Mental Health Ministry I
MENTAL HEALTH MINISTRY I
About the Author—Jennifer Elam is a licensed psychologist who has studied Quaker spirituality & Christian contemplatives & mystics. Sally Palmer became her art mentor at Pendle Hill during the 1996-1997 school year. Jennifer's media includes painting, writing, dancing, body prayer, drumming, book arts, paste papers, & life. She has led over 100 courses, workshops, and retreats in Arts and Spirituality. She has written 4 books. This pamphlet grew out of the work she did to integrate her career with her spiritual life.
Preface—God has always been central in my life. [As a 12-year old], I began asking questions, the answers to which I couldn't find in church. In college I sought answers through social sciences. With Quakers, I was challenged to find my unique path to God without rigid rules for seeking truth. I began to have experiences my profession would call "delusional." I didn't have a proper framework for understanding or naming my experiences. [My seeking brought me to Pendle Hill, contemplative life, & art. The desert fathers & mothers had experiences similar to mine, & art was a way of letting the Holy Spirit's energy flow through me]. At a conference for Quaker mystics, my 2 parallel tracks of child of God & psychologist met, clashed, & had to be reconciled.
Introduction—At a conference I led, a participant asked me to "dance your mysticism" in worship. I led them in a body prayer and they joined me in the dance. God choreographed that moment of worship, as I danced a connection of my physical being with the Divine. It was a union of that of God within me to that of God not in me, with joy the offspring. I am to allow and appreciate the gifts provided for me to do the work. The gifts include images, voices, Presences, and languages that sing and dance; they include separations that give a glimpse of a black pit so that I can discern right way in the moment.
Mystical experiences give me a glimpse of where true art, science, & religion come from. At Pendle Hill, I designed a project to support what I was learning. [At 1st I used my old social sciences methodologies]. Then I studied the Gospels like never before & continued my conversations with God. [I studied] Christian Mysticism, consciousness literature of the transpersonal psychologists, writings of early Quakers, & classical mystics. The [once] frightening experiences have become beautiful & personal metaphors & symbols of my deepest inner life.
I have become aware that some people don't have others to accompany them on their journeys; "accompaniers" are needed. [There is uncertainty in accompanying another]. One doesn't impose distinctions of: true or untrue; authentic or inauthentic; of God or not of God; mystical or mental illness. [One must honor the one being accompanied] and their unique experiences, allowing them to discern their own distinctions. It feels safer having doctrines and rules in religion and social sciences, but I don't believe it is safer. Real safety comes from seeking an ever larger Truth. [I have limited my search] only to provide a boundaried structure within which to seek.
Some, like Quakers, have safe places in which to share their experiences. Many do not share mystical experiences because they are afraid of being labeled crazy or formally diagnosed as mentally ill. The way of hel-ping required in this accompaniment role is different. I wanted to hide behind my professional role and distance myself from what I was hearing in mystical experience, because it triggered a part of myself that frightened me. An accompanier must be willing to know this part of oneself. [in spite of fearing] the fullness of God; they must be careful not to project that fear onto others.
This pamphlet is a glimpse of blessings I have received in being an accompanier. [The desire of mental health professionals to change how we treat mystical experiences] is strong. This pamphlet introduces my leading to address this concern & an invitation to Quakers to [join] in helping integrate the mystical. Here are stories of 10 others [with varying degrees] of knowing God's presence & / or the transformation of lives. I reflect on the mysticism & the mental illness in what I have heard. Then I describe a journey, a compilation of experiences that were repeated in many stories. It is a glimpse of the mystical that involves interweaving science, intuition, [spiritual guide, &] art. [I seek to smooth the rough edges of the integration of these different voices]. Each person has a unique prism through which to view mystical experiences. This pamphlet will serve its purpose when each listener feels drawn to the Source of creation & can connect with the Love & Truth [shared in these stories].
Called to the Presence—Anne is a Quaker woman aged 70 who taught in Quaker schools all her life. She said: "I was walking into meeting with the kids. There was this [timeless] moment ... of being part of a great unity and of being loved ... of being at one with God ... It was an experience of absolute knowing and [extreme Truth]. Mysticism is a God-connected experience ... I see a Quaker leading as like a mystical experience.
Abbie is a Quaker woman aged 65 and a teacher. She has had many openings, starting at a young age, that she needs to integrate into her life. She said: "When I was 8 or 9 ... I was quite upset that I hadn't been able to stop my dog's death ... [In the woods I cried and] was awakened by an enormous light that illuminated the woods and comforted me [with] a knowing, 'You are loved and all will be well' ... I had a dream [in which] there was terrifying energy ... Now I see it as the opening of ... energy from the Spirit ... [I have] an image of Jesus walking toward me ... I needed integration of the mystical aspect of my life ... with the rest of my life."
Patti is a Quaker woman aged 50 who has experienced God in "quaking" and in leadings for service. She said: "I have had a sense of being in the presence of Reality, the unity of all things God, and of guidance and fee-lings of a comforting presence ... the 1st was at age 8. It would have been helpful ... to speak to others ... who could help me put my experiences in perspective. [Since age 43,] I have been able to talk about these experiences with others who have had similar experiences."
Tom, 50, experiences God in nature, and said: "I didn't see an eagle. It had to do with the looking, preparedness, waiting, and the desire to see being so great. It was an instant ... beyond time—endless.
Ralph, 49, has had passionate experiences of Christ. He said: "I surrendered my will to God in meeting for worship, had a vision of gray-white robed hands coming down and resting on my shoulders ... and a gray-white home-spun woolen robe next to me on the facing bench ... I entered a new level of stillness that didn't end with meeting. 2 years [later] the stillness is still available to me ... I never felt as though I was going crazy ... My purpose in life has changed from improving the City of Man to upholding and bringing forth the City of God ... I am suspicious of a mysticism which disdains the affairs of daily life."
Margaret is a Quaker, aged 51, who struggled with her leadings; then her mini-stry became clear. She said: "The first time I was aware of the mystical was over 6 years ago in meeting for worship after my father died. I felt embraced by love—an almost physical feeling of God's arms around me. Worship was also filled with messages and each one, spoken by total strangers, spoke directly to me. Out of that worship grew a clear call to ministry [and reconciliation, to reconcile with a damaged relationship, my call to ministry, and painful abuses of the past through counseling].
Marjorie is a Quaker, aged 52; her ministry has emerged in leadership among Friends. She said: "At age 21, I began a science teaching career which ended abruptly with a nervous breakdown & suicide attempt ... I had a mystical experience when I was 28, [although I had] previously thought of myself as an atheist ... I was some-how taken up into the mysteries of the Universe ... I felt connected to a benevolent power that is hard to express in words ... This one experience was sufficient to determine my life thereafter ... Some months later I fell into a strange depression, [different from the suicidal depression of years before] ... Given the profound mystical experience ... I feared I was going mad ... I had an amazing dream; [accepting an offer] of the Kingdom of Heaven [would mean] that I would die. I felt called to stay in the world in order to help others find God ... My spirituality has grown and blossomed over the years. The conflict [between beliefs within Friends] is like a stormy sea in which the deeper you go, the calmer the water becomes. I think my purpose is how I can encourage such depth.
Annie, age 43, attended Quaker meeting for many years but has now found a faith community elsewhere. She believes her several [psychological] hospitalizations have been an important step in bringing her closer to her unique path. She said: "In my last job as a corporate trainer I broke down. I had a mystical experience and traumatic childhood memories [returned] ... It took 3 psychotic episodes to break down the old, idealized self-image ... "Voices" led me to do [crazy] things. The craziness cleared the way for a new self to grow—one capable of setting boundaries, speaking truth, and discerning the way."
"Before my breakdown I was unaware of the importance of containers. A the time of the breakdown, I was very open and had good access to material that had been buried for years. The issue was not opening up more material, but simply working with and containing what was now conscious. To build a container, one must first know how critical it is. Psychic material is like precious water. It needs to be held safely so it can be processed, resolved and learned from; the sturdier the container, the safer it is. How do you create a safe container [for the more volatile, difficult memories of life]? What needs to be held, for how long, in what circumstances? Sources for containment [include] a journal, a therapist, [a people network], activities, small groups, and communities. You need a good match between what needs to be contained and the container."
Jean, age 60, is a Quaker who has been a nurse. She feels strongly that the medical profession wasn't helpful to her. She said: "In 1984, I had an experience of being opened in ways that I had no prior concept of. [I had heightened sight, hearing, & smell, the last sense being without outer explanation]. I was part of historical events [as though they were] taking place now [e.g. crucifixion, holocaust]. I was experiencing tremendous love & power ... & a new & strong sense of inner guidance that gave me strength to accept what was happening. I was unable to watch or read about violence ... [without] reacting as if that violence was occurring to me ..."
"The explanation that fits my experience is the "kundalini awakening" described by Hindu tradition and early Christians. Many are able to accept & eventually integrate [this] into their lives. Others are frightened & try to forget, or to find help through the medical system, becoming labeled as "mentally ill" ... I knew I was having a spiritual experience. I also knew there was no way I could convince anyone of this ... During my 10-day stay in a psychiatric unit, I did not speak of my experiences ..."
"There was no support from others for what I was experiencing ... I was able to cope with changes because of the sense of a loving guidance & support within myself that was the source of my strength ... I became aware of where to find answers to what had happened to me ... A person needs to tell what is happening to them without judgment on the part of the listener ... Health Care professionals don't understand these experiences so they need to take a learning perspective rather than seeing themselves as experts; they are not in [the spiritual] arena. [They need to] listen to and respect the experience."
Helene, age 20, is a Quaker who was hospitalized for 10 days for a psychotic break, apparently feels no shame about it, and was only supported and not shamed by her mother and community. She said: "I see mysticism as the drama of a human psyche opening to, relating to, a wider consciousness. Among my experiences has been an extreme feeling of openness and love, a swelling of spiritual and psychological energy. The episode was a necessary growing point to see far and feel deeply. The rest of me had to catch up. In the hospital they let me have the space I needed to write and process what was going on inside of me; that was helpful. I treasure my experiences and don't wish to have others' skepticism color them. The episode began when I felt I had to look for my Source outside of self. I would love to hear about the experiences of others.
Relationship of Mysticism & Mental Illness—What is the effect on a person's soul of declaring God experiences "inauthentic," "false," or "delusional?" How does it feel to have to choose between denying ones [spiritual] center [in deference to] society's demands, & getting stuck with the label "crazy?" How do we respond to conflict between society's demands & our [spiritual] experiences? At what cost?
There is no clear, [universal] line between what is & isn't mental illness. There are only judgments & assessments made in relation to our experience & other's experience. Often experiences get labeled pathological when the assessor doesn't understand them or hasn't dealt with unacknowledged fears. I believe we have often set over-ly self-protective boundaries harmful to those we assess. What are the common overlapping experiences [of those labeled mystical & those labeled psychotic]? If expanded consciousness experiences are of low intensity & one has a religious frame of reference, it is labeled religious or spiritual. If the experience is intense & unfamiliar & the person is unable to contain & integrate the experience positively, it is likely to be labeled illness.
When we don’t honor that call we often become impotent in our actions. With more resistance, our lives go from impotence to alienation [and God’s “absence.” Behavior in alienation can easily be] labeled psychotic.
Elements of Mysticism and Mental Illness—[I found many of the same elemental experiences in different accounts labeled as either mystical or mental illness]. Helene agreed with psychiatrists that mysticism and mental illness are made of many of the same experiences. She believed that none of her experiences needed to be pathologized; they all had a purpose. I discovered a description of the journey to God. These journeys have [in common] stages that I describe as: calling; fork in the road; alienation or connection. [The journey may start in childhood with a deep sense of connectedness with God. With the calling] something different happens inside.
Further openings to God often occur when our usual defenses are lowered or overwhelmed; we are left vulnerable. The stronger the person is in terms of things our culture values (good job, prestige, political status), the harder the fall must be to render us vulnerable and open to change. When one is vulnerable, regardless of [being spiritually or psychotically inspired], the outward behavior looks the same. We sometimes experience openings as a result of seeking; often they come as a gift of grace. People become aware of [God's] presence in the form of help, guidance, or consolation. Other signs may include heightened senses and body movements like quaking. Dreams [at all times of the day, sleeping or while awake] become more meaningful. While we often feel a strong desire to tell our experiences to others, words seem inadequate. Their meanings have changed, and we are not sure what they mean to others. Creative expression becomes a more effective means of expression. Logic and linear thinking that have served us well in the past no longer serve. [The focus of our] concentration may change. There is a sense of needing to do God's work as was intended for us to do.
Some report "psychic" experiences. They seem to be possible because we have been opened to what we usually don't have access to: the spiritual realm. As we go deeper, the voices and visions continue and become stronger. Temporal and spatial boundaries are altered in many ways or are transcended. Many experience a Dark Night, and describe it as having their lives stripped, much as the layers of an onion are stripped away. The stripping causes many changes in life. When there are drastic changes, there is a sense of loss, and grief, with its denial, rage, depression, and eventual acceptance. Our lesson is to learn faith and to know that God is there.
A hard part of this Dark Night includes a pull toward nothingness; all is gone except the pain. Our deepest fear is of non-being and nothingness. How are we to give the pain to God and trust, when God seems to have abandoned us, [when there is no sense of God's presence? How are we to jump into nothingness with faith without evidence that it makes sense to do so? We are to know that the darkness is warm and full of creation energy, even if we can't see it. When we reach faith in God's presence, we fly.
