Religion and psychological sciences: critical considerations

Abstract

The article discusses critically the relations between Religion and the Psychological Sciences. After presenting his own concepts about each one of them, the author greets the increasing number of publications in the field of Religion and Spirituality, especially in the United States, but makes also some critical remarks. After making a distinction among scientifically based books and other of the so called Help yourself tendency, he discusses two different theoretical and practical approaches today present in Psychiatry and Psychotherapy: the neurobiological and the more phenomenologically oriented view. He defends that we should make a distinction between them but recognizing also their distinct roles and competencies. After these preliminary considerations, Belzen enumerates six epistemological theses for the clinical praxis of psychiatrists and psychotherapists who work in modern health care hospitals and institutions. For him those guide lines or principles may help the psychoscientists to understand and distinguish in their daily praxis what is religious and spiritual counseling from what is psychological and medical care.