In his article, Understanding Clergy Stress: A Psychospiritual Response, Fr. George Morelli in introducing psychological aids to relieving stress points out that the healing energy of God can only be received by one whose volitional faculty is open to God’s Grace:
“Recalling what St. Maximus the Confessor taught: “the grace of the most Holy Spirit does not confer wisdom on the Saints without their natural intellect as capacity to receive it.” Goodness and wisdom is granted to man by his volitive faculty; God is not coercive and will never confer his gifts on people who refuse to receive them. This points to the radical freedom that man possesses. Thus, when man freely obeys God, he can apply his intellect and acquired knowledge in ways that allow God’s grace to work more effectively in his life. For this reason, knowledge of the psychological aids in stress management can be seen not as a replacement for the peace, wisdom, and other attributes conferred by the Holy Spirit, but as a means by which the Spirit can affect peace and order in the believer’s life.”
My point in citing the above is this: If a client seeking services from a psychotherapist steeped in the secular science of “psychology” how shall this client be open to God’s Grace when such is not being communicated to him via the practitioner’s level of empathy, knowledge base and spiritual experience (or lack thereof). And what about the practitioner who holds a belief in God and his therapeutic knowledge base maybe that of humanistic or transpersonal modalities? What if his/her belief in a “God” is not that of The Father within the Triadic Godhead known to the Orthodox Church? As in any exposure of knowledge man is faced with only shades of Truth dressed in garbs of many layers of mythological “wisdom” that serve only to shelter the hearer, or in our case the client, from being exposed to the authentic Way, Truth and Life of Christ that leads to healing. Traditional psychological literature has become riddled with articles on treating the religious client and on integrating spirituality into therapeutic practice. Whether or not the client is Orthodox or even religiously-oriented, this, for the Orthodox Christian practitioner, falls short of communicating God’s healing power to their client. Even a melding of Orthodox teachings with a science of “psychology” is not the answer as these are more often like combining water and oil! The issue is not the initial degree of openness of the client, which comes about over time. The issue is in communicating God’s Grace as understood by the Orthodox Church while avoiding syncretism and scientific ecumenism.
What we are in desperate need of is a genuine Orthodox Christian Psychology, a thoroughly theological expression, not only anthropological and ontological but, that which informs the clinician –as does science currently attempts– about how to understand the workings and adaptations of the soul (which would include the mind and mental functionings) and its consequential behaviors with the appropriate methodology of change (metanoia). We need a genuine Orthodox psychotherapy that equips the clinician on how to assist and facilitate (not impose upon) the client towards a functioning that St. Maximos the Confessor calls, “well-being” and on the road towards theosis, if the client so wishes.
By establishing Emerge! eJournal (hosted by WordPress) and its companion discussion group Emerge! Forum (hosted by Yahoo! Groups) it is our hope that such fellowship and dialogue may well bring about an emergent and authentic body of knowledge and modality of therapy that will properly earn the nomenclature, Orthodox Psychology and Psychotherapy useful to clinicians and theologians alike. It is therefore our prayer, through the intercession of our father among the saints Gregory of Nyssa, that God –Who condescended to become Man so that we might return to the full potential of Adam therefore surpass him into the sharing of the divine nature of the Incarnate Logos, not only in His image but in His likeness as well – bless and guide us in this journey as He did the early Church Fathers. Amen.
