I think this is a Protestant article, but it still has some good points and funny 'toons.
Introduction:
A. Modern psychiatry is as anti-Christian, dangerous and satanic as evolution.
B. Modern psychiatry has six basic schools: Freudian (fallen into disfavor with most today), Rogerian, Human potential movement, Behavior modification, Encounter groups, EST (Young).
Sigmund Freud
C. Christians should realize that Modern psychiatry is founded upon the "medical/ chemical model" which is opposed to the model revealed in scripture: The Moral/ spiritual Model.
Medical/ chemical Model
Moral/ spiritual Model (Scriptural)
Man is nothing but physical
Man has a physical body controlled by a non-physical soul Eccl 12:7
You are sick, therefore not responsible
You are a sinner and fully responsible. (2 Corinthians 5:10)
You have a chemical imbalance in the brain (Assumption: Life is no more than chemistry)
There is sin in your life, chemical imbalance in the brain are a myth. The spirit is making the body sick, not the other way around. (Psalm 38:1-5)
You are suffering from a mental illness
The notion of "Mental illness" is a myth. There is usually nothing wrong with your body or your brain, you are suffering the consequences of sin in your life. You do indeed feel sick, but you would get better if you repent and change your lifestyle. (1 Timothy 6:10)
Its not your fault, you didn't cause this
Your actions and choices are the primary cause of the guilt you should be feeling (Ps 51:3-4)
You need drugs
You need to repent (Luke 13:3)
Your genes are the cause of your problem
Your sin has caused most the problems you suffer (Proverbs 3:5-8)
The solution to your problems is outside help of a trained professional psychiatrist.
The solution to your problems is dependant upon your taking action to repent and cleansing the inside of your heart. (James 4:8)
The diagnosis of your problem from within you
The diagnosis of your problem from outside (God) (Proverbs 14:12)
Preachers make bad psychiatric councilors, cause damage to individuals.
Preachers and Christians in general, make good psychiatric councilors (Romans 15:14)
Only trained and certified psychiatrists can help.
Psychiatrists with 11 years of university education cannot help as well as knowledgeable Christians. (1 Peter 5:8)
Don't get personally involved with the person and keep your feelings out of it.
Personally involved as a brother and emotionally involved. (Acts 20; 2 Cor 11:29)
Never give advice or moralize
Preach the word, rebuke, reprove, exhort, with great patience and instruction 2 Tim 4:2
D. To illustrate fictitiously the differences between the various systems, consider the following parable. Picture a poor fellow sitting on a tack suffering from severe pain. The little red warning light on the dashboard of the car is going off!
A counselor approaches him who holds the somatic or chemical view-point:. Hearing the client's complaints, he immediately pre-scribes tranquilizers or pain killers. The solution is to anesthetize him. Or perhaps the client is a do-it-yourselfer who does not have any pills in the medicine closet. He may resort to his own chemical solution by anesthetizing his brain with alcohol. If a surgical specialist is on hand he may suggest that the nerves which are activated may be severed. This will knock out the symptoms and give the client relief. Smash the red light on the dashboard!
Then, of course, there's the Freudian analyst who looks over the situation and says: These pains are located near the sɛҳuąƖ area. I think we'd better go back into the patient's childhood experiences and learn about some of his early sɛҳuąƖ experiences. Then, perhaps we'll be able to alleviate his pain, though of course no assurance can be given. We recognize that he has been wrongly socialized and his superego is a cruel tyrant. If he can be resocialized he will possibly get better.
Next, a disciple of Rogers appears: When the sufferer asks him what he must do to get relief, the therapist replies: I'm not going to advise anything. I'm sure that you have all the resources within yourself to solve the difficulty. I'll reflect your questions back to you and help you clarify and gain insight. Now, sir, you say you are torn two ways?
