I discussed the development of each new
school of scientific psychology from Wundt in 1879, to behaviorism in the first half of
the 20
th
Century, to cognitive psychology in the latter half. But no such research existed.
Not until recently did researchers begin to measure the effects and of spirituality. This
chapter discusses every study I found. I found no study prior to 1995. In this chapter I
will describe studies that show a correlation between spiritual wellness, on the one hand,
and physical and psychological wellness, on the other. I will also consider counselor
attitudes toward spirituality, as shown in research surveys. Counselor attitudes are
important. There would be little point in developing an integrated spiritual-psychological
approach to counseling if counselors had no interest. Finally I will discuss current
demographics relevant to a spiritual-psychological approach to counseling.
Spirituality’s Correlation with Physical and Psychological Wellness
Research has shown that spirituality correlates positively with physical and
psychological wellness. In Spiritual Wellness and Depression: Testing a Theoretical
Model with Older Adolescents and Midlife Adults, Briggs and Shoffner (2006)
operationalized spiritual wellness through the Spiritual Assessment Scale, a Likert scale
developed by Howden (1992), that measured four components of spiritual wellness.
Those components were (a) meaning and purpose in life, (b) inner resources, (c)
transcendence, and (d) positive interconnectedness. They found that greater spiritual
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wellness correlated with lower depression scores among both midlife adults and
adolescents. Spirituality and spiritual wellness have also been correlated with quicker
recovery from depression among physically ill older patients (Koenig, George, &
Peterson, 1998), and with higher scores for positive affect, psychological well-being and
life satisfaction (Elam, 2000).
In The Moderating Relationship of Spirituality on Negative Life Events and
Psychological Adjustment (2000), Young, Cashwell, and Shcherbakova operationalized
spirituality by use of the Human Spirituality Scale, a 5-point Likert scale that measured
three dimensions of spirituality. Those dimensions were (a) a larger context in which one
views one’s life, (b) an awareness of life and of others, and (c) a reverent compassion for
the welfare of others. Young et al wrote that depression and anxiety are the symptoms for
which individuals most commonly seek counseling and that depression and anxiety are
often brought about by stressful adverse life events. They found that spirituality provided
a significant moderating effect between stressful adverse life events and depression and
anxiety. Three-hundred three undergraduates, ages 18 to 29, participated in this study.
The authors recommended that the study be repeated with a more diverse population.
If future researchers report similar findings, Young et al argued, that would
indicate the efficacy of intentionally integrating spirituality into counseling practice.
Eighty-five percent of counselors report a spiritual orientation as compared to 68 % of
other mental health practitioners (Kelly, 1995). In light of this, Young et al urged
counselors to take the lead in developing a theory and technique that enhances the client’s
sense of spirituality.
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To begin to fill the theoretical lack, two of those authors, Young, and Cashwell
edited Integrating Spirituality and Religion into Counseling: A Guide to Competent
Practice (2005), published by the American Counseling Association. In that book,
seventeen contributors discussed the nine spiritual competencies. Those spiritual
competencies, approved by the Board of the Association for Spiritual, Ethical, and
Religious Values in Counseling are discussed further in Chapter 16.
The operational definitions used in the above referenced research, such as the
Spiritual Assessment Scale, were non-theistic and they did not stipulate that the spirit is
real. The spirit could be a metaphor and spirituality could mean nothing more than non-
materialistic values. On the other hand, some definitions were based on religious practice.
In a 28-year longitudinal study, Strawbridge, Cohen, Shema, and Kaplan (1997) found
that more frequent church attendance was correlated with better physical health and
longer lifespan. These effects remained significant when adjusted for the improved health
practices, more extensive social connections, and greater marital stability of frequent
churchgoers.
Some definitions provided by researches have distinguished between non-
religious spirituality and a religious spirituality that is connected with a specific
organization and set of beliefs, which beliefs would presumably, at least in the United
States, include a belief in God (Elam, 2000). Graham, Furr, Flowers, and Burke (2001)
found that participants who expressed spirituality through religious beliefs had greater
spiritual health and immunity to stressful situations than participants who identified
themselves as spiritual but not religious.
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Meaning of Spirituality for Clients
God was named explicitly when the researchers began their research by asking the
participants what spirituality meant to them. Koenig, Larson, and Larson (2001) reviewed
the research regarding the role religion plays in helping patients cope with serious illness.
They found that a significant percentage of patients reported that religious beliefs and
practices were the most important factors that enabled them to cope. They found that
developing a personal relationship with God, serving God by serving others, and finding
self-worth through religious identity, rather than through physical capabilities, helped
people experience psychological growth during suffering.
Counselor Attitudes toward Spirituality
In a survey of the attitudes of Licensed Professional Counselors toward the
importance of spirituality in counseling, Hickson, Housley, and Wages (2000) found that
more than 85% of the respondents agreed or agreed strongly with five of the fifteen
statements on their survey. Those five statements were: Significance of LPCs’ self-
awareness of spiritual beliefs (94%); Awareness of the spiritual self as a powerful
psychological change agent within the counseling process (90%); Need for the skills and
ability to discuss spiritual issues (89%); Belief that there is a universal yearning within all
humans to tap into their spiritual selves (86%); and Willingness to discuss spirituality
when counseling gerontological clients (86%). Surveys of family counselors reported in
Chapter 7 (Walker, Gorsuch, & Tan, 2004; Carlson, Kirkpatrick, Hecker, & Killmer,
2002) showed that most family counselors place a high value on their own spirituality
and on their clients’.
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Demographics Relevant to a Spiritual-Psychological Approach to Counseling
Between 82 % (Harris Interactive Poll, 2005) and 92 % (Fox News Poll, 2004) of
Americans reported a belief in God. Seventy percent of Americans reported a belief in
the soul and life after death (Harris Interactive Poll, 2005). Although most believe in
God, 42% of Americans are “not absolutely certain” that there is a God (Harris
Interactive Poll, 2006) and only 34 % attend church regularly (Pew Forum on Religious
and Public Life, 2008). Approximately 20 % of Americans consider themselves “spiritual
but not religious;” that is, they are uncomfortable with all denominations, but they
believe in God or in some transcendent spiritual reality. The spiritual-but-not-religious
may now constitute the third largest religious group in the United States, after Catholics
and Baptists, and their number is growing (Fuller, R. C., 2001; ReligionLink.org, 2003).
Theologian James Fowler (2000) thought that the increasing contemporary use of the
word “spiritual” is a good thing, because it indicates that people value spirituality and are
willing to practice it, even outside of established religions.
In The Stages of Life: Modern Man in Search of a Soul, Jung wrote that after age
50 the main concern of his clients was the ultimate meaning of their lives (1933). The
population is ageing. The U.S. Census Bureau indicates that 29.8% of the United States
population is age 50 or above as of 2006, and projects that 36.0 % will be 50 or over by
2030 (U.S. Census Bureau, 2008). In 2003, life expectancy in the US hit an all-time high
of 77.6 years (National Center for Health Statistics, 2008). As people get older they are
more likely to face illness, their own death, and the illness and death of others.
Traditional psychology provides them little guidance or comfort.
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Stephen Prothero, chair of the Religion Department at Boston University,
believed that religious literacy is a necessary part of cultural literacy. His research
convinced him that most Americans are religiously illiterate. He advocated teaching
religious texts and beliefs objectively and critically in pubic schools, including the
harmful aspects of religions (Prothero, 2007a, 2007b; Time, 2007). I define spiritual
literacy to include knowledge of the following history described by Principe (2006): In
the Middle Ages, theology was the most honored and most difficult branch of study to
pursue. Theology is still characterized by the pursuit of knowledge, but most people are
unaware of the work of any contemporary theologians. In the late 18
th
Century, German
theologians developed what is called “higher criticism,” by which was meant an analysis
of the Bible and other religious texts from a historical, textual, and philosophical
perspective. As long ago as Saint Augustine (354 - 430 AD) some theologians had
recognized that every word of the Bible could not be literally true, because of the two
conflicting stories of the creation in Genesis. According to Principe, not taking the Bible
to be the literal dictation of God liberated its spiritual message. Armstrong's The History
of God (1994) and Borg's Reading the Bible Again for the First Time (2001), which are
referenced in Chapter 2, are examples of higher criticism. My research has been an
attempt to provide a foundation for an approach to counseling that is both
psychologically and spiritually literate.
Conclusions regarding Research and Demographics
Recent research on spirituality has shown the following:
(1) There is a correlation between spirituality, on the one hand, and mental health
and longevity, on the other. A caveat is in order: the definitions of spiritual
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health used by the above studies vary among each other and are each different
from my definition of spiritual health, which is given in the last chapter.
Therefore, the above-described benefits may not accrue to a client who
obtains spiritual health as I have defined it.
(2) Most clients rely on spirituality when faced with physical or psychological
adversity.
(3) Many counselors agree that spirituality is an important aspect of psychological
health and development, and an important part of counseling.
(4) Many counselors feel uncertain of how to incorporate spiritual concerns in
counseling and would like to receive training in this area.
(5) Although most clients and counselors say they value spirituality, if they are
like most Americans, they are spiritually illiterate.
Despite those findings, the fields of counseling and psychotherapy have been slow to
develop and teach approaches to spiritual-psychological counseling. This paper is an
attempt to help fill that gap.
At the beginning of this research, I set out to find the answers to seven questions
regarding the relationship between the spiritual and the scientific views of psychology. In
the next two chapters, Chapters 14 and 15, I will re-state those questions and summarize
the answers I have found.
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CHAPTER XIV
WHAT I AS A COUNSELOR LEARNED FROM THE HISTORY
OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PSYCHOLOGY AND SPIRITUALITY
The seven research questions with which I began this paper appear in table 3. I
have added letters in parentheses to subdivide some questions. This chapter will discuss
the answers I found to questions 1 through 4. Chapter 15 will discuss questions 5 and 6.
Chapter 16 will answer question 7, for me, for now. When a question is first addressed, I
italicize it as a heading in the left margin. I conclude this chapter with a discussion of my
hopes and concerns for the future relationship between spirituality and psychology.
Table 3. The Seven Research Questions
(1) What is the history of the relationship between the spiritual world-view and
the scientific world-view?
(2) (a) Were the scientific and the spiritual views of human beings ever the same?
(b) If they diverged, when did they diverge? (c) What was the nature of that
separation: how did each view the other? (d) Does antagonism toward religion
still dominate psychology, or is the science of psychology becoming more open to
the value of spirituality?
(3) (a) What, if anything, was missing from the spiritual view that the scientific
view contributed? (b) What, if anything, was missing from the scientific view that
the spiritual view included?
(4) Are there recognized approaches to the study of psychology and the practice
of psychotherapy that include spiritual perspectives and values? If so, how do
those approaches differ from scientific psychology?
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(5) What are spiritual values? How do they differ, if at all, from materialistic,
scientific values? What are the possible goals for the client in an approach to
counseling that is spiritually based? How do those differ, if at all, from the goals
of scientific approaches?
(6) Are the spiritual and the scientific views of human beings and psychotherapy
(a) complementary and supportive; or (b) distinct and non-overlapping; or (c) at
odds; or does that answer depend on the client, the context, and the problem?
(7) Is there a way to combine the spiritual and scientific world views in one
approach to counseling, that, based on my research, class work, and
experience with clients, I would feel comfortable recommending to clients?
What should that approach look like?
(1) What is the history of the relationship between the spiritual world-view and the
scientific world-view?
Throughout this chapter and the next, I will discuss what I have learned of the
history of the relationship between the two world-views that seems significant to me as a
counselor who hopes to be sympathetic to the concerns of both viewpoints.
(2)(a) Were the scientific and spiritual views of the world ever the same?
There was once no separation between the individual’s psyche, religion, secular
power, and culture. Before humans wrote, when history and knowledge were oral,
individual human beings must have felt as if they had been born floating on a small raft
down a wide river. The current carried them. Sometimes the river was so wide that
people could not see the sides. They thought that the river was all there was. When
people were born, their parents threw them on to the river, as their parents had thrown
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them, and from then on the river defined the meaning of their lives. If one was a man
whose father had been a tailor, that man would probably be a tailor until the end of his
life. If one was a woman, one would bare children, send sons off to war, and often die in
childbirth. Life ended when people got to the sea, which swallowed them into oblivion.
Government, religion, and culture powered the river’s current; they flowed in the same
lineal direction. No one climbed out onto the banks to look around. The river moved too
fast and life was too short.
The Iliad was composed in approximately 900 BC, the Odyssey shortly thereafter.
In ancient Greece, the Iliad and the Odyssey were repeated aloud by rote at important
government holidays. The tradition was oral; there were few books and almost no
libraries. The Iliad and the Odyssey passed down the religious and cultural teachings of
ancient Greece. The Iliad taught courage in battle. The Odyssey taught the dangers of
climbing out of the river: if you wander far from home, monsters will eat you.
Sometimes a tributary would join the main branch and bring strangers floating
down along an unknown river, speaking an incomprehensible language. When barges
met, conflict arose. People tended to conceptualize that conflict either in terms of power
(Alexander the Great) or in terms of understanding (Euripides). In ancient times most
people lived in small in-groups, and feared and fought members of out-groups; so they
were likely to think of conflict in terms of power. It seems to me that the power
perspective has been dominant for most of history and still is. Recently, more and more
people are advocating understanding, openness, and collaboration instead. Some people
conflate power and spirituality and take up a sword for their beliefs; some conflate power
with scientific knowledge and material wealth. Others seek to understand the world either
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in terms of spirituality or materiality, but not from both perspectives. For the most part,
the science of psychology has been an attempt to understand people from a materialistic
perspective.
In 560 BC one man climbed out of the river alone in northern India. His given
name was Siddhartha Gautama. He became known as Buddha, which means “I am
awake” or the “Enlightened One” (Smith, 1986, pp. 121 - 122). His concerns were mainly
spiritual. His principle dispute was with the river: he objected to the Hindu caste system
and taught that each individual can be her or his own spiritual guide. He did not articulate
a position on whether the spiritual or scientific view of life was superior. The scientific
world-view had not yet developed.
Eastern views of spirituality are not considered in depth in this paper. I include
Buddha’s action because it gives a sense of perspective: it shows how extraordinary such
actions were and it is humbling to Western pride to realize that an Easterner went first.
As a counselor, I wish to be ecumenical: I wish to be welcoming and open to all spiritual
beliefs. I would not have excluded Eastern beliefs from this paper, but for my own
ignorance. I have no intention of excluding people who have those beliefs from the
approach to therapy that I will suggest in Chapter 17. If they come as clients, we can
learn together. If they are counselors, I hope they will make suggestions that will expand
my approach. In the Handbook of Psychotherapy and Religious Diversity (1999), the
editors Richard and Bergin present approaches to therapy with clients of many different
faiths, including Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, and Native American clients, written by
therapists who practice those faiths.
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(2)(b) When did the scientific and spiritual views diverge?
The second person I know of who climbed out of the river was Socrates (470 –
399 BC). There must have been something about the conditions in Athens, Greece in its
Golden Age that gave Socrates hope; and there must have been something about the
person that gave him vision and courage. He encouraged others to join him, including
Plato, who formed the Academy. Socrates thought independently, not as the government
and state religion had taught him to think. As a result, he was found guilty of both treason
and atheism, and condemned to die.
Aristotle (384 – 322 BC) climbed out on the other side of the river and formed the
Lyceum, where he taught Alexander the Great. Aristotle began to develop the scientific
world-view of nature and of human beings. At the time of Socrates and Aristotle, there
was no word for psychology and no need for it. As Jung pointed out (1931/1971), most
people did not think of themselves as having any questions which the culture did not
answer. The river, however, did have an undercurrent: the collective unconscious, which
carried human capacities in symbolic form. This accounts for similarities in the myths of
different parts of the ancient world.
(2)(c) What did those who held a spiritual world-view think of those who held a scientific
world-view, and vice versa?
Socrates and his student Plato were of a metaphysical temperament. They climbed
out on the spiritual side of the river. They sat by the river’s bank and wondered about the
true, underlying nature of reality; they wondered about morality and virtue, about the soul
and the meaning of life, and about death. They gained knowledge by inner contemplation
and Socratic dialogue, demonstrating the human ability to think for one’s self and to
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defend the value and truth of one’s thoughts. Aristotle was more practical and precise
than Socrates or Plato. He climbed out on the materialistic side of the river. He valued
gaining knowledge by careful observation of external reality; for example, he collected
and catalogued shells along the river’s bank and coined the term mollusca, meaning soft-
bodied (Conchologists of America website, 2008). From the beginning, there have been
people of all Jungian types on both sides; however, the intuitive-feeling types tended to
gather on the metaphysical side, and the intellectual and direct-perceptual types have
tended to congregate on the materialistic side.
These three men were contemporaries; they could have built a bridge across the
river. They did not. Socrates, Plato and Aristotle represent two distinct acts of
divergence. (1) All three diverged from the river. They stepped out onto the banks, saw
the world with independent eyes, and described what they saw for others. (2) Then they
diverged from each other: Socrates and Plato described the world symbolically and
metaphysically; Aristotle described it literally and physically. Instead of seeing
themselves as supplementing each other’s world-view, they took the attitude that one
view was correct and the other view was incorrect.
