MENTAL MEDICINE. Some Practical Suggestions From A Spiritual Standpoint; (Timeless Wisdom Collection Book 780)

These present days are witnessing numerous attempts at closer co-operation between the physician and the minister in the processes of health and healing. There are also some endeavors to readjust the church as a universal hospital and clinic for the cure of certain forms of disease, while the clergy, in some instances are giving the bulk of their ministry to the art of healing by psycho-therapeutic methods, including much of hypnotism.
We believe that the church will be wise in making haste slowly in the attempt at healing. There is real danger of giving itself, not to wise and rational psychotherapy, but to the extravagances of psychotherapeutic theories. It would be a distinct calamity if every church should be exploiting itself as a nervine hospital. There are also grave ethical dangers in the use of hypnotism.
Is there not possible, however, a wiser cooperation, and a safe and sane method? The addresses in this volume, in their spirit and teaching, endeavor to indicate what many of us believe to be the better way. They give a series of teaching along the lines of right thinking and right living, which ought to help make better conditions for health and healing. They eschew hypnotism. They aim to suggest a method of co-operation which can be readily used by all the churches, even if they do not have in their pulpit a trained psychologist, or in their equipment the necessary helpers for a church clinic. For most churches, this limited co-operation is all that is needed or advisable.
These addresses aim to incorporate the fundamental teachings of mental science as used in modern psychotherapy. They do not exaggerate mental and spiritual factors. They do not make rash promises. They do not minimize the regular therapeutic methods, approved by long experience and fruitful results. They do not, for a moment, take the place of the physician. Rather, they aim to co-operate cordially and to make the physician's work more effective by supplementing it with certain mental and spiritual factors, which religious teaching can often most helpfully supply.
The writer feels that nothing final is said in these lectures. They are only tentative. Others will yet do fuller and better work. But up to the present, perhaps there is no book which fills just this field or meets this need, which is that of practical suggestion and present service along vital lines.