Psychology, Theology, and Spirituality in Christian Counseling

Mark R. McMinn

• Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781414349237
• Topic: Teologia e religione
• Subtopic: Ministro del culto cristiano

The American Association of Christian Counselors and Tyndale House Publishers are committed to ministering to the spiritual needs of people. This book is part of the professional series that offers counselors the latest techniques, theory, and general information that is vital to their work. While many books have tried to integrate theology and psychology, this book takes another step and explores the importance of the spiritual disciplines in psychotherapy, helping counselors to integrate the biblical principles of forgiveness, redemption, restitution, prayer, and worship into their counseling techniques. Since its first publication in 1996, this book has quickly become a contemporary classic—a go-to handbook for integrating what we know is true from the disciplines of theology and psychology and how that impacts your daily walk with God. This book will help you integrate spiritual disciplines—such as prayer, Scripture reading, confession—into your own life and into counseling others. Mark R. McMinn, Ph.D., is professor of psychology at Wheaton College Graduate School in Wheaton, Illinois, where he directs and teaches in the Doctor of Psychology program. A diplomate in Clinical Psychology of the American Board of Professional Psychology, McMinn has thirteen years of postdoctoral experience in counseling, psychotherapy, and psychological testing. McMinn is the author of Making the Best of Stress: How Life's Hassles Can Form the Fruit of the Spirit; The Jekyll/Hyde Syndrome: Controlling Inner Conflict through Authentic Living; Cognitive Therapy Techniques in Christian Counseling; and Christians in the Crossfire (written with James D. Foster). He and his wife, Lisa, have three daughters.

1

Religion in the Counseling Office

written with James C. Wilhoit

After lying awake in bed for several hours, as she does most mornings, Jill drags her tired body downstairs, starts the coffeemaker, plops the Yellow Pages on the kitchen counter, and “lets her fingers do the walking” to Counselors. Jill knows she is depressed, overwhelmed with feelings of guilt and inadequacy, and she knows she needs help. But she worries about finding the right counselor, recognizing that her choice could have profound implications on her spiritual life.

Counselor A might tell Jill that her depression is worsened by her silly religious ideas. What she really needs, according to this counselor, is to think clearly and logically about the world, relax her neurotic demands for perfection, and begin finding ways to enjoy life. Counselor A tells Jill that as soon as she grows beyond her religious faith, she will be well.

Counselor B is more interested in listening than in telling Jill what to do. Jill’s religious values have meaning for her, so Counselor B listens and responds to Jill empathetically: “Your religious values seem very important to you. It sounds as if you want to do the right thing, but you’re not always sure what the right thing is. What I hear you saying is that you want God to help you through this difficult time in your life.” This counselor assumes that Jill needs a supportive companion or a transitional object to help her learn new ways of relating to others and herself. Religion can be discussed in therapy, but the power of change is found in the therapeutic relationship.

Counselor C tells Jill that depression results from personal sin. She feels guilty because God has given us all the gift of guilt so that we remember to confess our sins and depend more on him. By looking carefully at Scripture, the counselor helps Jill find areas of sin in her life, admit her fallenness, and ask God for forgiveness.

These are just a few of the possible counseling approaches hidden behind block ads and telephone numbers in Jill’s Yellow Pages. How will she decide? Will Jill reach out to the right counselor for help? Will she find someone to help her toward greater emotional and spiritual health?

Jill is not alone in her search for spiritually sensitive counseling. In a survey of Florida residents randomly selected from telephone listings, a greater number of respondents preferred help from a pastor than from a psychologist, social worker, psychiatrist, or community mental health center.3 Similarly, in an analog study with middle-aged adults, participants found religiously sensitive counselors more trustworthy, likable, and approachable than agnostic or atheistic counselors.4

Counselors Are Confused Too

Religion and religious values have become a frequent topic of discussion for many counselors in recent years, and most counselors have thought a great deal about the confusion their clients face in choosing a good therapist.5 But when it comes to religious values in the counseling office, our clients are not alone. Many counselors feel confused too.

