THERAPISTS (AND THEIR THERAPISTS) GOD REPRESENTATIONS IN CLINICAL-PRACTICE

Previous studies have focused on patients' developmental conceptions o f God, and how these dynamics are manifest in treatment with psychothe rapists. The present study is the first to examine empirically this re lationship the other way around: that therapists' developmental antece dents of their own God representations can also have differential impa ct on their clinical work, perhaps especially so with patients who are themselves religious. Four hypotheses were examined: that anonymous t herapists' work with religious issues in therapy could be matched from either their developmental God representations (H-1), or their experi ence with how religious issues were addressed in their own personal th erapy (H-2); and that pooling information from both variables would in crease the number of matches significantly over either variable alone (H-3, H-4, p < .05 for all hypotheses). Three of the four hypotheses w ere confirmed. Data from the present study support the argument that w hen it comes to how therapists work with religious issues in therapy, even more important than their developmental construction of God as a psychological representation is their experience with how religious is sues were handled in their own personal therapy. I offer seven points for future research, along with implications for graduate training pro grams that seek to equip students to work with religious issues in the rapy.