Political bias, moral values, and spirituality in the training of psychotherapists

Today psychotherapists face a challenge quite different from Karl Menninger's early efforts to foster an understanding between the new science of psychiatry and traditional religion. Today the mental health sciences are struggling with the contradictions and conflicts about society's values and spirituality that are currently vexing us all. The challenge today for psychotherapists is how to address values and spirituality professionally, ethically, and usefully in our work. This article looks at the scope of the task of training psychotherapists to work with values and spirituality in today's climate of amorphous values and culture wars.