[geocentrism] Psychoheresy and Inner Healing
- From: Bernie Brauer <bbrauer777@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: geocentrism@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 22 Apr 2007 09:13:40 -0700 (PDT)
http://www.pamweb.org/psy-innerhealing1.html
PSYCHOHERESY & INNER HEALING
Part One
---------------------------------
Psychoheresy is the use of psychology where God has already spoken in His
Word. It is using the very wisdom of men about which God has warned His people.
Inner healing is a process through which someone goes in order to transform the
effects of the past on the present. Inner healing involves finding painful
memories of early life traumas thought to be buried in the unconscious. The
inner healer guides people into reliving and recreating past events by
imagining the presence of Jesus or some other significant faith figure. It is a
reliving of the person?s past in his imagination. By replacing the memory of a
past event with a new one, painful memories are claimed to be healed and one is
supposedly set free from the grip of the past. Some of the elements of
psychoheresy are used in inner healing. Therefore, inner healing is
psychoheresy.
Individuals Involved
Agnes Sanford mothered the inner healing movement and directly or indirectly
mentored many others. Best known followers of Sanford are Ruth Carter
Stapleton, John and Paula Sandford (no relation to Agnes), Dennis and Rita
Bennett, Francis MacNutt, Morton Kelsey, Richard Foster, David Seamonds, and
John Wimber. Though some of the promoters are deceased, their books, which have
sold millions of copies, are still a powerful influence in this movement.
Moreover, these individuals have spawned thousands of other inner healers,
perpetuating these teachings to millions of others. The past and present book
sales testify to the popularity of this movement.
Errors of the Movement
There is a real, genuine, biblical healing and transformation of the inner
person. But while one may call the Lord?s inner work "inner healing," let us
quickly add that among all the seminars, books, tapes, or workshops of which we
are aware, we do not know one that is truly biblical and has not dipped into
the broken cisterns of the wisdom of men about which the Bible warns believers.
We would not recommend any of them because they represent a spiritually unholy
combination of biblical, psychological, and even occult ideas.
Inner healing teachings often sound biblical at the beginning. Many of them
even elevate excellent biblical principles, but all those with which we are
acquainted eventually worship at the altars of psychology and the occult. While
we cannot cover the whole spectrum of inner healing misteachings and heresies,
we will discuss some of the serious errors that are common in psychoheresy.
The serious errors involve five psychological ideas, one of which is right
out of the occult. John and Paula Sandford describe and summarize what Agnes
Sanford was trying to do. They say:
She saw that ancient [past], unforgiven, forgotten sins [memory] buried in
the heart [unconscious] could be manifested in unwanted, unseemly behaviors,
which could be changed [emotion and imagery] if such sins were forgiven and the
heart were cleansed.1
Two of the very important components often used in psychotherapy and in inner
healing are those of the unconscious and the past. These two elements are found
throughout the teachings of the inner healers. We will first discuss their use
of these two psychological concepts and then deal with their dangerous and
unbiblical use of memory, emotions, and imagery. These potentially perilous
five psychological ideas are used by those involved in psychoheresy, which
includes inner healers. Christians need to be wary of these five activities
from psychoheresy wherever they are used. While this article focuses on the
psychoheresy of inner healing, Christians will encounter these psychological
elements elsewhere as well.
The Unconscious
Before Freud popularized the unconscious, we lived in an era of
consciousness. The history of man until the nineteenth century was directed at
conscious thought and action.2 Now we are in an era of the unconscious.
When inner healers use the word unconscious (and its equivalents), they use
it in the Freudian sense, which is a specific mental state. The common meaning
of the word unconscious is quite different from the Freudian unconscious. The
unconscious, as a general term before Freud popularized it and even now, refers
to the thoughts, memories, feelings, etc. of which we are not presently
conscious. However, the Freudian unconscious is one in which these thoughts,
memories, feelings, etc. determine one?s behavior. With this kind of
unconscious, you do not do what you do or think what you think because of a
conscious choice; you are driven by your unconscious.
Freud used the iceberg as his model of the unconscious. According to Freud,
the entire iceberg represents the mind, and only the tip is fully accessible to
the person. It includes all information and memories that are not accessible
through recall, as well as present thoughts and mental activity. The huge mass
beneath the waterline does not simply represent all that is presently outside
conscious awareness; it supposedly contains all that drives, motivates, and
determines behavior outside conscious volition. Psychologists Hilgard,
Atkinson, and Atkinson point this out in their standard work on psychology.
