Psychology and religion: mapping the relationship

Mental Health, Religion & Culture March 2005; 8(1): 27 33 Psychology and religion: mapping the relationship MICHAEL A. HAYES 1 & HELEN COWIE 2 1 St Mary s College, London, UK, 2 University of Surrey, Guildford, UK Abstract A sceptical attitude towards religion remains dominant in many circles in mainstream psychology. For example, most theories of human development omit to mention spirituality at all. With some notable exceptions, many mainstream psychologists describe themselves as materialists with a belief that there is nothing beyond our bodies and our mental worlds, however meaningful they may be to us in the here and now. However, there is one domain of psychology that has for many years accepted a more positive stance towards religion and religious experience. Many of the great movements in counselling psychology were grounded in the strong religious or spiritual faith of the leader. The discipline of counselling psychology, with its emphasis on the practitioner as scientist, has actively taken account of spiritual experience rather than religious experience as a means of promoting healing and emotional well being in clients. The present article proposes that the interface between psychology and religion has constructive implications for the therapeutic work of practitioners and that counselling psychology has been particularly influential in leading the way towards a greater interest on the part of psychologists in the nature and purpose of religious experience by focusing instead on the phenomenon of spirituality. Introduction: the interface between psychology and religion Parsons and Jonte-Pace (2001, p. 1), in their attempt to describe the terrain where psychology and religion intersect, ask the following questions:. What is the relationship between psychology and religion?. Does psychology attack, critique, and challenge religion?. Does psychology collaborate with religion in promoting mental and spiritual wholeness? They argue that psychological models contain implicit assumptions about the person and about relationships that limit the discipline s ability to study and interpret religion. Argyle (2002, p. 22), a social psychologist who has carried out detailed research on the psychology of religion, gives insight into how this view of psychology might have arisen when he proposes that: religion presents a range of phenomena falling outside what is usually studied by psychologists, and for which there often appears to be no psychological explanation. Correspondence: Helen Cowie, European Institute of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Surrey, Duke of Kent Building, Stag Hill, Guildford, Surrey GU2 7TE, UK. E-mail: h.cowie@surrey.ac.uk ISSN 1367-4676 print/issn 1469-9737 online ß 2005 Taylor & Francis Ltd DOI: 10.1080/13674670410001666589

28 Michael A. Hayes & Helen Cowie However, Argyle s overview of a wide range of empirical studies of religious practice and belief by psychologists gives a less pessimistic picture. Surveys on the effects of religious belief on people s lives indicate that the greatest influence is on existential certainty since religious faith brings with it optimism about the future and alleviation from the fear of death and dying. Physical health appears to be better amongst church members. Religious healing seems to make people feel better even though their medical condition remains the same. Religious belief also plays an important part in promoting emotional health and well being, and religious people are more likely to be involved in altruistic and helpful activities in their own communities (Health Education Authority, 1999). When interviewed about belief, many people define faith as a relationship with God. Hinde (1999), though personally sceptical, argues as a psychologist that while belief in religion has traditionally provided answers to life s most profound questions around purpose and meaning, in contemporary society such belief is held by many to be unacceptable. He notes the profound loss of meaning that follows from such abandonment of traditional beliefs and argues that a destructive attitude towards religion and religious experience is inappropriate. Even a psychologist s concern to investigate subjectivity does not necessarily involve a belief that the spirit has a substance or that the spiritual transcends subjective experience. Nevertheless, the beneficial consequences that come from religious faith for example, through peace of mind cannot, he argues, be lightly explained away as a result of only taking account of what is scientifically verifiable. In the present article, we propose that the interface between psychology and religion, with spirituality as a mediator, raises particular issues that are extremely relevant to the concept of mental health in a social/cultural context. The chance of experiencing some form of mental problem or difficulty is high set at one in four by the UK Royal College of Psychiatrists. A recent website survey reported in The Daily Telegraph (Pook, 2000) found that ten per cent of the population believe that they would be better off dead. A high proportion of the participants reported that they felt unappreciated and dissatisfied with work and home life, or that they considered life to be passing them by. We could argue that this represents a worrying loss of meaning and direction in today s society. We might also argue that the absence of religious belief on the part of many people in the UK today might be viewed as a relevant factor in this current social malaise. The particular stance of counselling psychology Historically, there have always been strong emotional links admittedly some of them antagonistic between counselling psychology and religion. More recently, perhaps as a direct result of the loss of meaning in their personal lives expressed within the counselling encounter itself on the part of many clients, there has been a movement amongst counselling psychologists to pay close attention to matters of spiritual experience whether these are directly linked to religion or not. The possibility of sharing ideas or of working in parallel but distinctive ways involves an on-going dialogue between psychology and religion. Counselling psychology has been defined as the application of psychological knowledge to the practice of counselling (Woolfe, 1996), so identifying a clear scientific, evidencebased focus for the discipline. It is a key component in the training of the counselling psychologist to apply the techniques and research methods of the social sciences to assess the truth claims of particular hypotheses. One outcome has been to identify the individual s sense of meaning and spiritual purpose in life, to chart the development and representations of the self, and to acknowledge the importance of the person s narratives as representations of his or her life.

