Marika Candelaria - Week 6

In this week’s reading about spirituality and medicine, I have two things that come to mind--the psychological and spiritual perspective. One topic the author shared was empathy in Chaplaincy programs. Parameshwaran Ramakrishnan states that, “Transformation of one’s own ‘self’ occurs when both chaplain and patient bring their personal experience-triggered thoughts and emotions into their conscious awareness.” The author describes empathy as a part of spiritual knowledge instead of scientific knowledge. Throughout reading the Chaplaincy process of empathy as a form of spiritual healing, it reminded me of the psychological view of empathy. In psychology, we use empathy as a part of the humanistic-existential model in Carl Rogers’ client-centered therapy. Similarly, we acknowledge and reflect back on the person’s feelings and eventually work their way through to listen to their gut feelings. The difference between the two would be similar experiences between the client and the healer. I think that the Chaplaincy process involves a better form of connection between the patient and healer, which would create a more comfortable and open environment during the healing process. In the STEM field, religion is always a portion that usually gets ignored because of the few evidence behind these studies. However, because science is possibly based on the beliefs of religious values involving our existence, it would be a life-changing addition for humanity to connect these two rather than separating them into categories. The balance between science and spiritualism could possibly be a field of study to consider going through the psychological route in college. The reading from this week emphasizes my interest between this connection and makes me acknowledge both perspectives of healing. One question I have from this week--How can we bring forward and form a connection for future methods of healing in the medical field?