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PASTORAL PSYCHOLOGY
the Swedish psychologist, draws attention to the importance of
the contribution that psychological medicine has made to our
understanding of human nature. Instead of the schematic
picture of personality provided by academic psychology,
medical psychology reveals the characteristics of the mature
living individual. It has given us, to speak, a three-dimensional
view—a historical perspective—that has deepened our insight
and enlarged our sympathy. At the same time it has enabled us
to evolve constructive methods of treatment for many forms of
nervous disorder that hitherto were completely intractable.
Moreover, psychiatry has something of value to say not only
about abnormal or diseased personalities but about the mentally
healthy human being. It has shown us how complex the
structure of the mind is, how intimately knit together are all
its parts and how fateful to the integrity of the whole a
disturbance of the balance of any part can be.
The fundamental ideas with which psychiatry approaches
its task, says Landquist, are of great value in relation to the care
of souls. They enable us to make clear distinctions between
what is healthy and what morbid in the realm of mind.
Psychiatry uses terms like continuity, concentration, balance,
consciousness of purpose, to describe states of mental health.
When describing diseased conditions it speaks of dissolution,
disintegration, lack of balance, anxiety, and so on. These terms
and the conditions they denote are familiar to the spiritual
adviser, for they express real states of mind that he meets in the
course of his pastoral work.
It is evident that many of the terms used in psycho-therapy
to describe psychological attributes have a moral connotation.
Indeed, this use of expressions implying moral valuations is
characteristic of psychotherapeutic literature; nevertheless
these words are not employed in a judicial sense. They are
instances of moral ideas denoting a psychological function. One
can describe certain aspects of behaviour in psychopathic or
insane people only by using such terms as ‘lack of balance’ or
‘egocentricity’: but these words are employed as descriptions.
No moral judgments are implied by them. The psychotherapist
observes mental phenomena as symptoms of disorder or disease.
His attitude to his patient is precisely that of a physician
confronted with a body ravaged by illness. Consequently his
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