(2)(d) Does antagonism toward religion still dominate psychology?
From 400 BCE to 2008 CE, most Europeans who held a scientific world-view
have been antagonistic toward religion. Suspicion of spirituality was intensified by the
fact that Hypocrites (460 – 377 BC), the father of medicine, was a materialist who
disfavored spiritual explanations and cures. The principal early psychologists all had
medical degrees: Wilhelm Wundt, William James, Freud, and Jung. In the first half of the
20
th
Century, most psychotherapy was practiced by psychiatrists with medical degrees, as
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opposed to those with PhDs in psychology or Masters Degrees in counseling. Academic
psychologists, who worked in laboratories, were usually monists, beginning with Wundt
(1832 - 1920) and continuing through the work of radical behaviorist Skinner (1904 –
1990). In their laboratories, then and now, they often worked with rats, instead of
humans. They denied the existence and relevance of God and the soul.
(2)(e) Is the science of psychology becoming more open to the value of spirituality?
Looking back through the literature of the 20
th
Century, it appears that since
around 1990, slowly but steadily, an increasing number of psychologists and counselors
have been recognizing the importance of the spiritual side of people. In part, this results
from multiculturalism, which teaches that if spirituality is important to a client, the
counselor should respect it, whether or not it corresponds to an objective reality. I will
return to consideration of this current improvement in the relationship between
psychology and spirituality, its possible causes, and where it may lead, at the end of this
chapter, under Future Prospects.
(3) (a) What, if anything, is missing from the spiritual view that the scientific view
contributes?
After the deaths of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, according to Durant (1933), the
European world fell into intellectual darkness for 1, 800 years. It takes enormous energy
and some courage and optimism for an individual or society to obtain and maintain a
perspective independent from the river. The world fell back into the river and did not
climb out again until Francis Bacon (1561 – 1626) lit intellectual lamps in the minds of
European thinkers. Unlike Socrates, Bacon’s contribution was not that he climbed out of
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the river himself. Bacon’s contribution was that he inspired others to climb out, and he
showed them how.
Bacon articulated a new approach to knowledge: the method of experimental
testing and inductive reasoning. This path lay on the materialistic side of the river. He
warned that there were two enemies to materialistic progress: “idols of the tribe” (the
river) and “superstitious philosophies” (the metaphysical side of the river). Bacon named
Plato as a superstitious philosopher, and explicitly discouraged attempts to bridge the
river, which he thought would lead to muddy thinking. Bacon articulated a scientific
value that the spiritual view was missing: hard-nosed realism and an objective search for
knowledge, which lead to material progress.
Bacon had a receptive audience. At the outset of the 16
th
Century, the European
river was powered by the Catholic Church and by temporal rulers who collaborated with
the Church. Free thinkers were starved for intellectual food; they longed for a view of life
that was independent of the perspective of the river, and since 1454, they had had a tool
waiting to assist in their liberation: the printing press. Two of the most transformative
occurrences of the Reformation were the publication of Luther’s German translation of
the Bible (1522) and the King James Version of the Bible (1611), which allowed
everyone access to the river’s secrets and the opportunity to interpret them for
themselves, even if that led to heresy.
In Bacon’s time, most people were still dualists: like Socrates and Aquinas, they
believed in a soul, which survived death. The soul is different from the material body.
Monists, on the other hand, believe that there is only one dimension to reality: the
material dimension. By 1800, monists were gaining strength rapidly in every scientific
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field in Europe. Darwin’s Origin of Species was published in 1859. Darwin, himself,
came to conclude that his research supported the view that humans were material and
animal and nothing more. This was considered an enormous victory for monism and still
is. The dualists have had no victories since. One could look at the evolution of human
beings as a joint project of God and chance, but almost no writers have. An alternative
way of defining dualism is openness to the value of both the material and the spiritual
perspective. In that sense, dualism may be regaining respectability.
(3)(b) What, if anything, is missing from the scientific view that the spiritual view
includes?
Carl Rogers thought “ethics is a more basic consideration than science” (1961,
p. 214). It would be hard to arrive at a code of ethics by the scientific method unless the
scientist took a survey. Individual scientists can choose to adopt a moral code and follow
it. Until they do, science is amoral and morality is optional; when they do, they sit in
judgment of themselves. Amoral therapy may value the client’s present happiness above
painful moral refection and spiritual growth. Morality is part of the spiritual DNA of the
universe. Morality is one of the principal concerns of religion. When religious people act
immorally it is a concern of all religious people.
If the spiritual realm is real, scientific psychology is missing half of reality. Table
4 compares some materialistic assumptions to some spiritual beliefs. If the spiritual realm
is real, those who accept only the materialistic assumptions are missing everything on the
right-hand half of this table. Some atheists respond that the right half is delusional. Some
agnostics argue that there is no way to know if the right-hand half is real, and they are
content to wait until death to learn.
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Table 4: Materialist Assumptions Compared to Spiritual Possibilities.
The natural/supernatural line
Materialistic Assumptions Spiritual Possibilities
Belief Hope * Belief
There is no God. God(s) may exist.
Humans are alone in the universe. It may be possible to communicate with
God(s) through prayer and to obtain
guidance and help for one’s self & for
others. God may provide an experience of
companionship and of being loved.
Spirit and Soul are metaphors. Spirit and Soul may be real and survive this
life.
Individuals’ contributions are limited to
this lifetime, plus however long they are
remembered or the impact of their works is
felt.
The Soul and Spirit may take what they
have learned in this life into the next, and
may continue to grow there. It is, therefore,
possible to develop and learn up to the
moment of death and possible to learn as
much from one’s pain and failures as from
one’s success & joy.
Love is carnal. Love is spiritual and loving relationships
may endure into another realm of existence
or into another lifetime. Love entails
sacrifice, loss, and pain, as well as joys.
Humans invented morality. James thought
that the best morality humans have
invented is utilitarianism: the greatest good
for the greatest number.
Morality, including good & evil, has an
external reality based in God, but felt
inside of humans, as their conscience.
God’s morality is how s/he hopes we will
treat each other. Following that morality
may lead to personal unhappiness. (Kant,
James, Lewis.)
The impact of good and bad deeds is
limited to their material consequences.
Human good and evil have consequences
for the individual’s spiritual development
and the spiritual welfare of others, in this
life and the next. It is, therefore, never too
late to make amends, to ask for
forgiveness, or to forgive
Human evolution is done. Human evolution, including moral
evolution, may be continuing in the
Collective and Spiritual Unconscious and
present humans can contribute to its
growth. (Jung, Assagioli.)
* Lawrence Crocker, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Dartmouth, pointed out in the
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as yet unpublished book Hope to God, that hope is generally spoken of as a spiritual
value. It is possible to pray, for oneself and others, not in certainty, but in hope. I am also
grateful to Crocker’s Hope to God, pp. 36 – 37, for the phrase “the natural/supernatural
line.” (Used with permission, August 3, 2008.)
(4) Are there approaches to the study and practice of psychology that include both the
scientific and the spiritual perspectives?
Maslow (in Frick, 1971) observed that there might be an inborn tendency to see
reality one way or the other, not both ways at once. Because it takes energy and courage
to climb out of the river and to see reality with unprejudiced eyes from either side, most
people follow a scientific or religious leader, not their own private vision. This may
account for why so few have attempted to see with independent eyes from both sides; that
would require overcoming the pull of the river (social acceptance) and the claim of each
side that the other side is wrong.
In my research I found, in the 2,400 years since Socrates and Aristotle, only the
following persons who have made an effort to combine the two world-views (listed
chronologically from the earliest to the most recent): Thomas Aquinas, who defaulted to
doctrine; William James; Carl Jung; William Wilson, founder of AA; Roberto Assagioli,
creator of psychosynthesis; M Scott Peck, author of the best selling The Road Less
Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth (1978);
Rollo May (1989a); pastoral counselor David Benner (1998); Elio Frattaroli (2001); P.
Scott Richards and Allen E. Bergin, editors of Handbook of Psychotherapy and Religious
Diversity (1999) and authors of A Spiritual Strategy for Counseling and Psychotherapy
(2005); William R. Miller, editor of Integrating Spirituality into Treatment: Resources
for Practitioners (1999) and Judeo-Christian Perspectives on Psychology: Human
Nature, Motivation, and Change (2005); Allen Ivey, Mary Ivey, Jane Myers, and Thomas
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Sweeney authors of Developmental Counseling and Therapy: Promoting Wellness over
the Lifespan (2005); Craig S. Cashwell and J. Scott Young, editors of Integrating
Spirituality and Religion into Counseling (2005); and spiritually sensitive person-
centered counselor Brian Thorne. All of these authors wrote well and thoughtfully. Some
did not suggest any specific approach to counseling. Among those who did, for reasons I
discussed in Chapter 8 on Contemporary Theories that Combine Spirituality and
Psychology, I found no approach that I could adopt completely as my own. Brian Thorne
is the exception. His conclusions concerning the relationship of spirituality and
psychology were the closest to my own. His approach is discussed in Chapter 17. I list all
of these authors and their works here so that readers can turn directly to them and make
their own evaluation. In Chapter 17, I will combine what I have learned from the above
writers with my experience as a counselor, to suggest my own approach to spiritual-
psychological counseling. All of these people have written books on this subject. I am
omitting people who have written just articles, chapters, and dissertations. There must be
many writers I did not find and to them I apologize.
All of these writers respected spirituality as important for the client. They all
allowed for the possibility that the soul and God might be real and that, therefore, healthy
people may sanely choose to pursue goals that lie on the supernatural side of the
natural/supernatural line in table 4. Clients may seek to act in present material reality so
as to benefit themselves or others in future spiritual reality. Many of these writers dealt
explicitly with morality, a subject that psychology has avoided. I consider morality
further in the next chapter.
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Future Prospects for the Relationship between Spirituality and Psychology
In Bacon’s time there was a hunger for a view of reality that was free from the
river and religion. Ever since Bacon’s time, most respected scientists, including
psychologists, have advocated a materialistic, research based approach to human
knowledge that was untainted by “idols of the tribe” or “superstitious philosophies.”
Since around 1990, more and more books and articles have appeared written by
psychologists and counselors who argue that spirituality is part of what it means to be
human and that counselors should, therefore, be sensitive to this aspect of their clients’
needs and longings.
I think interest in the spiritual aspects of psychotherapy will continue to increase,
and that those who are now concerned will not be easily satisfied or silenced. I feel a
hunger today similar to the hunger that existed in Bacon’s time: a hunger to see more of
the world more clearly, without prejudice. Such a view is now obscured by scientific
psychology’s refusal to see or consider the metaphysical side of the river, which means
some psychologists are missing part of what their own clients value. It seems to me that
more and more people are becoming four-dimensional: they are intentionally striving to
relocate the center of the personality away from the ego toward a center greater than
themselves. They see conflict not in terms of power, but in terms of understanding,
openness, and collaboration. More and more people have tried on binoculars and have
seen both sides of the river at the same time. It seems to me that this is a matter of
spiritual development and religious maturity, which is occurring in the collective and
spiritual unconscious of the human race, and that people who have reached this point will
not willingly turn back.
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Four-dimensional, binocular viewing requires independence from both the river
and from the two dimensional, either-or thinking of both sides. I conjecture that the
Western world has reached a critical mass of people at Fowler’s stage 5, conjunctive
faith. These are people who are spiritually open-minded and flexible. They are well
educated and not intimidated by either religion or science. They are curious about both
sides of the natural/supernatural line. This curiosity and movement to stage 5 and beyond
are accounted for in part by the facts that the population is aging and stage 5 tends to
occur at midlife and beyond. These people are likely to be among the spiritually non-
religious. Their numbers are growing. They are less likely to go to church. They may be
in need of and open to an approach to counseling that combines traditional scientific
benefits with spiritual benefits. I will suggest one such approach in chapter 17.
Questions 5 and 6 (What are spiritual values and are the spiritual and scientific
views supportive or at odds?) are addressed in the next chapter. Question 7 (Is there a
way to integrate the two world views in counseling?) will be answered in Chapters 16
and 17.
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CHAPTER XV
WHAT I LEARNED REGARDING VALUES AND MORALS IN COUNSELING
I found it difficult to answer questions 5 and 6: What are spiritual values and do
the two worldviews conflict in counseling? These questions, and their answers, are
intertwined. If spiritual values are at odds with materialistic, scientific values, then the
two views would presumably be at odds in counseling. At some point, clients and
counselors would have to choose between them. My discussion of these questions below
does not satisfy me, but I offer it as a necessary beginning.
(5) What are spiritual values? How do they differ, if at all, from materialistic, scientific
values? What are the possible goals for the client in spiritually based counseling? How
do these differ, if at all, from the goals of approaches to therapy that are scientific?
Goals and values go together: people pursue and emulate what they value.
Scientific approaches to therapy tend to be based on the medical model, which values
wellness and sees the client as sick. The goal of treatment is to make the client physically
better. If the client is feeling sad or anxious, the goal is to make the client feel happy and
secure. It is assumed that there may be a physical cause and cure for sadness and anxiety.
When the effectiveness of evidence-based treatments is tested, clients are asked, “Do you
feel better?” and therapists are asked, “Did you ‘cure’ the client?”
In comparison, spiritual approaches to counseling can be conceptualized as
turning pain, sadness, and anxiety not into happiness, but into spiritual growth, which is
harder to measure objectively.
When Bergin (1980) asserted that counseling needed to include theistic values,
Ellis (1980) countered indignantly that atheists have values too. Almost any goal can be
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conceptualized as advancing either materialistic goals or spiritual goals; for example one
can work hard to earn a good income so that one can buy nice things (material) or so that
one can give to charity (spiritual) or both. An approach to psychotherapy that bridges the
river would be open to the client’s need to grow in both ways. Clients should choose their
own pathways to growth as an exercise of free-will. Clients’ free-will is maximized to the
extent they are free of the river. They are free of the river if they can question themselves
and society. Socrates and Aristotle both questioned. One questioned the nature of
metaphysical reality; the other questioned the nature of physical reality.
Parents, family, schools, government, and churches push people back into the
river. Pressures for social acceptance and the fear of being left out on earth and in heaven
draw people back. Empathy and compassion for others can give people courage to fight
the river’s pull. Learning to value their true-selves can help people see with their own
eyes and speak their own truth. Clients can be invited to sit beside the river and look at
their lives and society with self-less desire.
Morals are different from values. I discuss morality below under the heading
Moral Considerations in Counseling.
(6) In the practice of psychotherapy, are the spiritual and the scientific views of human
beings (a) cooperative; or (b) complementary and supportive; or (c) distinct and non-
overlapping; or (d) at odds; or does that answer depend on the client, the context, and
the problem?
The two world-views are each part of most clients’ reality; however, many
scientists have seen religion as an enemy and many priests have seen science as an
enemy. As a counselor, I do not want to choose sides, but I need to be sensitive to both.
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In Nonoverlapping Magisteria (1997), paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould took the
position that religion and science constituted and should continue to constitute two
separate and non-overlapping teaching authorities. The Catholic Church uses the term
“magisterium” to denote its teaching authority. It comes from the Latin word “magister,”
which means teacher. Gould described himself as an agnostic Jew, who, nonetheless,
believed that it is possible to be both a good scientist and a religious Jew or Christian. He
thought that there is no conflict between science and religion because there is no “overlap
between their respective domains of professional expertise—science in the empirical
constitution of the universe, and religion in the search for proper ethical values and the
spiritual meaning of our lives” (p. 18). Gould continued:
The net of science covers the empirical universe: what is it made of (fact)
and why does it work this way (theory). The net of religion extends over
questions of moral meaning and value. These two magisteria do not
overlap, nor do they encompass all inquiry (consider, for starters, the
magisterium of art and the meaning of beauty). To cite the arch clichés,
we get the age of rocks, and religion retains the rock of ages; we study
how the heavens go, and they determine how to go to heaven.
(Gould, 1997, pp. 19 -- 20)
Conflict would arise if either attempted to exercise authority in the
jurisdiction of the other: if, for instance, pastors claimed evolution to be false or if
scientists made what Crocker called a naturalistic “induction across the
natural/supernatural line” (Crocker, 2008, p. 39). Crocker mentioned Richard
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Dawkins’s assertion in The God Delusion that God “almost certainly” does not
exist (Dawkins, 2006, p. 111) as such an unjustified induction. Gould wrote:
I have enormous respect for religion, and the subject has always fascinated
me, beyond almost all others (with a few exceptions, like evolution,
paleontology, and baseball). Much of this fascination lies in the historical
paradox that throughout Western history organized religion has fostered
both the most unspeakable horrors and the most heart-rending examples of
human goodness in the face of personal danger. (The evil, I believe, lies in
the occasional confluence of religion with secular power. The Catholic
Church has sponsored its share of horrors, from Inquisitions to
liquidations—but only because this institution held such secular power
during so much of Western history. When my folks held similar power
more briefly in Old Testament times, they committed just as many
atrocities with many of the same rationales.) (Gould, 1997, p. 61)
Gould was warning that the religious world-view can be dangerous when it is
joined to the power of the river. When religion, secular power, and culture join, they
overwhelm most individuals’ ability to see and think independently. Science may pose
less danger of such abuse because, from the time of Aristotle and Hypocrites, it has
attempted to position itself apart from the river, in order to see and measure nature and
health more accurately.
