Counseling and Psychotherapy With Religious Persons: A Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy ...

301 Pages·2008·5.76 MB·English

Counseling
and Psychotherapy
With Religious Persons
A Rational Emotive
Behavior Therapy Approach
The LEA Series in Personality and Clinical Psychology
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Counseling
and Psychotherapy
With Religious Persons
A Rational Emotive
Behavior Therapy Approach
Stevan Lars Nielsen
Brigham Young University
W.Brad Johnson
United States Naval Academy
Albert Ellis
Albert Ellis Institute
LAWRENCE ERLBAUM ASSOCIATES, PUBLISHERS
Mahwah, New Jersey London
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2008.

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Copyright © 2001 by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
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Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., Publishers
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Cover design by Kathryn Houghtaling Lacey
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Nielsen, Stevan L.
Counseling and psychotherapy with religious persons: A rational
emotive behavior therapy approach/Stevan L.Nielsen, W.Brad
Johnson, Albert Ellis.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8058-2878-8 (cloth: alk. paper)
ISBN 0-8058-3916-X (pbk.: alk. paper)
1. Rational—emotive psychotherapy. 2. Counseling—Religious
aspects. 3. Psychiatry and religion. I. Johnson, W.Brad. II.
Ellis Albert. III. Title
RC489.R3 N54 2001
616.89’14–dc21
2001018771
CIP
ISBN 1-4106-0070-X Master e-book ISBN
Dedications
To Dianne, wife, friend, and colleague (SLN)
To Laura A.Johnson, for everything you are (WBJ)
To Janet L.Wolfe, whose support with this book, as with everything
else, has been most valuable (AE)
Contents
Preface ix
1 Elegant Psychotherapy for Religious Clients 3
2 Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) Today 41
3 Rational Emotive Assessment with Religious Clients 65
4 Rational Emotive Case Conceptualization and Session 79
Planning: An Overview
5 Disputation 101
6 Behavioral and Emotive Interventions for Religious 147
Clients
7 Obstacles to Effective REBT With Religious Clients 169
8 Guilt and REBT 207
9 Forgiveness and REBT 233
10 REBT With Specific Religious Groups 243
References 263
Author Index 277
Subject Index 281
vii
Preface
Since the early 1990s, interest in psychotherapy for religious clients has
increased. The number of books, chapters, and journal articles that have
included the topics psychotherapy and religion, religious belief,
religiosity, or religious membership in their titles and abstracts has
gone from 86 published in the 1950s and 84 published in the 1960s, to
99 published in the 1970s, 145 published in the 1980s, and 330
published in the 1990s.
Among these 744 scholarly publications, just five controlled studies
have examined how religion can be used in psychotherapy to treat
religious clients. These five studies reported scientific tests of religion-
oriented cognitive or cognitive-behavioral therapies (Johnson & Ridley,
1992; Johnson, Devries, Ridley, & Pettorini, 1994; Pecheur & Ewards,
1984; Propst, 1980; Propst, Ostrom, Watkins, & Mashburn, 1992). Two
(Johnson & Ridley, 1992; Johnson, et al., 1994) focused on religion-
oriented REBT. It makes perfect sense that cognitive and cognitive-
behavioral therapies, and especially REBT, would be used in
pioneering attempts to use religious belief material during
psychotherapy.
Why? Because REBT is a belief oriented psychotherapy. REBT’s
famous A-B-C model proposes that it is not A, Adversities or other
Activating events, but B, Beliefs about A, which yield C, self-defeating
emotional and behavioral Consequences. It is wholly consistent with
the A-B-C model to assess, accommodate, and assimilate belief
material from clients’ religious belief systems during REBT.
This book describes how REBT can be used to treat religious
clients. We first offer our rationale and explain why REBT, because of
its belief-oriented theory of how we humans disturb ourselves, is so
well-suited to treating religious clients. Since rational-emotive-
behavioral theory is constructivist as well as cognitive, emotive, and
behavioral, REBT can anticipate, accommodate, and assimilate
religious diversity in its interventions. We show how the beliefs
considered irrational in rational-emotive-behavioral theory can be
distinguished from religious beliefs.
ix