Freud compared the human mind to an iceberg: the small part that shows
above the surface of the water represents conscious experience, while the much
larger mass below water level represents the unconscious?a storehouse of
impulses, passions, and inaccessible memories that affect our thoughts and
behavior.3
Agnes Sanford wrote:
But this much I do know: that this unseen part of me, whether submerged
beneath the depths of my conscious self or rising above it, whether descending
into hell or ascending into heaven, this also is myself. And if I am to be a
whole person, this area of emanation or interpenetration must also be healed. I
call this part of me the soul, or the "psyche." I might instead say "the
unconscious" or "the subconscious," or "the deep mind" or the "spirit."4
The inner healers use Freudian theory absent his name. All inner healers with
which we are familiar use either the Freudian "unconscious" or some equivalent,
absent the use of Freudian terms for the mind such as id, ego, and super ego.
Inner healers? favorite terms they use for the Freudian unconscious are
subconscious, heart, inner heart, and the inner child, or some variation of it,
from psychiatrist W. Hugh Missildine and his book The Inner Child of the Past.
Biblical Basis for the Unconscious?
There is no biblical basis for the use of the unconscious. Freud stated that
the unconscious is a place where all kinds of powerful drives and mysterious
motivations cause people to do what they do. The implications of such a
powerful seat of urges driving people to do all kinds of things flies in the
face of God holding people responsible for their actions. If people look for
unconscious reasons for their behavior, they can excuse all sorts of behavior.
But, the idea of the unconscious as a hidden region of the mind with powerful
needs and motivational energy is not supported by the Bible or science.
We are tremendously complex beings, but psychological explanations about the
inner workings of the soul are merely speculation. The only accurate source of
information about the heart, soul, mind, will, and emotions is the Bible. Not
only is the Bible accurate; the Lord Himself knows and understands exactly what
lies hidden beneath the surface of every person. He knows and He brings
cleansing to those inner parts that we may never understand. David prayed:
Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: and see
if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting (Psalms
139:23-24).
Teaching a Freudian concept of the unconscious is contrary to Scripture.
Rather than relying on the Word of God and the indwelling Holy Spirit to search
their hearts, inner healing victims will learn to rummage around in some kind
of Freudian unconscious and remain focused on the self.
If you check all the usual Bible helps having to do with words and their
meanings, you will not find one that equates the heart or any other word in the
Bible with the Freudian unconscious. This is one of the many theological errors
in the teachings of those who attempt to integrate psychology into
Christianity. The Bible focuses on the conscious mind, not on the unconscious.
We see this throughout the Bible. The Bible is not deterministic in a Freudian
unconscious sense. Conscious behavior and volition are hallmarks of Scripture.
For example, obeying the Great Commandment is a conscious choice. God?s Spirit
dwells in our hearts by faith and transforms the inner man, but these are not
equivalent to a so-called unconscious. God works in us through conscious
cooperation and volition on our part. When we assign motivation and action to
the unconscious mind we throw out responsibility.
Scientific Basis for the Unconscious?
There is no scientific support for the Freudian idea of the unconscious. E.
M. Thornton, in her book, The Freudian Fallacy, says:
This book makes the heretical claim that [Freud?s] central postulate, the
"unconscious mind," does not exist, that his theories were baseless and
aberrational, and, greatest impiety of all, that Freud himself, when he
formulated them, was under the influence of a toxic drug [cocaine] with
specific effects on the brain.5
University of California professor Richard Ofshe, with freelance journalist
Ethan Watters, has written a book titled Therapy?s Delusions. The subtitle
revealing the book?s content is The Myth of the Unconscious and the
Exploitation of Today?s Walking Worried. In discussing "The fallacy of the
Freudian Unconscious," they say:
While it is clear that we all engage in out-of-awareness mental processes,
the idea of the dynamic unconscious proposes a powerful shadow mind that,
unknown to its host, willfully influences the most minor thought and behavior.
