Spiritual Transformation: Honoring Spiritual Traditions in Psychotherapy

Spirituality is becoming an increasingly important therapeutic resource for practitioners. Spirituality considers how an individual lives and practices transcendent beliefs at its most basic and generic form (Demarest, 2012). Spiritually oriented psychotherapy is an important and critical way to address the sacred in psychotherapy. Therapists are encouraged to take a client centered perspective by incorporating the clients' desires for using spirituality in treatment. Sperry (2012) and colleagues (Sperry & Mansager, 2007) provide a useful taxonomy containing 5 ways of understanding the relationships between psychology and spirituality using the domains of overlap and primacy. This taxonomy should also incorporate the dimensions of telos (goals), tactics (interventions and theory of change), and target in order to more completely understanding the clients' perspectives and honor their own spiritual and religious traditions in spiritually oriented psychotherapy. Christianity was used to demonstrate these domains.