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Page for Volume What is New
See also That Magnificent Rock Ch. 6
End-notes will appear at the end of each Section, except that in Section II, they will appear at the end of each relevant part within it, namely A and B.
Where do they come from and where are they going ?
Are the last named often professional versions of Macbeth, minus the conviction of his failure; with less realism and no more reality, where academically pursued without God ? Is irrationalism now an academic drug ?
Often, the fault is transferred from the pathetic altogether, to the proselytising or the pompous - at least consciously.
Inside a basic orientation of meaninglessness, a relativistic pot pourri cooked by no one with ingredients from nowhere, we may find distorted, encrypted, surreptitiously supplied agencies of meaning to a marvel, and even dynamic purpose, mission, values and directives. We are 'exposed' in some academic places to assurance and even some serpentine seeming form of moralising.
'We' become the arbiters of destiny, and 'scholarship' chomps on those who disagree with teeth, both brittle and decayed. At other times, we find the form of 'sincerity' striving to overcome its terrible difficulties in directing mere mortals from the midst of the sea which has no shores, the atheistic, agnostic depths, to just where they should go...
This might be called the academic phenomenon of idealistic agnosticism, mirage metaphysics or clandestine commandments, depending on the case. Pathologically, it is revealing; vitally, it is ruinous and essential to escape.
Again, at other times, it is more crudely seen as a sceptical agnosticism, which nonetheless manages to divulge ... the complete works on bound in disabling chains. From this prison, with Gilbertian irony, orated nevertheless, freedom is declared, liberty or ... or liberation is announced, the results of exploration by the analytical angel of light, which somehow manages to illuminate the darkness with (literally for Freud) unthinkable light! That case is well performed by the 'imprisoned' Freud. In view of these appalling and common antics without logic, it is astonishing that millions pay for this sort of thing; for it is often this which is provided; and one is reminded of the Scripture (Isaiah 55:3):
Why do you spend money for what is not bread ? and your labour for what does not satisfy ? Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness...Relative to any thought of any assured body of scientific knowledge governing psychiatry in the mass (or the morass ?), what follows is a matter of some interest from the works (chiefly) of 'prophet'... Carl Jung. However he is merely a leading modern example of that variety defined and declared by the true prophet Jeremiah, in chapter 23 - here verse 21:
"I did not send them, but they ran..."This is their death sentence Biblically, in terms of any lively functionality... for good before the God, who gave the Scripture.
Jung for his part levels criticism at Freud (p. 277, Modern Man in Search of a Soul) in a way which helps explain and, in measure, even make such a negative result probable, in dealing with Freud's metaphysical sexuality fixation, in which a tributary is made into the river system. Let us review and expand the point.
Why is this hold-all theory so concerned with a minute focus, that must encompass the world of creativity ? Say anything, make any item you like the beginning and the end; but that is words. It is not the fact. Sexuality is able to work, at its own level, but where is the interface between this and opera singing, art, literature and other learning; what is the presumed character of the actual dynamics, and by what carefully formulated means does this wonder occur so that it may be tested, checked, verified, refined and so on ? In the absence of any basis for such findings, they are scientifically invalid. Science is to tell us how and through what formats, by means of formulations, able to be verified, this or that happens; and if every implication and forecast is correct well. Here no part of the procedure is followed. Transformations of this order require transformative powers; and to assume them is to beg the question.
In fact, reproductive powers are by design linked to strong forces of personality expression, appropriate to engendering of another member of the human race; and this is one touch to the heart of man; but that reproductive equipment and scenarios, admittedly linked to life, should in some way control or encapsulate or condition or direct or provide a basis for other creative facets of life is sheer metaphysical romanticism, lacking not merely in scientific method, but in observational basis, logical structure and feasibility itself. Creativity makes sex, creativity makes books; but sex does not make books. Both are a function of the human spirit, in one case with special reference to reproduction, in the other to production. We are in utterly different milieus, linked only by the common fact of life, as indeed is the case with bones, nerve endings and cranial cells also.
