Spirituality as a Dimension of Family Therapists' Clinical Training

From its psychoanalytic beginnings, therapy training has emphasized the crucial role the self of the therapist plays in the effectiveness of therapy. Attention initially focused on therapists' personal history and vulnerabilities and later included an exploration of their relationship style. Less emphasis has been placed on analyzing therapists' belief and meaning systems which inescapably influence their clinical conceptualizations, attitudes, and behaviors. This article defines spirituality as attributions of a personal nature which give meaning to life events, help transcend difficult experiences, maintain hopefulness, and lead to behaviors which honor connectedness and proposes a rationale for including the spiritual dimension in therapy and therapy training and steps graduate training programs and supervisors may take to raise therapists' spiritual understandings.