Psychology Religion and Healing

PSYCHOLOGY, RELIGION AND HEALING. A critical study of all the non-physical methods of healing, with an examination of the principles under lying them and the techniques employed to express them, together with some conclusions regarding further investigation and action in this field LESLIE D. WEATHERHEAD M. PREFACE: IN THE FIRST WORLD WAR a young doctor, working in the desert amongst troops stationed north of Baghdad, talked about his dreams to two young chaplains far into the night. I was one of the chaplains. That doctor was a remarkable man. He practised psychological treat ment of an impressive kind when what was then called The New Psy chology was very new indeed. He practised hypnotism, both as a means of investigating the deep mind of the patient and also of giving him suggestions of courage, confidence and recovery. Further, he had as great a spiritual faith and power as I have ever seen. He would go out into the desert, and for hours he would concentrate his mind on one patient with a kind of spiritual intention. On returning he would some times find remarkable results. The patient, previously sleepless, would be asleep or, discontented, would have found peace of mind or, in despair, had begun to believe in his own recovery. In one case, a man apparently unable to walk was walking about the ward. The doctor claimed that when he had done all he could for a patient by all the arts of medicine, the turning point an the illness was sometimes determined by adding this form of prayerful concentration. I was a very young chaplain at the time, and only recently set free for chaplaincy duty by the Indian Army, in which I had enlisted as a combatant officer, I had wanted to be a medicalmissionary, but neither my family nor I could afford the cost of medical training. The com bination of healing and religion had always fascinated me. When this doctor turned to us two chaplains and said, You padres ought to be doing most of this, I felt he was right. I remembered that Jesus said, Heal the sick, and I had always had an uneasy feeling that to relegate all healing to the material methods of the doctors, splendid though that work is, did not really answer the challenge of our Lords words. Nor could I believe that His challenge was met by the psychologists, es pecially those who had no place for religion in their thought or practice. I therefore determined to learn all I could about non-physical ways of healing. When the doctor and my fellow-chaplain were both killed, I felt an even greater urgency to try to understand the ways in which psychology, religion and healing were related. On returning to Madras in 1919 I was lucky in being allowed to join a small study group of doctors and ministers. Considering we alHived busy lives, it was a strenuous training, for we took it in turns to intro duce a new book each week and read a paper on it which was the basis of discussion. My ministry in England since I returned in 1922 has only deepened in me the conviction that many people are suffering, even from sup posedly physical illnesses, who need not suffer a if we knew how to release and direct to them the resources of the spiritual world, and Z if both ministers and doctors were alert and trained to see and to under stand the early signs of psychological disturbance and to secure im mediate treatment, ideally in some environment where physically, psychologically and spirituallythe patient could be investigated and the whole personality integrated...