A Fork in the Road [to: Alienation]—How we frame experiences [of the pain of isolation] is critical. Pain is either: redeemable & has purpose; or unredeemable, without purpose & must be stopped. A fork in the road occurs. Our decision-making process here is different from past decision-making. Decisions must be pondered deeply; we need our clearest sense of [True] Self as God created us. [All childhood experiences, habits, & defenses facilitated growth]. Now they can be let go of to allow new growth, healthier traits & habits.
At the fork in the road, one becomes stuck in a feeling of alienation, isolation, & disconnectedness in which one can't reach God or other humans. After glimpsing this path, there is movement toward God, & knowing that God is present no matter what. Many are diagnosed with psychosis based on visions, voices, & presence, without considering their positive or negative effect one's life. [Likewise non-professionals will label the above experiences "crazy"; clergy will say God no longer speaks to people in an actual voice as in the Bible. The message not to honor our inner guide, not to move [toward] God's and our unique purpose and True Self comes in many forms. When we don’t honor that call we often become impotent in our actions. With more resistance, our lives go from impotence to alienation [and God’s “absence.” Behavior in alienation can easily be] labeled psychotic.
`A Fork in the Road [to: Connection]—Or, we answer our call. It is a process of letting go of those parts of ourselves that served us well in the past but are not functional now, and of finding that strongest part of our-selves that is God within us, our truest identity. "Ego" is used to mean both pride or status seeking and a strong sense of one's unique God-given identity. It is a mistake to teach obedience to God that requires total submission, before a person has a chance to become strong and well-developed. [Otherwise], it is unlikely they can contain the [intense spiritual] energy; their behavior is likely to get them into trouble.
Ego strength gives one a sense of who to talk to about what & when. The input of others can make a difference. They can provide the container when the ego strength is faltering. [Life can become very good in a place of connection]. [However], there is much back & forth or circular movement along the way. The [sometimes tough] path takes us to a deepening desire for God & for living God's will. There is a "knowing" what they need to do, & then there is a knowing that this is a waiting time, which is hard for those who have developed their identity around giving to others. Efforts to return to service [too soon] are ineffective. Work is no longer for the [old, self-centered reasons]. Work is now for living out co-creation with God. We need to provide safe containers or environments in which people may share their mystical experiences and model that sharing for the wider society. Diversity must be acknowledged & respected. What needs to contained must also be acknowledged.
Containers—Alan W. Jones writes: "When we are content to wait, the human heart's infinite emptiness is transformed into an eager emptiness waiting to be filled. This formlessness needs an outer structure ... The mystery is a jewel that needs a setting." A "container" is a safe environment in which to be with the experience. The "setting" [needed] is a place for: celebrating the joy; listening that goes to deep spiritual levels; containing intense energy; & supporting those in crisis. We need to say "thank you" for the joy; deep spiritual listening to others. A person in crisis needs accompaniment and love; in severe crisis it may need to be 24-hours-a-day. Choosing mental health professionals informed about and sympathetic to the work of the Spirit is crucial. Choosing spiritual directors who know when to ask for therapeutic help is equally critical. Meetings need to identify these people in their community before a crisis occurs to have easy access during a crisis.
Mental Health professionals are willing but unprepared to work with "religious or spiritual problems." Quakers have provided leadership in the mental health field in the past and are in a good position to do so again. To do so affirms the Quaker testimonies of "that of God in everyone"; equality testimony; and peace testimony [i.e. world peace necessitates that people 1st make peace with themselves, and then with each other]. Compassion is at the root of our values and is especially needed here. The accompaniment role I have learned is similar to the Quaker elders traditional role, [i.e.] providing support and accountability in a loving way with God as the center. I am called to a dance of loving accompaniment with people having out-of-the-ordinary experiences of God. The dance floor is made of respect, honesty, nonjudgement, and compassion. Prayer is the basic dance step. God is the choreographer. I am grateful for the dance. I invite you to join in.
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About the Author—Carol Murphy is a writer on religious philosophy & pastoral psychology; she came to Pendle Hill as a religious philosophy student. She studied pastoral counseling at: Garrett Biblical Institute, MA Gen. Hospital, & Worcester State Hospital. This is her 3rd PHP pamphlet; she writes other articles in her field.
[Introduction]—Behind stone walls & barred windows of the mental hospital, you hear the shouts & cursing of those living in private worlds of mental confusion. [You go inside the locked ward, & receive] greetings from individuals with real personalities, pathetically eager for companionship, & you feel great compassion. There are 3 stages of feelings hospital workers have toward mental patients: initial shock of meeting uncontrolled & occasionally violent inhabitants; self-protective frivolity & indifference; awareness of each patient's fears & hungers. Of what concern is the mentally ill's world to the sane & secure? The Society of Friends has long tried to bring the redemptive power of religion, with its peace & love testimony, to the mentally ill.
["We differ only in degree"]—One who digs down to the common humanity underlying us all sees that the mentally ill's troubles differ only in degree from "normal" troubles. Whereas the "normal's" symptoms and defenses are small, the psychotic's symptoms are conspicuous and disabling; the psychotic's soul is bare and vulnerable, a captive to one's past. Most of us have our blind-spots. The psychotic denies frightening reality and lives a world of fantasy. A sense of kinship rather than of distance is a necessity in understanding the psychotic mind.
A healthy person has a healthy ego, a controlling, rational function, which needs few inner defenses and attacks problems constructively, [working] like a secure and democratic government. A neurotic person has a repressive, defensive, rigid ego, something like a repressive dictatorship. The psychotic person has such a weak ego that untamed impulses and childish thinking terrorize or overwhelm one, something like a country in revolt, with armed mobs and disrupted communications. All of us, like governments at war, tend to adopt censoring, hopeful lies, rationalizing, scapegoats, and tend to succumb to a strong man when native resources fail.
Another avenue of understanding psychosis is a person's perception of & attitude toward ones feelings. A person with a failure in self-awareness may feel deeply threatened by others' appraisals of one, when one is unable to estimate oneself. The psychotic has lost the sense of ones own boundaries. One may disown one's feelings as alien invaders injected into ones mind by enemies. To the schizophrenic psychotic everyone is father & mother, & one repeats with them the love & hate which began as a child in ones unsatisfactory child / parent relationship. [Figures of speech about the body take on literal meaning for the psychotic]. Delusions about appearance can really symbolize self-disgust. [They don't develop beyond the childhood thinking process] with its private meanings & fantasies; [they never fully connect] with concepts having a meaning common to other minds.
In the schizophrenic, thinking becomes isolated from feeling, one thought becomes disconnected; logical coherence is lost. The mentally ill have lost their wholeness; in the end they find it hard to even become individuals. [Wholeness with others and individuality are 2 basic spiritual needs]. Alienation may be seen in the loss of control over self, confusion of thought, loss of contact with reality, and mingling love and hate in personal relationships. What causes such illness? We must never forget the person as a whole in a search for a particular "cause." Mental illness often arises from the failure of the first and most formative relationship of parent and child. The mental patient may never have learned to love or be loved during the founding of their personality. [First, let us consider a patient with paranoid ideas of persecution & seek a compassionate understanding of her].
"An Enemy Hath Done This"—Mary Brown enjoyed some simple country pleasures; what left deeper impressions was the drudgery of work, & her father's critical illness. She married a much older man to get away from home, & complained of ill health, some of it genuine, some not. She began to claim that certain people were trying to inject diseases into her. After several mental hospital admissions, she has since become unable to adjust to living outside. Our ability to learn from life lies in a sphere of "feedback" between encounter with reality & our perception of reality. Learning can lead to a vicious circle of self-limitation or to a self-correcting transformation by renewal of the mind.
Mary felt left out of the circle of family affection. If hard work didn't get her attention or affection, she herself could be nursed, like her father was. But when the family became impatient, she crawled out of bed to return to work. Marriage was a frustration that only increased loneliness & hostility. Ones own hostility frightens a paranoid, & you might say that one denies awareness of it in ones self, & projects it upon others, or ones own reactions appear to one as poisonous injections or insidious diseases. One then rationalizes this interpretation into a delusional system by means of a closed-circle thinking, [where past conclusions shape interpretations so they prove the same conclusions]; this system doesn't allow for the creative inconsistency of new discovery.
A paranoid's false certainty builds a false reality that grows farther & farther away from common agreement with others; [it becomes harder & harder to maintain]. Theological systems & Freudian psycho-analytical systems are in danger of becoming delusional [as well as dogmatic]. Healthy thinking is open-ended, ready to balance differences between past & present situations, seeing new perceptions as challenges rather than a paranoid's catastrophic threat. [Probably] her feelings of hostility rose to the point where she had to disown them; they appeared as plots against her & cancer injections. We now have the picture of an older woman, living in a private hell where she loves no one, no one loves her, or wants to live with her. [So she winds up in a mental hospital].
The Relevance of Religion—What is religion's answer to inner, private hells? The Mrs. Browns in the hospital receive some satisfaction for their claims for dependency and protection, but the atmosphere is necessarily impersonal. How can religion help convey to a patient a deep respect & a love which can pierce below the unlovable, demanding neediness to the true need for love? As psychiatry sees mental illness' root in failure of love, so religion, with agape love as the universe's structure, must join with psychotherapy in supplying remedial love; healing religion supports sane thinking with transcendence. Religion must help the isolated mind out of its closed squirrel-cage of thought. Religion is a search for an absolute, an uncaptured & transcendent truth which breaks open human systems & make them all seem relative. Growing religion has creative tension with the transcendent, & reaches for ever more inclusive truth, "that perpetual conversation ... a continuous inner self-estrangement & conflict, which is religious life's very breath & joy" [von Hügel]. It can embrace joy & suffering unafraid. A sane religion must find reconciliation in tragedy's heart; it must bear both Cross & Crown.
["Salvation of Sick Minds and Souls"]—Religion must bring salvation. The salvation of sick minds & souls comes through an experience of relationship that is symbolic of man's relationship with the Ground of being. One accepts oneself as accepted by God, & grows toward [a loosely defined, ever-expanding goal]. The minister of this sacramental relationship is being Christ to one's neighbor. How do rituals, theologies, & church activities help Mrs. Brown in her bitter loneliness? The Lord's Supper's proverbial nonverbal symbolism can be used to convey the divine love to those who can't be reached by words. Theological language that offers Christ & not just Christology can be used. The power of love means the ability to perform the work of love in transforming soul & society. Acting on principle means finding the working principle of things. We must learn to understand & cooperate with the workings of God. Religious psychotherapy & pastoral care is the study of how to apply the power of loving and understanding relationship. We must be controlled by the power we channel.
The Healing Relationship—What are the signs and effects of the healing relationships? It relies on understanding rather than judging, participation rather than withdrawal, and a thinking with rather than for or about one. The eye of love sees behind the behavior to the heart of the person, seeing all that he thinks and does in the light of ones own individual whole, judging one by the secret identity that God has prepared for one. The therapist loves in the name of Jesus, who remains the symbol of God's love even after humanity did its worst. [People] are put in a special category of the "insane" so that society may take a different attitude toward them.
The Christian, who sees that all have their measure of both destiny and freedom, is not interested in blame or excuses. "It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that God's works might be made manifest in him" [John 9.3]. It is particularly important in dealing with paranoid patients to sympathize with their feelings while being skeptical of their reasoning. It is hard thus to stand half in and half out of someone's mental outlook. [The pamphlet provides a patient / counselor dialog, where the patient expresses feelings of abandonment and anxiety, and accusations of mental torture, medical and procedural neglect (some most likely untrue), and the counselor responds with reflective listening and sympathetic, yet somehow non-commital answers]. The therapist must somehow stay clear of the patient's paranoid thinking without arguing, judging, or making an absolute of one's own system of thought. Both must venture forth into the larger truth together. God as truth must give a frame of reference larger than that of either the counselor or patient, by which both are measured.
[Realizing Ones Sickness]—To make the patient relinquish one's false world, one must realize ones own sickness. [While the state hospital seems ugly, confined, & unsympathetyic to patient & counselor], it must be remembered that mental patients, like the rest of us, blame [outside] circumstances for what is really an internal state of suffering, inward isolation & emotional confinement. When [hospital] patients know enough to be dissatisfied with their own inner condition, there is hope they can change, & even leave. [They must develop] the ability to face & endure the pervasive, formless anxiety the symptoms tried to relieve, & to find a better way of life.
Like all great teachers of the spirit, Socrates urged the supreme importance of soul-therapy. His argument strategy was to clear his pupils' minds of unexamined opinions so that truth could enter; a state of aporia or helplessness, [a realization of ignorance], and a craving to know is the precondition of new insight. Deep transformation comes from something more than bewilderment; there must be a recognition of psychological and spiritual perplexity. Jesus' harvest was among sinners, those rejected by Jewish society to which they normally belonged, and who might be willing to abandon their old outlook and life—and be born again.
The mental patient then, must recognize his poverty of spirit. How can the patient admit illness if mental illness is seen as a threatening judgment or the stigma of disease? How can the counselor acknowledge ones own distance from the Truth, or one's unconscious feeling that mental illness is shameful? [Hopefully, with] the therapist's acceptance, the patient begins to see one's mental symptoms as a series of defenses which can be dropped as one's isolation is overcome. The therapist has to work with a patient's ego, which is both friend and enemy to healing; it both seeks reality and erects stubborn defenses against realizations that threaten the self's integrity. Often the therapist has to supply the psychotic person with self-control and a sense of reality, by bringing an over-excited or fantasying patient back to everyday fact. [Deeper and deeper] therapeutic relationship should be able to strengthen them; toward this end religion and therapy must work together.