Psychology and religion 29 The origins of counselling lie in psychology, with a long-standing emphasis on the relationship between the helping professional and the client, a relationship which is characterized by qualities of empathy, acceptance and congruence the qualities that were identified and disseminated by Carl Rogers in the 1950s. These qualities can be operationalised by calling them interpersonal skills, but a deeper understanding comes from considering the nature of the psychological processes that occur in the client-counsellor relationship. Counselling psychologists themselves employ a whole range of methods including humanistic, psychodynamic, cognitive-behavioural, transpersonal and integrative. For many, though not all, it is an essential part of training to undergo psychological work on the self through experiential groups or personal therapy. The thread that holds these different approaches together is a belief in the relationship, an emphasis on the experience of the client, a concern to understand the perspective of the client, and a willingness to further the quality of life of tha client. By sharing the client s inner world, the counselling psychologist, whatever his or her theoretical orientation, forms a strong and intimate relationship based on trust. Clarkson (1995) suggests that there are five types of therapeutic relationship that are potentially present in any psychotherapeutic encounter: the working alliance; the transference/counter-transference relationship; the developmentally needed (or reparative) relationship; the person-to-person (or real) relationship; and the transpersonal relationship. Such categorisation takes account of the tacit knowledge of what works in therapy through the nature of the therapeutic relationship. It also opens the way for exploration of the interface between the therapeutic relationship and the spiritual growth of the client. Perspectives on religion within counselling psychology Freud expressed a deep antagonism to religion. The new disciplines of psychotherapy and psychology were scientific and secular. Freud described religion as potentially so infantile, so foreign to reality...it is painful to think that the great majority of mortals will never be able to rise above this view of life (Freud, 1963, p. 11). He viewed religion as a form of communal neurosis with rituals and practices that acted as a defence against forbidden desires. For example, he contended that sex and aggression are controlled by the superego in the form of guilt, with society s rules and religion playing a strong part in monitoring and containing these instinctive drives. The aim of analysis was to enable patients to live their lives without the props of irrational beliefs, including religious faith. Many psychodynamic practitioners to this day are caught in a defensive position with regard to religious experience, confining the concept of religion to psychopathology. The perception of psychology as a science has also perpetuated this view that science and religion are incompatible. One profound outcome of this scientific approach to religious experience has been the creation of an existential vacuum in therapeutic work with clients. Rowe (1983) commented in the 1980s on the fact that many of her colleagues in mental health circles completely ignored the therapeutic value of religion and religious belief to fellow humans in distress, so ignoring a critical dimension of human experience which she defines as unknowable in some senses but accessible through imagery. This does not mean, however, that all psychologists have ignored the significance of religion in human experience. Many key figures in counselling and psychotherapy have had strong religious backgrounds and have tried to forge some integration between their therapeutic work and the search for spiritual meaning in life. Jung had a profound interest in the spiritual and religious dimensions of human experience. He also recognised the existential dilemma posed by the fact that, in the modern age,

