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PASTORAL PSYCHOLOGY
In addition to the primary causes of mental disease,
psychiatrists take into account special conditions and circumstances
which are contributory. Among these are the misuse of tobacco,
alcohol and narcotic drugs, moral and emotional conflicts,
deep grief, disappointment and failure.
Although the medical profession nowadays lays emphasis
upon the physical rather than the mental aspects of psychic
disease, the general public still finds it difficult to accept the
idea that a bodily illness or infection accounts for the irrational
behaviour of insane persons, and they almost invariably ascribe
psychosis to unrequited love, religious zeal, overwork or some
other form of behaviour.
While correcting this mistaken point of view we must be
careful not to ascribe mental disease exclusively to physical
factors. Certainly, where an individual’s hereditary disposition
is one of great sensitivity and his energy resources are meagre,
emotional crises can disturb the precarious balance of mental
health; and the Christian adviser should be the first to realise
that unsound religious influences may well be among the
occasions of such emotional strains. This is not to say that the
religious life should be tepid and conventional. Mediocrity is no
more a mark of wholesomeness in religion than in any other
realm of personal thought and action. Within our present
context a religious influence can be described as unsound when it
has the effect of exacerbating a person’s fear of himself or of life.
That is to say, when it so heightens the individual’s sense of the
contrast between his own resources and the demands made on
him, by God or his fellow men and women, that he is compelled
by a sense of hopelessness to withdraw from the unequal contest
and to seek within himself consolation for or explanations of the
failures he cannot retrieve.
Religious Epidemics and Contagion
A phenomenon that has some bearing upon the religious
manifestations of insanity is the religious epidemic, a mysterious
outbreak of mass hysteria that occurs from time to time and may
spread like an infection over vast communities.
One of the earliest recorded examples of this occurred shortly
after the population of Europe had been decimated by the
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