Health-Related Spirituality: Empirical, Historical, and Conceptual Clarifications

To clarify the term of ‘health-related spirituality’, this chapter takes three approaches: historical research on the genealogy of this term, empirical research on current forms of spirituality, and conceptual analysis. An improved understanding of the many pasts of ‘spirituality’, of its distinct current usages, and of its multidimensionality, contributes to a better perception and understanding of the fluid, emergent and sometimes contradictory phenomena related to this term. It is argued that in the diversity of contemporary popular and academic usages of the term ‘spirituality’, distinguishable strands of a long conceptual history converge. This term’s success is that it transcends a duality constitutive of (Euro-American) modernity: the distinction between religious and secular. However, the integration of spiritual aspects responds not only to a societal change but also to a functional differentiation and reintegration in healthcare. Using the example of the World Health Organisation (WHO) discussion on the ‘spiritual dimension’ of health, it is pointed out that health-related spirituality is inevitably imbued with values and connected with healthcare politics and law.