There is no scientific evidence of this sort of purposeful unconscious, nor is
there evidence that psychotherapists have special methods for laying bare our
out-of-awareness mental processes. Nevertheless, the therapist?s claim to be
able to expose and reshape the unconscious mind continues to be the seductive
promise of many talk therapies.6
The Past
Just as there is a huge difference between the usual use of the term
unconscious and that of the Freudian or deterministic unconscious, so too with
the use of the past in inner healing. For inner healers, the past is not merely
your early life experiences, but rather your early life experiences causing,
determining, or driving your behavior. Freud postulated that a newborn will go
through several "psychosexual stages of development." He named them the oral
(0-18 months), anal (18-36 months), phallic (3-5 years), and genital (through
puberty). Freud believed that the first five years of life and how a person
maneuvered through these stages determined the person?s life. Outdoing Freud,
the Sandfords go further back into the prenatal period, as we shall show
shortly.
Biblical Basis for the Use of the Past?
There is no biblical basis for the use of the past (past determinants of
behavior). The Bible includes the past works of God in history, because we are
to remember the works of God both individually and corporately. But, regarding
the Christian walk, the cross took care of the past. The walk of the believer
is to be according to the new life and is therefore present and future
oriented. In Philippians 3 Paul gives his religious and personal background, on
which he had depended for righteousness before God. But when confronted by
Jesus he saw his own wretched sinfulness, not only that he had persecuted the
church, but that he was sinful to the core. He knew he could not make himself
righteous by going back into his past. Therefore he declared: "This one thing I
do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those
things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high
calling of God in Christ Jesus" Phil. 3:13-14). This does not
mean an inability to recall the past; it means that the past now has a
different significance. Biblically speaking, attempting to fix the past is
purely a fleshly activity, which when indulged in wars against the spirit.
A person need not be trapped in negative patterns of behavior established in
the early years of life, for the Bible offers a new way of life. Put off the
old man; put on the new. Jesus said to Nicodemus, "Ye must be born again," and
He said elsewhere that new wine could not be put into old wineskins. Jesus
offers new life and new beginnings. One who is born again has the spiritual
capacity to overcome old ways and develop new ones through the action of the
Holy Spirit, the fruit of the Spirit, and the sanctification of the believer.
One wonders why so many have given up the hope of Christianity for the
hopelessness of past determinism.
Scientific Basis for the Use of the Past?
There is no predictive validity to the relationship between early life
circumstances and present life. If you want to test it out, examine 100, 200,
500 kids in preschool or at whatever point in early life. Give all the tests
you want and then predict what the children will be like as adults. Even Freud
knew better than this. He could be postdictive (look back to connect one?s
early life with one?s present adult life), but never predictive (look ahead
from a child?s present life to tell how his future life as an adult will be).
Given an adult with a problem, a Freudian will then interview the person and
tell him how his childhood determined his present life. It is obvious that
there is no science involved in this, only guess work.
Orville Brim, Jr., of the Foundation for Child Development in New York,
studied this question. "Most of Brim?s career has been devoted to charting the
course of child development and its relation to adult personality; recently he
has become convinced that ?far from being programmed permanently by the age of
5, people are virtually reprogrammable throughout life.?" Brim says: "Hundred
and hundreds of studies now document the fact of personality change in
adulthood."7
Jerome Kagen of Harvard and co-researcher Howard Moss say they "could find
little relation between psychological qualities during the first three years of
life?fearfulness, irritability, or activity?and any aspect of behavior in
adulthood."8
Victor and Mildred Goertzel investigated this fallacy of early life
determinants. In their book Cradles of Eminence, they report on the early
environments of over four hundred eminent men and women of the twentieth
century who had experienced a wide variety of trials and tribulations during
their childhood.9 It is surprising and even shocking to discover the
environmental handicaps that have been overcome by individuals who should have
been psychically determined failures according to Freudian formulas. Instead of
being harmed by unfortunate early circumstances, they became outstanding in
many different fields of endeavor and contributed much to mankind. What might
have been environmental curses seemed to act, rather, as catalysts to spawn
genius and creativity. This study is not an argument for poor upbringing; it is
an argument against psychic determinism.
Early Life and En Utero Healing: One more dimension to the inner healing
practices is that of believing that very early life and even en utero healings
can take place. The inner healer encourages the person to imagine early life
situations and even en utero situations. And then to imagine Jesus being in
that situation ministering to them.
John and Paul Sandford say:
By revelation of the Holy Spirit, we have been led to pray for thousands of
traumas en utero, treating those as factual. Dramatic results in mental,
emotional, and physical healings, and transpersonal behavior testify to the
reality of such en utero traumas.10
This all flies in opposition to the well-known, scientific fact that memory
is related to the development of the hypocampus of the brain, which is
fundamental to memory formation, and therefore such memories do not exist in
the brain.
