Psychotherapy with the Fundamentalist Client

Abstract

With the public scandal in recent years involving soma religious leaders, the religiously conservative client is facing identity and trust issues critical to self-understanding but not well understood by Christian therapists unfamiliar with this subculture. What may be healthy expressions of seeking congruence as a person may be misinterpreted as increased psychoparhology. Beginning with a theoretical orientation to the fundamentalist movement, two therapists who work with the population and a religious scholar attempt to share perspectives and clarify Issues for counseling conservative clients within their own self-identity structures. The religious subculture can then be made part of the healing process if the therapist is not threatened by it.