The changeful Relationship of Spirituality and Psychotherapy: A jungian Perspective

Abstract

In this historical review, the complex and intertwined history of psychology, psychotherapy, religion, and spirituality is examined in order to assess current developments in the relationship between spirituality and psychotherapy. In particular, this review refers back to the psychology of religion movement, which won many active supporters from 1880 to 1930 in the U. S. – including the grandfathers of American psychology William James and G. Stanley Hall. Two paradigm shifts followed: first, a shift away from the topic of religion and spirituality and toward a strictly empirical science modeled on physics, and then, in the late 1960s through the 1990s, a return to an attempt to integrate spirituality into psychotherapy processes. This latter shift is characterized by an increasing secularization and deconfessionalization within psychology and psychotherapy and a focus on inner, subjective experience.