New Thought, Unity, Divine Science, Religious Science

1. Introduction

Version followed: the three main New Thought denominations as they describe themselves today. These are Unity (Unity World Headquarters and the Unity Prayer Ministry, Unity Village, Missouri), Divine Science (as its history is taught within New Thought), and Religious Science / Science of Mind (Centers for Spiritual Living). Umbrella principles are taken from the International New Thought Alliance (INTA). Affirmative prayer and spiritual mind treatment get a full guide in 092; this tab covers them only briefly.

This is a family of religious and healing movements, not a therapy. It grew out of nineteenth-century American mental healing ("mind-cure"). The guide first describes the movements' own healing practices as they publish them. It then gives the psychotherapist's procedures for clients who belong to, have left, or are drawn to these churches. [source: EBSCO Religious Science; EBSCO Unity Church; WRSP Unity timeline]

Unity. Charles and Myrtle Fillmore founded Unity in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1889. Unity's own account says Myrtle Fillmore had long-term illness that doctors called tuberculosis. In 1886 she heard a lecture by the metaphysical teacher E. B. Weeks. She took from it the affirmation that as a child of God she did not inherit sickness. She credited her recovery to that change in thinking, and she died in 1931. In 1890 she started a prayer circle, the "Society of Silent Help", which became Silent Unity and is now the Unity Prayer Ministry. The WRSP timeline says the Fillmores were certified as Christian Science healers in 1887. It also says Unity publishing brought in H. Emilie Cady's Lessons in Truth as a core text. In 1989 Connie Fillmore Bazzy introduced the Five Principles. As EBSCO paraphrases them: God is everywhere and wholly good; human beings are divine in essence; thinking shapes experience; prayer transforms lives; and the truths must be lived. [source: unity.org "Myrtle Fillmore: Where Unity Began"; WRSP Unity timeline; EBSCO Unity Church]
Divine Science. In Mark Hicks' TruthUnity course history, Malinda Cramer moved to San Francisco for her health in 1870. After years of unsuccessful medical treatment she stopped seeing doctors and recovered. By 1888 she was healing and teaching full time under the name Divine Science. In Denver, the Brooks sisters (Nona Brooks, Fannie Brooks James and Althea Brooks Small) taught and healed. They opened a college in 1898, and their work merged with Cramer's under the Divine Science name. A formal federation was set up in 1957. Divine Science teaching centres healing on God's omnipresence. [source: TruthUnity, Hicks, Background of New Thought; Althea's married surname [uncertain: not verified]]
Religious Science / Science of Mind. Ernest Holmes (1887–1960) studied with Emma Curtis Hopkins. In 1926 he published The Science of Mind, and in 1927 he founded a teaching institute in Los Angeles. A church body formed in the 1950s, later split into the United Church of Religious Science and Religious Science International, and these merged as Centers for Spiritual Living (CSL). Sources give the merger as 2011 or 2012 [uncertain]. EBSCO says the movement "advocates prayer, meditation, and traditional medicine", with the mind's power to support healing central to its faith. It has licensed practitioners and ministers who give individual spiritual mind treatments and follow an ethical code. [source: EBSCO Religious Science; Wikipedia Religious Science [uncertain: secondary, unverified] for the 1927 institute name and the merger date]
Umbrella. INTA's Declaration of Principles affirms God as Mind and Spirit, the divine indwelling in each person (shown as health, wisdom and peace), healing and thriving through alignment with a spiritual order, and mental states shaping daily experience. It also affirms freedom of belief and treats its statements as open to revision. INTA's office is at Unity Village. Its founding date is not given here [uncertain: not verified]. [source: newthoughtalliance.org]