Finally a Christian (nouthetic counselor) comes upon the scene: He looks around and finds a tack under the client. He says, "Get off that tack. Now that you're up, sit down on a chair over here and we'll talk about how you can avoid sitting on tacks in the future." (Competent to council, Jay Adams, p104)
II. Psychiatry attacks Christianity:
A. Quotes:
The word psychiatry, was first used by Johann Christian Reil in 1808 AD, and by definition means "doctoring the soul". With the universal acceptance of the chemical/medical view of man being wholly physical to the exclusion of any notion of spirit or soul, the term psychiatry is a misnomer.
"In short, the nature of the hallucinations of Jesus, as they are described in the orthodox Gospels, permits us to conclude that the founder of the Christian religion was afflicted with religious paranoia." (Charles Binet-Sanglé, La Folie de Jésus, The Madness of Jesus, 1910, p 393)
"Everything that we know about him conforms so perfectly to the clinical picture of paranoia that it is hardly conceivable that people can even question the accuracy of the diagnosis."(American psychiatrist William Hirsch, Conclusions of a Psychiatrist, 1912, p 99)
"Jesus Christ might simply have returned to his carpentry following the use of modern [psychiatric] treatments." (William Sargant, "The movement in psychiatry away from the philosophical," The Times (English), 22 August 1974, p 14)
Clinical psychologist Ty Colbert says that in order to adopt psychiatry's biological model, one has to "believe in a materialistic, non-spiritual world ... the medical model claims there is no mental activity that is due to the spiritual dimension. All activity, even one's religious beliefs or the belief in God, are nothing more than the workings of the brain." (Ty C. Colbert, Rape of the Soul, Hour the Chemical Imbalance Model of Modern Psychiatry has Faded Its Patients, 2001, p. 236)
"The pastor provides the Christian comfort and the psychiatrist provides the needed therapy and neither conflicts with the other." ('Wesley W. Nelson, naive conservative Christian, Baker's Dictionary of Practical Theology, p. 300)
II. Psychiatry is unscientific: "mental illness" is a myth. The Bible never speaks of anyone being mentally ill, only that they have sin or seared consciences.
A. Quotes:
"We cannot consider psychology ... a scientific discipline ... the therapist and psychiatrist [can] not objectively measure and analyze the causes and cures of anxiety with statistical repeatability as a doctor and patient could measure and analyze the causes and cures of a broken ankle." (Lisa and Ryan Bazler, Psychology Debunked Revealing the Overcoming life, 2002, p 11)
The only evidence that makes mental illness a disease "are the symptoms used by professionals to label someone mentally ill. But the symptoms used to diagnose someone as mentally ill (despair, hopelessness, sadness, anger, shame, guilt ...) are not biological mark-ers. There is no evidence that these expressions are physical in nature. They all point to a hurting soul." (Ty C. Colbert, Rape of the Soul, Hour the Chemical Imbalance Model of Modern Psychiatry has Faded Its Patients, 2001, p. 237-238)
"If an 'illness"' is to be "scientifically meaningful, it must somehow be capable of being approached, measured or tested in a scientific fashion, as through a blood test or an electroencephalograph. If it cannot be so measured-as is the case [with] ... 'mental illness'-then the phrase 'illness' is at best a metaphor ... and that therefore 'treating' these 'illnesses' is an ... unscientific enterprise." (Richard E Vatz, Lee S. Weinber & and Thomas S. Szasz, "Why Does Television Grovel at the Altar of Psychiatry?," The Washington Post, 15 Sep. 1985, pp. Dl-2.)
"Unlike medical diagnoses that convey a probable cause, appropriate treatment and likely prognosis, the disorders listed in DSM-IV [and ICD-10] are terms arrived at through peer consensus"-a vote by APA committee members. (Dr. Tana Dineen, Ph.D, Manufacturing Victims, Third Edition, (Robert Davies Multimedia Publishing, Quebec, Canada, 2000), p. 86.)