Counselor A sounds confident in rejecting religion but is having problems finding evidence to support such a view. Strident atheists, such as Albert Ellis, have argued for years that religion causes illness.6 But as their claims have been contradicted by research evidence, they have become more cautious in their rejection of religion.7 Ellis, for example, now says it is fanatical and rigid religious beliefs, not religion per se, that cause problems. Ellis even endorsed the Bible as a useful self-help book in a 1993 article: “I think that I can safely say that the Judeo-Christian Bible is a self-help book that has probably enabled more people to make more extensive and intensive personality and behavioral changes than all professional therapists combined.”8

Counselor B has always been open-minded and willing to accept any widely accepted religious belief as an important aspect of mental health. But some of the recent critiques of postmodernism have Counselor B wondering: If we accept any belief as valid, then do any beliefs have merit? If all truth is constructed by one’s own values and beliefs, then can’t truth also be deconstructed, so that nothing is ultimately true?9

Counselor C is a biblical counselor who rejects all secular theories of counseling in favor of using Scripture as the source of all knowledge. But every now and then Counselor C reads about the integration movement in psychology and theology and privately wonders if some psychological techniques may help resolve some emotional problems. What about the finding that panic attacks can be effectively treated with twelve sessions of breathing training and cognitive therapy?10 Or what about the list of empirically validated treatment procedures being developed by the Clinical Psychology Division of the American Psychological Association (APA)? Each procedure on the list has been verified effective by at least two double-blind controlled-outcome studies.11 Can biblical counselors continue to say that psychotherapy and counseling don’t work when there is so much evidence to the contrary?

It is good we have a group of religious counseling specialists—those who have spent many hours preparing to transcend the confusion faced by clients and most counselors. These specialists integrate Christian theology and psychological techniques and help their clients with both spiritual and emotional growth. They cling to the truth of Christ as revealed in Scripture and deliberately allow their beliefs to saturate their counseling methods. They respect and honor people’s Christian values while helping them understand and change their emotional pain. They help people like Jill. Surely they never feel confused when people like Jill come for help. Right?

Wrong. Even those involved in the Christian counseling movement often face feelings of confusion in the counseling office. The counseling office is where the integration of Christian beliefs and counseling techniques becomes most practical, and it is often where we feel most bombarded with unanswered questions. When should we pray with clients? Is forgiveness reasonable for a survivor of sexual abuse? Should we confront sin or wait for our clients to recognize it on their own? Is reconciliation always a reasonable goal? Are there times when divorce is acceptable? Do I have any evidence that this religiously oriented counseling approach is effective? Are the spiritual disciplines a necessary part of emotional healing? Is one theoretical approach to counseling more compatible with Christianity than another? Can Scripture memory contribute to denial and unhealthy defenses? Are positive self-talk and self-esteem contrary to Scripture?

What seems clear in the latest scientific journal or latest professional book somehow seems fuzzy in the counseling office. Even biblical principles, which we hold to be true and authoritative, sometimes seem difficult to apply as we work with our clients.

This is a book about counseling process and techniques. Although I will review a number of surveys, scientific studies, Scripture passages, and theoretical models, my primary purpose is to focus on the problems we face in the counseling office. I don’t have all the answers, and I cannot promise that those who read this book will never again feel confused and uncertain about religious issues in the counseling office. But perhaps this book will help Christian counselors and researchers unite around certain key questions and perspectives so that our interventions become increasingly relevant and effective.

The Frontier of Integration

When Jill finally finds a Christian counselor, she schedules an appointment, rehearses what she will say, and shows up ten minutes early for her first appointment. Her counselor, Dr. N. T. Gration, ushers Jill into the office and listens to her story. Jill begins by describing how distant she feels from everyone, including God. Now in her early thirties, Jill does not feel satisfied in her career as an accountant. None of her dating relationships has turned into a stable, long-term commitment. She has stopped communicating with her parents because a former counselor told her to. Jill’s parents, she says with an emotionless face, never took the time to figure out that her older brother sexually abused her for five childhood years. Jill’s intellect tells her that God loves her, but her emotions scream out that she is abandoned, drifting all alone in a cruel world.

Fortunately, Dr. Gration is an expert in integrating Christianity and psychology. She graduated from a psychology doctoral program at a Christian institution; she has read hundreds of books and articles about integration; and she has even written a few articles herself. Jill made a good choice in deciding to see Dr. Gration.