Gould concluded, “I believe, with all my heart, in a respectful, even loving
concordat between our magisteria—the NOMA solution. NOMA represents a
principled position on moral and intellectual grounds, not a mere diplomatic
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stance” (p. 60). As a rationalist, Gould relied on “intellectual grounds” so as not
to overlap with religion’s moral jurisdiction. Gould seemed to be saying that the
spiritual magisterium takes precedence in matters of morality; therefore, if a
contradiction should arise, the spiritual magisterium would decide questions of
value and ethics. I find that puzzling because it would secede moral jurisdiction to
a realm lead by people, many of whom Gould must have thought were suffering
from a possible delusion that God exists.
Gould wrote with a Harvard accent. I find his “more scientific than thou”
tone condescending at times. When I first read Nonoverlapping Magisteria, my
reaction was that there must be occasions when materialistic values overlap with
and contradict spiritual values and when one must choose. As I conducted
research for my paper, I looked for occasions when the spiritual world-view might
overlap and conflict with the materialistic: times when a person must choose
either a spiritual path or a materialistic path, and to choose one would clearly be
wrong by the standards of the other. I could think of very few. As examples of
times when some people put temporary materialistic gain or comfort ahead of
long term spiritual value, I thought of abortion, physician assisted suicide, and the
death penalty; although there are sensitive religious thinkers on both sides of these
issues. As examples of people putting spiritual belief ahead of scientific
knowledge, I thought of martyrs and Christian Scientists who refuse medical care.
In Care of Souls: Revisioning Christian Nurture and Counsel (1998), pastoral
counselor David Benner discussed differences between the values of soul care and the
values of traditional lay counseling. As I read his book, I made a list of his suggestions
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and added my own. The result appears in table 5, page 313. As a person who values
spirituality, I tend to prefer (as an ideal which I may not live up to) actions that reflect the
Values of Soul Care, which are listed on the right-hand side of this table. Nonetheless, the
values of soul care do not literally contradict the values of traditional, secular care. They
express an alternative or expanded perspective.
Romantic poet John Keats thought of life as “a vale of soul making” (Keats,
Letter written to his brother and sister between February and May 3, 1819, in R. Gittings,
ed., Letters of John Keats, 1970, pp. 249 – 250). It seemed to him, and it seems to me,
that disappointments, failures, and pain are essential parts of the growth of the soul.
Disappointment, failure, and pain have spiritual value, which evidence-based, scientific
psychotherapy devalues. The evidence behind most evidence-based approaches consists
of positive outcomes, such as success and happiness. Nonetheless, I cannot say, nor do I
believe, that if others make materialist assumptions and pursue materialistic values, they
are morally wrong or that their lives are meaningless. If people wish to develop
spiritually and they pursue materialistic values, they may be mistaken, but they are not
morally wrong.
I believe that spiritual development results from pursuit of the values of soul care.
I think that if people continually choose only materialistic goals, they will eventually feel
empty, lonely, and incomplete. But some people have no spiritual temperament or
curiosity and they may never develop either; they may be like the people Abraham
Maslow called the “merely healthy,” people who were content to fulfill their basic needs
and never strove for self-realization or transcendence (Maslow, quoted in Frick, 1971,
p. 42). If the spiritual realm is real, everyone may be drawn to (continued on p. 314)
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Table 5:
Values of Traditional Lay Counseling Values of Soul Care
Emphasis on cure. Emphasis on care.
Diagnosis. People are more than their symptoms and
more than their illness.
Symptom removal. Openness to the value of one’s own pain
and empathy for the pain of others.
Self-sufficiency. Living our lives aware of the reality that we
are in the presence of God.
Moral safety. Moral maturity.
Control of others and of the environment. Relinquishment of the idea that a person
can master life.
Willfulness. Willingness.
Self-realization Self-denial.
Personal success. Personal sacrifice.
Freedom. Discipline.
Self-reliance. Community.
Service to friends and family. Service to strangers.
Self-esteem. Self-transcendence.
Individual growth. Expanding self.
Security. Openness to darkness. (This is especially
true of Jungian approaches.)
Postponement and denial of death. Acceptance of death.
Self-control. Surrender.
Understanding. Awe.
Know-how. Spiritual literacy, recovery of the
sacred in everyday life.
Competency in I – it relationships. Competency in I – thou
relationships, dialogue.
Progress. Openness to the cycles of existence.
Busy-ness. Stillness.
Search for a home on earth. Search for a home in the universe.
Wisdom. Trust.
Happiness. Vitality. Peace.
Understanding. Acceptance.
Answers. Hope.
Love Unconditional love.
Truth Loyalty
Accuracy Truth
Utility Beauty
Experience Naiveté
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(continued from p. 312) explore spiritual questions and their own spirituality at some
point; but I may be wrong, and it is not for me as a counselor to say when, if ever, that
point is.
Rollo May left the ministry to become a psychotherapist, but he did not think that
God was dead. He thought that religion and scientific psychology were complementary
collaborators. May wrote "psychotherapy concerns itself with helping straighten out the
structure of the meaning of an individual’s life, and religion is the meaning" (May, 1940,
p. 24). Religion teaches us to love our neighbor, and psychotherapy helps us understand
why that is so difficult to do. May's complementary domains are almost indistinguishable
from Gould's nonoverlapping magisteria. May also thought that people experience values
dialectically: that humans realize their potential not by achieving one end or the other of
opposed qualities, but by balancing and compromising the two. In this process people are
often pulled too far in one direction and compensate by going too far in the other.
Eventually, as a result of this process, they experience psychological and spiritual
growth. The dialectical perspective values failure and sadness, as well as success and
happiness, and it values sin as part of the dialectic of good and evil. May thought that
people needed to experience both good and evil, and to be aware of both within
themselves, in order to appreciate the good and empathize with the bad.
Moral Deliberations in Counseling as a Precursor to Spiritual Development
It is important that Gould, a respected agnostic, conceded jurisdiction of moral
concerns to religion. For science, morality is optional and that option may not be
exercised. Religion, on the other hand, views morality as an essential concern of every
human being. If morality is only a concern of the spiritual magisterium; if psychology
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and psychotherapy are to be exclusively scientific in their concerns and approaches; then
it follows that the science of psychology should not address morality. However, Gould
also wrote, “It is only by paying attention to both that we become fully human. The
attainment of wisdom in a full life requires extensive attention to both domains,” the
spiritual and the scientific (1997, p. 18). In my opinion, attainment of wisdom in
psychotherapy requires attention to both magisteria. If one is a scientist who studies
fossils or stars, one can limit one’s focus to the data, at least while on the job, and hold
one’s awe in check. But if counselors are not ready to address a client’s spirituality while
on their job, they may miss half of what it means to be human, and if they do not address
the client’s moral questions, they will be missing half of what it means to be spiritual.
Jung, May, and Peck (1978) insisted that evil is real and needs to be defined by
psychology, if moral courage and charity are to be fostered in today’s secular,
materialistic society. Benner, May, Frattoroli and Jungian Robert Johnson (1991a, 1991b)
wrote that healthy psychological growth requires conscious moral deliberations and
decisions. The questions addressed in therapy are moral questions, because they concern
how one ought to live; but “psychotherapy patients do not separate moral and
psychological phenomena in the way that psychotherapists often do” (Benner, 1998,
p. 43). When discussing moral questions, Benner was non-judgmental and open-minded;
therefore, he did not say, for example, that to have an abortion or an affair is wrong. He
said it is wrong not to consider them as moral questions. Spiritual development comes, in
part, through the process of considering them as moral questions. “Moral reflection is
best initiated by inviting the one seeking care to engage in such reflection himself or
herself” (Benner, p. 154). Wilson thought that in order to become psychologically well,
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people first needed to become morally well by doing a personal moral inventory, asking
others for forgiveness, and making amends.
I agree that morality is the most important aspect of the human psyche that is
missing from the theory of psychology and the practice of psychotherapy. I do not want
to omit morality and evil from my approach to counseling. I want to arrive at definitions
of goodness and immorality and decide how to deal with moral questions in counseling. I
will begin by distinguishing morals from values; then I will define moral and immoral
acts.
Morals are distinct from values. Morals and values are often conflated but they
are not the same. There is much disagreement concerning values; there is little
disagreement concerning morality. Values measure what is important, what one wishes to
strive for and protect. Values measure what is important to a person’s growth.
Morals measure what is destructive to growth. Morality contains prohibitions, the
thou shalt not’s. It says what one must not do, even if one wishes to, even if one values
the result. Positive morality can measure a choice to sacrifice personal material well-
being for the material or spiritual welfare of another.
It is possible to rank values: a counselor can ask what is most important to a
client. Most values exist in relative relationship to other values; for example, self-love
cannot be absolute; it must be adjusted to account for love of others, critical self-
awareness, awareness of the need for self-change, and awareness of one’s own death.
It is not possible to rank moral acts: good or bad. People sometimes face
alternatives when both choices are morally wrong: whatever they do, they will hurt
someone. A spiritually sensitive counselor can help clients attend to moral decisions and
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forgive themselves when they fail. Moral questions are most likely to come up in the
context of relationships. When clients demonstrate moral courage, counselors should
celebrate their courage.
Throughout the world, there is and has been little difference in moral standards
within groups (Lewis, 1947). Historically, the critical difference has not been between
material and spiritual morality; the critical difference has been between in-group and out-
group morality. People who are not members of one’s own group have been thought to be
of lesser value. Acts that would have been immoral if committed against a member of
one’s own group were allowable or even noble when committed against a member of
another group (Judson, p. 98).
Moral and immoral acts. I define a moral act to be an intentional or knowing
action that fairly promotes the physical, mental, emotional, social, or spiritual well-being
of oneself or another. I define an immoral act to be an intentional, knowing, or reckless
action that unfairly harms the physical, mental, emotional, social, or spiritual well-being
of oneself or another.
To be meaningful, moral actions must result from an exercise of the client’s free-
will. As a counselor, I will assume, as a matter or working faith, that there are no evil
persons, just immoral acts. Anyone can change. Anyone can choose at any time to begin
to move in a positive direction on any of the spiritual dimensions, including the moral
dimension. The need for psychology to consider morality was made apparent by the
Holocaust.
Auschwitz. After modern, so-called civilized human beings perpetrated the horrors
of Auschwitz, it seemed to me psychology had a moral obligation to be moral: to
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understand how and why seemly decent people could align themselves with evil.
Psychologists should try to figure out how it happened and work to prevent its
recurrence. A few have, such as Robert Lifton. In the 1930s and 1940s, the Nazis and the
Japanese took the position that they were members of superior races and could treat
inferior races as they wished. Since World War II, science and religion have both
contradicted those claims. From a spiritual perspective no soul is worth more than
another. Scientific psychology has demonstrated that, genetically, all humans come from
the same ancestors. Multicultural psychologists have pointed out that race is a
pseudobiological term (Pedersen, 2000, p. 105). Gould (1974a, b, c, & d) argued that
there is no biological basis for the term “sub-species,” and Atkinson argued, “There is no
biological basis for the term race” (Atkinson, 2004, p. 8). Scientifically there is only one
human race, which demonstrates variability in extrinsic traits. Socially, those who have
possessed the superficial traits that are currently valued have discriminated against those
who did not (Atkinson, pp. 6 – 8).
In The Nazi Doctors (1986), Jewish psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton wrote that the
best way to avoid future genocidal horrors is to teach, from childhood, that all humans
are equal and to practice empathy “toward all human beings” (1986, p. 500). I believe
that equality extends to both genders. Equality must be a moral tenet of a spiritually
sensitive psychotherapy. In The Genocidal Mentality: Nazi Holocaust and Nuclear
Threat (1988), Lifton and Eric Markusen advocated a “species consciousness” which sees
all humans as part of one species, not as members of subspecies and races. They wrote
that everywhere they traveled in the world, they found people hungry and ready to share
such a view (1990, p. 256). One way people can gain a sense of common humanity is by
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traveling the world; but if they stay at home, they can choose to expose themselves to
people of different ethnicities, cultures, and religions. That is also an important way for
people to mature spiritually. The key method by which counselors teach empathy is not
by lecturing, but by modeling. Clients may show to others the same understanding and
empathy that has been shown to them.
A Binocular, Four-Dimensional Perspective
Jungian therapists Lionel Corbett and Murray Stein suggested a binocular
approach to therapy in which one lens sees the therapy in traditional terms and the other
sees the spiritual background. “At times one or the other level is at the foreground, but
both are always present, like the warp and the woof of a fabric” (Corbett & Stein, 2005,
p.60).
Jungian Robert Johnson thought that humans began to develop from a two-
dimension, linear view of psychic life toward a three-dimensional, self-questioning,
introspective view around the time of Hamlet (circa 1601), who was the first three-
dimensional hero. Johnson thought that humans now “live in an age where the collective
unconscious is devoted to the evolution from” three-dimensional consciousness to four-
dimensional consciousness (Johnson, 1991b, pp. 82 – 83). The transition is and must be
painful, because it involves a death of the former self. Johnson wrote:
The process can be summed up in one sentence: it is the relocating of the
center of the personality from the ego to a center greater than one’s self.
This superpersonal center has been variously called the Self, the Christ
nature, the Buddha nature, superconsciousness, cosmic consciousness,
satori, and samadi. (Johnson, 1991b, p. 84)
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According to historian of science Principe (2006), prior to the professionalization
of science in the 19
th
Century, it was assumed by most learned people that science and
theology both constituted legitimate pursuits of knowledge: one in the natural-material
realm, the other in the supernatural-spiritual. It was assumed that the material and
spiritual worlds were both real and that the proper attitude was one of cooperation.
Cooperation is compatible with a four-dimensional, binocular approach to counseling.
Conclusions
At the end of my research, I concluded that, as a spiritually sensitive
psychotherapist, I can wear bifocals, or trifocals, or whatever lenses may be necessary to
allow me to see from what James called a pluralistic perspective: I can appreciate that the
spiritual and material needs of each client may be different and may change in the course
of counseling. I can adjust my perspective so as to bring the client’s and my own
spirituality into focus when appropriate, and to bring the materialistic needs of the client
and my scientific knowledge into focus when that is more appropriate. If clients appear to
be experiencing a contradiction between their spiritual ideals and materialistic values, I
can use the confrontation skills I have been taught as a counselor; that is, I can ask the
client if they see a contradiction without implying that one view is right and the other
wrong. My ideal for my clients and myself is that our spiritual and materialistic sides will
collaborate, and that, as a result of that collaboration, we will see four-dimensionally
from outside our egos. Collaboration is not an approach that I can impose. Collaboration
is a point of view that explicitly rejects avoidance, competition, accommodation, and
compromise. It rejects either-or thinking in favor of both-and thinking. It is additive. It
attempts to honor all points of view without choosing one (Wilmot & Hocker, 2007).
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From the collaborative standpoint, if the perspective of NOMA, or May, or of Corbett
and Stein is inaccurate or incomplete, that is unimportant compared to what they all
contribute, which is an acknowledgement of the importance of both the spiritual and the
scientific world-views. Maslow (1968, 1980, 1987) wrote that people cannot turn to self-
actualization and self-transcendence until their basic needs for safety, shelter, food, love,
and self-esteem are met. As a counselor, I do not want to lose my head in the spiritual
clouds. I need to be able to come down to earth when required and respond with respect
and sensitivity to each level of need in my clients.
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CHAPTER XVI
HOW I RECONCILED THE SPIRITUAL AND
SCIENTIFIC WORLDVIEWS IN MY APPROACH TO COUSELING
When I began my research, I wanted to learn how psychotherapy had become
separated from the soul and, if possible, I wanted to reunite them in my approach to
counseling. I planned my Master’s research paper to serve as a foundation for that
approach. When I proposed this paper to my advisor, Dr. Lyle White, I was concerned
that he might think that I was trying to do too much. But he authorized this paper and
stuck with me through many re-writes. He kept asking difficult questions, which, at first,
I resented. Answering his questions took a lot of work, but it resulted in a paper that was
more fair-minded to both world-views and, therefore, more practicable. As I answered his
questions, I climbed a spiral staircase in my mind. The ascent was slow and sometimes
painful, but at the top, looking back, I saw old things from a new expanded vantage point.
At the end of my paper, I returned to two philosophic points-of-view that I had rejected at
first, but which, ultimately, I included in my approach to counseling. Those points-of-
view were the Nine Spiritual Competencies recommended by the Association for
Spiritual, Ethical, and Religious Values in Counseling (ASERVIC) and the theory and
practice of Carl Roger.
In this chapter and the next, I will discuss how, based on my research and my
experience with actual clients in practica and internship, I arrived at a spiritually sensitive
approach to counseling that I am comfortable with and that I think many clients will be
comfortable with. I will explain why I did not, at first, include the spiritual competencies
and Rogers’s person-centered therapy and why ultimately I adapted and included each of
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them in an approach I call spiritually sensitive person-centered counseling. In the next
chapter, I will describe spiritually sensitive person-centered counseling in detail.
The Nine Spiritual Competencies
The nine spiritual competencies are as follows:
(1) The professional counselor can explain the relationship between religion and
spirituality, including similarities and differences.
