Skype.com name: CounselPro
Limited Online Appointments Available for confidential Online Christian Executive Life Coaching.
{Competent Christian Life Coaching could be analogous to 'preventive medicine': offering proactive, pedagogic, and a priori help--before a personal, relational, or career crisis or emergency occurs.}
Are you a Christian executive or businessperson?
Are you a Christian leader? Pastor? Associate pastor? Para-church leader? Missionary?--or staff member in a Christian ministry organization..?
{Christian leaders often seek sponsorship by their denominational headquarters, organizations, or mission agencies. Past consultation has included Southern Baptist, Assemblies of God, The Episcopal Church, Southern Baptist, Missionary Baptist, Freewill Baptist, United Methodist, Mennonite Brethren, Plymouth Brethren, the Church of the Nazarene, charismatic Catholic, independent charismatic churches, Youth With a Mission, Church of God (Anderson), Church of God (Cleveland), Pentecostal Church of God (Joplin), and Pentecostal Holiness.}
Have you considered the benefits of convenient and confidential Online life coaching?
(Or do you know someone (in the above categories) you'd like to refer? Who might benefit?
A Convenient Online consultation (or regular coaching with an experienced and credentialed Christian life coach) is just a Skype.com call away.
My commitment is to be your competent, compassionate, coach and consultant.
(Emergencies requiring professional psychiatric and/or psychotherapeutic intervention, psychotropic or other medications, or danger to others or self, are referred to professionals in your area--and/or are advised to call 9-1-1.)
Issues may involve stress, indecisiveness, ineffectiveness, inertia, career frustration, ethics and character, misconduct, compulsivity (e.g. gambling), grievances, relational difficulties, personality traits, chronic anger, anxiousness, or obsessiveness.
Executive Life Coaching Appointments are arranged initially at convenient times via e-mail contact to CounselPro@gmail.com.
Friday, July 10, 2009
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Light vs. Darkness
Light vs. Darkness
"What is truth..?" --Pontius Pilate
(People ask me:)
"How can I know who is speaking the truth to me (and what is Truth and what is Falsehood and Deception)--in my everyday conversations, and in the written, radio, TV, film, (media) news, polemics, politics, and propaganda..?" "And how can I know that what I am thinking and believing is the Truth--and not a Lie, not some 'doctrine (teaching) of devils' and evil deception--that, even though it might sound convincing, reasonable, and logical at first, will lead me, nevertheless, into the'broad way that leads to destruction'...the 'road to hell' that is paved with the proverbial 'good intentions'...?
I reply: "First of all (lay aside your past political brainwashing, your 're-education camps', the propaganda and secular philosophies of your past) is your mind redeemed? Are you transformed in Christ by the renewing of you mind according toRomans 12:1-2..? "Are you liberated by the Holy Spirit of God from the unsaved, perishing, sin-enslaved paradigms, world-views, and near-sightedness of sin-sick humanity--and the sin-virused soul...?"
I always remind folks that they must have more than some solipsistic emotional experience or cerebral 'aha' to become a regenerate born-again Christian--(Study John) because the Bible states that "The carnal mind cannot perceive the things of God." One must be sure that his unregenerate-non-born-again-sinful nature and the god of this world (Satan) has not cognitively and spiritually blinded his (spiritual) eyes.
A man or woman must be wooed, coaxed, drawn, convicted by the Holy Spirit. And s/he must respond in faith, trust, wholehearted and sincere belief in Jusus Christ--the Anointed One of God. There must be an authentic I-Thou Encounterwrought by the supernatural empowerment and 'connection' of God, the Holy Spirit--this is not some rhetorical--some philosophical-some psychological change of attitude, some baptist signing of a membership card, some political shift, some genuflecting, religious mumbling of a Christianized four-spiritual-laws formula--or result of a 'heaven-chilp implant.
Salvation of the soul is a divinely-wrought supernatural miracle. It cannot be culterized, tribalized, philosophized--or psychologized. (Sadly, this is why mega-churches and the so-called Emergent Churches are bursting in attendance. (You preach the truth of "Narrow is the way and strait is the gate, and the reality of persecution that comes to any true believer in Christ--and you'll not get a big crowd of twenty-something boppers...in fact they'll run away from you...as even the disciples did at first from Jesus when they realized, 'Hey, this guy's gonna get himself crucified...!')
And I also ask, "In your psycho-social support system--who are your cronies--who do you hang around with and feel comfortable with..? Do you try to get your fellowship with sinners...? i.e.: Are you (Psalm 1) "Sitting in the seat of the scornful..?...Standing in the way of sinners..?...Listening to the counsel of the ungodly..? Remember, the Bible states that"There is no fellowship (participation in the Holy Spirit) between (spiritual) light and (spiritual) darkness." And the Biblealso states, "Evil cronies have a corrupting influence."
1. Affirm and confirm your belief in Jesus Christ and trust in His Sacrifice on the Cross for the remission and cleansing of your sin, and confirm your sincere hope in Christ's Resurrection from the grave and defeat of Satan, Death, and Hell.
2. Pray: Seek the Heavenly Father God for the gift of the Holy Spirit (John). The Father will bestow the authentic gift of the Spirit--not a 'scorpion' or 'stone'--but a 'nourishing fish'--the 'true Bread' of the Holy Spirit.
3. Ask God for wisdom according to the Book of James: "If a man lack wisdom, let him ask of God."
4. Pray--seeking God that Jesus Christ will baptize you in the Holy Spirit--so that you may have the mind of the Holy Spirit--with which the Bible says is life and peace (Romans). (The Father is the Giver of the Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ is theBaptizer in the Holy Spirit.)
5. Study Jesus' instructions about the Holy Spirit in the sixteenth chapter of the Gospel of John. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Truth. The Holy Spirit will lead the sincere seeker of Jesus Christ into all truth. The Spirit will convict and convince the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment. Falsehood and lies and deception will not stand in the light of the truth of the Holy Spirit.
6. Study the principles Jesus laid down in Matthew: e.g.: "A bad tree cannot produce good fruit." Apply these principles when you hear any street-corner philosopher gab, any social engineer speak, any politician, any 'conspiracy theorist'present his views, any media pundit or talk show host, or even TV preacher--pontificate.
7. Listen carefully--sometimes (especially with a politician on TV) turn off the sound--look at his non-verbals, his facial expressions, his eyes... But seek always for 'the mind of Christ...for the 'mind of the Holy Spirit'...for the Spirit of Truth--to discern between truth and error, deception, falsehood, and lies. We live in a world of psychopathy (cf. the writings ofMeloy and Hare).
8. And don't forget, God is on His Throne. Jesus Christ is Lord. All things are Christ's. 'Every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord'. All things are ours in Christ. Yet, until Christ returns for the community of the redeemed, we still live in a fallen, sinful world dominated by evil control freaks and of 'people of the lie'.
(excerpt: unpublished work-in-progress):
What Is Truth?
The Question of Pontius Pilate
Copyright 2009 by Philip C. Brewer
All Rights Reserved
"What is truth..?" --Pontius Pilate
(People ask me:)
"How can I know who is speaking the truth to me (and what is Truth and what is Falsehood and Deception)--in my everyday conversations, and in the written, radio, TV, film, (media) news, polemics, politics, and propaganda..?" "And how can I know that what I am thinking and believing is the Truth--and not a Lie, not some 'doctrine (teaching) of devils' and evil deception--that, even though it might sound convincing, reasonable, and logical at first, will lead me, nevertheless, into the'broad way that leads to destruction'...the 'road to hell' that is paved with the proverbial 'good intentions'...?
