A Focus-Group Study on Spirituality and Substance-User Treatment

A Focus-Group Study on Spirituality and Substance-User Treatment is a work by Adrienne J. Heinz (2010).

Core claims

• Heinz and colleagues conduct qualitative focus groups with individuals in substance use treatment and find that spirituality is experienced as a multidimensional construct encompassing connection (to self, others, and the transcendent), meaning-making, identity transformation, and the cultivation of inner resources — not as a monolithic belief system.
• Participants consistently distinguish between spirituality and religiousness, describing spirituality as a personal, experiential phenomenon and religiousness as institutional and doctrinal — a distinction that aligns with depth psychology’s emphasis on direct encounter with the numinous over credal adherence.
• The paper reveals that many treatment providers are uncomfortable addressing spirituality despite clients’ desire for spiritual engagement, identifying a gap between client needs and clinical culture that has significant implications for treatment design.

Related questions

• How does the participants’ experiential distinction between spirituality and religiousness illuminate Jung’s concept of ‘individual religion’ — the direct, unmediated encounter with the numinous that Jung argued was the authentic religious function of the psyche?
• Does the clinician discomfort with spirituality that the paper identifies reflect what Masters calls ‘spiritual bypassing in reverse’ — a therapeutic culture so committed to secular rationalism that it cannot recognize the spiritual dimension of psychological suffering?

See also

• Library page: /library/recovery/heinz-spirituality-substance-treatment/

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