The "Higher Power" in Psychotherapy

Most modern psychiatrists and psychologists are secular or scientific in their outlook.

The medical psychiatric model, for instance, says that the answer to your mental/emotional/life problems is in a pharmaceutical pill. It claims that your illness is bio-chemical imbalances in your brain.

Around 100 years ago, Sigmund Freud ("father of modern psychiatry") describes human personality in 3 parts - the ego (the will), the id (basic human drives, such as sex), and the superego (the conscience). Freud taught that the ego is an unconscious slave to the id (Paul referred to it as "flesh" in Romans 7). So to cure that, he prescribes "deadening" of the superego to avoid guilt that might cause mental illness.

Most psychotherapists - psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, nurses, or counselors) - nowadays lean toward the faithless or secular point of view of Freud. They simply can not accept the therapeutic concept of a "higher power" in dealing with man's addictive and destructive tendencies through putting faith in Jesus. The unpleasant truth is that most people do not realize the severe limitation, incompleteness, or even inaccuracy of secular or scientific psychotherapy.

Here's the bottom line - without Christ as your "Higher Power" in psychotherapy, you can never have total and complete recovery/healing.