III. Modern Psychiatry doesn't work or have the answers!
A. Quotes:
"Freudians cannot point to unambiguous evidence that psychoanalysis works, but neither can proponents of more modern treatments, whether Jungian analysis, cognitive-behavioral therapy or even medications. Indeed, claims about the 'wonder drug' Prozac notwithstanding, numerous independent studies have found that drugs are not significantly more effective than 'talking cures' at treating the most common ailments for which people seek treatment, including depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder and panic attacks." Scientific American, 12/1996, p.106
"The success of the Freudian revolution seemed complete. Only one thing went wrong. The patients did not get any better." (Zilboorg, G., in Mowrer, The Crisis in Psychology and Religion (Princeton: Van Nostrand, 1961; H. J. Eysenck, Director of the University of London's Department of Psychology)
"The ministry makes a tremendous mistake when it swaps what it has for psychoanalytic dressing.... Where will psychoanalysis be even 25 years from now? ... I predict it will take its place along with phrenology and mesmerism." (Leo Steiner in November of 1958, "Are Psychoanalysis and Religious Counseling Compatible?" Paper read to Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, Harvard University).
"Once bright with promise, psychoanalysis today seems hardly worth the millions we are lavishing on it each year. In the U. S. there are approximately 18,000 psychiatrists-as against about 484 in France and l,000 in Italy. And about nine per cent at their couch-side listening posts throughout this great land are psychoanalysts.... Many of these doctors and patients have begun to take stock: have the benefits of psychoanalysis justified the hours of torturous self-examination, the years of painfully slow probing, the $25,000 or so spent for the complete "treatment"? In short, are psychiatry and psychoanalysis worth the millions-a-year Americans lavish on it? . . . The truth is that not only is the dramatic breakthrough and cure almost nonexistent, but thousands upon thousands who have spent millions upon millions aren't at all certain whether they are one whit less "neurotic" than before they began their five-times-a-week, $25-a-session trudge to the psychoanalyst's couch... But much more significant than the gradual disillusionment of patients is the wholesale defection of analysists them-selves from the Freudian fold. Many doctors are now sharply challenging the need for long-drawn-out excavations of the subconscious.)" 1n Time Magazine, February 14, 1964, p. 43.
"Surveys show that of patients who spend upwards of 350 hours on the psychoanalyst's couch to get better-two out of three show some improvement over a period of years. The fly in that particular ointment, however, is that the same percentage get better without analysis or under the care of a regular physician. As a matter of fact, that same ratio-two out of three people-got better in mental hospitals a hundred years ago. . . . Patients get better regardless of what is done to them. Unfortunately the analyst often interprets improvement as a result of his treatment. It does not bother him that other people use other methods with equal effect-hypnosis, electric shock, cold baths, the laying on of hands, the pulling out of teeth to remove foci of infection, suggestion, dummy pills, confession, prayer." (Dr. H. J. Eysenck, 1n Time Magazine, February 14, 1964, p. 43.)
"G. L. Harrington, in a V. A. hospital in Los Angeles, for example, worked with 210 male patients in Building 206. Building 206 was the end of the line. All hope for these men had been given up. Many could not even take care of their most elemental needs. Previously there had been an average of only two releases from Building 206 each year, but after the first year of Harrington's responsibility program, 75 men were released from the hospital, and the next year he predicted that 200 would be released-that is, almost a complete turnover. Glasser, in the Ventura State School for Girls in California, showed an 80 per cent success with hardened sociopaths in a structured total responsibility program. By success, Glasser means no return and no future violations of the law.1 This writer was able to view at first hand the quick and dramatic results of Mowrer's program in Illinois." (Competent to council, Jay Adams, p15)
IV. The Conscience:
A. The Little red light on the dashboard of the car! Psychiatry disconnects the light, Christianity fixes the problem so the light goes out.
