“Personal Counselling Part Of Christianity"

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28543, 24 March 1958, Page 12

“Personal Counselling Part Of Christianity"

Personal counselling of people in trouble and with personal and emotional difficulties was not something outside his work as a member of the church, said the Rev. Dr D. O. Williams, the president of the Methodist Church of New Zealand in an interview in Christchurch. He had found that helping people through establishing a personal relationship of acceptance and understanding through psychoanalysis was closely allied to the teaching of Christianity.

Dr Williams is in Christchurch on an official visit, and part of his programme is a series of public meetings in the Durham Street Methodist Church. Dr Williams said that he felt

that among the difficulties for young people today was that they came out of school and found that life did not make much sense. This was apart from other psychological difficulties. The cause of this lay, he felt, in that the earlier generation was not sure of itself. With Freud’s works it looked as if all the problems were sex problems but it had been found that these were frequently a symptom of bad personal relations. People could get out of trouble by getting into good relations with a counsellor. “I have had a real interest in counselling, or as it was once called, psychoanalysis, since T joined the ministry 27 years ago, said Dr Williams, who had carried out research on the psychological and clinical approach to personal counselling and in 1954 went to the University of Chicago as a Fulbright Scholar. “New Insights”

“In the United States I got new insights into what we now call pastoral counselling,” he said. “I found that their approach was through inter-personal relationships; that is, through one person helping another if he accepts him, and if he understands him in a thorough-going way without any strict analysis being made. “Counselling procedures, based on good persona] relationships, were adequately expressed in the New Testament. I find that counselling is no longer an offshoot of my work,” he said. This alliance was now widely recognised. ‘‘Every true Christian ought to be a counsellor—an expert in human relations,” he said. “If you want to help somebody, don’t judge, him, don’t tell him off, don’t advise him. First accept him. Prove to him that you are sharing his difficulties with him. Then the person in trouble can explain his troubles and, by that, develop a real insight into himself. He can then make the necessary personality changes and set himself on the way to maturity. ‘‘A mature person is creative, independent, capable of setting himself a long-range goal, and is in good relations with other people,” said Dr Williams. “A person in difficulties does not . normally seek counselling until he is almost in despair and has tried everything else. A professional counsellor will deal with folk who come to him; we know that if we go to them with real concern we can help them. Sex Problems ‘‘When Freud first produced his great works it looked as if the main problems were sex problems. But as we have gone further we find that sex problems are most frequently a

symptom of bad personal relations. Where sex problems come in there are usually underlying problems of personal relations,” he said.

He explained the reaction of parents to a* child who arrives home from school with a good report, and to one who arrives home with a bad report. The child felt that he was loved if he was successful and disliked if unsuccessful. A child who was unsuccessful would try to put up a front of success, and some people went on trying to put up a front of success throughout their lives. But it would not work in adulthood. ‘‘Then, what we do to win good personal relations is what gets us disliked.” With a counsellor people did not have to put up that front of success. Exhibitionism This could be just one of the many psychological ' aspects of exhibitionism bodgies and widgies, said Dr Williams. ‘‘But we must add to the psychological picture the fact that these children are not being given a worthy goal for theijf lives. As they come out of the education system of today, life does not make much sense. They are not encouraged to set a personal goal,” he said. Children had not been given an over-all picture of the meaningfulness of life, he said. This was because parents were not sure of themselves. .

‘‘lf you have no purpose what is the use of discipline. If you have an objective you will adopt a discipline to achieve it.” There was an objective in Christianity which was not a lifetime job. but an eternal one.