PSYCHOTHERAPY: WHAT WE SEE WHEN WE LOOK BEHIND THE CURTAIN

Why do most people speak highly of their psychotherapist and their healing process? In an article entitled “Freud is a Fraud,” Chris Noble, MD, had written:

• Speculation was and is at the heart of psychoanalytic theory and practice. However, unlike scientific speculation, which leads to testable hypotheses and controlled experiments, psychoanalysis was developed mainly by unscientific, if not anti-scientific, minds. One searches in vain among the analysts for any semblance of the typical concerns and attitudes of scientists. There is no concern for testing their claims, which are put forth dogmatically rather than tentatively. Skepticism about their work is rare; bravado and bold assertions are common.

Psychotherapists now widely accept the many findings that the relief that their clients derive is not the result of their theoretical approach or even of their particular practices, but of the empathetic relationship they form with their clients.

Some practices are even widely regarded as arrogant:

• Freud's theories and practice can be attacked not only for his ideas and methods, but for his arrogance and contempt for his patients and colleagues. (Noble)

Freud had even stated:

• "I can't help being convinced that my dear fellow men, with few exceptions, are worthless." http://somniloquy.online.fr/TSI3/freud.html

The real Freud wasn’t the one that his patients had been seeing. In the midst of the Vietnam War, I had asked my psychiatrist to write a letter claiming that I was unfit for military service. He gave a copy to me. I was glad to read that the letter made an excellent case for my psychological unfitness. During our next meeting, I thanked him for his convincing letter. He answered, “I meant every word of it.”

The curtain had been pulled back, and I was devastated to find what he really thought about me. He saw me as Freud had seen his clients - as “worthless.”

I too saw myself as worthless - as irreparably damaged merchandise, despite his positive affirmations of me during our counseling sessions.

Years later, after I had a life changing encounter with Jesus, I returned to college and obtained a degree in social work and did my fieldwork in a community mental health center. I would sit in as the psychotherapists would share their cases and receive feedback.

The mask was put aside, and they discussed what they really felt towards their clients. I was surprised by the contrast between what I was seeing in these meetings and the face they wore with their clients.

I wondered if this would happen me once I became a Christian psychotherapist. In retrospect, I found that our Lord painfully humbles us so that we would accept our unworthiness in the face of His love and acceptance for us:

• Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. (II Corinthians 1:3-4 NKJV)

Years later, I have found these verses true. I has now became unthinkable for me to regard anyone as worthless or even beneath me. It is because of God’s love and acceptance of me that I can now love and accept other broken people - no mask needed!

MARK EPSTEIN, BUDDHISM, PSYCHOTHERAPY, AND EGO

I like reading Mark Epstein. He is a psychiatrist and Buddhist who writes with remarkable sensitivity, compassion, humility, and depth. He identifies the ego as the source of many of our problems:

·       Ego is the one affliction we all have in common. Because of our understandable efforts to be bigger, better, smarter, stronger, richer, or more attractive, we are shadowed by a nagging sense of weariness and self-doubt. Our very efforts at self-improvement orient us in an unsustainable direction since we can never be certain whether we have achieved enough. (All the quotes are from Epstein’s Advice not Given: Getting over Yourself)

The ego can be life-dominating. We spend our lives trying to prove that we are a “somebody” and spend a massive amount of energy trying to hide this endeavor from ourselves and others. This pertains even to those who have “arrived”:

·       People with a strong sense of self still suffer. They may look like they have it all together, but they cannot relax without drinking or taking drugs. They cannot unwind, give affection, improvise, create, or sympathize with others if they are steadfastly focused only on themselves. Simply building up the ego leaves a person stranded. The most important events in our lives, from falling in love to giving birth to facing death, all require the ego to let go.

However, Epstein believes that he has found an answer for this stubborn addiction:

·       But there is no reason for the untutored ego to hold sway over our lives, no reason for a permanently selfish agenda to be our bottom line. The very ego whose fears and attachments drive us is also capable of a profound and far-reaching development. We have the capacity, as conscious and self-reflecting individuals, to talk back to the ego.

