The term "Orthodox
Psychotherapy" does not refer to specific cases of people
suffering from psychological problems or neuroses. Rather, it
refers to all people. According to Orthodox Tradition, after
Adam's Fall, Man became ill; his intellect (called “nous”,
the `eye of the heart') was darkened and lost communion with
God. Death entered into the person's being and caused many
anthropological, social, even ecological problems. In the
tragedy of his fall man maintained the image of God within
him but lost completely the likeness of Him, since his
communion with God was disrupted. However the Incarnation of
Christ and the work of the Church both aim at enabling the
person to attain the likeness of God, that is, to
re-establish communion with God.
By adhering to Orthodox therapeutic
treatment as conceived by the Holy Fathers of the Church,
Man can cope successfully with his thoughts and thus solve his
problems completely and comprehensively. All this
therapeutic treatment or psychotherapy is closely connected
with the neptic tradition of the
Church and its hesychastic life,
as it is preserved in the texts of the Philokalia, in the works of the Fathers of the Church
and notably in the teaching of St. Gregory
Palamas. Certainly one should
not disregard the fact that the neptic
and hesychastic life is the same
life that one sees in the life of the Prophets and the
Apostles, as described precisely in the texts of the Holy
Scriptures.
********************
"Wherefore he who professes the science of spiritual
medicine ought first of all (...) and to see whether he
tends to health or (on the contrary) provokes to
himself disease by his own behaviour, and to look how
he can care for his manner of life during the interval. And
if he does not
resist
the physician, and if the ulcer of the soul is
increased by the application of the imposed medicaments,
then let him mete out mercy to him according as he is worthy
of it."
(Canon CII of the
Quinisext Ecumenical Council)
