Opening Therapy to Conversations with a Personal God

Abstract

Systemic therapists are particularly aware that a person's sense of self is co-created in a social network of relationships and conversations with others. But often clients feel that their private and meaningful conversations with a personal God are unwelcome in the therapy conversation. If we consider this unspoken censoring as a form of professional oppression, though usually inadvertent, then we may see not only how we participate in oppressing but how we can participate in freeing our conversations. It is therapists' certainty that oppresses and constrains opportunities to hear the story as the client experiences it. I offer four certainties I have recognized in my own work and how, with the help of clients and research participants, these certainties have changed to wonder and creativity.