(2) The professional counselor can describe religious and spiritual beliefs and
practices in a cultural context.
(3) The professional counselor engages in self-exploration of religious and
spiritual beliefs in order to increase sensitivity, understanding, and acceptance
of diverse belief systems.
(4) The professional counselor can describe her or his religious and or/spiritual
belief system and explain various models of religious or spiritual development
across the lifespan.
(5) The professional counselor can demonstrate sensitivity and acceptance of a
variety of religious and/or spiritual expressions in client communication.
(6) The professional counselor can identify the limits of her or his understanding
of a client’s religious or spiritual expression and demonstrate appropriate
referral skills and generate possible referral sources.
(7) The professional counselor can assess the relevance of the religious and /or
spiritual domains in the client’s therapeutic issues.
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(8) The professional counselor is sensitive to and receptive of religious and/or
spiritual themes in the counseling process as befits the expressed preference of
each client.
(9) The professional counselor uses a client’s religious and/or spiritual beliefs in
the pursuit of the client’s therapeutic goals as befits the client’s expressed
preference. (Reprinted with permission from Cashwell and Young, ACA’s
Integrating Spirituality and Religion into Counseling: A Guide to Competent
Practice, 2005, p. 2.)
These spiritual competencies reflect a multicultural sensitivity in which the most
important reality is the client’s. These skills are important whether the spiritual realm of
existence is real or imaginary. These competencies reflect a concern for “process” over
“content.” They focus more on the counselor’s attitude than on what is said. When I
began my research, I did not appreciate the need or justification for a spiritual approach
to counseling that was empty of content. Content is personal, as the competencies
suggest. What is personal is dear to each of us but may not be transferable. By including
explicit beliefs in my approach to counseling, I might appear to be denying the validity of
other beliefs. As I worked on the paper, I engaged in self-exploration of my own beliefs.
To me, spiritual content meant my experiences of the spiritual realm, which formed me as
a child and as an adult. These experiences are an important part of who I am as a person
and as a counselor. They gave me the courage to return to college at 60, faith in the value
of each client, and commitment to each client’s right to make his and her own spiritual
choices. If possible, I wanted to express this spiritual content in my approach to
counseling.
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When I was a child, my experiences of the spiritual realm had come from a gay
Episcopalian priest who taught open-mindedness and tolerance and my father who taught
Romantic Poetry at SIU. In our summers, my father and I would go on long, almost
wordless walks in the mountains and forests, where I experienced God exactly as
Wordsworth had:
There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and freshness of a dream,
It is not now as it hath been of yore; --
Turn wheresoe’er I may,
By night or day.
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.
. . .
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our Life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
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But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
(Wordsworth, Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood,
1802 – 1804, 1807/ 2004, pp. 340 – 342)
My best friend in high school was an agnostic rationalist, and for a few years
between childhood and adulthood, so was I. One summer, when we were 17, we stood on
the rocky shores of Lake Kashi, in northern Ontario, where his parents owned a summer
cabin, and we debated. “There is no way that we can know for certain whether or not God
exists,” my friend said. “You are correct,” I answered. But inside I demurred. I was not
content with that answer. In my mind, I yelled at the silence: “God, I want to know. Do
you exist and will you be there to help when things get rough, at least to accompany me?
If you are there, show me.” To my surprise, God answered. God answered though
mystical experiences and miracles and by listening to my prayers and offering comfort
and guidance, sometimes in dreams at night, sometimes in waking dreams. Thus, in my
adulthood, God continued to be an important part of my experience. William Alston
(2002), a philosopher and practicing Anglican, thought that atheists often assume that
believers base their beliefs on unquestioning obedience to authority or blind faith in
things unseen; but he thought many, like himself, base their beliefs on their personal
experience. Person-centered therapist Brian Thorne, a self-identified Christian, thought it
possible that as many as one in five persons has mystical experiences, but that they
seldom talk about them because such experiences run counter to the scientific
weltanschauung. “They come as gifts,” Thorne wrote, “but also as challenges to our
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concept of reality and it is sad in the extreme when, as a result of conditioning we dismiss
them as unimportant or even crazy” (Thorne, 1991, p. 20).
Carl Rogers and Person-centered Counseling
Carl Rogers began graduate school at Union Theological Seminary; but, after an
uncomfortable summer giving sermons, he dropped out and enrolled in the graduate
program in Educational Psychology at Columbia across the street, because he did not
want to tell others what to do or believe (Thorne, 1992). I feel the same. If there is a line
that divides the scientifically observable world from the spiritual realm, I do not claim to
know with absolute certainty anything that lies on the spiritual side of that line; and even
if I did, I would not wish to impose my beliefs on others. Like the 14
th
Dalai Lama, I do
not think it is necessary to believe in God or in any religion to be a good or spiritual
person (Iyer, 2008). And like Carl Rogers, I believe that people learn from their own
experience, not from being told.
When I began my research, I thought it likely that, although Rogers had left the
seminary, he would have made some allowance for the spiritual world-view in his
approach to counseling. He did not explicitly do so. In a dialogue with theologian Paul
Tillich, which is also quoted in Chapter 5, Rogers explained:
I realize very well that I and many other therapists are interested in the
kind of issues that involve the religious worker and the theologian, and yet, for
myself, I prefer to put my thinking on those issues in humanistic terms, or to
attack those issues through the channels of scientific investigation. I guess I have
some real sympathy for the modern view that is sort of symbolized in the phrase
"God is dead;" that is, that religion no longer does speak to people in the modern
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world, and I would be interested in knowing why you tend to put your thinking –
which certainly is very congenial to that of a number of psychologists these days
– why you tend to put your thinking in religious terminology and theological
language. (Rogers, 1989b, p. 72)
Rogers was asking why humanistic psychology and humanistic psychotherapy are
not enough. Tillich answered that Rogers was concerned with human relationships on the
horizontal plane; Tillich was also concerned with human relationships on the vertical
plane, or the plane of the divine and eternal. Rogers wanted humans to be open to their
own inner voice and to the voices of others; Tillich also wanted humans to be open to
God.
The God of my experience has always been patient and non-directional with me,
just as a person-centered counselor would be. I believe that God has shown me
unconditional positive regard, non-possessory love, and understanding, even when I have
not deserved them.
I tried to construct an approach to spiritual-psychological counseling that
explicitly included some of the beliefs that appear on the right of tables 14.2, 17.1
(Beliefs Common in the West), and 17.2 (Beliefs Less Common in the West). But every
approach I tried seemed argumentative, rather than accepting. I ultimately came to the
conclusion that I could not construct a fair-minded approach to counseling that included
explicit spiritual content. I then began to consider what process would work best with
non-explicit spiritual content. I looked for a process that would be consistent with the
spiritual competencies and would meet the following criteria:
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(1) The approach would recognize the possibility of a realm of existence that is
non-material but real.
(2) The approach would be spiritual but non-religious; that is, it would be open to
all religious and spiritual beliefs but not bound to any one.
(3) It would be adaptable to both spiritual and non-spiritual milieus and to
spiritually inclined and non-spiritually inclined clients.
(4) The approach would fulfill the potential of William James’s ideas, as if he had
become a therapist. It would be pluralistic. It would value both the healthy
minded and sick souls. It would pay positive attention to sorrow, pain, and
death and value shades of gray. It would honor these thoughts of James
writing in favor of a multiplicity of religious beliefs:
No two of us have identical difficulties, nor should we
be expected to work out identical solutions. Each, from his
peculiar angle of observation, takes in a certain sphere of fact
and trouble, which each must deal with in a unique manner. One
of us must soften himself, another must harden himself; one must
yield a point, another must stand firm, – in order the better to defend
the position assigned him. (James, 1902, pp. 419)
(5) It would include an explicit process by which the spiritual aspect of humans
could be accessed and nurtured.
In Chapter 8, I considered Alcoholics Anonymous, pastoral counseling, Jungian
psychology, and developmental-wellness counseling, and I concluded that none of them
met all these criteria. It seemed to me that I could best share my experiences of the
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spiritual realm by treating my clients as God has treated me, as a person-centered client.
The theory of person-centered therapy is empty of content except for its underlying
philosophy, which is that clients must build their true selves and their true values out of
their own experience, not the experience of their parents or teachers or priests; that they
are capable of doing so; and they can be trusted to do so without coaching from the
counselor. This attitude can be extended to the client’s true spiritual self, whom clients
must build out of their own spiritual experiences, not mine. As a spiritually sensitive
person-centered counselor, I have faith in the client and faith in the universe. I believe if
the client cries out to the vertical dimension of existence, it will respond. When the
vertical dimension has responded, people have translated that response into many
different beliefs and liturgies, all of which I respect.
I believe that spiritual development, alluded to in competency 4, is one of the
purposes of life. If that is so, each of us must begin at a separate point and progress at a
different rate. I cannot pick the point or impose the rate. I can trust clients to grow
spiritually the same way Rogers trusted them to develop in non-spiritual ways.
So far, all my clients in internship who have discussed spiritual issues have been
Christian. However, my approach is not limited to Christians. I think that the client’s true
spiritual self must come entirely from the client’s experience, which may not be
Christian. I believe that the spiritual true-selves of Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus,
agnostics, atheists, and others are of equal value and deserve equal respect and
understanding. Like Lifton (1986), I believe this attitude is essential if we are to evolve
beyond the mentality of Auschwitz. I think spiritually sensitive person-centered
counseling can be helpful to clients of any religion, and to the spiritually non-religious,
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and to curious doubters. My job is not to convert. My job is to listen and to help clients
hear their own spiritual voice.
May criticized Rogers for not acknowledging or dealing with both good and evil
in his clients. One reason I rejected person-centered therapy at first was that I was
concerned that it might be an a-moral approach. Rogers believed in his clients, and he
fostered their growth. In order to promote that growth, he practiced unconditional
positive regard. He said to all clients, “I want to understand.” Rogers wished to teach his
clients nothing; he wished to provide his clients with an environment in which they could
learn for themselves (Rogers, 1951, 1961). Concerning person-centered therapy and
values, Hobbs wrote:
One of the cardinal principles in client-centered therapy is that
the individual must be helped to work out his own value system,
with a minimal imposition of the value system of the therapist. This
very commitment is, of course, itself an expression of a value which
is inevitably communicated to the client in the intimate course of
working together. This value, which affirms the individual’s right
to choose his own values, is believed to be therapeutically helpful.
The suggestion of an array of other values by the therapist is believed
to be therapeutically harmful, possibly because, if they are presented
by the therapist, they will inevitably carry the authority of the therapist
and constitute a denial of the self of the client at the moment.
(Hobbs, 1951, p. 292)
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It seemed to me that there was a danger that by always saying, “Yes, I
understand,” and never saying, “No,” a person-centered therapist could become one of
“Hitler’s willing executioners,” to employ Daniel Jonah Goldhagen’s cautionary phrase
for “good” people in Germany who did not say, “No,” to Hitler (1996). Despite these
concerns, I have concluded that the counselor can provide a climate in which the client
can listen to his or her own conscience, but that the counselor cannot be the client’s
conscience. If Himmler came to counseling and suggested the final solution today, in
2009, the counselor would be legally and ethically required to report him because of the
danger he would pose to all living kind. And the counselor could resign as his therapist.
Be that as it may, I cannot imagine Himmler coming to counseling of his own free will. If
clients come to counseling voluntarily, they are probably motivated by what Rogers
called a feeling of incongruence between their perception of themselves and their actual
experience. Himmler would not have felt incongruent. If clients do not come to
counseling of their own free will, they are probably sent by family members, or a court,
or the welfare department, who at least claim to be seeking the client’s best interests. If
he had come, Himmler would probably have felt uncomfortable with the self-examining
nature of counseling and would have left. If he had stayed and had contemplated doing
evil, the counselor would have had a moral obligation to him and to society to confront
him and say, “I disagree with the moral choices you are making; I do not think they are
good for your growth or the growth of others.”
Spiritually sensitive therapist Brian Thorne agreed that person-centered therapy
relies on clients to develop their own morality out of their own experience, rather than
depending on a morality of authority, which is, in any case, ineffective. Given
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acceptance, understanding, and support, it was his experience and Rogers’s that most
people tend to develop in prosocial ways. Nonetheless, Thorne acknowledged that there
were times when he has had to take a stand against what a client was doing. Thorne has
counseled some clients who began to grow, then suddenly stopped and fled in fear from
their own development, freedom, and health. Concerning this, Thorne wrote:
Moral non-intervention has been a logical outcome of my positive view of
mankind and of my understanding of the therapeutic process. Now, however, as I
experience my client’s rejection of me and of the process to which I have attached
such value, I find myself shaken to the foundations. I seem to be witnessing the
most shocking act of self-betrayal on my client’s part. He has found himself, only
to be overcome with such fear and dismay that he is now striving to lose himself
again as quickly as possible. (Thorne, 1991, pp. 121-122)
When he senses that clients are about to flee, Thorne confronts them, lovingly, non-
moralistically, with his perception of the damage they are doing to their own growth, and
he tries to re-engage them through his authoritative faith in the process. This authority is
not expressed judgmentally; it is expressed graciously, out of Thorne’s genuine concern
and regard for the client. He wrote:
I have suggested that there is much in the person-centered tradition
(and in the analytical for that matter) which implies that unconditional
acceptance and moral confrontation are incompatible activities. That is a
view to which I can no longer subscribe. On the contrary, I have come to
believe that it is the very holding of these two in healthy tension which
constitutes the counselor’s greatest challenge and can prove to be his or
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her most potent force for healing at those crucial times when the client
hovers between health and neurosis. (Thorne, 1991, pp. 124 – 125)
Thorne’s willingness to confront immorality is strengthened by his belief, which I
share, that it is impossible to be mentally well and morally ill, that immorality is a form
of mental illness, which is destructive to self and others. “The healing of neuroses is
dependent upon the creation of a non-moralistic relationship” (p. 121), but “ethical
development is a fundamental of growth toward wholeness” (Thorne, 1991, p. 123).
There is natural tension between these two ideals, which Thorne thinks it is best to
acknowledge to one’s self and, on occasion, to the client.
I think May may have misunderstood Rogers when he accused him of not taking
human evil into account in his approach. Rogers wrote:
Gradually my experience has forced me to conclude that the individual
has within himself the capacity and the tendency, latent if not evident,
to move forward toward maturity. In a suitable psychological climate
this tendency is released, and becomes actual rather than potential.
(Rogers, 1961, p. 35)
By maturity, Rogers did not mean happy and well behaved. He meant able to
enter into relationships that were congruent with one’s true-self and with the other
person’s. Rogers was not saying that all people are good; he was saying that given the
right conditions they will all try to become better. In On Becoming a Person (1961),
Rogers asked his readers if it had not been their experience that “the core of human
personality is positive” (p. 91). Peck wrote People of the Lie (1983) in part because of
evil clients he had known, people who were intent upon destroying the life force in
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others, sometimes in their own children. I was an assistant District Attorney for seven
years and a criminal defense lawyer for 10. In that time I, too, have known people who do
not fit Rogers’s description. One was a contract killer, who took pleasure and pride in
causing pain and fear. Another was a serial sex-abuser who had sexually abused every
male and female child who had come under his power for years. Those were the only two
cases from which I resigned. Another person who did not live up to Rogers’s
expectations was a 14-year-old girl who may have committed as many as seven murders.
Like the child in The Bad Seed (1956), she got rid of anyone who displeased her. She was
represented by another member of the firm for which I worked, not by me personally. I
also represented a client with antisocial personality disorder, a strong young man who
was charged with stealing a purse by force from an older woman. On the witness stand,
he changed to a new lie as quickly as the old lie was revealed. He tried to sound sincere,
but he was like a bad high school actor performing the role of a “sincere person.”
Nonetheless, by his eagerness to seem sincere and truthful, he demonstrated an inner
awareness of morality and a wish to be seen to live up to it; in other words, morality was
still his ideal. I prosecuted and represented hundreds, probably thousands, of people
charged with every crime imaginable, and all the rest of them fit Rogers’s
characterization. Although they often failed, they tried to be better people.
Person-centered therapy and taking sides in counseling. In my training, I have
wanted to ask some clients, “Can’t you see what you are doing is wrong?” In working
with some couples and families, I have been tempted to take sides. In Interpersonal
Conflict, Wilmot and Hocker, wrote that if mediators or counselors took sides, they
would gain an enemy and create an issue of “unfair bonding,” which “precludes you [the
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counselor] from being an effective neutral helper” (2007, p. 273). I decided, therefore, to
focus all my attention on seeing and validating the positive aspects of each individual
client and each member of the couples and families I was seeing. This is called “assets
based counseling,” and it is an approach that is stressed in SIU’s program. Although I had
said nothing specific, clients could tell that my attitude was different and the atmosphere
in the counseling room improved immediately and enormously.
Frattaroli (2001) and May (1989) wrote that spiritual growth arises from inner
moral conflict. Wilmot and Hocker (2007) and Kellett and Dalton, authors of Managing
Conflict in a Negotiated World (2001), wrote that growth can arise from constructive
conflict with others. If I apply the same approach to inner conflict that I have tried with
couples and families, I would not take sides in a clients’ inner moral conflict. If I want to
be an agent of moral change, I must support what is good and wait for clients to become
better when they are ready. Some may never be ready. If counselors are moralistic and
judgmental, they are likely to be ineffective, because clients will see them as taking sides
in the client’s inner conflicts.
