In Answer to APA's Call for Religiously Informed Therapy: Christian Informed Emotion Focused Therapy

Abstract

Despite the directives issued by APA ethics code guidelines, mainstream means of conducting therapy that is sensitive to the religious convictions of therapy clients do not yet exist. The aim of this dissertation was to advance the effort for providing empirically validated religiously integrative therapy for the Christian community. A complementary intervention to Greenberg’s individual Emotion Focused Therapy (EFT) is recommended to ameliorate the extant friction between EFT theory and Christian belief. The integrative effort of EFT theory and Christian belief is instantiated through the incorporation of a therapy intervention based on an Ignatian method of vocational discernment. As there is empirical support for the key techniques of EFT operating outside of the full EFT model, this dissertation contends that adding an explicit means of helping clients consider God’s will, will help Christian therapists and clients to take advantage of the healing prowess of EFT, while also making decisions in therapy with appropriate deference to their God given vocations.