The genie of transformation which would make a sort of chameleon out of sex lacks not only in interface, but in transformative equipment; resembling someone solemnly, except perhaps a little tipsy at a banquet speech, declaring that really, you know, mathematics is a form of romantic love lyric, because, don't you see, people sometimes simply love mathematics, and love their wives, so that actually mathematics is covert reproduction. Nor does this metaphysical monstrosity which perhaps appeals to the sex-obsessed, like other idols of reductionism, fare any better practically. Thus one expert, H.J. Eysench, Director of the University of London's Department of Psychology (presumably not without clinical reference) wrote: "The success of the Freudian revolution seemed complete. Only one thing went wrong. The patients did not get any better..." (Adams op.cit., p. 2). Even making allowances for the vigour of argument, this is an interesting specialist statement. It is very reminiscent of the self-assessment of Dr Spock, disillusioned with a pseudo-sophisticated permissiveness of a generation he had had the sadness to observe brought up, very often, rather in the way he had once... recommended! His frankness at least is refreshing in a way the methodology has evidently failed to be, for those to whom it was directed!
On p. l (op.cit.), Adams quotes from the published accounts of the American Psychiatric Association symposium on Progress in Psychiatry: "Psychiatry is today in a state of disarray almost exactly as it was 200 years ago." An interesting survey (p. 3) shows the result that of patients who spend 350 hours on psychoanalysts' couches, 2 out of 3 got somewhat better after a period of years. The survey also shows for its field that the same percentage responded similarly without analysis! In fact, the p. l statement just cited fits well with Carl Jung's finding (presumably based on no little clinical experience...), that the adequacy of mind-survey now, is like that of natural science in the 13th. century (Modern Man in Search of a Soul, p. 225, cf. p. 60).
Whatever researchers may wish to do to respond, these numerous experts indicate categorically that there is no assured body of 'scientific' knowledge which covers the case with psychiatry; though doubtless, some pockets where presuppositions are not rampant may do rather better - for example the observation of certain symptoms which often cohere in syndromes.
As to the presuppositional point just made, L.J. Sherrill notes (in his Guilt and Redemption, p. 15) that the various psychologies are 'heavy with dogmas... If dogma is statements pronounced true apart from evidence which any other competent person can verify...' (italics added).
Adams similarly lists many who are
pursuing new models of psychology away from what are deemed the eminently
presuppositional
models (p. 13, op.cit.), so often used earlier - such as presuppositional
determinism with all its problems of epistemology. Impressive results from
responsibility concepts (if one is to think of being
'clinical'), are cited by Adams in conjunction with the 'Moral Model' of
Dr. Mowrer, Research Professor at the University of Illinois at the time
in view.
Not so, is the evident retort, to this. Machines do not err. They cannot, matter being what it is. What they can do, and may do, is depart in performance from the desires and/or designs of their maker.
This fact merely accentuates the basic point being made. It is the maker of the machine who errs, and the machine which does not do so. Error is not in determinism, for all must be what it is. Error is in man, even wilful error, conceived error, contrived error, forgetful error, oversight error, overload error, casual error, witless error.
Man is a master of error in multitudes of forms, and for many reasons in many ways. As a person, this is one of his undoubted fortes. He may even err for hidden reason, revealed to him in their purposes only later. He may imagine wrongly through over-active imagination or under-active, through ignorance or conceptual effrontery. Similarly guilt and shame have no meaning, where error must happen; but do have meaning even in the communistic orgies of blame. People work on the assumption of responsibility for themselves and others, whatever their theories. The reason is simple: we know that we can listen, or otherwise to temptations and possibilities, being swayed as persons who may and do err. Error comes when the conception of the machine maker is outside the determined paths of the materials used, for good reason. Error has no place in determinism; but it has much place in man, who has no place in determinism.
Logically it is so, and empirically there is an expected consequence. Guilt and shame are not effectively dealt with, let us add, when the assumption is made that erring man is - what shall we call him - an indeterminate determinate ? Verbal contortions may help expose the conceptual folly. To this we shall shortly return with data from Jung. Further, how ludicrous for debate, when all minds are 'determined' by inevitable conditions, and how much more ludicrous to imagine that any truth could be obtained from them... such as the 'truth' that all is determined. Mind-buckling theories must always go before they attack anything else, and are of course logically worthless.
