Spirituality—our relationship with the sacred—is expressed through our beliefs, practices, emotions, values, and relationships. Spirituality can play a vital role in understanding the problems clients face and the solutions they seek in psychotherapy. This volume brings together top scholars who show how therapists can ethically and competently integrate spiritual perspectives and interventions into their practices and thereby more effectively treat clients from diverse religious, spiritual, racial, and cultural backgrounds. The chapters present research, clinical guidance, and case studies representing a wide variety of approaches and settings, including community mental health centers, private practice offices, hospitals and medical clinics, universities, and prisons. Given the important role that spirituality plays in many people’s lives, this book will help practitioners bring attention, sensitivity, and evidence-based knowledge about the spiritual dimension into their psychotherapy practice.

Many religious people distrust the process of psychotherapy because they fear that helping professionals will misunderstand and pathologize their spiritual beliefs. This book provides concrete guidance for working effectively with clients from a wide range of religious backgrounds, including all of the main Christian denominations found in the United States as well as Judaism, Islam, Eastern traditions, and the ethnic-centered spirituality of African-American, Latino, and American Indian populations. Each of the 16 core chapters is written by a contributor who is both a mental health professional and an expert in the religious tradition described. After providing key information on the history and practices of the faith, authors describe how spiritual concerns may interact with common presenting problems in clients who practice the tradition and offer guidelines for promoting trust and positive outcomes. Rich in clinical examples, the book is an ideal training resource for both graduate students and experienced practitioners.

In Casebook for a Spiritual Strategy in Counseling and Psychotherapy, leading therapist-authors mine their rich case histories to present valuable teaching tools for practitioners. Written from several theistic traditions and psychological orientations, this casebook -- the companion volume to A Spiritual Strategy for Counseling and Psychotherapy -- examines the therapeutic relationship as it occurs in various forms of Christian, Jewish, and Islamic faiths, and provides practitioners with examples that will illuminate and inform their practices with clients of varying religious backgrounds.