From the desk of Dr. Eric K. Sweitzer, Director of Charis Counseling Centers
space
Over what is now my almost 30-year career, I have witnessed the coming and going of many trends in the fields of psychology and psychiatry. Like every generation of graduate students, I was exposed to the prevailing schools of thought regarding what makes us “tick” properly, what causes us to “tick” improperly, and how to restore our “ticking” to its originally intended state.
Now 30 years later, I am observing a new trend in the gradual movement away from separating the human person into distinct realms of physical, spiritual, and mental/emotional functioning and toward viewing the human person as an intricate integration of the mind, body and spirit.
The “spiritual realm” in particular has become of increasing interest in the mental health field. At the outset of my career, spirituality was still considered exemplary of one’s neurotic need to depend upon someone other than one’s self. Now, our field has apparently learned that we cannot lean entirely upon our own resources for healthy emotional and relational functioning.
The good news is that centers such as Charis are now considered by health insurance companies to offer a legitimate specialty in Christian counseling, whereas when I began in the late 1970’s, such an association would have been detrimental to acceptance in the psychiatric community.
The bad news is that now we operate in a climate in which anything that claims to be of a “spiritual” nature is accepted, and even promoted. While mental health professionals recognize the need for some sense of the “transcendent” in people’s lives, the prevailing attitude is that each person has the innate capacity to define for him or herself who or what constitutes their “god.” Related to this sentiment is the assumption that all such individual perceptions are equally valid and that the notion of what is “true” is determined solely by what “works” for an individual.
In actuality, what has happened in the mainstreams of mental health is a digression away from any form of orthodox beliefs (i.e., Trinitarian, Christ-centered understandings of human nature and its relation to the Divine), to a bias towards hodge-podge forms Eastern mysticism, which now dominate presentations at major trainings and conferences.
As a Christian, I do agree human beings are not just physical or just mental/emotional, or just psychological beings. I also agree that these components are interdependent and that a more comprehensive approach to healing must be considered. In my own thinking, I have moved away from assuming that physical symptoms of my clients are either totally unrelated to psychological problems, or the reverse—that their chronic pain or other condition must be purely “all in their head.” I now have a greater respect for the mysterious interplay between mind, body and spirit.
I am less quick to assume that a client’s chronic headaches are only stress-related, or that their anxiety condition is exclusively caused by psychological trauma in childhood. I have become more “wholistic” in my thinking, challenging clients to seek help from other professionals who expertise in the physical realm supersedes mine, while at Charis, we continue to work primarily upon the “psycho-spiritual” aspects of their functioning.
Allowing “spirituality” to become more acceptable in the healing arts has, however, opened up “Pandora’s box.” In my next post, I will speak more specifically about some of the techniques that have appeared on the scene and have become very attractive to mental health professionals and their clients.
For now, I will simply refer to a warning from the Apostle John: “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world.” (I John 4:1) How do we perform such a test to determine the validity of any “new” technique or theory about human functioning? John answers this question in the very next verse: “By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already.”
I look forward to reading about some of the counseling strategies rooted in mysticism that you see coming out of “Pandora’s Box.” Very interesting. Thanks for the post.
good site!