Reviews
Reviews
Peter J. Verhagen
Psychiatry and Religion
Controversies and Consensus: A Matter of Attitude
Review
In 1960, the Committee on Psychiatry and Religion of the New York-based Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry published a report entitled Psychiatry and Religion: Some Steps Toward Mutual Understanding. This group and others worked valiantly half a century ago to change the attitudes of psychiatrists toward religion, with limited success. Verhagen, in the title of the current volume, likewise places “attitude” at the core of the controversies and consensus in the twenty-first century dialogue between psychiatry and religion. He documents the difficult but ultimately successful efforts of the Section on Religion, Spirituality and Psychiatry to craft a Position Statement on Spirituality and Religion in Psychiatry and to have this statement adopted as an official position of the World Psychiatric Association. His work provides a theory for the integration of psychiatry and religion in clinical practice, and also stands as tribute to all those who worked to achieve the long-desired goal of aligning psychiatric attitudes with the realities of everyday religious and spiritual life.
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