30 Michael A. Hayes & Helen Cowie millions of people had lost belief in any form of religion and that they bolstered this opinion by insisting that there is no scientific evidence of the truth of religious ideas. As Jung (1964) indicated, this works when life is running smoothly, but when losses occur then people begin to reflect on the meaning of their lives. Where once they turned to religion, increasingly they turned to counsellors or psychiatrists, and at difficult times in their lives may envy those who have a belief in God. Jung s argument was that it is the role of religious symbols to give meaning to the person s life in order to raise people beyond the narrow confines of their own individual lives. Through the process of being captured by symbolic ideas, he argued, the person had the potential to transcend everyday experience in order to attain a sense of something beyond. Jung argued that issues of religion and morality were inseparable from the mental life of humans. Erikson, a highly influential thinker to emerge from the field of psychoanalysis, documented the relevance of psychotherapy to the modern world, posing many still-unresolved questions on the relationship between the individual and society. He did not reject the importance of religion as Freud had done but wrote that religion translates into significant works, images, and codes the exceeding darkness which surrounds man s existence, and the light which pervades it beyond all desert or comprehension (Erikson, 1972, p. 19). Erikson was sensitive to the power of religion in human life and linked the presence of religious faith to the child s early experience of trusts or mistrusts in the parent-child relationship. He identified religion as an affirmation of love or terror of the dark unknown. Within his developmental framework, he conceptualised the religious experiences of such figures as Luther and Gandhi in terms of ideology and identity, and in that sense found transcendent meanings in a secular world. While Erikson did not commit himself to any one religion, he was clearly searching for a spiritual connection at the core of individual identity. Rogers (1951), the founder of client-centred therapy, integrated a strong commitment to the Protestant religion with an equally strong commitment to scientific enquiry. McLeod (1993) notes that the influence of Protestant thinking on client-centred therapy is evident in the emphasis on individual personal growth and the concern to be guided by feeling and intuition rather than by doctrine. These two strands in Rogers life met in his vocation to become a therapist and have evolved in contemporary humanistic practice to challenge the assertion that religious beliefs are necessarily contrary to reality and embody a growing concern to respect the reality that clients bring to the therapy session. For example, from the humanistic perspective, Elkins, Hedstorm, Hughes, Leaf, & Sanders (1988, p. 10) define spirituality as:...a way of being and experiencing that comes through awareness of a transcendental dimension and that is characterised by certain identifiable values in regard to self, others, nature, life, and whatever one considers to be the Ultimate. Berke (1996), writing about psychoanalysis and the Jewish mystical tradition, Kabbalah, explores the idea that both psychoanalysis and Kabbalah are theories about the nature of existence and that each offers a method for restoring shattered lives, the former dealing with the self and the latter dealing with the soul. For example, the thirteenth century Spanish Kabbalist, Rabbi Abrahan Abulafia, emphasised a mystical logic (or metaphorical jumping and skipping ) similar to Freud s logic of the unconscious and his method of free association. This dynamic interplay between the unconscious and the conscious is similar, argues Berke, to the Hebrew concept of shalom, the process of gaining peace and wholeness, while the reparation process, of overcoming fragmentation and loss, is intimately related to the Kabbalistic concept of tikkun, the restoration of the heart.

Psychology and religion 31 In a similar quest, Frankl (1973) through the development of logotherapy, highlights conscience as having a transcendent origin. It is conscience that guides the individual s quest for ultimate meaning. For Frankl, an existential vacuum exists in the lives of many who are not able to access what he called primary or intrinsic religiousness. Healing this existential vacuum comes about by the integration of the somatic, the psychic and the religious. Contemporary transpersonal counselling psychologists such as Rowan (1993) have proposed that there is a spiritual dimension to experience that is fundamental to the understanding of what it is to be human. The transpersonal is about the inner self, the archetypes, the soul, the creative self, peak experiences with an underlying assumption that each person has the potential for spiritual growth. Each one of us is, from this perspective, on a path of development that leads towards the transpersonal life of the soul. The practice of counselling psychology and psychotherapy is one means of facilitating such growth. At the same time, practitioners do not need to be interested in religion as such, certainly not in the monotheistic religions which are most easily available in our culture (Rowan, 1993, p. 227). Rather, the focus, from this perspective, is on the role that therapeutic practice plays in acting as a bridge between psychology and spirituality. As this brief overview indicates, a concern on the part of counselling psychologists to investigate the spiritual dimension of experience has emerged more strongly in recent times, perhaps as a direct result of the wider spiritual vacuum experienced by many who seek help in finding meaning in their lives through therapy rather than through religion, as they would have done in the past. One factor that has facilitated this shift of focus is a growing interest in matters that are spiritual, whether these are allied to religion or not. Implications for practice In the context of the present article, we argue for the necessity to maintain the links between religion and spirituality, while recognizing the differences. In harmony with Schneiders (1993, 1998), we define spirituality as a dimension of being that gives life meaning and that can be expressed as a relationship with a higher being, sometimes called God:...that dimension of the human subject in virtue of which the person is capable of self-transcending integration in relation to the Ultimate, whatever this Ultimate is for the person in question. In this sense, every human being has a capacity for spirituality or is a spiritual being...very, very few people will become accomplished in the spiritual life without studying it in some way, whether theoretical or practical (Schneiders, 1993, p. 10). Religion, by contrast, is a particular framework that includes a belief structure, a moral code, an authority structure and a form of worship. Within this framework, people find spirituality and can explore their spiritual journey in the company of others who share their belief. In an earlier study, (Cowie, & Hayes, 2000; Hayes, 2001) we compared the spiritual and religious experiences of a sample of transpersonal psychotherapists and spiritual directors. While only 1 out of 10 psychotherapists in the study practiced their religion, all of them claimed to have had spiritual experiences. Not surprisingly, all of the spiritual directors made use of the spiritual in their everyday lives. But so too did 8 out of 10 of the transpersonal psychotherapists, although their language was tentative and made little use of religious terminology. Our findings indicated quite powerfully that the person might be spiritual though not religious. We concluded that a willingness to explore the common ground between transpersonal psychotherapy and spiritual direction challenged much of the perceived antagonism between psychological growth and spiritual quest.

