title: Psychotherapists' spiritual, religious, atheist or agnostic identity and their practice of psychotherapy: a grounded theory study.
abstract: In this present grounded theory study, 16 experienced psychologists, who practiced from varied theoretical orientations and came from diverse religious/spiritual/nonreligious backgrounds, explored their personal religious/spiritual/nonreligious identity development journeys, their experiences with clients' religious/spiritual content in psychotherapy sessions, and how their identity may have influenced the way they interacted with religious/spiritual material during sessions. Results revealed that psychologists' spiritual/religious/nonreligious identity is conflicted and complex and that their academic and clinical training did not provide sufficient opportunity to examine how this may affect their therapeutic work. A tentative grounded theory emerged suggesting that psychologists both identified with and were activated by clients' spiritual/religious conflicts and their internal experiences about the spiritual/religious content, both of which presented significant challenges to therapeutic work.
authors.affiliation: Lehman College, Counseling, Leadership, Literacy, and Special Education, Bronx, USA.
authors.forename: Danielle
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Magaldi-Dopman
authors.forename: Jennie
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Park-Taylor
authors.forename: Joseph G
authors.initials: JG
authors.lastname: Ponterotto
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D003220:Conflict, Psychological; D003469:Culture; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007062:Identification, Psychological; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011369:Professional-Patient Relations; D011582:Psychological Theory; D011613:Psychotherapy; D012069:Religion and Psychology; D029181:Spirituality