B. Passages:
"I thank God, whom I serve with a clear conscience the way my forefathers did, as I constantly remember you in my prayers night and day, " 2 Timothy 1:3
"Paul, looking intently at the Council, said, "Brethren, I have lived my life with a perfectly good conscience before God up to this day." " Acts 23:1
""So then, I thought to myself that I had to do many things hostile to the name of Jesus of Nazareth. "And this is just what I did in Jerusalem; not only did I lock up many of the saints in prisons, having received authority from the chief priests, but also when they were being put to death I cast my vote against them. "And as I punished them often in all the ѕуηαgσgυєs, I tried to force them to blaspheme; and being furiously enraged at them, I kept pursuing them even to foreign cities. " Acts 26:9-11
"The faith which you have, have as your own conviction before God. Happy is he who does not condemn himself in what he approves. But he who doubts is condemned if he eats, because his eating is not from faith; and whatever is not from faith is sin." Romans 14:22-23
"For when Gentiles who do not have the Law do instinctively the things of the Law, these, not having the Law, are a law to themselves, in that they show the work of the Law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them, " Romans 2:14-15
"To the pure, all things are pure; but to those who are defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure, but both their mind and their conscience are defiled. " Titus 1:15
"But the Spirit explicitly says that in later times some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons, by means of the hypocrisy of liars seared in their own conscience as with a branding iron, " 1 Timothy 4:1-2
"and they, having become callous, have given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness. " Ephesians 4:19
"But the goal of our instruction is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. " 1 Timothy 1:5
V. Sickness is caused by sin, we need to repent to be healed physically:
A. Guilt is a major cause of illness
"So it came about in the course of time that Cain brought an offering to the Lord of the fruit of the ground. Abel, on his part also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of their fat portions. And the Lord had regard for Abel and for his offering; but for Cain and for his offering He had no regard. So Cain became very angry and his countenance fell. Then the Lord said to Cain, "Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen? "If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door; and its desire is for you, but you must master it." " Genesis 4:3-7
"For the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil, and some by longing for it have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs. " 1 Timothy 6:10
"The way of the wicked is like darkness; They do not know over what they stumble. " Proverbs 4:19
"Who is the man who desires life And loves length of days that he may see good? Keep your tongue from evil And your lips from speaking deceit. " Psalm 34:12-13
"And you groan at your final end, When your flesh and your body are consumed; And you say, "How I have hated instruction! And my heart spurned reproof! " Proverbs 5:11-12
""But he who listens to me shall live securely And will be at ease from the dread of evil."" Proverbs 1:33
B. We need to repent of our sins; healing comes from confession:
"Trust in the Lord with all your heart And do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He will make your paths straight. Do not be wise in your own eyes; Fear the Lord and turn away from evil. It will be healing to your body And refreshment to your bones. " Proverbs 3:5-8
"Is anyone among you sick? Then he must call for the elders of the church and they are to pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord; and the prayer offered in faith will restore the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up, and if he has committed sins, they will be forgiven him. Therefore, confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another so that you may be healed. The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much. " James 5:14-16
"How blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, Whose sin is covered! How blessed is the man to whom the Lord does not impute iniquity, And in whose spirit there is no deceit! When I kept silent about my sin, my body wasted away Through my groaning all day long. For day and night Your hand was heavy upon me; My vitality was drained away as with the fever heat of summer." Psalm 32:1-4
"A tranquil heart is life to the body, But envy is rottenness to the bones. " Proverbs 14:30
"O Lord, rebuke me not in Your wrath, And chasten me not in Your burning anger. For Your arrows have sunk deep into me, And Your hand has pressed down on me. There is no soundness in my flesh because of Your indignation; There is no health in my bones because of my sin. For my iniquities are gone over my head; As a heavy burden they weigh too much for me. My wounds grow foul and fester Because of my folly. " Psalm 38:1-5
"Lord, all my desire is before You; And my sighing is not hidden from You. " Psalm 38:9
"For I am ready to fall, And my sorrow is continually before me. For I confess my iniquity; I am full of anxiety because of my sin. " Psalm 38:17-18