The Sandfords also say:
We have found under the anointing of the Holy Spirit and found that science
confirms that a baby within the womb already knows, experiences, tastes and
feels everything which is going on around him. He knows whether he is wanted.
He knows what is going on in the family. He knows whether there are bickerings
and fightings. He hears everything that is going on in the family and inside
the womb already reacts in his spirit and can make sinful choices within his
spirit before he ever gets out of the womb, having already set himself in
rebellious, hurtful ways before he is born.11
The Sandfords claim that if a child is conceived out of wedlock the child
knows it in the womb. If the mother thought about abortion, the child knows it.
If the mother hoped for a boy and is carrying a girl, the child knows it. And
how do they know all these things? According to the Sandfords, the Holy Spirit
told them and their experiences confirmed it. In their attempt to biblically
prove their outrageous statements, the Sandfords quote Luke 1:41, "And it came
to pass, that, when Elisabeth heard the salutation of Mary, the babe leaped in
her womb; and Elisabeth was filled with the Holy Ghost."
Using Bible verses out of context to support what they teach is typical of
how the Sandfords twist Scripture to justify their inner healing tactics. Note
that "the babe [John the Baptist] leaped in her [Elisabeth?s] womb" and that
"Elisabeth was filled with the Holy Ghost." This was a sovereign act of God
that involved two persons, the "babe" (John the Baptist) and Elisabeth in
response to the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit. Such a specific act of
God cannot be used to prove anything generally about any other unborn child?s
ability to know and experience what the Sandford?s claim. It is as unbiblical
as saying that all pregnant mothers are "filled with the Holy Ghost" in the
manner and for the purpose that Elisabeth was.
Luke 1:41 magnificently confirms the presence of the Messiah in Mary?s womb,
and Elisabeth?s words in Luke 1:42-44, under the unction of the Holy Spirit,
confirm that glorious truth. Luke 1:41 also foretells John the Baptist?s unique
role to as the forerunner of Jesus. The words "the babe leaped in her womb" in
verse 41 have been preceded with a great deal of information about the
conception of both babies. In reference to the babe, John the Baptist, Luke
1:15 says: "For he shall be great in the sight of the Lord, and shall drink
neither wine nor strong drink; and he shall be filled with the Holy Ghost, even
from his mother?s womb." This is a unique prenatal event not found elsewhere in
Scripture. Also, nothing is said in Luke 1 or in all of the Bible to which the
Sandfords can refer that would support their fallacious claims that babes in
the womb would have the knowledge and understanding that they assume.
To reduce this supernatural heralding of the Messiah to an ordinary
occurrence due to some natural ability within all unborn children is to
undermine Scripture and make it say what it does not mean. Indeed, to our
knowledge, no one in the history of the church has given such an egregious
application of verse 41. Inner healers major in eisegesis, which is
interpreting Scripture with one?s own ideas, rather than explaining what the
Bible is actually saying.
Summary
Therefore, we are not determined by our unconscious and we are not determined
by our past. However, those two ingredients are essential to the inner healer
and are fundamental to many psychoheresies. These ideas form the theoretical
base for what inner healers and many counselors do. These erroneous notions
from the cauldron of psychoheresy are both taught and believed by many
Christians as they attempt to address problems of living. These two mental
concepts (the unconscious and the past) are detrimental to the clear teachings
of Scripture. They displace God?s Word as the final authority in areas of life
and godliness. Christian, beware! Be wary and avoid such heretical teachings
and practices, especially when used with the Bible as in Theophostic Prayer
Ministry and other inner healing ministries.
In Parts Two and Three (next issues), we discuss three more ingredients of
many psychoheresies that are also used in the inner healing movement. These are
the use of memory, the emotions, and imagery. While the unconscious and the
past are the essential ingredients of many psychoheresies; memory, emotions,
and imagery are the added collaborative dangers of inner healing.
http://www.pamweb.org/psy-innerhealing2.html
PSYCHOHERESY & INNER HEALING
Part Two
---------------------------------
In Part One we discussed two essential ingredients used in many
psychoheresies that are essential in inner healing. They are the unconscious
and the past. The use of both are unbiblical and should be avoided by believers
because they function contrary to God?s Word. In this part we discuss two other
elements of many psychoheresies that are an integral part of inner healing.
