Book

Dr. Alexandra Hepburn has provided counselors and therapists with an amazingly useful and thoughtful discussion of the role of spirituality in therapeutic work with our clients. From my perspective as a clinical mental health counselor who believes that the spiritual domain is always present in the problems and conflicts that our clients bring, Interplay is a must-read, providing wonderful examples of how to work with a variety of presenting issues where spiritual themes might be missed if not attended to.

A skillful resource for our specialized age. Hepburn interweaves the multiple dimensions and disciplines of humanity’s most ultimate concerns with practical potency and illustrative wisdom.

This volume is a lovely introduction to some of the most important issues in transpersonal psychology. It brings a unique lens to view some of them, in particular the Enneagram and Jung’s typology, and is an accessible approach to whoever wants to explore this area.

Practicing psychotherapeutic training doesn’t teach spiritual literacy. This readable volume fills that gap. It is, first, an intelligent guide to a series of the most advanced and rich theoretical frameworks for understanding the interplay of psychology and spirituality. And it applies those distinctions by guiding the reader through a far-reaching survey of the nature and varying expressions of spiritual experience, as well as their relationships to various neuroses and psychopathologies. Additionally, it reflects an embodied appreciation of the richness of interior spiritual experience. Thus, it’s far more than a series of theoretical distinctions, it’s a rich exploration of lived experience that makes those distinctions come alive, giving them flesh and blood.

Interplay is a gift that keeps on giving. Alexandra Hepburn has filled this book with treasure upon treasure, some you’ll use now, some you’ll come back for later. Her capacity for interweaving psychological and spiritual ways of seeing and being – for helping them play together — is remarkable. This is a work of wisdom.

I believe it is essential to weave together psychotherapeutic healing and understanding with spiritual experience and perspective for whole healing to happen. Dr. Alexandra Hepburn has woven a beautiful tapestry that integrates the value of the Enneagram, an ancient key to unraveling the wounded ego and inspiring our integration of our highest virtues, along with very practical interventions that will serve all clinicians and clients alike. We must explore the depths in order to discover the heights and embody this wisdom into our everyday living.

Alexandra Hepburn makes an important and timely contribution to the vital activity of supporting healing and growth in psychotherapy by thoroughly addressing the intersection of psychology and spirituality. By wisely and skillfully deploying the Enneagram system of personality, perhaps the most powerful psycho-spiritual tool available today that addresses this integration, she clarifies the way these two approaches may be usefully combined and advances the ability of therapists everywhere to do deeper work with clients in a more effective way.   

In The Interplay of Psychology and Spirituality, Hepburn artistically and expertly interweaves spiritual development, self/other knowledge of the Enneagram, and spiritual intelligence. The result is both words and the melody of the beautiful dance between mental health and spirituality. This is a must read for all psychotherapists interested in the spiritual journey, both their own and that of the clients they serve.

A debut manual for counselors and therapists grapples with spirituality issues.

Based on her 26-year career as a grief and life transitions counselor and therapist, Hepburn offers advice to those in the helping professions who encounter challenging patient problems involving spirituality. Many science-based practitioners have a difficult time evaluating spiritual visions, near-death experiences, and other extraordinary events patients sometimes bring to therapy. Discussing Jung, contemporary philosopher Ken Wilber, mindfulness teachers Jack Kornfield, and Stan Grof, and many authorities in various spiritual traditions, the author employs personality typologies based on the ancient Enneagram and ideas about individuation in her wide-ranging guide. Written in a sophisticated and trenchant style, this book weaves together crucial concepts and practices that support a deep engagement with a provocative subject often dismissed in much professional literature as myth or nonsense. “How can we understand the relationship between these two approaches to personality differences?” the author asks in examining Jung’s emphasis on wholeness by dealing with psychological opposites and the Enneagram’s transformational unveiling of different personality layers. This book attempts to answer this and many other thorny and complex questions involving psychology and spirituality. Replete with useful charts, graphs, and images, this resource for practitioners does not shy away from extensively exploring not only the rewards of spiritual journeys, but also the dangerous pitfalls,self-deceptions, and delusions emerging from those odysseys. Hepburn addresses all of this with admirable detail, clarity, and honesty.