Ascend to Third Floor
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THE BIBLE'S TIMELESS AND TIMELY INSIGHTS
by Smiley Blanton, M.D.
THE OTHER DAY a new patient noticed a Bible lying on my desk.
"Do you a--psychiatrist--read the Bible?" he asked.
"I not only read it," I told him, "I study it. It's the greatest textbook on human behavior ever put together. If people would just absorb its message, a lot of us psychiatrists could close our offices and go fishing."
"You're talking about the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule?"
"Certainly but more, too," I said. "There are dozens of other insights that have profound psychiatric value. Take your own case. For the past hour you've been telling me how you've done this, tried that, all to no avail. It's pretty obvious that you're worrying yourself into a state of acute anxiety, isn't it?"
"That," he said dryly, "is why I'm here."
I picked up the Bible.
"Here's some advice that St Paul gives to the Ephesians. Just four words:Having done all, stand. Now, what does that mean? Exactly what it says. You've done your best, what more can you do? Keep running in circles? Plow up the same ground? What you really need far more than a solution to this particular problem is peace of mind. And there's the formula: relax, stand quietly, stop trying to lick this thing with your conscious mind. Let the creative power in your unconscious take over. It may solve the whole thing for you, if you'll just get out of your own way!"
My patient looked thoughtful.
"Maybe I should do a little Bible reading on my own," he said.
It does seem foolish not to make use of the distilled wisdom of 3000 years. Centuries before psychiatry, the Bible knew that "the kingdom of God is within you." We psychiatrists call it the unconscious mind but only the words are new, not the concept. From beginning to end the Bible teaches that the human soul is a battleground where good struggles with evil. We talk about the forces of hostility and aggression contending with the love- impulses in human nature. It's the same thing.
What psychiatry has done is to bring scientific terminology to the truths that the Bible presents in poetry, allegory and parable. What, in essence, did Freud and the other pioneers discover? That the human mind functions on the conscious and the unconscious level. That the thing we call conscience does, too, and that many emotional pressures and dislocations are caused by its hidden action.
It is tremendously exciting to read the BIble with even this much knowledge of psychiatry. Here are a few of my favorite passages, words so full of insight that I think they might well be memorized and repeated periodically by anyone who values his mental health.
For hundreds of years, troubled people have found comfort in these words from the Book of Deuteronomy. This is not surprising. One of the few fears we are born with is the fear of falling, so the idea of a pair of loving arms, sustaining and eternal, is an answer to the yearning in all of us to feel safe, to find security. Furthermore, one of the deepest forms of communication is touch. And so this Biblical image brings a great sense of peace. If you suffer from tension and insomnia, try repeating these words to yourself at bedtime. You may find them more effective than any sleeping pill.
Many people think this noble concept comes from the New Testament. Actually you can also find it in Leviticus. The remarkable thing, to a psychiatrist, is its recognition that in an emotionally healthy person there must be self-love as well as love of others.
Lack of self-esteem is probably the most common emotional ailment I am called upon to treat. Often pressure from the unconscious mind is causing this sense of unworthiness. Suppose a woman comes to me, weighted down with guilt. I can't undo the things she had done. But perhaps I can help her understand why she did them, and how the mechanism of her conscience, functioning below the conscious level, is paralyzing her. And I can urge her to read and reread the story of the Prodigal Son. How can anyone feel permanently condemned or rejected in a world where this magnificent promise comes ringing down the centuries, the promise that love is stronger than any mistake, any error?
A modern rephrasing might be, "Stop worrying about the future." Worry causes tension. Tension blocks the flow of creative energy from the unconscious mind. And when creative energy wanes, problems multiply.
Most of us know perfectly well that worry is a futile process. Yet many people constantly borrow trouble. "Sufficient unto the day," says the Bible, "is the evil thereof." There are plenty of problems in the here and now to tackle and solve. The only moment when you're really alive is the present one, so make the most of it. Have faith that the Power that brought you here will help you through any future crisis, whatever it may be. "They that wait upon the Lord," says Isaiah, "shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles." Why? Because their faith makes them non-worriers.
