Spirituality in Therapy - Essay Example

? Spirituality in Therapy This paper discusses Relational Ethics of Care along the spirituality in therapy of Francoise Dolto and James Olthuis. To set a background, Sigmund Freud is the pioneering psychoanalyst who introduced the intra-psychic therapeutic method of free association. Through the years, Psychoanalytic Therapy has evolved dramatically, seeking more effective ways to bring reconstruction to patients from personality conflicts. Among these is Humanistic Therapy which sees the patient as a human being with an innate positive drive for a better life. Dolto and Olthuis adopt humanistic therapy with the addition of Christian spirituality concepts which this paper attempts to discuss. Dolto and Olthuis As practicing Christian, Francoise Dolto brought ideas from Christianity into her clinical practice. Dolto was influenced by the Humanism of French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, who stressed the need for psychologists to recognize the religious depths of personality in the human person. Adopting Lacan’s insights on the religious personality, Dolto gave importance to the spiritual-psychological dialectic of the “I” and the “me” of the human person (Slattery,2002). Beyond Lacan, however, Dolto focused more on the spiritual dialectic with the client finding joy and desire to strive for meaning in his life through Gospel truths. In her clinical practice, Dolto worked along an ethics of desire for a loving relationship in the patient. Her therapeutic process consisted in freeing an innate frozen human desire—structured by the Creator-- to rise up towards relational cohesion with all created beings. During the spiritual dialectic, Dolto the therapist helped the patient to project this innate desire onto others consonant with a capacity to love. For Dolto, the Gospel can be instrumental to this spiritual dialectic since it is the seat of Christ’s teachings on compassionate love and openness to others, exemplified by Jesus’ story about the Good Samaritan. Dolto believes that if compassionate love fills the world, man can free its innate desire for the cohesion of all of humankind. Meanwhile, James Olthuis in his writings harps on a Christian way of therapy through a relational dialectic between therapist and client. Understandably reflective of his career as a philosophical theologian, Olthuis chose Christian Love as the basic theme of his book the Beautiful Risk (Oltuis, 2001). His actual therapeutic methodology is scientific and objective, since he as an analyst related to his clients with clinical skills, but at the same time he filled himself with sensitivity and honesty sourced from Christian compassion. Through the dimension of his Christian faith, Olthuis has enriched the humanist’s view of self-actualization mediated by Christian care, connection, partnership and love. Impact of spirituality in therapy Given the relational spiritual dialectic of Dolto, my therapeutic practice can gain a deeper dimension by including God in my therapy work. To reflect on my education, I was taught therapeutic practice mainly along scientific concepts and procedures. Faith is understandably not within the purview of psychological education and training. I have even observed, for example, that clinicians remove from patients all items of faith like crucifixes, rosaries and prayer books prior to treatment or confinement. Dolto, however, makes a radical move as she showed that the path to cure is a deeper dialectic, the spiritual one encompassing the scientific efforts in helping a patient. Complementing this is Olthuis’ idea of professional practice that is imbued with Christian care, connection, partnership and love. Given Dolto’s and Olthuis’ religious perspectives, I believe I can now see my patients in a new light, specifically as seekers of meaning and cohesion within themselves and harmony with life. On their part, clients will see freedom at the end of the tunnel of their entrapment with complex biological, psychic and social forces that complicate their lives. As a therapist, I am both a keen listener and a catalyst that would allow patients to project a God-given desire to open and relate and be attuned to external reality. Through this art of listening, my client should be able to equally recognize that inner impulse to appreciate his God-given self, no matter how subject to human limitation it is. Self-esteem is most basic to therapy, and only through self identification and self love can my client gather the strength to rise out of the mire of conflict affecting him. The change process is never instantaneous and it may take as long a time, possibly even longer, than the gradual and subtle personality changes which have rendered the patient out of touch with himself and the world. The relational ethics of care, compassion and love also involves time, but the impact of relational therapy is to imbue a subtle spiritual force that can motivate both the therapist and the patient. In concrete and factual terms, Norman Vincent Peale exemplifies the practice Positive Thinking through the Biblical Word, which helped thousands of clients who came to him for pastoral counselling. Bringing spiritual beliefs, values and desires in my work is part of my own maturing. Christian faith can start from an infantile stage during which I started to believe simply because of my religious cultural upbringing. Slowly, however, there is the maturation process even as religion grows out of superstition and creeds into genuine faith which teaches unity in the Godhead and childlike relationship as exemplified by a historical Christ. Freud thought of religion as mass delusion alluding at the infantile practice of elaborate rites and adherence to complexity of creeds. On my part, I bring into my practice a simplicity of beliefs, values and desires summed up by the simple tenet of love of God and man. To those who come to me for therapy, I will not be preaching, but I will be like Olthuis offering his client the opportunity to discover for himself salutary beliefs, values and desires through simple therapeutic methods such as reflective journals, stream-of-thought mapping etc. The spiritual therapy work should involve me both as a professional therapist and an individual Christian. I am first a Christian and I will live my life in continually growing openness to life—things, events and people. As an individual opening myself to the world, I become more and more attuned to seen and unseen forces, including the Unseen Presence and Healer of Life— “He who is” to Jews, “The Compassionate One” to Moslems, and the Omnipresent to me. As a professional, Dolto’s spiritual dialectic and Oltuis’ risk of Christian compassion shall guide me by. References Olthuis, J. (2001). The Beautiful Risk. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Slattery, M. (2002). How Francois Dolto Links lacanian Psychoanalysis with the Christian Gospels. The Journal of Pastoral Care & Counseling, Winter 2002, Vo. 56, No. 4 Read More