They are the use of memory and emotions. These are common activities of the
mind. However, joined to the activities having to do with the unconscious and
the past in the way they are generally used in inner healing, they contradict
the clear teachings of Scripture and are heretical wherever they are taught and
practiced.
Memory
The healing of memories is a central function of inner healers and many
psychotherapists. Typically the "healers" look for memories reaching back as
far as the early post-natal period, but some attempt to deal with what they
imagine to be memories from the pre-natal period, as dealt with in Part One.
Dr. Jane Gumprecht, in her book Abusing Memory: The Healing Theology of Agnes
Sanford, quotes Sanford?s own description of her theory behind the healing of
memories:
Something is troubling the deep mind. . . some old unpleasant memory....
What are these "roots of bitterness" and how can they be drawn out of us? ...
We are apt to drag chains fastened upon our souls so long ago that we do not
even know what they are ... burdens put upon our souls when we were too little
to be responsible?... Yet there is hope, because God is involved with time ...
seeing our need He incarnated Himself and became man, thus entering into the
collective unconscious of the race.... Jesus is our time-traveler ... out of
timelessness into our time, on purpose to transcend time in each of us,
entering the subconscious and finding His way through past years to every
buried memory in order to touch it with His healing power and set us free. I
ask Jesus to enter into him, and go back through time and heal the memories of
fear and resentment?even those he had forgotten... then I ask Jesus to walk
into the past?back though their memories ... and set them free.1
As mentioned in Part One, we are to remember the works of God both
individually and corporately. God provided not only His written word to remind
the Israelites of His glory and His gracious acts of mercy, but He instituted
feasts to help them remember the exodus and other significant events that
demonstrated His great love for them and also their own sinfulness. The
Israelites sinned when they forgot God?s great mercies and His written law.
Therefore the psalm writer says, "Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I
might not sin against thee" (Psalm 119:11). Many times Jesus urged his
listeners to remember what God had done and what He had said. Jesus instructed
His followers to celebrate communion in remembrance of Him (1 Cor. 11:24).
Therefore memory is important in relation to God, what He has done for the
believer and what He has said in His Word.
Biblical Basis
The Bible gives no instructions to search for forgotten circumstances
(memories) in one?s past in order to be healed. The Bible instructs the
believer to count that past self (called the "old man") dead and to live the
new life in Christ Jesus: "Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed
unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord" (Romans 6:11).
Therefore, the practice of recovering memories in inner healing is in direct
disobedience to the Word of God and the work of the Holy Spirit in a
Christian?s life.
Scientific Basis
The inner healers and many psychotherapists rely on the accuracy of memory in
dealing with the past. The healee is directed to remember early life
experiences in order to begin the process of healing.
In Part One we revealed that John and Paula Sandford claim "that a baby
within the womb already knows, experiences, tastes and feels everything which
is going on around him."2 The Sandfords give more credence to prenatal,
postnatal, and early life memories than science permits. Mark L. Howe, an
expert in the field of early life memories, says that memories before the age
of two years are unlikely to "survive intact into adulthood." Howe concludes:
"For now, it is safe to say that we do not remember being born or our in utero
experiences. We do, however, have excellent imaginations, ones that can not
only create ?memories? but also affect the memories we do carry with us from
childhood."3
In Freudian psychoanalysis the process of getting to the unconscious and past
is through the portal of free association, which heavily involves past memories
and particularly early life memories, as the patient reports whatever comes to
mind while in the presence of the analyst. Theophostic Prayer Ministry, which
is a combination of inner healing and various psychotherapies known and
practiced by Ed Smith, its originator, utilizes a form of free association,
which he calls "drifting." Regardless of the change in name from free
association to drifting, it is relatively the same activity with the same
associated problems with memory.4 It is axiomatic that the further one goes
back in memory, the more unreliable the result.
