Sunday Meditation: Whom Can You Trust? Start with the Holy Spirit!

The first gift of the Holy Spirit it wisdom. We all need it and the six others that accompany it: understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord. It's prudent to begin every venture with a prayer to the Holy Spirit for wisdom and guidance. And I offer this post today in that spirit -- seeking truth and praying for wisdom.

I shared this article by therapist Joshua Coleman today on my substack page. 

What Happens When Childhood Becomes the Explanation for Everything?

Coleman raises some questions that I think need to be asked about psychotherapy and its direction. I'm not saying there is no use for psychotherapy. A good holy practitioner can certainly be a help and support. I respected Dr. Ed Sheridan who died in 2022 who was a Catholic and daily communicant. Our pro-life community met with him on several occasions to discuss our approach to counseling moms in crisis. He was a wise and kind man. He was also a blessing to my own family during a challenging family crisis. 

When the Road Less Traveled Leads to the Abyss

I wrote the other day about re-reading People of the Lie by M. Scott Peck. I'm over halfway through the book now and I have to kind of shake my head to clear it. When I read it some 40 years ago I was still a bit naive and enthralled by men in white lab coats, although my pro-life activism had already dispelled the childish notion that all doctors were Albert Schweitzer.

Today, I'm reading the book with a more critical eye and, while I still find it useful, interesting, and thought-provoking; I'm much more aware of the flaws and my serious disagreements with Peck's philosophy and opinions. So here goes with a few:

• Peck was obviously Freudian in his approach to psychotherapy. Like Freud, most of his client examples go back to childhood assuming that almost all psychological problems are the result of parental abuse, neglect, and, as this book makes the case, actual parental evil. Freud believed that anything wrong with a person was the fault of upbringing, particularly problems with the mother. Many of Peck's cases exemplify this Freudian theory. Mom is a villain, in one case a spider. In several cases both parents are villains and I don't disagree, especially the case of the parents who gave their son a rifle for Christmas that his brother used to kill himself. That appears diabolical!