Spirituality, Religion and Religion: Concepts Reflection in Psychological Articles

Abstract

Considering the indiscrimination which the Spirituality, Religion, Religion concepts are often treated, the objective of this review is to discuss distinctions and point out its influences in the psychological context. The search has been done at the BVS, PsycINFO and SciELO databases, in the period from 2008 to 2013 and 11 articles were found, from which only seven could be utilized for the categorization, since they met the objectives of this work. The material found was subjected to the Content Analysis method. Thus, it was possible to distinguish the concepts, whereas the spirituality is understood as the broadest dimension. Spirituality and health have been studied to search for better treatments and individual suffering decrease. The religiosity is the believer’s expression or practice which can be related to a religious institution. In the other hand, Religion is composed by specific beliefs and rites, understood as ways which guide to the transcendent’s salvation. Though there’s certain difficulty among the psychology professionals to understand and distinguish the spirituality, religiosity and religion concepts, and include them in their clinic, the spirituality being present in the psychologists’ activities and in the therapeutic processes of the psychology services users in the public and private scope.