1. Yet the ideal outcome is rarely achieved. Therapy begins
with the realization that healing is of the mind, and in psychotherapy
those have come together who already believe this.
It may be they will not get much further, for no one learns beyond
his own readiness. Yet levels of readiness change, and when therapist
or patient has reached the next one, there will be a relationship
held out to them that meets the changing need. Perhaps they will
come together again and advance in the same relationship, making
it holier. Or perhaps each of them will enter into another commitment.
Be assured of this; each will progress. Retrogression is temporary.
The overall direction is one of progress toward the truth.
2. Psychotherapy itself cannot be creative. This is one of the
errors which the ego fosters; that it is capable of true change,
and therefore of true creativity. When we speak of "the
saving illusion" or "the final dream," this is
not what we mean, but here is the ego's last defense.
"Resistance" is its way of looking at things; its interpretation
of progress and growth. These interpretations will be wrong of
necessity, because they are delusional. The changes the ego seeks
to make are not really changes. They are but deeper shadows,
or perhaps different cloud patterns. Yet what is made of nothingness
cannot be called new or different. Illusions are illusions; truth
is truth.
3. Resistance as defined here can be characteristic of a therapist
as well as of a patient.
Either way, it sets a limit on psychotherapy because it restricts
its aims. Nor can the Holy Spirit fight against the intrusions
of the ego on the therapeutic process. But He will wait, and
His patience is infinite. His goal is wholly undivided always.
Whatever resolutions patient and therapist reach in connection
with their own divergent goals, they cannot become completely
reconciled as one until they join with His. Only then is all
conflict over, for only then can there be certainty.
4. Ideally, psychotherapy is a series of holy encounters in which
brothers meet to bless each other and to receive the peace of
God. And this will one day come to pass for every "patient"
on the face of this earth, for who except a patient could possibly
have come here? The therapist is only a somewhat more specialized
teacher of God. He learns through teaching, and the more advanced
he is the more he teaches and the more he learns. But whatever
stage he is in, there are patients who need him just that way.
They cannot take more than he can give for now. Yet both will
find sanity at last.
