bMS 649/49 (21)- Religion and Healing. Religion and Culture, Harvard

Religion and Healing Intr. We have discussed the economic, the social and the educational realms in relation to religion. What is left (not in problems but in possible objects) are the realms of healing and of politics. They seem to be very remote from each other; but they are not: For hea- ling the personality without healing the society is ulti- mately impossible as people from both sides have star- ted to see 1. The religious vision of healing a] The semantic identity of healing and saving. (???, whole, salvum, Heil, heal) b] The myth of cosmic healing in ancient and

Christian sources. (Article pp. 349 – 356) 2. The three levels of healing and their confusion. a] The physical healing (knife and herb: Persia), the prophological magic healing (e.g. in sacramental thinking p. 357. – incubation or holy sleep, incantations, magic names etc) the religious healing (prayer etc.) but this also is called faith- healing, and here the confusion araises) b] The concept of "faith-healing" as introduction into the meaning of the magic. It is magic and not religion. Definition of magic = Sympatheia = psychic participation in the other being without physical mediation. This presupposes a sphere between the biological and mental. (Psychic??) Relation between beings which are not separated egos or centered selfs with exclusiveness.

c] Magic influence follows definite rules. One must have or employ other magical powers. The rules are as strict as their scientific ones … but without methods of public veri- fication. d] Magic elements can be confused with the two others The physical means can be sound and – at the same time magi laden with magic power. Early Renaissance medicine was full of this confusion (conf. alchemy). e] The magic can also enter the religious, by influen- cing the divine powers, so that they may influence other man, biological processes or physical movements. The ma- gic use of prayer, of sacraments, of liturgical acts. The difference of religion and magic universally. Ultimate concern over against psychic activities.

f] The presence of the magic as an element in all en- counters with people. The magic of the word. The influence of the physician on the ???. The magic of advertisment. The double meaning of the words suggestion and the antisuggestion The two meanings of magic. Its technique and radiation. 3. The problem of mental healing a] The place of mental disease was indefinite. The struggle of the medical and the theological point of view. In both of them magical elements (magic metals or herbs) (exorcism) were present. But the medi- cal point of view went the road of empirical knowledge and removed more and more the magic. The religious point of view did the same, especially in Protestantism. But this This lead medicine more and more to mechanism and (???) [??? – ???] in treating the mentally ill and theology more and more to moralism (which is

still the reason that people hide mental disease in their families). The extreme was reached when Kant wanted to treat the mentally ill through philosophy: The ultimate con- sequence of the Cartesian separation. b] The anthropological problem as the problem of the psyche. The continuous protest against its removal in Voluntarism and Romanticism; from Paracelsus to E. v. Hartmann. But the superiority of the medical point of view. The decisive step: The rediscovery of the unconscious by Freud in scientific terms. The psychic reality as the one, of which the others are expressions. The monistic ten- This makes the healing of the mentally diseased indepen- dently from of the two sides possible. The rise of a genuine psychotherapy between medicine and religion: psycho-analysis.

c] The inadequacy of the new construction: Id, Ego, Superego. The turn to the personality – psy anthropology as the unity. It is deeper than the contrast between the un- conscious and the conscious. It has freedom because of I.] cen- teredness II.] Relatedness to objective structures which make freedom from the "id" possible. d] This whole structure is still under attack by the ???-medicine (and partly by surgery: lobotomy). The effect of drugs. Tranquillizers, Exciters, changers?? But all this can give help 'only for the' price of dehumanizing. It destroys the identity of the deciding self.

4. Mental and religious healing. a] The function of the magic in ordinary medicine: The trust in the medicine or in the doctor. – The magic in psychotherapy: The transference phenomena. Suggestion and selfsuggest- tion. Mutual suggestion in group therapy. b] Religious healing not faith-healing, but parti- cipation in the divine presence, having the personal center in the divine center. Or even more generally: Being grasped by an ultimate concern. But the non-intended magic is always present: Sermons, confessional, councelling. c] The limits of psychotherapeutic healing: Libe- ration but not direction. The psychotherapist as priest religious with unintentional magic. But not as physician. If directions in the patient, they come from past traditions.

d] The limits of religious healing: Direction, but not liberation from fixed diseases. The minister or lay- priest as healing medium, medical wisdom with uninten- tional magit. But not as minister. He is awakening healing powers in the councelee by the direction towards the ulti- mate)). [Examples about neurotic and authentic anxiety, guilt, emptiness] e] Exaggeration of psycho-somatic and of religious- medical healing. The essential unity of man and his existential estrangements. – The critical situation of psychotherapy: The wave of fashion, the ??? of the Freudians, the defection of the Neo-Freudians, the criticism from the medical side, the criticism from the religious side. – The necessity of consolidation and resistance and selfrestraint.

5. Ethical problems in religion and healing a] The problem of mercy killings (the wisdom of the law) b] The problem of saying the truth to the patient c] Returning the patient into the world. (lack of symbols representing the healing power, loneliness, uneasy acceptance of the group ideology, the demands of competition, the slavery to gadgets, the dangers of the world situation.