32 Michael A. Hayes & Helen Cowie The growing acknowledgement on the part of practitioners of the spiritual dimension seems to have enormous implications for mainstream mental health services. West (2000), for example, recommends that therapists should become aware of their own unhealthy resistance to the concept of spiritual development that may take the form of, for example, a dismissive or negative attitude to clients religious faith, and an undervaluing of the role that belief can play in the course of therapy. This could be especially unhelpful to clients who regularly attend mosque, temple, church or synagogue. In fact, he argues, such an attitude denies the spiritual roots of psychotherapy. Not all spiritual experiences are totally healthy nor are they all signs of madness... There are times when a client will need a spiritual referral. There are times when what is happening to a client might be best viewed as a spiritual awakening or a spiritual emergency... (West, 2000, p. 149) Some mental health practitioners are beginning to see the immense significance of the spiritual dimension of the human person for their emotional well being. Furthermore, although Jung suggested that individuals become more interested in the spiritual aspects of their development in the second half of life, in the present time many young people are expressing an interest in transpersonal issues, for example in near-death experiences, or reincarnation or in meditation. Counselling psychologists from this perspective argue that the genuinely therapeutic engagement with a client is spiritual in the sense that it is akin to the I Thou relationship developed by Martin Buber (1937, 1947). This relationship is characterised by an absorption in and engagement with the other without any sense of self-seeking or manipulation. The theory proposes that we are only truly ourselves in this mode of being: In the most powerful moments of dialogic, where in truth deep calls unto deep, it becomes unmistakably clear that it is not the wand of the individual or of the social, but of a third which draws the circle round the happening. On the far side of the subjective, on this side of the objective, on the narrow ridge where I and Thou meet, there is the realm of between. (Buber, 1947, p. 246). The I Thou mode of relating to the other can bridge the difficulties that many have with the concept of conventional religious belief. As King-Spooner (2000, p. 167) puts it: What is crucial here is that Buber sees I Thou as a mode of relation which always enters, or has the potential to enter, a spiritual dimension... For Buber all I Thou relation points towards God in each Thou we catch a glimpse of the everlasting Thou. But I think there is no problem in dropping the G-word here... Many counselling psychologists get round the conflict by defining spirituality as engagement with God in ourselves and so begin to address the very real conflicts with their religion that some clients bring to therapy. Conclusion Perhaps the enduring task for both psychology and religion is to enable people to live their lives with courage and optimism and to strive towards creating conditions that give people the strength to live well and that dispel beliefs and patterns which trap people in lives of misery. Establishing the distinction between spirituality and religion enables us to consider more clearly the complementary relationship between psychology and spirituality. With this discovery comes a growing awareness of the need to include a spiritual reality in the psychological debate. Just as theology and, by implication, spirituality view human experience as a source for reflection, so the empirical findings of psychology and the interpersonal tools of

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