Such a result is exactly what we have been finding, again and again, in ourconsideration of other elements of non-Christian theories. This is hardly unexpected, especially since Christian-theism has been demonstrated correct; for what is false should exhibit its failure ... as it does, and in so doing, it provides further confirmatory verification of Biblical truth.
Again, Jung speaks of the "suffering which tortures us all" (p. 62), whilst in terms of data, there are numerous Christians who do not conform to this finding. Refinement, testing, yes; but an inward torture, no ? They are worlds apart- as is the reference of Paul to the Christian's dower of a 'peace which surpasses all understanding', and Christ's reference to giving peace 'not as the world gives' together with grounds for that peace, as in John 14:1-8. Jung's approach to the Bible makes it understandable that he did not find or apprehend this peace, was insensitive to it, could not construe it, did not work with it.
Obscurity is predictable for relativistic presuppositions moving amongst the actual data: they are, as noted, in different worlds and so could not cohere when pressed. Mutually contradictory elements are expected similarly as the thrust of fact meets vortex-wise, with the imperviousness of erring theory. Torture, again, is not unexpected where one trusts in one's own self or one's own religion, in conflict with the requirements of evidence and logic: as is the case for all religious and moral relativism.
These verifications from a Christian approach (from a revelatory approach using the Bible, for reasons noted) are of great importance. Our point however is this: the outstanding thinker Jung, surrounded with clinical data and able to be subtle indeed, cannot make theories on such bases meet the facts, personal or professional. Psychiatry is not at this level even competent, and its errors in this sphere are systematic where agnostic and relativistic (*1) - and what else can it be where revelation iS rejected or injected subjectivistically without logical ground in crypto-relativism!
Christianity on the other hand both states and meets the requirements in guilt, and is famed for its outstanding, not to say often instant transformations (*2), following spiritual 'acquittal' in Christ. This too is verification. Biblical Christianity also meets the logical requirements concerning human responsibility and unity of concept in a coherent non-self-contradictory system.
We are responsible because we are persons made in the fellowship-model for God (He is not geometrical, being a Spirit, so 'image'- Genesis 1:27- is not physical but correlative at the personal level). As persons, though not like God in being infinite (by definition there is but one such Being), we resemble Him in this, that there are areas of freedom to which possibilities of error must relate.
Much greater than computers, we are responsible because not fully automated; guilty when irresponsible; and forgiven when receiving the revelatory remedy: in Christ and Him crucified, and risen to pronounce and prove the reality of justification by grace. Unlike the alternative, this works both logically and practically, in data and design. The considerations are consistent and the consequences are effective. But how can such things be ?
They can be because God, as shown, necessarily is, and that He should devise a way to pardon sin and preserve justice is not merely self-consistent, but obviously His sole prerogative as Creator, whose equipment is used and misused, in the human format, the spirits he has created rebelling, bending or blending relative to His will, and His righteousness. Who else could possibly end guilt but the One on whom the conduct impinges, as owner, maker and creator ? Who else could possibly devise the conditions of pardon, and how else could peace possibly be obtained! This however brings us to the concept of divine action into the Nature He has made. Let us consider this in particular in the field of health, our present topic.
That being said, miracles are the positive side, in what is rightly ordered and organised towards deity. They come into the milieu of divine operation among men, as He pleases, but by His will and with His power, deliberate intervention in the work, in the first place, deliberately made in its natural form.
This has its negative counterpart, in intrinsic failure of what might at least have been ordered aright, rather than misconstrued and misused, in contradiction and confusion, in the humanist or relativist side of things, as represented by Jung. Miracles are the 'plus' while the other is the 'minus'; and each relates to verification (or anti-verification, in the Jung case, as also in the clinical case for Freud, as noted).
Of course other anti-miracles abound where God is omitted - as in the case of Jung's just criticism of Freud as having no adequate correlation-medium between his reductionist category (of sexuality), and the diverse and divergent realities of creativity, wrought by man. We might also note with mirth the simple fact that the threesome of ego, id and super-ego is a threesome in what ? The Christian of course at once has the answer: in a design made in the spiritual image of God, so that components (*3), when understood, are seen as expressions of the purpose of the design. As with all design, purpose is elemental to its integrity and expressibility.
