Psychotherapy: Science or Religion? Some Implications for Today's Church -- By: Noel Beaumont Woodbridge

Journal: Conspectus
Volume: CONSPECTUS 04:1 (Mar 2007)
Article: Psychotherapy: Science or Religion? Some Implications for Today's Church
Author: Noel Beaumont Woodbridge


Psychotherapy: Science or Religion? Some Implications for Today's Church1

Noel B. Woodbridge2

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to investigate the true nature of psychotherapy. In particular, an attempt will be made to answer the question: Is psychotherapy a science or a religion? It is a sad fact that today’s church has to a large extent given up its call to minister to hurting people, because Christians believe the myth that psychotherapy is a science. The paper argues that psychotherapy, in fact, is not a science, but rather another religion and that today’s church needs to return to the biblical counselling of the early church, which is far more effective than psychotherapy.

1. Statement of the problem

The contemporary climate of counselling is therapeutic, and not religious. People today do not hunger for a personal salvation, but for a sense of “feeling good”—that “momentary illusion of personal well-being, health and psychic security” (Lasch 1979:98). The cure of souls, which once was a vital ministry

of the church, has today been displaced by a cure of minds called “psychotherapy”.

For many, traditional religion no longer provides relevant answers for personal problems. More and more people are seeking answers from alternative sources and “in strange, new packages”. Millions of people are turning to those parts of psychology, such as psychotherapy, which promise to meet their present need for a quick solution to difficult problems by means of “an effortless, painless ride into the Promised Land” (Cinnamon & Farson 1979, cover).

When educated man lost faith in formal religion, he searched for a substitute belief that would be as reliable in the last half of the twentieth century as Christianity was in the first. He found what he was looking for in psychology—including its various branches, such as psychotherapy and psychiatry—which has now assumed the role of a substitute belief (Gross 1978:9).

Referring to this change from the spiritual to the psychological and from religion to science, Szasz (1978:26) claims that psychotherapy is a modern, scientific-sounding name for what used to be known as the “cure of souls”. One of the main reasons why Szasz wrote his book entitled, The Myth of Psychotherapy was as follows:

To show how, with the decline of religion and the growth of science in the eighteenth century, the cure of (sinful) soul, which had been an integral part of the Christian religion, was recast as the cure of (sick) minds, and became ...

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