I reply: "First of all (lay aside your past political brainwashing, your 're-education camps', the propaganda and secular philosophies of your past) is your mind redeemed? Are you transformed in Christ by the renewing of you mind according toRomans 12:1-2..? "Are you liberated by the Holy Spirit of God from the unsaved, perishing, sin-enslaved paradigms, world-views, and near-sightedness of sin-sick humanity--and the sin-virused soul...?"
I always remind folks that they must have more than some solipsistic emotional experience or cerebral 'aha' to become a regenerate born-again Christian--(Study John) because the Bible states that "The carnal mind cannot perceive the things of God." One must be sure that his unregenerate-non-born-again-sinful nature and the god of this world (Satan) has not cognitively and spiritually blinded his (spiritual) eyes.
A man or woman must be wooed, coaxed, drawn, convicted by the Holy Spirit. And s/he must respond in faith, trust, wholehearted and sincere belief in Jusus Christ--the Anointed One of God. There must be an authentic I-Thou Encounterwrought by the supernatural empowerment and 'connection' of God, the Holy Spirit--this is not some rhetorical--some philosophical-some psychological change of attitude, some baptist signing of a membership card, some political shift, some genuflecting, religious mumbling of a Christianized four-spiritual-laws formula--or result of a 'heaven-chilp implant.
Salvation of the soul is a divinely-wrought supernatural miracle. It cannot be culterized, tribalized, philosophized--or psychologized. (Sadly, this is why mega-churches and the so-called Emergent Churches are bursting in attendance. (You preach the truth of "Narrow is the way and strait is the gate, and the reality of persecution that comes to any true believer in Christ--and you'll not get a big crowd of twenty-something boppers...in fact they'll run away from you...as even the disciples did at first from Jesus when they realized, 'Hey, this guy's gonna get himself crucified...!')
And I also ask, "In your psycho-social support system--who are your cronies--who do you hang around with and feel comfortable with..? Do you try to get your fellowship with sinners...? i.e.: Are you (Psalm 1) "Sitting in the seat of the scornful..?...Standing in the way of sinners..?...Listening to the counsel of the ungodly..? Remember, the Bible states that"There is no fellowship (participation in the Holy Spirit) between (spiritual) light and (spiritual) darkness." And the Biblealso states, "Evil cronies have a corrupting influence."
1. Affirm and confirm your belief in Jesus Christ and trust in His Sacrifice on the Cross for the remission and cleansing of your sin, and confirm your sincere hope in Christ's Resurrection from the grave and defeat of Satan, Death, and Hell.
2. Pray: Seek the Heavenly Father God for the gift of the Holy Spirit (John). The Father will bestow the authentic gift of the Spirit--not a 'scorpion' or 'stone'--but a 'nourishing fish'--the 'true Bread' of the Holy Spirit.
3. Ask God for wisdom according to the Book of James: "If a man lack wisdom, let him ask of God."
4. Pray--seeking God that Jesus Christ will baptize you in the Holy Spirit--so that you may have the mind of the Holy Spirit--with which the Bible says is life and peace (Romans). (The Father is the Giver of the Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ is theBaptizer in the Holy Spirit.)
5. Study Jesus' instructions about the Holy Spirit in the sixteenth chapter of the Gospel of John. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Truth. The Holy Spirit will lead the sincere seeker of Jesus Christ into all truth. The Spirit will convict and convince the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment. Falsehood and lies and deception will not stand in the light of the truth of the Holy Spirit.
6. Study the principles Jesus laid down in Matthew: e.g.: "A bad tree cannot produce good fruit." Apply these principles when you hear any street-corner philosopher gab, any social engineer speak, any politician, any 'conspiracy theorist'present his views, any media pundit or talk show host, or even TV preacher--pontificate.
7. Listen carefully--sometimes (especially with a politician on TV) turn off the sound--look at his non-verbals, his facial expressions, his eyes... But seek always for 'the mind of Christ...for the 'mind of the Holy Spirit'...for the Spirit of Truth--to discern between truth and error, deception, falsehood, and lies. We live in a world of psychopathy (cf. the writings ofMeloy and Hare).
8. And don't forget, God is on His Throne. Jesus Christ is Lord. All things are Christ's. 'Every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord'. All things are ours in Christ. Yet, until Christ returns for the community of the redeemed, we still live in a fallen, sinful world dominated by evil control freaks and of 'people of the lie'.
(excerpt: unpublished work-in-progress):
What Is Truth?
The Question of Pontius Pilate
Copyright 2009 by Philip C. Brewer
All Rights Reserved
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
LIFE COACHING & ULTIMATE CONCERNS
Blog Discussion: LIFE COACHING PRINCIPLES
The Priestly Solution: Part One
Ultimate Concerns, Intercession, & the Efficacy of Earnest Prayer
"Who shall free me from the body of this death..?" --the Apostle Paul
"And you shall seek Me, and you shall find Me, when you shall search for me with all your heart. And I will be found of you..." --the Prophet Jeremiah
The human personality is not a closed system--but an open system--and synergistic--made to interact interpersonally with others--and created to engage in the ultimate concerns of prayer.
One may infer from the symbol of Christ's Cross that horizontal communication, community, and communion hangs on the core truth of the vertical--every human being's God-bestowed ultimate concern for vital faith (the only saving faith --which clings to and trusts in its Object, Jesus Christ--because vital faith is not some metaphysical force--or even trust that one's chair will not break under him as he sits down) in communication , community, and communion with God the Father--in the wisdom, power, and love of the Holy Spirit.
Yet it is the rare Christian individual, couple, or family--who listens and responds wholeheartedly--when I prescribe a regular practice of intimate prayer timestogether every week.
I usually get a "Huh?" look--as they twitch impatiently waiting for me to get out of the way so they can watch American Idol, True Crime road chases, or listen to late-night-talk-radio conspiracy theories.
One-dimensional shallowness is pandemic.
And even among the so-called intellectual community, there is a rabid, mindless willingness to turn to Pop culture and then often on to Naturalism, Metaphysics, Eastern Mysticism, Middle Eastern Mysticism, Occult Mysticism, Pantheism--or even (within Christian aberrations) to Charis-magic--or cults like Peoples Temple.
"Demas has forsaken me--having loved this present world..." ---The Apostle Paul
Secular Naturalism (which rejects all supernatural implications or resources--when generating solutions for problems of living and problems of loving) is a closed system philosophically, psychologically, and, of course, spiritually. Naturalistic solutions can only be generated via the closed-system tools of Rationalism, Empiricism (truth is revealed by the five senses), Reductionism, Materialism, and Pragmatism (if it works--it's right).
Naturalism can only flail about in self-absorbed conspiracy theories, Collectivism, or some version of human and social engineering (because so many want to be taken care of by a centralized nanny or papa-fuhrer government)--reaching out for totalitarian and Orwellian solutions . Naturalism also appeals to Christ-rejectors who entrench themselves in any version of smug evolutionary theory--whether Darwinian or otherwise.
Metaphysics (Gnosticism, the mind sciences, EST, TM, Emersonian Transcendentalism, Transpersonal Psycholog y, Rosacrucianism, and their ilk) while housing many doctrines of devils--may appear to reach out beyond the solipsism of the human self --but hangs somewhere in the intellectual ghetto between navel-nuzzling Naturalism and tree-worshipping Pantheism...and remains a closed system--a bridge to nowhere.