Miracles are, it is well to observe, not extreme rarities; although they are indeed hard to photograph, as journalists are not normally called in when the Creator uses His discretion to intervene by miracle. Journalists are frequently much more concerned with the outward and observable operations of 'reality' - which is the action of what God made - than with the faith-related functions of man-in- God's-image. Nor does the Almighty often give notice; for as we see in the days of Jesus Christ on earth, God is far from enamoured of sensationalism in the use of this sort of power (far from it, indeed, as seen in many examples such as that of Mark 7:36).
Nevertheless, when a major denomination in England confirms the testimony of a healer of some tens of thousands of cases, often wrought in hospitals or most publicly, simply in the name of Christ and without psychic extravaganzas, and dealt with in three publications, much in case-book format, mere 'educated' dismissal is not the proper scientific or clinical response. Mrs Elsie Salmon, Methodist Minister's wife in South Africa, healed for many years after World War II, both in South Africa and in England; and the cases from survey appear to have been most frequently those deemed medically 'incurable'. They included the psychiatric, as well as cancer. Even distorted or ungrown limbs or members could be healed.
In the records, the case is provided of a baby who, since birth, had been lacking a part of an arm and one entire hand. The arm in its defective condition was first X-rayed, and later restored complete with hand, phases of restoration being noted and described (pp. 135 ff., He Heals Today).
The extensive, detailed reports show that many cases in the physical side involved organic diseases, and that those affected were healed almost instantaneously, setting the phenomenon apart from either earthy or eerie naturalistic palliatives and procedures, from naturalistic religions indeed. This is a point which can scarcely here be too much stressed, relative to the Christian supernatural: precision is important.
The three books concerned are: Key To Healing, He Heals today and Christ Still Healing. The latter two were published in I951 and I956 in England and a forward appeared in the second from Dr. W. E. Sangster, President of the Methodist Conference, just as did legal and medical data statements of authenticity, in one significant area of comparison: condition before and condition after the healing.
Healing at a distance was one of the other striking similarities to the healing of Christ, noted in the publications. (Cf. Matthew 8:5-13.) The most striking difference, at first appearance, from many, was plainly this: Mrs Salmon simply put it that the healing would occur in the name, by the power and to the honour of the Lord Jesus Christ. Her work as a mere agent of Christ appears strongly, and she is far from seeking any significant relationship to herself.
Numerous physical and physiological impressions and indications, in the books, are of great interest; but the important thing in this context is the public, repetitive and dramatically simple as well as simply dramatic character of the healing. The gift of healing is one noted by Paul in I Corinthians 12:28: but in the light of I Corinthians 12:11, as in that of Christ's frequent insistence on not making sensations out of His works of compassion, it is clear that this is not a mandate, but a miracle, an expression of His peace and mercy, amid the consequences of sin: it is something that is not to obscure what is more important, that a man should know his God.
We are, then, seeing the consistency of grace and goodness, power and propriety, the scriptures and the results in this healing sphere. While secular psychiatry makes one kind of effort, often with confusion and contradiction, there are consistent and discrete provisions exactly following the Bible, on the other hand. These can result in mental or physical healing; and the spirit of a sound mind is a Biblical indication which faith can apprehend (II Timothy 1:7).
This may come from direct, miraculous means, if God so determines; or in a less direct manner, as the heart being united in the fear, the understanding of the Lord, and the life oriented to reality, wise principles being followed from the word of the Lord, health is ministered. Such results may arrive in a way not wholly different from that of a conscientious athlete, though it specifically involves a supernatural comradeship, something natural to man. It is the unnaturalness of not being in comradeship with the supernatural and loving God, in His directive peace and presence which is an underlying cause of that vulnerability, over-reactivity, moodiness and dissatisfaction, compounded by either unforgiven sin that rankles, or buried sin which festers, which is a pre-disposing cause to much mental illness.
Let us however revert to the case of the directly miraculous. Biblically, the provision of healing gifts is one divine option, explicitly sovereignly exercised at the divine discretion (I Corinthians 12:10,28). This gift is not at all at the head of Paul's list, beginning with those of the apostleship, and this, we see, fits with the attitude of Christ. Emphatically, we see here, that God elects when to distribute any gift, does not grant any of these gifts to all, so that no one can be assumed either to have or to have an obligation to have any one of this specific functional gifts, love (I Corinthians 13) being the greater thing to desire, and prophecy, of the specific gifts, the one so needed as to be selectively set forth (I Corinthians 14:1).