One of the clinical training movement's pioneers was Anton Boisen, a minister who became mentally ill himself, and from that realized the religious significance of mental crises. His training program includes direct contact with patients supplemented by lectures. The religious counselor collaborates with each of the other professional groups, each of whom performs their complementary function, and knows when to ask the others' help. The religious counselor has the opportunity to see a person in the ultimate context of ones relationship with God, bring that relationship to one, and to be sensitive to the need for more skilled help if it should arise.
The Ultimate Reward—The mentally ill show us in large the blind alley defenses, confusion, alienation from self, society and God from which we all suffer in some measure. We discover our own weakness and also the underlying structure of relationship which can use us as its binding and healing agents. This work is ... the reconciliation of the world to God as Truth by God as Love. In contact with the mentally ill we can learn the sensitive serenity, disciplined compassion which are essential to the work. With their stripes we are healed.
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67. The Ministry of Counseling (by Carol R. Murphy; 1952)
[About the Author]/ PREFACE—She was born in Boston, MA, Dec. 1916 (died 1994). After home schooling in rural MA, the family moved to the Philadelphia area; Carol attended Quaker schools. In 1928 the family became convinced Friends. She graduated Swarthmore Class of 1937 & earned an M.A. in International Affairs at American Univ. in 1941. She began her association with Pendle Hill in 1947. This pamphlet is the 2nd of 17 that she was to write. She devoted most of her life to the study of religious philosophy & pastoral psychology.
This essay arises from a concern to bring together a living religion of the Holy Spirit with a recent [development] in therapeutic counseling [connected with] a deep respect for the human spirit. My thoughts have grown and clarified in contact with my teachers and fellow students at Pendle Hill, Garrett Biblical Institute, and Syracuse University. I have embodied many of their ideas in what follows.
"Our labor is to bring all ... to their own teacher in themselves"—George Fox
[Introduction]—Perhaps one day, [someone will come to you because of your religious faith and ask to talk about themselves and their feelings of inadequacy, their doubts about God, their frustrations with themselves]. As the one appealed to, you may feel equally helpless. How does salvation of the soul include release from anxiety & meaninglessness? You may feel you have a Christian duty to help. What does it mean to help someone? How can one help another towards spiritual strength or renewed faith? How do I deal with a case of mental illness?
You may conclude that this sort of help can only be given by expert guidance counselors or psychiatrists. But the question of religion's relevance [to the problem won't come up]. What responsibility does religion have to find means of making a real difference in human lives? How can psychotherapy seek to relate itself to religion's ultimate concern? A conversation between psychotherapy & religion [will help] religious workers wanting a clearer definition of what helps people's minds & hearts, & to all who want to demonstrate that faith can make a difference in life's everyday relationships. This pamphlet will help to see the possibility of a more delicate & thorough-going co-operation with divine love. Each of us must determine how one will use the spirit of counseling in one's work.
The Promise of Religion—Great promises of transformation of personality is found in II Cor. 5:17, John 3:7, Romans 12:2, & Gal. 2:20. Christianity at its best conceived of the religious way as joy & fulfillment. Newness of life & fresh perception of the beauty & omnipresence of God [is found there]. Buddhists & Laotzu also struck a note of fullness of life. Religion has called on all humans to enter into a new dimension of [fully living & being]. It is holy joy which is the heart of living religion. [Some reject this], preferring the comfortable discomfort of their neuroses.
As a practical way of transformation, Christian tradition has offered the individual growth through the loving community; a personality can grow best in an atmosphere of mutual love; salvation isn't solitary. How have Christians given or not given God's love & understanding effectively? Many religious people have deeply buried spiritual diseases that needed greater self-understanding than was available for healing. To discover the nature of agape love we must go to those who actually give love, & describe what they do & what results. If we believe that transformation is a work of God 's love we will expect to find in psychotherapy more evidence of the nature & power of love.
The Contribution of Psychotherapy—Psychotherapists have found they can best deal with a personal problem by transforming the person who has the problem. Psychotherapy has changed from the medical look on mental illness to an educational outlook. The therapist-teacher may offer coaching in new conditioned responses, or give the "student" a great degree of freedom to reach one's own insights & view one's own behavior. Adjustment is an inadequate goal for therapy, because mental health is more than docility to folkways. Dr. A. H. Maslow finds the supremely sane to have the qualities of lovingkindness, mystical consciousness, willingness to be unconventional & to face the unknown without fear, & appreciation of everyday life. He calls them self-actualizing. Therapists are learning to trust the therapy process to lead their patients into undiscovered wholeness of life, rather than to stop short at any specific goal.
The psychotherapist brings a single-minded concentration on the inner springs of personality. Since therapy requires discovery of what one's self really is, the therapist must offer the patient unwavering respect without threat of withdrawal or hope of favor. Through this therapeutic attitude, we have come to a closer description of agape, God's creative love. Agape doesn't have to be deserved, & gives freedom to the loved one to become what one inwardly is. What is the place of God in counseling? As Love, God is present in therapeutic love as its very source & ground. [In contrast], much of psycho-analytical theorizing seems to come from a contempt for people rather than love for them; a second-hand materialistic philosophy is also involved. The religious person will look for a theory which proceeds from a reverence for the human spirit & makes no unexamined & outworn assumptions about ultimate reality.
Non-directive Therapy—Nearly all schools of thoughts in psychotherapy agree upon the value of understanding and acceptance, and there is a growing tendency to rely on the patient's ability to reach one's own insights when thus understood and accepted. [In reality], one finds a greater or lesser measure of suggestion, interpretation, approval and warning, which makes the patient feel inferior to and dependent on the all-wise therapist. One is astonished at the amount of subtle pressure and threat unconsciously employed in most human relationships, and the extent to which another's goals are made normative for someone.
Consistency in avoiding manipulation & responsibility for the patient's behavior in non-directive therapy is difficult. It is daily decisions in favor of love rather than coercion. It is an attitude of humble willingness to be taught rather than to teach, to be guided rather than to guide, which is the foundation of a consistently loving therapy. Non-directive counselors offer neither interpretation nor ambiguous silence. One tries to understand step by step along with one's client, sensing what one's client is feeling. The therapist's task is to go into the client's private world, & look through the client's eyes. For a sensitive therapist that must surely be a nearly mystical union.
A simple method of "reflecting" and clarifying a client's feeling can bridge the gap between one mind and another. Being tempted to either satisfy a client's explicit need, or to judge & tell the client it is not good for the client is to make one a child rather than an adult. The therapist will be able to accept and clarify a need without meeting it. [None of the labels—non-directive, client-centered, self-directive, spirit-centered, light-centered—are inclusive enough of the counselor/client/more-than-self inter-relationships, or easily understood by both the religious and non-religious]; "non-directive" is used here for convenience.
"Seeing is Behaving"—It is the possession of consistent convictions which distinguishes nondirective therapy from the techniques used by therapists & guidance counselors. The eclectic methods include a shotgun approach using procedures from shock therapy to reassurance, or a "wonder drug," favorite panacea given to all patients, an anxious rush into planless action. In reality, researchers in the non-directive field have worked toward a hypothesis to which techniques must be relevant, leading to a [positive] attitude in therapy which techniques spontaneously express; behaviorism is the opposite approach, dealing with external, objective absolutes.
A scientific law specifies that "This thing under these conditions will do thus and so." Scientists have now realized that the world of their theories is a hypothetical construct which provides a consistent background to individual experiences which alone seem real to us. This new thinking is called "phenomenological theory." The new theory concentrates on the individual consciousness as perceiver, and makes no claims concerning the nature of "reality." The human organism is one that must maintain and protect itself [and make sense of what it sees with] snap judgments concerning the meaning of reality. We cut up and reassemble the continuity of experience in ways taught us by our mother tongue. The peculiarity of perception is not only human or cultural, but also individual. The personal perspective and context of yourself, ordered by your needs and values, is in turn the determinant of your behavior. [In order to understand the meaning of someone's behavior we must ask]: How must one feel in order to act as one does? How would I have to feel if I were to behave like that? To change behavior, it is the perception of self and situation that must be changed. The only test of a field of perception is its adequacy in the experience of its possessor; learning increases that adequacy and clarity of perception.
In the new conception of the world, there is no "object" or "subject." "Mind & "world" are creative of each other, & are no more to be separated from each other than circumference from the area of the circle. There is one patterned field of which subject & object are interdependent poles. In psychology, the personality can't be understood apart from the situation it is in, nor can the situation be the same without the personality that perceives it.
Relevance to Religion/Moral Standards—This revolution in thought closes the supposed gap between "objective" science & religious commitment. The phenomenological theory supports the objection to the purely external evaluation of another, & calls for knowledge of the person through participation in their internal frame of reference. Many psychologists are unable to free themselves from the older subjective psychology completely to embrace the full philosophical implications of the new way of thought. The field concept provides religion a consistent, credible way of conceiving God's immanence in the human spirit. God & humans aren't one, & they aren't 2. The newer trend in scientific thinking can build a strong philosophical foundation for insights that religious seers have never been able to justify through more traditional ways of thinking. In time, still wider & more adequate philosophical frames of reference will have to be constructed to encompass the further growth of truth.
The counselor must give up the search for an "objective" interpretation of the client by case-history and diagnosis, nor can one judge mental "illness" by one's own opinion of what "reality" is. The counselor can only [trust and enable] the reorganization that takes place in therapy. The religious person must replace their own opinions or an authoritarian doctrine with faith in the working of the Holy Spirit toward a divine end beyond our cultural horizons. The urge to personal growth is the power of God working in us. Standards must be thought of as dynamic rather than static, as transcending human opinion, and uniting humankind by free reconciliation.
Those who share the spirit of nondirective therapy have the best kind of conscience, with a growing inner consistency which sets them apart from petty authoritarian practices. A human is affected only by what the environment means to one, and by one's own interpretation of one's memories. Consciousness becomes an active agent of behavior. What we see determines what we are and what we are determines what we see. The concept of sin in its emotional aspect, does not proceed from agape, but from the approval-disapproval attitude of moralism which agape supersedes. As long as agape is at hand to guide perception, redemption is possible. Jesus once implied that one might have such a rigid perceptual structure as to be incapable of seeing new and greater values. The entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven meant for Jesus just such a radical reformulation of one's way of perceiving as the conventional adult finds almost impossible.
The Process of Therapy—The reorganization of self and perception takes place in various degrees in the course of therapy. One derives a perception of one's self partly from the opinions of others and partly from experience of ones own needs and capabilities. An important part of the experience of therapy is learning from the attitude of the therapist that one is capable of becoming adequate to life. The practice of faith-healing might be redeemed from the realm of superstition by being reformulated to experience and trust the full capacities of the psycho-physical organism and the Spirit immanent within it.
There is also the need to be acceptable to others and to conform to their standards of what the self should be. When one tries to meet the terms of a conditional love, one then becomes estranged from one's own experience; not meeting their terms risks estrangement from others. There is an unacknowledged part of the self that is fearful because it is feared; shameful because it is condemned; and irrational because it is not admitted to reason. In the freedom of therapy one comes to a better estimate of one's strengths and weaknesses; one can bear to see one's self more completely. The therapist 's unconditional accepting attitude is a mediation of God's forgiveness.
What is the "self" that one must "forget" and "lose?" [That self is the one] we think we are, or the self the world expects us to be. The self we are to develop is the self of our potentialities, [God's idea of our best self]. We can't set the limit at which we stop growing; we must always be open to further growth in directions that may surprise us. It must be remembered that the self is [actually] a field which interpenetrates all perceived reality and which can be consciously extended to include other selves or all humanity. [Perhaps the universe is developing through the various perceiving aspects [of itself.]
Non-directive therapy prefers to speak of experience being admitted to or denied, differentiated or undifferentiated, to the Jungian terms Conscious & Unconscious. Denied experience speaks to us in disguise, [which is dropped] only when the conscious self can bear the revelation. Therapists more & more let growing self find its acceptable time for new insights. A dream has a message for the dreamer, but different canons of dream interpretation reveal as much of Freud's or Jung's or Erich Fromm's personalities as they do the dreamers' personalities. The non-directive counselor provides the atmosphere favorable for self-made analysis of symbols. Jungian art therapy could broaden & deepen the more verbal course of non-directive therapy. Some non-directive interviews have been almost completely silent, with the counselor's acceptance coming across nonetheless.
Education for therapy—Training in counseling consists in finding out what attitudes the student actually has, and helping him to define more adequately one's perception of the nature of therapy and the role one plays in it. Learning to accept and respect many kinds of people is moral rebirth at the deepest level. The heart of non-directive training lies in free discussion of the deepest issues of therapy and in actual counseling experience. The non-directive counselor must judge one's own readiness for counseling others. No one outside of a person can judge that person's capabilities. And there is no common agreement among schools of psychotherapy as to acceptable public qualifications of professional therapists.
If a non-directive counselor feels clear in one's convictions, if one feels warm acceptance for the client before one, if one's methods express one's spontaneity, then one is qualified for that case. The wise therapist will come to know the point at which one's personal adequacy ceases. Psychoses are as much an attempt to cope with a perceived threat to the idea of self as are more "normal" behavior. The counselor may find one has reached the limit of one's ability to accept; the counselor must able to accept one's own lack of acceptance. Wise is the counselor who by awareness of one's own viewpoint is able to remain inwardly free from it.
