Merging the horizons of psychotherapeutic and religious worldviews: New challenges for psychotherapy in the global age

Abstract

By collapsing the space that had previously separated conflicting worldviews, global trends force these worldviews into encounters that might not otherwise occur. This discussion examines the impact on the practice of psychotherapy of one of these encounters, namely, the encounter between the religious worldview of devout believers and the therapeutic worldview that heavily influences the Western practice of psychotherapy. In the face of the combined effects of immigration and the phenomenal worldwide growth of conservative religion, psychotherapy in the USA and Europe will increasingly be offered to religiously committed people who distrust the therapeutic viewpoint. Following an examination of the effects of global trends on the religiosity of the populations from which many Western psychotherapists draw their patients, we present a clinical vignette that demonstrates how these trends challenge therapists to become therapeutically engaged with their patients’ religious beliefs and values. The vignette illustrates typical errors made by therapists when treating devoutly religious patients and suggests guidelines for working with patients’ religious beliefs.