Eastern Mysticism ( sacred cow worshipping gurus--with the cow's holy dung rubbed into their hair, Hinduism, Buddhism, Shintoism, Korean and Chinese Folk Religions--and their ilk)--is a faux open system--in truth only a door to the Occult. (Hey--dial 4-1-1 and ask the Bangalor operator if I'm right and she'll tell you I am.)
Middle-Eastern Mysticism, another gateway to the occult--includes the Jewish Cabala, and--surprising to many, the Muslim Religion. (Islam--actually a psycho-social, interpersonally-reinforcing-modernity-resisting-atavistic-radical-ludite movement--also bridges across to a form of Pantheism--because Allah is actually considered to be the Moon God--a pantheistic entity--not the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Occult Mystici sm (OM) is a 'bridge' to an evil somewhere with its lies of Spiritualism, Necromancy, Fortune-Telling, Palm-Reading. Tea-Reading, Tarot Card Reading, Ancestor Worship, Soul Travel, Ghost & Monster Quest, Astrology, Primitive Tribal Religions (put your Dream-Catcher Mitt on Chief Running Bare...), the American Hollywood Star System--ad nauseum. Albeit an open system--OM is a devilish back-door-left-open system--a gateway to the Dark Side.
Pantheism (held together by its own separate philosophical glue) is a spiritual detour (away from Christian theology) offered to the superstitious-but-ultimately-concerned soul. The latest come-on from Pantheism (after the heaven-through-chemistry drug, LSD, psilocybin, crank, coke, opiate movement) is the Earth Mother Worship (planet-saving-tree-hugging-Earth Liberation Front, Vegetarian,Vegan,Veggie Tales, Globalist, global warming , etc.) Movement.
Walt Whitman, the great American poet, was known to remark that if only one person grasped the meaning of one of his poems--that was who he'd written it for. Christian Life Coaching often fails to connect to the counselee's heart and mind because the counselee (client) may not possess the gravitas--the profundity of understanding--the substantive qualities of personality--the emotional, intellectual, and spiritual depth --which are the essential requirements of effective Life Coaching--in my approach. Not that failed attempts at Life Coaching is pearl-casting--or teaching pigs to sing--and honestly that's not necessarily why I don't do prison or drug-rehab ministry--but I do exit stage left as quickly as possible from the shallow and the insubstantial-of-spirit.
(excerpt: unpublished work-in-progress)
Life Coaching & The Psychology of Ultimate Concerns
Copyright 2009 by Philip C. Brewer
All Rights Reserved
The Priestly Solution: Part One
Ultimate Concerns, Intercession, & the Efficacy of Earnest Prayer
"Who shall free me from the body of this death..?" --the Apostle Paul
"And you shall seek Me, and you shall find Me, when you shall search for me with all your heart. And I will be found of you..." --the Prophet Jeremiah
The human personality is not a closed system--but an open system--and synergistic--made to interact interpersonally with others--and created to engage in the ultimate concerns of prayer.
One may infer from the symbol of Christ's Cross that horizontal communication, community, and communion hangs on the core truth of the vertical--every human being's God-bestowed ultimate concern for vital faith (the only saving faith --which clings to and trusts in its Object, Jesus Christ--because vital faith is not some metaphysical force--or even trust that one's chair will not break under him as he sits down) in communication , community, and communion with God the Father--in the wisdom, power, and love of the Holy Spirit.
Yet it is the rare Christian individual, couple, or family--who listens and responds wholeheartedly--when I prescribe a regular practice of intimate prayer timestogether every week.
I usually get a "Huh?" look--as they twitch impatiently waiting for me to get out of the way so they can watch American Idol, True Crime road chases, or listen to late-night-talk-radio conspiracy theories.
One-dimensional shallowness is pandemic.
And even among the so-called intellectual community, there is a rabid, mindless willingness to turn to Pop culture and then often on to Naturalism, Metaphysics, Eastern Mysticism, Middle Eastern Mysticism, Occult Mysticism, Pantheism--or even (within Christian aberrations) to Charis-magic--or cults like Peoples Temple.
"Demas has forsaken me--having loved this present world..." ---The Apostle Paul
Secular Naturalism (which rejects all supernatural implications or resources--when generating solutions for problems of living and problems of loving) is a closed system philosophically, psychologically, and, of course, spiritually. Naturalistic solutions can only be generated via the closed-system tools of Rationalism, Empiricism (truth is revealed by the five senses), Reductionism, Materialism, and Pragmatism (if it works--it's right).
Naturalism can only flail about in self-absorbed conspiracy theories, Collectivism, or some version of human and social engineering (because so many want to be taken care of by a centralized nanny or papa-fuhrer government)--reaching out for totalitarian and Orwellian solutions . Naturalism also appeals to Christ-rejectors who entrench themselves in any version of smug evolutionary theory--whether Darwinian or otherwise.
Metaphysics (Gnosticism, the mind sciences, EST, TM, Emersonian Transcendentalism, Transpersonal Psycholog y, Rosacrucianism, and their ilk) while housing many doctrines of devils--may appear to reach out beyond the solipsism of the human self --but hangs somewhere in the intellectual ghetto between navel-nuzzling Naturalism and tree-worshipping Pantheism...and remains a closed system--a bridge to nowhere.
Eastern Mysticism ( sacred cow worshipping gurus--with the cow's holy dung rubbed into their hair, Hinduism, Buddhism, Shintoism, Korean and Chinese Folk Religions--and their ilk)--is a faux open system--in truth only a door to the Occult. (Hey--dial 4-1-1 and ask the Bangalor operator if I'm right and she'll tell you I am.)
Middle-Eastern Mysticism, another gateway to the occult--includes the Jewish Cabala, and--surprising to many, the Muslim Religion. (Islam--actually a psycho-social, interpersonally-reinforcing-modernity-resisting-atavistic-radical-ludite movement--also bridges across to a form of Pantheism--because Allah is actually considered to be the Moon God--a pantheistic entity--not the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Occult Mystici sm (OM) is a 'bridge' to an evil somewhere with its lies of Spiritualism, Necromancy, Fortune-Telling, Palm-Reading. Tea-Reading, Tarot Card Reading, Ancestor Worship, Soul Travel, Ghost & Monster Quest, Astrology, Primitive Tribal Religions (put your Dream-Catcher Mitt on Chief Running Bare...), the American Hollywood Star System--ad nauseum. Albeit an open system--OM is a devilish back-door-left-open system--a gateway to the Dark Side.
Pantheism (held together by its own separate philosophical glue) is a spiritual detour (away from Christian theology) offered to the superstitious-but-ultimately-concerned soul. The latest come-on from Pantheism (after the heaven-through-chemistry drug, LSD, psilocybin, crank, coke, opiate movement) is the Earth Mother Worship (planet-saving-tree-hugging-Earth Liberation Front, Vegetarian,Vegan,Veggie Tales, Globalist, global warming , etc.) Movement.
Walt Whitman, the great American poet, was known to remark that if only one person grasped the meaning of one of his poems--that was who he'd written it for. Christian Life Coaching often fails to connect to the counselee's heart and mind because the counselee (client) may not possess the gravitas--the profundity of understanding--the substantive qualities of personality--the emotional, intellectual, and spiritual depth --which are the essential requirements of effective Life Coaching--in my approach. Not that failed attempts at Life Coaching is pearl-casting--or teaching pigs to sing--and honestly that's not necessarily why I don't do prison or drug-rehab ministry--but I do exit stage left as quickly as possible from the shallow and the insubstantial-of-spirit.