Applications—Although not every not every human relationship can or should be made a counseling relationship, there are no bounds to the relevance of an inner attitude of acceptance and understanding in communicating with others. [The church can be koinonia] if we learn to live in the therapeutic spirit. The development of group therapy is one step in this direction. Small cells of transformation can be formed. The practice of non-violence can also receive reinforcement and refinement from wisdom concerning coercion and aggression that psychology is beginning to acquire. Spiritual coercion is increasingly seen as more destructive than physical force. Sensitivity to this kind of coercion can help religious people themselves to avoid methods tainted by this pressure. The therapeutic spirit accepts needs and desires but does not feel that they all should be equally met.
In religious education, the religious teacher must offer not labels spelled "God" or "Christ" but actual experience of agape. True education nurtures the insights that unite knowledge with behavior and ability with desire, changing one's life, not merely one's ideas. The non-directive attitude will make us forswear indoctrination and recall us to our inward Teacher, it will also make us unashamed of having a religious point of view.
Culture addresses each human's ultimate concern, and is therefore inescapably religious. The answers to ultimate questions, if they are living and truthful, will judge and transform the culture that gave it birth. A religion of agape can greatly help provide education with integration around a human's ultimate concern which proceeds from life-transforming experience rather than empty speculation. All religion asks of psychotherapy is that God be given a chance to will and to do of God's good pleasure in us.
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104. Psychoanalysis and Religious Mysticism (by David C. McClelland; 1959)
About the Author—David C. McClelland received his Ph.D from Yale (1941) & is now Professor of Psychology at Harvard. He has served at The Ford Foundation & on national & international committees in the field of psychology. He has written the books, Personality, and The Achievement Motive. This pamphlet's substance was given as a Philips lecture at Haverford; its present form was used in a lecture at Princeton Seminary.
[Introduction]—It is part of the professional role of the scientist to remain in a state of suspended judgment and objectivity so far as many of life's most serious issues are concerned. Very few intellectuals in my circle take Christianity seriously except as an historical or social phenomenon. It is apparently just as inconceivable for a US President to be irreligious as it is for a professor of psychology to be religious. Even undergraduates have a similar attitude and a reluctance to talk about their religious convictions.
I have had to overcome considerable internal resistance to reveal even a little of my personal religious convictions. In talking about the unconscious religious assumptions of psychoanalysis, I thought it only fair to reveal my own, and whatever bias I might have, so that it might be discounted and corrected by others. My carefully nurtured spirit [has roots in] my Huguenots and Presbyterian ancestors, my Covenanter mother, my Methodist minister father, and my own beliefs as a convinced Quaker.
[Psychoanalysis and Christianity for Intellectuals]—Psychoanalysis is enthusiastically accepted, or at least taken seriously by the same men who ignore or despise Christianity. In Cambridge where I live it is difficult to spend an evening without discussing some aspect of psychoanalysis. It is not overtly a religious movement, but it is a social movement, and its leading practitioners have charisma. They are looked up to, admired and seen as being beyond ordinary humans, much as ministers and priests have been at various times in the past. Psychoanalysis heals. It has many of the characteristics of a religious movement.
Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain describes Dr. Krokowski, a lecturing psychoanalyst: "He was standing ... with his arms outstretched and his head to one side ... like Christ on the Cross. It seemed [that] with open arms he summoned all and sundry to ... 'Come unto me, all ye who are weary and heavy laden' ... [To him], all those present were weary and heavy laden, [and could be redeemed with] the power of the analytic." That kind of missionary zeal is not altogether dead among contemporary psychoanalysts.
[Psychoanalysis and Jewish Mysticism]—Psychoanalysis didn't spring full-blown from Freud's mind. It drew heavily on traditions of Jewish mysticism, particularly Hasidism. In David Bakan's Sigmund Freud & ... Jewish Mysticism, he argues that leaders in psychoanalysis, being predominately Jewish, secular, & in rebellion against orthodox Judaism, nevertheless borrowed heavily from the mystical traditions in their formative milieu. Mysticism [& Hasidism in particular] represented a revolt against Rabbinical [minutiae] & "legalism," [which was somewhat discredited by continuous persecution from the 17th century on]. Hasidism's healing qualities & emotional release replaced the cold, hard, rational, orthodox legalism. In Freud's image, one is born into a matrix of other individuals, & must obtain release from a tragic social existence. Psychoanalysis is the instrument for obtaining release just as mysticism obtained release from oppressive Jewish orthodoxy. For both, the problem was self-fulfillment as over against oppressive social forces, much like those found in Calvinistic Puritan circles.
[Peculiarities of Psychoanalysis]—Psychoanalysis has never had much success among delinquent or working-class people. Many in these groups have an absence of well-defined moral standards. Psychoanalysis targets oppression by excessive moral demands. Psychoanalytic practice usually refused to have anything to do with anyone else in the patient's milieu. Problems arise that affect the mental health of those around the patient, like a husband realizing he needs release, divorce from his wife. She may need analysis, but the husband's analyst may refuse to see her, because he may feel that the patient's family isn't the analyst's responsibility.
Psychoanalysis originated as an individualistic revolt against legalistic Judaism's oppressive orthodoxy. Jewish mysticism adopted the Jewish religious scholar's exegesis of the text, but in a looser, more metaphorical manner. Jewish mysticism drew on centuries of cabalistic writings & the direct inspiration of its chief writers to produce the Zohar, allegorical reinterpretations of religious traditions, the Jewish mystic's Talmud. The Zohar uses allusion & metaphor; psychoanalysts do the same as "free association." Imagination, interpretation of free association, dreams & metaphors releases people from traditionalism, & oppressively rational, moral obligations. Freud felt that sexual knowledge of human nature's unconscious, irrational forces ultimately gives one control over them. While sexual associations to knowledge had been present in all Jewish traditions, they were most highly developed in the Zohar, [which emphasizes the sexual in Jewish religious tradition].
Freud and the orthodox analysts rigidly adopted the view that real understanding of the world must be sexual. He saw the sexual instincts in a sense as the root of all evil. There is evidence Freud felt that by exploring the underworld of the mind he could gain control over the evil forces within it. Psychoanalysis was a secular outgrowth of the Jewish mystical tradition. It fit in readily with American intellectuals' spirit of revolt against Christian orthodoxy, and with the New England temperament which had been shaped by a similar Puritan emphasis. Echoes of Calvinism can also be found in Freud's determinism. Psychoanalysis provided many of the values which religion had provided, but without consciously posing as religion; it was presented as science.
[Psychoanalysis and its Religious Roots]—Freud reports how disturbed he was that psychoanalysis was largely a Jewish movement in its early days. Leading psychoanalysts in Europe and the US were for a long time nearly all Jews. Both secularized Jews and Protestants may not realize how strongly colored their life view is by their religious background. For Freud to admit that there was anything Jewish or religious about psychoanalysis would undermine its scientific status. With the vicious anti-Semitism sweeping Europe, it certainly would not help a new "science" to be associated with mysticism, occultism, and cabala.
My intent is to show that psychoanalysis was successful in part because of its religious roots. One can admit that a movement was religious in origin without implying that it continues to be religious. The new ideas that are afloat in advanced medical centers highlight how psychoanalysis meets religious needs in slightly different ways from religious movements. [Note: Ironically, Freud may have created an unconscious religion, a "Church" functioning like one in most respects except in the recognition that it is one]. In one modern variation of psycho-analysis, the patient's key problem is needing love. Neurosis develops because the person feels one can no longer trust people. The therapist can't get away with pretending one cares; there must be genuine respect. Psychoanalysis' concern for the individual today has developed into the mystic's concern for "that of God in every man."
Freud's instinct seems to have been correct when he refused to yield to those insisting that sexuality was a mere metaphor. For him the sexual nature of humankind represented power; especially the power to heal. Whatever imagery the patient uses, it must have power. The religious mystic has testified continually about one's direct emotional experience of a power beyond oneself, usually called God. For Freud, the sexual image succeeds in conveying the power of the inexpressible. Whatever image is used must carry the emotional impact of contact with a power beyond self, whether it be life principle, libido, positive growth force, or God. The neurotic begins to get well when something happens which one experiences emotionally as "outside self." An inescapable fact is that one didn't do it oneself—some power outside did the moving [and changing]. Some psychiatrists don't think it is possible to consider an individual's health apart from the health of those around him; [all affected need treatment]. The traditional religious concern for group has begun to creep back into psychiatric practice.
When Freudianism came to America, it tended to get more optimistic—[too optimistic in the minds of many European analysts]. [Some argued that people are neurotic because they are brought up incorrectly. One only had to provide proper child-rearing and to "retrain" the incorrectly raised patient. Modern psychology seems to be moving away from Freud's easy pessimism or easy "American" optimism. It regards humans as having great potentialities for good and evil. The Quaker mystic recognizes humankind's serious existential limitations, and has struggled for and sometimes found the Divine spark in others and oneself.
[Intellectual, Social, & Personal Aspects of Mysticism & Psychoanalysis]—What is the best definition of religion? Religion has to do with the transcendental, with a power [from] beyond. Religion functions in the intellectual, social, & personal spheres of life. Intellectual meaning in life is provided by theology. Ethics & moral principles are provided by the social sphere of religion. In the personal sphere, religion or God has been invoked to describe experiences which seem beyond the normal; the New Testament covers all these spheres. Throughout its history Christianity has sometimes emphasized one or another sphere of religion. 100 years ago [i.e. 1850's] it was religion's theological aspects that excited Christians; [differences led to splits throughout Protestantism]. Today it is difficult for different Christian denominations to have enthusiasm over theological disputes. Around the turn of the 20th century', ethical questions assumed paramount importance. Ethics became the royal road to the discovery of God as theology had been earlier.
With world wars, Fascism, Communism, & the potential for nuclear annihilation, the ethical emphasis in Christianity is losing some of its enormous appeal. There is an alternative: to find God in the "healing power of the analytic." Psychoanalysis provides [the intellectual] with a theology, with a view of the nature of existence. Psychoanalysis also has something to say about ethics, about [human inter-relationships]. Modern therapeutic technique is nearer to the mystical tradition; it does not concern itself with particular ethical problems but with the basic attitudes that lie behind [human inter-relationships], with the "changed heart." Psychoanalysis is above all a continuing testimony to a "power not ourselves that heals." Psychoanalysis as a secular religious movement, fulfilled an historic religious function which the church was not fulfilling.
[Psychoanalysis & Protestant Ministers]—Protestant ministers are less important in the community now than they used to be. Once, the minister was God's representative [whose involvement with after-life was in having superior knowledge of or even some control over it, a "gatekeeper"]. As ethics replaced theology as [life's focus], after-life became less & less important. The minister became someone who just had ideas about how life should be lived. A doctor who keeps you in this world became more important as human interest shifted to this life. The doctor-psychiatrist inherits some of the physician's control over life & death; one also would have some of the minister's power-charisma. One is connected to manifestation of God's power which is the power to heal.
The Protestant church's pastoral counseling [doesn't facilitate healing power as much as it provides another social service]. Are ministers willing to undergo 3 to 7 years required for psychoanalysis? Only by prolonged self-examination can one understand and work with the healing powers one must be prepared to represent. Are ministers willing to spend years in preparation and seeking sensitively for the leadings of the Divine Spirit as Jesus did? [What should be done about] psychiatrists representing religion unconsciously? Why do intellectuals attach a stigma to organized religion? The church became insensitive to the [current] revelations of God, sticking to former revelations which have lost their meaning and no longer fulfill their original function. Creeds, doctrines, rituals must be created anew in each generation.
The mystic believes religious images are always attempts to express the inexpressible, & one will draw on ones most profound psychological experiences to clothe the inexpressible with meaning it deserves. Jews & Puritans were strict disciplinarians about sexuality in children. They should be more likely to invent & approve of sexual theories of disease which characterize psychoanalysis. Many find sexual images "true" & compelling, & in fact the only way in which the inexpressible can be expressed for them. The only mistake, according to mystics, is to worship images, to regard any revelation as final. How can the Protestant church give up some reverence for [old] formulas & seek more sensitively for new ones that speak for God to our time's conditions? How can the Protestant church institutionalize progressive revelation without weakening its foundation? Psychoanalysis' new ways of interpreting existence, [human inter-relationship, & healing powers from outside ourselves have been very meaningful to many thinking people. How can the church absorb enough of the mystical approach to religion to respond more sensitively & flexibly to God's revelations in our time?
[The Church's Reaction to Psychoanalysis]—The Christian church's reaction to psychoanalysis has 2 main currents of thought. 1st, psychoanalysis is obviously a "good thing," because it helps one overcome ones neuroses and move toward [inner self-]perfection and outer [perfecting of] relating to others. Freud's basic assumptions, if properly stated, are very similar to liberal Christianity. Psychoanalysis and Christianity should get together and help one another toward a better world.
In the 2nd current of thought, Paul Tillich believes that psychoanalysis has helped people realize the meaninglessness, loneliness of existence with which one is confronted after waking up from ones "dreaming innocence" of childhood to ones finitude & limitations. Psychoanalysis contributed the discovery that one wasn't even master in ones inner "household"; one was controlled by forces beyond ones knowledge. For Tillich, Christianity represents the faith that estrangement can be healed. Tillich's argument has emphasis on religion's healing & "meaning-giving" functions. American psychoanalysis & American liberal Christianity [trace the source of humankind's troubles to ignorance & improper upbringing]. They fail to recognize as Freud did the inevitability of anxiety & the testimony of psychoanalysis to the healing power of something beyond us all. If the patient and the analyst have brought about recovery, they have done so only indirectly and were not able to force the issue.
