Loving in the context of community mental health practice: a clinical case study and reflection on mystical experience

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.

Keywords:

• love
• community mental health
• case study
• mystical experience

Acknowledgements

With gratitude to Professor Chris Cook, Professor Bonita Long and Dr Sonya Sharma for their support in reviewing earlier drafts of this manuscript. This article is dedicated to A.W.

Notes

1. The term “help-seeker” is from the work of Reissman (1990) and is preferred over “patient” or “client” for the agency and possibility of equality it implies.

2. Two recent conferences held in the North East of England: Spirituality and Mental Health including: Sharing Good Practice; Tees, Esk and Wear Valley NHS Foundation Trust, July 2011 and Spirituality, Theology and Mental Health: Myth, Authority and Healing Power; Durham University, September 2010.

3. Psychiatrist Dr. Sarah Eagger, speaking at Spirituality and Mental Health: Sharing Good Practice addressed the difficulty psychiatry students have with spiritual assessment. A major objection is that spirituality is too intimate, and as uncomfortable to assess as sexuality once was before it became a standardised part of psychiatric assessment.

4. Fuller's work is related to the issue of wonder and demonstrates some significant similarities to William James' understanding of ineffability.