Loving in the context of community mental health practice: A clinical case study and reflection on mystical experience
Mental Health, Religion & Culture February 1, 2014 DOI: 10.1080/13674676.2012.749849 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Case report Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | Mystical experience |
| Key points | Argues that mystical experience in the therapeutic relationship can refresh community mental health by helping professionals see the help-seeker as the Sacred Self. |
Abstract
Current research on mystical experience is offering community mental health professionals the opportunity to re-consider the role of love within clinical care. In psychological literature the historical conflation of love and sexuality is fraught with ethical concerns about professional impropriety, and the abuse of power. But the intimacy, intensity and beauty to be found within the therapeutic process bears the hallmark of the mystical, alluded to by Carl Rogers near the end of his career. This embodied experience that researchers are striving to understand in client populations is overlooked within the context of the therapeutic relationship. Described as the “essence” of love, or mystical consciousness, this liminal and transformational experience has the capacity to challenge and refresh the medicalised, often inhospitable, culture of community mental health by helping “professionals” re-discover that in treating the help-seeker they are always treating the Sacred Self.
Comparable studies
Other theoretical and historical papers on mystical experience, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| Religious and Mystical Experiences as Artifacts of Temporal Lobe Function: A General Hypothesis | 1983 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| The Psychedelic Mystical Experience in the Human Encounter with Death | 1969 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Vectorial Cerebral Hemisphericity as Differential Sources for the Sensed Presence, Mystical Experiences and Religious Conversions | 1993 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| The epistemic innocence of psychedelic states. | 2016 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Mystical Experience and Religious Doctrine | 1982 | Theoretical or philosophical paper |
Citations in the library
Cites 5
- Mystical experience in the context of health care. Journal of Holistic Nursing June 1, 2008
- Mystical Consciousness: A Modest Proposal Spiritus: A Journal of Christian Spirituality March 1, 2008
- The interface between religion and psychosis. Australasian Psychiatry February 1, 2007
- Mystical experience of a counsellor: An autobiographical journey Women & Therapy May 19, 1997
- Toward a more culturally sensitive DSM-IV. Psychoreligious and psychospiritual problems. The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease November 1, 1992