Integrating Spirituality and Religion into Counseling: Clinical Competence and Sacred Sensitivity

Integrating Spirituality and Religion into Counseling: Clinical Competence and Sacred Sensitivity

Scheduled courseOnline
Led by
Karen Kućan
Ran
9 Sep 2026–30 Sep 2026 · upcoming
Cost
$295

This course offers a bridge between clinical practice and spiritual diversity, expanding Pacifica’s Extension offerings by introducing a competency-based approach to the sacred that honors both psychological depth and lived expressions of spiritual-but-not-religious experience and religious faith. Rather than interpreting religion symbolically, participants will practice engaging it relationally and clinically—with cultural humility, compassion, and respect for each client’s lived experience.

While Pacifica Graduate Institute has long explored the imaginal and archetypal dimensions of the sacred, many practicing clinicians encounter clients whose experiences are rooted in specific religious worldviews and spiritual-but-not-religious orientations before ever being exposed to Jungian or transpersonal perspectives. This course addresses that gap by offering an evidence-based, and deeply compassionate model for meeting clients where they are.

This course serves as a bridge between Jungian and transpersonal, spiritual-but-not-religious worldviews, and the diverse forms of religious faith through which many clients seek meaning, healing, and transformation. Participants will learn how to engage this full spectrum of the sacred with clinical skill, ethical grounding, and cultural humility.

Grounded in the ASERVIC Spiritual Competencies and current AAMFT/CAMFT/ACA diversity standards, the course equips clinicians to integrate clients’ spiritual, spiritual-but-not-religious, and faith-based perspectives into assessment and therapeutic dialogue without imposing or deconstructing belief systems. The focus is on clinician self awareness, skill development and cultural humility, not on promoting any specific worldview.

  1. Describe the ASERVIC Spiritual Competencies and their relevance to ethical counseling practice under ACA, CAMFT, and AAMFT standards.
  2. Demonstrate embodied self-monitoring to support ethical engagement with spiritual or religious material in individual psychotherapy.
  3. List psychoanalytically informed indicators of how spirituality or religion may function within an individual’s psychological life.
  4. Discuss scope-of-practice considerations and ethical boundaries for integrating spirituality and religion into counseling practice.
  5. Assess and differentiate relational engagement with spirituality and religion from interpretive or belief-driven approaches in clinical work.
  6. Describe culturally specific expressions of the sacred as they emerge in individual psychotherapy without imposing or deconstructing client belief systems.

Enrolment

Cost
$295
Format
Online
Access
Scheduled course
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