The person-centered approach is consistent with this non-judgmental attitude
toward clients. Rogers found that clients naturally tended to judge themselves and the
world in moral terms, as “‘good” or ‘bad,’ ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, ‘satisfying’ or
‘unsatisfying’” (Rogers, 1951, p. 149). In the course of person-centered counseling, the
client changes in three ways:
He perceives himself as a more adequate person, with more worth and more
possibility of meeting life. He permits more experiential data to enter awareness,
and thus achieves a more realistic appraisal of himself, his relationships, and his
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environment. He tends to place the basis of standards with himself, recognizing
that the “goodness” or “badness” of any experience or perceptual object is not
something inherent in that object, but is a value placed on it by himself.
(Rogers, 1951, p. 139)
At the outset of counseling, the locus of control lies outside the client, in their
parents, culture, friends, and in the counselor. One role of the counselor is to keep the
locus of control within the client; so that “as therapy progresses, the client comes to
realize that he is trying to live by what others think, that he is not being his real self, and
he is less and less satisfied with this situation” (Rogers, 1951, p. 149). Eventually, clients
internalize and take responsibility for their own values and morality. They develop their
own values and morality out of their own experience, and their basis for judging
themselves changes from how others judged them to how they judged themselves. If
these new values are the counselor’s, the client will only have replaced one set of
introjected values with another and will still be in the river’s thrall.
One result of spiritually sensitive person-centered therapy could be that clients
sit above the river, above both banks, and judge reality (the material bank) and values
(the metaphysical bank) for themselves. Clients can only arrive at this point if they feel
“complete freedom from threat to the self” (Rogers, 1951, p. 144).
(7) Is there a way to combine the spiritual and scientific world views in one approach to
counseling, that, based on my research, class work, and experience with clients, I would
feel comfortable recommending to clients? What should that approach look like?
I answer this question in the next chapter. The person-centered approach that I
propose there comes from Rogers and is almost without content. It emphasizes attitude,
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philosophy, and process, as do the nine competencies. It is adaptable to the content of the
client’s spiritual and material world-views whether those views are nonoverlapping or
conflict.
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CHAPTER XVII
A SPIRITUALLY SENSITIVE
PERSON-CENTERED APPROACH TO COUNSELING
This chapter presents an approach to talk therapy that builds on what I have
learned in my research about the relationship between spirituality and psychology. This
approach conceptualizes the client as having the following five spheres of growth and
difficulty: physical, mental, emotional, social/relational, and spiritual. This five-sphere
perspective was suggested to me by psychologist David Elam of Southern Illinois
University’s Counseling Center and is used with his permission. When all five spheres
are addressed, the total client is being cared for. In any of the five spheres, a client can be
growing or stuck. These five spheres are interconnected and wellness in one affects the
wellness of all. Care of the total client may be approached from two distinct perspectives:
the material, scientific perspective of Aristotle, Hypocrites, B. F. Skinner, and Albert
Ellis, or the metaphysical, spiritual perspective of Socrates, Plato, William James, and
Rollo May. If used sensitively, with an appropriate client, the therapist does not have to
choose one of these approaches to the exclusion of the other. The two perspectives can be
supportive of each other. Traditional talk therapy has addressed the total client, with these
exceptions: counselors could recommend that a client consider medicine, exercise, or
dietary changes but did not usually oversee the physical aspects of treatment; and most
counselors have not been willing to work with spiritual concerns, on the grounds that
they are unscientific and are more appropriately the business of rabbis, imams, or priests.
As I conducted the research for this paper, I wanted to find or develop an
approach that I could use in my own work as a counselor. For reasons explained in the
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last chapter, the approach that seems most open to combining the spiritual and the
naturalistic world-views is the person-centered therapy of Carl Rogers. Therefore, I call
the approach suggested in this chapter spiritually sensitive person-centered counseling.
This chapter is organized into the following sections, which appear on the
following pages:
Spiritually Sensitive Person-Centered Counseling’s
View of the Client p. 340
The Vales, Goals, and Results of Spiritually
Sensitive Person-Centered Counseling p. 342
Spiritually Sensitive Person-Centered
Counseling’s View of the Therapist/Counselor p. 349
Spiritually Sensitive Person-Centered
Counselor Brian Thorne p. 350
Content vs. Process p. 354
The Process of Spiritually Sensitive
Person-Centered Counseling p. 354
Spiritually Sensitive Person-Centered
Counseling with Groups p. 365
Conclusions p. 370
Spiritually Sensitive Person-Centered Counseling’s View of the Client
Traditional non-spiritual psychotherapy views the client as sick, abnormal, in pain
because of psychosocial maladjustment, and in need of expert care and medicine. Some
clients prefer this approach.
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As a spiritually sensitive person-centered counselor, I view clients as stuck in one
or more of the five areas of potential development, including spiritual. I view clients from
both a scientific perspective and a spiritual perspective. I adjust to emphasize one view or
another as clients’ needs, expressed preferences, and receptivity allow.
Carl Rogers believed that each person has a true-self which is unique and
valuable, but which may be stuck in its development. It is not the counselor’s job to
define that true-self or change it. It is the counselors job to make clients feel valued and
safe, so that they can define and develop themselves through their own experience and
conscious choices.
I will never equate the diagnosis with the client. I do not, for example, think of
someone with a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder as “a borderline.” I think of
him or her as a human being who demonstrates pain and fear of a sort that the DSMIV-TR
associates with that diagnosis. I will also try to be aware of the occasions when I
demonstrate my own pain and fear similarly. I will think of each client as a complete
human being, who is a lot more than his or her diagnosis, and who can continue to
develop in many ways, including spiritually.
If the spiritual half of the natural/supernatural world is real, clients can also be
trusted to develop the spiritual component of their true-selves, which I will call their
souls. As a spiritually sensitive person-centered counselor, I will not tell clients what to
believe, as a priest or imam might. Development of a client’s spiritual true-self does not
depend upon any particular set of beliefs. The spiritual true-selves of Christians,
Muslims, and atheists are of equal value. Rogers trusted clients to develop healthily in
non-spiritual ways. Clients can also be trusted to develop healthily in spiritual ways.
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The Values, Goals, and Results of Spiritually Sensitive Person-Centered Counseling
Values. Carl Rogers had confidence in the process of person-centered therapy
whereby each client is valued as a unique individual of worth and trusted to develop in
prosocial and self-syntonic ways. “One of the cardinal principles in client-centered
therapy is that the individual must be helped to work out his own value system, with a
minimal imposition of the value system of the therapist” (Hobbs, 1951, p. 292). This
insistence on the client choosing his or her own values is thought to be therapeutic.
Making value choices and moral deliberations are part of maturing psychologically and
spiritually.
Goals. One goal of therapy is to move the locus of valuation from outside the
client to inside. At the outset of counseling, the locus of control lies outside the client, in
their parents, culture, friends, and in the counselor. One role of the counselor is to keep
the locus of control within the client; so that “as therapy progresses, the client comes to
realize that he is trying to live by what others think, that he is not being his real self, and
he is less and less satisfied with this situation” (Rogers, 1951, p. 149). The next stage of
person-centered therapy is for clients to develop their own values that are true to their
own experience. If these new values are the counselor’s, the client will only have
replaced one set of introjected values with another.
Results. Spiritually sensitive person-centered counseling can help clients become
unstuck in their cognitive, emotional, psychosocial, or spiritual development. In the
course of counseling, clients become unstuck through a four-step process: (1) They
perceive themselves as more adequate persons, with more worth and more possibility of
meeting life. They begin to see the world with their own eyes. (2) In the second step,
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clients begin to feel their own pain, instead of denying it or projecting blame onto others.
They permit more experiential data to enter awareness, and thus achieve a more realistic
appraisal of themselves, their relationships, and their environment. (3) They tend to place
the basis of standards within themselves, recognizing that the “goodness” or “badness” of
any experience or perceptual object is not something inherent in that object, but is a value
placed on it by themselves (Rogers, 1951, p. 139). (4) In the final step, clients become
more accepting and loving toward others. They can use their pain, fear, and sadness to
feel the pain, fear, and sadness of others and to help. At the outset of therapy, clients may
scream in rage at the world; in mid-therapy they may cry for themselves; at the
conclusion, they can cry for others. This final change is accelerated if they are in a
person-centered group, as well as in individual counseling. As a result of therapy, clients
may sit above the river, on either bank, and judge reality (the material bank) and values
(the metaphysical bank) for themselves. Clients can only arrive at this point if they feel
“complete freedom from threat to the self” during therapy sessions (Rogers, 1951,
p. 144).
As this progress occurred, Rogers observed that the following “value directions”
emerged. These value directions were quoted in Chapter 6, in the section that discussed
the values of Humanistic and Existential Psychology, but they are worth repeating:
(1) As they mature, people tend to move away from façades. Pretense,
defensiveness, putting up a front are negatively valued. They move away from
"oughts." The feeling of "I ought to do or be thus and so" is negatively valued.
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(2) They no longer seek to meet the expectations of others. Pleasing others, as a
goal in itself, is negatively valued. Being real is positively valued. The client
tends to move toward being himself, being his real feelings, being what he is.
(3) Self-direction is positively valued. They discover increasing pride and
confidence in making their own choices, guiding their own lives. One's self, one's
own feelings, come to be positively valued. From a point of view where they look
upon themselves with contempt and despair, they come to value themselves and
their reactions as being of worth.
(4) Being a process is positively valued. From desiring some fixed goal, clients
come to prefer the excitement of being a process of potentialities being born.
(5) They come to value an openness to all of their inner and outer experience. To
be open to and sensitive to their own inner reactions and feelings, the reactions
and feelings of others, and the realities of the objective world -- this is a direction
which they clearly prefer. This openness becomes their most valued resource.
(6) Sensitivity to others and acceptance of others is positively valued. They come
to appreciate others for what they are, just as they come to appreciate themselves
for what they are.
(7) Deep relationships are positively valued. To achieve a close, intimate, real,
fully communicative relationship with another person seems to meet a deep need
in every individual, and is highly valued.
(Paraphrased from Rogers, 1964, p. 182).
As they develop these value directions, I anticipate that clients will tend to choose
consciously and explicitly to move in positive directions on the spiritual dimensions,
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which are described in Chapter 12, Spiritual Health and Development. They will attempt
to integrate these spiritual dimensions into the structure of their true-selves with the
guidance of their “true consciences” as that term is defined by Brian Thorne, whose
views are discussed below (Thorne, 1991, pp. 118 – 119).
Development is maximized when clients learn from all of life, the good and the
bad. Clients begin this process by understanding their own suffering and seeing more
possibilities in themselves. As they develop, they become more understanding and
forgiving of others and see more possibilities in others.
If the spiritual true-self, or soul, is real, it will emerge and express itself in the
safety of the counseling relationship. In the Introduction to Existential Psychotherapy,
Yalom wrote: “The claim that the ultimate existential concerns never arise in therapy is
entirely a function of a therapist’s selective inattention: a listener tuned into the proper
channel finds explicit and abundant material” (1980, p. 13). I believe that the same is true
of the spiritual concerns raised in this paper. I think that many people share these
concerns, even many who think of themselves as agnostic and non-spiritual, and that,
given the opportunity, many clients will appreciate a counselor who is comfortable
discussing such concerns.
In A Spiritual Strategy for Counseling and Psychotherapy (2005), Richards and
Bergin gave case examples in which both traditional psychological concerns and spiritual
concerns arose. They pointed out a phenomenon similar to Yalom's experience: the
spiritual issues may be there as part of the client's presenting concerns, but they could be
overlooked or the counselor could feel uncomfortable or incompetent addressing them.
Richards and Bergin also pointed out the danger of imposing one's own spiritual view on
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the client. But they did not think that danger justified avoiding the client's spiritual issues,
if one is sensitive and knowledgeable and proceeds carefully.
I define spiritual issues to be concerns of clients that the materialistic assumptions
of the Aristotelian-scientific side of the river, which appear on the left in table 4, and the
non-religious beliefs, which appear on the left of tables 5 and 6, on pages 347 and 348,
may not accurately and completely account for all of their experience; and may not,
therefore, form a complete and adequate basis for discussing life's problems with a
counselor. Clients have spiritual concerns if they wish to make their lives meaningful in
the context of a reality that includes any of the hopes, possibilities, speculations on the
right-hand side of table 4 or any of the religious beliefs on tables 5 and 6.
My heroes have been people who combined spiritual revolution with peace
making, such as Jewish Agnostic Erich Fromm, Hindu Ghandi, Christian Martin Luther
King, the 14
th
Dalai Lama, a Buddhist, and Muslim Irshad Manji, who is the current
Director of the Moral Courage Project at New York University. Through the process of
spiritually sensitive person-centered counseling, I hope that my clients and I will have the
opportunity to become peaceful spiritual revolutionaries in our own lives. Ideally, we will
acquire a binocular and four-dimensional perspective. We will learn to see independently
of the river and to see from both sides. We will think for ourselves while listening to
others of all faiths, and we will be able to sacrifice ourselves for others when appropriate,
like Maslow’s self-transcending persons and Fromm’s healthy revolutionaries. Through
the counseling relationship, we will both gain a greater capacity to love and to hope. If
we do not realize all of these ideals, that does not mean we have failed; it means that “life
is difficult” (Peck, 1978, p. 15). Like Fowler’s stage 6, these ideals (continued on p. 348)
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Table 6. Beliefs Common in the West:
Alternative Belief Intermediate value Belief
Atheism. Agnosticism God (All the principal
religions except Buddhism.)
No life after death.
Don’t know; wait and see. Eternal spirit is real and
survives death. (All major
religions.)
Perfection of the ego.
(Selfism.)
Extinction of the ego.
(Buddhism.)
Transcendence of the ego
through love and good
works. (Islam, Judaism, &
Christianity.)
Self-realization. (Platonism,
Selfism.)
Union with the eternal.
(Buddhism, Hinduism,
Sikhism.)
Communion with the
eternal. (Islam, Judaism, &
Christianity.)
Naturalism: There is no
God.
God is everywhere.
Polytheism and Pantheism.
Monothesism.
Some believe that humans
are essentially evil, and are
saved from original sin by
the sacrifice of Christ’s
death on the cross.
Humans are essentially
good. (Early Rogers.)
Humans contain the
potential to become good or
bad. (Later Rogers.)
Literal interpretation of
sacred texts.
Symbolic interpretation. Critical examination of
religious texts as historic
documents.
There is only 1 true
religion.
There is a preferred
religion.
Different religions represent
different perspectives on the
same ultimate truths; all
religions contain some error
and are incomplete.
There is no punishment or
reward after death.
God rewards the good and
punishes the evil after
death. (Christianity, Islam.)
Humans make their own
heaven and hell by the
spiritual choices they make
in this life and the next.
(Hinduism, Socrates, Jesus
in St. Mark’s Gospel.)
See one’s self as self-
directing and independent
of God, if there is a God.
See one’s relationship with
God as primarily deferring
& obedient.
See one’s relationship with
God as principally
collaborative. (Richards &
Bergin, 2005.)
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Strength of Belief
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Table 7. Beliefs Less Common in the West:
Alternate Belief Intermediate value Belief
We are only born once. Don’t know. Humans are reborn.
(Hinduism, Sikhism,
Buddhism.)
We have no choice in
whether or not we are born
or reborn.
Some choose to be reborn
(bodhisattvas).
All humans choose to be
born. (Betty J. Eadie’s
recounting of her near-death
experience in Embraced by
the Light, 1992).
Human consciousness does
not continue to evolve.
Don’t know. Human consciousness
continues to evolve in the
Collective Unconscious and
in the Spiritual Unconscious
(Jung, Assagioli, Teilhard
de Chardin, Sri Aurobindo).
There are many Gods, or
many aspects of the 1 God.
(Hinduism.)
There are 3 aspects of the 1
God. (Christianity).
There is only one God.
(Islam, Judaism, Sikhism.)
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Strength of Belief
10 = I believe with absolute certainty.
7 = I hope it is true.
5 = I wonder if it is true.
3 = I doubt it is true.
0 = I believe with absolute certainty that it is not true.
(continued from p. 346) are worth retaining as imaged goals even if attained by only a
few. Although these are my ideals, I do not preach them and they cannot be taught.
Through a slow and painful process, each individual must grow toward these ideals out of
his or her own experience, reflection, and choices. Person-centered therapy is ideal for
fostering that growth.
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Spiritually Sensitive Person-Centered Counseling’s View of the Counselor/Therapist
The ideal spiritual-psychological counselor, as I envision him or her, is open to
the possibility that any of the prospects on the right of table 4, and any of the beliefs on
tables 6 (Beliefs Common in the West) and 7 (Beliefs Less Common in the West) may
reflect ultimate reality. These beliefs are shown with intermediate beliefs and against a
scale from 1 to 10, with 10 meaning “I believe with absolute certainty” and 0 meaning “I
believe with absolute certainty that the alternative is not true.” According to this scale, a
Believer whose strength of belief is 7 may be able to communicate more easily with an
Agnostic at 6 than with a Believer at 10. A spiritually sensitive counselor is open to the
possibility that there is one God, more than one God, or no God. The ideal spiritual-
psychological counselor is comfortable accompanying clients in their own search for
their own answers. The ideal counselor would be psychologically literate and spiritually
literate.