(excerpt: unpublished work-in-progress)
Life Coaching & The Psychology of Ultimate Concerns
Copyright 2009 by Philip C. Brewer
All Rights Reserved
Thursday, January 22, 2009
PRAY FOR THE OFFICE OF PRESIDENT
The Office of President
Once again, as a new president is elected, I am studying the Life of the Psalmist David in the Old Testament scriptures--and reviewing David's relationship with Saul (cf. I, II Samuel).
Even though David was well aware of the pathology in Saul's personality--Saul's danger-to-others and danger-to-self, and Saul's rebellion against God--David still honored the Office that King Saul held.
In the books of I, II Samuel we find that rebellion against God is tantamount to the sin of witchcraft. One may find out that his commander-in-chief is toxic, engages in power abuse, and perhaps must be impeached or censured--but to destroy the Office of executive authority would, of course, be anarchy.
Consider the bloodbaths of the French, Marxist, Maoist revolutions ("The revolution devours its own children.") and you see the occult spiritual (Rwandan or Red Guard type) rebellion of anarchy, tearing down of government, and toxicrebellion.
As a counselor and life coach in my community for many years, I've had to listen to many a church member complain about his or her pastor. I've always directed them to a study of the life of David, his relationship with Saul, and, and even though he had to flee from Saul--David's respect for the Office of King.
From a clinical-assessment-of-failing-leadership viewpoint, it is interesting to me to study the life of King Saul as his mental and spiritual health deteriorates. As his carried-and-buried anger and narcissistic entitlement build--his paranoid auspiciousness, jealousy, and delusional grandiosity metastasize like a cancer. He descends further into Occult Mysticism,as he consults the Witch of Endor--seeking ungodly counsel--(consider a similar melt-down with Hitler)--sinking deeper and deeper into depression--until he becomes a homicidal maniac and then self-destructive. Working in a 5150 acute psychiatric unit I saw this life-pattern embodied in distressed people--a news anchor, a clinical psychologist, a professional football player, the head of a hospital, a minister, a teacher, an administrator, a politician.
From my youth in the JFK days to the present I've always prayed for the Office of the U.S. Presidency--whether or not I liked the policies, personality, philosophy, or practices of a particular leader. For example, even though I thought the Seventies were horrible years, and I was literally allergic to everything about Jimmy Carter, I still prayed for the Office of the Presidency. LBJ, I also thought was atrocious, and thought that JFK, Nixon, and Clinton each dishonored the Office of the Presidency they held. Personally and with presidential gravitas, I believe Reagan honored the Office of the American Presidency, but I also really liked his personality, philosophy, and policies. Ford, and the Bushes, I believe, honored the Office of the Presidency--even though they made many mistakes and can be criticized for shortcomings regarding the effectiveness of their leadership, decisions, and policies.
I believe that God will take down any leader who dishonors his Office ("Vengeance is mine says the Lord.").
To point out shortcomings of a U.S. president if his tenure in office reveals them, does not dishonor the Office of the Presidency--it is because we do honor and respect the Office that we have the human right to address characterological flaws and failings of politicians and leaders--or to be afraid of their thinking if we find that they hold dangerously despotic, social-engineering, Smother-Mother-Government, or terrorist-appeasing world views--or want to trash our country's borders, language, and culture.
(excerpt: unpublished work-in-progress):
SAUL, DAVID, & PRESIDENTIAL OFFICE
Human Rights vs. Rebellion
Copyright 2009 by Philip C. Brewer
All Rights Reserved
Once again, as a new president is elected, I am studying the Life of the Psalmist David in the Old Testament scriptures--and reviewing David's relationship with Saul (cf. I, II Samuel).
Even though David was well aware of the pathology in Saul's personality--Saul's danger-to-others and danger-to-self, and Saul's rebellion against God--David still honored the Office that King Saul held.
In the books of I, II Samuel we find that rebellion against God is tantamount to the sin of witchcraft. One may find out that his commander-in-chief is toxic, engages in power abuse, and perhaps must be impeached or censured--but to destroy the Office of executive authority would, of course, be anarchy.
Consider the bloodbaths of the French, Marxist, Maoist revolutions ("The revolution devours its own children.") and you see the occult spiritual (Rwandan or Red Guard type) rebellion of anarchy, tearing down of government, and toxicrebellion.
As a counselor and life coach in my community for many years, I've had to listen to many a church member complain about his or her pastor. I've always directed them to a study of the life of David, his relationship with Saul, and, and even though he had to flee from Saul--David's respect for the Office of King.
From a clinical-assessment-of-failing-leadership viewpoint, it is interesting to me to study the life of King Saul as his mental and spiritual health deteriorates. As his carried-and-buried anger and narcissistic entitlement build--his paranoid auspiciousness, jealousy, and delusional grandiosity metastasize like a cancer. He descends further into Occult Mysticism,as he consults the Witch of Endor--seeking ungodly counsel--(consider a similar melt-down with Hitler)--sinking deeper and deeper into depression--until he becomes a homicidal maniac and then self-destructive. Working in a 5150 acute psychiatric unit I saw this life-pattern embodied in distressed people--a news anchor, a clinical psychologist, a professional football player, the head of a hospital, a minister, a teacher, an administrator, a politician.
From my youth in the JFK days to the present I've always prayed for the Office of the U.S. Presidency--whether or not I liked the policies, personality, philosophy, or practices of a particular leader. For example, even though I thought the Seventies were horrible years, and I was literally allergic to everything about Jimmy Carter, I still prayed for the Office of the Presidency. LBJ, I also thought was atrocious, and thought that JFK, Nixon, and Clinton each dishonored the Office of the Presidency they held. Personally and with presidential gravitas, I believe Reagan honored the Office of the American Presidency, but I also really liked his personality, philosophy, and policies. Ford, and the Bushes, I believe, honored the Office of the Presidency--even though they made many mistakes and can be criticized for shortcomings regarding the effectiveness of their leadership, decisions, and policies.
I believe that God will take down any leader who dishonors his Office ("Vengeance is mine says the Lord.").
To point out shortcomings of a U.S. president if his tenure in office reveals them, does not dishonor the Office of the Presidency--it is because we do honor and respect the Office that we have the human right to address characterological flaws and failings of politicians and leaders--or to be afraid of their thinking if we find that they hold dangerously despotic, social-engineering, Smother-Mother-Government, or terrorist-appeasing world views--or want to trash our country's borders, language, and culture.
(excerpt: unpublished work-in-progress):
SAUL, DAVID, & PRESIDENTIAL OFFICE
Human Rights vs. Rebellion
Copyright 2009 by Philip C. Brewer
All Rights Reserved
Friday, January 16, 2009
CULTBUSTERS!
"Hey...it's Kooks & Kool-Aid--or Your Kin..."
Cultbusting / Rescuing / Debriefing / Exit Counseling
"Who ya gonna call for God's sake...?"
Yeara ago, I started CULTBUSTERS!
I'd done a lot of Cult Exit Counseling (Children of God, The Way, The Walk, Moonies, Scientology, Mormons, the Mind Sciences & Modern Gnosticism, JW, 7th Day, Eastern Mysticism, Authoritarian Mind-Control, Charis-Magic Faith, EST, Faux Faith Healing, Eighth Street Commune, A Course In Miracles, Latter Rain, NLP, Transpersonal Psychology, Emersonian Transcendentalism, E. W. Kenyonism, Peoples Temple, T.U.L.I.P.ism, Papalism, Mariolatry), Dominion Theology, Superstitious Animism, Earth Mother Worship, PMA, Charismatic Clairvoyance, Late-Sixties-Early-Seventies-Radicals-Masquerading-as-Evangelicals, and Aberrations of Deliverance and Demonology (illustrated by the faux guidance of the book, Pigs In the Parlor by Frank & Ida May Hammond),
I'd read books by the following: Margaret Singer, Ph.D., e.g.: Cults In Our Midst, Dr. Jacques Ellul, e.g.: On Propaganda, Walter Martin, Ph.D., e.g.: Chaos of Cults, Ronald Enroth, Ph.D., e.g.: Churches That Abuse and Youth, Brainwashing, and the Extremist Cults, Robert J. Lifton, Ph.D. Mind Control, Brainwashing, and Totalism, Dr. Farah, e.g.: From the Pinnacle of the Temple, and other books, e.g.: How to Cult-Proof Your Kids, Toxic Faith, and The Subtle Power of Spiritual abuse--and had seen The Amazing Randy (albeit an agnostic magician himself) expose the faux healer, Peter Popoff, on The Tonight Show.