People should be functional, not presumptuous, the apostle teaches; seek to serve, not to elevate, in general, this or that gift, or office in a prejudicial or peculiar manner. God is the giver, a person with discretion and, as with all gifts, it is the giver who has the directive finality in the matter. Far more is this so, when the giver God: baptising all into Christ's body at conversion (I Cor. 12:11-13, John 6:56).
It is apparent many of the Corinthians were sensationalistically gift-conscious and carnally motivated; so that Paul sorted out the extravagance of the excitement (I Corinthians 14:19,29 ff.), setting higher that spiritual proclamation of the word of God in the power of the Holy Spirit which is the contemporary residuum of 'prophecy'. It is God as speaker who is to be known, understood (cf. Jeremiah 9:23-24). This prophetic gift is not rescinded or rescindable from Scripture, but is one truncated in a completed canon (Revelation 22, Galatians 1). No word play will remove the word of God which states and stipulates the prophetic role as cardinal, in an assigned list, apostolically correlative to the body of the Lord, awaiting that which is perfected, when we know as we are known (I Corinthians 13:12).
It is good neither to play the theological 'evolutionist', and cut off members of the body in its gift analogy - as propounded by Paul - for the working model; nor to direct that body, as if one were the head. That is Christ (Matthew 23:8,10), so that peculiar new 'spiritual' papacies are as much to be avoided as the Roman doctrinal kind, for the same underlying reason: We, says Christ, are brethren, and He is Master. It is witless to outmaster God; and useless as an aim.
The gifts are works of grace, operative by God's power, at His discretion, and have specialised function, never divorced from the love, the humility and the submission which is, as it were, the matrix where gifts are digits. In this milieu of power, grace, peace, mutual solicitude and service, healing is a possible entrant, at the specific and direct level; but it is not a paranoid focus, a foolish superficiality; and it is subordinated highly specifically to the spiritual character of life, not in disdain, but in proportion to the significance which all things have. After all, as Christ indicated, a sound body going to hell is not the optimal case (Matthew 5:30, 6:22-23, Luke 11:34-35; and note the case of Job, sick for a time and for a highly significant spiritual purpose - Job 1:8, 11-12, 19:23 ff.).
Thus miraculous healing to take one specific but not at all exalted gift, is neither a mandate for the mob, nor a magic wand; it is a consignment to a disciple, at the will of God, and will operate within the confines of spirituality, and of the word of God, in general: not as some sensationalistic substitute for love and truth, understanding and instruction in the ways of the Lord. It is given, like all gifts, as desired by the Lord. God is a person, not armoury.
Nor should operation of the healing gift be confused, in terms of the Bible as the divine word to be verified by those concerned, with the general power of prayer. Specialised gifts are for service, not for intrusion. Personal prayer is still a highly effective means of approach to God, who does not limit Himself to certain specific people, by any rule; merely, as it were, using gifts for us as we might use a gardener. It does not stop our own gardening ...
This is rendered explicit in James 5:16. The "effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much..."; and that coheres to perfection with the restraint indicated in I Corinthians 12, concerning the sovereign selection of gifts, by God. Christians are always dependent on the giver, not on the gift (cf. 1 John 2:27 in an allied sphere): the gift is for service, and neither for focus nor worship. The gifts are used in mutual love; but faith resides in God only. In Christ, it is the Word of God which takes pre-eminence in the functioning of the Christian 'body'. Paul is decisive here, and misuse of these instructions is no more relevant to the Christian beauty of consistency, than is the intrusion of the Roman religion into the power of this world. Both errors are as relevant to Christianity as is influenza to the body: a painful experience, that certainly needs watching, and which should be avoided.