Since memory is so essential in this process, it is important to ask, "How
good is memory?" Dr. Carol Tavris has said, "Memory is in a word lousy. It is a
traitor at worst, a mischief-maker at best. It gives us vivid recollections of
events that could never have happened, and it obscures critical details of
events that did."5
The brain does not operate like a computer. Nevertheless, counselor, pastor
Dr. Cecil Osborne says:
Everything that has ever happened to us is inscribed somewhere in the
memory bank. Though the event may have transpired many years ago, the memory is
lodged somewhere in those fifteen billion cells in the brain. Time does not
diminish them in the slightest. The fact that most of the traumas of childhood
are "forgotten" does not mean that they are doing no damage. Deep in the
unconscious mind they can become festering pools of pain, producing anxiety,
tension, character distortion, obsessive-compulsive behavior, alcoholism, drug
addiction, difficulty in giving or receiving love, impaired relationships and,
in time, actual physical symptoms of a hundred different varieties.6
In his book Remembering and Forgetting: Inquiries into the Nature of Memory,
Edmund Bolles says, "The human brain is the most complicated structure in the
known universe."7 He also says, "Remembering is a creative, constructive
process. There is no storehouse of information about the past anywhere in our
brain."8
As an example of how memory works, the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget
describes a clear memory from his own early childhood:
I can still see, most clearly, the following scene, in which I believed
until I was about fifteen. I was sitting in my pram, which my nurse was pushing
in the Champs Elysées, when a man tried to kidnap me. I was held in by the
strap fastened round me while my nurse bravely tried to stand between me and
the thief. She received various scratches, and I can still see vaguely those on
her face. Then a crowd gathered, a policeman with a short cloak and a white
baton came up, and the man took to his heels. I can still see the whole scene,
and can even place it near the tube station. When I was about fifteen, my
parents received a letter from my former nurse saying that she had been
converted to the Salvation Army. She wanted to confess her past faults, and in
particular to return the watch she had been given as a reward on this occasion.
She had made up the whole story, faking the scratches. I, therefore, must have
heard, as a child, the account of this story, which my
parents believed, and projected into the past in the form of a visual memory.9
Memories are created out of images, overheard conversations, dreams,
suggestions, and imagination as well as out of actual events. And they change
over time. Even as we remember we tend to fill in the gaps. Therefore, each
time a memory is recalled it is also recreated with the emotions accompanying
the recall and with the imagination which fills in the gaps.
False memories abound in inner healing. In 1989, we wrote the following:
Across America parents are receiving phone calls and correspondence that
plunge them into a nightmare of accusations of abuse and incest. These are not
parents of young children or teenagers. They are parents of grown children who
throughout their lives had had no recollection of being sexually molested by
their mother or father. Now, seemingly out of the blue, their bizarre stories
are stunning their parents. These adult children, usually daughters, now claim
to remember precise details of one of their parents sexually abusing them.
Where do they get such ideas? Where do those sordid memories come from? What
brings them to the surface? Inner healing and other forms of regressive-type
therapy lurk behind this surge of family horror stories.
Since we wrote that in 1989 there has been a surge of sexual abuse and
satanic ritual abuse accusations by adult children towards their parents,
primarily based upon early life memory reconstruction. These can occur quite
easily during inner healing.
The Emotions
The intense use of emotions is an essential ingredient in inner healing.
Remove emotions and you?ll disable the movement. The Freudian concept involved
is that of abreaction, which is "the discharge of tension by reliving by words,
feelings, and actions a traumatic experience (the original cause of the
tension)."10 It is a type of catharsis. A whole movement to express emotions is
built upon this one Freudian concept. Others took the Freudian idea and
postulated that lurking within each one of us are emotions that need to come
out if we are to feel better. These groups became known as "ventilationists."
Biblical Basis
There is no biblical basis for emotional expression as manipulated by inner
healers and some psychotherapists. If you only deal with one human emotion,
anger, you will find prohibitions against its use, not permission for its use
in the way the inner healers use it. We call it unrighteous anger.
Scientific Basis
In the past, self-control was encouraged and was the model for behavior. Now
we have moved from a society of self-restraint to one of self-expression.
Leonard Berkowitz, who has extensively studied violence and aggression,
disagrees with the idea that it is desirable to let out one?s aggressive
feelings. "Those therapists that encourage such active expression of negative
emotions ... [and] stimulate and reward aggression heighten the likelihood of
subsequent violence."
Hydraulic Model: Tavris discusses the hydraulic model of emotions. The model
says simply that if emotional energy is blocked in one place it must be
released elsewhere. She says:
Today the hydraulic model of energy has been scientifically discredited,
but this has not stopped some therapeutic circles from expanding the
"reservoir" idea to contain all the emotions?jealousy, grief, resentment, as
well as rage. These therapists still argue that any feeling that is "dammed up"
is dangerously likely to "spill over" and possibly "flood" the system.11
Catharsis, in spite of its seeming temporary relief, has never been proved to
be a panacea for problems.
