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APPENDIX II
RELIGION AND PSYCHOTHERAPY

Religion and psychotherapy have, of late, come to have many relations to each other and many interests in common, at least in the minds of a number of clergymen, and in popular estimation. There is no doubt but that religion can do much to soothe troubled men and women, even when their troubles are entirely physical in nature and origin. It at least lessens the unfavorable effect of worry in exaggerating such pathological processes as are at work. All diseases, functional and organic, are rendered worse by solicitude, while many troublesome symptoms become quite bearable if only the patient does not dwell on them too much but takes them as they come, carefully refraining from emphasizing them by over-attention. That is the very essence of psychotherapy. Religion, in the sense of trust in divine wisdom, can do much to originate and maintain this imperturbed frame of mind. People who are without religion, that is, without the feeling that somehow all their ills are a part of the great plan of the universe, the mystery of which is insoluble, but the recognition of which is demanded by reason, and who lack the assurance that somehow, in Browning's phrase:

 
  "God's in His Heaven-
  All's right with the world!"
 

—are more prone to give way to over-anxiety and consequently to make themselves suffer more in all their ills, than is necessary or even likely in the more favorable state of mind of those whose trust in Providence is thorough and efficient.

In recent years there has been in the general population a distinct loss of faith in the great religious truths that are so helpful in engendering a peaceful state of mind in suffering. Many have come, if not to doubt of the Providence of the Creator, at least to feel that we do not know enough about it to place any such supreme dependence on it in the trials of life as would make it a source of relief, or at least consolation, in suffering. This same spirit of doubt has paralyzed faith in the hereafter and in all that trust in it brings, to sufferers, of consolation to come for their ills if these are borne as becomes rational creatures whose suffering has a purpose, though we may not comprehend it. Some people are destined by their physical make-up or by accidental conditions to considerable suffering. There are many ailments that are incurable and are definitely known to be incurable. Some of these entail great suffering of body and even more suffering of mind. Such suffering becomes quite unbearable unless the patient is of a very stoic disposition, or unless the thought of a hereafter in which the sufferings of this life will have a meaning is present to console.

Great scientists in the midst of all our advance in science—one need but mention here such men as Lord Kelvin, Clerk Maxwell, Johann Müller, Laennec, Pasteur, Claude Bernard, though the number might easily be multiplied—have insisted that the existence of a Creator is absolutely demanded by what we know of the physical universe. "Science demonstrates the existence of a Creator," is Lord Kelvin's expression. The existence of a Creator implies, also, the existence of laws made by Him, by which His universe is regulated in every detail, nothing being left to chance. Chance is indeed only a term which indicates that we do not know the causes at work. If somehow the Creator's power has been sufficient to bring the manifold things of the universe into existence according to a plan in which there is no such interference with one another as would cause serious disturbance of the universal order around us, then He can be trusted also to care for even the minutest details of creation and of human life.

In the gradual disintegration of the religious sense which has come as a consequence of certain materialistic tendencies in nineteenth century education and science, these religious sources of consolation have been shut off from a great many people. They have come to the feeling of being portions of a machine that moves hopelessly on, somehow, on the old principle, "The mills of the gods grind slow, but they grind exceeding fine." The sufferings of humanity then, are, for these people, only a portion of a great universe of suffering that is constantly going on but for which they can see no reason and no purpose. Lucretius's lines which make human sufferings the butt of the jokes of the gods who look gleefully on from their Elysian happiness, would represent the feelings of these doubters better than any religious expression. We have come back in this age, when evolution has so much influenced the thought of the time, after the curious cyclic fashion in which human thought repeats itself from era to era, to the attitude of mind of the old Roman poet who almost singly among his contemporaries, had been deeply affected by the same doctrine of evolution. The pessimism he was prone to as to the significance of human life has become once more the fashion.

