Psychology as Religion

Book : Psychoheresy: The Psychological Seduction of Christianity (Paperback)
by Martin Bobgan (Author), Deidre Bobgan (Author)

An excerpt here from http://www.psychoheresy-aware.org

The Bible is full of explanations of why people behave the way they do and how they change. Beginning with Genesis, God demonstrated the basic problem of mankind: separation from God through sin. And, God provided the only lasting remedy for change: a restored relationship with God by faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus. A person’s separation from God or his active relationship with God will affect every attitude, every choice, and every action. The study of mankind from any other perspective will bring about a distorted view. Although we can observe, record and report external aspects of human nature, we must turn to Scripture for explanations of why people behave the way they do and how they can change. Every other explanation must be fully in agreement with Scripture to be accurate.

Psychology deals with the very same areas of concern already dealt with in Scripture. Explanations of why people behave the way they do and how they change have concerned philosophers, theologians, cultists, and occultists throughout the centuries. Since God has given an Instruction Book on how to live, all ideas about the why’s of behavior and the how’s of change must be viewed as religious in nature. Whereas the Bible claims divine revelation, psychotherapy claims scientific substantiation. Nevertheless, when it comes to behavior and attitudes and morals and values, we are dealing with religion, either the Christian faith or any one of a number of other religions including that of secular humanism.

Psychotherapy fits more reasonably into the category of religion than into the field of science. Those who look at psychotherapy from an analytical, research point of view have long suspected the religious nature of psychotherapy. Psychiatrist Jerome Frank says that “psychotherapy is not primarily an applied science. In some ways it more resembles a religion.”1

Many who practice psychotherapy embrace its religious aspects. According to Victor Von Weizsaecker, “C. G. Jung was the first to understand that psychoanalysis belonged in the sphere of religion.”2 Jung himself wrote: Religions are systems of healing for psychic illness. . . . That is why patients force the psychotherapist into the role of a priest, and expect and demand of him that he shall free them from their distress. That is why we psychotherapists must occupy ourselves with problems which, strictly speaking, belong to the theologian.3

Note that Jung used the word religions rather than Christianity. Jung himself had repudiated Christianity and explored other forms of religious experience, including the occult. Without throwing out the religious nature of man, Jung dispensed with the God of the Bible and assumed his own role as priest.

To read the entire chapter, click HERE or go to http://www.psychoheresy-aware.org/bkchapt.html

ROOTS OF RELIGIOUS ALTERNATIVES.
From its very beginning psychological theories and methods of counseling created doubt about Christianity. Each great innovator of psychological theories sought an understanding about mankind apart from the revealed Word of God. Each created an unbiblical system to explain the nature of man and to bring about change. Men like Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) and Carl Jung (1875-1961) eroded confidence in Christianity and established systems in direct opposition to the Word of God. Occultism, atheism, and antagonism towards Christianity were disguised by psychological, scientific sounding language.

Sigmund Freud reduced religious beliefs to illusions and called religion “the obsessional neurosis of humanity.”4 Jung, an early follower of Freud, however, viewed all religions as collective mythologies. He did not believe they were real in essence, but that they could affect the human personality. While Freud viewed religion as the source of mental problems, Jung believed that religion was a solution. Freud argued that religions are delusionary and therefore evil. Jung, on the other hand, contended that all religions are imaginary but good. Both positions are anti-Christian. One denies Christianity and the other mythologizes it.

Religious bias colored the psychological systems of both Freud and Jung. They were not dealing with science, but with values, attitudes, and behavior. And because they were working in areas about which the Bible gives the authoritative Word of God, they were developing antibiblical religions. Jay Adams says: Because of the teaching of the Scriptures, one is forced to conclude that much of clinical and counseling psychology, as well as most of psychiatry, has been carried on without license from God and in autonomous rebellion against Him. This was inevitable because the Word of the sovereign God of creation has been ignored. In that Word are “all things pertaining to life and godliness.” By it the man of God “may be fully equipped for every good work.” And it is that Word—and only that Word—that can tell a poor sinner how to love God with all of the heart, and mind, and soul, and how to love a neighbor with the same depth of concern that he exhibits toward himself.5

