Why “integrating” psychotherapy and spirituality? This question seems silly to many people for one of two reasons. Some would say it is silly because the two must necessarily be kept separate, like church and state. Others would say it is silly because they are inherently intertwined and don’t require any effort on our part to be integrated.
I am inclined toward the view that the two are inherently intertwined, but believe that they have been artificially separated by psychology, the discipline that most clearly undergirds most of what we practice in psychotherapy, in its zeal to be scientific. Freud’s disdain for religion didn’t help either. Of course there have always been those, like Carl Jung, who have kept alive the perspective that psychology and psychotherapy have an intrinsic relationship to spirituality. However, this perspective has only moved toward widespread acceptance among psychotherapists in the last few decades, thanks in part to the Journal of Humanistic Psychology, and the Journal of Transpersonal Psychology. Such acceptance in mainstream psychology, as reflected in the American Psychological Association, has only been noticeable in the last few years.
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