Such pessimistic thoughts do not come, as a rule, while people are in good health, but they assert themselves with double emphasis in moments of trial and suffering. Lucretius himself is said to have committed suicide. The result of the diffusion of this materialistic pessimism in our time has been a gradual preparation for a revulsion of feeling in many minds. One manifestation of this reaction has been seen in a form of religion which denies entirely the existence of evil. God the Creator is good and therefore there can be no evil in His world. Whatever of evil there is, is only due to man's failure to see the entirety of things. Evil is an error of mortal mind—only that and nothing more. In spite of the manifest absurdity of the underlying principle, if people can only be brought to persuade themselves that there is no such thing as evil or suffering, then many of their discomforts disappear, all of their symptoms grow less and a sense of well-being results. It is, indeed, surprising how many even physical ills will be relieved by this state of mind if sincerely accepted. It is the highest possible tribute to psychotherapy and the curative influence of mind over body.

Another phase of this revulsion of feeling has been the institution of a church movement that would make sufferers realize once more all the consolations there are in religion. The sufferer is brought to a renewed lively sense of the presence of the Creator in the universe and of His care for His creatures. The great purpose of suffering in making people better and stripping them of their meanness and selfishness is brought out. Anyone who has ever had called to his attention the difference between two brothers, one of whom has been chastened by suffering above which he has risen by character development, and another who has enjoyed good health and prosperity all his life, will realize how much of good suffering means in the world. Pain is not in itself an evil, but a warning, and most of the trials of life can rather readily be shown to partake of this character. A man who can be made to submit himself, then, to the will of the Creator and be persuaded to acknowledge that somehow we must try to work out our part in the great scheme of things behind which the Creator stands, is somewhat like the soldier ready even when tired and worn out, to go in on a forlorn hope, because he has confidence that he is executing a part of the plan of his general for his country's welfare, though he does not know how, and he is quite well aware that it is going to cost him much in pain and suffering, and perhaps his life.

There is no doubt that an abiding sense of religion does much for people in the midst of their ailments and, above all, keeps them from developing those symptoms due to nervous worry and solicitude which so often are more annoying to the patient than the actual sufferings he or she may have to bear. While religion is often said to predispose to certain mental troubles, it is now well appreciated by psychiatrists that it is not religion that has the tendency to disturb the mind, but a disequilibrated mind has a tendency to exaggerate out of all reason its interests in anything that it takes up seriously. Whether the object of the attention be business, or pleasure, or sexuality, or religion, the unbalanced mind pays too much attention to it, becomes too exclusively occupied with it, and this over-indulgence helps to form a vicious circle of unfavorable influence. While many people in their insanity, then, show exaggerated interest in religion, this is only like other exaggerated interests of the disequilibrated, and religion itself is not the cause but only a coincidence in the matter.

Clouston, in his book on "Unsoundness of Mind" (Methuen, London, 1911), put this very well when he said, "It is true that religion, touching as it does, in the most intense way the emotional nature, and the spiritual instincts of mankind, sometimes appears to cause and is often mixed up with insanity. But in nearly all such cases the brain of the individual was originally unstable, specially emotional, over-sensitive, hyperconscientious, and often somewhat weak in the intellectual and inhibitory faculties and, if looked for, other causes will usually be found." He had said just before, "To talk of 'religious insanity' as if it were a definite and definable form is in my judgment a mistake."

On the contrary, there is now a growing conviction that a deep religious feeling, a sense of dependence on and trust in the Almighty, will do more than anything else to keep people from those neurotic manifestations which so often are seen in our day and are growing more and more frequent as life becomes more strenuous and more attention is paid to the material side of things, to the exclusion of the spiritual. How true this is may be judged from expressions that have been used in recent years by well-known specialists in nervous diseases and in psychology. These have included men who were often not believers in religion themselves but who recognized its influence for good for others. Such expressions are to be found in the writings of men of every nationality. Not infrequently, in spite of their own religious affiliation, they acknowledge what a profound influence certain forms of religion have over people. These testimonies have been multiplying in our medical literature in recent years, because apparently physicians have come to appreciate much better by contrast the influence for good of religion over some of their patients, since so many of the sufferers from nervous diseases they see have not this source of consolation to recur to.

