Would a psychologist understand enlightenment experience in a patient or would it be perceived as irrelevant garden variety delusion?

First and foremost in any therapeutic relationship is pursuing what is most beneficial for the client. The therapist’s spiritual beliefs and practices are separate from this - though of course they may influence therapeutic choices. What is more relevant is whether the client’s beliefs and practices are beneficial to them, or causing distress. And even if they are causing distress, the objective would be to alleviate that distress rather than reform a client’s entire belief system or dismiss it as delusion. That would be pretty irresponsible. A skilled therapist can even utilize the spiritual convictions of a client (along with other techniques that have proved efficacious) to help a client through what they perceive as a spiritual crisis - and this can happen whether the therapist shares those beliefs or not. Again, this is about what is beneficial to the client. Now of course this would also be true of delusion…but again the delusion need not be contradicted or dismissed out-of-hand, and only requires attention if it is interfering with well-being or day-to-day functioning. To give an example let’s say a client says, “I’m totally in love with this person but because they don’t want anything to do with me I just want to kill myself.” Okay well their earnest emotional conviction has everything to do with why they are suffering, but a solution has a lot more to do with how to manage emotional impulses and suicidal ideation than negating that belief (or treating it as unreal, delusional or suspect). In fact, for some personality and cognitive disorders, if a therapist betrays even the slightest skepticism about the validity of a client’s emotional state - if they so much as hint that it isn’t real or important, and that the client needs to accept this - then the therapeutic relationship will be finished. Kaput.

So I suppose my point is that it doesn’t matter - at all - if a psychologist understands, appreciates or recognizes an enlightenment experience in someone they are treating. What matter are outcomes. And so all that a therapist should be concerned with is how the enlightenment experience is impacting their client. Is it having a positive, constructive and enriching effect? That’s great! Is it having a debilitating, paralyzing, depressive or anxiety-producing effect? That’s not great, and the question becomes how to help a client manage their responses to the experience. It’s really that simple.

Now in my own work I of course have encountered this issue often. I have taught courses in meditation, helped people through spiritual crises, and generally encourage a deepening of spiritual experience. But what if a person’s spiritual journey is destroying their relationships, their health, their happiness, their means of support, etc.? Unless such destruction was the deliberate objective the client expressed when they sought my help, then my job is to help restore balance. That is one reason why the emphasis in Integral Lifework (what I teach and coach) is nurturing all thirteen dimensions of self. Spirituality is only one dimension, and all dimensions need to support and harmonize with all the others. Overemphasizing one or more of these is just as injurious as neglecting one or more.

My 2 cents.

(From Quora question: https://www.quora.com/Would-a-psychologist-understand-enlightenment-experience-in-a-patient-or-would-it-be-perceived-as-irrelevant-garden-variety-delusion)

Trackbacks

Trackback specific URI for this entry

This link is not meant to be clicked. It contains the trackback URI for this entry. You can use this URI to send ping- & trackbacks from your own blog to this entry. To copy the link, right click and select "Copy Shortcut" in Internet Explorer or "Copy Link Location" in Mozilla.

No Trackbacks

Comments

Display comments as Linear | Threaded

No comments

The author does not allow comments to this entry