Can Cognitive Science Rescue ‘Spiritual Care’ from a Metaphysical Backwater?

Abstract

Spiritual care' has a valued but precarious place in contemporary UK health care. Although the term is widely used, it only attracts significant attention and resources related to care at the end of life; elsewhere, spiritual care is often under-resourced and perfunctory. The author argues that a major reason for this is that proponents of spiritual care have so far failed to speak a language comprehensible to practitioners and health managers more familiar with reductionist, evidence-based work. He proposes that current developments in the cognitive and evolutionary psychology of religion have the potential to provide such a language, and to refocus a subject that has been muddled by conceptual vagueness and the multiplication of assessment tools. As a result, attention to spirituality could be liberated from its current ghetto in palliative and long-term care and become more firmly embedded and integrated into everyday nursing practice.

Spiritual care as a response to an exaptation: how evolutionary psychology informs the debate

“…In addition, there are a few areas in which a confusion has arisen from my use of terms, and Paley's interpretation of them: On spirituality as ‘fundamental’ . In my earlier paper (Kevern, , p. 13) I make the working assumption that ‘spirituality points to something fundamental in human beings and therefore in person‐centred care’. Paley points to some difficulties with this statement and, on reflection, it clearly needs more formulation and clarification.…”

“…I intended to make no universal anthropological claim, but only a contingent and practical one: that a full account of person‐centred care should include some consideration of those aspects which are typically classified under the term ‘spiritual’, on the grounds that people do report spiritual or religious distress and it is appropriate to respond to it as such. A ‘balanced mental state’ . Another stage in my argument at which it suffered from a lack of terminological precision was in the claim that ‘A practical implication of this finding… is that a balanced mental state is more likely to include some transaction with divine beings than not’ (Kevern, , p. 12). Paley, not unreasonably, interprets this as implying normativity: that a ‘balanced’ person is one who ‘transacts’ with divine beings.…”

Why the cognitive science of religion cannot rescue ‘spiritual care’

“…There are a number of prehistoric, automated cognitive mechanisms which, according to CSR, underpin religious concepts. Drawing on mainly on Barrett's () version, Kevern () refers to two of these mechanisms (as well as a distinction between reflective and nonreflective beliefs). I will describe four.…”

“…Peter Kevern () believes that he has found a way of rescuing ‘spiritual care’ from the metaphysical backwater in which it languishes (Paley ), complete with a justification for ‘spirituality’ discourse in a secular health care system. The deus ex machina performing the rescue operation is the cognitive science of religion (CSR), which is a currently popular explanation in evolutionary terms of the origins of religion.…”

What’s the Point of Spiritual Care? A Narrative Response

“…How can they demonstrate their ongoing relevance in settings where they are often misunderstood, stereotyped, and dismissed? 2 There have been several responses to these questions, but one in particular has sought to shift the orientation of such care away from religious care (although religious care remains part of what spiritual care practitioners can provide) and toward a more generic spiritual care (Kevern, 2013;Lasair, 2018aLasair, , 2018bPattison, 2015). Those practitioners who received their training in Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) know the care they provide ought to be appropriate for people of all faiths, or of no faith (Canadian Association for Spiritual Care [CASC], 2018;Lasair, 2016Lasair, , 2018aLasair, , 2018b).…”