Karasu T Byram
Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Montefiore Medical Center, Bronx, NY, USA.
Am J Psychother. 2015;69(4):357-60. doi: 10.1176/appi.psychotherapy.2015.69.4.357.
Psychotherapy is an instrument for remediation of psychological deficits and conflict resolution, as well as an instrument for growth and self-cultivation. In fact, psychotherapy is the finest form of life education. All of this is done without psychotherapists' playing a teacher, a minister, a priest, a rabbi, an imam, or a Buddhist monk, but by being familiar with what they know and more. That "more" is about understanding "the attributes" of gods and religions as they serve the all-too-human needs of believing and belonging. It is about the distillation of common psychological, sociological, moral, and philosophical attributes of religions, and the recognition that the attributes themselves are faith and God. Attributes that serve the affiliative needs define faith, for example, belonging is faith; attributes that serve the divine needs define God, for example, compassion is God. Those who have recovered from their primitive innocence need to formulate their ideas of God and religion, regardless of their affiliation with a religious community. One may need to resonate emotionally with the God of his or her religion, but intellectually need to transcend all its dogma and cultivate a personal concept of divinity free from any theological structure. Such an enlightened person achieves enduring equanimity by striving to own the attributes of Gods--to be godly. This is equally true for psychotherapists as it is for their patients.
心理治疗是修复心理缺陷和解决冲突的一种手段，也是促进成长和自我修养的一种手段。事实上，心理治疗是生活教育的最佳形式。所有这些都是在心理治疗师不扮演教师、牧师、部长、拉比、伊玛目或佛教僧侣的情况下完成的，而是通过熟悉他们所知道的以及更多的知识来实现。那“更多的知识”涉及理解神灵和宗教的“属性”，因为它们满足了人类对于信仰和归属感的普遍需求。它涉及提炼宗教共同的心理、社会、道德和哲学属性，并认识到这些属性本身就是信仰和上帝。满足归属需求的属性定义了信仰，例如，归属感就是信仰；满足神圣需求的属性定义了上帝，例如，慈悲就是上帝。那些已从原始纯真状态中恢复过来的人需要形成他们对上帝和宗教的看法，无论他们是否隶属于某个宗教团体。一个人可能需要在情感上与他或她宗教中的上帝产生共鸣，但在理智上需要超越其所有教义，并培养一种不受任何神学结构束缚的个人神性概念。这样一个开明的人通过努力拥有上帝的属性——变得神圣——来实现持久的平静。这对心理治疗师和他们的患者来说同样如此。