This penetrating phrase from Proverbs implies that what you think you think is less important than what you really think. Every day in my office I see illustrations of this. I recall talking to a woman who had married during the Korean War. Her husband, a reserve officer, had volunteered for war duty and gone overseas, leaving her pregnant. He had been killed;she was left to bring up their son alone. Eventually she remarried, but now she was having difficulty with the 15-year-old boy.
It was apparent that she treated her son with unusual harshness and severity. "Why are you so strict with him?" I asked. "Because I don't want him to grow up spoiled," she said instantly.
"Did it ever occur to you," I asked, "that when this boy's father went away voluntarily, leaving you, and got himself killed, something in you was enraged, something in you hated him? And isn't it just possible that some of this unadmitted hate has been displaced onto the child he left you with, although your conscious mind doesn't want to admit that either? Look into your heart and search for the truth there, below the rationalizations of your mind. Until you do, we're not going to get anywhere with this problem."
Of course! What we shall love is the key problem of human existence, because we tend to become the reflection of what we love. Do you love money? Then your values will be materialistic. Do you love power? Then the aggressive instincts in you will slowly become dominant. Do you love God and your neighbor? Then you are not likely to need a psychiatrist!
We psychiatrists warn against sustained anger and hostility; we know that unresolved conflicts in the unconscious mind can make you physically ill. How does the Bible put it? Let not the sun go down upon your wrath.And:A merry heart doeth good like a medicine. Exactly so. These flashing sparks of truth from the pages of the Bible are endless!
If I were asked to choose one Bible passage above all others it would be this:And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. In one tremendous sentence these words encompass the whole theory and method of psychotherapy. Nine times out of ten, when people come to me tormented by guilt, racked by anxiety, exhausted by unresolved hate, it is because they don't know the truth about themselves. It is the role of the psychiatrist to remove the camouflage, the self-deception, the rationalizations. It is his job to bring the unconscious conflicts into the conscious mind where reason can deal with them. As Freud said, "Reason is a small voice, but it is persistent." Once insight is gained, the cure can begin because the truth does make you free.
We shall never have all the truth. Great questions of life and death, good and evil, remain unanswered and must so remain, as the book of Job eloquently tells us. But this much seems plain to me; locked in the unconscious of each of us are the same elemental forces of love and hate that have haunted and inspired the human race from the beginning. With this hidden area of the human spirit psychiatry concerns itself sometimes helpfully, sometimes not. But there is also an ancient book that deals with it, that understands it profoundly and intuitively, a book that for 3000 years has been a help in time of trouble to any person wise enough to use it. (#)
ARTICLE No. 2
A SIMPLE SHORTCUT TO SET YOU FREE by Davis
ARTICLE No. 3
DIARY OF A NEW MOTHER by Geissler
ARTICLE No. 4
THE REMARKABLE SELF-HEALING POWER OF THE MIND by Hunt
ARTICLE No. 5
OPEN YOUR EYES TO THE BEAUTY AROUND YOU by Rau
No. 6:WHAT IS THIS THING CALLED LOVE? by Viorst
No. 7:THE SECRET OF HAVING FUN by LeShan
No. 8:PIED PIPER OF SEVENTH AVENUE by Comer
No. 9:OBEY THAT IMPULSE by Marston
No. 10:THE LOVING MESSAGE IN A TOUCH by Lobsenz
And some more...
No. 11:THE WISDOM OF TEARS by Hunt
No. 12:HAVE YOU AN EDUCATED HEART? by Burgess
No. 13:THE STRANGE POWERS OF INTUITION by Lagemann
No. 14:WHY KIDS ARE 20 DEGREES COOLER by Mills
No. 15:THE RIGHT DIET FOR YOU by Stare
And still some more...
No. 16:STRAIGHT TALK ABOUT THE LIVING-TOGETHER ARRANGEMENT by Montague
No. 17:...The ABC's of It by Lakein
No. 18:The Day We Flew the Kites by Fowler
No. 19:"Touched by Something Divine" by Selzer
No. 20:How to Live 365 Days a Year by Schindler
Ascend to Second Floor
Ascend to Third Floor
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