Epstein believes that by gaining awareness of our situation, through both or either psychotherapy and Buddhist meditation, we can begin to correct ourselves:

·       They learn to make sense of their internal conflicts and unconscious motivations, to relax against the strain of the ego’s perfectionism.

However, a very basic question remains: “Do these means of self-awareness give us accurate self-knowledge, and does this knowledge penetrate deeply enough?” Epstein seems to think so. He claims that the practice of mindfulness is a mirror into the soul:

·       This image of the mirror is central to Buddhist thought. A mirror reflects things without distortion. Our consciousness is like that mirror. It reflects things just as they are. In most people’s lives, this is taken for granted; no special attention is given to this mysterious occurrence. But mindfulness takes this knowing consciousness as its most compelling object.

It might be compelling, but is this form of self-awareness any more profound than the awareness that we are hungry, tired, or angry? I don’t mean to denigrate this kind of awareness, but I doubt that it can penetrate deeply enough to the roots of the ego. Nevertheless, Epstein believes that this kind of awareness is adequate:

·       Without such consciousness, we remain pushed around by impulses and held in check by unrecognized defenses. But when we are able to see the extent of our own fears and desires, there is something in us, recognized by both Buddha and Freud, which is able to break free. Taking responsibility for what is going on inside of us gives hope.

Is there any evidence that this “gives hope,” or are we simply flattering ourselves with a false assurance that we know ourselves and can “break free?” Epstein seems to admit that this question is not easily satisfied by snap answers:

·       We have to both trust and mistrust the mind, often at the same time. This takes practice.

However, what type of practice will enable us to determine if we are deceiving ourselves? Or that we have attained freedom rather than dissociation from ourselves and our humanity?

I am suspect for a number of reasons. For one thing, we suppress material that is highly threatening to our mental stability and sense of self. Why then should we expect that it would be easy to confront this material through psychotherapy or meditation?

Instead, my experience with psychotherapy showed me that the therapist is just as invested as I am in keeping certain things repressed or denied if they come to the surface. For what if I told the therapist, “I am a horrible person, and I don’t deserve to live.” He would help me explore the reasons why I might feel this way, but as a giving person, his goal is to prove me wrong.

What if I confided that I had murdered an entire village of women and children in Vietnam, and without any regret? He might tell me that “others would have also cracked under such pressure,” and that I had to learn to forgive myself. However, he would not consider the possibility of objective guilt, and perhaps I did deserve to die for what I had done. Perhaps he might try to lesson my feelings of guilt by telling me, “You were just following orders, and you need to learn to forgive yourself?”

However, is this tactic covering the problem or exposing it? And does mere self-awareness provide the answer to our problems? Instead, it seems that deep self-awareness is the last thing that we want. Thoughts of our moral inadequacies and the punishment we know we deserve for them are highly threatening. Perhaps this is why it is not enough to be wildly successful and why we also need to constantly convince ourselves that we are morally deserving, worthy, and entitled. This is why it doesn’t matter how much money or power we have accrued. We still feel threatened when our character is maligned by even by a charge that we had wrongly cut into line. This should point us to the understanding that there is an unresolved issue deeper that ego.

Buddha would have answered that we have to live according to our moral nature, and that if we fail to, we will experience the effects of our negative karma. However, what if the effects of this “karma” are even more disastrous than Buddha was able to perceive? What if our moral failure had sentenced us to a perpetual sense of threat and doom? And what if it is this threat that has driven our ego into overdrive to prove our worthiness in the face of this overwhelming threat?

It also seems that we need to go a little deeper with our questioning. What kind of wisdom runs the karma wheel to ensure that we really receive what we deserve? It seems that this kind of justice would have to be administered intelligently.

It also seems that we are also aware of our need for forgiveness, however misplaced it might be. After the war, a Nazi was being medically attended to by a Jew. The Nazi begged for his forgiveness, even though this attendant hadn’t been directly affected by the Holocaust.

