Loving in the context of community mental health practice: A clinical case study and reflection on mystical experience
Mental Health Religion and Culture February 1, 2014
Love, often conflated with sexuality in psychological literature and therefore ethically fraught, may be a neglected but transformative element in community mental health care. The intimacy and intensity of the therapeutic process resemble mystical experience, an idea Carl Rogers alluded to late in his career. This liminal, transformational experience—described as the essence of love or mystical consciousness—can challenge the medicalized culture of mental health by helping professionals recognize that in treating the help-seeker they are always treating the Sacred Self.