Mental Disorders and Spiritual Healing: Teachings from the Early Christian East

by Jean-Claude Larchet, Rama P. Coomaraswamy (Translator)

This work, the third panel of a triptych dedicated by the author to the notion of illness derived from the patristic and hagiographic texts of the Christian East from the first to the fourteenth centuries, makes an essential contribution to the history of mental illnesses and their therapies in a domain very little studied until now. Confronted by the numerous problems still posed today in understanding these illnesses, their treatment, and their relationship to those who are sick, he shows the importance offered for reflection and current practice by early Christian thought and experience. After indicating how the Fathers understood the psyche and its relationship with body and spirit, the author gives a detailed analysis of the different causes they attribute to mental illness and the various treatments recommended. At the same time he shows how, relying on fundamental Christian values, they manifest a constant solicitude and respect for the sick, and how they are at pains to integrate them into community life and have them participate in their own healing, foreshadowing in this way the needs and aspirations of our own time. The last part discloses the deep significance of one of the strangest and most fascinating forms of asceticism the Christian East has known: 'folly for the sake of Christ', a madness feigned with the goal of attaining a high degree of humility, but also a way well-suited, through a close experience of their condition, to help those who are often among, today as in the past, the most destitute. Jean-Claude Larchet is docteur dès lettres et sciences humaines, docteur en théologie, and docteur d'État en philosophie. The author of Thérapeutique des maladies spirituelles (Paris: Editions de l'Ancre, 1991) and The Theology of Illness (Crestwood, New York: St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2002), he is a specialist in questions of health, sickness, and healing. He is today one of the foremost St Maximus the Confessor specialists.

Genres: Theology, Christian, Spirituality, Psychology, Mental Health

180 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2005

About the author

Jean-Claude Larchet, né le 9 août 1949 à Badonviller (Meurthe-et-Moselle), est un patrologue et théologien orthodoxe français.

Auteur de nombreux ouvrages publiés aux éditions du Cerf et traduits dans dix-neuf langues, il est notamment spécialiste de Maxime le Confesseur.

Reviews

[Joshua Finch]

Larchet is a clear and analytical writer. It's a quick read. The analysis of the soul is quite helpful, because there is a lot of different ways of doing this analysis I've seen, and this one seems to capture a lot of what is shared.
Unpredictably the chapter on demonic possession became quite the exhortation, in a good way via St Theodosios and his 'deranged' monks.
And the chapter on spiritual illness has the same hortatory effect by St Chrysostom's counsels to his depressed friend, and otherwise is more like a condensation on the fathers' views of acedia and sadness, which is helpful, but I didn't really see detailed or worked out relations of these to the psychological states and equivalents in Modern psychology terms. That was the purpose of the chapter stated, and I think it can be sussed out to some degree. But I was not very familiar with the Modern psychological diagnoses he mentioned, nor were they really the starting point of analysis before translation. He mentions them like 'neuroses' 'psychoses' and quickly ties them, loosely to what the Fathers were talking about. The majority is what the fathers said about it, which is indeed valuable as a gathering of their words on it.
The last chapter really reveals saintly folly. It shows the extreme intelligence of it. It's rather like they're spies in the world, doing effective sabotage and counterintelligence and whatnot on the ruler of the world. But then it also shows the necessary asceticism behind it, and the charity involved which separates it from the ancient cynics' attitude.

[Ted · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book explores mental illness and spiritual disorders looking at how the Fathers of the church understood the various manifestations of mental illness. The Fathers did distinguish between mental illness caused by demons from that with organic causes and prescribed different treatments for the illness based on its cause.

[Charles · Rating 5 out of 5]

A brilliant little work with the best account of the patristic view of mental illness. Many assume the early church fathers attributed all mental illness to the work of the demonic. This book outlines that they had three broad headings to categorize mental illness of which the demonic is only one. The church fathers also categorized mental illness as somatic (purely physical) and spiritual. The book also handle's the place of the fool for Christ in relation to true mental illness. I have been reading patristics and Orthodox Theology for quite some time and this book still had new things to offer me. The authors style is easily enough to read. However, keep in mind Larchet's writings are originally in French, so this is a translation. Even as avid reader of theology and patristics I had to look up a couple words so keep a dictionary or the internet handy. Still a worthy tomb worth the time and effort.

[Colm Alton · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have always wanted to read a book on how the earliest Christians helped people heal from mental health issues. This book provides a good summary of the general themes of how the early Christian’s approached this issue. From the survey in this book, the earliest Christian’s had some surprising nuances that resemble modern psychology including taking into account the role physical effects on the body play in causing mental health disorders. Some of the terminology used by the author describing modern psychological phenomena were slightly outdated but this book was written in 2005 and is a translation from French! Overall a solid introduction and a good way of introducing someone to the church fathers.

[Wendy Gierhart]

A helpful yet easy read on patristic anthropology, specifically where it comes to the connection between body and soul and how the Church Fathers discerned spiritual aspect in mental illness (and mental health) and how they approached things they considered to be of somatic or demonic origin.
I enjoy Larchet’s writing style as it brings together perspectives from the tradition in an accessible way.

[Elvira Tsvetanova · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thank the Lord for guiding me towards this knowledge.

Exceptional scholarship on a life-saving topic. The part about the spiritual root of mental illness contains the most comprehensive guide on spiritual warfare I have ever encountered.

The orthodox teaching on acedia is so profoundly explained. There are seven remedies mentioned with the best possible sources - the Church fathers who understood the spiritual battles better than anyone else.

It is good news that so much of our mental turmoil originates in our own free will. That means developing spiritual discipline would be the key to our healing.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

The perspective of the Eastern Fathers of the Christian Church on the subject of mental illness, sadness, and despair

[Darrick Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating, short study of how early Eastern Christian writers dealt with mental illness. It gives some knowledge of how such illnesses were treated in medicine in the late Antique period, but also details how the Eastern Fathers and Mothers of the Church distinguished between physical and spiritual causes.