H: Is the aim of therapy really to get clients to think "clearly and objectively" about values and beliefs? Q: Not necessarily. But sometimes it may be. H: I see my therapeutic role as helping clients to achieve change and/or acceptance, as defined by the client's goals (not mine). Q: Therfore this assertion of what you believe to be your role is your "belief system" about what you should be doing. This is the believe system that your clients MUST accept if they decide to work with you. This belief system of yours embodies a large number of values, moral judgments, and presuppositions about human nature and about what all people really do need that is good for them. You have hereby stated your prior assumption about what you and your clients should do together. I think it is important that we all be clear about what we are doing as therapists and what our prior assumptions are. To say you believe you should have no prior assumption IS a prior assumption about how you should behave and about what clients should reasonabley expect from you and about whay you believe is good for people. So you have at least three prior assumptions in this one statement that you should operate from no prior assumptions. H: I would not want to work from a prior assumption that clients' religious beliefs are wrong, unobjective Q: This is not so in every case. If the client's religious beliefs dictate that you should be teaching the client NOT to value some of his or her his or her own goals, then you would be working from a prior assumption that contradicts the client's religious beliefs. I willingly work from a prior assumption that the client's relgious beliefs are wrong if I believe (and had evidence for my belief) that the client's religious beliefs are precisely what is creating the client's malaise or sustaining or greatly exacerbing the client's malaise. I am clear about what my values are and make my values clear to clients. And my values are based on the prsupposition that clients come to me to be able live more happily unless they demonstrate that they come for some more circumscribed goal. And I have other values as well. H: There may be ways of incorporating clients' religion, such as acknowledging acceptance of different forms of sexual expression within their own religion. Q: Agreed. And there are at least two more important possibilities to consider. (1) There may not be ways of incorporating the client's religion. And (2) the client's religion may be irrelevant. I began this thread looking for some clarity on "spiritual growth." I thank Jane for her efforts to bring clarity and to tackle directly the issue of the meaning of "spiritual growth," and I appreciate her conclusion that the term is an oxymoron. So far, other than Jane's effort to deal with it, the originating issue--the meaning of "spiritual growth"-- appears to have gone by the wayside. This is not an auspicious sign for those who believe this concept is relevant to what psychotherapists do.
and need to be changed.
My conduct with clients may or may not include accepting or not accepting the clients' religiious beliefs, depending on whether these beliefs are or not relevant to what is interfereing with the client's happiness (or with some other more circumscribed goal the client may be coming to se me for help with).
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