One
of the phenomena of the age in which we live is the way the church has
been infiltrated by secular psychology. Contrary to 2 Timothy 3:16-17,
the Bible is no longer sufficient as a basis for counseling. We need
psychotherapy. The Holy Spirit is no longer depended on to produce
needed changes in the lives of believers. Elders are no longer
competent to counsel. They must refer their people to a professional
therapist. This in spite of the fact that God has given us in the Word
and by the Spirit all that is necessary for life and godliness (2
Pet. 1:3).
For
generations believers took their problems to the Lord in prayer. Now
they must take them to a psychiatrist or psychologist. Young men are
no longer urged to preach the Word. Now the buzz-word is
"Practice psychological counseling."
Professional
counseling has become such a sacred cow that someone will inevitably
arise in its defense. What's so wrong with it? Let me list eleven
things that are wrong with it.
1.
The person's attention is directed to self rather than to Christ. That
is a fatal flaw. There is no victory in self. Self-examination is not
a cure. Good seamen don't cast their anchors inside the boat. We need
Someone bigger than ourselves and that Someone is Christ. Sooner or
later we have to realize that occupation with Christ is the way to
victory in the Christian life (2 Cor. 3:18).
Ibsen,
the Norwegian dramatist, tells of a visit which Peter Gynt paid to a
mental hospital. All the people seemed normal. No one seemed crazy.
They talked quite sensibly about their plans. When Peter mentioned
this to a doctor, the latter said, "They're mad. I admit they
talk very sensibly, but it's all about themselves. They are, in fact,
most intelligently obsessed with self. It's self - morning, noon, and
night. We can't get away from self here. We lug it around with us,
even through our dreams. Oh yes, young sir, we talk sensibly, but
we're mad right enough."
2.
Modern psychology is based on human, not divine, wisdom. It is man's
opinion rather than God's authoritative Word. The variety of human
opinions is seen in the fact that there are over 250 systems of
psychotherapy and over 10,000 techniques (including one to help your
pets), each one claiming superiority over the others.
Says
Don Hillis, "This trend carries with it at least one dangerous
element: human reasoning takes the place of the Word of God in solving
emotional and spiritual problems. Rational answers... that are not
based on spiritual principles can lead to temporary relief but in turn
may become disillusioning and detrimental."
3.
Many and probably most of the problems for which people seek
counseling are caused by sin - broken marriages, fractured families,
interpersonal conflicts, worry, drugs, alcohol, and some forms of
depression. For these problems we don't need the "couch" but
the Cross. Only the Savior can say, "Your sins are forgiven; go
in peace."
4.
Modern counseling engages in a lot of blame-shifting. Sin is sickness.
Or it is caused by a person's environment. Parents are blamed for
their children's unacceptable behavior. As a result people are
relieved of personal responsibility. John MacArthur tells of a woman
who said she had a problem with compulsive fornication for years:
"The counselor suggested that her conduct was the result of
wounds inflicted by a passive father and an overbearing mother."
Henry
Sloane Coffin sized up the situation insightfully:
"Current
psychology adds to... moral alibis. Men and women have themselves
analyzed, and find emancipation in banishing the ugly names which
vigorous religion attached to sins, where they are re-christened with
labels with no suggestion of guilt. They are maladjusted, or
introverted, rather than dishonest or selfish. A middle-aged father
tires of his wife and becomes involved with a young woman half his
age, and is told by a practitioner that he is suffering from 'a spasm
of re-adolescence,' when he ought to be struck in the face with 'Thou
shalt not commit adultery.' "
5.
Psychotherapy works directly contrary to the Holy Spirit by
emphasizing the importance of a good self-image, of a healthy case of
self-esteem. The Holy Spirit is seeking to convict sinners of sin and
bring them to repentance. He is seeking to restore backsliding
believers and bring them to confession. Any self-esteem that is not
based on the forgiveness of sins and of man's position in Christ is
phony to the core.
6.
