The Spiritual Care & Counseling Concentration within the Psychology and Counseling program at Goddard College provides a rigorous and inclusive program, allowing students to explore strategies for inquiring into the psychological issues related to spiritual life.

Students in this concentration will benefit from the broad, core base of standard psychological theories and methods, as well as explore additional resources for providing compassionate support to people undergoing crisis or change. Individuals grappling with difficult experiences such as marginalization or loss and grief, those troubled by difficult questions such as free will versus fate, and others dealing with existential tensions such as those between body and mind or tradition and progress can benefit from a spiritual component to their psychological care.

Students pursuing the concentration in Spiritual Care and Counseling also learn ways to assist and support people impelled by human longings such as those for meaning, beauty, fulfillment, and transcendence. This program recognizes, as spiritual traditions always have, the teaching and healing potential of nature, of the varied forms of beauty, and of all avenues of connection with the larger whole.

Institutions such as hospitals, prisons, community mental health centers, and community- based organizations have long tapped, and will continue to make use of, lay-led programs and a variety of professional practitioners to serve them.

Core courses in the concentration (which may also be taken as electives) include: Spirituality and Meaning, Spiritual Psychology, Spirituality and the Emotions, Care and Compassion in Spiritual Counseling, and Spiritual Inspiration, Reflection, and Action.