But Dr. Gration isn’t always sure how the articles and books she has read help her with the struggles her clients face. Is it wise for Jill to isolate herself from her parents? Is it reasonable for Jill to forgive her parents, or even her brother? What counseling approaches might help Jill feel closer to God? Dr. Gration can go to the local university library or to her old course notes from graduate school, but she probably won’t find answers to these questions.

Dr. Gration’s dilemma illustrates the slow evolution of the integration movement in psychology and Christianity—an evolution outlined by Everett Worthington, Jr., in a 1994 article in Journal of Psychology and Theology.12 Worthington describes three stages of interdisciplinary integration—blending psychology and theology into a framework for Christian counseling. In the first stage, before 1975, a variety of articles introduced rudimentary concepts that were mostly unrelated to one another. In the second stage, between 1975 and 1982, integration models flourished. Integration journals were filled with schematic drawings of how Christianity and psychology can be related. Following this period of model madness, since 1982 the integration movement has become increasingly relevant and practical. We have considered how our theories of counseling can and should be enhanced or modified by Christian values, and we have started reporting empirical studies that help build a scientific base for our claims.

Thus, it appears we are making good progress in what Worthington calls interdisciplinary integration. But what about Dr. Gration’s questions about Jill? These pertain more to intradisciplinary integration—that which occurs within the disciplines of counseling and psychotherapy. In other words, how do I implement religious values and beliefs into my treatment of this client? In this regard, the journals and professional books are less helpful. In 1983 Gary Collins wrote this about the Journal of Psychology and Theology:

The Journal of Psychology and Theology does publish practical articles and the “publications policy” clearly indicates that applied papers are welcome. Nevertheless the major emphasis in the Journal appears to be theoretical. I suspect that relatively few pastors or full-time professional care givers find the articles to be of practical help in their counseling work. It would be helpful to see more of an applied perspective in this publication. . . We must give more attention to the previously mentioned issue of integration methodology. How do we do integration? What skills and methods are involved?13

Worthington concludes, and I agree, that Collins’s call for practical integration methods has not produced much change: “Practice-focused, training-oriented articles have been scarce to non-existent.”14

But things may be starting to change. The International Congresses on Christian Counseling in 1988 and 1992 have brought together Christian counselors from around the world to discuss counseling techniques and methods. The American Association of Christian Counselors (AACC) publishes Christian Counseling Today, a popular periodical with many practical counseling suggestions. Integrative counseling methods may be the next frontier for Christian counselors and researchers to explore. This is a book for those wanting to investigate the frontier of intradisciplinary integration.

Life on the Frontier

A number of personal and professional challenges face Christian counselors as we confront this new frontier of intradisciplinary integration.

Challenge 1: Moving from Two Areas of Competence to Three

Dr. Gration has a master’s degree in theology and a doctorate in psychology. She is well prepared for interdisciplinary integration. But she feels unprepared for many of the practical questions Jill brings to the counseling office. What more does she need?

For Christian counselors doing interdisciplinary integration, two areas of competence are necessary and sufficient: psychology and theology. When psychologists without theological training attempt to do integration, they often minimize the importance of doctrine, psychologize Christian beliefs, and overlook the historical and sociological context of today’s psychology. Orthodox Christian theology keeps counselors grounded in the midst of a profession easily swayed by new theories, fads, and sensationalistic claims. When theologians without psychological training attempt to do integration, they often misrepresent the nuances of psychological science and misunderstand the complexities of clinical applications. So the best interdisciplinary integration work usually comes from those who have formal or informal preparation in both psychology and theology. Even the titles of our integration journals demonstrate these two essential ingredients: the Journal of Psychology and Theology and the Journal of Psychology and Christianity.

Intradisciplinary integration introduces a need for a third area of competence. If we are to bring religious issues out of the scholarly journals and into the Christian counseling office, we must understand spirituality and the process of spiritual formation. The importance of spirituality in emotional healing has been known for centuries in the Catholic Church and is particularly evident in monastic life and spiritual direction. But contemporary Protestant counselors have ofte...