Why was forgiveness so important to this Nazi who was facing death? Did he know something that the West has long suppressed, because it represents too much of a threat? Jesus had highlighted this most basic conflict:

·       “And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed.” (John 3:19-20)

As lovers of the darkness and the lies we spin about ourselves and our worthiness, we hate anything that might expose our real condition. We are guilty as charged by our conscience! Consequently, we flee from the light and anyone who might shed that light. As a result, I have never heard anyone say, “I am seeing my psychologist because I want to learn the truth about myself.” Instead, we seek help for the reduction of our painful symptomology.

Perhaps psychotherapy and meditation do reveal some important things about us, but I doubt that these can penetrate to the real source of the problem – our moral corruption – and certainly cannot rectify the problem. Ultimately, our problem is moral and relational. We have to confess our sins and receive forgiveness, not a self-generated forgiveness.

If this is true, the ego isn’t the problem but the mechanism trying to cover and compensate for the problem. Besides, the ego is deceptive. It is like jello, which can take disguised forms, as in the practice of self-improvement, the pursuit of a virtuous life, or even through religious practices, all used to inflate our sense of our worthiness. It is not that such practices are wrong, but they are deceptively used to cover the real problem – our alienation from God.

Epstein understands that the ego cannot be eliminated. Instead, it must be understood and properly channeled. But how? From my experience and the experience of millions of others, the underlying moral problem must first be adequately addressed rather than denied or drugged. It is the source of alienation from real self-knowledge and from our Creator, as many religions attest. We know that something is terribly wrong with us, and this sends our ego into obsessive overdrive to prove otherwise – that we are worthy by virtue of our attainments and social approval.

Biblical wisdom tells us that, fundamentally, we have to be reconciled to our righteous Creator who proved His love for us by dying for our sins:

·       “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16)

It is this love alone that has enabled me to face myself and then to stand against the assaults of guilt and shame, despite my unworthiness.

WILL THE KNOWLEDGE OF OUR PAST FREE US FROM THE PRESENT?

Does understanding our past relieve us of its influence? A male complained that he had consistently taken abuse from friends and acquaintances. He didn’t feel that he had the right to assert himself against their abuse. However, through psychotherapy, he saw that this had been the way he had been treated by his caregivers. He then “understood” that not speaking up for his welfare and setting boundaries were behaviors and a self-concept he had inherited and that they no longer had to dictate his life. He therefore began to set needful boundaries with his friends and acquaintances.

We don’t like seeing anyone abused, so we regard this as a “success story,” but is it? There are two problems here. For one thing, our memories can be either distorted or highly selective. Therefore, this male might not be connecting the right dots in his analysis of his past and how it impacts his present.

However, we might think, “Well, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that he is now finding relief from his feelings of unworthiness and is now setting necessary boundaries.”

This might be true, but he is left with a problem that will eventually resurface. Even if he has correctly assessed that his failure to set boundaries was a product of his past, it still fails to give him the rationale he needs to resist victimization.

Let me try to illustrate this point. If we realize that our past “nurturing” inculcated us with the idea that we should tolerate abuse, all this realization tells us is that we need not be led by our past. However, it fails to tell us what we should be led by or to give us an objective standard of behavioral and cognitive rightness. It doesn’t tell us why we shouldn’t tolerate abuse.

It is like the girl who was taught that it is wrong to abuse others. While this might help her to understand her disdain for abuse, it does not answer the question, “Is it wrong to abuse?” It would therefore be absurd for her to begin to abuse others, because she now understands that her disdain for abuse had come from her parents.

It is not enough for us to merely connect the dots and to understand our present inclinations from the perspective of the past. Instead, it is more important to have an objective standard for right behavior.

When I first began going to church, I felt strongly that everyone who came to shake my hand was a hypocrite. However, I found that it is more important to live by the guidance of the objective truths of Scripture and love others than it was to understand why I felt this way. When I began to treat others with love, miraculously my opinions of them changed.

It wasn’t enough for me to know that my feelings of self-loathing came from the way I had been treated as a child. Instead, I needed to know that I was lovable and had value. This was something that I was unable to obtain through psychotherapy. Nor did it seem to matter how many times the psychotherapist would assure me that I am a “good person.” My deeply ingrained feelings of self-loathing would just laugh at these reassurances.

What could assure me that I had value? The psychotherapist’s words were only his opinions and were unable to penetrate to the depths where my feelings were preaching their life-controlling messages.