In America we have a number of such testimonies. In his "Self Help for Nervous Women" Dr. John K. Mitchell of Philadelphia, who may be taken to represent in this matter the Philadelphia School of Neurologists, to which his father has lent such distinction, said:

It is certainly true that considering as examples two such widely separated forms of religious belief as the Orthodox Jews and the strict Roman Catholics, one does not see as many patients from them as from their numbers might be expected, especially when it is remembered that Jews as a whole are very nervous people and that the Roman Church includes in this country among its members numbers of the most emotional race in the world.

Of only one sect can I recall no example. It is not in my memory that a professing Quaker ever came into my hands to be treated for nervousness. If the opinion I have already stated so often is correct, namely that want of control of the emotions and the over-expression of the feelings are prime causes of nervousness, then the fact that discipline of the emotions is a lesson early and constantly taught by the Friends, would help to account for the infrequency of this disorder among them and adds emphasis to the belief in such a causation.

Prof. Münsterberg, who may be fairly taken to represent the German school, but whose long years of residence in America have made him a cosmopolitan, is quite as positive in his declaration of the place that religion may hold in making human suffering less. In his "Psychotherapy" he devotes considerable attention to the subject. The religious discipline, that is, the training of human beings from their earliest years to recognize that there is a higher law than their own feelings and that they must suppress many of their desires and take evil as it comes as a portion of human life, is of itself, he insists, an excellent preparation to enable the individual to bear up under the physical and mental trials of life and to make many symptoms that would otherwise be almost intolerable, quite bearable. It is from earliest years that this training must make itself felt, and Prof. Münsterberg insists that from early childhood the self-control has to be strong and the child has to learn from the beginning to know the limits to the gratification of his desires and to abstain from reckless self-indulgence. A good conscience, he says, a congenial home and a serious purpose, are, after all, the safest conditions for a healthy man, and the community does effective work in preventive psychotherapy whenever it facilitates the securing of these factors.

Self-denial has always been one of the main elements of religious training, and indeed was declared a chief source of merit for the hereafter. The modern psychotherapeutist, however, preaches self-denial almost as strenuously as the religious minister of the olden time, only now not for any religious merit or reward, but because it makes life more pleasant and by that much happier. When men and women have learned to deny themselves in their younger years, it is not hard to stand even pain when they grow older, and pain is inevitable in every human life and the training to stand it is therefore worth while. Pain borne with equanimity is lessened by one-half if not in its intensity then at least in its power to disturb, and since religion will do this it possesses an important remedial value. Here is where religion is particularly valuable and the passing of it from many minds has thrown them back on themselves and left them without profound interests, so that they occupy themselves overmuch with the trivial incidents of life within them and disturb the course of many of their functions by giving exaggerated thought to them. Religion adds a great purpose to life and such a purpose keeps men and women to a great extent from being disturbed about trifles.

Of course, it would be too bad if religion should do no more than this. This, however, is the only phase of it with which we are concerned here. We may think very strongly with Prof. Münsterberg, that it would be quite wrong to assign to it only this place in life. He says: "The meaning of religion in life is entirely too deep that it should be employed merely for the purpose of lessening the pains and aches of humanity and the dreads that are so often more imaginary than real." He insists that "It cheapens religion by putting the accent of its meaning in life on personal comfort and absence of pain." He adds, "If there is one power in life which ought to develop in us a conviction that pleasure is not the highest goal and that pain is not the worst evil, then it ought to be philosophy and religion." Present-day movements, however, tend to subordinate religion to this-worldliness rather than to other-worldliness, and by just that much they take out of religion its real significance. We are here on trial for another world is the thought that in the past strengthened men to bear all manner of ills, if not with equanimity, at least without exaggerated reaction. It has still the power to do so for all those who accept it simply and sincerely.