Psychotherapeutic Re-Orientation and Religious Re-Birth

Extract

The methods of analytic psychotherapy, owing to its intuitive pre-occupation with allegory, have always shown a close analogy to religious experience. Psycho-therapeutic re-orientation leads via disturbing experiences, in the course of which hitherto undreamt-of unconscious psychic relationships become apparent, to the expansion of the conscious mind of the patient. There is a psychic catharsis. This process has clear analogies with the initiation experi ences of the ancient mysteries. In the course of psychotherapy things are evaluated from their beginnings in their relations to reality, and the effect of this is to re-establish normal contact with reality. One plunges into the psyche, however, only as far as is necessary to attain this end.