These days CULTBUSTERS! exit-counseling would include The Emergent "Millennials" Church Postmodern Aberrations, The Secret, Recycled Latter Rainism, Revivalist Charis-Mystical Subjectivism, Kansas City Prophets, Mega-Church Millenial Paradigm-Shiftrers, Pop Culture Groupies, Radical Fundamentalists, the Prophetess Movement, Intimate-Connection Spiritual Dancing, Eco-Green Radicals, Marxist-Maoist Lib Theology, Prosperity Gospelers, Gangbangers, and contemporary Thought Reform Authoritarians.
In the intial years there was no 'Deprogramming'' a la Ted Patrick...all of these folks were 'ego dystonic' in that they each signed off with notarization that they had each desired in compis mentis that they wanted out--desired a complete break from and mental healing from--their respective cult. They would have ten Marathon Days (10:30am--3:30pm) of voluntary Christian-based-but-professional psychotherapy, counseling, and life coaching. I saw very few 'reversions' and little recidivism after the ten Marathon Days, along with a follow-up treatment program.
After years of this (with no financial remuneration on my part), I thought about starting a fee-scheduled (or economically-sponsored) 'rescue, exodus, and spiritual wellness intervention program' named CULTBUSTERS!
A busy traditional counseling practice caused me to set this plan aside.
Now...I'm considering a jump start of CULTBUSTERS!
I still need to get it organized and get all the legal clearances, etc....a little like bounty hunters--or even car repo companies have to do...yet, our approach would be one of dignity, therapeutic wisdom, and professional respect for the individual--and for human rights.
There would be, of course, a Fee Schedule and up-front Retainer Fee, special insurance, and appropriate qualifiers and disclaimers--operated under a non-profit organization.
What think ye...? Would you consider joining me in this important work...? There is a great need for Life Coaches--trained to do Cult-Exodus Intervention.
(CULTBUSTERS!...It's a dirty job...but somebody's gotta do it...!)
____________________________
"We Bust Cults Best...!"
CULTBUSTERS!TM
Spring Your Kin...Before They Drink the Kool-Aid!
"Who ya gonna call for God's sake..?"
P.C. BREWER & ASSOCIATES
Copyright 2009 by Philip C. Brewer All Rights Reserved
Cultbusting / Rescuing / Debriefing / Exit Counseling
"Who ya gonna call for God's sake...?"
Yeara ago, I started CULTBUSTERS!
I'd done a lot of Cult Exit Counseling (Children of God, The Way, The Walk, Moonies, Scientology, Mormons, the Mind Sciences & Modern Gnosticism, JW, 7th Day, Eastern Mysticism, Authoritarian Mind-Control, Charis-Magic Faith, EST, Faux Faith Healing, Eighth Street Commune, A Course In Miracles, Latter Rain, NLP, Transpersonal Psychology, Emersonian Transcendentalism, E. W. Kenyonism, Peoples Temple, T.U.L.I.P.ism, Papalism, Mariolatry), Dominion Theology, Superstitious Animism, Earth Mother Worship, PMA, Charismatic Clairvoyance, Late-Sixties-Early-Seventies-Radicals-Masquerading-as-Evangelicals, and Aberrations of Deliverance and Demonology (illustrated by the faux guidance of the book, Pigs In the Parlor by Frank & Ida May Hammond),
I'd read books by the following: Margaret Singer, Ph.D., e.g.: Cults In Our Midst, Dr. Jacques Ellul, e.g.: On Propaganda, Walter Martin, Ph.D., e.g.: Chaos of Cults, Ronald Enroth, Ph.D., e.g.: Churches That Abuse and Youth, Brainwashing, and the Extremist Cults, Robert J. Lifton, Ph.D. Mind Control, Brainwashing, and Totalism, Dr. Farah, e.g.: From the Pinnacle of the Temple, and other books, e.g.: How to Cult-Proof Your Kids, Toxic Faith, and The Subtle Power of Spiritual abuse--and had seen The Amazing Randy (albeit an agnostic magician himself) expose the faux healer, Peter Popoff, on The Tonight Show.
These days CULTBUSTERS! exit-counseling would include The Emergent "Millennials" Church Postmodern Aberrations, The Secret, Recycled Latter Rainism, Revivalist Charis-Mystical Subjectivism, Kansas City Prophets, Mega-Church Millenial Paradigm-Shiftrers, Pop Culture Groupies, Radical Fundamentalists, the Prophetess Movement, Intimate-Connection Spiritual Dancing, Eco-Green Radicals, Marxist-Maoist Lib Theology, Prosperity Gospelers, Gangbangers, and contemporary Thought Reform Authoritarians.
In the intial years there was no 'Deprogramming'' a la Ted Patrick...all of these folks were 'ego dystonic' in that they each signed off with notarization that they had each desired in compis mentis that they wanted out--desired a complete break from and mental healing from--their respective cult. They would have ten Marathon Days (10:30am--3:30pm) of voluntary Christian-based-but-professional psychotherapy, counseling, and life coaching. I saw very few 'reversions' and little recidivism after the ten Marathon Days, along with a follow-up treatment program.
After years of this (with no financial remuneration on my part), I thought about starting a fee-scheduled (or economically-sponsored) 'rescue, exodus, and spiritual wellness intervention program' named CULTBUSTERS!
A busy traditional counseling practice caused me to set this plan aside.
Now...I'm considering a jump start of CULTBUSTERS!
I still need to get it organized and get all the legal clearances, etc....a little like bounty hunters--or even car repo companies have to do...yet, our approach would be one of dignity, therapeutic wisdom, and professional respect for the individual--and for human rights.
There would be, of course, a Fee Schedule and up-front Retainer Fee, special insurance, and appropriate qualifiers and disclaimers--operated under a non-profit organization.
What think ye...? Would you consider joining me in this important work...? There is a great need for Life Coaches--trained to do Cult-Exodus Intervention.
(CULTBUSTERS!...It's a dirty job...but somebody's gotta do it...!)
____________________________
"We Bust Cults Best...!"
CULTBUSTERS!TM
Spring Your Kin...Before They Drink the Kool-Aid!
"Who ya gonna call for God's sake..?"
P.C. BREWER & ASSOCIATES
Copyright 2009 by Philip C. Brewer All Rights Reserved
GOING SANE: YOUR MEANINGFUL LIFE TASK & THE LOGOS IN LIFE COACHING
Dr. Viktor Frankl (Man's Search For Meaning), the Jewish survivor of a Nazi Concentration Camp, and later psychotherapist and founder of LogoTherapy (think "Logos") focused his counselees on discovering The Meaningful Life Task. (As a Christian Life Coach, I utilize this concept and also teach the person to center on its synonymous parallel, the Call of God--think "Jonah.")
