There was a time when most Western scientists, who were materialists, held that the mind was an epee-phenomenon,a product of matter, a motion in the brain, and that brain secretes thought even as the liver secretes bile.
In his Varieties of Religious experience professor William James criticizes the medical materialists who tried to explain away all physical and religious phenomena as due to the morbid condition of the bodily organs, glands and nerves, in the words :
"Scientific theories are originally conditioned just as much as religious are ; and if we only know the facts intimately enough, we should doubtless see 'the determining the dicta of the sturdy atheist as decisively as it does those of the Methodist under conviction anxious about his soul......To plead the organic causation of a religious state of mind, then , in refutation of its claim to possess superior spiritual value, is quite illogical and arbitrary...."
Modern psychologists with their stress on the influence of mind over the body have disproved the medical materialism which held that he mind was merely a by-product of the brain. The human personality is not a body plus mind but an integrated body-mint. " Your mind is your body and vise-verse," says one psychologist.patients who are satisfied with this theory body-mind personality sometimes receive wonderful cures through psychosomatic treatment. (Psyche means mind or soul and Soma means body )
Think for yourself and be cured
In her admirable book, Mind & Body ,Dr.Flanders Dunbar described the case of a thirty-nine-year-old woman who had been an invalid for eighteen year her marriage. All this time she suffered from stomach and heart trouble, pains all over, dizziness and general weakness. She tried to find relief successively, though not sucessfully, by vatious means. Finally psychological analysis revealed that she cherished a deep resentment against her paraents whom she had to help and also against her elder sister who shirked her share of the family responsibility, then she married a man whom she was not sure she loved and whom she considered her inferior. The coming of a child had no therapeutic effect, and she continued to be ill. The psychologist who treated her helped her to see the connection between her psychic and somatic symptoms, to discover how her repressed rages brought on her invalidism. She now become able to think clearly and adjust her life on a healthy basis. she was really cured, and she acquired as steady a balance of mind as can be expected of any human beings,
But there are many cases where a spiritual outlook is essential for healing, Years ago Dr. Jung suggested that psychologists and clergymen should join hands in alleviating human suffering. The American magazine of October,1947, published an article describing a remarkable clinic of this kind designed to Mend Broken souls and restore shattered faith.
A thirty-four-years-old woman came to this clinic. She looked like a woman of fifty and had for months suffered from insomnia, nervousness and chronic fatigue.She had consulted doctors, but to no avail. Religious at heart, she tried to pray but without success. She finally become so depressed that she wanted to commit suicide psychiatrist discovered the real cause of her illness : for several years she had been harbouring a deep resentment towards her sister who had married the man she herself wanted to marry. Outwardly she was kind to her sister,but deep in her subconscious mind she cherished a terrible harted which ruined her mental and physical health. Then a minister came to her aid. "You know it is evil to hast ask God to help you forgive your sister in your heart ; then God will give you peace." She followed this advice. "Though prayer and faith in a power greater than herself she has been able to forgive her sister. Her depression and insomnia are gone. She is a new person and happier than ever before.
(From : Adventures in Religious life )
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