"Talking out an emotion does not reduce it; it rehearses it." Tavris says,
"Talking can freeze a hostile disposition."12 She says, "The psychological
rationales for ventilating anger do not stand up under experimental scrutiny.
The weight of the evidence indicates precisely the opposite; expressing anger
makes you angrier, solidifies an angry attitude, and establishes a hostile
habit."13 To put it simply, "anger, over ventilated, perpetuates anger."14
"Sometimes the best you can do about anger is nothing at all."15
Well why do adults in general, Christians included, follow such false
teaching? It is because they honestly believe (never mind scientific proof to
the contrary) that catharsis is good. They have bought the psychological notion
of expression over our tradition of suppression (not repression).
Cognitive Dissonance: What happens when people have experiences and how do
these experiences shape their theology? Leon Festinger has developed a theory
called cognitive dissonance. The theory is simply this: because people cannot
live in a state of conflict (dissonance) between a belief (a cognitive idea)
and a behavior or an emotional experience, something has to give. And, very
simply, according to Festinger, what gives is usually the belief. The brain
needs to maintain consistency for behavior and it will generally do so by
conforming its belief to its behavior or emotional experience.
Example One: Consider the happily married Christian man who believes in
fidelity. An office party comes along and after a little too much to drink he
drives a woman office coworker home and commits adultery. His behavior is at
odds with his belief about marriage. So, what happens? According to this theory
he will often change his original belief (fidelity) to conform to his behavior
(adultery).
Example Two: Someone is invited to attend a meeting in which emotional
experiences are promoted and practiced. He has great doubts, but goes because a
friend has invited him. During the meeting he hears teachings supporting the
emotional activities and sees others participating. In the midst of all the
hype he ends up becoming emotionally and experientially involved. As soon as he
crosses the line from hesitation to participation he becomes ensnared in the
emotions and experiences. No more doubts, no more hesitation. He usually
becomes both a participant and a promoter.
According to this theory such immersion and participation will change an
individual?s beliefs. And that is precisely what happens in emotional
experiences such as inner healing. One such example from a pastor follows:
During the course of her talk, [Roz] Rinker explained how the Holy Spirit
could work through our prayers to reach back into past experiences and heal old
emotional wounds. She invited us to test the validity of this claim for
ourselves. Following her lead, we were instructed to allow our minds to be led
by the Spirit to our childhood. As I did so, I began to visualize myself as a
boy of eight. I was startled to see a very burdened child; in fact, I saw
myself carrying a large bundle on my back. Apparently, the weight of this
burden symbolized my past needs and worries.
We then were asked to envision a setting for this child. I immediately found
him standing before a dark school ground at night. Fear began to creep into my
meditation and I intuitively realized that all of these symbols were poignant
descriptions of how my childhood experience felt to me.
Next she asked us to do a surprising thing. "Now see if you can imagine Jesus
appearing," she instructed. "Let Him walk toward you."
Much to my amazement, I?an ordained Reformed Church clergyman with a
doctorate in psychology?found this happening to me. An image of Jesus moved
slowly toward me out of that dark playground. He began to extend His hands
toward me in a loving, accepting manner.
"Now," she said softly, "ask Him to touch you with His healing power."
Before I could consciously respond to her direction, I saw Christ already
moving through my imagination with a freedom that exceeded my direction. My
meditation seemed to have taken on a life of its own. I no longer was creating
the scene. The figure of Christ reached over and lifted the bundle from my
back. And He did so with such forcefulness that I literally sprang from the pew.
I blinked my eyes and looked at the people who still were meditating. I was
perplexed, confused. But then it occurred to me: Something in my past has just
been healed. I feel released.
In the days that followed, I had a growing realization that something
profound had transpired within me.16 (Italics in original.)
Remember that, according to the theory of cognitive dissonance, when a belief
and a behavior are in conflict, either the belief or behavior usually changes;
and, it is usually the belief that changes.
Notice the imagery in the above account. In Part Three (next issue) we
discuss imagery, the fifth ingredient in the unbiblical stew called "inner
healing." Imagery is potentially the most dangerous of the five.
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Other related posts:
- » [geocentrism] Psychoheresy and Inner Healing
