The Background of Spiritual Healing

Those who have read Miss Ikin's earlier little book on " Religion and Psycho-therapy" will expect to find in this present work a clear and simple treatment of her subject and they will undoubtedly not be disappointed. Miss Ikin has stated with great clearness and simplicity the case for spiritual healing, than which few studies today are of greater interest to thoughtful people. Since the beginning of the Century there has been discernible in the writings of many of the leading psychologists a steady advance in the direction of recognition of a spiritual background to the science. Many psychologists have travelled a long way from the purely materialistic outlook which at first characterised the modern aspect of this science. As Miss Ikin's interesting article in the last number of this journal indicated,* she is devoting her work at present to bringing these views to the notice of the clergy on the one hand and the rank and file of the medical profession on the other in the endeavour to promote a sympathetic and close working cooperation. The present book is one means, and a very useful one, of carrying out this idea. It is a fact today that the public insist upon knowing more about the healing aspect of modern psychology, and its original materialistic bias has been res-* Religion and Psychotherapy. Mental Welfare, April, 1937. ponsible for much clerical lack of sympathy. Miss Ikin is doing valuable work in removing prejudices from both sides. Her first chapter on the emergence of the spiritual factor in the treatment of disease is an attempt to take a historical review of the ground that has already been covered. The chapter on the relationship of psychoanalysis to confession is again a helpful contribution in delimiting the special fields of usefulness of work from the medical and clerical angles of approach. The book is expanded from a series of lectures given on the subject, but the psychological standpoint is definitely accentuated for reasons which Miss Ikin makes clear. There is no doubt that this distinction between scientifically psychological and merely miraculous bases of healing will help very many people to a clearer appreciation of the possibilities in regard to a given case. The book, however, will be found very helpful to many who do not realise that psychotherapy generally necessitates a facing up to reality if cure is to be obtained. It is a …