Religion and Psychology

In one of my recent videos, someone commented that psychologists should not talk about religion. While I understand his perspective, this article explains why I disagree.
Psychology is the study of the soul. It focuses primarily on the thoughts and feelings of individuals. It is many things at once: an academic research subject, an entire subject-field of public writing, and a licensed profession. It creates a bona fide and unique relationship between two or more human beings. It is also something people can use introspectively to help themselves.
Psychology differs from theology in an important way. Whereas theology focuses on one’s relationship to God, psychology focuses on the relationship to one’s self and others. James Hillman made this point in his book Suicide and the Soul, arguing that while theology concerns itself with moral implications of the act of suicide, psychologists are concerned with listening to and understanding what causes a person to feel suicidal. We go through the process with them, understandingly, without a moral, medical, or legal objective. He uses this fact to argue that psychology is in the best position to treat the meaningful contents of a person’s specific suicidal thoughts, drives, and behaviors.
In that sense, and from the start, there can be no subject that is off-limits for psychology. It often happens that the context and content of people’s suffering is saturated in religious ideas, language, and experience. In fact, in my years as a psychotherapist, I find that it is more likely that someone will talk about religion than not at some point in the therapeutic relationship.
This makes sense, since only 29% of people in America claim to be unaffiliated with a religion. Were I to try and avoid religious conversations in my clinical work, I would ward off a great deal of content my clients bring, turning many away at the door. Religion can be no more avoided than sexuality or politics in the life of an individual.
Now, there is a difference between being open to having such conversations and specializing in them. The latter is what I do. But before I get into that, let’s unravel the kind of thinking that leads someone to think that religion is off-limits for psychology.
This belief comes from the scientific view of objectivity, bolstered by ethical concern. It makes sense. Psychologists don’t give medical advice because they aren’t trained as physicians. We don’t offer financial advice because we weren’t trained to do so. We avoid voicing political opinions because this impedes the client’s will and adversely impacts the therapeutic relationship. Why is religion different?
It isn’t!
The key here is that psychologists aren’t about giving advice, except about things they specialize in professionally—e.g., methods for coming out of a panic attack. Medical problems, finances, politics, and religion do belong in psychotherapy. We just don’t tell you what to do about them.
In fact, our 3,000 hours of supervised training helps us offer just this kind of objectivity. And let’s be clear—no one is perfectly objective. That’s not a possibility, even when we’re calculating your IQ score from hard data during a well-controlled assessment. What we are trained to do is to recognize our own biases by continuously reflecting on ourselves through introspection, consultation, and our own personal therapy. Furthermore, we are trained to recognize when something is too triggering for us or is too close to home such that it might impact our ability to be objective. Professionalism is about knowing when to say “I can’t help you with that” or making a referral.
The result is not a cold, calculated relationship, but one in which even the imperfections of the therapist provide opportunities for the client’s healing. We step out of the way enough to let you find your own path forward. Heidegger called this “leaping ahead” vs. “leaping in,” providing an authentic form of care that does not impose what I think and believe onto you.
Therapists are humans first. That means we enter the work with our own beliefs about life, finances, marriage, God, work, and politics. Our training is to ground our clinical practices in rigorous theory to avoid causing harm. A specialist is usually someone with extensive personal experience coupled with specific professional training. An autism specialist may be autistic themselves. A chronic illness specialist may have a history of colitis. And a spiritual or religious therapist may have extensive personal experience as a former evangelical pastor’s son and grandson.
You might ask if my personal experiences cause a kind of close-up blindness that makes it hard for me to see things clearly and objectively. There can be truth in that, which is why my own years of personal development have been critical to my success as a therapist. It has been 20 years since my own religious crisis. Bearing that in mind, I often find that my own intimate knowledge of people’s religious experiences helps me guide them through their own journey safely and effectively in ways that someone without such experience could not. It is the same as how a former alcoholic may be best positioned to relate to the cravings and thought processes of another alcoholic, so long as they have done their work.
Personal development still is not enough. Specific professional development and credentials are also needed to establish credibility. In my case, that comes through having earned a master’s in transpersonal studies (e.g., the science of spirituality) and obtained a Spiritual Guidance Mentorship Training certificate (SGMT). Atop this, my clinical training as a depth psychologist prepared me well to handle the symbolism, metaphor, and myth of religious experience and its adjacent clinical presentations in trauma, psychosis, and existential crisis.
My goal is never to tell my clients what to believe. It makes no difference to me whether someone becomes more or less religious, changes their beliefs, reaffirms their faith, or questions it. I love going through the process with people as they explore doubts, struggles, trauma, and confusion about their religious or spiritual experiences. It allows me to use the best of my personal experiences and training to help others.
This is the opposite of what many people have experienced in their faith or spiritual practice—where they were told in no uncertain terms, what to think, believe, or do. I will talk about this more in my next article on what makes the therapy I offer different from faith-based counseling.
Dr. Jesse Fister is a licensed clinical psychologist providing therapy and assessment services across forty states through PSYPACT, and the author of Soul to Soil. This article is educational and reflective, not clinical advice. If you’re interested in working together, you can schedule a free consultation at jessefister.com.
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