Core idea of change (as the movements hold it): God, or Mind, is wholly good and present everywhere. A person's thinking shapes their experience. So recognising one's unity with the divine, and affirming the good as already true, changes inner states and outer conditions, health among them. Evidence status (one line): there is no controlled evidence that affirmation, affirmative prayer or a positive attitude cures or controls physical disease. The American Cancer Society position, as quoted by Science-Based Medicine, is that imagery, relaxation and meditation have not been shown to control cancer growth. Any benefit lies in subjective outcomes such as distress, meaning and coping. [source: Novella 2024, Science-Based Medicine]

For the therapist. Most clients encounter these churches as warm, liberal congregations. Unity and CSL publications do not tell members to refuse medicine, and EBSCO describes both as accepting medical care. The clinical issues are subtler. They include self-blame for illness ("my thinking caused this"), pressure to stay positive, spiritual bypassing of grief or anger, occasional delay of care in individual members or independent teachers, family conflict, and grief when healing prayer seems to fail. Court or regulator findings of medical neglect specific to these denominations: none found in the sources consulted. Treat individual risk on its merits. [source: EBSCO Unity Church; EBSCO Religious Science; Novella 2024; [synthesis]]

2. Framework

There is no session protocol. The movements offer a set of open practices: classes, Sunday services, daily devotionals, a prayer line, and one-to-one sessions with licensed practitioners or ministers. The psychotherapist works in their own modality and treats New Thought as part of the client's cultural and spiritual context. No session counts come from sources; the phases below are a [synthesis] for clinical use.

How the movements organise involvement [source: Seaside Center CSL practitioner pathway; unity.org Prayer Ministry; EBSCO]

Entry: Sunday services, introductory classes (CSL centres list courses such as Foundations of Science of Mind), the Daily Word devotional, and Unity books.
Deepening: further courses on consciousness, meditation, treatment and "prosperity consciousness". At CSL, a two-year Practitioner Studies programme leads to licensing as a practitioner, and practitioner status is required before ministry.
Support: free prayer from the Unity Prayer Ministry (Silent Unity) by phone, app, online form or post, around the clock. After the first prayer, a request is held in a 30-day prayer vigil. At CSL, a person may book a session with a licensed practitioner.

Clinical phases [synthesis]

Engagement and assessment. Goal: understand what New Thought means to this client and how they use it. Use the Cultural Formulation Interview with its spirituality, religion and moral traditions module, and take a spiritual history. Screen for medical decisions in play, self-blame, high-pressure positivity, and mental-state concerns. Move on when the client's practice and its role (resource, strain or both) are mapped together.
Formulation and goals. Goal: a shared formulation that respects the faith and names the problem the client wants help with, such as illness-related guilt, grief, family conflict or anxiety. Move on when goals are agreed in the client's own words.
Active work. Goal: work on meaning, emotion and decisions with the interventions in section 4. Where medical illness is present, help the client hold faith and medical care together and coordinate with the treating doctor, with consent. Move on when the target distress is reduced and the client's practice is serving them rather than burdening them.
Consolidation and ending. Goal: the client's own plan for using spiritual resources and professional care, and how to tell if self-blame or bypassing returns. Link with the client's minister or practitioner if the client wishes.

