Spirituality: Perspectives from Psychology

Abstract

The engagement of modern psychology with spirituality has spanned more than a century, following seminal inquiries by William James, Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. Today, there is no single understanding of spirituality within psychology. Nevertheless, psychological and psychologically-informed studies of spirituality have consistently revealed important aspects of this area of human functioning including the identification of a range of approaches and orientations to spirituality; the importance of various beliefs, attitudes and cognitive styles associated with spirituality; the relationship and contributions of personality and emotion to spirituality; and the relevance of spiritual attachments to human development and well-being. In the practice of psychotherapy, spirituality’s inclusion has some empirical support, although professional development in spiritually-informed practice is relatively sparse. The challenge for future research is to consider whether psychological approaches may illuminate additional aspects of spirituality – especially those (such as the numinous and mysterious) that are not easily constrained within a psychological paradigm. For this illumination to occur, psychologists must be open to apparently anomalous and inexplicable components of spirituality, while maintaining a psychological perspective that facilitates sound theoretical and empirical examinations of new arenas of spirituality.