Religious and Spiritual Values Central to Personality and Behaviour

Following a review and analysis of Allen E. Bergin's article "Psychotherapy and Religious Values," this paper anticipates future directions for integrating clients' religious and spiritual values in psychology and psychotherapy research and practice. The author argues that to support Bergin's suggestion that such values are no longer "at the fringe of clinical psychology [but rather] at the center" of our comprehension of personality and its aspirations, researchers and clinicians in psychology need to go beyond the "methodolatry" denounced by Bergin and associated with probabilistic practices. For that purpose, she first presents the considerations of Experiential Ontological Phenomenology (EOP), to which the concept of will is added, as a methodological scientific foundation to a value-based model in psychotherapy. She then introduces the principal concept of this model, the fundamental value, presented in relationship with the second most important concept, the psychological nub, derived from psychoanalytic concepts. The third basic concept, the subjective process, borrowed from the humanistic approach, is mentioned as being included in the EOP theory. Finally, a brief case study demonstrates how this model constitutes a point of integration at which theistic values or belief systems and psychological studies and practice meet.