3. Guiding principles

Describe the faith in its own terms. Use the client's words ("treatment", "demonstration", "Truth", "consciousness", "the Christ within") and ask what they mean. In practice: gloss, don't translate into pathology. [source: section 1 sources; [synthesis]]
Attribute, don't adjudicate. Healing claims belong to the tradition. You neither endorse nor debunk them. In practice: say "in Unity teaching…", not "prayer will heal you" or "that's not real". [synthesis]
No practice treats physical disease in therapy. In practice: never frame affirmation or prayer as a treatment for a medical condition. All medical decisions go to the treating doctor. Never advise starting, stopping or changing a medicine. [synthesis]
The therapist is not a practitioner, minister or healer in therapy. In practice: you don't give spiritual mind treatments, affirm a healing, or pray for outcomes as part of therapy. Refer spiritual needs to the client's own community. [synthesis]
Respect autonomy, support informed choice. In practice: help the client think through medical options with full information and their values. Do not pressure them toward or away from faith. [synthesis]
Separate responsibility from blame. The teaching that thought shapes experience can turn into self-blame for illness. In practice: name the difference between agency ("what I can do now") and fault ("I caused my cancer"). [source: Novella 2024; [synthesis]]
Watch for spiritual bypass. Counselors can unintentionally reinforce clients who use spiritual practice to avoid psychological work. In practice: welcome positive affirmation and also make room for grief, anger and fear. [source: Cashwell, Myers & Shurts 2004 (abstract)]
Differentiate without pathologising belief. Shared New Thought beliefs are not delusions. In practice: assess form, fixity, functioning and congruence with the community, not content. [synthesis]
Cultural and spiritual competence. In practice: know the basics of the client's tradition, ask about the rest, and notice your own reactions to positive-thinking spirituality. The spiritual and religious competencies of Vieten et al. 2013 [uncertain: not verified]. [synthesis]
Children come first. In practice: a child's access to medical care and to assessment is not negotiable on faith grounds. Know your local safeguarding duties. [synthesis]
Boundaries for dual-role clinicians. In practice: a therapist who is also a licensed practitioner or minister keeps the roles fully separate and does not offer treatment to therapy clients. The APA Ethics Code standards on multiple relationships and competence apply [uncertain: not verified]. [synthesis]

4. Intervention inventory

Part A describes the movements' own practices as they publish them, so you can understand what a client is doing. These are not techniques for the therapist to deliver. Part B gives the psychotherapist's procedures.

A. The movements' own practices (described, not delivered by the therapist)

A1. Affirmation (healing statements)

Purpose and context (as published): to replace belief in sickness or lack with a statement of divine truth. In Unity's founding story, Myrtle Fillmore held that as a child of God she did not inherit sickness. Unity quotes her: "Our bodies are the fruits of our minds." In Divine Science teaching as Hicks reports it, the Brooks sisters had students repeat "God is my health, I cannot be sick." Unity's "Prayer of Faith", a poem of affirmations first published in its children's magazine Wee Wisdom in 1898, is still widely used. [source: unity.org; WRSP Unity timeline; TruthUnity, Hicks]
Steps (as described): a short, positive, present-tense statement of the desired truth, repeated in quiet, often alongside prayer and meditation. Unity's account of Myrtle Fillmore describes a daily routine of prayer, meditation, Bible reading and speaking affirmatively to her body. She also urged pure food, exercise and clean living. [source: unity.org]
Example language: when a client mentions it, "Which affirmations do you use, and what happens inside you when you say them?" (illustrative)
Watch for: affirmations used to override symptoms ("I cannot be sick" leading to ignored warning signs), or as compulsive neutralising. A statement such as Myrtle Fillmore's "no such thing as… incurable condition" (unity.org) can feel like a demand on a seriously ill client. Evidence status: affirmations have no demonstrated effect on the course of physical disease. [source: Novella 2024; [synthesis]]

A2. Affirmative prayer / Spiritual Mind Treatment (brief; full guide in 092)

Purpose (as published): prayer that affirms the desired good as already true in God or Mind, rather than petitioning a distant God. CSL describes treatment as a practice for oneself or others, given by members, licensed practitioners and ministers. [source: CSL St Augustine "The Power of Affirmative Prayer"; EBSCO Religious Science]
Structure (outline): the five steps currently taught in Religious Science centres are named Recognition, Unification, Declaration (often called Realization), Thanksgiving and Release [source: Wikipedia Religious Science [uncertain: secondary, unverified]]. The CSL St Augustine page describes focusing on a clear intention, affirming it "with conviction" as already fulfilled, then releasing it and trusting divine intelligence. Unity's Prayer Ministry describes affirming peace, healing, guidance and wholeness "rather than begging or pleading" (paraphrase). [source: CSL St Augustine; unity.org Prayer Ministry]
Example language: "When you treat about this, what are you declaring, and how do you feel afterwards?" (illustrative)
Watch for: treatment for a diagnosed illness taking the place of medical review. Feeling that a "weak" treatment, or lingering "negative" thoughts, explain why symptoms persist. See 092 for the full procedure and clinical notes.

