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METHODS OF TREATMENT
The effectiveness of spiritual exercises is increased if they are
performed in quietness and solitude, away from the haste and
activity of daily life. The systematic exercises practised at
‘Retreats’, when a large or small group of people retire to a
quiet environment to devote themselves for a time to prayer
and contemplation are of great value to many disintegrated
people. Change of surroundings and seclusion enhance the
value also of individual exercises in concentration and inner
collectedness.
If it is impracticable for a confidant to obtain the solitude he
needs, it is of great importance that, while he is undergoing
treatment, he should gain some degree of quietness and
seclusion, while living in his ordinary surroundings, by making
use of leisure time that otherwise would be spent in reading or
amusement. The spiritual adviser can do a good deal to ensure
this by helping the confidant to choose and read appropriate
books, and in other ways to ensure that all avoidable distractions
are removed and the mind is given opportunities for rest while
the body is relaxed. Directions concerning the use of Sunday
are obviously important in this connection.
It may be that none of the foregoing forms of treatment
correspond to the needs of the confidant. Sometimes it happens
that very early in the course of treatment the spiritual adviser
becomes aware that an intervention of a very special kind is
needed if other methods are to bear fruit. Sometimes this
situation becomes apparent cnly after other methods employed
for some time, and at first seeming to succeed, produce no
lasting results.
What we have in mind is something that may be called ‘deep
probing’. The problem is by means of the spiritual interview to
bring to light everything in an individual’s past that can help
to explain the obscure aspects of his present mental and
religious situation. The assumption made is that the key to a
person’s present condition can be found only by making a
search in the depths of his past history. Here may lie the
explanation of the apparently irrational doubts, fears and
evasions by which he is now troubled; the solution of the
present problems that cannot be met, the cause of contemporary
mental and emotional conflicts. By scrutinising the confidant’s
past it may be possible to make accessible to the consciousness
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