Product Details
Spiritually Integrated Psychotherapy: Understanding and Addressing the Sacred

Spiritually Integrated Psychotherapy: Understanding and Addressing the Sacred
By Kenneth I. Pargament PhD

List Price: $40.00
Price: $25.84 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details

Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com

33 new or used available from $25.84

Average customer review:

Product Description

From a leading researcher and practitioner, this volume provides an innovative framework for understanding the role of spirituality in people's lives and its relevance to the work done in psychotherapy. It offers fresh, practical ideas for creating a spiritual dialogue with clients, assessing spirituality as a part of their problems and solutions, and helping them draw on spiritual resources in times of stress. Written from a nonsectarian perspective, the book encompasses both traditional and nontraditional forms of spirituality. It is grounded in current findings from psychotherapy research and the psychology of religion, and includes a wealth of evocative case material.

Product Details

  • Amazon Sales Rank: #381500 in Books
  • Published on: 2007-07-26
  • Original language: English
  • Number of items: 1
  • Binding: Hardcover
  • 384 pages

Features

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Kudos! In the best tradition of William James, Pargament highlights the role of spirituality in the lives of clients and psychotherapists and critically examines the assessment and treatment implications. Drawing on research and clinical examples, he describes important and often overlooked ways that attention to spirituality can be integrated into psychotherapy. This book should be of interest to both the novice and seasoned psychotherapist, and will also challenge practitioners and educators in other domains to consider when and how to address issues of spirituality. This is an important book that should stimulate much debate."--Donald Meichenbaum, PhD, Department of Psychology (Emeritus), University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
 
"From one of our foremost thinkers in psychology and religion, this book provides an up-to-the minute, spiritually informed approach to helping people. The strength of the book is its general applicability for most clients who are spiritually attuned. It is the best available resource of its kind for practicing therapists, and would be a great supplemental text for psychotherapy courses. Easy reading--brilliant thinking."--Everett L. Worthington, Jr., PhD, Department of Psychology, Virginia Commonwealth University
 
"A remarkable combination of clinical acumen and spiritual sensitivity--there is nothing like it in the literature. This book is clearly the work of a mature clinician with a wide range of experiences to draw upon. It offers a wonderful balance of the theoretical and the practical, is genuinely ecumenical and open in its orientation, and is approachable by members of any religious community (or no religious community). Psychotherapists of all persuasions will welcome this book, and it would be an ideal text for any course in spirituality and psychotherapy or pastoral counseling."--James W. Jones, PsyD, PhD, Department of Religion, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
 
"Exceptional. Pargament offers a sweeping, well-balanced view of spirituality from a clinical perspective, without reducing spirituality to psychology. Through a clear command of existing theory and research, compelling clinical vignettes, wonderful quotations, practical recommendations, and his own gracious therapeutic attitude, Pargament gently reminds the reader that spirituality is a legitimate--often pivotal--dimension of clinical practice. He has 'done the work' for the rest of us who may wonder how to address spirituality within a professional context. Clinicians at all levels of experience will grow by reading, and rereading, this book."--Christopher K. Germer, PhD, private practice, Cambridge, Massachusetts

"What is spirituality, as distinct from religiousness? What is its impact on our lives? Are there psychological approaches that incorporate the client's spiritual values and yearnings? Are these approaches effective? Free of jargon and accessible to all mental health professionals, this volume speaks with clarity, sympathy, and wisdom that make it hard to put down. As a therapist, Pargament interweaves the text with delightful clinical vignettes; as a researcher, he explains the studies on spirituality in everyday life and in therapy in a most compelling way. This book is a wake-up call to the mental health profession."--David Greenberg, MD, Department of Psychiatry, Herzog Hospital, and Faculty of Medicine, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel

"This is a book for psychotherapists who take spirituality seriously--their own and that of their clients--and who want to include it in their scope of practice as helpers. In clear prose and with many illustrative case examples, Pargament addresses practical issues of providing spiritually integrated therapy and counseling. He cogently argues that spirituality cannot truly be separated from psychotherapy; to practice without considering this vital dimension of human nature is to risk missing, misunderstanding, and mishandling fundamental struggles of the inner life."--William R. Miller, PhD, Departments of Psychology and Psychiatry (Emeritus), University of New Mexico


"[Pargament] provides a rationale for psychologically understanding the role of the sacred in the lives of clients. He details ways that spirituality can be of invaluable help in a client's psychological struggles. He also describes many ways that a stunted and stagnant spirituality needs to be addressed as it contributes to a client's psychological despair. Next, Pargament discusses ways of addressing spirituality in psychotherapy....The volume is filled with concrete and practical examples that clearly illustrate Pargament's concepts....This volume is important and well timed....Illuminates the ways that psychotherapy ultimately is a journey into the mystery of the other. In this regard, the book is filled with wisdom. Both experienced clinicians and novice therapists would benefit from its contents."--APA PsycCRITIQUES
 