A3. Unity Prayer Ministry (Silent Unity) requests

Purpose (as published): free, around-the-clock prayer support. The ministry describes trained prayer associates who listen without judgment and pray affirmatively. Requests come by phone, online form, app, social media or post. After the first prayer a request is held in a 30-day prayer vigil. Unity World Headquarters says healing is the most common request, often made for someone else. [source: unity.org Prayer Ministry; unity.org "When Someone You Love Needs Healing"]
Steps: the client contacts the ministry. The client's part ends there; the prayer is offered on their behalf.
Example language: "It sounds like knowing people were praying for your mother helped. What did it give you?" (illustrative)
Watch for: the ministry's public page does not describe crisis or suicide referral, so it is not a crisis service [source: unity.org Prayer Ministry]. Make sure a client in crisis has a crisis line and an emergency plan. [synthesis]

A4. Practitioner sessions (Religious Science / CSL)

Purpose (as published): a licensed practitioner prays with and for a person and may offer ongoing sessions as a spiritual coach or prayer support. Practitioners complete prerequisite classes and a two-year Practitioner Studies programme, and are licensed under an ethical code. [source: Seaside Center CSL pathway; EBSCO Religious Science]
Steps: booked one-off or ongoing sessions. The content is spiritual mind treatment and spiritual counsel. Fees, if any, vary by centre [uncertain: not verified].
Example language: "How do your practitioner sessions and our sessions fit together for you? What goes where?" (illustrative)
Watch for: role overlap with psychotherapy; the client receiving conflicting guidance. With consent, agree a division of roles. [synthesis]

A5. Classes, texts and devotional practice

Purpose (as published): to learn the principles. Core texts include The Science of Mind (Holmes, 1926) and H. Emilie Cady's Lessons in Truth (Unity). CSL centres teach courses such as Foundations of Science of Mind, Essential Ernest, Mental Equivalents, Meditation Methods, Treatment and Meditation, and a required prosperity-consciousness course on the practitioner path. Unity publishes the Daily Word devotional. [source: EBSCO Religious Science; WRSP Unity timeline; Seaside Center; EBSCO Unity Church]
Example language: "Is there a passage or teaching that's been especially meaningful, or especially hard, lately?" (illustrative)
Watch for: prosperity teachings that link giving or tithing with financial or health return. Course costs piling up. Self-worth tied to "level of consciousness". [synthesis]

B. The psychotherapist's work

All of Part B is clinical [synthesis] built on the principles above, unless a source is given.

B1. Client-led exploration of meaning

Purpose: understand what New Thought gives this client (hope, belonging, agency, a non-punitive God) and where it strains them. Use early, and whenever faith comes up.
Steps: (1) Ask permission to talk about faith. (2) Invite the story: how they came to Unity, Divine Science or CSL, and what drew them. (3) Explore key terms in their words. (4) Ask what the teaching says about their current problem, and what they themselves believe. (5) Reflect strengths and tensions back without judgment.
Example language: "You said you're 'holding the high watch' for your recovery. What does that look like day to day, and how does it feel?" (illustrative)
Watch for: the client checking whether you will mock or endorse them. Working well looks like the client speaking freely about both comfort and doubt.

