Why Go to Church?
Google Image I once volunteered to help with a program at a huge, state mental health institute. It involved a brief training in an experimental process for helping profoundly catatonic patients “wake up,” if even for a short period. As I recall, it was loosely based on a widely recognized but largely obsolete procedure called logotherapy. That term is derived from the Greek word “logo,” which translates into “meaning.” The therapy, invented by Holocaust survivor and renowned psychologist, Victor Frankl, in this case involved small group “discussions” about subjects that presumably had nothing to do with the traumas that resulted in the patients’ condition. With a group of women – with whom I worked on a hospital ward – it meant finding subjects about which they may have once been interested. In those days, the topics included gardening, sewing, child-rearing, etc. The hope was that the women would be interested in one of the topics and “forgetting” her condition, offer an o...