Then, of course, there is the financial side. James Montgomery Boice
comments, "So we have the unique phenomenon in our day of people
paying other people to listen to them, which is what the psychiatric,
psychologic, and counseling professions are all about. Counseling is a
billion dollar business. But it is not that counselors actually advise
or guide people in the vast majority of cases.
Basically
all they do is listen. They are paid to do what people in an earlier
day did voluntarily."
When
a lady complained that twenty years of counseling had not helped her,
a friend asked her, "Have you ever gone to church for help?"
"No,
all the church wants is your money."
"How
much have you paid to the psychologist?"
"I've
paid $60 a week for these twenty years and that is out of a monthly
salary of $2400."
Sixty
dollars a week adds up to $240 a month. That is a tenth of her income.
She was "tithing" to her counselor, but she wouldn't
"tithe" to the church. And she admitted that she was no
better.
Another
woman objected to what she called her analyst's double standards.
"For six years I visited my analyst five times a week and gave up
many of the little extras in life - like nice clothes and vacations -
to afford him. But when I got sick and missed a session, a funny thing
happened. My analyst would insist that my illness was some kind of a
psychosomatic revenge - that I was subconsciously resisting treatment.
Of course, I always had to pay. Yet, when he went away on his usual
full month vacation in August, leaving me stranded, alone and panicky
with many unresolved conflicts, I'm supposed to understand why his
vacation doesn't interrupt the analysis."
Rollo
May, a leading voice in the profession since its beginnings in the
1950's, lamented that psychotherapy has succumbed to money-making and
to "gimmicks."
"Psychotherapy,"
he said, "has become a business where you have clients and make
money." Many practitioners claim that, to be effective, the
treatment should constitute a financial sacrifice for the
"patient." The latter wouldn't have respect for it if it
were a bargain. Small wonder that people joke: A neurotic is one who
builds castles in the air. A psychotic is one who lives in them. A
therapist is one who collects the rent.
7. Sometimes
people pay a small fortune to be analyzed when what they need is a
regular doctor. During two years of counseling, an author complained
that his vision was blurred when he tried to read. The therapist
replied that "inability to concentrate was a typical syndrome in
people with floating anxieties." Finding it difficult to make
enough money to pay the psychologist, the counselee went to an
oculist. The latter suggested that a pair of reading glasses would
cure the syndrome. It did.
8.
Christian
counselors claim to merge the best insights of unregenerate men like
Freud, Rogers, Maslow, and Jung with the teachings of the Bible. It is
an unholy union. At a congress on Christian counseling in 1988, Jay
Adams said, "With all that is within me I urge you to give up the
fruitless task to which I alluded: the attempt to integrate pagan and
biblical truth... Think of the millions of hours, the more than one
generation of lives already spent on this hopeless task. Why are there
no discernible results? I'll tell you why. Because it just can't be
done... Counseling has to do with changing people. You see, that's
God's business."
9.
Even in most Christian psychological counseling, prayer is not
accepted as a viable "technique." At best it is tolerated;
at worst it is neglected. Few Christian therapists spent significant
time praying with their counselees. Are we to believe that prayer is
only of marginal importance in coping with the problems of life? Have
we been wrong all these years in believing that if we meet God's
conditions, He will answer our prayers?
10.
In many churches the ministry is psychology with a veneer of Biblical
vocabulary. People go looking for bread and they get a stone.
11.
To put things very bluntly, psychotherapy has not proved eminently
successful, and in many cases it has been harmful.