Thus word, work and witness combine without confusion or contradiction. Not only so; but there are depths of personal inter-relationship with the Almighty, specialties of gifts, generalities of answered prayer, the preservation of the integrity of the individual, of the focus on Christ, on the operation of His principles, on the centrality of His word, as expressive, directive and a source of understanding without which there is only barrenness; and there is health of in its dimensions, neither alien to the mind or man, nor limited to it. This health is neither mere physical force nor oblivious of functional considerations; it is deep, it touches the depths of human personality in its relationship, personally, with the God who made it, as well as the body; and has ways for both.
That record is not one secular psychiatry can match. In fact, no point is known to the author for which Christianity does not provide a consistent conceptual answer; and no alternative is available which is so much as consistent in its own concepts. Jung's admission (together with his potent attacks on some other systems in the book noted) is merely illustrative here. It will be good, by way of verificatory contrast, to follow further now the embarrassment of Jungian psychiatry, for there are few of Jung's eminence, and his scope is broader than that of many.
Further, Jung holds that the effective psychiatrist is to 'perfect' himself (op. cit. p. 262) in order to help the patient, yet neither of them is taken by him to know what is that reality, of necessity involved, for the meaningful delineation of 'perfection' ! To this we shall in a moment return.
Moreover, he notes that the decline of religious concepts in modern civilisation is "degenerative" op. cit. pp. 224-5), and stimulative of more neuroses (op. cit. p. 266). This of course accords well with the expert critical notes cited at the outset in this writing, on treatment of mental illness (pp. 334-335 supra). Jung's admission of the 13th.century state of the psychiatric art (op. cit. p. 335 supra, cited) need not be further studied, but it should be borne in mind. And this is science ! Assured science! It is necessary for realism in these areas.
Let us now revert to the just-mentioned Jungian 'need' - clinically - of perfection for proper psychiatric function... How will one proceed even substantially who, in the end does not know - his final conclusion - know the "perfection" (*5) which he is to apprehend in order so much as to do his professional service conscientiously and adequately ? If he does not even know it, how would he even move to its attainment (*6), or... use it either for himself as a person or a physician, or for his patient! He conceives himself as personally involved (which he is), and thus in need of such consummate personal ingredients, in which he finds this basic deficiency. Without... as we have seen... being theoretically placed so as to know the divine and only objective specifications for the meaning of man (pp. 284-288 ff. supra), how can, how could Jung even approximate the perfection necessarily hidden from his eyes, or accurately determine even its precise direction ?
Thus while Paul would render even himself cursed, should he depart from or change the only gospel of the only God (Galatians 1:6-9), yet as to its presentation and application, he is such an assiduous servant that he can say: ''I have become all things to all men, that I might be all means save some'' ... and again, ''Now this I do for the gospel's sake, that I may be partaker of it with you.''
This word from I Corinthians 9:22-23 shows a passion for perfection which does not confuse the Christ with the operator, or the gospel with the personal findings of the preacher.
In Jung's type of approach, however, what is essential both in knowledge and performance of perfection in a personally based function, is essentially unattainable; it is a natural consequence in such a philosophic situation as Jung opted, where such confused metaphysics moved in the place of God Himself. By reason of who He is, men simply cannot play God. Not only does it not work; it could not. Psychiatry, in some of its expressions, is an able and apt demonstration of that fact, descending often to stimulus altering drugs with anti-beneficial side-effects, often the reduction of personal force.
Meanwhile, the perfect (*6) doctor, famed beyond all men, Jesus Christ Himself, endlessly effective over thousands of years, this One, Jung could not seem to find - only the need for Him, he found!
As with Macbeth, so with Jung, one feels a great sorrow... With force comes for him the ancient dictum: Physician, heal thyself!
What is the correct design (*7) for these patients ? What should be their disposition? What is right ? We are dealing with more than ideas: with ideals, actuality, spirituality, personality... To them, no design may with knowledge be offered by Jung, but that of a frustrated functionary trying to interpret which way their 'life' or 'libido' ... is going. It may go very well to hell. The pathway to hell is studded with good intentions and honourable mentions.
Psychiatry cannot - without an objective revelation from the objective God - so much as discipline itself (*8)! far less can it restore, as distinct from control, its patients: it does not, in this state, even know the design for them.
One could pity a panel-beater in such a predicament, without any example or specification, dealing with a drastic deformation of the car. (One might also... spare a thought for his client!) But then, he can at least beat. That case would be poor; but this is piteous.
