Article August 17, 1918 Issue

A writer in your April issue on the subject of "Religion...

Henry Van Arsdale

The California Eclectic Medical Journal

A writer in your April issue on the subject of "Religion and Psychiatry" ridicules the healing done by Christian Science, and assigns as a reason for his ridicule that Christian Science "brings about cures through the same mechanism" as was used by Jesus and other Bible characters. All such healing he classes as suggestive therapy, and in so doing he illustrates a sentence in a recent article by one of the editors of Life to the effect that "the funniest thing about psychology is its effect on psychologists." Mr. William James stated it a little differently in defining what he called the psychologist's fallacy: "The great snare of the psychologist is the confusion of his own standpoint with that of the mental fact about which he is making his report. I shall hereafter call this the 'psychologist's fallacy' par excellence."

Christian Science claims and is proving itself to be a restoration of primitive Christianity. When The Church of Christ, Scientist, was formed in 1879, on motion of Mrs. Eddy the following was adopted: "To organize a church designed to commemorate the word and works of our Master, which should reinstate primitive Christianity and its lost element of healing" (Manual, p. 17). The individual who turns to a Christian Science practitioner for help is immediately made acquainted with the method of treatment, which does not include suggestion, but is what Paul referred to as transformation brought about by the renewing of the mind. The spiritual truths and teaching of the Bible, as explained in Mrs. Eddy's book "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," bring about the healing in Christian Science, which your contributor admits, but assigns to another cause.

Mrs. Eddy recognized the need of a true Science of psychology to dissipate the mysticisms of the subject as ordinarily presented, for she wrote, "The prophylactic and therapeutic (that is, the preventive and curative) arts belong emphatically to Christian Science, as would be readily seen, if psychology, or the Science of Spirit, God, was understood" (Science and Health, p. 369). When ontology, the science of true being, resumes its rightful place in human thinking as supreme in metaphysics, academic psychology will be seen to be unimportant, and Jesus' methods all-important. Christian Science emphasizes this.

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

Article

Extracts from Letters