The Spiritual Psyche In Psychotherapy

This book examines the interaction of spiritual and psychoanalytic lineages with psychotherapy in everyday practice. Written by a team of seasoned clinicians and illustrated through clinical vignettes, chapters explore topics pertaining to the mystical dimensions of psychological and spiritual life and how it may be integrated into clinical practice. Topics discussed include dreams, dissociation, creativity, therapeutic relationship, free association, transcendence, poetry, paradox, doubleness, loss, death, grief, mystery, embodiment and soul. The authors, clinicians with decades of experience in psychotherapy, psychoanalysis and spiritual practice, draw from their deep engagement with spirituality and psychoanalysis, focusing on a particular theme and its application to clinical work that is supported by the generative conversation among these lineages. At once applied and theoretical, this book weaves insights from the heart of Vajrayana Buddhism, Zen Buddhism, Christianity, Catholicism, Ecumenicism, Integral Spirituality, Judaism, Kabbalah, Non-violence, Sufism and Vedanta. They are in conversation with psychoanalytic perspectives including Jungian, Post-Jungian, Winnicottian, Bionian, Post-Bionian and Relational. A felt sense of the spiritual psyche in clinical practice emerges from this conversation among spiritual and psychoanalytic lineages, beckoning clinicians ever further on the path of spiritually rooted, psychodynamic practice.

This book presents an approach to spirituality based on direct personal experience of the sacred. Using the language and insights of depth psychology, Corbett outlines the intimate relationship between spiritual experience and the psychology of the individual, unveiling the seamless continuity between the personal and transpersonal dimensions of the psyche. His discussion runs the gamut of spiritual concerns, from the problem of evil to the riddle of pain and suffering. Drawing upon his psychotherapeutic practice as well as on the experiences of characters from our religious heritage, Corbett explores the various portals through which the sacred presents itself to us: dreams, visions, nature, the body, relationships, psychopathology, and creative work. Referring extensively to Jung’s writings on religion, but also to contemporary psychoanalytic theory, Corbett gives form to the new spirituality that is emerging alongside the world’s great religious traditions. For those seeking alternative forms of spirituality beyond the Judeo-Christian tradition, this volume will be a useful guide on the journey.

Traditional concepts of God are no longer tenable for many people who nevertheless experience a strong sense of the sacred in their lives. The Religious Function of the Psyche offers a psychological model for the understanding of such experience, using the language and interpretive methods of depth psychology, particularly those of C.G. Jung and psychoanalytic self psychology. The problems of evil and suffering, and the notion of human development as an incarnation of spirit are dealt with by means of a religious approach to the psyche that can be brought easily into psychotherapeutic practice and applied by the individual in everyday life. The book offers an alternative approach to spirituality as well as providing an introduction to Jung and religion.

This book purports to redefine therapy as a spiritual practice requiring discipline and a process of creating meaning for ones life. The word psyche originally meant soul, and it is that which this book leads the reader back to. As a professional psychotherapist, Dr. Matise describes Freud as not just the discoverer of psychoanalysis but as one who was more spiritual in his approach than is given credit. The book calls therapy back to its roots and original intentions as soul work. Therapy is not just for the sick of mind but more and more acceptable to all people, as our modern lives become busier and more detached from one another. The pressures to succeed and be happy, though widely held Western values, have left individuals devoid of real meaning. In the age of quick fixes, therapy as a process of spiritual growth and development has lost its appeal and conditions us to avoid legitimate pain at all costs. The book provides case studies to clarify the integration of psychology and spirituality. While written from the perspective of a psychotherapist, its audience is far wider, as the book explores human nature and the existential questions of humanity, rather than the nuts and bolts of therapy. This book is for the searcher in each of us who is seeking a deeper experience of what it means to really live and not so much be happy, but be real.

The first concise overview of transpersonal psychotherapy.

TABLE OF CONTENTS: 1. Exploring sacred landscapes 2. Countertransference and transference aspects of religious material in psychotherapy: The isolation or integration of religious material 3. Ministry or therapy: The role of transference and countertransference in a religious therapist 4. The use of religiou simagery for psychological structuralization 5. Myth and symbol as expressions of the religious 6. Religious imagery in the clinical context: Access to compassion toward the self - illusion or truth 7. The transcendent moment and the analytic hour 8. Concluding clinical postscript: On developing a psychotheological perspective 9. Psychology and spirituality: Forgoing a new relationship.

This book explores the expanding literature on spirituality as an important dimension of psychology, and explains the relationship between psychological treatment and spiritual healing. The author examines ideas from religious traditions, and considers their implications for psychotherapy and personal growth.

From a leading researcher and practitioner, this volume provides an innovative framework for understanding the role of spirituality in people's lives and its relevance to the work done in psychotherapy. It offers fresh, practical ideas for creating a spiritual dialogue with clients, assessing spirituality as a part of their problems and solutions, and helping them draw on spiritual resources in times of stress. Written from a nonsectarian perspective, the book encompasses both traditional and nontraditional forms of spirituality. It is grounded in current findings from psychotherapy research and the psychology of religion, and includes a wealth of evocative case material.

Historically, the language and concepts within clinical theory have been steeped in linear assumptions and reductionist thinking. Because the essence of psychotherapy involves change, Psyche’s Veil suggests that clinical practice is inherently a nonlinear affair. In this book Terry Marks-Tarlow provides therapists with new language, models and metaphors to narrow the divide between theory and practice, while bridging the gap between psychology and the sciences. By applying contemporary perspectives of chaos theory, complexity theory and fractal geometry to clinical practice, the author discards traditional conceptions of health based on ideals of regularity, set points and normative statistics in favour of models that emphasize unique moments, variability, and irregularity. Psyche’s Veil further explores philosophical and spiritual implications of contemporary science for psychotherapy. Written at the interface between artistic, scientific and spiritual aspects of therapy, Psyche’s Veil is a case-based book that aspires to a paradigm shift in how practitioners conceptualize critical ingredients for internal healing. Novel treatment of sophisticated psychoanalytical issues and tie-ins to interpersonal neurobiology make this book appeal to both the specialist practitioner, as well as the generalist reader. .

In this concise, thoughtful, and practical book, clinician Carlton Cornett explores the relevance of religion and spirituality to the clinical process and describes how to integrate issues of spirituality into everyday professional practice.