We have previously devoted a lengthy study to the subject of spiritual maladies. As a result, we will limit ourselves in this work to merely recalling the analysis of the passions of acedia and sadness—their links with the various forms of depression are quite obvious and, in recent years, have attracted the attention of some psychiatrists who have shown themselves quite sensitive to the depth, richness and wisdom of Patristic analysis.
These last mentioned illnesses have an exemplary value. All the more so as symptoms of anxiety and depression afflict over two hundred million individuals, who most often receive only chemical treatment for their illness. Undoubtedly some of these are organic in origin and, as such, this therapy is justified. However, most of them, as is generally admitted, are suffering from what is currently called ‘mal de vivre’ (feeling lousy’). In other words they suffer from existential problems which standard psychiatry remains totally incapable of treating. It is obvious that these problems to a great extent relate to the spiritual sphere as envisioned by the Fathers whose nosology and therapeutic techniques would appear to be most pertinent, for despite the fact that both time and social context are different, they touch upon universal dimensions of human existence, upon difficulties that afflict everyone who desires to find a meaning for existence and to harmonize their interior life; individuals who wish to conform their activities to values whose disappearance, as many psychiatrists and psychologists admit, leads to the increase of mental problems, especially anxiety and depression.
Mental Disorders & Spiritual Healing: Teachings from the Early Christian East
Jean-Claude Larchet
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Aggression, also found in the majority of neurotic states and in certain psychoses, can be connected with the passion of anger in the broader sense given to this term by the Fathers. Asthenia or lethargy, common to many mental diseases, corresponds rather exactly to one of the essential components of the passion of acedia. One can also perceive a direct connection between standard neurotic phobias, defined as ‘agonizing fears, with the passion of fear. The neurosis of anxiety can be easily classified within the framework of this same passion of fear and the passion of sadness. Psychotic depression has a connection on the one hand with acedia and on the other with despair, an extreme form of the passion of sadness.
Mental Disorders & Spiritual Healing: Teachings from the Early Christian East
Jean-Claude Larchet -
Many psychiatrists recognize the fact that these medications are only adjuvants whose greatest value is to make the patient amenable to therapies based on psychological interventions, but such therapies are seldom used, while the medicinal approach is rarely crowned with success. One knows that psychoanalysis, one of the most elaborate forms of therapy currently available, rarely cures those afflicted with psychoses, and only attains to limited success with neuroses.
Mental Disorders & Spiritual Healing: Teachings from the Early Christian East
Jean-Claude Larchet -
“Everyone thinks that creativity and motivation come from tapping into your childhood issues and trauma. In fact they come from tapping into your childhood wonder and enthusiasm.”
—Gena Gorlin -
Therapy and Introspection: A Cultural Experiment
Therapy and deep introspection are new enough that we don’t fully understand their long-term impact on personal resilience or society’s mindset. In many ways, we’re experimenting with introspection as a tool, one that’s untested compared to the ancient preference for forward-focused living. -
But if going to therapy has taught me anything, it’s that nothing is actually solved by intellectualizing and pathologizing every part of what we feel — and when we try, we’re usually sort of wrong anyway. Your emotions, by and large, are not a problem to be fixed in service of producing a better, more manageable, more loveable self. They just want to be felt.
no good alone
rayne fisher-quann -
Perhaps you look too much inwards on self, instead of outwards on the Lord Jesus.—The healthiest people do not think about their health; the weak induce disease by morbid introspection. If you begin to count your heartbeats, you will disturb the rhythmic action of the heart. If you continually imagine a pain anywhere, you will produce it. And there are some true children of God who induce their own darkness by morbid self-scrutiny. They are always going back on themselves, analyzing their motives, re-considering past acts of consecration, or comparing themselves with themselves. In one form or another self is the pivot of their life, albeit that it is undoubtedly a religious life. What but darkness can result from such a course? There are certainly times in our lives when we must look within, and judge ourselves, that we may not be judged. But this is only done that we may turn with fuller purpose of heart to the Lord. And when once done, it needs not to be repeated. “Leaving the things behind” is the only safe motto. The question is, not whether we did as well as we might, but whether we did as well as we could at the time.
We must not spend all our lives in cleaning our windows, or in considering whether they are clean, but in sunning ourselves in God’s blessed light. That light will soon show us what still needs to be cleansed away, and will enable us to cleanse it with unerring accuracy.
The Gift of Suffering
by F.B. Meyer -
We must, however, remember that temperaments differ. Some seem born in the dark, and carry with them through life an hereditary predisposition to melancholy. Their nature is set to a minor key, and responds most easily and naturally to depression. They look always on the dark side of things, and in the bluest of skies discover the cloud no bigger than a man’s hand. Theirs is a shadowed pathway, where glints of sunshine strike feebly and with difficulty through the dark foliage above.
Such a temperament may be yours: and if it be, you never can expect to obtain just the same exuberant gladness which comes to others, nor must you complain if it is so. This is the burden which your Saviour’s hands shaped for you, and you must carry it for Him, not complaining, or parading it to the gaze of others, or allowing it to master your steadfast and resolute spirit, but bearing it silently, and glorifying God amid all. But, though it may be impossible to win the joyousness which comes to others, there may at least be rest, and victory, and serenity—Heaven’s best gift to men.
The Gift of Suffering
by F.B. Meyer