The true mystic experiences the gap between infinite & finite, essence & existence in positive terms, as affirmation, joy, wonder, belonging, supra-existential meaningfulness. Psychoanalysis is more profoundly religious in its positive implications than liberal Christianity realizes. It gives testimony to direct, mystical experience of a "Power beyond ourselves that heals." Christianity was itself a response of mystical, individualistic, Judaic elements to Pharisaic orthodoxy. How has psychoanalysis, with its individualism, mysticism, & opposition to religious orthodoxy, provided a new religious movement out of Judaism? How is it ironic if God has chosen secular Jews to produce a new religious revolt against orthodoxy, this time of Christian making?
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The Contribution of Psychotherapy—Psychotherapists have found they can best deal with a personal problem by transforming the person who has the problem. Psychotherapy has changed from the medical look on mental illness to an educational outlook. The therapist-teacher may offer coaching in new conditioned responses, or give the "student" a great degree of freedom to reach one's own insights & view one's own behavior. Adjustment is an inadequate goal for therapy, because mental health is more than docility to folkways. Dr. A. H. Maslow finds the supremely sane to have the qualities of lovingkindness, mystical consciousness, willingness to be unconventional & to face the unknown without fear, & appreciation of everyday life. He calls them self-actualizing. Therapists are learning to trust the therapy process to lead their patients into undiscovered wholeness of life, rather than to stop short at any specific goal.
The psychotherapist brings a single-minded concentration on the inner springs of personality. Since therapy requires discovery of what one's self really is, the therapist must offer the patient unwavering respect without threat of withdrawal or hope of favor. Through this therapeutic attitude, we have come to a closer description of agape, God's creative love. Agape doesn't have to be deserved, & gives freedom to the loved one to become what one inwardly is. What is the place of God in counseling? As Love, God is present in therapeutic love as its very source & ground. [In contrast], much of psycho-analytical theorizing seems to come from a contempt for people rather than love for them; a second-hand materialistic philosophy is also involved. The religious person will look for a theory which proceeds from a reverence for the human spirit & makes no unexamined & outworn assumptions about ultimate reality.
Non-directive Therapy—Nearly all schools of thoughts in psychotherapy agree upon the value of understanding and acceptance, and there is a growing tendency to rely on the patient's ability to reach one's own insights when thus understood and accepted. [In reality], one finds a greater or lesser measure of suggestion, interpretation, approval and warning, which makes the patient feel inferior to and dependent on the all-wise therapist. One is astonished at the amount of subtle pressure and threat unconsciously employed in most human relationships, and the extent to which another's goals are made normative for someone.
Consistency in avoiding manipulation & responsibility for the patient's behavior in non-directive therapy is difficult. It is daily decisions in favor of love rather than coercion. It is an attitude of humble willingness to be taught rather than to teach, to be guided rather than to guide, which is the foundation of a consistently loving therapy. Non-directive counselors offer neither interpretation nor ambiguous silence. One tries to understand step by step along with one's client, sensing what one's client is feeling. The therapist's task is to go into the client's private world, & look through the client's eyes. For a sensitive therapist that must surely be a nearly mystical union.
A simple method of "reflecting" and clarifying a client's feeling can bridge the gap between one mind and another. Being tempted to either satisfy a client's explicit need, or to judge & tell the client it is not good for the client is to make one a child rather than an adult. The therapist will be able to accept and clarify a need without meeting it. [None of the labels—non-directive, client-centered, self-directive, spirit-centered, light-centered—are inclusive enough of the counselor/client/more-than-self inter-relationships, or easily understood by both the religious and non-religious]; "non-directive" is used here for convenience.
"Seeing is Behaving"—It is the possession of consistent convictions which distinguishes nondirective therapy from the techniques used by therapists & guidance counselors. The eclectic methods include a shotgun approach using procedures from shock therapy to reassurance, or a "wonder drug," favorite panacea given to all patients, an anxious rush into planless action. In reality, researchers in the non-directive field have worked toward a hypothesis to which techniques must be relevant, leading to a [positive] attitude in therapy which techniques spontaneously express; behaviorism is the opposite approach, dealing with external, objective absolutes.
A scientific law specifies that "This thing under these conditions will do thus and so." Scientists have now realized that the world of their theories is a hypothetical construct which provides a consistent background to individual experiences which alone seem real to us. This new thinking is called "phenomenological theory." The new theory concentrates on the individual consciousness as perceiver, and makes no claims concerning the nature of "reality." The human organism is one that must maintain and protect itself [and make sense of what it sees with] snap judgments concerning the meaning of reality. We cut up and reassemble the continuity of experience in ways taught us by our mother tongue. The peculiarity of perception is not only human or cultural, but also individual. The personal perspective and context of yourself, ordered by your needs and values, is in turn the determinant of your behavior. [In order to understand the meaning of someone's behavior we must ask]: How must one feel in order to act as one does? How would I have to feel if I were to behave like that? To change behavior, it is the perception of self and situation that must be changed. The only test of a field of perception is its adequacy in the experience of its possessor; learning increases that adequacy and clarity of perception.
In the new conception of the world, there is no "object" or "subject." "Mind & "world" are creative of each other, & are no more to be separated from each other than circumference from the area of the circle. There is one patterned field of which subject & object are interdependent poles. In psychology, the personality can't be understood apart from the situation it is in, nor can the situation be the same without the personality that perceives it.
Relevance to Religion/Moral Standards—This revolution in thought closes the supposed gap between "objective" science & religious commitment. The phenomenological theory supports the objection to the purely external evaluation of another, & calls for knowledge of the person through participation in their internal frame of reference. Many psychologists are unable to free themselves from the older subjective psychology completely to embrace the full philosophical implications of the new way of thought. The field concept provides religion a consistent, credible way of conceiving God's immanence in the human spirit. God & humans aren't one, & they aren't 2. The newer trend in scientific thinking can build a strong philosophical foundation for insights that religious seers have never been able to justify through more traditional ways of thinking. In time, still wider & more adequate philosophical frames of reference will have to be constructed to encompass the further growth of truth.
The counselor must give up the search for an "objective" interpretation of the client by case-history and diagnosis, nor can one judge mental "illness" by one's own opinion of what "reality" is. The counselor can only [trust and enable] the reorganization that takes place in therapy. The religious person must replace their own opinions or an authoritarian doctrine with faith in the working of the Holy Spirit toward a divine end beyond our cultural horizons. The urge to personal growth is the power of God working in us. Standards must be thought of as dynamic rather than static, as transcending human opinion, and uniting humankind by free reconciliation.
Those who share the spirit of nondirective therapy have the best kind of conscience, with a growing inner consistency which sets them apart from petty authoritarian practices. A human is affected only by what the environment means to one, and by one's own interpretation of one's memories. Consciousness becomes an active agent of behavior. What we see determines what we are and what we are determines what we see. The concept of sin in its emotional aspect, does not proceed from agape, but from the approval-disapproval attitude of moralism which agape supersedes. As long as agape is at hand to guide perception, redemption is possible. Jesus once implied that one might have such a rigid perceptual structure as to be incapable of seeing new and greater values. The entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven meant for Jesus just such a radical reformulation of one's way of perceiving as the conventional adult finds almost impossible.
The Process of Therapy—The reorganization of self and perception takes place in various degrees in the course of therapy. One derives a perception of one's self partly from the opinions of others and partly from experience of ones own needs and capabilities. An important part of the experience of therapy is learning from the attitude of the therapist that one is capable of becoming adequate to life. The practice of faith-healing might be redeemed from the realm of superstition by being reformulated to experience and trust the full capacities of the psycho-physical organism and the Spirit immanent within it.
There is also the need to be acceptable to others and to conform to their standards of what the self should be. When one tries to meet the terms of a conditional love, one then becomes estranged from one's own experience; not meeting their terms risks estrangement from others. There is an unacknowledged part of the self that is fearful because it is feared; shameful because it is condemned; and irrational because it is not admitted to reason. In the freedom of therapy one comes to a better estimate of one's strengths and weaknesses; one can bear to see one's self more completely. The therapist 's unconditional accepting attitude is a mediation of God's forgiveness.
What is the "self" that one must "forget" and "lose?" [That self is the one] we think we are, or the self the world expects us to be. The self we are to develop is the self of our potentialities, [God's idea of our best self]. We can't set the limit at which we stop growing; we must always be open to further growth in directions that may surprise us. It must be remembered that the self is [actually] a field which interpenetrates all perceived reality and which can be consciously extended to include other selves or all humanity. [Perhaps the universe is developing through the various perceiving aspects [of itself.]
Non-directive therapy prefers to speak of experience being admitted to or denied, differentiated or undifferentiated, to the Jungian terms Conscious & Unconscious. Denied experience speaks to us in disguise, [which is dropped] only when the conscious self can bear the revelation. Therapists more & more let growing self find its acceptable time for new insights. A dream has a message for the dreamer, but different canons of dream interpretation reveal as much of Freud's or Jung's or Erich Fromm's personalities as they do the dreamers' personalities. The non-directive counselor provides the atmosphere favorable for self-made analysis of symbols. Jungian art therapy could broaden & deepen the more verbal course of non-directive therapy. Some non-directive interviews have been almost completely silent, with the counselor's acceptance coming across nonetheless.
Education for therapy—Training in counseling consists in finding out what attitudes the student actually has, and helping him to define more adequately one's perception of the nature of therapy and the role one plays in it. Learning to accept and respect many kinds of people is moral rebirth at the deepest level. The heart of non-directive training lies in free discussion of the deepest issues of therapy and in actual counseling experience. The non-directive counselor must judge one's own readiness for counseling others. No one outside of a person can judge that person's capabilities. And there is no common agreement among schools of psychotherapy as to acceptable public qualifications of professional therapists.
If a non-directive counselor feels clear in one's convictions, if one feels warm acceptance for the client before one, if one's methods express one's spontaneity, then one is qualified for that case. The wise therapist will come to know the point at which one's personal adequacy ceases. Psychoses are as much an attempt to cope with a perceived threat to the idea of self as are more "normal" behavior. The counselor may find one has reached the limit of one's ability to accept; the counselor must able to accept one's own lack of acceptance. Wise is the counselor who by awareness of one's own viewpoint is able to remain inwardly free from it.
Applications—Although not every not every human relationship can or should be made a counseling relationship, there are no bounds to the relevance of an inner attitude of acceptance and understanding in communicating with others. [The church can be koinonia] if we learn to live in the therapeutic spirit. The development of group therapy is one step in this direction. Small cells of transformation can be formed. The practice of non-violence can also receive reinforcement and refinement from wisdom concerning coercion and aggression that psychology is beginning to acquire. Spiritual coercion is increasingly seen as more destructive than physical force. Sensitivity to this kind of coercion can help religious people themselves to avoid methods tainted by this pressure. The therapeutic spirit accepts needs and desires but does not feel that they all should be equally met.
In religious education, the religious teacher must offer not labels spelled "God" or "Christ" but actual experience of agape. True education nurtures the insights that unite knowledge with behavior and ability with desire, changing one's life, not merely one's ideas. The non-directive attitude will make us forswear indoctrination and recall us to our inward Teacher, it will also make us unashamed of having a religious point of view.
Culture addresses each human's ultimate concern, and is therefore inescapably religious. The answers to ultimate questions, if they are living and truthful, will judge and transform the culture that gave it birth. A religion of agape can greatly help provide education with integration around a human's ultimate concern which proceeds from life-transforming experience rather than empty speculation. All religion asks of psychotherapy is that God be given a chance to will and to do of God's good pleasure in us.
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104. Psychoanalysis and Religious Mysticism (by David C. McClelland; 1959)
About the Author—David C. McClelland received his Ph.D from Yale (1941) & is now Professor of Psychology at Harvard. He has served at The Ford Foundation & on national & international committees in the field of psychology. He has written the books, Personality, and The Achievement Motive. This pamphlet's substance was given as a Philips lecture at Haverford; its present form was used in a lecture at Princeton Seminary.
[Introduction]—It is part of the professional role of the scientist to remain in a state of suspended judgment and objectivity so far as many of life's most serious issues are concerned. Very few intellectuals in my circle take Christianity seriously except as an historical or social phenomenon. It is apparently just as inconceivable for a US President to be irreligious as it is for a professor of psychology to be religious. Even undergraduates have a similar attitude and a reluctance to talk about their religious convictions.
I have had to overcome considerable internal resistance to reveal even a little of my personal religious convictions. In talking about the unconscious religious assumptions of psychoanalysis, I thought it only fair to reveal my own, and whatever bias I might have, so that it might be discounted and corrected by others. My carefully nurtured spirit [has roots in] my Huguenots and Presbyterian ancestors, my Covenanter mother, my Methodist minister father, and my own beliefs as a convinced Quaker.
[Psychoanalysis and Christianity for Intellectuals]—Psychoanalysis is enthusiastically accepted, or at least taken seriously by the same men who ignore or despise Christianity. In Cambridge where I live it is difficult to spend an evening without discussing some aspect of psychoanalysis. It is not overtly a religious movement, but it is a social movement, and its leading practitioners have charisma. They are looked up to, admired and seen as being beyond ordinary humans, much as ministers and priests have been at various times in the past. Psychoanalysis heals. It has many of the characteristics of a religious movement.
Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain describes Dr. Krokowski, a lecturing psychoanalyst: "He was standing ... with his arms outstretched and his head to one side ... like Christ on the Cross. It seemed [that] with open arms he summoned all and sundry to ... 'Come unto me, all ye who are weary and heavy laden' ... [To him], all those present were weary and heavy laden, [and could be redeemed with] the power of the analytic." That kind of missionary zeal is not altogether dead among contemporary psychoanalysts.
