Psychotherapy and spirituality

Abstract

Concept of spirituality is paralleled with the concepts of religiosity and psychotherapy. These concepts had been inseparably connected and intertwined. When the materialistic science appeared, a sharp division between what is scientifically measurable, accessible to exact observation, and to experimenting occurred. At its beginning, psychotherapy wanted to be »a serious science«. However, it embarked into the areas which surpass the ability to measure and experiment: it reaches for the domains of human experience which are often inaccessible to objective observation and measuring. A respect for the personality of a human being, the individuality and the freedom of choice blurs the difference between the »objective truth«, the »subjective choice« and »pathology«. This vagueness is most obvious in the domain of spirituality: how, during the psychotherapeutic process, to differentiate between a client’s spirituality, which is his own free choice in the search of answers to the basic existential questions, and »spirituality«, which is the result of hallucinations, delusions, unassimilated introjects and projections… In the article I don’t give answers to these questions, but I try to define the questions. In this way I hope to stimulate reflection and research of this sensitive field, which is still often tabooed.