A therapist with a Buddhist meditation practice listens to his Jewish patient tell about having taken up a Vipassana meditation practice. Or should he wonder what keeps her form mining the depths of her Judaism. Knowing she has recently fallen in love with an orthodox man at the same time she is taking up a Vipassana practice further complicates the psychodynamic understanding of her new religious practice. The complexity of an analysis of her belief and unbelief rapidly becomes apparent. Fortunately, we have more than Freud to make sense of these complexities.
Therapists frequently feel stymied by their lack of knowledge about a particular patient s faith.
This can be an advantage. A good place to begin when the patient presents belief as an organizing issue is to ask them to explain who in their faith tradition they particularly admire. Try to develop with them a developmental line of faith and practice that ranges from the immature to the mature. There is a fine line between listening with an ironic sense and listening with a skeptical or cynical sense. The believing patient will often notice the difference between therapists who analyze faith with an eye toward maturing their faith versus eliminating it.