Hidden Courage

Reconnecting Faith and Character with Mental Wellness

Elenchin

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2009
• eBook ISBN: 9781498274234
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Most consumers of mental health services assume that psychology developed as a bias-free social science, with research data driving theory and practice. This view is greatly flawed, as virtually all of the key theorists advanced their views based primarily on observations, personal insights, and beliefs. These thinkers held a hostile view of faith, dismissing religious values as a sign of mental illness. While psychotherapy literally means care of the soul, mental health treatment largely excludes matters of the heart such as moral fiber and spirit. Lost has been the idea that virtues such as courage and hope play an intensely vital role in mental wellness. More troubling is the fact that most recipients of psychological services assume that mental health professionals, because of their training, possess sophisticated insights only they can dispense to relieve mental distress. Because the majority of mental health treatment has historically functioned from an illness model, both treatment providers and consumers have deemed faith beliefs and character strengths irrelevant to good mental health. Fortunately, the last twenty years of scientific research has reestablished the positive relationship between faith beliefs, character traits, and behavioral health that has been held sacrosanct throughout virtually all of human history. Through a distillation of these findings, Hidden Courage seeks to empower nonprofessionals with accessible, timeless principles that guide a good life.

1

From a Moral to Mental Compass

“We always know that society is full of folly and will deceive us in the matter of humanity. It is an unreliable horse, and blind into the bargain. Woe to the driver if he falls asleep.”1

—Albert Schweitzer

During the last year of my Ph.D. program an acquaintance asked me a few questions about a mental health issue relating to his family member. He was aware of my job as a mental health therapist, including prior work as a counselor in two residential treatment facilities. We also had discussed my dissertation research study, which examined depression and spirituality among undergraduate college students. Halfway through the discussion a thought came to his mind and his facial expression changed abruptly. He caught himself and said, “Wait a minute. Your Ph.D. won’t be in clinical psychology, will it?” When I affirmed he was correct, he said, “Oh, why am I talking to you about this then!” and immediately ended the discussion.

This incident typifies the societal attitude toward the mental health field. Many believe that the experts possess knowledge unattainable to those outside the field. Solely by earning their degrees, psychologists and psychiatrists have obtained powers of insight that they can use to solve a host of behavior problems. What has fueled this perception, and how has it affected the treatment options?

A Comparison with Medical Science

Since the early part of the twentieth century the field of psychology has grown dramatically. Escaping the shadow of philosophy, psychology has developed a cultural standing of prominence and professionalism. From the time of Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920), who is considered the founder of modern psychology,2 until the present, psychologists have been keenly interested in applying the scientific method to the understanding of human behaviors. The scientific method is the use of testable experiments and observations to prove a hypothesis, or educated guess, about some phenomenon. This form of inquiry had proven to be highly effective in the natural sciences, such as biology, chemistry, physics, and astronomy. However, it was a new way to gain knowledge for philosophical theorists, who had based much of their previous thinking on opinion and conjecture.

“All that is true, by whomever it has been said,has its origin in the Spirit.”3

—Thomas Aquinas

As a result of this elevated status to professionalism, mental health patients typically assume that the foundations of psychology are as well established as the fundamentals of medical science and that psychological training mirrors medical training. Psychiatrists and psychologists are comparable to medical doctors, therapists are similar to nurses and physicians’ assistants, and mental health paraprofessionals match up with medical technicians. Individuals who seek mental health treatment typically assume that they will receive standardized, state-of-the-art care, which flows naturally from an established discipline.

Both professionals and mental health patients have compared psychology to medical science—a field that has made countless valuable advances and saved the lives of an incalculable number by using the regimental scientific method to gain knowledge. One example of a medical advancement is found in the highly contagious smallpox disease that claimed upwards of 500 million lives in the twentieth century. Those who contracted the disease and survived were brutally scarred. An English country doctor named Edward Jenner believed there was some truth in an old wives’ tale that milkmaids never contracted smallpox, although they would often come down with the milder disease of cowpox marked by blistered hands. He speculated that it was the pus in the blister that protected the milkmaids from contracting smallpox. In 1796 Jenner set out to prove his theory by injecting pus from a maid’s blistered hands into a young boy named James Phipps and repeating the procedure over several days. The doctor’s next step was to inject the boy with smallpox. Young Phipps became ill, but within a few days he made a full recovery.

