PSYCHIATRY AND SPIRITUAL HEALING
Si,—I have read with interest three articles by 'A Psychiatrist' in the Spectator—last February, and again last month.
I am, I hope, recovering from tuberculosis, but I have also suffered from one of the physical therapies which your contributor esteems so highly, and which is well known to be contra-indicated in tuberculosis.
Psychiatrist means healer of the soul. I would suggest that if your contributor takes his profession seriously, and regards his patients as men and women, and not merely as economic units, personnel, or specimens in a test-tube, he should undergo one or more of these physical treatments himself, before inflicting them on his patients.
I do not think he would then recommend them with such confidence, and, as a Christian and a believer in spiritual healing, I venture to state that electrical convulsant therapy, induced insulin comas and prefrontal leuco- tomy are far removed from healing by any kind of conversion or Divine grace; they resemble more the methods used by Com- munists for extorting confessions of guilt from deviationists;—Yours faithfully,
SERTORIUS
[Name supplied] Palma de Mallorca, Baleares, Spain
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