1. Very simply, the purpose of psychotherapy is to remove the
blocks to truth. Its aim is to aid the patient in abandoning his
fixed delusional system, and to begin to reconsider the spurious
cause and effect relationships on which it rests. No one in this
world escapes fear, but everyone can reconsider its causes and
learn to evaluate them correctly. God has given everyone a Teacher
Whose wisdom and help far exceed whatever contributions an earthly
therapist can provide. Yet there are times and situations in which
an earthly patient-therapist relationship becomes the means through
which He offers His greater gifts to both.
2. What better purpose could any relationship have than to invite
the Holy Spirit to enter into it and give it His Own great gift
of rejoicing? What higher goal could there be for anyone than
to learn to call upon God and hear His Answer? And what more transcendent
aim can there be than to recall the way, the truth and the life,
and to remember God? To help in this is the proper purpose of
psychotherapy. Could anything be holier? For psychotherapy, correctly
understood, teaches forgiveness and helps the patient to recognize
and accept it. And in his healing is the therapist forgiven with
him.
3. Everyone who needs help, regardless of the form of his distress,
is attacking himself, and his peace of mind is suffering in consequence.
These tendencies are often described as "self-destructive,"
and the patient often regards them in that way himself. What he
does not realize and needs to learn is that this "self,"
which can attack and be attacked as well, is a concept he made
up. Further, he cherishes it, defends it, and is sometimes even
willing to "sacrifice" his "life" on its behalf.
For he regards it as himself. This self he sees as being acted
on, reacting to external forces as they demand, and helpless midst
the power of the world.
4. Psychotherapy, then, must restore to his awareness the ability
to make his own decisions. He must become willing to reverse his
thinking, and to understand that what he thought projected its
effects on him were made by his projections on the world. The
world he sees does therefore not exist. Until this is at least
in part accepted, the patient cannot see himself as really capable
of making decisions. And he will fight against his freedom because
he thinks that it is slavery.
5. The patient need not think of truth as God in order to make
progress in salvation. But he must begin to separate truth from
illusion, recognizing that they are not the same, and becoming
increasingly willing to see illusions as false and to accept the
truth as true. His Teacher will take him on from there, as far
as he is ready to go. Psychotherapy can only save him time.
The Holy Spirit uses time as He thinks best, and He is never wrong.
Psychotherapy under His direction is one of the means He uses
to save time, and to prepare additional teachers for His work.
There is no end to the help that He begins and He directs. By
whatever routes He chooses, all psychotherapy leads to God in
the end. But that is up to Him. We are all His psychotherapists,
for He would have us all be healed in Him.
