In another work the same professor says: “The patristic tradition is neither a social philosophy nor an ethical system, nor is it religious dogmatism: it is a therapeutic treatment. In this respect it closely resembles medicine, especially psychiatry. The noetic faculty of the soul that prays unceasingly in the heart is a physiological instrument which everyone has and which requires healing. Neither philosophy nor any of the known positive or social sciences is capable of curing this instrument. That can only be done through the Fathers’ neptic and ascetic teaching. Therefore those who are not cured usually do not even know of the existence of this instrument.

Orthodox Psychotherapy, The Science of the Fathers
Metropolitan of Nafpaktos Ierotheos

For it is by the power of Christ that all healing occur and demons are expelled. The saints appeal to this power and manifest it by invoking the Name of Jesus, which is especially effective in combating demons and so can deliver men from insanity:

‘The Name of Jesus can still remove distractions from the minds of men (ekstasis dianoias), and expel demons, and also take away diseases,’ declares Origin, who also tells us:

And some give evidence of their having received through this faith a marvellous power by the cures which they perform, invoking no other name over those who need their help than that of the God of all things, and of Jesus, along with a mention of His history. For by these means we too have seen many persons freed from grevious ities, and from distractions of mind (ekstasis), and madness (mania), and countless other ills.

Mental Disorders & Spiritual Healing: Teachings from the Early Christian East 
Jean-Claude Larchet

The Life of St Theodosius provides us with an example of this. Some monks had turned from the right path by the practice of an aberrant and badly understood form of asceticism and above all in these efforts had placed their confidence in themselves rather than God. As a result they were overcome with psychic difficulties through the activity of Satan. St Theodosius welcomed them into his monastery to care for them. St Theodore of Petra provides us with a similar case:

A number of men in the mountains and in the caves had not led the struggle for a Christian life according to Christ, and, for having practiced a rash form of asceticism with great zeal, were pierced through by the sword of pride. They had attributed their ascetic activities to their own strength and had forgotten that our Lord had said: Without me, you can do nothing (John 15:5). Because of this wasting of the flesh, or having in some way fallen under the judgment of God which surpasses understanding, they were delivered up to Satan, and because of their deranged minds they could no longer control their thoughts.

Mental Disorders & Spiritual Healing: Teachings from the Early Christian East 
Jean-Claude Larchet

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

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

Failed to promptly pay off thousands of dollars of therapy debt, after going to months of therapy that did not help me at all

cruel optimism new year
rayne fisher-quann

“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