Spirituality in Clinical Practice: Incorporating the Spiritual Dimension in Psychotherapy and Counseling

Abstract

Maintains that Sperry's book title suggests a presentation of ideas revealing explicit incorporation of spirituality in psychotherapy, which presentation he delivered. Throughout the text, he identified the trans-contextual nature of spirituality, seeing it associated with forms of psychotherapy, theoretical models, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders IV (DSM-IV), practitioners' personal lives, etc. He began by establishing spirituality's relevance in society and the culture of psychotherapy, and then he proceeded to offer technical distinctions between different forms of psychotherapy (e.g., pastoral counseling and nonspiritually-attuned psychotherapy). The reviewer expresses some concerns. First, Coffey contends that Sperry's focus predominantly involved 'incorporating the spiritual dimension,' or explicit recognition of spirituality, with little attention given to implicit spirituality experiences, or more broadly, psychotherapy as a spiritual process. Second, Sperry tended to privilege DSM-IV ideas and overlook family-therapy references, even when such references specifically aligned with and could have contributed to his topic. Finally, Coffey takes issue with topics Sperry highlighted such as hierarchy, pathology, and Christian-based theology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)