Rev. Karen E. Herrick, PhD is the Director of the Center for Children of Alcoholics, Inc. in Red Bank, New Jersey. After her Master’s Degree in Social Work from Rutgers University, she originally began to educate families on the disease concept of alcoholism.
Dr. Herrick developed a successful private practice eventually seeing all types of people with psychological problems including addictions. She wrote her book "You’re Not Finished Yet" which encapsulates her private practice work plus an additional two chapters on spirituality and spiritual experiences after she had a Holy Spirit experience during Holotropic Breathwork training.
She attended more educational sessions in California through the Spiritual Emergence Network and eventually completed a PhD at the Union Institute & University in Cincinnati, Ohio. Her thesis was entitled "Naming Spiritual Experiences". 75% of the 133 mental health professionals she researched stated that they believed further education regarding spiritual experiences, near-death experiences (NDEs) and/or after-life experiences would be beneficial to them personally and professionally. During her therapeutic practice, she encourages some clients to visit with mediums to aide in handling their grief and loss of loved ones. She was ordained at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine and uses her Interfaith ministry to be actively involved in the Spiritual Psychology of William James, Carl Jung and Abraham Maslow. She has completed requirements for certification with the American Center for Integration of Spiritually Transformative Experiences (ACISTE). The mental health professionals she researched indicated they needed more networking opportunities. She hopes to aid in a consensus that spiritual experiences are happening, which will increase discussion and raise the percentage of the population from 40-50% of having these experiences to well over the 50% mark. In doing so, she will bring a 1880's term "Sane Hallucinations" into the world of psychology in order that people will understand that healthy people have the experiences of seeing their deceased loved ones and that they are not abnormal.