In
recent years, some courageous Christian authors have raised warning
flags concerning the whole area of psychological counseling. For
instance:
Competent
to Counsel, by J.E. Adams (1970)
Psychology
as Religion: The Cult of Self Worship, by Paul C. Vitz (1977)
The
Psychological Way/The Spiritual Way, by Martin and Deidre Bobgan
(1979)
Psychological
Seduction, by W.K. Kilpatrick (1983)
The
Seduction of Christianity, by David Hunt and T.A. McMahon (1985)
Psychoheresy,
by Martin and Deidre Bobgan (1987)
Beyond
Seduction, by David Hunt (1987)
Prophets
of Psychoheresy, by Martin and Deidre Bobgan (1989)
Opponents
have either waved aside the books with a cavalier flourish or accused
the authors of divisiveness or sundry other evils. However, they now
have to face the fact that non-Christian men who are professionals in
the field are voicing grave doubts and disillusionment as to
psychotherapy. Here are a few:
The
Myth of Psychotherapy, by Dr. Thomas Szasz (1978)
The
Shrinking of America, by Bernie Zilbergeld (1983)
Against
Therapy: Emotional Tyranny And the Myth of Psychological Healing, by
Jeffrey Masson (1988)
Dr.
Szasz, a professor of psychiatry at the State University of New York,
has been an outspoken critic for years. He has termed psychiatry a
pseudo-science, like astrology or alchemy. He calls mental illness a
myth, a convenient label adopted to disguise and thus make more
palatable the bitter pill of moral conflict in human relations. He
contends that no form of abnormal behavior is a disease, and thus
treatment is not the concern of an M.D.
He
goes even farther. He says that perhaps most psychotherapeutic
procedures are harmful for the so-called patients. "All such
interventions and proposals should therefore be regarded as evil until
they are proven otherwise."
Zilbergeld
says that it is generally as helpful for a counselee to talk to a lay
person as to a professional.
Jeffrey
Masson is a graduate of the Toronto Psychoanalytic Institute and a
member of the International Psychoanalytic Association. He served as
Projects Director of the Sigmund Freud Archives. In the Preface of
Against Therapy, he writes: "This is a book about why I believe
psycho-therapy, of any kind, is wrong. Although I criticize many
individual therapists and therapies, my main objective is to point out
that the very idea of psychotherapy is wrong."
Dr.
Hans J. Eysenck, Professor of Psychology at London University, found
that between 66% and 77% of neurotic "patients" will recover
or improve to a marked extent with or without psychotherapy. It is a
matter of spontaneous remission.
O.
Hobart Mowrer, Professor of Psychology at the University of Illinois,
said, "As the clock of history has ticked off the decades of this
century, we have gradually discovered that Freud's great postulate -
that all our behavior can be blamed on others and that the goal of
life is not to act morally but to free ourselves of guilt - has dumped
us from the frying-pan into the fire."
The
claim that psychotherapy has a high rate of success is not based on
fact. In the Cambridge-Somerville study, potential juvenile
delinquents who were give psychological counseling turned out worse
than the control group that had received no counseling.
It
should also be noted that in psychotherapy, there is a psychosomatic
or placebo effect. "A high expectancy of improvement, fueled by
the therapist's promise that he can deal effectively with the problem,
leads to a sense of good results and enthusiastic praise, even though
there is no real change."
So
what is the conclusion of the matter? The conclusion is that "a
great revolutionary movement which promised to account in scientific
terms for all neurotic illnesses and to cure many of them" has
failed to deliver. And while many secular practitioners are admitting
that dramatic breakthroughs and cures are almost non-existent, the
evangelical church is flocking more and more to psychotherapy instead
of the Bible as the shining panacea for tensions, anxieties and other
problems.
To
quote Don Hillis again, "Perhaps it is time for the church to do
some soul searching about the fact that religious people are turning
to psychologists and psychiatrists for help rather than to the church.
Perhaps someone should be concerned when Christian youth feel they can
accomplish more for mankind as psychologists and psychiatrists than as
pastors and evangelists. Perhaps a new look at the Book will reveal a
spiritual psychology that will provide spiritual answers to the
emotional and mental needs of God's people."
There
is a place for counseling, but it must be Biblical counseling. It must
not displace the Bible, or the Holy Spirit, or prayer. It must not
excuse sin or relieve people of personal responsibility.
Published
by express permission from the author - 2004
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