Lev, A. (2024). Spiritual integration in therapeutic practice [Unpublished Master’s thesis]. Alef Trust & Liverpool John Moores University.
This study examines how counselling professionals integrate spirituality into therapeutic practice. Recent research has suggested that spiritual methods can promote therapeutic goals; this study extends this research by focusing on the lived experience of real-world practitioners. I interview ten therapists, coaches and counsellors, from diverse cultures and with different practice styles, all with long experience in employing spiritually integrated approaches. All ten report that they encounter and engage a spiritual presence that is helpful to the therapeutic process. Most conceive of this helpful presence as a disembodied, intelligent spirit or guide; this helper can be invited, and may profoundly impact the course of counselling. The results suggest that spiritually integrated approaches might be especially effective for treatment of trauma, an area where more cognitively-oriented methods have often failed. Participants’ descriptions of the spiritual helper vary widely, but it is consistently experienced as nonordinary and humbling; it often can be sensed in the body; it frequently takes the form of a client’s deceased ancestor. Participants suggest several methods that can help to create a therapeutic space, so that meaningful interactions with the sacred realm become more probable. Chief among these is the use of silence. I place the results in context, considering the historical evolution of spiritually-integrated psychotherapy, and I offer a unifying theory that suggests that practitioners may integrate spirituality by inviting a spiritual helper, and by creating a spiritually therapeutic space.