Truth is fallen in the street.
Judgment will at last supervene, but in the interim, this sad vanity appears.
In such matters, when I think of the naked vulnerability of students so often falsely taught in such domains beforehand, in aggressive secondary schools (where also my experience is direct and personal as a teacher), it does help me in one way. I have no personal difficulty whatsoever with the concept of hell in such a case. There is for that destiny, in certain matters of human ... error, shall we say, a certain affinity.
Small wonder Jesus the Christ spoke of mill-stones around the necks of certain offenders.
For them, it would be better if they had never been born! These are His words. Thus even this area the word of Gcd penetrates with its poignancy, power and personal perspective, with relentless authority.
Our point, in this context, is simply that when and because secular psychiatrists fail per se to understand the image of God (Ephesians 4:19), we would expect them to man-handle the sick, or those deemed sick, even perhaps in a literal way: as men (or women) they handle what is God's without even - of necessity in such a case - understanding their design. If they refuse to know God (cf. Romans 1:18-19, Ephesians 4:19 - the divine diagnosis on determined unbelief): then they will not without gross distortion know what is in His image, in man-as-designed, or indeed understand God who is a Spirit (I Corinthians 2:14-15).
That is how the matter stands Biblically; our point is the results of such alienation ought systematically to appear in such human territory, when treated by specialists in such a condition. If it does, this is verification; and the more startling the way it does, the more dramatic the verification. To this point, we shall return.
When therefore, as happens so often in psychotherapy, analysis seems too expensive or burdensome, too time-consuming, restrictive or unproductive (and we have seen some evidence of such an approach, which is an understandable reaction when too little is understood, and the handbook of the Maker of the said Man is ignored in what is then, Biblically, a trifling with souls): Thencontrol may be sought.
Control rather than cure may become the criterion of 'therapy'. How may this be done ? How is it often done ? It is through demeaning - or even mind-restricting or mind-abusive drugs. It is cheap and seemingly simple, perhaps; and it may control such problems, as one psychiatrist put it, as 'obstinacy' - or pleasingly reduce them... (Unfortunately, this is not always a matter of 'dealing' with the dangerously violent, and reaction may lead to long-term instability, running the risk of aggravation.)
But who is being obstinate ?
Eagleson, Professor of English at Sydney University, has some comments on language as a medium of control in some psychiatry, and the concept of 'control', rather than healing, is precisely what one would expect when the manual of the Maker is rejected. Chemical or other devices may be sought.
When chemistry is used, though far too little is known to fully to realise what is really happening to the abused mental equipment, in ways less obvious in the short run, the patient may be conveniently kept 'quiet'. So are the patients, perhaps with slobbering mouths, urinary incontinence, slurred speech and hazy thoughts... controlled! It is more than short-sighted glibly to imagine that they do not notice these things, feel the implications, or will not in due course respond to these assaults or directions.
Was even the Inquisition more cruel than some who make a convenience of patients but whose 'control' dwarfs their power to heal. Not that all drugs must be wrong. However, their forcible use to suppress undesirable mental activity - or what is deemed so by those often themselves relativists with no ground for 'ideals', but merely preference: this can be torture to some patients, and may have deep and undesirable consequences for others, who may prefer God to man, as did David, in His tender mercies (I Chronicles 21:8-13 - esp. v.13).
Indeed, in a case known to me, such things have been executed in a way contrary to well established Biblical principles. It is in such a case like force-feeing pork to an Orthodox Jew. This, in our 'enlightened' society, such aggravated chemical assault (often extended by physical assault by attendants in what might in some cases almost attain to conspiracy), is viewed as 'socially desirable', because the State or the profession or the coterie is allowed to play 'god', with lamentably inadequate spiritual and mental equipment for the task!
Eagleson (p. 62, op. cit.) puts it thus:
Notice how the term has become a euphemism for what many of us might want to call 'unwarranted interference'. It is interesting too that those who are labelled pre-delinquent or pre- psychotic are frequently those who have little political power themselves. The terms are usually applied to the poor and to children, especially children from broken homes, that is to those who do not have the power to resist help.
