Survey data of the general population, counselors, and counselor educators indicate that spiritual and religious issues are therapeutically relevant, ethically appropriate, and potentially significant topics for counseling and counselor education in secular settings. In this article, the authors propose that a balanced, thoughtful inclusion of these topics in Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP) core curriculum areas is a reasonable and sound approach to preparing counselors to work ethically and effectively with these issues in secular counseling settings. Methods and examples for achieving this inclusion are presented for each of the CACREP core curriculum areas.

Therapeutic empathy has been an oflen-used construct by counseling professionals. Through that usage, the term has evolved in meaning and significance from its original presentation by Carl Rogers. This article traces that evolution by identifying its users and contributors over the past 20 years. These include counselor-practitioners, counselor educators, researchers, and increasingly, the public. The resulting changes have implications for future research directions, counselor training, and the pmctice of counseling.Counselors have lived with the clientcentered conception of empathy for more than 20 years. It was in 1957 that Carl Rogers first presented this popularized definition of a therapeutic construct. Like most well-used constructs, empathy has grown in meaning through these 20 years of usage and study. As with most concepts, we need to examine these changes periodically to understand their professional implications. What is empathy today? How much have we gained in our understanding of the construct? How has empathy affected professional practice, and how has professional practice affected it? The purpose of this article is to trace the evolution of empathy, beginning with its historical antecedents, and including recent definitions from research and practice.

For this study the researchers recruited a random sample of college men and women (N = 390) and examined whether a pessimistic explanatory style mediated the relationship between childhood emotional abuse and frequency of nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) in the past year. The study found that pessimistic explanatory style was positively associated with NSSI and that pessimistic style functioned as a partial mediator of the childhood emotional abuse-NSSI relation. Clinical implications for mental health counselors are discussed.

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