From the Revd John Brown
Sir, - It is alarming that more than half the clergy polled by
St Luke's Healthcare had received no training about stress, and,
therefore, find it difficult to cope with (Leader comment,
11 October).
This lack of understanding of mental-health problems leaves them
ill-equipped to provide pastoral care to the many afflicted in this
way, who continue to experience the stigma attached to mental
illness, owing to this ignorance.
Thankfully, the needs of stressed clergy are at last being taken
seriously, but the contribution of modern depth psychology towards
resolving these issues needs fuller recognition.
Carl Jung, the famous psychiatrist, and son of a Swiss pastor,
acknowledged the vital contribution of religious experience towards
the healing of his patients. He claimed that none of them in the
second half of life fully recovered until they had found God at the
centre of the soul, and described his own experience of constantly
circling round God as a planet revolves around the sun. So, when
asked in a TV interview whether he believed in God, he famously
replied: "I don't need to believe: I know."
By insisting that self-awareness can be achieved only when the
ego or conscious self explores the depths of what he called the
collective unconscious, particularly through the study and
interpretation of dreams (there are more than 130 references to
dreams in the Bible), Jung helps us appreciate the riches of the
Christian mystical tradition.
As the 14th-century mystic who wrote The Cloud of
Unknowing said, it is by trying to get a true knowing and
feeling of yourself "that I trow soon after you will get the true
knowing and feeling of God as he is".
It is reassuring that the Pilgrim course recently launched by
the House of Bishops quotes from perhaps our most famous mystic,
Julian of Norwich, and emphasises the importance of personal
experience in our encounters with the living God rather than the
academic study of theology.
I look forward to the day when every parish offers a school of
prayer, encouraging every member of the congregation to discover
the way of prayer that suits him or her best, since, in the words
of John Wesley, "an ounce of experience is worth a pound of
knowledge."
JOHN BROWN
3 Manor Way, Middleton-on-Sea
West Sussex PO22 6LA
From Emma Laughton
Sir, - It is encouraging that your leader comment (11 October)
tackled the issue ofstigma in mental health, on the same day as you
reported the appalling death, after police restraint,of Tom
Orchard, a much-loved church employeewho was a user of
mental-health services (News). The inquest has yet to take place;
meanwhile, the Crown Prosecution Service is considering the
case.
There is some irony then, and unclarity, in the leader's
statement that "To kill oneself or another is seldom a sane act."
If officers are found responsible for Mr Orchard's death, will
theybe judged "insane"? Other explanations would be more likely.
Actions can cause unintended death, whether innocently or culpably.
But there is a deeper problem with this statement. It feeds rather
than challenges the false equation that bad=mad=bad, which is one
of the basic untruths of stigma.
Violence and killing flow from a range of ordinarymotives that
are common to humanity. Violence is a norm for some people and
sub-cultures, in wars and where civil society disintegrates. These
motives and norms are not psychiatric symptoms. Let us beware. The
shallowidea that "killing is insane" easily becomes "the insane are
killers" - the very lie that your leader set out to criticise.
Such misperceptionsare damaging and dangerous for people with
mental-health problems.
EMMA LAUGHTON (Reader)
Dolphin House, Dolphin Street
Colyton, Devon EX24 6NA