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rx
traditions
theotherapy
psychospiritual approaches

definition

The basis of the Greeks' practice of theotherapy was in associating given symptoms with gods and goddesses. The god/goddesses were viewed as a traditional face which described the symbolic symptoms that the patient was producing.

• Carl Jung said: 'We are still possessed by our autonomous psychic contents as if they were gods. . . The magic of the symbol . . . contains those primitive analogies that speak to the unconscious . . . and at the same time it is also an idea corresponding to the highest intuition produced by the consciousness . . . Today they are called phobias, compulsions, and so forth; in a word, neurotic symptoms. Where the god is not acknowledged, ego-mania develops, and out of this mania comes illness." This is a classical Jungian description of the power of a secondary process.

• In his book on Theotherapy, Peter Lemesurier combines modern archetypal psychology with information from the ancient records. Through a directory of symptoms and characteristics, he creates an system of identifying the gods and goddesses which predominate. He then gives a repertory of treatments cataloged by god/goddess name, with a list of positive and negative characteristics for each, to enable one to access and ponder these inner forces.

• Lemesurier writes, "The (Greek) method was essentially homeopathic. It was a case of not fighting the illness but of recognizing and cooperating with it, in the realization that all illness is essentially a tool of healing. More than that, the method involved fully accepting the emergent symbols of the unconscious and thus, by extension, the dark and often repressed parts of the psyche. Once again, then, the therapy was a psychologically healthy one, encouraging the further development of the inner human being in the direction that the illness itself had the function of suggesting. . . And do bear in mind that your god or gods will almost inevitably change with time, in line with your changing symptoms."
(Lemesurier, p. 144)

see:
body reveals: the spirit
character typology of Reich and Lowen
search for god - "a wounding"
the shadow and physical symptoms
transference and countertransference


footnotes