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

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.

Study at a glance

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.