Calling possible worlds into reality: The spiritual aspects of psychotherapy

Résumé 0

The structure and content of the concept of ‘normalcy’ in modern culture, and in the helping professions, point to an ideal. To be ‘normal’ or ‘mentally (perfectly) healthy’ is largely the same as fulfilling an ideal of perfect socialization. A perfectly ‘normal’ person would thus be a perfectly resilient, perfectly balanced, perfectly motivated, perfectly constructive, perfectly loving etc. member of society, partner, or family member. The ‘psych-professions’ see mental health in terms of the varying degrees of approximation to this ideal. However, they always overlook the spiritual precondition for any person to move towards the ideal of normalcy. While the psych-professions speak of personal change and development, they fail to understand that such change is only possible on the assumption of convictions and emotions that are fundamentally spiritual in nature. This paper discusses the struggle every person undergoes in their attempts to approach the internalized social ideal of normalcy in terms of the metaphor of the Biblical Jacob’s ladder, where the ladder leading to Heaven is infinite and Jacob cannot possibly hope to reach its end, but climbing the ladder is a spiritual task which marks all of the attributes traditionally associated with the concept of ‘normalcy’ in the helping professions.