[Psychoanalysis and Jewish Mysticism]—Psychoanalysis didn't spring full-blown from Freud's mind. It drew heavily on traditions of Jewish mysticism, particularly Hasidism. In David Bakan's Sigmund Freud & ... Jewish Mysticism, he argues that leaders in psychoanalysis, being predominately Jewish, secular, & in rebellion against orthodox Judaism, nevertheless borrowed heavily from the mystical traditions in their formative milieu. Mysticism [& Hasidism in particular] represented a revolt against Rabbinical [minutiae] & "legalism," [which was somewhat discredited by continuous persecution from the 17th century on]. Hasidism's healing qualities & emotional release replaced the cold, hard, rational, orthodox legalism. In Freud's image, one is born into a matrix of other individuals, & must obtain release from a tragic social existence. Psychoanalysis is the instrument for obtaining release just as mysticism obtained release from oppressive Jewish orthodoxy. For both, the problem was self-fulfillment as over against oppressive social forces, much like those found in Calvinistic Puritan circles.
[Peculiarities of Psychoanalysis]—Psychoanalysis has never had much success among delinquent or working-class people. Many in these groups have an absence of well-defined moral standards. Psychoanalysis targets oppression by excessive moral demands. Psychoanalytic practice usually refused to have anything to do with anyone else in the patient's milieu. Problems arise that affect the mental health of those around the patient, like a husband realizing he needs release, divorce from his wife. She may need analysis, but the husband's analyst may refuse to see her, because he may feel that the patient's family isn't the analyst's responsibility.
Psychoanalysis originated as an individualistic revolt against legalistic Judaism's oppressive orthodoxy. Jewish mysticism adopted the Jewish religious scholar's exegesis of the text, but in a looser, more metaphorical manner. Jewish mysticism drew on centuries of cabalistic writings & the direct inspiration of its chief writers to produce the Zohar, allegorical reinterpretations of religious traditions, the Jewish mystic's Talmud. The Zohar uses allusion & metaphor; psychoanalysts do the same as "free association." Imagination, interpretation of free association, dreams & metaphors releases people from traditionalism, & oppressively rational, moral obligations. Freud felt that sexual knowledge of human nature's unconscious, irrational forces ultimately gives one control over them. While sexual associations to knowledge had been present in all Jewish traditions, they were most highly developed in the Zohar, [which emphasizes the sexual in Jewish religious tradition].
Freud and the orthodox analysts rigidly adopted the view that real understanding of the world must be sexual. He saw the sexual instincts in a sense as the root of all evil. There is evidence Freud felt that by exploring the underworld of the mind he could gain control over the evil forces within it. Psychoanalysis was a secular outgrowth of the Jewish mystical tradition. It fit in readily with American intellectuals' spirit of revolt against Christian orthodoxy, and with the New England temperament which had been shaped by a similar Puritan emphasis. Echoes of Calvinism can also be found in Freud's determinism. Psychoanalysis provided many of the values which religion had provided, but without consciously posing as religion; it was presented as science.
[Psychoanalysis and its Religious Roots]—Freud reports how disturbed he was that psychoanalysis was largely a Jewish movement in its early days. Leading psychoanalysts in Europe and the US were for a long time nearly all Jews. Both secularized Jews and Protestants may not realize how strongly colored their life view is by their religious background. For Freud to admit that there was anything Jewish or religious about psychoanalysis would undermine its scientific status. With the vicious anti-Semitism sweeping Europe, it certainly would not help a new "science" to be associated with mysticism, occultism, and cabala.
My intent is to show that psychoanalysis was successful in part because of its religious roots. One can admit that a movement was religious in origin without implying that it continues to be religious. The new ideas that are afloat in advanced medical centers highlight how psychoanalysis meets religious needs in slightly different ways from religious movements. [Note: Ironically, Freud may have created an unconscious religion, a "Church" functioning like one in most respects except in the recognition that it is one]. In one modern variation of psycho-analysis, the patient's key problem is needing love. Neurosis develops because the person feels one can no longer trust people. The therapist can't get away with pretending one cares; there must be genuine respect. Psychoanalysis' concern for the individual today has developed into the mystic's concern for "that of God in every man."
Freud's instinct seems to have been correct when he refused to yield to those insisting that sexuality was a mere metaphor. For him the sexual nature of humankind represented power; especially the power to heal. Whatever imagery the patient uses, it must have power. The religious mystic has testified continually about one's direct emotional experience of a power beyond oneself, usually called God. For Freud, the sexual image succeeds in conveying the power of the inexpressible. Whatever image is used must carry the emotional impact of contact with a power beyond self, whether it be life principle, libido, positive growth force, or God. The neurotic begins to get well when something happens which one experiences emotionally as "outside self." An inescapable fact is that one didn't do it oneself—some power outside did the moving [and changing]. Some psychiatrists don't think it is possible to consider an individual's health apart from the health of those around him; [all affected need treatment]. The traditional religious concern for group has begun to creep back into psychiatric practice.
When Freudianism came to America, it tended to get more optimistic—[too optimistic in the minds of many European analysts]. [Some argued that people are neurotic because they are brought up incorrectly. One only had to provide proper child-rearing and to "retrain" the incorrectly raised patient. Modern psychology seems to be moving away from Freud's easy pessimism or easy "American" optimism. It regards humans as having great potentialities for good and evil. The Quaker mystic recognizes humankind's serious existential limitations, and has struggled for and sometimes found the Divine spark in others and oneself.
[Intellectual, Social, & Personal Aspects of Mysticism & Psychoanalysis]—What is the best definition of religion? Religion has to do with the transcendental, with a power [from] beyond. Religion functions in the intellectual, social, & personal spheres of life. Intellectual meaning in life is provided by theology. Ethics & moral principles are provided by the social sphere of religion. In the personal sphere, religion or God has been invoked to describe experiences which seem beyond the normal; the New Testament covers all these spheres. Throughout its history Christianity has sometimes emphasized one or another sphere of religion. 100 years ago [i.e. 1850's] it was religion's theological aspects that excited Christians; [differences led to splits throughout Protestantism]. Today it is difficult for different Christian denominations to have enthusiasm over theological disputes. Around the turn of the 20th century', ethical questions assumed paramount importance. Ethics became the royal road to the discovery of God as theology had been earlier.
With world wars, Fascism, Communism, & the potential for nuclear annihilation, the ethical emphasis in Christianity is losing some of its enormous appeal. There is an alternative: to find God in the "healing power of the analytic." Psychoanalysis provides [the intellectual] with a theology, with a view of the nature of existence. Psychoanalysis also has something to say about ethics, about [human inter-relationships]. Modern therapeutic technique is nearer to the mystical tradition; it does not concern itself with particular ethical problems but with the basic attitudes that lie behind [human inter-relationships], with the "changed heart." Psychoanalysis is above all a continuing testimony to a "power not ourselves that heals." Psychoanalysis as a secular religious movement, fulfilled an historic religious function which the church was not fulfilling.
[Psychoanalysis & Protestant Ministers]—Protestant ministers are less important in the community now than they used to be. Once, the minister was God's representative [whose involvement with after-life was in having superior knowledge of or even some control over it, a "gatekeeper"]. As ethics replaced theology as [life's focus], after-life became less & less important. The minister became someone who just had ideas about how life should be lived. A doctor who keeps you in this world became more important as human interest shifted to this life. The doctor-psychiatrist inherits some of the physician's control over life & death; one also would have some of the minister's power-charisma. One is connected to manifestation of God's power which is the power to heal.
The Protestant church's pastoral counseling [doesn't facilitate healing power as much as it provides another social service]. Are ministers willing to undergo 3 to 7 years required for psychoanalysis? Only by prolonged self-examination can one understand and work with the healing powers one must be prepared to represent. Are ministers willing to spend years in preparation and seeking sensitively for the leadings of the Divine Spirit as Jesus did? [What should be done about] psychiatrists representing religion unconsciously? Why do intellectuals attach a stigma to organized religion? The church became insensitive to the [current] revelations of God, sticking to former revelations which have lost their meaning and no longer fulfill their original function. Creeds, doctrines, rituals must be created anew in each generation.
The mystic believes religious images are always attempts to express the inexpressible, & one will draw on ones most profound psychological experiences to clothe the inexpressible with meaning it deserves. Jews & Puritans were strict disciplinarians about sexuality in children. They should be more likely to invent & approve of sexual theories of disease which characterize psychoanalysis. Many find sexual images "true" & compelling, & in fact the only way in which the inexpressible can be expressed for them. The only mistake, according to mystics, is to worship images, to regard any revelation as final. How can the Protestant church give up some reverence for [old] formulas & seek more sensitively for new ones that speak for God to our time's conditions? How can the Protestant church institutionalize progressive revelation without weakening its foundation? Psychoanalysis' new ways of interpreting existence, [human inter-relationship, & healing powers from outside ourselves have been very meaningful to many thinking people. How can the church absorb enough of the mystical approach to religion to respond more sensitively & flexibly to God's revelations in our time?
[The Church's Reaction to Psychoanalysis]—The Christian church's reaction to psychoanalysis has 2 main currents of thought. 1st, psychoanalysis is obviously a "good thing," because it helps one overcome ones neuroses and move toward [inner self-]perfection and outer [perfecting of] relating to others. Freud's basic assumptions, if properly stated, are very similar to liberal Christianity. Psychoanalysis and Christianity should get together and help one another toward a better world.
In the 2nd current of thought, Paul Tillich believes that psychoanalysis has helped people realize the meaninglessness, loneliness of existence with which one is confronted after waking up from ones "dreaming innocence" of childhood to ones finitude & limitations. Psychoanalysis contributed the discovery that one wasn't even master in ones inner "household"; one was controlled by forces beyond ones knowledge. For Tillich, Christianity represents the faith that estrangement can be healed. Tillich's argument has emphasis on religion's healing & "meaning-giving" functions. American psychoanalysis & American liberal Christianity [trace the source of humankind's troubles to ignorance & improper upbringing]. They fail to recognize as Freud did the inevitability of anxiety & the testimony of psychoanalysis to the healing power of something beyond us all. If the patient and the analyst have brought about recovery, they have done so only indirectly and were not able to force the issue.
The true mystic experiences the gap between infinite & finite, essence & existence in positive terms, as affirmation, joy, wonder, belonging, supra-existential meaningfulness. Psychoanalysis is more profoundly religious in its positive implications than liberal Christianity realizes. It gives testimony to direct, mystical experience of a "Power beyond ourselves that heals." Christianity was itself a response of mystical, individualistic, Judaic elements to Pharisaic orthodoxy. How has psychoanalysis, with its individualism, mysticism, & opposition to religious orthodoxy, provided a new religious movement out of Judaism? How is it ironic if God has chosen secular Jews to produce a new religious revolt against orthodoxy, this time of Christian making?
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111. Psychotherapy Based on Human Longing (by Robert C. Murphy; 1960)
About the Author/ Introduction—Robert C. Murphy was educated at Harvard College and Cornell University Medical College. After the war, he was trained in psychiatry and psycho analysis. He practices in community psychiatry and private practice. He teaches and writes on psychiatry.
"I wrote this piece 1½ years ago ... after several teaching engagements at Pendle Hill ... It still speaks for my general orientation to psychotherapy, as a subjective & intuitive account of my experience in psychotherapy ... It is a sort of credo, which will do for a long time. From a physician, one such statement is enough."
[The Force of Longing]—Buried in the deepest stratum of one's unconscious, lies an immense psychological force. [From the moment an infant differentiates between self & other or mother], longing drives the human organism, to relate to, to comprehend, to "love" that which lies beyond one. This longing brings its own insight. The psychotherapist needs only to be aware of this force & keep it within one's vision. The therapist is an observer & a catalyst. One has no power to "cure" the patient, who is fully equipped for getting well.
The patient longs for health above all. In every person who goes to a therapist, the forces of health & hope are stronger than those of sickness & despair. The patient is always trying to get well. The therapist's detachment, optimism, & enjoyment of interaction provides a place where a cure can happen. The therapy joins with the patient's longing for order & comprehension. One isn't required to see into everything the patient says. [One compensates] for emotional blind-spots by waiting, which presently gives way to a new & refreshing insight. Psychotherapy seeks to conserve everything, including the apparently destructive, because when all is seen, nothing is destructive. Every communication is a plea from the patient that the therapist see his basic striving.
[Listening to the Unconscious: Interaction, Wisdom, and Freedom]—The agency of this work is the therapist's capacity to listen in every expression or gesture in which the patient tries to make one's self understood, for the striving toward sanity. Listening is the only activity essential to psychotherapy. Anything else the therapist does merely emphasizes his listening. To be listened to is, generally speaking, a nearly unique experience for most people. It is small wonder that people who have been demanding all their lives to be heard, so often are speechless before someone willing to really listen; they become frightened.
Fearing a mounting condemnation, the patient seeks signs of continuing trust and affection, which cannot be displayed on command. The therapist's task is to permit love to be expressed through one, choosing its own time and place and method. One will find one's self smiling at things from the patient quite foreign to one's conscious standard. Therapy consists of a spontaneous interaction between the patient's unconscious and the therapist's unconscious. Therapy is a fluid interplay, always in motion, always changing. Conscious and rational disciplines like those of science are not flexible enough to adjust to its requirements. The role of consciousness is to [choose to let the unconscious make decisions]. The conscious mind may eventually know why a response to the patient was the right one, but its cumbersome process cannot be used to choose that response.
