Research Paper

Research Paper



Research Paper

Introduction

Although integral to the development of counseling psychology, spirituality has been marginalized as a topic in disciplinary research and as a resource or consideration in professional practice for the majority of the 20a century. Religious and spiritual questions have traditionally been viewed as unscientific topics of study. Little funding or suppo1 has been available for research in the area, and consequently in comparison with other domains there has been relatively little research on spiritual and religious issues in psychology. Spirituality has also received scant recognition as a consideration in leaching or clinical practice.

Within the clinical sphere, the ascendance of the psychodynamics model of practice in the early 20th century fostered a general disregard and suspicion of religion and spirituality (Pacific 2002). Most of the researchers viewed religion as a defense mechanism, and potentially as a symptom of the disorder.

Although models of practice have expanded exponentially until very recently, psychological training has continued in the long tradition of disregarding spiritual and religious issues.

Most of the researchers used spiritual strategies successfully to cope with a wide variety of illnesses and misfortunes, and are linked to positive mental physical and psychosocial outcomes for people living with such conditions as cancer, MW, and MS(Egan 2002).

Spirit and Psyche: Friends or Foes

Spirituality and psychology have a long, complex and contentious relationship. Shamans, witches, healers and priests, were the community leaders originally charged with healing menial, emotional, and physical problems. With the Enlightenment, came new visions of science and reason gradually replacing religious hopes for salvation with the creation of a heaven on earth. Against this back drop of secular optimism, the emerging enterprise of psychology hooked its wagon to the rising star of science in order to establish its legitimacy as a separate discipline in the late 19th century. As part of this process, spiritual and religious questions and conceptualization were pushed to the margins of the discipline, where they have remained for much of the 20 century.

Although, currently defined as the science of mind and psychology originally denoted the study of spiritual beings. Corsini (2000) locates the first use of the word psychologia in late 15 or early 16 century philosophy, where ii was used to delineate a subdivision of penumatologia: “the science or doctrine of spiritual beings and substances” that particularly pertained to organic beings (p. 228. Leahy (1991) traces the etiology of the word psychology to the Greek terms psyche meaning soul and logos meaning word or knowledge. He attributes the modem use of the word psychology to l8' century philosophy where it was defined as “the discipline that knows about the soul” (p. 40).

When psychology came into being in the late l9 century, it was a multidisciplinary enterprise owing as much to its philosophical and religious roots as to its wholehearted embrace of the scientific method. Early classes in psychology were taught in departments of philosophy and religious studies (Coon, 2000). Reflection and introspection were legitimate adjuncts to measurement and observation within the new ...