Many Christians believe that the sole reason we reject psychotherapy and its underlying psychologies is because of Scripture. While the Bible is surely the only reason one needs to reject psychotherapy, there are other reasons. We also reject psychotherapy for academic and scientific reasons. To put it simply, the research does not support the use of psychotherapy with its high-pay-per-hour therapists. Our books and other books we offer reveal the research related to the underlying, unbiblical principles of psychotherapy and its failure to support the justification for such a highly visible, highly paid practice.
Readers are sometimes surprised to learn that distinguished experts in psychiatry and psychology side with us in our condemnation of psychotherapy. Some of these individuals who support and recommend our work are, in fact, atheists. Their reasons for supporting our work are based on their knowledge of psychotherapy, their expertise in having practiced it, and their awareness of the vast amount of research that fails to support it.
For example, Dr. Thomas Szasz endorses our books and recommends our work to others. Szasz is a Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry, State University of New York, and author of many books on psychiatry and psychotherapy, including The Myth of Psychotherapy. Szasz is a secular humanist who is considered an expert in this field by any court in America. Szasz is also one of the best-known psychiatrists in the world.
Szasz wrote the following in endorsing one of our books:
Although I do not share the Bobgans’ particular religious views, I do share their conviction that the human relations we now call “psychotherapy” are, in fact, matters of religion—and that we mislabel them as “therapeutic” at great risk to our spiritual well-being. This is an important book.
Szasz has remarked, “Herein lies one of the supreme ironies of modern psychotherapy: it is not merely a religion that pretends to be a science, it is actually a fake religion that seeks to destroy true religion.” He has also warned about the “implacable resolve of psychotherapy to rob religion of as much as it can, and to destroy what it cannot.”
Dr. E. Fuller Torrey is a clinical and research psychiatrist, internationally known for his theory regarding the possible origin of schizophrenia, and author of a number of books, including Witchdoctors and Psychiatrists and The Death of Psychiatry. Torrey endorsed our first book with the following:
The Bobgans have produced a unique and helpful book which puts “psychotherapy” back where it belongs. Spiritual counseling is as valid and effective a way to assist people who have problems of living, and is in fact more honest than most. For people with problems of living who share the Bobgans’ spiritual world view, their approach would be the most effective. [Their book] is incisive, well reasoned, well written, and an important addition to literature on counseling and psychotherapy.
Torrey describes himself as a “practicing atheist.”
While Christians should reject psychotherapy and its psychologies for biblical reasons alone, we could give many other examples to demonstrate that all people should reject it for many other reasons.
We are grateful to God for the experts and distinguished individuals from whom we derive additional information and support, but moreover that He has “given us all things that pertain unto life and godliness” (2 Peter 1:3).
(PAL V10N4 (July-August 2002)