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On: 18 October 2014, At: 05:57
Publisher: Routledge
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Edale House, 41, Dudley Road, Whalley Range, Manchester, M16 8FW, UK E-mail:
Published online: 18 Aug 2006.
To cite this article: Lynda Ankrah (2002) Spiritual emergency and counselling: An exploratory study, Counselling and
Psychotherapy Research: Linking research with practice, 2:1, 55-60, DOI: 10.1080/14733140212331384988
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14733140212331384988
Edale House, 41, Dudley Road, Whalley Range, Manchester, M16 8FW, UK
Email: forbes-ankrah@talk21.com
Growing up in a multicultural community in England brought me into close personal contact with the
beliefs and perceptions about healing held by people of many different cultures. In many cases, no
strong boundary was seen between physical, psychological and spiritual aspects of an illness, and experiences of hearing voices or seeing visions were accepted as normal everyday occurrences. During my
training as a counsellor, I came into contact with the work of Stanislav Grof on the concept of spiritual
emergency, which, together with the work of African and European authors who were exploring
transpersonal aspects of psychology, provided a theoretical framework for researching how counsellors
respond to clients wishing to explore experiences of spiritual crisis. This paper describes an exploratory
study into the phenomenon of spiritual emergency within counselling. Questionnaires were distributed
by post to people known to have been in counselling relationships, and interviews were conducted with
three informants reporting different types of spiritual experience. All respondents who completed questionnaires reported having at least one of the non-ordinary experiences classified by Stanislav Grof as
characteristics of a spiritual emergency. Several participants felt unable to explore this experience with
their counsellors, some for fear of being labelled as mentally ill, while others found their counsellors
helpful and sympathetic. Differences in dealing with spiritual phenomena were apparent between
European and non-European participants. These findings are discussed in relation to theory and practice.
Key words: clients experiences, culture, heuristic inquiry, race, spiritual emergency
A personal journey
A particular feature of the community in which I
grew up in Manchester was the presence of a rich
diversity of different cultures and backgrounds.
Although it was not openly discussed to any great
extent, I was aware that there were very different
ways of talking about, thinking about, and dealing
with the physical and non-physical aspects of wellbeing and illness. A condition that might be
thought by some to be best treated by physical
means, whether through medicines or surgery,
might be considered by others to be best treated
through prayer or other spiritual interventions.
The miracles considered by some to be events
that happened only in the far-off world of the Bible
or the Koran were discussed (privately) by others
in ways that suggested that seeing visions, talking
in tongues, or being possessed by spirits were
How do counsellors
receive people who
wish to talk about
voices and visions?
Method
In deciding on how best to explore this topic, I was
very much drawn to the heuristic approach of Clark
Moustakas (1990). This was a methodology that
fitted well with my own beliefs, and with the highly
subjective and experiential nature of my research
topic. I worked out a two-stage research design.
The first step was to design a questionnaire, which
contained three sections. Section One asked questions about the age, religion and cultural background of the respondent. Section Two explored
the type of counselling relationship they had experienced, and the context in which the respondents
had sought counselling. Section Three asked
respondents to describe their spiritual experiences,
using a list based on Grofs work, and then asked a
number of very open questions which invited
respondents to reflect on their experiences of counselling.
Results
All 20 respondents reported having at least one of
the non-ordinary experiences listed at some stage
in their life (see Table 1). This may be an indication
of some bias in the sample since it is possible that
people who could not recall any such experiences
chose not to return the questionnaire at all, rather
than send back a non-response. All of the respondents reported having the listed experiences over
a wide range of ages, with several reporting that
this took place over a long period of time, and
many reporting occurrences since early childhood
(the earliest being at 3 years of age).
Overall, 75 per cent of the respondents felt able
to bring their spiritual experiences into the counselling relationship, although they met with very
varied responses from their counsellors. Three of
the respondents (15 per cent) felt that the counsellor was unable to help in this area, despite being
generally encouraging. One commented that the
counsellor was helpful and encouraging but
tended to try and influence me with her own ideas
which didnt always match my experience.
Another described the counsellor as interested,
but puzzled and unable to contribute much. A
third respondent reported that the counsellor was
encouraging to an extent but did not fully explore
[this issue]. It is important to note that no respondent reported their counsellor as hostile in this
area. In the five cases (25 per cent) where there
was an unhelpful reaction reported and the word
indifferent was also used, it is possible to explore
Number of
responses
40
Visions
35
30
Hearing voices
25
Connections to plants/
trees/animals
20
20
20
20
15
Talking in tongues
Discussion
The evidence reported here is too limited to draw
any firm conclusions, and it is likely that counselling
clients who had no spiritual experiences to report
may have been less willing to complete the questionnaire. Nevertheless, the study reinforces the
findings of many previous studies (see West, 2000)
that there is a high proportion of everyday spiritual
experience within the normal population. The possibility also emerges that, in Britain, people from
non-European cultural backgrounds may be less
likely to feel confident about raising issues of spiritual emergency with counsellors, or to feel that the
counsellor has been helpful when they have sought
to open up this area in the counselling relationship.
These findings can be discussed in terms of two key
The findings of my
study emphasise the
importance simply of
listening and
providing an
accepting space for
people to bring in
their experiences of
spirit even if we do
not always understand
what they mean
Lynda Ankrah
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