Marife Turkish Journal of Religious Studies

Abstract

Religious Counseling: The Meeting Point of Psychotherapy and Religious Education In recent times, reconstruction of curricula in Faculties of Theology has often come into question and recommendations have been made about setting up new academic sections in these faculties. Religious social services relate these recommendations. The main subject of this article covers such recommendations and the relationship between psychotherapy and religious education based on these recommendations. The basis of these arguments for this relationship is related to the relationship between psychotherapy and religion. Therapists recognize that they should accept religion throughout the therapeutic processes especially in the cases related to death anxiety although Freud’s views on religion is the reason about the impossibility of religion, indirectly religious education, in this method. There are thera- pists accepted to this relation in Turkey. Both optimistic approaches and social progress provide opportunities for religious education in this issue. Religious counseling, therefore, gains importance as a meeting point of both fields. Past research on religious education is supported by recent researches which support the opportunity of combining the fields of Psychotherapy and Religious Education