VI. Informed Christians are better councilors than Psychiatrists.
A. Quotes:
"the psychiatrist's special training is said to equip him "no better . . . than any other human being of similar age and similar experience of working directly with disturbed people," . Werry sees psychiatric training as largely irrelevant to the work he must pursue. (John S. Werry's "The Psychiatrist and Society," Dis-Coverer, Vol. 5, No. 3, August 1968, p. 8)
"I will at a number of points bring into question whether the special technical knowledge the doctor presumably has, is significant in effecting a change in the patient's life." (Bernard Steinzor)
B. The Holy Spirit is our councilor: Jn 14:16-17
C. Jesus is called our "wonderful Councilor: Isa 9:6
D, Proverbs emphases council:
"And you neglected all my counsel And did not want my reproof; " Proverbs 1:25
""They would not accept my counsel, They spurned all my reproof. " Proverbs 1:30
E. Christians are called to council:
"Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you, with all wisdom teaching and admonishing (counsel) one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God. " Colossians 3:16
"And concerning you, my brethren, I myself also am convinced that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge and able also to admonish (counsel) one another. " Romans 15:14
"We proclaim Him, admonishing (counsel) every man and teaching every man with all wisdom, so that we may present every man complete in Christ. " Colossians 1:28
"preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction. " 2 Timothy 4:2
"One of themselves, a prophet of their own, said, "Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons." This testimony is true. For this reason reprove them severely so that they may be sound in the faith, " Titus 1:12-13
F. Psychiatrists are often the devils agents: "Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. " 1 Peter 5:8
VII. Psychiatry's practice of blaming others for our actions and rejection of personal accountability is opposite to Christianity:
A. Quotes:
"I went to my psychiatrist to be psychoanalyzed To find out why I killed the cat and blacked my husband's eyes. He laid me on a downy couch to see what he could find, And here is what he dredged up from my subconscious mind: When I was one, my mommie hid my dolly in a trunk, And so it follows naturally that I am always drunk. When I was two, I saw my father kiss the maid one day, And that is why I suffer now from kleptomania. At three, I had the feeling of ambivalence toward my brothers, And so it follows naturally I poison all my lovers. But I am happy; now I've learned the lesson this has taught; That everything I do that's wrong is someone else's fault." (Anna Russell, folk song, "Jolly Old Sigmund Freud")
"typical Mental Health organization propaganda: "Sympathetic under-standing, the kind you give to a person when he is sick with a physical illness" is what the mentally ill person must have... You make allowances because you know he's sick, that he can't help his sickness, that he needs your sympathy and understanding. The person with a mental problem is also sick and most of the time he can't help it either." (Harry Milt, Director of Public Information for the National Association for Mental Health, in a pamphlet entitled "How to Deal With Mental Problems,")
"Thus when we read in the paper that the alcoholic, the rapist or vandal . . . will be given "psychiatric care," we are assured that the problem is being effectively dealt with and we dismiss it from our minds. I contend that we have no right to this easy absolution from responsibility." (Dr. H. J. Eysenck, 1n Time Magazine, February 14, 1964, p. 43.)
"Psychiatrists have been trying ... to dull, if not actually extract, the teeth of the law-and this is on the distinctively Freudian assumption that it is entirely natural for the criminal to act as he does and quite unreasonable for society to make him stand trial for being his antisocial self. (Richard T. LaPiere," (Psychiatry and Responsibility, 1962), p. 80.)
