Mental Disorders and Spiritual Healing

This work the third panel of a triptych dedicated by the author to thenotion of illness derived from the patristic and hagiographic texts of theChristian East from the first to the fourteenth centuries makes anessential contribution to the history of mental illnesses and theirtherapies in a domain very little studied until now.Confronted by the numerous problems still posed today in understandingthese illnesses their treatment and their relationship to those who aresick he shows the importance offered for reflection and current practiceby early Christian thought and experience.After indicating how the Fathers understood the psyche and itsrelationship with body and spirit the author gives a detailed analysis ofthe different causes they attribute to mental illness and the varioustreatments recommended.At the same time he shows how relying on fundamental Christian valuesthey manifest a constant solicitude and respect for the sick and howthey are at pains to integrate them into community life and have themparticipate in their own healing foreshadowing in this way the needs andaspirations of our own time.The last part discloses the deep significance of one of the strangest andmost fascinating forms of asceticism the Christian East has known: 'follyfor the sake of Christ' a madness feigned with the goal of attaining ahigh degree of humility but also a way well-suited through a closeexperience of their condition to help those who are often among today asin the past the most destitute.Jean-Claude Larchet is docteur dès lettres et sciences humaines docteur enthéologie and docteur d'État en philosophie. The author of Thérapeutiquedes maladies spirituelles (Paris: Editions de l'Ancre 1991) and TheTheology of Illness (Crestwood New York: St Vladimir's Seminary Press2002) he is a specialist in questions of health sickness and healing.He is today one of the foremost St Maximus the Confessor specialists.