Compass Therapy and Christian Psychology

All theories of counseling include underlying assumptions and core beliefs about God, human nature, personality, and healthy versus unhealthy behavior. Compass Therapy holds that people are related to the personal, holy, and loving Creator known through the Christian faith.

This does not exclude other perceptions of God or other ways of construing human values within the therapeutic setting. It simply underscores the fact that since cardinal values of Christianity include compassion, empathy for those who suffer, and motivation to heal and transform persons who have lost their ways, Christian psychology offers a viable worldview from which to practice counseling and psychotherapy.

Compass Therapy weds faith and science. The facets of psychology pertinent to the healing of persons include motivation, sensation and perception, learning and memory, personality and social integration, and lifespan development. All are grounded in a God who understands and utilizes counseling and therapy as yet another means of calling people to exercise freedom rightly and benefit from the identity, intimacy, and community he has invited them to know.

From a Christian perspective, Christ embraces people in need, seeking to transform their personal crises through the power of the Holy Spirit present within the alliance of therapist and counselee (Montgomery, 2006, pp. 71-74).

It's as though the Holy Spirit says to any therapist who is open, “Come. Let us work together with your counselee. Let me inspire you with insight and direction to help tame your counselee’s anxiety and heal their pain. Have courage in guiding them to give up the patterns that are defeating them: the manipulations of pleasing, placating, seducing, calculating, controlling, arguing, intimidating, avoiding, or withdrawing. Through a therapeutic bond that draws upon My wisdom, help them find a pathway that leads to flexibility, discerning love, and personal power without guile.”

If your therapeutic experience is anything like mine over the past thirty years, you may have noticed that the Trinity comforts and heals beyond religious category or human constraint, and that the Holy Spirit does indeed enhance your effectiveness as a healer of the soul.

To learn more, see:  

Compass Therapy: Christian Psychology in Action

Philosophical Underpinnings of Compass Therapy

As the founder of Compass Therapy, I'm occasionally asked why I choose a Christian worldview as the philosophical foundation of this approach to counseling. The obvious answer is that I am a Christian by faith and choice, though in coming to this experience I did try out atheistic and agnostic perceptions of reality. 

Beyond my personal faith, I want to take a stand as a professional psychologist who believes that spirituality is essential to human nature and vital to mental health. I agree with many world religions that are rooted in a community of faith, where people find purpose in suffering, hope in times of loss, and meaning in their sacred scriptures and traditions.

So why am I selective about making Christianity the foundation upon which Compass Therapy arises? Because the Trinity, the core teaching of Christian faith and doctrine, reveals a spiritual reality that underlies all human experience: the reality of One God in Three Persons. In other words, human life and history, deriving from being created in the image of God, is fundamentally interpersonal, just like the divine Trinity is fundamentally interpersonal: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

But aren't these religious assertions a far cry from modern psychology and psychotherapy, and shouldn't there be a permanent barrier that separates what happens in a house of worship from what happens in a therapist's office?

I think not.

Whether we like it or not, we are born into a social context of Life Together. Therefore our mental health is linked to the progress we make in getting along with God and other people. No person is an island, and alienation from community (ie. the inability to give and receive love) is a sure mark of psychopathology.

Compass Therapy suggests that developing a healthy personality and fulfilling interpersonal relationships are primary aims of good therapy. Toward that end a therapist uses techniques of psychotherapy to relieve symptoms of anxiety, depression, relationship dysfunction, addiction, or a host of other disorders and psychological disabilities. Yet let's never forget that the primary aim remains the development of personality health and social integration, a pursuit that lasts a lifetime.

For more about this, see

COMPASS PSYCHOTHEOLOGY:
 Where Psychology & Theology Really Meet