Professor of psychiatry and author Thomas Szasz contends, “The popular image of Freud as an enlightened, emancipated, irreligious person who, with the aid of psychoanalysis, ‘discovered’ that religion is a mental illness is pure fiction.”6 He says, “One of Freud’s most powerful motives in life was the desire to inflict vengeance on Christianity for its traditional anti-Semitism.”7 Freud used scientific-sounding language to disguise his hostility towards religion. However, Szasz declares, “There is, in short, nothing scientific about Freud’s hostility to established religion, though he tries hard to pretend that there is.” Freud was not an objective observer of humanity, nor was he an objective observer of religion.

While Freud grew up in a Jewish home, Jung’s father was a Protestant minister. Jung’s description of his early experience with Holy Communion reveals his disappointment with
Christianity. He wrote: Slowly I came to understand that this communion had been a fatal experience for me. It had proved hollow; more than that it had proved to be a total loss. I knew that I would never again be able to participate in this ceremony. “Why, that is not religion at all,” I thought. “It is an absence of God; the church is a place I should not go to. It is not life which is there, but death.”8

This significant experience could have led Jung to deny all religions as Freud did, but he did not. For him all religions were myths which contained some truth about the human psyche. For him, psychoanalysis was a religious activity. And, since all religions held some elements about truth, he denied the authority of Scripture and the exclusive claim of Jesus Christ to be the only way of salvation.

Carl Jung repudiated Christianity and became involved in idolatry. He renamed and replaced everything Christian and everything biblical with his own mythology of archetypes. And as he moved in his own sphere of idolatry, the archetypes took form and served him as familiar spirits. He even had his own personal familiar spirit by the name of Philemon. He also participated in the occultic practice of necromancy.9 Jung’s teachings serve to mythologize Scripture and reduce the basic doctrines of the faith into esoteric gnosticism.

Rather than objective observation and scientific discovery, Freud and Jung each turned his own experience into a new belief system and called it psychoanalysis. Freud attempted to destroy the spirituality of man by reducing religion to illusion and neurosis. Jung attempted to debase the spirituality of man by presenting all religion as mythology and fantasy. Repudiating the God of the Bible, both Freud and Jung led their followers in the quest for alternative understandings of mankind and alternative solutions to problems of living. They turned inward to their own limited imaginations and viewed their subjects from their own anti-Christian subjectivity.
Because they rest on different foundations, move in contrasting directions, and rely on opposing belief systems, psychotherapy and Christianity are not now, nor were they ever, natural companions in helping individuals. The faith once delivered to the saints was displaced by a substitute faith, often disguised as medicine or science, but based upon foundations which are in direct contradiction to the Bible.

Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen indicates the impetus psychology received from those who sought to repudiate Christianity by saying, “It appears that certain of the most influential pioneers in American psychology found in it an ideal vehicle for renouncing their own Christian upbringing in the name of science.”10

Carl Rogers is another example of one of those influential pioneers. While attending Union Theological Seminary, he and some of his fellow classmates “thought themselves right out of religious work.”11 He did not find what he was looking for in Christianity and thus turned away from his Christian upbringing and Christian calling.12 Carl Rogers renounced Christianity and became one of the most respected leaders of humanistic psychology. He confessed, “I could not work in a field where I would be required to believe in some specified religious doctrine.”13

Psychology was attractive to him since he was interested in the “questions as to the meaning of life,” but did not want to be restricted by the doctrines of Christianity.14 Not only did Carl Rogers embrace another religion, secular humanism; he later turned to the occult. Rogers engaged in the forbidden practice of necromancy, which is communication with the dead through a medium.15 What does a man who has repudiated Christianity have to offer the church about how to live?

From its inception, psychotherapy was developed as an alternative means of healing and help, not as an addition or complement to Christianity. It is not only a substitute method of helping troubled souls; it is a surrogate religion. Szasz contends: Contrition, confession, prayer, faith, inner resolution, and countless other elements are expropriated and renamed as psychotherapy; whereas certain observances, rituals, taboos, and other elements of religion are demeaned and destroyed as symptoms of neurotic or psychotic “illness.”16