It was only Jesus who was able to break through my deadly waves of self-loathing. I became assured that if He loved me so much that He had died for me, while I was His enemy, He would love me all the more once I became His friend (Romans 5:8-10).

This awareness didn’t come overnight. Since I had not known love as a child, it was hard for me to believe/feel that God now loved me. I had hated myself and therefore projected that everyone else, including God, hated me. And I felt sure of this. I was also sure that I had to produce a steady stream of successes in order to be worthy of anyone’s love. This, of course, caused me to envy and even hate those who had more success.

However, Scripture began to rewrite my own script. I began to experience the “love of God that passes all understanding” (Ephesians 3:19) and the assurance that He would never leave me (Romans 8:38-39). Even through suffering, the words of my Savior became more real to me:

·       “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30)

Jesus does give us a “yoke” and a “burden,” but these can become the instruments of freedom from many of the things that oppress us.

WHAT SHOULD CHRISTIAN COUNSELING LOOK LIKE?

Christian counseling (CC) must be Word-centered:

• According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it. For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. (1 Corinthians 3:10-11; ESV)

When we guide another, it must be according to the Word of God:

• And when they say to you, “Inquire of the mediums and the necromancers who chirp and mutter,” should not a people inquire of their God? Should they inquire of the dead on behalf of the living? To the teaching and to the testimony! If they will not speak according to this word, it is because they have no dawn. (Isaiah 8:19-20)

CC is for naught when we fail to consult the light – God’s Word. It also dishonors God when we reject His counsel in favor of worldly counsel:

• As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace: whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God… in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. (1 Peter 4:10-11)

CC should recognize that all positive growth comes from God through His Word:

• I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. (1 Corinthians 3:6-7)

• Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation. (1 Peter 2:2)

As Paul confessed, whatever good comes out of our lives, comes from the Lord:

• But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me. (1 Corinthians 15:10; James 1:17)

However, we tend to wrongly put mental illness in its own specialized category where only the “professional” can help. However, according to Scripture, we are all “mentally ill,” living in darkness and self-deceit, as Jesus claimed:

• “And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed.” (John 3:19-20)

In short, we all are such a mess that we require the Lord’s radical surgery to remove our blindness (Matthew 7:1-5), the log in our eye. Of what does the log consist? Self-righteousness, entitlement, and arrogance! We therefore have to be humbled in order to be lifted up and made well. Otherwise, we are always right in our own eyes:

• All the ways of a man are pure in his own eyes, but the LORD weighs the spirit. (Proverbs 16:2)

The Apostles thought that all they needed was more faith:

• The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” And the Lord said, “If you had faith like a grain of mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you. Will any one of you who has a servant plowing or keeping sheep say to him when he has come in from the field, ‘Come at once and recline at table’? Will he not rather say to him, ‘Prepare supper for me, and dress properly, and serve me while I eat and drink, and afterward you will eat and drink’? Does he thank the servant because he did what was commanded? So you also, when you have done all that you were commanded, say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty.’” (Luke 17:5-10) 

The amount of faith wasn’t the problem. They are already had enough faith to cast a mulberry tree into the sea. Instead, it was their entitlement mentality that was getting in the way. They had been trusting in their own merit instead of the Lord’s. Instead, they had to regard themselves as “unworthy servants,” even after they had done everything that they were supposed to do!

When we regard ourselves as worthy, to some degree we discount our Lord’s gift of worthiness. Instead of placing our trust completely in Him (Psalm 62), we are placing part of our trust in our own worthiness or merit – an offense to the gift-Giver!

In this and in many other ways, secular humanist psychotherapy (SHP) is diametrically opposed to Biblical Counseling. Here is a brief outline of the differences:

1. While SHP understands us as a pathological product of nature and nurture (genetics and environment), Scripture sees a broader, more creative process at work, which includes our own choices, like mainlining heroin. Fundamentally, many of our struggles are self-caused. We reject the light in favor of the darkness (John 3:19-20), bringing upon ourselves all manner of ills (Romans 1:21-32; Proverbs 1:29-32). By rejecting God’s gift of righteousness, we condemn ourselves to pursuing a non-existent alternative righteousness, significance, and self-esteem resulting in self-justification and denial.