Truth (as Harry Blamires wrote) is a rock--not a consensus. Every thoughtful person desiring to live the reflective life (the all-too-rare-it-seems-nowadays) reader, thinker, and truth-seeker will hopefully come to grips with the profound meaning of The Logos, encapsulated in The Anointed One--the Christ. Man needs the Rock upon which (Whom) to cast his anchor.
In my too-short-two-year study of First Century Greek, I began to uncover, in the Gospel of John, the Word--the Logos of God ("In the beginning was the Word (Logos), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."). The Logos, Who holds the universe together by His power, the Logos, the central, organizing force--Who also cerebrally leads the sincerely-seeking thinker into His clear thinking--His Logic--into His boundaried arena of 'reasoning together' walling out toxic irrationality (thought disorders), red herrings, rabbit trails, virulent anxiety, mood swings, impulsivity, tribal customs, illusionality--even delusionality.
There is a super-rationality in The Call of God and its consequent Meaningful Life Task which is (albeit a 'going sane' spiritually) may appear 'crazy and foolish' to the uninitiated--to the pagan or spiritual philistine onlooker living outside the system of the Christian's purpose, raison d'etre, and Call. For a follower of Jesus, this is not the disorder of integrity and disease of responsibility of the schizophrenic or schizotypal--but the sensible, ordered thought process of "Christ in you the hope of Glory."
Studying the history of scientific researchers, inventors, writers, artists, composers--some may not have discovered the Logos--but I find the key to their creative sanity to have a common denominator--their centering on a meaningful life task--the wisdom of an organizing focus (",..this one thing I do..." --think the Apostle Paul).
Jesus called His disciples to meaningfulness Pneumatologically (think the Holy Spirit and the Book of Acts) because God created the human personality to be a Pneumatic instrument--dynamically Wind-powered--Holy Spirit driven. The human personality is not to be driven by ideas, ideologies, or templated concepts (think Marx--or perhaps even Warren..?) but by the mind of Christ and the "life and peace" of the "mind of the Spirit." In Dementia, we see a breakdown of Executive function--planning, organizing, prioritizing. Executive functions (cognitively) lie within the domain of the Holy Spirit's work in the human mind.
"In Him e live and move and have our being." --the Apostle Paul
All one's necessary wisdom and knowledge rests in Christ, our Lord and Savior. But without the mind of Christ the psyche remains deceived, irrational, anchorless. Powerless without the wisdom of the Holy Spirit, the human being cannot discover his meaningful life task, his reason to be--cannot achieve the escape velocity to defeat the gravitational pull of sin and evil.
One cannot 'go sane' cognitively and spiritually and find his meaningful life task--without the mind of Christ.
(excerpt: unpublished work-in-progress):
GOING SANE:
Your Meaningful Life Task
& The Logos in Life Coaching
Copyright 2008-2009 by Philip C. Brewer
All Rights Reserved
Truth (as Harry Blamires wrote) is a rock--not a consensus. Every thoughtful person desiring to live the reflective life (the all-too-rare-it-seems-nowadays) reader, thinker, and truth-seeker will hopefully come to grips with the profound meaning of The Logos, encapsulated in The Anointed One--the Christ. Man needs the Rock upon which (Whom) to cast his anchor.
In my too-short-two-year study of First Century Greek, I began to uncover, in the Gospel of John, the Word--the Logos of God ("In the beginning was the Word (Logos), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."). The Logos, Who holds the universe together by His power, the Logos, the central, organizing force--Who also cerebrally leads the sincerely-seeking thinker into His clear thinking--His Logic--into His boundaried arena of 'reasoning together' walling out toxic irrationality (thought disorders), red herrings, rabbit trails, virulent anxiety, mood swings, impulsivity, tribal customs, illusionality--even delusionality.
There is a super-rationality in The Call of God and its consequent Meaningful Life Task which is (albeit a 'going sane' spiritually) may appear 'crazy and foolish' to the uninitiated--to the pagan or spiritual philistine onlooker living outside the system of the Christian's purpose, raison d'etre, and Call. For a follower of Jesus, this is not the disorder of integrity and disease of responsibility of the schizophrenic or schizotypal--but the sensible, ordered thought process of "Christ in you the hope of Glory."
Studying the history of scientific researchers, inventors, writers, artists, composers--some may not have discovered the Logos--but I find the key to their creative sanity to have a common denominator--their centering on a meaningful life task--the wisdom of an organizing focus (",..this one thing I do..." --think the Apostle Paul).
Jesus called His disciples to meaningfulness Pneumatologically (think the Holy Spirit and the Book of Acts) because God created the human personality to be a Pneumatic instrument--dynamically Wind-powered--Holy Spirit driven. The human personality is not to be driven by ideas, ideologies, or templated concepts (think Marx--or perhaps even Warren..?) but by the mind of Christ and the "life and peace" of the "mind of the Spirit." In Dementia, we see a breakdown of Executive function--planning, organizing, prioritizing. Executive functions (cognitively) lie within the domain of the Holy Spirit's work in the human mind.
"In Him e live and move and have our being." --the Apostle Paul
All one's necessary wisdom and knowledge rests in Christ, our Lord and Savior. But without the mind of Christ the psyche remains deceived, irrational, anchorless. Powerless without the wisdom of the Holy Spirit, the human being cannot discover his meaningful life task, his reason to be--cannot achieve the escape velocity to defeat the gravitational pull of sin and evil.
One cannot 'go sane' cognitively and spiritually and find his meaningful life task--without the mind of Christ.
(excerpt: unpublished work-in-progress):
GOING SANE:
Your Meaningful Life Task
& The Logos in Life Coaching
Copyright 2008-2009 by Philip C. Brewer
All Rights Reserved
Saturday, December 20, 2008
A History of Therapy: "Still Crazy After All These Years"
By SCOTT STOSSEL
Published: December 19, 2008
Does psychotherapy work?
AMERICAN THERAPY
The Rise of Psychotherapy in the United States
By Jonathan Engel
351 pages. Gotham Books. $27.50
Depends on what you mean by “psychotherapy.” And by “work.”
The answer matters. In trying to ascend from (as Freud once put it) “hysterical misery to ordinary unhappiness,” millions of Americans attend weekly therapy sessions of myriad kinds, at costs that can exceed $10,000 a year. Large professional edifices — psychiatry, psychology, social work, among others — are constructed atop the notion that psychotherapy works. If it were to be conclusively demonstrated that therapy doesn’t work, therapists would be put out of business; that’s effectively what’s already happened to Freudian psychoanalysts.
Jonathan Engel, a professor of health care policy at Baruch College, begins “American Therapy” by asserting: “Psychotherapy works. Multiple studies conducted over the past half-century have demonstrated that two-thirds of people who engage in psychotherapy improve.” But then, intentionally or not, he dedicates the better part of this fascinating book to complicating that proposition.
For starters, there’s that one-third of patients who don’t get better with psychotherapy; by definition, it doesn’t work for them. And then, perhaps more damningly, there’s the one-third of patients who have been consistently shown to get better without any treatment at all.
