Article March 27, 1978 Issue

Mental health and identity

ARTHUR P. WUTH

One who suffers from mental confusion, memory failure, an inability to respond to simple orderliness—what to do and how to do it in the common routine of daily living—is being confronted with temporary lapses in his sense of identity. Depending on the circumstances, the effect is mental conflict as to one's being, location, relationships, purpose, and motive. Extreme cases present a picture of substitutive identity, where the sufferer is convinced he is someone he is not.

The remedy is to gain a clearer sense of one's true identity, and this is a goal everyone should achieve. The dream of mortality itself is a deluded state. Every disease is evidence of mistaken identity. And sin is the same, though more serious. Mary Baker Eddy, who discovered and founded Christian Science, reminds us: "There are many species of insanity. All sin is insanity in different degrees. Sin is spared from this classification, only because its method of madness is in consonance with common mortal belief."^{Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 407;}

What is our true identity? Christian Science describes man as image, reflection, likeness, expression, idea. God, Spirit, is the cause, and man is the effect. True identity has to do with our indestructible relationship to the creator, a relationship that is wholly spiritual.

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