Religious imagery of a schizotypal patient

Psychotherapists are increasingly challenged to become more effective with religiously oriented patients. In this article I summarize a recent stage model of psycho-religious functioning that was developed to help psychotherapists work with religious material in clinical practice. Following this brief introduction, I describe how the paradigm guided my clinical understanding of a young man suffering from a severe personality disorder. The case study depicts the entanglement of his religious thinking with his core psychological and emotional conflicts and supports the assertion that nonjudgmental exploration of religious imagery may be a vital component of psychotherapy with intensely religious patients.