And then there’s this: a survey published in the early 1970s found that whereas a majority (59 percent) of people who had visited a professional psychotherapist for mental distress reported having been “helped” or “helped a lot” by the consultation, much larger majorities of people who had consulted a clergyman (78 percent) or a physician without specialized psychological training (76 percent) or — get this — a lawyer (77 percent) reported the same thing. Of course, psychotherapy did develop some pretty wacky offshoots in the 1970s — primal scream therapy, rebirthing therapy and Z-therapy (which seems to have involved, among other things, poking and tickling the patient) — so maybe it’s not surprising that people got more psychic relief from their lawyers than their therapists. But while a 1974 paper by a Johns Hopkins psychiatrist criticized the “charlatans” who “preyed on the gullible and the self-deluded,” these kooky therapies were actually surprisingly effective; many of the patients who underwent them reported themselves cured. This would certainly seem to undermine the claims of mainstream professional psychotherapy to specialized knowledge of any particular usefulness. If someone can poke and tickle a neurotic patient to health, why should an aspiring psychotherapist bother to get a graduate degree? Is psychotherapy just a high-priced placebo?
Engel describes an experiment that seems to have been animated by these very questions. In 1979, a Vanderbilt University researcher named Hans Krupp divided 30 patients with psychological problems into two groups, one to be treated by trained psychotherapists, the other by humanities professors with no psychological expertise. The result? The two groups reported improvement at the same rates. “Effective psychotherapy,” Engel writes, “seemed to require little more than a willing patient and an intelligent and understanding counselor who met and spoke regularly and in confidence.”
A University of Pennsylvania study found that the most successful therapists — regardless of whether they were Freudians or behaviorists, cognitive therapists or Z-therapists — were honest and empathic and connected quickly and well with other people. (Krupp’s humanities professors may have fared so well because they were chosen based on how well likedthey were.) Studies like Krupp’s rattled the foundations of the field and, as Engel puts it, “shook therapists’ confidence in their own rectitude.” But, as Engel takes pains to remind us, if twice as many distressed people improve with therapy as without it — as studies consistently show — those are still pretty good odds for psychotherapy.
The question of effectiveness is only incidental to Engel’s main goal, which is to tell the story of how, over the course of less than 100 years, psychotherapy went from being an obscure treatment for upper-middle-class Jews in fin-de-siècleVienna to being a staple of mainstream American medical practice and a fixture of our popular culture. Mining both medical journals and the popular press, Engel spins a richly textured tale of psychotherapy’s rise.
Naturally, the story begins with Freud, a thoroughly unlikely candidate to become the progenitor of anything distinctly American. He visited the United States only once, in 1909, and found the country rather barbaric. Practical-minded Americans, for their part, would not seem to have provided a receptive audience for his arcane theory of mind, with its id, ego and superego, and its references to Oedipal crises, castration complexes and penis envy. But the most eminent American psychologists of the day — G. Stanley Hall at Clark University, James Jackson Putnam at Harvard, Adolf Meyer at Johns Hopkins and, later, Harry Stack Sullivan, of the Washington School of Psychiatry, among others — embraced and promoted Freudian theory. Psychoanalysis, Engel observes, “seemed to be compatible with a strain in the American zeitgeist,” and the psychoanalytic establishment here “rigidly stood by the Freudian canon for decades” after his death.
For several decades after Freud’s visit to America, psychotherapy remained at the margins of American culture; mental illness was still a little discussed, and highly stigmatized, phenomenon. World War II changed that: when 12 percent of draftees — nearly two million men — were rejected for “neuropsychiatric” reasons, it profoundly altered the American perception of mental illness; psychiatric problems became, in some sense, normal. William Menninger, who was serving as chief psychiatrist of the United States Army, noted that “people are beginning to see that damage of the same kind can be done by a bullet, bacteria or mother-in-law.” After the war, terms like “repression” and “inferiority complex” began cropping up in movies and best-selling novels. “Where the public once turned to the minister, or the captain of industry, or the historian or the scientist,” one social critic observed, “it is now turning more and more to the psychiatrist.” (Engel writes about the fascinating battle lines drawn between psychiatrists and the clergy during this time, with their diametrically opposed notions of guilt.)
When Time magazine put Freud on its cover in April 1956, the psychoanalytic moment in America had arrived, and for the next several decades psychoanalysts largely dominated the mental health field. But even as Freudians occupied the top echelons in the psychiatric institutes and the medical school residency programs, and the psychoanalytic idiom was tightly woven into the culture, more and more studies were calling into question the effectiveness of the psychoanalytic enterprise. In 1975, the behavioral psychologist Hans Eysenck declared (controversially) that “Freudian theory is as dead as that attributing neurotic symptoms to demonological influences, and his method of therapy is following exorcism into oblivion.”
The death warrant may actually have been written earlier, in the 1950s, on the first prescriptions for Thorazine, an anti-psychotic, as “the drug which emptied the hospitals.” Though Freud himself anticipated the age of biological psychiatry (in 1938, he wrote “the future may teach us to exercise a direct influence, by means of particular chemical substances, on the amounts of energy and their distribution in the mental apparatus”), the realization that drugs could so successfully treat some forms of mental illness thoroughly discombobulated the psychoanalytic profession. If drugs worked, that implied an organic, or medical, basis for neurosis, which in turn challenged some of the basic assumptions of psychoanalytically oriented therapy. If mental illness was due to some physical anomaly in the brain, wasn’t the best way to treat the illness by directly addressing that anomaly, with a pill? By the mid-1960s, the psychiatric establishment was moving definitively in a pharmaceutically oriented direction.
Meanwhile, the advent of even better drugs like Prozac (which went on the market in 1987), and the proliferation of cognitive therapies, in which the patient works with a therapist in a focused way to change maladaptive ways of thinking, further diminished Freud’s standing; repeated controlled studies clearly showed both drug and cognitive therapies to be effective in ways that psychoanalysis, with its hours on the couch, has not been shown to be.Though some Freudian analysts continue to practice today, Engel writes, they resemble “nothing more than a fanatical Essene sect, living apart in the wilderness where they could continue to seek truth in the master’s writings.”
Engel describes how factors like changes in the structure of health insurance shaped (and often distorted) psychiatric care, and his book is studded with fascinating tidbits like this one: in the mid-1960s, two buildings on the corner of 96th Street and Fifth Avenue in Manhattan had as many analysts as Minnesota, Oregon, Delaware, Oklahoma, Vermont, Wisconsin and Tennessee combined.
Engel gestures at, but doesn’t directly address, some of the most interesting questions prompted by the rise of psychotherapy. Is the enormous growth of the field over the last century simply a case of supply surging to meet demand, or does the volume of neurosis fluctuate over the years? Are anxiety and alienation always symptoms to be treated, or are they sometimes appropriate — even healthy — responses to the vicissitudes of late modernity? Is psychotherapy an art or a science, a subcategory of humanism or of biology?
But the story Engel does tell is plenty interesting and his conflicted view of Freudianism well worth absorbing: the most influential school of therapy in American history may not have worked very well as a treatment — but it did revolutionize how we think about the human mind.
-------------------
Scott Stossel, the deputy editor of The Atlantic, is writing a book about anxiety.
Published: December 19, 2008
Does psychotherapy work?
AMERICAN THERAPY
The Rise of Psychotherapy in the United States
By Jonathan Engel
351 pages. Gotham Books. $27.50
Depends on what you mean by “psychotherapy.” And by “work.”
The answer matters. In trying to ascend from (as Freud once put it) “hysterical misery to ordinary unhappiness,” millions of Americans attend weekly therapy sessions of myriad kinds, at costs that can exceed $10,000 a year. Large professional edifices — psychiatry, psychology, social work, among others — are constructed atop the notion that psychotherapy works. If it were to be conclusively demonstrated that therapy doesn’t work, therapists would be put out of business; that’s effectively what’s already happened to Freudian psychoanalysts.
Jonathan Engel, a professor of health care policy at Baruch College, begins “American Therapy” by asserting: “Psychotherapy works. Multiple studies conducted over the past half-century have demonstrated that two-thirds of people who engage in psychotherapy improve.” But then, intentionally or not, he dedicates the better part of this fascinating book to complicating that proposition.