B2. Cultural Formulation Interview and spiritual history

Purpose: structured cultural assessment. Use at intake or when faith clearly shapes the problem.
Steps: (1) Use the DSM-5-TR Cultural Formulation Interview core questions on the problem's definition, causes, stressors, supports and help-seeking. Add the supplementary module on spirituality, religion and moral traditions [uncertain: not verified]. (2) Add New Thought specifics: which denomination and centre, practitioner or minister involvement, Prayer Ministry use, affirmation routines, classes and costs. (3) Ask about medical care: current diagnoses, treatments accepted, declined or delayed, and why. (4) Record the client's explanatory model (for example "error thinking" causing illness) next to the medical one, without ranking them.
Example language: "In your community, what would people say is causing this? And what do you think yourself?" (illustrative)
Watch for: a gap between the client's private doubts and the community's expected positivity. If the main focus of care is a religious or spiritual problem, the DSM-5-TR "Religious or Spiritual Problem" may apply; its code is Z65.8, which ICD-10-CM lists as including religious or spiritual problem [source: ICD-10-CM Z65.8 (Unbound Medicine); DSM-5-TR wording uncertain: not verified].

B3. Differential assessment without pathologising belief

Purpose: tell shared religious belief and practice apart from psychosis, mania, OCD, complicated grief or depression.
Steps: (1) Ask whether the belief is shared by the client's community; New Thought tenets are. (2) Assess form: fixity, distress, functional decline, idiosyncratic elaboration (such as a unique mission or personal powers), and other symptoms such as sleep loss, pressured speech or hallucinations. (3) Assess compulsive features: affirmations repeated to neutralise feared thoughts, or fear that a "negative thought" will cause illness or harm. (4) Ask, with consent, how co-religionists see the change.
Example language: "Lots of people in your church pray this way. Has anything about your praying or thinking changed recently, in a way that worries you or others?" (illustrative)
Watch for: "manifestation anxiety" (dread of one's own thoughts) suggests an OCD-spectrum process. Consider exposure and response prevention (ERP) as OCD clinical sources describe it, with contraindications, safety and consent built in [uncertain: not verified].

B4. Autonomy-respecting medical decision support

Purpose: help a client with a physical illness make informed decisions that are consistent with their values. Use whenever a diagnosis, treatment choice or delay is in play.
Steps: (1) Clarify what the treating doctor has advised and what the client understands. (2) Explore what the faith asks of them here. Most Unity and CSL clients find no requirement to refuse medicine [source: EBSCO Unity Church; EBSCO Religious Science]. (3) Name any fear that accepting treatment means "lack of faith", and explore it. (4) Invite the client to take questions back to the doctor. (5) With written consent, coordinate with the doctor. (6) Never advise on medicines, and never present prayer or affirmation as a treatment.
Example language: "Some people in New Thought see medicine as one of the ways good comes through. Others feel torn. Where are you with it?" (illustrative)
Watch for: delay of assessment or treatment, a partner or teacher pushing refusal, rapid deterioration. Escalate to the medical team when there is risk.

B5. Working with self-blame for illness

Purpose: ease guilt and shame from the belief that one's thinking caused, or is failing to cure, the illness. Science-Based Medicine describes a "tyranny of positive thinking" in which patients blame themselves for not being positive enough. [source: Novella 2024]
Steps: (1) Elicit the self-blaming belief in the client's words. (2) Validate the wish for agency. (3) Separate agency from fault: "what I can do now" versus "I caused this". (4) Explore whether the teaching itself requires blame; many clients and ministers say it does not. If the client wishes, invite them to bring the question to their minister. (5) Give factual information: attitude has not been shown to determine survival [source: Novella 2024]. (6) Build self-compassion and shift focus to what matters to them now.
Example language: "Wanting your mind to help your body makes complete sense. Can we look at whether 'I didn't think positively enough' is fair to you?" (illustrative)
Watch for: relief, less rumination, and more openness with the medical team. Signs it isn't working: the client feels you are attacking their faith. If so, slow down and repair (see section 5).

