Psychotherapy : including the history of the use of mental influence, directly and indirectly, in healing and the principles for the application of energies derived from the mind to the treatment of disease / by James J. Walsh.
- James Joseph Walsh
- Date:
- 1912
Licence: In copyright
Credit: Psychotherapy : including the history of the use of mental influence, directly and indirectly, in healing and the principles for the application of energies derived from the mind to the treatment of disease / by James J. Walsh. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.
796/830 page 776
![RELIGION AND PSYCHOTHERAPY Eeligion and psychotherapy have, of late, come to have many relations to each other and many interests in common, at least in the minds of a number of clergymen, and in popular estimation. There is no doubt but that religion can do much to soothe troubled men and women, even when their troubles are entirely physical in nature and origin. It at least lessens the unfavorable effect of worry in exaggerating such pathological processes as are at work. All diseases, functional and organic, are rendered worse by solicitude, while many troublesome symptoms become quite bearable if only the patient does not dwell on them too much but takes them as they come, carefully refraining from emphasizing them by over-attention. That is the very essence of psychotherapy. Eeligion, in the sense of trust in divine wisdom, can do much to originate and maintain this imperturbed frame of mind. People who are without religion, that is, without the feeling that somehow all their ills are a part of the great plan of the universe, the mystery of which is insoluble, but the recognition of which is demanded by reason, and who lack the assur- ance that somehow, in Browning's phrase: God's in His Heaven— All's right with the world! —are more prone to give way to over-anxiety and consequently to make them- selves suffer more in all their ills, than is necessary or even likely in the more favorable state of mind of those, whose trust in jProvidence is thorough and efficient. In recent years there has been in the general population a distinct loss of faith m the great religious truths that are so helpful in engendering a peace- ful state of mind in suffering. Many have come, if not to doubt of the Provi- dence of the Creator, at least to feel that we do not know enough about it to place any such supreme dependence on it in the trials of life as would make it a source of relief, or at least consolation, in suffering. This same spirit of doubt has paralyzed faith in the hereafter and in all that trust in it brings, to sufferers, of consolation to come for tlicir ills if these are borne as be- comes rational creatures whose sufl'ering has a ])urpose, though we may not comprehend it. Some people are destined by their phvsical make-up or by accidental conditions to considerable suffering. There are many ailments that are incurable and are definitely known to bo^ incurable. Some of these entail great suffering of body and even more suffering of mind. Such suffering becomes quite unboara])lo unless the pnlient is of a verv stoic disposiiinn. or unless the thought of a hereafter in which the sufferings of this life will have a meaning is present to console.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b23984600_0798.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