The unconscious' wisdom isn't scientific. The source of all that is of value in one is one's deepest unconscious drive, one's longing for order & comprehension. It isn't with intellect that one reaches for the unknown, but with longing. Reason then refines & makes explicit that which the unconscious apprehends, & fits it into a frame of reference. The therapist must know that his "intuitive" work is bound to natural law governing mental processes. Humankind is truly free, but this freedom can't be discovered on the awareness level represented by reason. One is free in so far as one's life is comprehensible, acquires meaning, & expresses one's basic longing.
[The Self-evident Truth of Life/ Suicidal Impulse]—Psychotherapy is designed to bring the patient to see [the self evident truth in life]. The patient has spent one's life believing what one was told to believe, [rather than what one knows to be true within one's self]. An adolescent girl is driven toward getting pregnant not by sex as much as by needing to declare herself a separate person capable of functioning for herself. Her movement in the direction of pregnancy may threaten to bring about a tragedy, but it was the only striving toward health revealed by therapy. The youngster begins to catch sight of what she really wants, reflected, in the therapist's face. She has moved a little closer to the self-evident truth that freedom of choice is the very natural essence of her life.
The same thing is true of the impulse to suicide, which always reveals its sad longing for wholeness, for taking command of one's own life. I have never interfered with a patient's right to take one's life. One need only hold on, and wait for understanding. Once a therapist is aware of a suicidal patient's true message, they can only have profound tenderness for the patient. This tenderness communicates to the patient that love and trust are valued above life itself. The ego once heard, need no longer die to prove its conviction. Suicide constitutes an ego's last attempt to express its longing [for death], which has gone unheeded.
Longing for death is inseparable from longing for life. Life and love are also inseparable. Out of a basic human need for knowledge spring's one's capacity to seek to understand the death that awaits one, and at the same to enjoy life [and love] fully. It may be that the suicidal person is closer to real real health than the one who is less dangerously disturbed. Suicide signifies a refusal to accept a life under any authority other one's own as yet undiscovered inner authority.
[Seeking New Authority: The Patient's Inner Longing]—The less violently restless person cut their Self free of old authority controlling their life, & then drift into new ones. Rebels of all sorts may discover "communism," "free enterprise," "intentional community," "pacifism," "voluntary poverty," "free love," [even] "psychoanalysis" (when used as a way of life, rather than a cure) & other "isms" & formulas. If one can't move beyond them, one is left clinging to someone else's rules & maxims. It doesn't lead to a life of depth & adventure.
The patient's unconscious longing becomes the authority for the cure. It is seen by the therapist, who reflects the patient's own inner core of health back to them, long before the patient has any conscious awareness of it. The patient senses an unshakeable authority, but can't conceive that there is something within one's self which can command so much confidence. It may take a long time for the chain of doubts to be worked through. In obedience to previous authority, one doesn't trust "the powerful beast" within; it gets stuffed back inside. [If the innermost self is somehow murdered], Won't all that energy of a lifetime burst out in an uncontrollable explosion?
The therapist knows that one need not fear. The longing which lies at the root of the patient's life hasn't been destroyed, [even after being allowed] so little expression. The more fully it is set free, the more rapidly does it lead the ego into new patterns of change & growth. The ego tames the restless beast with a voice of final authority; only one's longing can bring one's instinctual cravings under control. All this the therapist knows through experience; the patient doesn't know this. Longing's force has been captured by a beast struggling [with lifelong] repression. It isn't the beast which the patient need fear, but one's unwillingness to acknowledge and befriend it.
[The Patient's Approach to the Therapist and the Cure]—What the patient presents to the therapist is a carefully designed impotence that won't offend—or contemptuous aggressiveness. They present every conceivable pattern of [reluctance], overt or camouflaged. They don't know what they mean by "being cured," for they can't picture themselves in full stature. They come, taking a long, long chance on finding something new.
It takes enormous courage. [They use aggressive or passive-aggressive reluctance] and hope the therapist will take the hint and try to understand what real terror is like, and what courage it takes to meet it face to face. The therapist soon discovers they are being watched. Something in the patient watches and looks for a way to help the therapist, judges impartially and even affectionately their weaknesses and strengths. It is longing that brought the patient to treatment and that knows what is sought. It leads the therapist, who needs to keep eyes fixed on it, or wait for awareness of it to return. There is always in the patient that which sees exactly what the therapist is doing. It is endlessly patient in teaching the therapist how to correct their mistakes.
There are some the therapist cannot correct. The fixed inadequacies of the therapist's ego are too deeply rooted to changed easily. The therapist knows they are there. It is they, and nothing else, that decisively set the limits to treatment. Sooner or later treatment ends, because the therapist can no longer hear what they are being told. One's therapeutic horizons widen through each such episode. Psychotherapy is a process of hearing, when no one else can hear, what a patient is trying to say about inner longing. [When therapy ends] the therapist will discover that it was not the patient who refused to understand, but one's self.
[Treatment of Schizophrenic Patients]—In terms of human longing, schizophrenia appears as a fascinating example of infantile longing, a huge awakening to the freshness and sensitive awareness of infancy; it could be a gigantic step in growth. The schizophrenic's entire ego structure needs to be regrown because the old one has lost the capacity to integrate new experience. Nearly all previous experience is repudiated in favor of a fresh start.
Schizophrenics have uncanny skill in setting traps for the therapist. If the traps work, therapy becomes a clinical or symptomatic cure. Schizophrenia therapy is invaluable in the therapist's development, if they keep their ears open & don't mind being secretly hurt & humiliated. The therapist's only refuge against an abandoned & skillful adversary like the schizophrenic ego, is to fasten their attention on the patient's longing, nothing else. The therapist can't bring the patient the experience of perfect trust for which they long. One can delight in the shy, overwhelming longing which is evident behind the sexual preoccupation or rage. By waiting & listening, the therapist may lead the patient to see the trustworthiness of their innermost longing. Therapy acquires potency to the extent the therapist abandons their Self to the presence of longing in the patient, and responds to nothing else.
[Patient/ Therapist Interaction]—Treatment is the interplay of cooperating egoes, struggling against each other, coming to grips & drifting apart. The patient studies the therapist with the penetrating alertness of a child. They view the therapist at one moment as an accomplice, & at another as an evil seducer, [casting them] in many roles with a wide assortment of motives. With each of the patient's probings], the therapist retreats & the patient advances; the therapist leads the patient out of their Self. The patient asks: What do you want from me? The therapist indicates by listening behavior the desire to know what the patient is like, & the patient's innermost nature. The patient responds with old beliefs that were adequate in relations to other egos; the therapist waits for more.
This being waited on confuses the patient [who is used to being forced to conform by an outside authority]. They mistakenly assume the authority they sense is the therapist's, rather than their own inner authority. The therapist becomes "invisible" and "undiscoverable," showing only a growing interest in the patient's unfolding life. The "identity" that is turned toward the patient is that part of the therapist which longs to see that which is delightful in people. They have set their sights on a miracle: the release of human energy at its source. The adventure of a therapist's life is that one may, with each case move further toward it.
About the Author—Mariellen Gilpin is a member of Urbana-Champaign (IL) Friends Meeting. She has worked to improve educational services for prisoners, adult new readers, and children with disabilities. She has presented workshops and retreats and has clerked. She became mentally ill in 1978. Her journey to recovery has been arduous. For 4 years she led a 12-step group of mental suffers called GROW.
Our life is love & peace & tenderness … [it is] helping one another up with a tender hand. Isaac Penington
My Story—In the fall of 1978, I held confusing and disturbing conversations with many voices, among them “God” and “Jesus.” The illness greatly intensified my struggle to distinguish the voice of God from the voice of self-interest. Mine has been a journey in God’s presence. It is a story of how one Quaker has dealt with mental illness. I perceive that demons are a spiritual reality; exorcism is sometimes appropriate and helpful; prayer is not always a good thing. I take readers to frightening territory but show a path of compassion, of spiritual nonviolence, and that demons, too, desire to serve God. [Please] listen with open ears.
I now believe I became ill because I accepted negative spirits from the people I tried to heal. The demons I accepted from others added to my own spiritual illness, [which affected my] mental illness. As I learned to make wiser choices in spite of strong contrary feelings, both the spiritual & mental illness became more manageable. I take a small dose of medication, but true healing has required me to face the demonic head-on, [with God’s help].
I once emerged from deep worship knowing that to kill is never right, and emotional violence kills the spirit as surely as physical violence. God prepared me for discovering the demons by sending human helpers 1st. I [learned] to practice spiritual nonviolence. I have learned how to find and benefit from the right kind of help, while maintaining personal responsibility for my treatment and recovery.
Developing Self-Management Skills—In 1984 I attended my 1st GROW meeting. GROW is a mutual help organization for mental sufferers that grew out of Alcoholics Anonymous. I would need my doctor’s cooperation to reduce medications responsibly. Before talking to him I needed a strategy for self-management. GROW’s convictions are: I am cooperating with the invincible power of a loving God, directly & through helpers; I can [make] my body act rightly in spite of my feelings; My feelings [improve as my thinking & acting habits improve]. GROW determinations are: go by what I know, not feel; deal only with definite problems and accepting faults; actively ignore my disturbing feelings and gradually overcome them.
If I committed to a plan of getting well, I would be cooperating with God. When I understood that hearing voices resulted from not recognizing my feelings and not expressing them in wiser action, I could believe my hallucinations would stop as my thinking and acting got better. I had to ignore actively, by listening to my feelings and substituting positive behaviors and ideas for the negative ones.
My hallucinations concerned 2 things: my relationship with God and a failed relationship with a former friend. I tried to understand the pattern of my voices. Hallucinatory experiences always woke me up with a whoosh audible only to me. Soon “God” (an internal character) was volunteering answers to all my burning questions. I decided to put a positive thought in place of the delusions by reciting a prayer used at GROW meetings. The second time a whoosh started I was able to start the prayer at once—and the whoosh ceased. In 1990 I stopped attending GROW weekly meetings, but to this day I use the GROW program. Some Support Systems/ Praying About Problems I Cannot Handle—My husband has been wonderfully supportive & wise in handling the challenges of my illness. [Through him] I have always known the attractiveness of reality. In our small meeting everybody knows I am mentally ill. Many in meeting have simply treated me as if the essential Mariellen were still in here somewhere. My meeting understands that needing support and being able to give it are not mutually contradictory. For 4 years, I have talked regularly with 2 different clergy men.
I practiced healing touch for others, which gave me [only] the illusion of power at the expense of my functionality. I learned to use prayer for guidance. [I had a prayer-conversation with God, where I asked for help with a support-group friend who would call late at night and talk for 90 minutes. God walked me through what to do and promised to support both me and my friend]. Praying for friends like Ann, I came to a deeper level of compassion, a deeper commitment to present positive alternatives to their self-destructive choices, and the courage to love the unlovable enough to take firm action.
Taking My Hand Off the Trigger/ Learning God’s Will—[While I made progress in interrupting the onset of hallucinations & reducing medication, I realized that] I needed to stop doing things that triggered whooshing. Praying, instead of helping to prevent hallucinations, began to cause them. I offered God a year without prayer. The thought “5 years” came unbidden. I prayed” “I dedicate every act I do in the next 5 years to you. Help me pray with my life.” I made many mistakes, but for 6 years prayer & hallucination happened monthly rather than nightly. Before meeting for worship I formed the intention of simply being in God’s presence.
I sensed God’s presence in everything. I trusted that help would come without my having to ask. Hannah Whitall Smith’s method for determining God’s will included: Checking Scripture; Checking against common sense; Checking with wise friends; Checking reality [way opening]; Minding the stops. Within 6 years, I was able to pray without hallucinating. God was faithful.
Discovering Demons—In January 1994, I was able to pray “Please, let it be possible for me to tell you I love you without hallucinating”; I knew I had prayed in the spirit. The next morning I awoke and sensed that something wanted me to open my mouth so it could leave. My mind’s eye saw a shadowed form uncoil from the center of my brain. [For more than 9 hours, the demon and his baggage left me. I told no one. 7 demons left me, one a week. They decided who would leave when. My longtime guests knew their work was done.
The negative spirits told me their names: Unease with God; Anger; Hurry; Power. A clergyman told me releasing demons was as effective as psychotherapy, and to reflect on why I had originally accepted the demonic. My doing healing touch for others had been as much about power as they had been about caring for my friends. Devils come to us because of our faulty choices in response to strong feelings. Choosing to feel better in the short run, rather than do better and be better in the long run is negative. Changing my ways with friends gave me real power, power that made me less likely to distract myself from the pain of feeling inadequate by doing healing touch. With that change in me, Demon Power knew he could leave.
Releasing a Little Child’s Negativity—Intense hallucinations of conversing with “God” continued after the 7 guests left. A voice in my mind said, “We think you have a negative spirit with the name Raped by God. It doesn’t belong to you … What was your own sexually abusive experience to which this memory attached itself?” I knew that Raped by God came from my best friend, and that my own experience was an older cousin wanting to see me without my clothes when I was about 6. [I came up with some very special affirmations for my little guest, among them,] “Lord, please fill my former guest with an overwhelming sense of your undying, understanding nurture and love.” My husband sat up with me early in the morning, and I repeated that prayer to myself as the little child-spirit left. From that hour to this, I have been able to pray.