The ideal spiritual-psychological counselor possesses what Keats called “negative
capability:”
I had not a dispute but a disquisition with Dilke, on various subjects; several
things dovetailed in my mind, & at once it struck me, what quality went to form a
Man of Achievement especially in literature & which Shakespeare possessed so
enormously - I mean Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in
uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts without any irritable reaching after fact & reason.
(The Letters of John Keats, letter of December 22, 1817, to George and Thomas
Keats)
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I think of negative capability as the ability to negate one’s ego so as to perceive one’s
true-self, the true-selves of others, and the world more completely. It is a perspective
above the river and above both sides: an intentional centering outside the self. It includes
the ability to appreciate the ambiguity and unfinishedness of oneself and others without
needing to impose completeness.
As a spiritual-psychological counselor, I hope I will demonstrate non-possessory
love, or agape. I believe that morality is an important component of human development,
but moral questions must originate within the client. If a client appears to me to be “evil,”
in some sense of the word, I will wait patiently for him or her to develop morally. If he or
she does not, I will end the relationship and explain why: that my view of the right path is
different, and I cannot accompany him or her any further along a path that I sense will be
destructive to him and her and to others.
Spiritually Sensitive Person-Centered Counselor Brian Thorne
Brian Thorne (born 1937) is Director of the Center for Counseling Studies at the
University of East Anglia. In doing the research for this paper, I encountered his writings
twice. When I was working on Chapter 5, Humanistic Psychology, my advisor, Dr.
White, suggested I read Thorne’s 1992 biography of Carl Rogers. When I got to Chapter
16, and sought to apply what I had learned to the actual practice of psychotherapy,
Rogers’s person-centered approach seemed the best fit. I then set out to learn how to be a
person-centered counselor. The best source I have found is Rogers’s original works:
Client Centered Therapy (1951) and On Becoming a Person (1961), which I have relied
on for much of this chapter. Rogers’s view of counseling, as expressed in these books,
still seems fresh. The second best source I have found is Brian Thorne, who has authored
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and co-authored many books and articles about how to be a person-centered therapist,
including several which have explicit spiritual themes: Person-centered Counseling:
Therapeutic and Spiritual Dimensions (1991), Person-centered Counseling and Christian
Spirituality: The Secular and the Holy (1998), and The Mystical Power of Person-
Centered Therapy: Hope Beyond Despair (2002).
On Good Friday, 1946, when he was 9, Thorne had a mystical experience. He was
playing cricket in Bristol Park, which was still full of air-raid shelters from World War II.
There appeared in the street a religious procession “headed by a crucifer, candle bearers
and a thurifer swinging a censer” (Thorne, 1991, p. 19). The effect on Thorne was
instantaneous and powerful: he felt comforted, loved, and understood to the very core of
his being. He left his friends, ran home, shut himself in his bedroom and sobbed for
hours. From that moment to this, he has “had the unshakeable conviction that love is the
primary force in the universe no matter how great the evidence may seem to the contrary”
(1991, p. 19). Thorne thought that perhaps as many as one in five people have had some
form of mystical experience, but they “seldom talk about them and often, indeed, dismiss
them from consciousness” (p. 20). The scientific weltanschauung intimidates them and
they keep silent. Acknowledged atheist Crocker (2008) discussed many arguments for
and against the existence of God, and ultimately found no argument convincing one way
or the other. Crocker pointed out that many intelligent, critical thinkers claim to believe
in God, not on the basis of authority or argument, but on the basis of experience, an
experience that Crocker has not had, and therefore, felt he could not judge. Thorne is one
of these. The God that Thorne experienced was not a judgmental God. God did not say,
“You have been a naughty boy, Brian, playing Cricket on Good Friday instead of going
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to church!” (Thorne, 1991, p. 21). The God Thorne experienced was unqualifiedly
loving, reassuring, and understanding. Part of what God said to Thorne that day,
wordlessly, in Thorne’s heart, was: “Whatever you do, don’t let people tell you you’re no
good and go on trying to find out more and more what is going on. Most people don’t
want to know, it seems, but that’s only because they’re frightened” (p. 21). Based on that
experience, Thorne concluded that the purpose of life is spiritual growth. Spiritual growth
consists of trying to “find out more and more what is going on,” on the material and the
supernatural side of the line. It consists of understanding more and more and loving more
and more. It includes inner growth and requires reaching out with love toward others.
In the 1950s and 1960s, Thorne felt isolated, as I had, when psychology and
counseling made no attempt to define, account for, or care for the human spirit. At first,
Thorne took comfort from Jung’s acknowledgement of the spiritual realm. Then he found
Carl Rogers and person-centered counseling and “found in Rogers someone who seemed
to esteem the validity of my own experience and who gave names to attitudes and
activities which I had falteringly attempted to embody for many years” (Thorne, 1989,
p.59).
Thorne wrote that the “true conscience” is what allows people to distinguish what
is good for their spiritual growth from what is not (Thorne, 1991, pp. 118 – 119). Thorne
thought that counselors should not serve as a client’s conscience but counselors can help
create an environment in which the “true conscience can make itself heard” (1991, p.
119). He thought that ethical growth is a necessary part of personal growth and that
immorality is, therefore, ultimately self-destructive. Ethical growth begins with gaining a
sense of freedom, which allows a client to rely on his or her own experience, rather than
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on the judgment of others. Person-centered counseling fosters that freedom and nurtures
the true conscience. While clients are growing, even though they are likely to make moral
mistakes, Thorne felt no need to confront them. When a healthy ambience is established,
bad people will eventually become good (p. 11). Nonetheless, some people retreat in fear
from continued growth, and then it is “not enough for the counselor to remain passively
acceptant of this flight from health” (1991, p. 124). Genuineness on the counselor’s part
was another of Rogers’s conditions for growth. Genuineness required Thorne to express
anguish at the client’s self-betrayal, while simultaneously communicating that the client’s
rejection of health is acceptable.
However counselors conceptualize good and evil, the person-centered therapist is
“the representative of the forces of light against the powers of darkness” (Thorne, 2002,
p. 25). Thorne believed that forces of good exist on the supernatural side of the
natural/supernatural line, in what he called “the invisible world” (p. 81), and that those
supernatural forces of good can be called upon to offer help and comfort on the natural
side of the line (pp. 25 – 26, 81 - 83).
Thorne thought that, as a species and as individuals, humans are always
unfinished. Humans become less unfinished through relationships, and the relational
aspect of spiritual development and health is not adequately addressed by the self-
actualization metaphor (2002, p. 10).
Thorne holds each client in mind each day for a brief period in a way “much akin
to silent intercessory prayer” (p 42). Thorne’s experience was that this holding in mind
“can have a remarkable impact on the therapeutic relationship and its development. The
ability of the therapist to be fully with the client is greatly enhanced as is the capacity for
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acceptance and validation” (p. 42). Clients must sense this dedication because they
“experience the therapist’s commitment in a way which greatly increases their trust in
themselves and the process” (p. 42).
Content vs. Process
When I began this research paper, I was resistant to an approach that valued
process over content. I wanted to end up with an approach to counseling that included at
least some explicit beliefs. I have concluded that if I am to take that approach, I must take
it as a pastor, not as a counselor. I think that a spiritually sensitive person-centered
approach to counseling can function best if it includes no specific beliefs but is open to
all. Just as person-centered counseling trusts clients to define their true-selves, it can trust
them to define their true spiritual selves. Such openness is obtained through the process
of counseling, which is discussed next.
The Process of Spiritually Sensitive Person-Centered Counseling
“Unlike other therapies, in which the skills of the therapist are to be exercised
upon the client, in this approach the skills of the therapist are focused upon creating a
psychological atmosphere in which the client can work. If the counselor can create a
relationship permeated by warmth, understanding, safety from any type of attack, no
matter how trivial, and basic acceptance of the person as he is, then the client will drop
his natural defensiveness and use the situation” (Rogers, 1946, p. 422).
Rogers laid down six necessary and sufficient conditions for client change, to
which I add four below, for a total of ten. Person-centered therapy was first called non-
directive therapy, then client-centered, and finally person-centered therapy. Each of these
conditions can be described in terms of a non-directive processes. If Rogers’s six
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conditions are met, the client will change from within in prosocial and self-syntonic
ways; that is, in ways that the client feels are consistent with her or his true-self. Most
people find change difficult, painful, and frightening; therefore, according to Rogers, if
any one of his six conditions is not met, the client is unlikely to change. The ten
conditions are:
1. Psychological contact. Sharf defined “contact” as follows:
There must be a relationship in which two people are capable of having some
impact on each other. Brodley (2000) describes the concept of presence, which
refers to the therapist not just being in the same room with the client but also
bringing forth her abilities to attend to and be engaged by the client.
(Sharf, 2004, p. 210)
My mother, Patricia Benziger, who was a counselor, told me that one duty
and skill of a good counselor is to “hook the client” at the start; that is, to get the client
interested and invested in coming back. If the counselor believes in the process, the
counselor can help the client learn to share that belief. Psychologist Garry Prouty
developed techniques of “pre-therapy” to bring people into psychological contact who are
normally “contact impaired,” such as people with learning disabilities and psychoses
(Prouty, 2008). I try to establish contact by helping clients understand cognitively and
feel emotionally that I am there for them, that I am interested in them and committed to
our relationship. I sense that the strongest hook is my interest; they do not expect that;
they are not used to another person taking a genuine interest in them and it feels good.
Interest is followed by caring. My interest demonstrates my caring in a non-possessory
way.
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2. Incongruence. Clients feel incongruent; that is, they feel distress that
is attributable to an incongruence between their perception of themselves and their actual
experience. This may include incongruence between a client’s spiritual ideals and
material ambitions, or, as in AA, incongruence between one’s will and the will of a
higher power. Conditions 1 and 2 are less likely to be present with clients who do not
choose to be there, such as court-ordered clients and reluctant spouses dragged to marital
therapy. Nonetheless, it has been my experience that counseling is a powerful, self-
validating experience, so that many involuntary clients soon learn to love coming,
although others will always remain reluctant.
3. Genuineness and congruence. The therapist is genuine and congruent.
Thorpe wrote that the process of person centered counseling begins by establishing a
“facilitative climate for change,” and the first element in the creation of this climate is
genuineness (Thorpe, 1991, p. 390). For me, genuineness includes integrating my
spiritual beliefs into my approach to counseling, without imposing those beliefs on
anyone.
4. Unconditional positive regard and acceptance. This means that clients
feel valued and loved, in a non-possessory, non-threatening way. Fromm wrote that love
is a capacity rather than an emotion. Love is “a capacity for the experience of concern,
responsibility, respect, and understanding of another person and the intense desire for that
other person’s growth” (Fromm, 1950, p. 87).
Rogers wrote that when a client enters person-centered therapy:
Every aspect of self which he exposes is equally accepted, equally valued.
His most belligerent statement of his virtues is accepted as much as, but no more
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than, his discouraged picture of his negative qualities. His certainty about some
aspects of himself is accepted and valued, but so are his uncertainties, his doubts,
his vague perception of contradictions within himself.
(Rogers, 1951, pp. 192 – 1930)
5. Empathy. Rogers defined “empathy” as a “deep understanding of the
emotionalized attitudes expressed [by the client] and acceptance of them” by the
counselor (Rogers, 1946, p. 417). Rogers wrote:
The way of being with another person which is termed empathic has several
facets. It means entering the private perceptual world of the other and becoming
thoroughly at home in it. It involves being sensitive, moment to moment, to the
changing felt meanings which flow in this other person, to the fear or rage or
tenderness or confusion or whatever, the he/she is experiencing. It means
temporarily living in his/her life, moving about in it delicately without making
judgments, sensing meanings of which he/she is scarcely aware, but not trying
to uncover feelings of which the person is totally unaware, since this would
be too threatening. It includes communicating your sensings of his/her world as
you look with fresh and unfrightened eyes at elements of which the individual
is fearful. It means frequently checking with him/her as to the accuracy of
your sensing, and being guided by the responses you receive. You are a
confident companion to the person in his/her inner world. By pointing to
the possible meanings in the flow of his/her experience you help the person to
focus on this useful type of referent, to experience the meanings more fully,
and to move forward in the experiencing. (Rogers, 1975, p. 4)
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Does empathy mean that the counselor actually feels what the client feels, or is it limited
to an intellectual understanding? The author of Theories of Psychotherapy and
Counseling, Richard Sharf (2004) and my counselor mother thought it was limited to an
intellectual understanding. My Methods of Counseling instructor, Dr Gail Mieling,
thought it meant that the counselor actually feels what the client feels. I agree with Dr.
Mieling. I try to feel what the client feels.
6. Perception by the client of the counselor’s empathy and acceptance. It is
not enough for the counselor to be accepting and empathic. The client must feel the
counselor’s empathy and acceptance. That feeling is communicated by a climate of
welcoming, warm acceptance, which the therapist establishes in the sessions from the
first intake interview.
Wickman and Campbell (2003a) analyzed a well-know videotape of Carl Rogers
counseling a 30 year old, recently divorced woman named Gloria. This videotape is
frequently used to demonstrate Rogers’s method. Dr Mieling showed this videotape in
our Methods of Counseling class. Wickman and Campbell found that Rogers had used
the following conversational devises:
Nonexpert language referred to Rogers intentionally using “not knowing”
language that displayed his inability to decide for Gloria what was best
for her. Meta-statements referred to both Rogers’s and Gloria’s explicit
here-and-now talk about their ongoing interaction. Affiliative negative
assessments were Rogers’s acknowledgement of the difficulty of Gloria’s
situation. First-person quotes externalized Gloria’s hypothetical internal
dialogue, stating out loud Rogers’s understanding of what Gloria was saying
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to herself. Invitations for repair involved explicit and implicit requests by
Rogers for Gloria to correct him if he misunderstood what she was saying or
implying. Withholding direct responses to requests for advise referred to
Rogers’s not providing an immediate solution or answer when Gloria
specifically asked what she should do. Problem reformulation referred to
Rogers’s highlighting what Gloria said that was both within her control and
manageable in a counseling session. (Wickman & Campbell, p. 179)
Wickman and Campbell demonstrated that Rogers used each of these
conversational devises to establish one or more of these three conditions of positive
change: empathy, genuineness, or unconditional positive regard. First-person quotes and
affiliative negative assessments established empathy. Invitations for repair and meta-
statements established empathy. Meta-statements also established genuineness. Non-
expert language demonstrated genuineness and unconditional positive regard. Somewhat
paradoxically, unconditional positive regard was also demonstrated by withholding
advice. Sensitive problem reformulation established unconditional positive regard and
empathy. The authors further explain problem reformulation:
Gloria’s topic introductions often began with fuzzy, ill-defined problem
descriptions not within her control to change. Rogers responded in a way that
captured the essence of what she said (empathy) while converting the
description into a better-defined and more workable problem. In this way,
problem reformulation gave the power of change and ownership of control
for problem resolution back to the client (unconditional positive regard).
Through problem reformulation, Gloria was the initiator both of the problem
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and its manageable resolution. Consequently, Gloria not only felt heard, but
also empowered, reinforcing her ability to change. (Wickman & Campbell,
2003a, p. 182)
Wickman and Campbell conclude, “Gloria’s consistent response to Rogers’s
conversational devises was to talk in more detail and at a more complex level about her
problem situation until it became no longer problematic” (Wickman & Campbell, 2003a,
p. 182).
In another article, Wickman and Campbell analyzed how Gloria’s situation
became non-problematic through the use of conceptual metaphors by Gloria and Rogers.
They found that Gloria began the session employing three individual metaphoric systems
for construing her reality: Self as Container, Knowing Equals Feeling, and Knowing
Oneself is Seeing Oneself Through Others’ Eyes. Rogers adapted these metaphors and
incorporated them in his therapeutic interventions. By the end of the session, Rogers and
Gloria had worked together to co-construct a new metaphor that blended the meanings of
the old metaphors to produce the new metaphor of Utopia, in which feeling right or
perfect was reinterpreted as feeling whole. “By reframing the meaning of perfect to no
longer depend on how others might see her, the Utopia metaphor provided a congruent
way for Gloria to ‘feel right’ and ‘comfortable’ by accepting herself as an authentic
‘whole’ person. . . . For Gloria, Utopia described the perfect-as-whole feeling in which
she could know things were ‘right’ by ‘feeling all in one piece’ (i.e. accepting all the
pieces into her self-container) without ‘worry’ or ‘guilt’ from trying to look ‘perfect’ in
others’ eyes (i.e. Knowing Oneself Is Seeing Oneself Through Others’ Eyes). Gloria’s
frame of reference for self-evaluation gradually shifted from external (e.g. Pammy) to
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internal (i.e. self) criteria” (Wickman & Campbell, 2003b, p. 20). Pammy is Gloria’s
daughter. The Utopia metaphor originated with Gloria; then she and Rogers worked on its
meaning together.
In addition to Rogers’s six conditions, I try to establish the following four
conditions with each client:
7. Understanding. “Understanding” may be the same thing as empathy.
But it is so vital to the process that I think it needs to be separately defined and discussed.