Jenner reported his findings to the medical community in London, and by 1840 the English government endorsed his vaccination as the sole treatment for smallpox. Use of the vaccine spread across the continents, culminating with the World Health Organization’s 1980 pronouncement that smallpox was extinct.4 Gone! This example illustrates Western thinking toward gaining knowledge for improving physical health. (It also highlights the importance of ethical considerations when conducting research; James Phipps was lucky that Jenner was right!)

Medicine continued to progress, marked by key findings that served to form a solid foundation for effective diagnoses and treatment of medical illness. The list below highlights some accomplishments of medical science since the late 1800s.

• X-rays to image bone and tissues have been discovered.

• Marie Curie initiated research on “uranium waves,” which led to the discovery of radioactivity. Radiation is commonly used in the diagnoses and treatment of physical illness.5

• Life expectancy has nearly doubled in the twentieth century as a result of improved medical techniques and more sanitary living conditions.

• Several diseases have been eliminated through the development of vaccinations.

• Improved medicines have been developed since the establishment of molecular biology.

• Insulin has been discovered and used to treat diabetes.

• The antibiotic penicillin has been discovered and used to treat infections.

• Open heart surgery has been developed and advanced.

• Inhalers have been developed to alleviate the symptoms of asthma.

• The CAT (Computerized Axial Tomography) scan has been developed to show a picture of cross sections through parts of the body.

• The human genome has been mapped and will encourage new understanding and treatment of diseases.6

The scientific method has yielded an abundance of fruitful findings in the natural sciences. Louis Pasteur discovered how microorganisms could contaminate milk. He developed a process to heat the liquid and destroy the harmful bacteria. The procedure is called pasteurization to honor the scientist who developed the practice. Evangelista Torricelli’s invention of the barometer, Alexander Graham Bell’s design of the telephone, and Guglielmo Marconi’s development of the radio all serve as practical examples of ways that science is able to improve our lives.

With the physical sciences making important tangible developments it is little wonder that psychologists looked on with envy. The philosophical and psychological arenas, by their very natures, are simply not as scientific as the natural sciences. Explaining why a nine-year-old stole an apple from a street vendor is more challenging than describing the fractured radius (bone below the elbow) the same boy received when being pursued by the irate merchant. Furthermore, casting the young lad’s bone is easier than “fixing” his potential inclination toward thievery.

Fallen Analogy

This is not to say the scientific study of mental health is not a legitimate and important discipline. This field of study has made significant contributions to understanding how the mind works. Child development, family counseling, and substance abuse treatment are a few areas that have benefited from rigid examination of mental and behavioral functioning. However, the direct analogy between medical science and psychology is misguided. The field of psychology, by its own admission, operates from many different and often contrasting theoretical frameworks and treatment approaches.

There has been much confusion within the mental health field. For almost any general psychological theory there is another that is in direct opposition. By itself that is not necessarily a bad thing because theories are educated guesses. Many theories can be tested scientifically to reveal data either supportive or not supportive of the assumptions made. However, the mental health field has a history of working from leading theories as if they were established, scientifically proven facts. In its effort to match the respectability of medicine and the other hard sciences, psychology has forcefully embraced the exclusive use of the scientific method and discarded wisdom litera...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: From a Moral to Mental Compass
• Chapter 2: Faith in Reason
• Chapter 3: In Freud We Trust?
• Chapter 4: Is Life All about Me?
• Chapter 5: Wheat and Weeds
• Chapter 6: Closing the Loop
• Chapter 7: Reason for Faith
• Chapter 8: Character