Mental Disorders And Spiritual Healing

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.