RELIGIOUS VALUES IN COUNSELING AND PSYCHOTHERAPY

The premise of Father Curran's new book is that counseling and psychotherapy, for all their weaknesses and failures, still offer to religion the best possibility of reaching man ""as he really is."" It is the author's intention to demonstrate that certain ""awarenesses"" from counseling and psychotherapy may be applied, with great benefit, to a religious situation. The book considers first what man is and clarifies the place of counseling with respect to man and to religious values. Then, sin, guilt and anxiety are studied and analyzed in relation to religious maturity. The third, or principal part of the book, defines man as ""a being in correspondence beyond"" and, in accordance with that definition, demonstrates how religion and counseling therapy complement one another in the stages of psychological growth. The two final sections treat, respectively, of how counseling can help make religion relevant to the individual, and of how authentic religious relationships may be established. Obviously, this is a book for counselors, and psychotherapists who work within the framework of religious belief. That very limited audience will find Curran's work as original as it is solid, and even profound--a work superior in many respects to its predecessor volume, Counseling and Psychotherapy to which this book is complementary.