by Jules Cyber

Created on: July 01, 2007

Spirituality should be a part of any helping or healing profession. Whilst it will take a long time for what should happen to become what actually does happen, I think that there are slow movements in that direction.

I am talking about spirituality in its broadest sense: anything that brings a meaning and sense of purpose in a person's life. It would seem the most obvious thing in the world to expect a helping professional to look at their 'patient' as a whole person with their own important and relevant experience of life. It would seem obvious that the professional would need to acknowledge, respect and tap into what gives people's lives meaning and purpose. However, idiotically, this is very often not the case. Psychiatry has probably been criticised more than any other profession for failing to do this as a discipline and for producing professionals who fail to do this as individuals. It has also accumulated a history of dehumanising and abusive practice, which it has by no means shrugged off as yet.

If, instead of seeing a person, you see a 'disorder' or the lack of a 'disorder, you have already started off on the wrong foot if you actually want to have a positive effect on this person's life. This is presumably the idea of being in a healing or caring profession - to have a positive effect. If you look for 'symptoms' in the words and actions of the person, rather than aiming to empathise with what life is like for them and what is important to them, then you are really in danger of doing them more harm than good. At the end of being objectified and having their experience reduced in this way, many people will be left, not only with distressing 'symptoms' but also probably feeling violated, or at least further deflated. They will probably walk away with a decreased sense of self, a decreased self-esteem and a weaker grip on their sense of meaning and purpose.

Treating people as laboratory rats rather than as whole human beings with feelings has been a bad habit of all Western medical traditions, and particularly doctors, not just of psychiatrists. (I am not suggesting that laboratory rats should be treated that way either, by the way!). Treating people as 'matter' or 'machines' rather than spritual beings with meaningful subjective experience, feelings and dreams, is also a common criticism of the Western medical approach. There are movements towards more holistic ways of viewing health in general health care, and so there is every reason to assume that this

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