The pursuit of understanding means having an interest in the client and being curious.
Rogers wrote:
In client-centered therapy the client finds in the counselor a genuine
alter ego in an operational and technical sense – a self which has temporarily
divested itself (so far as possible) of its own selfhood, except for the
one quality of endeavoring to understand. In the therapeutic experience,
to see one’s own attitudes, confusions, ambivalences, feelings, and
perceptions accurately expressed by another, but stripped of their
complications of emotion, is to see oneself objectively, and paves
the way for acceptance into the self of all these elements which are
now more clearly perceived. (Rogers, 1951, pp. 40 – 41, italics added)
In the forward to Carl Rogers: The Quiet Revolutionary, An Oral History, Eugene
Gendlin explained how understanding works:
Rogers eliminated all interpretation. Instead, he checked his understanding
out loud, trying to grasp exactly what the patient wished to convey. When
he did that, he discovered something: The patient would usually correct
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the first attempt. The second would be closer, but even so, the patient
might refine it. Rogers would take in each correction until the patient
indicated, “Yes, that’s how it is. That’s what I feel.” Then there would
be a characteristic silence. During such a silence, after something was
fully received, the next thing comes inside. Very often it is something
deeper. Rogers discovered that a self-propelled process arises from
inside. When each thing is received utterly as intended, it makes new
space inside. Then the steps go deeper and deeper. . . .
When you listen in this way, each person expands from inside and becomes
intricate, elaborate and beautiful before your eyes. If you interpret or edit
even for a moment, there is a jarring interruption. It stops the inwardly
arising process. (Gendlin, 2002, retrieved over the Internet unpaginated)
In Client-Centered Therapy (1951), contributing author Nicholas Hobbs wrote
that understanding is most effectively expressed by restatement of content, free of all
interpretation. Simple acceptance (“I see,” “I understand”) and reflection of feeling are
also important, but less so. Reflections of feeling must be interpretive, and clients are
more likely to respond to reflections of feeling defensively. A spiritually sensitive
person-centered counselor would be able to recognize spiritual and moral content and
would be comfortable working with spiritual and moral metaphors. Clients would be
more likely to express such content if the counselor’s disclosure statement says explicitly
that the counselor is willing to work with spiritual issues and questions. My disclosure
statement, which is found in Appendix 1, does so.
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8. Tenderness. Thorne added this condition. He felt he had experienced it in his
best therapeutic relationships. He thought of it as a feminine characteristic, which he
intentionally added to a male dominated field, and he defined it as:
In the first place it is a quality which irradiates the total person – it is evident
in voice, the eyes, the hands, the thoughts, the feelings, the beliefs, the
moral stance, the attitude to things animate and inanimate, seen and unseen.
Secondly, it communicates through its responsive vulnerability that
suffering and healing are interwoven. Thirdly, it demonstrates a preparedness
and an ability to move between the worlds of the physical, the emotional,
the cognitive and the mystical without strain. Fourthly, it is without shame
because it is experienced as the joyful embracing of the desire to love
and is therefore a law unto itself. Fifthly, it is a quality that transcends the
male and female but is nevertheless nourished by the attraction of the one
for the other in the quest for wholeness. (Thorne, 1991, p. 76)
In Thorne’s experience, when the counselor demonstrates attitudes of
genuineness, total acceptance, empathic understanding, and tenderness, the therapeutic
relationship will move through three stages:
The first stage is characterized by the establishing of trust on the part if the client.
This may happen very rapidly or it can take months. The second stage sees the
development of intimacy during which the client is enabled to reveal some of
the deepest levels of his experiencing. The third stage is characterized by
an increasing mutuality between therapist and client. When such a stage is
reached, it is likely that therapists will be increasingly self-disclosing and will
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be challenged to risk more of themselves in the relationship.
(Thorne, 1991, p. 42)
I initially suggested condition 9 in Chapter 5 on Humanistic Psychology and
condition 10 in Chapter 7 on Group and Family therapy. They are:
9. Privacy and Confidentiality. Many of the books I have read contain case
histories. Rogers’s session with Gloria is an example. Except for Thorne’s books, none
have explicitly discussed how the issue of breaching the client’s right to privacy was
dealt with. In the 1940s, the right of privacy was thought to belong to the counselor, and
the counselor was free to disclose information in the client’s best interests (Winslade &
Wilson, 1985). That has evolved slowly, so that today, every mental health field
recognizes privacy as the right of the client. Confidentiality is how the counselor honors
that right. If clients do not trust that the relationship is absolutely private and confidential,
they are unlikely to risk dropping their defenses and undertaking deep self-questioning
and growth.
10. Optimism. Clients are likely to come to counseling if they are in
distress. That distress may originate in their own perception of incongruence or it may
originate in the perception of others, such as a parent, spouse, or court. Clients are likely
to have tried things that did not work. They are likely to be pessimistic that counseling
will lead to a better result. If the counselor believes in the process and communicates that
optimism to the client, the client may be encouraged to come back and continue when the
work is hard. I am optimistic, in part, because I believe that at least some of the
possibilities on the spiritual side of the natural/supernatural line are real, that the universe
has meaning, and that each person has the opportunity to contribute positively to that
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meaning. Whether or not conditions 8, 9, and 10 are necessary, they are good qualities to
establish with each client; so I include them on my mental checklist.
Implementation of the above conditions is mostly a matter of process. Person-
centered therapy does involve content at two junctures: the philosophy of the therapist
and the result for the client. Rogers did not like the fact that some critics, and even some
practitioners, reduced person-centered therapy to techniques and tricks, like reflective
empathy. In Rogers’s experience, those techniques would not work if the therapist did not
believe in the philosophy; if the therapist did belief, then the therapist’s genuineness
could transcend errors of technique. The client’s liberated true-self is content, but it
cannot be pre-defined by the counselor.
Spiritually Sensitive Person-Centered Group Counseling
Rogers thought that group therapy was probably the most potent social invention
of the 20
th
century (Rogers, 1970). He thought it important that the leader, now generally
called the facilitator, facilitate the expression of both thoughts and feelings, which meant
that the facilitator must be comfortable with both and ready to attempt to understand and
re-state the cognitive and emotional content of members’ statements. A spiritually
sensitive group facilitator would also recognize and be comfortable discussing spiritual
concerns. If a group facilitator can develop “a psychological climate of safety in which
freedom of expression and reduction of defensiveness gradually occur” (Rogers, 1970,
p. 6) then the following tends to occur (The notes in italics are my additions to Rogers):
1. In such a climate, many of the immediate feelings and reactions of each
member toward others and toward herself or himself will be expressed.
2. A climate of mutual trust develops. Each member moves toward greater
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acceptance of his or her total being -- emotional, intellectual, and physical --
as it is and as it might potentially be. (I would add that in a group that was
friendly to spirituality, the client’s spiritual being, present and potential, will
also be accepted and expressed.)
3. With individuals less inhibited by defensive rigidity, the possibility of changes
in personal attitudes and behavior becomes less threatening.
4. With the reduction of defensive rigidity, individuals can hear each other, can
learn from each other, to a greater extent.
5. There is a development of feedback from one person to another, such that
each individual learns how he appears to others and what impact he has in
interpersonal relationships. (This is different from individual person-centered
counseling, in which the counselor’s feedback is supposed to be limited to a
restatement of the client’s meaning and feelings.)
6. With the greater freedom and improved communication, new ideas, new
concepts, new directions emerge.
7. These learnings in the group experience tend to carry over into the
relationships with spouse, children, students, subordinates, peers, and even
superiors following the group experience.
(Adapted from Rogers, 1970, pp. 6 – 7)
Rogers thought that groups were growing in popularity in response to the
“increasing dehumanization of our culture” and the loneliness of many people (Rogers,
1970, p. 10). People who come to contemporary groups are hungry:
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It is a hunger for relationships which are close and real; in which feelings and
emotions can be spontaneously expressed without first being carefully censored or
bottled up; where deep experiences – disappointments and joys – can be shared;
where new ways of behaving can be risked and tried out; where, in a word, he
approaches the state where all is know and all accepted, and thus further growth
becomes possible. (Rogers, 1970, p. 11)
Rogers thought that many people are lonely, because they live behind a false front. This
façade has been acquired in response to criticism from parents, schools, and churches.
Behind that front, people live inauthentic lives, in which they cannot express their true
feelings or thoughts to any other person. Although they may never consciously articulate
this feeling, they feel certain that their inner selves will not be accepted or understood.
Group therapy allows members to feel accepted, understood, valued, and loved by a
number of other people, not on account of their false fronts, but on account of their
willingness to take the risk of expressing their inner selves and, thereby, putting
themselves “in genuine touch with other human beings” (Rogers, 1970, 114).
As with one-on-one therapy, the desire to understand is vital to the process: “My
attempt to understand the exact meaning of what the person is communicating is the most
important and most frequent of my behaviors in a group” (Rogers, 1970, p. 51). Rogers
came to trust groups to develop the potential of their members in positive ways when the
groups were facilitated rather than directed, similar to his trust in the process of
individual non-directive therapy.
Rogers hoped “gradually to become as much a participant in group as a
facilitator” (Rogers, 1970, p.45); so, Rogers was exposing himself in group in a way he
368
never had as an individual therapist. Rogers wrote that the group therapy experience was
the closest he came to an I-Thou relationship. Rogers did “not like the facilitator who
withholds himself from personal emotional participation in the group – holding himself
aloof as the expert, able to analyze the group process and members’ reactions through
superior knowledge” (p. 67).
The distinguishing characteristic of person-centered group counseling is that
through modeling, interpersonal learning, and the power of group dynamics, members
will come to demonstrate towards themselves and toward each other the same
acceptance, empathy, understanding, and love that the group facilitator shows for each of
them. Concerning this process, Thorne wrote:
The role of the group leader (usually known as “the facilitator”) is to engage in
the process in such a way that an atmosphere or climate is established in which
members can gradually exhibit towards each other the qualities of genuineness,
acceptance and empathic understanding which characterize the effective
therapeutic relationship. The facilitator eschews the role of the expert or the
consultant and, if he does his work effectively, his behavior and involvement
may well become indistinguishable from that of other group members. (p. 51)
Most large groups are notorious for their tendency to render individuals
powerless. In a person-centered workshop, however, the large group can
become the arena in which an individual feels empowered and this comes
about through the conscious valuing of differences. First the staff members,
then others demonstrate by their behavior that validating and empowering
others is the facilitator’s chief art. The person who feels him- or herself
369
respected and valued is then willing to put his or her skills and resources
at the disposal of the community. People who are empowered are unlikely
later to abuse their power. (Thorne, 1991, p. 64)
In a chapter in Rogers’s Client-Centered Therapy (1951) concerning groups, Hobbs
wrote: “In group therapy a person may achieve a mature balance between giving and
receiving, between independence of self and a realistic and self-sustaining dependence on
others” (p. 293).
Concerning spirituality and groups, Thorne wrote:
As someone who has frequently facilitated person-centered encounter
groups in many parts of the world and often been a member of cross-
cultural communities, I am well aware of the transforming effect such
groups can have on many participants. There is a sense in which these
experiences can lead to a greatly heightened sense of awareness and
a much enhanced feeling both of self-worth and of interconnectedness
with others. The encounter group can provide an avenue into a level
of experiencing which can appropriately be described as spiritual,
mystical, transcendental. (Thorne, 1992, p. 103)
Rogers thought that groups could be used to increase inter-group understanding
and reduce institutional and international tensions. He held encounter groups around the
world, in such place as the Soviet Union during the cold war and South Africa while
apartheid was still in force.
370
Conclusions
Through the process of person-centered therapy, Rogers thought that clients were
able to develop and express their true-selves: first in the counseling office, then in the
outside world. Assagioli (1971, 1973) expanded that concept to include a true spiritual
self, which exists at the intersection of the material and spiritual worlds. I believe that the
client’s true spiritual self will develop in the process of person-centered counseling if the
counselor accepts and tries to understand the client’s spiritual concerns and experiences.
In the next chapter, I will reflect a final time on what I have learned as a counselor since
starting out in Chapter 1.
371
CHAPTER XVIII
CONCLUDING THOUGHTS: LOOKING BACKWARD AND FORWARD
Freud, Skinner, and Ellis, three dominant thinkers in the field when I was young,
had explicitly excluded God and spirituality from their theoretical approaches to
psychotherapy. When I returned to school, I intended to do the opposite: to find a way to
combine the scientific facts of psychology with spiritual sensitivity in whatever approach
to counseling I ended up adapting. When I began my research, I knew that I wanted to
end up with an approach to counseling that was scientifically and spiritually literate and
sensitive to both worldviews, but I had only a vague idea of how I would get there and no
idea of what such an approach would look like. My initial strategy in Chapters 2 and 3
was to build a foundation of understanding by looking back. If I could learn when, how,
and why psychology had become separated from the soul, I might figure out how to
reconcile them. The seven research questions were intended to critically examine the
relationship between spirituality and psychology from different perspectives. At first I
was groping: so much was new to me, and there were few guides. No approach to
reconciling the different worldviews in counseling emerged from history; so I decided to
define more precisely what I was looking for and I chose the criteria that appear at the
beginning of Chapter 8. Several contemporary approaches that combine spirituality and
psychology were helpful, but none satisfied all these criteria. Then I tried to come up
with a completely original approach that satisfied these criteria and included some of my
own personal beliefs. I found I could not do so without imposing those beliefs.
I enjoyed the only psychology class I took in college. In that class, in 1964, I first
heard Carl Rogers’s voice and his echoic restatement of clients’ concerns with little or no
372
interpretation. The professor warned us, “This may not sound like a serious theoretical
approach, but it is.” Then he played an audiotape. I do not remember its exact content,
but it sounded something like this:
Client (enraged): My wife doesn’t respect me!
Rogers (empathetic): You feel that your wife doesn’t respect you. That makes you
angry?
I took Rogers’s kind, understanding, patient voice seriously from the start. I
thought then that if I ever became a counselor I might use his approach, at least in part. I
did not become a counselor then because of psychology’s antagonism toward spiritual
concerns, and because I thought to myself, “If I become a psychotherapist now, in my
20s, I will think I know all the answers, and I do not. I do not know enough of life to
provide any help to others in living theirs.” The older I get the more I realize how little I
know. Age and experience have given me not answers, but patience and sympathy for the
pain and lostness of others.
My experience has made me even less interested in the role of the counselor as
expert. When I began my research I did not know what approach to counseling I would
end up with, but I had a hunch, based on my classroom experience in 1964, that my final
approach would in some way include Rogers’s. Therefore, I intentionally did not read
Rogers’s three main texts on how to become a counselor, Client Centered Therapy
(1951), On Becoming a Person (1961), and Carl Rogers on Encounter Groups (1970),
until I had finished the first 15 chapters of my paper and eliminated all other possible
approaches. Then I read these books. Reading the books by Rogers and the books of
person-centered counselor Brian Thorne, I felt that I had finally come home. I felt here
373
are people who speak my language, whose sympathies are my sympathies, whose
experience I can learn from and whose skills I can use to help others. I was then able to
come up with my own approach, which I call spiritually sensitive person-centered
counseling.
The philosophic position of Rogers and Thorne, which is embodied in their non-
directive approach, is that the counselor cannot teach anything, including values, and
should not try to do so. Clients can be trusted to learn what they need to learn from their
own experiences, which would have to include their spiritual experiences, not mine. Even
with full-disclosure on my part, an approach that followed my beliefs would raise ethical
questions of whether I was imposing my beliefs on clients. Jung (1931/1971) thought that
before the 19
th
Century, culture had done the work of reconciling the naturalistic and
spiritual worldviews. But following the divorce of science from religion, each individual
psyche must now do that work alone. Therefore, there exists no overall approach to
reconciliation that applies to every client. If the materialistic worldview is going to be
reconciled with the spiritual, that reconciliation must occur within each client based on
his or her spiritual issues, beliefs, and experiences. I can be an empathetic companion but
not an authoritative guide.
The approach of Rogers and Thorne requires faith in the client. Nothing in my
work as a counselor has shaken that faith. Since returning to school, my personal and
professional experiences have kept me humble and have reaffirmed my sense that as a
counselor I am at my best when I offer understanding and appreciation, not answers. My
experiences have affirmed my sense of the uniqueness, value, and continuing potential of
each human being, couple, and family, whether diagnosed with no dysfunction, or
374
diagnosed with an Axis I or Axis II disorder or both. I have learned that, once in
counseling, most clients will grow; but they will grow at their own pace and in response
to their own needs, not in response to my agenda. Some clients feel spiritual needs; some
appear to feel none.
The seven research questions have served their purpose well. No question had a
right or wrong answer, but each obliged me to become more understanding of both
worldviews. This research has been intellectually and spiritually rewarding. I enjoy it
most when I am sharing those rewards with clients. I bring the hypothesis and belief that
each client holds within a unique true-spiritual-self or soul, which will emerge, express
itself, and grow in a climate that is open and accepting of the client as both a material and
spiritual being. That hypothesis is unprovable; so, I am glad that I have found an
approach that allows me to move comfortably and ethically between a naturalistic
worldview and a spiritual one in the counseling office, as the needs of each individual
client determine.