"First of all, there is little you can do as ministers for people in a mental hospital. Secondly, what you can do is support the patient's right to feel injured by others. Thirdly, it is important to understand that in a mental institution people with guilt no longer are subjected to rebuke from others outside, the pressure is off, and in this way they quietly lose their guilt and get well. Fourthly, we must consider people in mental hospitals not as violators of conscience but as victims of their conscience. Finally, when we look at their erratic behavior, it seems to be sin, but it isn't; the patient is not really responsible for his actions. He can't help what he's doing; he's sick Often he blames himself for what he can't help, for what isn't his fault, and this is a cause of his problems. Consequently bad behavior as blameworthy is taboo in a mental hospital. The usual religious approach of responsibility, guilt, confession and forgiveness is no good here. The patients' conscience are already too severe. These people are morally neutral persons, and all we can do is be ventilators for them." (Mental Health Institute for pastors." (The summary address of the chaplain from a state mental hospital, 1965)
B. Verses:
Blame shifting was mans first response to sin: Adam blames Eve, Eve blamed the serpent. None said, Its my fault! Gen 3
Aaron claimed the golden calf just popped out of the fire all by itself! Exodus 32:24
Saul said the people made him sin: 1 Samuel 15:22
"For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad. " 2 Corinthians 5:10
VIII. Psychiatry's practice of excusing the guilt of sin is opposite to Christianity:
A. Quotes:
"the therapist's attempts to excuse the patient's negative and undesirable behavior on the ground that it was determined by the past and so he had no reason to feel guilty about it" (Lawrence LeShan, "Changing Trends in Psychoanalytically Oriented Psychotherapy," Mental Hygiene, July 1962, pp. 454-463).
B. Verses:
Galatians 2:11 Peter stood condemned
""But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court; and whoever says to his brother, 'You good-for-nothing,' shall be guilty before the supreme court; and whoever says, 'You fool,' shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell. " Matthew 5:22
IX. Psychiatry's rejection of absolute right and wrong (moralizing) is opposite to Christianity:
A. Quotes:
Albert Ellis' therapy clearly represents one modern application of these principles. In the A. A. P. Tape Library, Volume No. l, entitled "Loretta," Ellis climaxes an interview with a strong attack upon Loretta's conscience. He threatens that she will never be released from treatment until she does away with her moral values. Listen to the following excerpts: "Your problem actually is the fact that you have a lot of what I call "shoulds," "oughts," and "musts." ... The main issue-as I said before-in my estimation, is that you set up a lot of "shoulds," "oughts," and "musts" which unfortunately you were taught when you were very young. You were taught these by your father, your mother, your church ... But if you didn't have this concept of ought which unfortunately is nicely defeating your own ends, then you wouldn't believe this-you wouldn't be disturbed." (After an objection by Loretta to this attack, Ellis tells her:) "Well, you're fully entitled to your views, but unfortunately as long as you maintain them you're going to sit in this mental hospital-now when you change your views you're going to get out." (Loretta, still staunchly objecting, triumphantly replies:) "Well, as long as we have air conditioning it might not be so bad."
"let us never allow ourselves to make any moral judgments, judgments concerning the moral worth of a human being." (Rollo May, The Art of Counseling (New York: Abingdon Press, 1939), p. 176)
"The more recent alumni of theological schools are very reluctant to be directive in the office of pastoral counselor. The good pastor in this office is not judgmental, he is not directive; and as we have ourselves insisted throughout, he is not moralistic. So when someone puts this kind of question to him, "What ought I to do?" he knows that he must not answer it, whatever else he does or does not do. He is permitted to ask, "Well, what do you think you ought to do?" (Julian Hartt, A Christian Critique ofAmerican Culture (New York: Harper and Rowe, 1967), p. 338)
"This is a crucial point. The counselee asks for advice. If the counselor succuмbs to the temptation with its implicit flattery and gives advice or even specific instructions, he short-circuits the process and thwarts the real personality readjustment of the counselee . . . Rather, he must seize this request for advice as a means of making the counselee accept more responsibility for himself." ... "You wish rules on the matter. You want these rules to compel you from the outside and you follow them with the same strain and tension which you manifest now. That will make your problem all the worse. Your desire for rules, you see, rises out of that same basic mistrust of life." (Rollo May, The Art of Counseling (New York: Abingdon Press, 1939), p. 139)
B. Verses:
"Everyone who practices sin also practices lawlessness; and sin is lawlessness. " 1 John 3:4
""He who rejects Me and does not receive My sayings, has one who judges him; the word I spoke is what will judge him at the last day. " John 12:48
X. Psychiatry's rejection of mentoring is opposite to Christianity:
A. Quotes:
"Moreover, I assure you that you are misinformed if you assume that advice and guidance in the affairs of life is an integral part of the analytic influence. On the contrary, we reject this role of the mentor as far as possible. Above all, we wish to attain independent decisions on the part of the patient." ... "Advice-giving is not an adequate counseling function because it violates the autonomy of personality. It has been agreed that personality must be free and autonomous; how, then, can one person justifiably pass ready-made decisions down to another. Ethically one cannot do it; and practically one cannot-for advice from above can never effect any real change in the other's personality. The idea never becomes part of him, and he will cast it off at the earliest convenience." (Rollo May, The Art of Counseling, 1939, p. 139)
B. Verses:
"For you have been called for this purpose, since Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example for you to follow in His steps, " 1 Peter 2:21
"Remember those who led you, who spoke the word of God to you; and considering the result of their conduct, imitate their faith. " Hebrews 13:7
"Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they keep watch over your souls as those who will give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with grief, for this would be unprofitable for you. " Hebrews 13:17
"Therefore I exhort you, be imitators of me. " 1 Corinthians 4:16
"Be imitators of me, just as I also am of Christ. " 1 Corinthians 11:1
"You also became imitators of us and of the Lord, having received the word in much tribulation with the joy of the Holy Spirit, " 1 Thessalonians 1:6
XI. "Answers lie within self" rather than from God, is opposite to Christianity:
A. Quotes:
"If I thought I could answer your questions helpfully, Fred, I would. But I know from my experience that I can be of more help to you in another way. I am convinced that you have everything in you-good judgment and a good sense of what all the implications are and what the situation is really like-to make a good decision, really better than I can. But what I can do is provide some guidance in thinking through these complicated questions and be a kind of sounding-board." (James Dittes, The Church In the Way (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1967), pp. 279-280.)
B. Verses:
"Trust in the Lord with all your heart And do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He will make your paths straight. Do not be wise in your own eyes; Fear the Lord and turn away from evil. It will be healing to your body And refreshment to your bones. " Proverbs 3:5-8
"There is a way which seems right to a man, But its end is the way of death. " Proverbs 14:12
"My son, do not reject the discipline of the Lord Or loathe His reproof, For whom the Lord loves He reproves, Even as a father corrects the son in whom he delights. " Proverbs 3:11-12
"My son, do not forget my teaching, But let your heart keep my commandments; " Proverbs 3:1
"For I give you sound teaching; Do not abandon my instruction. " Proverbs 4:2
"For the commandment is a lamp and the teaching is light; And reproofs for discipline are the way of life " Proverbs 6:23
Conclusion:
A. Christians should realize that Modern psychiatry is founded upon the "medical/ chemical model" which is opposed to the model revealed in scripture: The Moral/ spiritual Model.
Psychiatry is a direct outgrowth of atheism, denying God and teaching man is a mere animal.
Psychiatry views man as wholly physical, just a bunch of chemicals and denies the spirit and soul of man.
Psychiatry believes the solutions to problems are within the each man himself. This of course proves that going to such a councilor for solutions to problems is irrelevant, since he will refuse to offer his own opinion or solutions to anything.
Psychiatry opposes the idea of absolute right and wrong, but advocates a moral relativism.
B. "Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded. " James 4:8
C. "For this people's heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them. Acts 28:27
D. "And concerning you, my brethren, I myself also am convinced that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge and able also to counsel one another. " Romans 15:14
E. By the power of the word of God. I proclaim you all councilors!
F. Because of legal liability, it is never wise to counsel someone to stop taking drugs prescribed by a psychiatrist or any other doctor. Have the patient ask the doctor to become drug free and no longer prescribed such drugs.
Recommended Book list:
"Competent to Council", Jay Adams
"Psychology gone awry", Mark Cosgrove (good overview of modern positions)
"Psychology As Religion: The Cult of Self-Worship" Paul C. Vitz
"The Emperors New Clothes/the Naked Truth About the New Psychology", by William Kirk Kilpatrick
http://www.bible.ca/marriage/mental-illness-nouthetic-psychiatry.htm