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APA Psychotherapy Training Videos are intended solely for educational purposes for mental health professionals. Viewers are expected to treat confidential material found herein according to strict professional guidelines. Unauthorized viewing is prohibited.
In Addressing Issues of Spirituality and Religion in Psychotherapy, Dr. Edward P. Shafranske demonstrates his psychoanalytic therapeutic approach to handling issues of spirituality and religion within the context of therapy. This approach treats the client's beliefs with respect and acceptance, allowing the therapeutic work to incorporate the client's spiritual and religious life into the therapy. In this session, Dr. Shafranske works with a man in his 20s who is a devout Christian, but who seems to hide behind his beliefs in the face of conflict, particularly to avoid direct emotional experience. Dr. Shafranske helps the young man to move from a cognitive to an affective understanding of how he uses religion in part as a defense mechanism as well as an authentic expression of faith. Dr. Shafranske concludes that over time in successful treatment, the patient would transform his God-representations and would more fully integrate his religious beliefs into his life.
Dr. Shafranske's therapeutic approach emphasizes the development of insight and aims for greater integration of cognitive and emotional experiences, assisting clients to better attain their personal desires by resolving intrapsychic and interpersonal conflicts and modifying defenses. Drawing substantively upon a unified composite theory of psychoanalysis, he pays close attention to unconscious mental processes and defenses, inferred in the client's free associations, reflected in the "here and now" of the therapy interaction, and through an analysis of the "in vivo" experience of transference.
Edward P. Shafranske, PhD, ABPP, a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst, is professor and director of the doctoral program in clinical psychology at Pepperdine University. He is a well-known contributor to the psychology of religion, authoring over 40 papers and chapters and lecturing in North America and Europe as well as serving two terms as president of APA Division 36 (Psychology of Religion). He served as editor of Religion and the Clinical Practice of Psychology, associate editor of the Encyclopedia of Psychology, coeditor of Spiritually Oriented Psychotherapy, and coauthor of Clinical Supervision: A Competency-Based Approach. He was recipient of the William C. Bier Award and Distinguished Service Award (presented by Division 36) and was named Luckman Distinguished Teaching Fellow by Pepperdine University.
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