375
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Brad Benziger
Southern Illinois University
Carbondale, Illinois
Client-Counselor Service Agreement
Informed Consent
Thank you for considering my counseling services. In order to help you make an
informed decision, I have prepared this document for you to read. Please review this
statement and sign it in the space provided at the bottom. If you have any questions or
concerns, I would be pleased to discuss them with you.
Education,Training,andExperience
I am a student in the Master of Science in Education Program with a specialty in
Marital, Couple, and Family Counseling at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.
CounselingServices
The types of counseling services I provide are directed toward individuals,
groups, couples, and families.
My philosophy of counseling is based on the belief that the client possesses the
power to change, and that it is my role to help the client become aware of how to
understand and utilize that power. This philosophy accepts the client as the driving force
in change. I believe this approach brings about effective long-term results because the
client discovers how to utilize his or her own inner strengths and gifts rather than having
to rely on someone else for solutions to life’s challenges.
My approach to counseling is eclectic. In selecting treatment methods, I tend to
draw ideas and techniques from a number of major counseling approaches, including
cognitive-behavioral, client- or person-centered, existentialist, and family systems
therapy. I also believe that a spiritual perspective is important to counseling, and I am
open to exploring any religious or spiritual concerns or issues you might have, including
how to address spiritual questions in the context of non-religious counseling. My own
perspective on the role of spirituality in counseling is attached to this Service Agreement
and is titled “A Spiritually Sensitive Person-Centered Approach to Counseling.”
Counseling can have risks as well as benefits. Because therapy often involves
discussing unpleasant aspects of your life, you may experience uncomfortable feelings
such as sadness, guilt, anger, frustration, loneliness, or helplessness. On the other hand,
counseling can also lead to positive resolutions such as solutions to specific problems,
improved relationships, and reduction in distressful feelings. I cannot guarantee the
outcome of your counseling experience.
408
During the first few sessions, I will ask you to share information with me that will
help me understand you and that will help me know more about the nature and history of
the concerns that brought you to counseling. As such, I may inquire about a number of
aspects of your life, including work, family, social relationships, church, and spirituality.
During these first sessions I will be evaluating you and your concerns to determine if I
think I can help you and you will be evaluating me to judge if I can help you. After this
initial mutual evaluation, we will discuss and decide together how best to proceed,
including what problems to address and what approaches to utilize. You should
determine whether or not you feel comfortable working with me. Feel free to discuss any
questions or concerns with me. If your concerns persist, I will be happy to refer you to
another professional. If at any time I do not believe your concerns can best be addressed
by me an appropriate referral will be made. You are absolutely free to discontinue
counseling with me at any time. If you decide you do not wish to continue counseling
with me, we can discuss whether you prefer to discontinue counseling altogether or
would prefer me to refer you to another counselor.
No Secrets
If you are seeing me for couple or family counseling, I have found it helpful to
establish a rule of “no secrets.” This means that if at all possible I do not want to
communicate with any one without both or all present. If you do communicate with me
without the other person or persons present, I will fully disclose the contents of that
communication to the other(s) at the first opportunity.
MandatoryDisclosures
As a rule I will keep our communications and all records of those
communications confidential and secure. Security means that I will keep your records in
a locked file cabinet. Confidentiality means that I will not disclose even the fact that you
are my client to another person without your permission. I will not disclose anything you
tell me to any other person, except to your spouse or other family member if you are
seeing me for couples or family counseling. If I work for an agency, I may discuss things
you tell me with my supervisor or with other mental health professionals who work for
the same agency in order to better plan for and address your treatment needs.
Other exceptions to confidentiality are: I will disclose information to another
person or agency if you explicitly request it in writing, signed and dated by you. That
disclosure request should also specify when it will expire; if it contains no expiration
date, I will assume that it expires one year from the date you sign it.
409
Finally, I may be required to disclose information without your consent if I
(1) suspect that you were physically or sexually abused as a child or that you are
physically or sexually abusing a child, or if you tell me of a child who is being physically
or sexually abused by someone else; (2) suspect that you, as an elder adult, are being
abused or that that another elder adult who is unable to seek assistance for her or himself
is being subject to abuse, neglect, or financial exploitation by you or by someone else; or
(4) determine that you are a danger to yourself or others; or (5) if I am ordered by a court
to disclose information.
I, or we, as clients, have read the above Client-Counselor Service Agreement,
which, including this page, consists of 4 pages, and agree to its terms. If we have any
questions, we know that we are free to discuss them at any time with the counselor. This
agreement has been executed in duplicate originals. One original has been kept by the
counselor; the other has been given to the client or clients for their records.
In addition, we as clients have been given a copy of “A Spiritually Sensitive
Person-Centered Approach to Counseling,” consisting of 3 pages of text and 3 tables to
read at our leisure. The counselor encourages us to read this and provide feedback
concerning our own thoughts about this approach. In what ways are we comfortable with
it? How are we not comfortable with it? How would we change it?
__________________________ ___________________
Client Signature Date
__________________________ ___________________
Client Signature Date
__________________________ ___________________
Brad Benziger - Counselor Signature Date
(In drafting this Service Agreement, I drew upon the language in the service agreement of
Dr. Laura K. Harrawood (2006), used with her permission, and the sample Informed
Consent provided in A Spiritual Strategy for Counseling and Psychotherapy, Richards &
Bergin, 2005, p. 162.)
410
A Spiritually Sensitive Person-Centered Approach to Counseling
(Attachment to Brad Benziger’s Client-Counselor Service Agreement)
I, Brad, think of people as having five spheres of growth and difficulty: physical,
mental, emotional, social/relational, and spiritual. When all five spheres are addressed,
the total client is being cared for. In any of the five spheres, a person can be growing or
stuck. These five spheres are interconnected and wellness in one affects the wellness of
all.
I call my approach to caring for the total client “spiritually sensitive person-
centered counseling.” It is based on Carl Rogers’s person-centered therapy (Rogers, 1951
& 1961). Rogers posited that if the client feels incongruent and if the counselor
establishes a relationship of congruence and genuineness and shows unconditional
positive regard, acceptance, and empathy for the client, the client will grow from within
and become his or her true-self. This conceptualization was not imposed upon clients;
Rogers found that clients spoke of becoming more their true-selves.
Rogers defined “incongruence” as a contradiction between people’s perception of
themselves and their actual experience. I include incongruence between one’s material
desires and spiritual ideals and conflict between one’s personal will and the will or wish
of God (Alcoholics Anonymous, 3d ed., 1976). I believe that in the course of counseling,
clients will also develop the spiritual component of their true-selves, or their souls
(Frattaroli, 2001; Assagioli, 1971).
If I express and communicate unconditional positive regard and understanding,
then clients will change in four ways: (1) They will perceive themselves as more
adequate people, with more worth and more possibilities of meeting life; (2) they will
411
permit more experiential data to enter awareness, and thus achieve a more realistic
appraisal of themselves, their relationships and environment; (3) they will place the basis
of valuation within themselves and see with their own eyes, not the eyes of their parents,
teachers, priests, or counselor; and (4) in the final step, clients will become more
accepting and loving toward others. Through dialogue with the client, the counselor will
grow similarly.
I include spiritual sensitivity in my approach because, if I excluded it, I would not
be authentic or genuine. By spiritual sensitivity, I mean openness to and respect for the
religious beliefs of others. This includes my sense that people may sanely hope that the
possibilities to the right of the natural/supernatural line in table 1 are real, and that people
may reasonably base decisions in the seen, material world on consequences in the unseen,
supernatural world. Supernatural possibilities also include the beliefs in table 2 (Beliefs
Common in the West) and table 3 (Beliefs Less Common in the West). I define spiritual
issues to mean clients’ concerns that the materialistic assumptions, which appear on the
left in table 1, and the non-religious beliefs, which appear on the left of tables 2 and 3 of
this Service Ageement, may not accurately and completely account for all of their
experience; and may not, therefore, form a complete and adequate basis for discussing
life's problems with a counselor. The religious beliefs are shown with intermediate values
and against a scale from 1 to 10, with 10 meaning “I believe with absolute certainty” and
0 meaning “I believe with absolute certainty that the alternative is not true.” According to
this scale, a believer whose strength of belief is 7 may be able to communicate more
easily with an agnostic at 6 than with a believer at 10. A spiritually sensitive counselor is
open to all these possibilities and is comfortable accompanying clients in their own
412
search for their own answers. Some clients have many spiritual concerns and questions;
some have none. One of my ethical obligations as a counselor is not to impose my beliefs
on you even by implication.
Jungian therapists Lionel Corbett and Murray Stein suggested a binocular
approach to therapy in which one lens sees the therapy in traditional terms and the other
sees the spiritual background. “At times one or the other level is at the foreground, but
both are always present, like the warp and the woof of a fabric” (Corbett & Stein, 2005,
p.60). As a spiritually sensitive psychotherapist concerned with the whole client, I will
wear bifocals, or trifocals, or whatever lenses may be necessary to allow me to adjust my
approach to the view and needs of each client. I will adjust my perspective so as to bring
the client’s and my own spirituality into focus when appropriate, or to bring the
materialistic needs of the client and my scientific knowledge into focus when that is more
appropriate. If clients appear to be experiencing a contradiction between their spiritual
ideals and materialistic values, I can use the confrontation skills I have been taught as a
counselor; that is, I can point out the contradiction without asserting that one view is right
and the other wrong. My ideal for clients and myself is that our spiritual and materialistic
sides will collaborate in counseling and in life. If the soul and spirit are real, not merely
metaphors, I believe that they will emerge, express themselves and grow in the accepting,
loving climate of person-centered counseling.
413
Table 1, Service Agreement: Materialist Assumptions Compared to Spiritual
Possibilities.
The natural/supernatural line
Materialistic Assumptions Spiritual Possibilities
Belief Hope Belief
There is no God. God(s) may exist.
Humans are alone in the universe. It may be possible to communicate with
God(s) through prayer and to obtain
guidance and help for one’s self & for
others. God may provide an experience of
companionship and of being loved.
Spirit and Soul are metaphors. Spirit and Soul may be real and survive this
life.
Individuals’ contributions are limited to
this lifetime, plus however long they are
remembered or the impact of their works is
felt.
The Soul and Spirit may take what they
have learned in this life into the next, and
may continue to grow there. It is, therefore,
possible to develop and learn up to the
moment of death and possible to learn as
much from one’s pain and failures as from
one’s success & joy.
Love is carnal. Love is spiritual and loving relationships
may endure into another realm of existence
or into another lifetime. Love entails
sacrifice, loss, and pain, as well as joys.
Humans invented morality. James thought
that the best morality humans have
invented is utilitarianism: the greatest good
for the greatest number.
Morality, including good & evil, has an
external reality based in God, but felt
inside of humans, as their conscience.
God’s morality is how s/he hopes we will
treat each other. Following that morality
may lead to personal unhappiness. (Kant,
James, Lewis.)
The impact of good and bad deeds is
limited to their material consequences.
Human good and evil have consequences
for the individual’s spiritual development
and the spiritual welfare of others, in this
life and the next. It is, therefore, never too
late to make amends, to ask for
forgiveness, or to forgive
Human evolution is done. Human evolution, including moral
evolution, may be continuing in the
Collective and Spiritual Unconscious and
present humans can contribute to its
growth. (Jung, Assagioli.)
414
Table 2, Service Agreement: Spiritual Beliefs Common in the West
AlternativeBelief Intermediatevalue Belief
Atheism. Agnosticism God (All the principal
religions except Buddhism.)
No life after death.
Don’t know; wait and see. Eternal spirit is real and
survives death. (All major
religions.)
Perfection of the ego.
(Selfism.)
Extinction of the ego.
(Buddhism.)
Transcendence of the ego
through love and good
works. (Islam, Judaism, &
Christianity.)
Self-realization. (Platonism,
Selfism.)
Union with the eternal.
(Buddhism, Hinduism,
Sikhism.)
Communion with the
eternal. (Islam, Judaism, &
Christianity.)
Naturalism: There is no
God.
God is everywhere.
Polytheism and Pantheism.
Monothesism.
Some believe that humans
are essentially evil, and are
saved from original sin by
the sacrifice of Christ’s
death on the cross.
Humans are essentially
good. (Early Rogers.)
Humans contain the
potential to become good or
bad. (Later Rogers.)
Literal interpretation of
sacred texts.
Symbolic interpretation. Critical examination of
religious texts as historic
documents.
There is only 1 true
religion.
There is a preferred
religion.
Different religions represent
different perspectives on the
same ultimate truths; all
religions contain some error
and are incomplete.
There is no punishment or
reward after death.
God rewards the good and
punishes the evil after
death. (Christianity, Islam.)
Humans make their own
heaven and hell by the
spiritual choices they make
in this life and the next.
(Hinduism, Socrates, Jesus
in St. Mark’s Gospel.)
See one’s self as self-
directing and independent
of God, if there is a God.
See one’s relationship with
God as primarily deferring
& obedient.
See one’s relationship with
God as principally
collaborative. (Richards &
Bergin, 2005.)
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Strength of Belief
415
Table 3, Service Agreement: Spiritual Beliefs Less Common in the West
AlternateBelief IntermediatevalueBelief
We are only born once. Don’t know. Humans are reborn.
(Hinduism, Sikhism,
Buddhism.)
We have no choice in
whether or not we are
born or reborn.
Some choose to be reborn
(e.g. bodhisattvas).
All humans choose to be
born. (Betty J. Eadie’s
recounting of her near-death
experience in Embraced by
the Light, 1992).
Human consciousness does
not continue to evolve.
Don’t know. Human consciousness
continues to evolve in the
Collective Unconscious and
in the Spiritual Unconscious
(Jung, Assagioli, Teilhard
de Chardin, Sri Aurobindo).
There are many Gods or
Many aspects of the 1
God (Hinduism).
There are 3 aspects of the
1 God (Christianity).
There is only one God.
(Islam, Judaism, Sikhism).
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
StrengthofBelief
10 = I believe with absolute certainty.
7 = I hope it is true.
5 = I wonder if it is true.
3 = I doubt it is true.
0 = I believe with absolute certainty that it is not true.
416
Service Agreement References
Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc. (1976). Alcoholics anonymous (3
rd
ed.).
New York: Author.
Assagioli, R. (1971). Psychosynthesis: A manual of principles and techniques. New
York: Viking Press.
Corbett, L. & Stein, M. (2005). Contemporary Jungian approaches to spiritually oriented
psychotherapy. In L. Sperry & E. P. Shafranske (Eds.), Spiritually Oriented
Psychotherapy (pp. 51 -- 73). Washington, DC: American Psychological
Association.
Frattaroli, E. (2001). Healing the soul in the Age of the Brain: Becoming conscious in an
unconscious world. New York: Penguin Putnam.
Rogers, C. R. (1951). Client-centered therapy: Its current practice, implications, and
theory. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Rogers, C. R. (1961). On becoming a person: A therapist’s view of psychotherapy.
Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
417
PERMISSIONS RECEIVED TO INCLUDE
COPYRIGHTED MATERIALS IN MASTER’S RESEARCH PAPER
Thank you Laura K. Harrawood, PhD, Assistant Professor, Counseling
Department, Idaho State University, for allowing me to adapt her Counselor-Client
Service Agreement, into the Client-Counselor Service Agreement for Spiritually
Sensitive Person-Centered Counseling that appears in the Appendix.
Thank you David Gouthro for permission to adapt his Forms of Verbal Interaction
into table 1; thank you Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company for permission to
adapt material from Allen Ivey, Mary Ivey, Jane Myers, and Thomas Sweeney,
Developmental Counseling and Therapy (2005) into table 2 in this paper; and thank you
Sterling Lord Literistic, Inc, for permission to copy and use the figure from Roberto
Assagioli’s Psychosynthesis (1971) that appears as figure 2 in this paper.
I also wish to thank the following authors and publishers for permission to quote
at length from their work:
The American Counseling Association for permission to reprint the Nine Spiritual
Competencies from Craig S. Cashwell and J. Scott Young, Integrating Spirituality and
Religion into Counseling: A Guide to Competent Practice (2005), and for permission to
quote extensively from the article An analysis of how Carl Rogers enacted client-centered
conversation with Gloria, by Scott A. Wickman and Cynthia Campell, in Journal of
Counseling and Development, 81, 178 – 184 (2003);
Constable & Robinson for permission to quote extensively from Carl Rogers’s
Client-Centered Therapy (1951);
418
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for permission to quote extensively from Carl
Rogers’s On Becoming a Person (1961);
Penguin Group for permission to quote extensively from Elio Frattaroli, Healing
the Soul in the Age of the Brain (2001); and
Simon & Schuster for permission to quote extensively from M. Scott Peck’s
People of the Lie (1983)
419
VITA
Graduate School
Southern Illinois University
James Bradford Benziger Date of Birth: October 10, 1944
1200 E. Grand Avenue, Apartment10-4B, Carbondale, Illinois 62901
6703 Marquette, West Linn, Oregon 97068
Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Bachelor of Fine Arts, May 1962
University of Illinois, Champaign, Illinois
Juris Doctor, May 1969
Master’s Research Paper Title:
Spiritually Sensitive Psychological Counseling:
A History of the Relationship between Psychology and Spirituality and
Suggestions for Integrating Them in Individual, Group, and Family Counseling
Major Professor:
Lyle White