For starters, there’s that one-third of patients who don’t get better with psychotherapy; by definition, it doesn’t work for them. And then, perhaps more damningly, there’s the one-third of patients who have been consistently shown to get better without any treatment at all.
And then there’s this: a survey published in the early 1970s found that whereas a majority (59 percent) of people who had visited a professional psychotherapist for mental distress reported having been “helped” or “helped a lot” by the consultation, much larger majorities of people who had consulted a clergyman (78 percent) or a physician without specialized psychological training (76 percent) or — get this — a lawyer (77 percent) reported the same thing. Of course, psychotherapy did develop some pretty wacky offshoots in the 1970s — primal scream therapy, rebirthing therapy and Z-therapy (which seems to have involved, among other things, poking and tickling the patient) — so maybe it’s not surprising that people got more psychic relief from their lawyers than their therapists. But while a 1974 paper by a Johns Hopkins psychiatrist criticized the “charlatans” who “preyed on the gullible and the self-deluded,” these kooky therapies were actually surprisingly effective; many of the patients who underwent them reported themselves cured. This would certainly seem to undermine the claims of mainstream professional psychotherapy to specialized knowledge of any particular usefulness. If someone can poke and tickle a neurotic patient to health, why should an aspiring psychotherapist bother to get a graduate degree? Is psychotherapy just a high-priced placebo?
Engel describes an experiment that seems to have been animated by these very questions. In 1979, a Vanderbilt University researcher named Hans Krupp divided 30 patients with psychological problems into two groups, one to be treated by trained psychotherapists, the other by humanities professors with no psychological expertise. The result? The two groups reported improvement at the same rates. “Effective psychotherapy,” Engel writes, “seemed to require little more than a willing patient and an intelligent and understanding counselor who met and spoke regularly and in confidence.”
A University of Pennsylvania study found that the most successful therapists — regardless of whether they were Freudians or behaviorists, cognitive therapists or Z-therapists — were honest and empathic and connected quickly and well with other people. (Krupp’s humanities professors may have fared so well because they were chosen based on how well likedthey were.) Studies like Krupp’s rattled the foundations of the field and, as Engel puts it, “shook therapists’ confidence in their own rectitude.” But, as Engel takes pains to remind us, if twice as many distressed people improve with therapy as without it — as studies consistently show — those are still pretty good odds for psychotherapy.
The question of effectiveness is only incidental to Engel’s main goal, which is to tell the story of how, over the course of less than 100 years, psychotherapy went from being an obscure treatment for upper-middle-class Jews in fin-de-siècleVienna to being a staple of mainstream American medical practice and a fixture of our popular culture. Mining both medical journals and the popular press, Engel spins a richly textured tale of psychotherapy’s rise.
Naturally, the story begins with Freud, a thoroughly unlikely candidate to become the progenitor of anything distinctly American. He visited the United States only once, in 1909, and found the country rather barbaric. Practical-minded Americans, for their part, would not seem to have provided a receptive audience for his arcane theory of mind, with its id, ego and superego, and its references to Oedipal crises, castration complexes and penis envy. But the most eminent American psychologists of the day — G. Stanley Hall at Clark University, James Jackson Putnam at Harvard, Adolf Meyer at Johns Hopkins and, later, Harry Stack Sullivan, of the Washington School of Psychiatry, among others — embraced and promoted Freudian theory. Psychoanalysis, Engel observes, “seemed to be compatible with a strain in the American zeitgeist,” and the psychoanalytic establishment here “rigidly stood by the Freudian canon for decades” after his death.
For several decades after Freud’s visit to America, psychotherapy remained at the margins of American culture; mental illness was still a little discussed, and highly stigmatized, phenomenon. World War II changed that: when 12 percent of draftees — nearly two million men — were rejected for “neuropsychiatric” reasons, it profoundly altered the American perception of mental illness; psychiatric problems became, in some sense, normal. William Menninger, who was serving as chief psychiatrist of the United States Army, noted that “people are beginning to see that damage of the same kind can be done by a bullet, bacteria or mother-in-law.” After the war, terms like “repression” and “inferiority complex” began cropping up in movies and best-selling novels. “Where the public once turned to the minister, or the captain of industry, or the historian or the scientist,” one social critic observed, “it is now turning more and more to the psychiatrist.” (Engel writes about the fascinating battle lines drawn between psychiatrists and the clergy during this time, with their diametrically opposed notions of guilt.)
When Time magazine put Freud on its cover in April 1956, the psychoanalytic moment in America had arrived, and for the next several decades psychoanalysts largely dominated the mental health field. But even as Freudians occupied the top echelons in the psychiatric institutes and the medical school residency programs, and the psychoanalytic idiom was tightly woven into the culture, more and more studies were calling into question the effectiveness of the psychoanalytic enterprise. In 1975, the behavioral psychologist Hans Eysenck declared (controversially) that “Freudian theory is as dead as that attributing neurotic symptoms to demonological influences, and his method of therapy is following exorcism into oblivion.”
The death warrant may actually have been written earlier, in the 1950s, on the first prescriptions for Thorazine, an anti-psychotic, as “the drug which emptied the hospitals.” Though Freud himself anticipated the age of biological psychiatry (in 1938, he wrote “the future may teach us to exercise a direct influence, by means of particular chemical substances, on the amounts of energy and their distribution in the mental apparatus”), the realization that drugs could so successfully treat some forms of mental illness thoroughly discombobulated the psychoanalytic profession. If drugs worked, that implied an organic, or medical, basis for neurosis, which in turn challenged some of the basic assumptions of psychoanalytically oriented therapy. If mental illness was due to some physical anomaly in the brain, wasn’t the best way to treat the illness by directly addressing that anomaly, with a pill? By the mid-1960s, the psychiatric establishment was moving definitively in a pharmaceutically oriented direction.
Meanwhile, the advent of even better drugs like Prozac (which went on the market in 1987), and the proliferation of cognitive therapies, in which the patient works with a therapist in a focused way to change maladaptive ways of thinking, further diminished Freud’s standing; repeated controlled studies clearly showed both drug and cognitive therapies to be effective in ways that psychoanalysis, with its hours on the couch, has not been shown to be.Though some Freudian analysts continue to practice today, Engel writes, they resemble “nothing more than a fanatical Essene sect, living apart in the wilderness where they could continue to seek truth in the master’s writings.”
Engel describes how factors like changes in the structure of health insurance shaped (and often distorted) psychiatric care, and his book is studded with fascinating tidbits like this one: in the mid-1960s, two buildings on the corner of 96th Street and Fifth Avenue in Manhattan had as many analysts as Minnesota, Oregon, Delaware, Oklahoma, Vermont, Wisconsin and Tennessee combined.
Engel gestures at, but doesn’t directly address, some of the most interesting questions prompted by the rise of psychotherapy. Is the enormous growth of the field over the last century simply a case of supply surging to meet demand, or does the volume of neurosis fluctuate over the years? Are anxiety and alienation always symptoms to be treated, or are they sometimes appropriate — even healthy — responses to the vicissitudes of late modernity? Is psychotherapy an art or a science, a subcategory of humanism or of biology?
But the story Engel does tell is plenty interesting and his conflicted view of Freudianism well worth absorbing: the most influential school of therapy in American history may not have worked very well as a treatment — but it did revolutionize how we think about the human mind.
-------------------
Scott Stossel, the deputy editor of The Atlantic, is writing a book about anxiety.
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