By Ozodi Osuji
In secular, scientific psychotherapy, you visit your therapist; he does an intake interview during which you tell him about your mental health issues; he tells you what the symptoms you said you have mean in terms of psychological categories (they could indicate personality disorder and if so, what kind, could be anxiety disorder, there are many types, could be depression, bipolar affective disorder, schizophrenia, and so on).
Having ascertained the diagnosis, and the client agrees that it pretty much describes the issues that led him to seek therapy, the therapist then comes up with a treatment plan. This consists of what he is going to do about the identified problem.
In most cases, it entails you, the client, coming to the therapist’s office once a week for an hour of therapy (talk therapy may be supplemented with medications). Once a week, for about a year, at a designated time, you come to his office to tell him about yourself and your issues, and he listens.
Most therapists mainly listen and ask questions that draw the client out to talk about themselves and their issues. Most people heal themselves, but with a bit of insight from therapists, therapists do not heal them.
A good therapist is a good listener and mainly listens to their clients talk about their issues. Let us say that you are depressed; this means that you increasingly find living not as joyful as it was in your past, do not look forward to the activities of daily living, if you are a student, such as going to school, if a regular adult, such as going to work, having friends come over or you going to see them, engaging in sporting activities, grooming your self and a general sense that life is no longer meaningful and you may occasionally have suicidal thought (if it is major depression, you will probably be placed on one or more of the anti-depression medications, or even hospitalized if you have plans to harm yourself).
Whereas in the past therapists employed assorted types of therapies, such as Freudian, Adlerian, Horneyian psychoanalysis, Jungian Psychoanalysis, Rogerian, and Maslow’s humanistic therapy, Behavior Modification, etc., these days most therapists employ Cognitive Behavior Therapy.
Cognitive Behavior Therapy, CBT, states that it is not what is happening out there in the world that makes us depressed, sad, anxious, angry, etc., but how we think about it. One’s cognition, one’s thinking, disposes one to see events in the particular manner one sees them. The same event may elicit sad feelings in some people, anxiety in others, or anger in some people.
It is one’s interpretation of events that shapes one’s responses to them. CBT undertakes to show the client how to think differently, hence have different responses to events taking place in his world.
CBT is generally useful in anger management, understanding, and dealing with anxiety, but may or may not be the only primary modality for intervention in serious mental health issues, such as depression, mania, delusional disorder, paranoia, and schizophrenia, etc. Some mental health issues require medications, and, indeed, some need a philosophy or religion to cope with them.
When I worked as a therapist, I used existential therapy in addition to CBT. Life is, in many ways, depressing and seems to have no meaning. You cannot wish what existentialists call meaninglessness away. We are born, suffer, and eventually will die. This is depressing, but how do you cope with it?
Existentialism and other philosophies enable one to understand the nature of our being and suggest what we can do to deal with the issues arising in us.
If one is amenable to religion/spiritual counseling, it is sometimes especially useful in dealing with persistent life issues.
The issue of death, for example, is generally coped with if one has a religion that enables one to find faith in life after death, believe in God, and heaven. If a person can convince himself that death is not the end of his existence, his depression tends to dissipate. Thus, a combination of secular and spiritual therapy is probably useful for some people.
Secular therapy deals with the known world, the world that science explains, but science has not even understood one percent of the four percent of the visible universe. Ninety-six percent of the universe is unknown to us because it consists of dark energy and dark matter, and we do not know anything about those.
There are too many unknown aspects of our world and lives; therefore, to limit ourselves to the area where science and pure reason help us to understand is not enough.
Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Mystical Christianity, Gnosticism, A Course in Miracles, and other religions tend to help people entertain the possibility of life after death.
A Course in Miracles helps people to see that although on earth we all seem separated and live isolated lives, at the spiritual level we are all connected; if we are connected and are one, then there is reason to love all people as one loves oneself.
Loving yourself and others, as well as forgiving those who hurt you, leads to greater happiness, while holding grudges and seeking revenge often results in unhappiness.
In my approach to psychotherapy, I try to combine secular and spiritual therapy (many clients do not care for spirituality, and, as such, one must not bring it up in therapy). The goal of therapy is to deal with one’s issues so that one lives peacefully and happily.
SALVATION LIES IN CHANGING ONE’S SELF-CONCEPT AND SELF IMAGE, AND ULTIMATELY TO HAVING NO SELF-CONCEPT AND SELF IMAGE
If you are on planet Earth, you probably have a self-concept. Upon birth, the human child inherited a specific biological constitution. That body interacts with his physical and social world, and by age six, he had formed a view of who he is.
The self-concept and self-image are who one believes oneself to be; it is based on one’s experience in a particular body, family, and society. It determines one’s responses to other people and to the world.
The self-concept is the same as one’s personality. Personality is the individual’s habitual pattern of behaving in his world. Most people have normal personalities, but some people have personality disorders (such as paranoid, schizoid, schizotypal, narcissistic, histrionic, borderline, antisocial, avoidant, dependent, obsessive compulsive, and passive aggressive).
A few people have formal thinking disorders, also called psychosis (such as delusional disorder, Bipolar Affective Disorder and schizophrenia).
Once personality is formed in childhood, the individual employs it in relating to other people, and in normal situations, he has smooth relationships with other people; in personality disorders, he has conflict-ridden interpersonal relationships.
Therapists help their clients to understand their personalities, self-concepts, and self-images. Where there are problems in the self, therapists help their clients to improve their approach to themselves and to other people.
SPIRITUAL PSYCHOLOGY
Spiritual psychology posits that there is a spiritual world and that we are parts of a spiritual universe. A course in miracles, for example, posits that in eternity, heaven, we are spirits, and that all spirits are joined as one spirit, hence love one another.
It says that we entertained the desire to separate from our unified spirit self. We collectively invented a universe of space, time, and matter, and now project ourselves into bodies and feel separated from other people, and formulate separate self-concepts for ourselves.
We all have separate self-concepts. The self-concept and self-image interfere with our relationships with other people.
Salvation consists of changing one’s self-concept, from emphasizing separation to emphasizing union with all people and their creator, God.
In the metaphoric language of A Course in Miracles, we go from the ego separate self to the Christ Unified Self. The ego emphasizes separation and different interests, whereas Christ emphasizes union and common interests and love.
The ego bears grievances, whereas the Christ forgives those who harmed its body and ego because it knows that it is not its body and ego, and what was done to those was not done to its real self, unified spirit.
If one loves all and forgives all people, one tends to experience relative peace; one is, as it were, at the metaphoric gate of heaven, but not in heaven because one still sees oneself as separated from other people and lives in a body.
If one completely lets go of identification with the separated self and forgives oneself and other selves, one may experience oneness with all selves, the mystical union of the son and his father as one shared self (Hinduism calls it Samadi, Buddhism calls it Nirvana, and Zen calls it Satori).
In the state of union, one feels eternal, permanent, changeless, happy, peaceful, and blissful.
Adding the benefits of spiritual therapy to secular therapy seems a more holistic way to procure peace and happiness in this world. If a person is atheistic and prefers a rational approach, the therapist should respect this and rely only on evidence-based psychological methods.
Ozodi Osuji
March 19, 2026
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