B6. Working with spiritual bypassing

Purpose: notice and gently address the use of spiritual practice to avoid painful emotions, needs or problems. Cashwell, Myers & Shurts (2004) call spiritual bypass a dysfunctional pattern that counselors may unintentionally reinforce. [source: Cashwell et al. 2004 (abstract)]. The term is often credited to John Welwood [uncertain: secondary, unverified].
Steps: (1) Notice when affirmation appears right after a painful topic. (2) Name it gently and with curiosity, without judgment. (3) Invite both/and: the affirmation and the feeling. (4) Explore what the feeling needs: grief, anger, a boundary, help. (5) Link back to the client's own tradition's room for honest feeling, if they see one.
Example language: "I notice we went quickly to 'everything is in Divine Order'. Before that, there was a lot of hurt. Could we stay with the hurt for a moment?" (illustrative)
Watch for: more emotional range in session, and the client describing problems more concretely.

B7. Family conflict over faith and treatment

Purpose: support a client when family members disagree about medical care or faith (for example, a relative in New Thought who resists chemotherapy, or relatives who scorn the client's faith).
Steps: (1) Map positions and fears. (2) Help the client state their own position. (3) Rehearse conversations. (4) Consider family sessions with consent. (5) Where a child or an adult lacking capacity is affected, follow safeguarding procedures (see B10).
Example language: "What would you like your sister to understand about why you're choosing treatment, and what do you need from her?" (illustrative)
Watch for: coercion, isolation, threats of shunning. These are rare in these denominations but possible with independent teachers.

B8. Grief when healing did not come

Purpose: support bereaved clients, or those facing irreversible illness, who prayed or treated for healing.
Steps: (1) Allow grief and protest. (2) Explore spiritual distress: "did my prayer fail?" or "was my consciousness wrong?" (3) Separate love and effort from outcome. (4) Draw on the client's tradition for meaning, for example life as eternal or "transition" in New Thought language, if the client finds it helpful. (5) Watch for complicated grief and suicidal ideation, and assess them using standard practice.
Example language: "You poured so much love into praying for him. His death doesn't cancel that." (illustrative)
Watch for: guilt that persists, social withdrawal from the congregation, or anger at God or the church. Refer to bereavement services if needed.

B9. Financial and prosperity teaching review

Purpose: identify financial strain linked to prosperity teaching, tithing, courses or private teachers.
Steps: (1) Ask neutrally about spending on courses, tithes and practitioners. (2) Explore beliefs connecting giving with return. (3) Support budgeting decisions made by the client.
Example language: "How do the money side of your spiritual life and the rest of your finances fit together right now?" (illustrative)
Watch for: debt, secrecy, or a teacher promising healing or wealth in exchange for payment.

B10. Children and safeguarding

Purpose: protect a child's access to medical care and developmental assessment.
Steps: (1) If a parent describes delaying a child's medical care in favour of prayer or affirmation, explore it and inform them of the risks. (2) Follow local child-protection law and reporting duties. (3) Don't let spiritual labels replace assessment for ADHD, autism or other conditions. (4) Obtain the child's assent where appropriate, and never name the child in records shared outside the service.
Example language: "I can hear how much faith you have in prayer for her. I also need to make sure she's seen by her doctor about this." (illustrative)
Watch for: refusal of urgent care. Act promptly.

B11. Liaison and referral

Purpose: connect the client with supports outside therapy.
Steps: (1) If the client wishes, involve their minister or practitioner (with consent) for spiritual questions. (2) Refer to medical care, bereavement services, financial advice, OCD specialists or crisis services as indicated. (3) For clients leaving or reconsidering their faith, offer space for religious transition without pushing.
Example language: "Would it help to talk with your minister about whether accepting treatment fits Unity's teaching?" (illustrative)
Watch for: the client feeling handed off. Keep continuity.

B12. Boundaries for the therapist

Purpose: keep the therapy role clear.
Steps: (1) Do not give treatments, affirm healings or pray for outcomes in therapy. (2) If you are yourself a licensed practitioner or member, consider whether to disclose, and keep the roles separate (no treatments for therapy clients, no recruiting to your centre). (3) Seek supervision on your own reactions.
Example language: "I'm here as your therapist. Prayer and treatment are something you have with your community, and I'm glad you have that." (illustrative)
Watch for: clients asking you to "hold the high watch" or treat for them. Decline warmly.