Psychiatric patients who show no symptoms are said to be escaping to health. This means that such patients are assumed, because they have no symptoms, to be still sick. They are seen as intent on deceiving themselves and the staff that they are well. Again, the words of the description give the institution the power to continue to restrain them in order to protect society. Treatment may involve public humiliation and pain.
Medication may convert those who will not conform. The word therapy which the dictionary defines as 'a curative medical treatment', is used to justify repression and cruelty in expressions like electro-convulsive therapy, or to label a common activity as though it were a medical one.Eagleson proceeds to expose certain uses of the term 'therapy' as 'portraying a power relationship as a helping one...' (Cf. Dr Leo Alexander, p. 126, supra.)
Our current point, outside the abuse of minds and the question of the motives sometimes involved in certain superficial and even simplistic psychiatric answers to deep questions, ones which in fact require the Maker, is this. On the Biblical survey of spiritual things, precisely this sort of tendency to deception and brutalisation and misuse of (mental) equipment, and neglect of (spiritual) preference duly expressed by patients, would be expected if doctors with some knowledge (though severely limited in some of the related fields) use chemicals, and methods with broad implications, to secure particular results in their patients.
Force and onset, even deviousness may appear appropriate, where dimensions are not and cannot be understood. (Biblically there is restraint on such understanding of the image of God, where Christ is absent - I Corinthians 2:14.)
Indeed, Biblically denoted 'spiritually dead', and 'alienated from the life of God', pagan imparters of 'life' and 'health' may at times resemble a flea seeking to move an elephant ... and he might, if he nipped deeply enough. Put more directly, if what leads should be... dead, where can it lead ?
The tableau, the status quo, it is of course one more verification of Biblically imparted perspective: This amazing sort of result from so much knowledge conforms to the analysis of man Biblically provided; and the strange assemblage of (real intellectual) talent, task and such results ... is wholly explained in these terms. And that is one thing we must expect of truth: its capacity to explain reality, to provide depth, basis and background for understanding.
Now this is no attack on psychiatry per se. It is an exposure in some measure of misused psychiatry where patients, subjected at times to brutal force, are 'remoulded' by those who do not themselves have objective grounds, in many cases, either for their 'ideal' man or woman, or for their treatment to attain some greater approximation to it.
Biblically, it becomes one more case of the blind leading the blind - uncommon neither here nor in politics. These results are a verification, then, at the practical level of the necessity for God, attesting the failure and inconsistency which frequently and readily results systematically when men play God, dealing with what they do not (by virtue of their wills quite directly in many cases) understand. Nor would you expect those who do not know, and will not know their own Creator (and indeed that of their patients) - a frequent failing in any field - to understand what is made in God's image. All these things mutually, evidentially verify the word of God.
If, on the other hand, the failure of Freud and the internal defeat of Jung, if the endless and, in measure, needless contests of psychiatric schools together with the brutal and often inhumane treatment of patients, if these things were not so: then the human soul might look as if it were relatively simple. The psyche might then appear as if it were just some particular affair requiring... man's own independent order of thought, to solve it.
Not so, in practice, and far from it! In such a case, it is something like this which one must Biblically expect; and thus, assuredly, does one find! In some respects, modern psychiatry is an experimental verification of the truth carried out in some measure, in laboratory conditions!
Man's inability and confusion, and his controversy are predictable if he fails to take account of the word of His Maker.
In particular, the use of such limited and systematically distorted approaches (such as the Scripture asserts will occur in the minds of unbelievers in the only-true-God-there-is) ... would be expected both to show, and to lead to mismanagement, cruelty and confusion. Cruelty in its place is often caused by systematic failure to discern, to be sensitive to, even to understand crucial and sensitive elements of any case, involving persons, or lesser creations. It is not a question of intention very often in life; but of non-realisation. It still ... hurts. Needless harrowings and harassments are still common, the blows of the blind.
Thus this would be expected; and it happens.
Doubtless some palliatives are found, some limited help is provided from secular psychiatry; but in any verification, we are not interested in occasional or partial effects, but in conformity of results to theory.
From the Biblical viewpoint, then, the results are precisely what we would expect; they follow from the nature of the Biblical analysis, in kind, and are of the nature of acute and sustained verification.
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