"Using current research findings and theories along with historical findings, Pargament offers concrete suggestions, assessment tools, and sample questions. He discusses various approaches that will be valuable in therapy and counseling; in this regard, the book can serve as a handbook....Offers insights into an often-overlooked topic. The list of references is extensive, and the index is thorough....Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals."--Choice
 
"A remarkable book....One thing is certain/-m/many people today want spiritually sensitive help, and psychotherapists need a framework that enables them to provide that help. Pargament gives us the framework, taking willing readers on a journey that leads to a deeper understanding of spirituality and the domain of the sacred. Pargament has a knack for articulating the ineffable....Contains rich and robust clinical examples, and Pargament is not shy in sharing with us how he has grown with his clients and what he has learned from them."--Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic
 
"The author has put together a theory that integrates spirituality with psychotherapy that can help inform both students and practitioners interested in this still-emerging area of practice. As such, this text will likely prove useful to students and practitioners alike."--Clinical Social Work Journal

About the Author

Kenneth I. Pargament, PhD, is Professor of Psychology at Bowling Green State University, where he has been on the faculty since 1979. He has published extensively on the vital role of religion and spirituality in coping with stress and trauma. Dr. Pargament has been a leading figure in the effort to bring a balanced view of religion and spirituality to the attention of scientists and professionals. He is author of The Psychology of Religion and Coping: Theory, Research, Practice and coeditor of Forgiveness: Theory, Research, and Practice (with Michael E. McCullough and Carl E. Thoresen). He is a recipient of the William James Award for excellence in research in the psychology of religion and the Virginia Staudt Sexton Mentoring Award for guiding and encouraging others in the field. Dr. Pargament is a practicing clinical psychologist who has worked with people from diverse spiritual backgrounds.

Customer Reviews

A fascinating book!!5
Very rarely do you come across a book written with such wisdom, humility, thoughtfulness, passion and sensitivity. If spiritual matters matter to you, if understanding human psyche is a "passionate habit" for you, if the intersection between these two intriguing human phenomena always spark your intellect, and if you want to know how practical can complicated ideas be, Spiritually-integrated Psychotherapy: Understanding and Addressing the Sacred is a must book for you. Throughout much of the history of the field of psychology, religion and spirituality, perhaps the most distinctive human phenomena, have been viewed from a stereotypic, narrow, and negative prism. "Mass delusion" and the "Opium of the masses," you know! In a gentle, thorough, balanced and precise way, Dr. Kenneth I. Pargament, an internationally known researcher in the field of psychology of religion, first challenges the basic assumptions of mainstream psychology with regard to the role spirituality plays in the well-being of the individual. Then, he brilliantly establishes the theoretical foundation of the whole endeavor by defining spirituality in an existential dynamic way, a definition that is also broad enough, and nonjudgmental, to be applicable to individuals from diverse religious and spiritual backgrounds. Drawing on his extensive readings, the empirical literature in the field of the psychology of religion, and his immense clinical work, he next evenhandedly walks the reader through the road of "hope and challenge" that leads to the integration of spirituality into psychotherapy. You will fall in love with this book! I can assure you also that after you are done reading this masterpiece, you will not wait long to joyfully read Pargament's other masterpiece, The Psychology of Religion and Coping: Theory, Research, Practice.

A Must Read!5
In his book, Spiritually-Integrated Psychotherapy: Understanding and Addressing the Sacred, Dr. Kenneth Pargament builds the case, as the title suggests, for exploring and utilizing a spiritually-integrated approach within psychotherapy. The author introduces spirituality, provides a historical framework for its place in psychology, and introduces why and how clinicians could address spirituality with clients. The author uses empirically and clinically supported illustrations to explain how spirituality can impact clients, as part of the solution, or oftentimes, part of the problem. Regardless of its nature and outcome, one point is clear, spirituality in one way, shape, or form, enters into the treatment room with our clients. As the author points out, it is now our challenge (and opportunity), to begin to account for and address this "3000 pound elephant" in the room. This book is edifying as well as a pleasure to read. It is filled with engaging, elucidatory and diverse quotes ranging from Gandhi to Kenny Rogers! Pargament draws on his many years of clinical practice, seamlessly weaving a plethora of salient, real-life examples with his knowledge as a research scientist. The vast resources and diverse citations used throughout the book reflect a large breadth and depth of knowledge that in itself creates a lens of spiritual and psychological integration within its text, while explaining the importance of this bridging in psychotherapy. Spiritually-Integrated Psychotherapy: Understanding and Addressing the Sacred is a must-read for those who are interested in a framework for exploration of integrating spiritual issues into clinical care.