EVERY SATURDAY RELIGIOUS LIFE

Southland Times, Issue 23374, 4 December 1937, Page 12

EVERY SATURDAY RELIGIOUS LIFE

(By

POPOKOTEA)

DOCTORS, CLERGYMEN AND NERVES

Dr Leslie D. Weatherhead, the distinguished practising psychologist and minister of the City Temple, London, writing under the above title in the August number of Good Housekeeping states that there are thousands oi sufferers who are not getting adequate and understanding treatment. me o them, he continues, have no physical symptoms at all, save that they ee permanently tired, off their food and “nervy.” Sometimes the suffeier may merely have strange and irrational fears, worries without quite knowing w y, and the most humiliating and distressing bouts of deep depression. On the other hand, we have the person with marked physical symptoms. 1 hey m y range from a “tight band round the head” to a definite paralysis. Yet t most able physician, with all the means at his disposal, is unable to discov just what is wrong. , . , . .• u What happens to these patients? If there is a physical symptom which cannot be explained or dissipated, a physician will often prescribe bromi e or valerian or a long holiday. The case is described as functional, or the patient is told that it is “just nerves,” and the doctor frequently ceases to take mucn further interest. . , ( Where there is no physical symptom, the patient—say, m the case or worry or fear—betakes him to his priest or clergyman or minister. Occasion ally he is lucky enough to find one with a training in psychology. .. . • neither doctor nor minister is adequate, to whom can this kind ot patient tuin. The answer would appear to be easily—the psychologist. But, alas it is not so easy as that! True, the patient won’t here be dismissed as some doctors, in their heart of hearts, dismiss as a nuisance any patient who doesnt tit into their materialistic categories. Nor will be be told to trust God or p y about it” or “have faith,” three pieces of advice which seern to exhaust the stock-in-trade of some clergymen. Nor will such a patient be tola o render his fears to God” when he is the victim of some deeply iepi ess phobia for which he is no more responsible than a physically ill patient is responsible for his cancer. ... Some of the best psychologists in Harley Street recognize the supreme place which religion must have in the re-integration of personality that.is involved in adequate psychological treatment. The best psychologist in England—in my judgment—is not afraid definitely to use religious terms in speaking to his patients. “I have become convinced,” he says, that religion is the most important thing in life, and that it is essential to mental health Others stress the importance of the patient’s “adjustment to the infinite, ana Professor Jung of Zurich, who cannot be said to have an axe to 6 lin<l religion, says, “It is in reality the priest or the clergyman, rather than the doctor, who should be most concerned with the problem of spiritual sutlering. . . . During the past 30 years, people from all the civilized countries of the world have consulted me. . . . Among my patients m the second halt oi life—that is to say, over 35-there has not been one whose problem in the last resort has noVßeen that of finding a religious outlook on life. It is sate to say that every one of them fell ill because he had lost that which the living religions of every age have given to their followers, and none or them nas really been healed who did not regain his religious outlook. ... It is indeed high time for the clergyman and the psychotherapist to join forces to meet this great spiritual task. ... Side by side with the decline of religious life, <he neuroses grow noticeably more frequent.” , ... , The writer feels that the time is inevitably coming when there will be a clinic of mental and spiritual healing in each city. While tactful clergymen can do much at present, such clinical work calls for specialized traming. Why do the churches tarry so long when there is such an extensive iiela for a definite constructive ministry of healing? THE BIBLICAL WINDOW THERE’S SOUND SENSE IN IM lb

A SON SPEAKS Exodus 20:12 “Honour thy father and thy mother.” At 11: “My parents are grand. They know simply everything.” At 16: “Really and truly my parents are not quite so good as I used to think. They don’t know everything.” At 19: “Although my parents think they are always right, they really know very little compared with what I know already. ...” At 22: “My parents do not understand young people; they have nothing in common with the young generation.” At 30: “To tell the truth, my parents were right in many things.” At 50: “My parents were wonderful people. They had a clear mind and always did the necessary thing at the right moment. My beloved parents —News Weiner Tagblatt, Vienna.

Divorce is easy in Dahomey. It is also unnecessary. Not because of religious han or peculiar wisdom, but through the working of a local custom. When the husband and wife fall out tradition decrees that they must stand in a separate corner of the room, faces to the wall. Thus they remain for an interval of silent cogitation. Then the husband cries as loudly as he can: “I am an idiot, I am an idiot, I am an idiot.” Then comes the wife’s turn. She exclaims: “I am an idiot, I am an idiot, I am an idiot.” Husband and wife turn around, face one another and advance to the centre of the room shouting: “We are idiots, We are idiots We are idiots.” This confession ends the religious ceremony. Husband and wife are free to do whatever they please. And for a thousand years they have done the same thing: burst out laughing and forgotten their quarrel. —Lilliput, London.