Ch. 9. V. 4 – 6. Jesus: “In one of the newer forms of the ego’s plan for salvation, a psychotherapist may interpret the ego’s symbols in a nightmare, then use those interpretations to prove the nightmare real, leaving the dreamer as its ‘powerless victim.’ Having made the nightmare real, the therapist then attempts to dispel its real effects by ‘magic’ therapies, thus again diminishing the importance of the dreamer himself.
Yet even this could be a healing approach, if only the ego were identified as the ‘dreamer of the nightmares,’ and its thought system then recognized as unreal! But if the decision-making mind itself is believed to be the dreamer, that denies the mind’s corrective power through the Holy Spirit within it.
There is a contradiction here, even in the ego’s terms. And it is one which, despite its confusion, the ego usually notices sooner or later. If the way to counteract fear is to reduce the importance of the mind, the ego as ‘the mind’ in question, how can this build ‘ego strength,’ as sought from the psychotherapist? Such evident inconsistencies account for why no one has really explained what happens in psychotherapy. Nothing really does!
No one can teach except from his own learning, and nothing real has happened to change the mind of the unhealed healer. His ego will always seek to ‘get something’ from the situation. The unhealed healer therefore does not know how to just give, and consequently cannot share, as is necessary for real healing. Thus he cannot correct anything because he is not working correctively. He believes that it is up to him to teach the patient what is real, although he has not learned it himself!
What, then, should happen? When God said, ‘Let there be light,’ there was light. Can you find light by analyzing darkness, as the psychotherapist does, or like the theologian, by acknowledging darkness in yourself and bargaining with some mysterious distant light to remove it, all the while emphasizing the distance to those you would seek to help?
Healing is not mysterious! Nothing will change unless healing is understood, since light is understanding. Nor does it depend on anything outside of you, which would make it ‘magic.’ A ‘miserable sinner’ cannot be healed without magic, nor can an ‘unimportant mind’ learn to esteem itself without magic therapies!”
Note: It may useful to remember that the Course was initially directed to two professors of Medical Psychology at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons, who were teaching psychologists, psychiatrists and psychotherapists!