5. Handling problems

The sources do not address clinical difficulties directly. All guidance here is [synthesis] unless a source is given.

Client hears exploration as an attack on faith (rupture). Name it, apologise for any implied judgment, and restate your stance: you are not here to change their beliefs, only to help with what they asked for. Return to their words. Example: "I may have sounded like I was questioning your faith. That's not my aim. Can you tell me how that landed?" (illustrative)
Relentless positivity in session ("everything is perfect"). Don't argue. Ask about the cost of keeping it up, and give permission for both/and feelings (B6). Track small moments of honest distress and reflect them warmly. [source: Cashwell et al. 2004 abstract on counselors reinforcing bypass; [synthesis]]
Client delays medical assessment or treatment. Use B4. Make sure the decision is informed and the doctor knows. If there is serious risk, or a child or adult lacking capacity is involved, follow your safeguarding and duty-of-care procedures. Don't take responsibility for the medical decision, and don't advise on medicines.
Guilt deepens when the illness progresses. Use B5 and B8. Directly counter "weak consciousness" explanations with compassion and facts [source: Novella 2024]. Screen for depression and suicide risk using standard practice.
Compulsive affirmation or fear of one's thoughts. Assess for OCD (B3). If present, refer to ERP-trained care or offer it, with contraindications, safety and consent built in. Avoid reassurance loops, including your own.
Client asks you to pray, treat or affirm healing with them. Decline warmly (B12). Affirm their community's role, and offer to explore what the request means.
Non-adherence to between-session tasks. Check whether the tasks clash with their practice (for example, "writing negative thoughts makes them real"). Co-design tasks that fit their framework, such as an "honest inventory" before an affirmation.
Overwhelm (diagnosis, bereavement). Slow down, stabilise, and focus on immediate supports and practical steps. Bring in the medical team and bereavement services.
Independent teacher or online coach with high control or high fees. The denominations themselves are generally low-control. Some independent "manifestation" teachers are not. Assess financial and coercive pressure (B9), support the client's own decisions, and offer information on leaving if they want it. Use role descriptions; don't name individuals unless a reliable source does.
Family insists the client stop treatment or stop attending church. Use B7 and protect the client's autonomy. If coercion amounts to abuse, follow local procedures.
Therapist's own reactions (contempt for "magical thinking", or over-identification as a fellow member). Take it to supervision and check your competence. Refer if you can't hold a neutral stance. Spiritual and religious competencies (Vieten et al. 2013) [uncertain: not verified].
Dual-role therapist (practitioner or minister). Keep roles separate. Don't treat clients spiritually, don't recruit, and document how the boundary is managed. APA Ethics Code standards on multiple relationships [uncertain: not verified].

Cross-references: 092 Affirmative prayer and spiritual mind treatment (full guide); 084 Quimby's mental healing; 086 Christian Science and its schisms; 089 Law of attraction and The Secret; 091 Louise Hay's affirmations for healing.

Sources

Books and articles cited:

Holmes, E. (1926). The Science of Mind. Cited as the founding text in the EBSCO and Wikipedia entries [uncertain: not verified].
Cady, H. E. Lessons in Truth. Named as a Unity core text in WRSP; edition [uncertain: not verified].
Cashwell, C. S., Myers, J. E., & Shurts, W. M. (2004). Using the Developmental Counseling and Therapy Model to work with a client in spiritual bypass: Some preliminary considerations. Journal of Counseling & Development, 82, 403–409. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.1556-6678.2004.tb00327.x.
ICD-10-CM Z65.8, Other specified problems related to psychosocial circumstances (includes 'Religious or spiritual problem'), https://www.unboundmedicine.com/icd/view/ICD-10-CM/945432/all/Z65_8___Other_specified_problems_related_to_psychosocial_circumstances

← Previous · XIV-084Quimby's mental healing Next · XIV-086 →Christian Science and its schisms