Spirituality and Couples (Heart and Soul in the Therapy Process) - 9781560243120

This inspiring book focuses on the spiritual aspect of psychotherapy with couples. Spirituality and Couples demonstrates that spirituality is an important factor in both the therapy process and the healing process. Chapters provide models to help therapists and counselors incorporate various aspects of spirituality into their therapy practices. They show the importance of a conscious attention to spirituality as a means of strengthening the effectiveness of individual therapy sessions as well as overall therapy efforts. Mental health professionals will find that including spiritual factors into their therapy will increase the effectiveness of their work as it opens new channels of communication between clients and therapists.

Spirituality and Couples stresses that therapy should be viewed as a process between human beings rather than the use of a set of tools by a therapist on clients. Chapters cover a variety of topics including:

• an interview with Virginia Satir on the importance of not removing “heart and soul” from her work by reducing it to a set of techniques
• the need to find a new basis for enduring, enriching relationships
• the relevance of Buddhist meditation for the practice of couples therapy
• spiritual awakening in the couple relationship
• the sacredness of marriage
• spiritual connections between two people
• an analysis of Virginia Satir’s philosophy of treatment in terms of spirituality Mental health professionals, couples therapists, pastoral counselors, and clergy will find the information and strategies in this book interesting to read and helpful in their work.