1. Yet the ideal outcome is rarely achieved. 2Therapy begins with the realization that healing is of the mind, and in psychotherapy those have come together who already believe this. 3It may be they will not get much further, for no one learns beyond his own readiness. 4Yet levels of readiness change, and when therapist or patient has reached the next one, there will be a relationship held out to them that meets the changing need. 5Perhaps they will come together again and advance in the same relationship, making it holier. 6Or perhaps each of them will enter into another commitment. 7Be assured of this; each will progress. 8Retrogression is temporary. 9The overall direction is one of progress toward the truth.
2. Psychotherapy itself cannot be creative. 2This is one of the errors which the ego fosters; that it is capable of true change, and therefore of true creativity. 3When we speak of “the saving illusion” or “the final dream,” this is not what we mean, but here is the ego’s last defense. 4“Resistance” is its way of looking at things; its interpretation of progress and growth. 5These interpretations will be wrong of necessity, because they are delusional. 6The changes the ego seeks to make are not really changes. 7They are but deeper shadows, or perhaps different cloud patterns. 8Yet what is made of nothingness cannot be called new or different. 9Illusions are illusions; truth is truth.
3. Resistance as defined here can be characteristic of a therapist as well as of a patient. 2Either way, it sets a limit on psychotherapy because it restricts its aims. 3Nor can the Holy Spirit fight against the intrusions of the ego on the therapeutic process. 4But He will wait, and His patience is infinite. 5His goal is wholly undivided always. 6Whatever resolutions patient and therapist reach in connection with their own divergent goals, they cannot become completely reconciled as one until they join with His. 7Only then is all conflict over, for only then can there be certainty.
4. Ideally, psychotherapy is a series of holy encounters in which brothers meet to bless each other and to receive the peace of God. 2And this will one day come to pass for every “patient” on the face of this earth, for who except a patient could possibly have come here? 3The therapist is only a somewhat more specialized teacher of God. 4He learns through teaching, and the more advanced he is the more he teaches and the more he learns. 5But whatever stage he is in, there are patients who need him just that way. 6They cannot take more than he can give for now. 7Yet both will find sanity at last.