Psychotherapy Part 90

It is certainly true that considering as examples two such widely separated forms of religious belief as the Orthodox Jews and the strict Roman Catholics, one does not see as many patients from them as from their numbers might be expected, especially when it is remembered that Jews as a whole are very nervous people and that the Roman Church includes in this country among its members numbers of the most emotional race in the world.

Of only one sect can I recall no example. It is not in my memory that a professing Quaker ever came into my hands to be treated for nervousness. If the opinion I have already stated so often is correct, namely that want of control of the emotions and the over-expression of the feelings are prime causes of nervousness, then the fact that discipline of the emotions is a lesson early and constantly taught by the Friends, would help to account for the infrequency of this disorder among them and adds emphasis to the belief in such a causation.

Prof. Munsterberg, who may be fairly taken to represent the German school, but whose long years of residence in America have made him a cosmopolitan, is quite as positive in his declaration of the place that religion may hold in making human suffering less. In his "Psychotherapy" he devotes considerable attention to the subject. The religious discipline, that is, the training of human beings from their earliest years to recognize that there is a higher law than their own feelings and that they must suppress many of their desires and take evil as it comes as a portion of human life, is of itself, he insists, an excellent preparation to enable the individual to bear up under the physical and mental trials of life and to make many symptoms that would otherwise be almost intolerable, quite bearable. It is from earliest years that this training must make itself felt, and Prof.

Munsterberg insists that from early childhood the self-control has to be strong and the child has to learn from the beginning to know the limits to the gratification of his desires and to abstain from reckless self-indulgence. A good conscience, he says, a congenial home and a serious purpose, are, after all, the safest conditions for a healthy man, and the community does effective work in preventive psychotherapy whenever it facilitates the securing of these factors.

Self-denial has always been one of the main elements of religious training, and indeed was declared a chief source of merit for the hereafter. The modern psychotherapeutist, however, preaches self-denial almost as strenuously as the religious minister of the olden time, only now not for any religious {780} merit or reward, but because it makes life more pleasant and by that much happier. When men and women have learned to deny themselves in their younger years, it is not hard to stand even pain when they grow older, and pain is inevitable in every human life and the training to stand it is therefore worth while. Pain borne with equanimity is lessened by one-half if not in its intensity then at least in its power to disturb, and since religion will do this it possesses an important remedial value. Here is where religion is particularly valuable and the pa.s.sing of it from many minds has thrown them back on themselves and left them without profound interests, so that they occupy themselves overmuch with the trivial incidents of life within them and disturb the course of many of their functions by giving exaggerated thought to them. Religion adds a great purpose to life and such a purpose keeps men and women to a great extent from being disturbed about trifles.

Of course, it would be too bad if religion should do no more than this. This, however, is the only phase of it with which we are concerned here. We may think very strongly with Prof. Munsterberg, that it would be quite wrong to a.s.sign to it only this place in life.

He says: "The meaning of religion in life is entirely too deep that it should be employed merely for the purpose of lessening the pains and aches of humanity and the dreads that are so often more imaginary than real." He insists that "It cheapens religion by putting the accent of its meaning in life on personal comfort and absence of pain." He adds, "If there is one power in life which ought to develop in us a conviction that pleasure is not the highest goal and that pain is not the worst evil, then it ought to be philosophy and religion."

Present-day movements, however, tend to subordinate religion to this-worldliness rather than to other-worldliness, and by just that much they take out of religion its real significance. We are here on trial for another world is the thought that in the past strengthened men to bear all manner of ills, if not with equanimity, at least without exaggerated reaction. It has still the power to do so for all those who accept it simply and sincerely.