Psychotherapy and Spirituality: Crossing the Line Between Therapy and Religion

Citation

Hannabuss, S. (2001), "Psychotherapy and Spirituality: Crossing the Line Between Therapy and Religion", Library Review, Vol. 50 No. 2, pp. 99-107. https://doi.org/10.1108/lr.2001.50.2.99.3

Professionally and bibliographically, this work opens up the way in which counselling and psychotherapy in the 1990s have integrated spirituality. Spirituality is often uneasily poised between counselling and religion (the first of which regards the second as directive, and the second of which regards the first as ignorant of self‐transcendence). New Age eclecticism (for example, bits of Zen, existentialism and behaviourism) has added to the confusion, but also the rich potential for spirituality. West is a lecturer in counselling studies at Manchester University and has wide practical and research experience in the field. Biographical influences (healing, Christianity, Quakerism) influence his approach, but it is objective for all that (and, above all, humanistic), and fits into a well‐documented and topical framework of reading and professional work.

Rogers’s core conditions of empathy, congruence and unconditional positive regard are exploratorily extended in the direction of spirituality, and West’s case is convincing. Key figures are Thorne and Wilber, Rogers and Buber, as West provides a coherent critical guide to their work and impact, comparing the “ladder to oneness” approach with the more mainstream “spiral to integration” in counselling. This is a helpful guide for therapists with some experence (not beginners) and for people running counselling courses, offering a coherent backward look at Freud and Jung, linking spirituality with major counselling styles, and putting eclectic and multicultural trends in counselling in the context of spirituality in the UK today. It is a realistic work in taking on board the delusional and psychotic dimensions of psychotherapy, and the need for therapists to face the shadow side of their own and clients’ personal journeys. He acknowledges boundaries, too, insofar as processes like forgiveness and inspiration may or may not be appropriate in specific counselling situations. Exemplary case studies demonstrate how ideas can be applied.

West’s research approach will commend itself to readers wanting to learn more about contemporary bibliography in this area, and for librarians wanting to build up a relevant collection. His “agenda for change” where psychotherapy is concerned is challenging, particularly in a professional area where suitable therapist‐supervisors are still too thin on the ground. This is an exciting series (with works linking psychotherapy with philosophy, feminism, science, culture, and politics), with a research ambience of interest to people in related areas of qualitative research.