A Growing Understanding/ Some Very Special Support Systems—For 5 months, while the demons left me, I had walked outside consensus reality—alone—with only God’s support. I had accepted all these guest-demons from other people. I also had resident demons of my own. Demons seem to remind us of strong contrary feelings about life experiences. An inner spirit is negative when it allows overdeveloped self-interest to rule, or short-term gains for an individual; abuse, dishonesty; murder.
We can un-choose faulty behavior only if we acknowledge feelings & convert their energy into positive choices. Negative spirits seem to cluster around growing points. Negative spirits may be the force of naked self-interest, here to protect us. We ignore their wisdom at our peril. Being spiritually healthy is like standing [in a see-saw’s center], one foot in light, one in shadow, & balancing there. Positive & negative spirits help us know exactly what is on each side of the seesaw. [We seek a balance, neither, too self-interested or too compassionate].
My illness suddenly became very much worse. Something wanted me sick. In June I asked my Quaker meeting for a committee of care. There were 2 members of ministry and oversight committee and a Celtic shaman with the gift of discerning spirits. The committee of care met with me every few weeks and prayed for me every night. We spent 45 minutes in worship whenever we met. I was freed by the silence to say what was really happening, and the committee was freed to help me. The shaman was a wise, kind man who valued silence and deeply listened for God’s guidance. He did no harm, and was respectful of the spirits’ need for appropriate celebration, [i.e. communion] of their peaceful departure.
Getting Better/ Trying What Love Will Do—I hoped for an exorcism to dispatch my own resident demons. [Attempts to do so resulted in] long negotiations, after which I would be too tired to release them. I slowly negotiated a peace settlement with my internal voices. I stopped hallucinating nightly & instead heard voices monthly. I needed less effort to reclaim reality. In 1998 I was able to lead ministry and oversight committee through a period of division and hurt feelings. I still hallucinated that a one-time friend came to apologize. Finally, one night I despaired of letting go of the anger through any power of my own and turned to God in prayer. [After a big hallucination that relieved the anger, I found] I was simply regrouping without the usual self-recrimination. [Better yet, I was] not angry at myself—a gift it never occurred to me to ask for.
In 2004, there was a marked increase in whooshing. I couldn’t see that my self-care had lapsed. I decided to pray for my perceived demons. I would love myself, & them as well, into wholeness. I didn’t presume to say what kind of help. The demons within seemed to appreciate prayers. My prayers evolved along these lines [excerpts follow]: “I praise you for sending help to the positive & negative spirits in the universe … I praise you for helping us claim these [expanding] gifts: choosing the positive more; loving & serving & pleasing you more; seeing strong negative feelings more objectively; knowing more [clearly] what we are called to do; choosing to make your will our will; [feeling more strongly the need to love you]. I praise you for [the help of] positive & negative spirits [in highlighting] our growing points. I honor them & their role in your universe & for their work within … I praise you for helping us live out [love & service of you] rather than disabilities & maladjustments.”
Taking My Hand Off the Trigger/ Learning God’s Will—[While I made progress in interrupting the onset of hallucinations & reducing medication, I realized that] I needed to stop doing things that triggered whooshing. Praying, instead of helping to prevent hallucinations, began to cause them. I offered God a year without prayer. The thought “5 years” came unbidden. I prayed” “I dedicate every act I do in the next 5 years to you. Help me pray with my life.” I made many mistakes, but for 6 years prayer & hallucination happened monthly rather than nightly. Before meeting for worship I formed the intention of simply being in God’s presence.
I sensed God’s presence in everything. I trusted that help would come without my having to ask. Hannah Whitall Smith’s method for determining God’s will included: Checking Scripture; Checking against common sense; Checking with wise friends; Checking reality [way opening]; Minding the stops. Within 6 years, I was able to pray without hallucinating. God was faithful.
Discovering Demons—In January 1994, I was able to pray “Please, let it be possible for me to tell you I love you without hallucinating”; I knew I had prayed in the spirit. The next morning I awoke and sensed that something wanted me to open my mouth so it could leave. My mind’s eye saw a shadowed form uncoil from the center of my brain. [For more than 9 hours, the demon and his baggage left me. I told no one. 7 demons left me, one a week. They decided who would leave when. My longtime guests knew their work was done.
The negative spirits told me their names: Unease with God; Anger; Hurry; Power. A clergyman told me releasing demons was as effective as psychotherapy, and to reflect on why I had originally accepted the demonic. My doing healing touch for others had been as much about power as they had been about caring for my friends. Devils come to us because of our faulty choices in response to strong feelings. Choosing to feel better in the short run, rather than do better and be better in the long run is negative. Changing my ways with friends gave me real power, power that made me less likely to distract myself from the pain of feeling inadequate by doing healing touch. With that change in me, Demon Power knew he could leave.
Releasing a Little Child’s Negativity—Intense hallucinations of conversing with “God” continued after the 7 guests left. A voice in my mind said, “We think you have a negative spirit with the name Raped by God. It doesn’t belong to you … What was your own sexually abusive experience to which this memory attached itself?” I knew that Raped by God came from my best friend, and that my own experience was an older cousin wanting to see me without my clothes when I was about 6. [I came up with some very special affirmations for my little guest, among them,] “Lord, please fill my former guest with an overwhelming sense of your undying, understanding nurture and love.” My husband sat up with me early in the morning, and I repeated that prayer to myself as the little child-spirit left. From that hour to this, I have been able to pray.
A Growing Understanding/ Some Very Special Support Systems—For 5 months, while the demons left me, I had walked outside consensus reality—alone—with only God’s support. I had accepted all these guest-demons from other people. I also had resident demons of my own. Demons seem to remind us of strong contrary feelings about life experiences. An inner spirit is negative when it allows overdeveloped self-interest to rule, or short-term gains for an individual; abuse, dishonesty; murder.
We can un-choose faulty behavior only if we acknowledge feelings & convert their energy into positive choices. Negative spirits seem to cluster around growing points. Negative spirits may be the force of naked self-interest, here to protect us. We ignore their wisdom at our peril. Being spiritually healthy is like standing [in a see-saw’s center], one foot in light, one in shadow, & balancing there. Positive & negative spirits help us know exactly what is on each side of the seesaw. [We seek a balance, neither, too self-interested or too compassionate].
My illness suddenly became very much worse. Something wanted me sick. In June I asked my Quaker meeting for a committee of care. There were 2 members of ministry and oversight committee and a Celtic shaman with the gift of discerning spirits. The committee of care met with me every few weeks and prayed for me every night. We spent 45 minutes in worship whenever we met. I was freed by the silence to say what was really happening, and the committee was freed to help me. The shaman was a wise, kind man who valued silence and deeply listened for God’s guidance. He did no harm, and was respectful of the spirits’ need for appropriate celebration, [i.e. communion] of their peaceful departure.
Getting Better/ Trying What Love Will Do—I hoped for an exorcism to dispatch my own resident demons. [Attempts to do so resulted in] long negotiations, after which I would be too tired to release them. I slowly negotiated a peace settlement with my internal voices. I stopped hallucinating nightly & instead heard voices monthly. I needed less effort to reclaim reality. In 1998 I was able to lead ministry and oversight committee through a period of division and hurt feelings. I still hallucinated that a one-time friend came to apologize. Finally, one night I despaired of letting go of the anger through any power of my own and turned to God in prayer. [After a big hallucination that relieved the anger, I found] I was simply regrouping without the usual self-recrimination. [Better yet, I was] not angry at myself—a gift it never occurred to me to ask for.
In 2004, there was a marked increase in whooshing. I couldn’t see that my self-care had lapsed. I decided to pray for my perceived demons. I would love myself, & them as well, into wholeness. I didn’t presume to say what kind of help. The demons within seemed to appreciate prayers. My prayers evolved along these lines [excerpts follow]: “I praise you for sending help to the positive & negative spirits in the universe … I praise you for helping us claim these [expanding] gifts: choosing the positive more; loving & serving & pleasing you more; seeing strong negative feelings more objectively; knowing more [clearly] what we are called to do; choosing to make your will our will; [feeling more strongly the need to love you]. I praise you for [the help of] positive & negative spirits [in highlighting] our growing points. I honor them & their role in your universe & for their work within … I praise you for helping us live out [love & service of you] rather than disabilities & maladjustments.”
What Love Has Done/ Learnings/ Epilogue—1st, I hallucinate only twice a year. 2nd, I am much less anxious. 3rd, my positive spirits do more to help me make better choices. 4th, my positive & negative spirits, including new, more objective voices, seem to work together now to bring me more fully into God’s kingdom. This “delusion” on my part has led to more mental & spiritual health. Seldom in my experience, has departure from reality led directly to better mental health, as I have continued to experience it. I pray for both positive & negative spirits, sometimes with thanks for specific work, but I don’t single out positive spirits for special blessings. I decided if I were named & called a negative spirit, I would feel shamed. So I accord honor to my negative spirits. They do not force us to express our feelings in an unwise behavior.
Nowadays I sometimes hear whooshing. Most of my hallucinations are a process of coming to a deeper objectivity about & unity with what God would have me do. My counselor says I have peace & inner joy. How can I help but feel at peace in a world filled with a loving & redeeming God’s presence? We measure wholeness in minutes & our brokenness in lifetimes, yet there is wholeness in our choices to do the best thing in spite of strong contrary feelings. Could we bring wholeness to our broken & bleeding planet if we all practiced spiritual nonviolence, & prayed for positive & negative spirits in the universe & for all of us in the world?
Appendix A: Strategies for Coping with Mental Health and Medical Systems—Get a medical advocate, [knowledgeable if possible, and] one with good question-asking skills. Choose a psychiatrist carefully, not one who is parental and controlling, or over-medicating. If you believe in God, avoid anti-God mental health workers. Make sure you are with people you trust during medication changes; psychiatry is an art as much as a science and each body is different. Find a support group. Get counseling help, I state “Sometimes I hear the voice of God, and that voice is helpful,” and then ask “Can we deal? Can you at least be agnostic about the source of my issues?” Do your homework: read medication information; weigh risks before changing medication; consider what issues you want to bring up with therapist. Behave as if you are sane. Try to do what good ordinary people do, and avoid what good ordinary people avoid. Work makes voices less tempting.
Appendix B: Being a Committee of Care—Providing pastoral care to someone with a mental illness requires spiritual and emotional commitment. It was critical to bring together the right committee. We were led invite Les. [Even though] he was not a Friend, his deep spirituality and respect for Quakerism enabled him to enter fully into Quaker process. Remaining centered was the single most important thing we did as a committee. Eventually we were spending about half our time in worship. We were able to hear when someone was speaking from expectations rather than from Spirit and truth. We daily held Mariellen in the Light.
The rest of the committee sometimes met without Mariellen, giving us space to vent our negative reaction to what Mariellen was telling us without disrespecting her. We found that each of us tended to take on certain roles in the committee based on our natural strengths. By remaining open, we were able to discern that Mariellen had been experiencing something unhealthy outside herself. The committee reframed the illness as a disability like diabetes. Mariellen could not be [totally] healed, but she could live a healthy life when she made correct choices.
[As a committee] we discerned: things which sounded crazy but could be true; we could speak truth to Mariellen once we discerned what reality was. Mariellen discovered that it wasn't God if it led in unhealthy directions.
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Nowadays I sometimes hear whooshing. Most of my hallucinations are a process of coming to a deeper objectivity about & unity with what God would have me do. My counselor says I have peace & inner joy. How can I help but feel at peace in a world filled with a loving & redeeming God’s presence? We measure wholeness in minutes & our brokenness in lifetimes, yet there is wholeness in our choices to do the best thing in spite of strong contrary feelings. Could we bring wholeness to our broken & bleeding planet if we all practiced spiritual nonviolence, & prayed for positive & negative spirits in the universe & for all of us in the world?
Appendix A: Strategies for Coping with Mental Health and Medical Systems—Get a medical advocate, [knowledgeable if possible, and] one with good question-asking skills. Choose a psychiatrist carefully, not one who is parental and controlling, or over-medicating. If you believe in God, avoid anti-God mental health workers. Make sure you are with people you trust during medication changes; psychiatry is an art as much as a science and each body is different. Find a support group. Get counseling help, I state “Sometimes I hear the voice of God, and that voice is helpful,” and then ask “Can we deal? Can you at least be agnostic about the source of my issues?” Do your homework: read medication information; weigh risks before changing medication; consider what issues you want to bring up with therapist. Behave as if you are sane. Try to do what good ordinary people do, and avoid what good ordinary people avoid. Work makes voices less tempting.
Appendix B: Being a Committee of Care—Providing pastoral care to someone with a mental illness requires spiritual and emotional commitment. It was critical to bring together the right committee. We were led invite Les. [Even though] he was not a Friend, his deep spirituality and respect for Quakerism enabled him to enter fully into Quaker process. Remaining centered was the single most important thing we did as a committee. Eventually we were spending about half our time in worship. We were able to hear when someone was speaking from expectations rather than from Spirit and truth. We daily held Mariellen in the Light.
The rest of the committee sometimes met without Mariellen, giving us space to vent our negative reaction to what Mariellen was telling us without disrespecting her. We found that each of us tended to take on certain roles in the committee based on our natural strengths. By remaining open, we were able to discern that Mariellen had been experiencing something unhealthy outside herself. The committee reframed the illness as a disability like diabetes. Mariellen could not be [totally] healed, but she could live a healthy life when she made correct choices.
[As a committee] we discerned: things which sounded crazy but could be true; we could speak truth to Mariellen once we discerned what reality was. Mariellen discovered that it wasn't God if it led in unhealthy directions.
http://www.pendlehill.org/product-category/pamphlets
www.facebook.com/pendlehill?fref=ts
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