Columbia University\u2019s clinical psychology department has recently introduced a master\u2019s concentration in spiritual psychology and there\u2019s an interesting article about this program and the blending of therapy and spiritual practices in The New York Times<\/a>. It\u2019s a fair piece overall; the writer, Sharon Otterman, only lapses into predictable caricatures a few times with lines like \u201csounding more Deepak Chopra than Freud,\u201d and with them, she may just be playing the foil a bit. The key takeaway is that this is the first time an Ivy League university has done something like this:<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a very significant step, because outside of the faith-based training programs, these training programs related to religion and spirituality have been few and far between,\u201d said Julie Exline, the president of a division of the American Psychological Association focused on the subject. \u201cIt helps to make the topic seem more mainstream and less fringy.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \u201cLess fringy.\u201d I love that. Yes, despite the fact that the field of psychology began with both atheist and spiritual threads, represented iconically by Freud and Jung, the atheists won out in the name of Science, relegating those who incorporate spiritual elements into their therapeutic models to the fringy edges of the field. <\/p>\n