Gary's Newsletter 360: A Broader View of Integration
Posted by Gary R Collins on December 5, 2009 Comments 0At least once every year I teach a graduate course on the methods and models of integrating Psychology and Christianity. Most students enroll hoping for "how-to-do-it" techniques to bring Christian spiritual disciplines into counseling with believers. Some have come from undergraduate programs where integration involved evaluating and choosing between several integration models from the 1970s and 80s.
I have no problem with teaching methods and models of integration, especially to beginning counselors. But have we limited our Christian integration focus so that we risk losing contact with the larger world in which we live and serve? APA's Journal of Psychotherapy Integration isn't about psychology and Christianity the journal describes "psychotherapy integration" broadly as bringing together "knowledge of psychotherapy and behavior change with developments in broader fields" including psychiatry, cognitive science, psychobiology, health psychology and other academic disciplines.
From my perspective integration for Christian caregivers should go beyond counseling rooms or techniques. Integration also involves learning to bring our faith into:
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secular settings where Jesus can't be mentioned by name,
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Christian counseling with non-believers including those who resist any talk about religion or spirituality,
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the lives of integrators who can't expect to do integration in their work if Jesus is not integrated into their lives,
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social-environmental issues where psychologists and other social scientists seek to understand and deal with neurobiology and behavior, terrorism, political fears, economic crises, poverty, difficult transitions (like sudden job loss), populations at risk, trauma, postmodernism, globalism, ecological issues, positive psychology, and rapidly changing technology among others.
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ongoing professional and philosophical issues such as the political positions taken by professional organizations or the growing interest in integration apart from anything Christian. A coming professional conference on mindfulness is subtitled "Buddhism and Psychology." Does this have any relevance for understanding emerging integration issues that our students will face in their coming careers?
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