2. While SHP is client-centered, the Biblical is God-centered, acknowledging that God is the source of everything good and the ultimate answer to whatever our problem might be (Romans 8:31-32). Meanwhile, SHP claims that the answer is in us, placing an extra burden on us. Meanwhile, CC starts where the sufferer is (1 Corinthians 9:19-22) and later lead them to higher ground away from self.

3. Consequently, while SHP tries to build a self-trust based upon raising self-esteem and behavioral mastery over fears and other conflicts, CC rejects self-trust in favor of trusting in God alone (Psalm 62). Self-trust opposes the Gospel. Jesus instructed His followers that they could do nothing without Him (John 15:4-5; also Jeremiah 17:5-7; 2 Cor. 3:5). Furthermore, those who trust in themselves have fallen from grace (Gal. 5:2-4).

4. While SHP seeks to exalt the client, Scripture counsels humbling ourselves to the truth of our brokenness and need, trusting that God will exalt us (Luke 14:11; 18:14; James 4:10).

5. While SHP is focused on symptomology and, in the short run, feeling better about oneself, Scripture is primarily focused on truth and thinking correctly about ourselves and God (John 8:31-32).

6. Consequently, SHP is about affirming the self, while Scripture is about affirming God and His truth, and secondarily, who we are in Him! SHP focuses on improving the client’s performance and feelings about oneself, while Scripture’s focus is upon honoring God, knowing that He will, in the long run, take care of our needs better than we can (Matthew 6:33).

7. SHP emphasizes self-expression, while Scripture emphasizes self-control and virtue.

8. SHP tends to be non-judgmental and tolerant of just about all forms of expression. Scripture maintains that truth has to guide all of our thinking and behaving. Underlying this distinction, SHP resorts to the disease model. In the same way that we are not responsible for contracting cancer, we are also not responsible for our problematic behaviors. Scripture has a higher view of humankind, and therefore we must take responsibility for our lives.

    In One Nation Under Therapy, psychiatrist Sally Satel and ethicist Christina Sommers warn:

·       "At the heart of therapism [the no-fault, disease-pathology philosophy of psychotherapy] is the revolutionary idea that psychology can and should take the place of ethics and religion. Recall Abraham Maslow’s elated claim that the new psychologies of self-actualization were offering a “religion surrogate,” that could change the world. He had “come to think of this humanist trend in psychology as a revolution in the truest, oldest sense of the word…new conceptions of ethics and values.” Carl Rogers then looked upon group therapy as a kind of earthly paradise—a “state where all is know and all accepted.” The sixties and seventies were heady times for Maslow and Rogers. They were promoting a visionary realignment of values, away from the Judeo-Christian ethic, in the direction of what they regarded as a science of self-actualization." (217)

9. Because SHP is all about mitigating symptomology, it has little tolerance or understanding for the positive role of suffering. Consequently, it fails to embrace the totality of our experience. Scripture, however, recognizes the need for suffering (2 Cor. 4:7-11), helping us to accept it and to even rejoice in the midst of it (James 1:2-4).

Tragically, the more that the Church has embraced SHP, the more it has denigrated the Gospel. Professor of religion, Philip Jenkins, writes:

·       "During the 1970’s and 1980’s, psychological values and assumptions permeated the religious world no less than the secular culture…But an intellectual chasm separates the assumptions of traditional churches from those of mainstream therapy and psychology. The medicalization of wrongdoing sharply circumscribes the areas in which clergy can appropriately exercise their professional jurisdiction, and this loss of acknowledged expertise to therapists and medical authorities at once symbolizes and accelerates a substantial decline in the professional status of priests and ministers." (“Opinion: The Uses of Clerical Scandal,” First Things, 1996, 60.)

Instead, we have everything that we need in Christ:

·       For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority. (Colossians 2:9-10)

We, therefore, need to understand how complete and equipped we are in Christ. When we go forth with an understanding of Scripture, we are more-than-ready to minister to the broken (2 Timothy 3:16-17):

·       [God] comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too. (2 Corinthians 1:4-5)