THE RELATIONSHIP OF HEALING TO IMAGINATION

The etymology of the word "healing " comes from the root that also means holy. We define ourselves as members of the healing arts if we are engaged in the work of therapy. Yet, in the realm of our traditional therapeutic approaches, scant if any, reference is made to the inclusion of what is holy into the process. Psychology, as it is generally organized within our cultural context, derives its guiding principles from the natural scientific application of what originally was discovered as the principles underlying the operation of machines and of the material world in general. When philosophical materialism dominates the value system of a society there tends to be a diminishing emphasis on the holy. This situation might occur as a consequence of the elevation of the material thing to a revered status, while feelings about religious or spiritual life are relegated to the realm of the aberrant and the pathological; or what might be worse, not taken seriously at all. This trend has been followed in the field of psychology and the dominant modes of western therapy that have developed thus far in thi