Integrating Spirituality with Psychology Life’s difficulties can often bring a person’s sense of religion and spirituality to the surface. As a psychotherapist I welcome the exploration of these dimensions as a profound resource that can potentially be tapped to promote psychological well being. Some definitions: Religion has been defined by Dew and colleagues (2008) as an “organized system of beliefs, rituals, practices, and community, oriented toward the sacred” (p. 382). Religion tends to focus on formal organizations with specifically defined and widely accepted beliefs, practices, and traditions. Spirituality, in contrast, can be thought of as a “search for the sacred, a process through which people seek to discover, hold on to, and, when necessary, transform whatever they hold sacred in their lives” (Hill & Pargament, 2008, p. 4). This can be a very private experience and need not be part of experiences in organized religion. But, one can be religious but not spiritual, spiritual…
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