ANSWER by Bro. Ignatius Mary, OLSM on May 21, 2004

Dear Tannianly: One must be very careful about what one reads about "interior healing". This is a topic that was born partly out of Jungian psychology and to the level of which it is influenced by Jungian psychology is not something that is really within the Catholic worldview. Most of this comes from the Charismatic Renewal who gets this from the Pentecostals who get it from people like Agnes Sanford. Sanford is the mother of the "interior healing" and "healing of memories" movements. She is also, knowingly or unknowingly, one of the grandmothers to the so-called New Age movement. One of her great contributions to the New Age movement and to Pentecostalism was her teaching of a very dangerous concept that she called “experience comes before theology". This is a typical approach of charismatics. Experience, of course, is really "emotional experience." Emotional experience cannot be trusted and besides, the Church officially teaches that while such subjective and emotional experiences are a gift from God, they MUST be guided by reason. The idea that experience comes before theology is a demonic concept. Our experience does not test theology. Theology must test our experience. As a result of Mrs. Sanford's misguided thoughts she continued to "think" her way right out of a Christian worldview. Agnes Sanford, who also was inspiration for the healing ministry of the laicized pseudo-Catholic/Protestant priest Francis MacNutt, was born in 1897. Her first book positing her healing ideas was published in 1947. By the 50's she had joined the Pentecostals. Sanford promoted Jungian psychotherapy. Her pastor was a Jungian psychologist who studied at the C.G. Jung Institute near Zurich and her son, John Sanford, also became a Jungian psychologist. Sanford's worldview, including her ideas about healing, are steeped deeply into the flawed worldview of Jungian philosophy. If there is any doubt about the danger and misguided notions of Jungian psychology, then I would refer people to the book by Father Mitch Pacwa, S.J., Catholics and the New Age: How Good People Are Being Drawn into Jungian Psychology, the Enneagram, and the Age of Aquarius The results of Sanford's misguided journey into Jungian-ism can be summed up by the fact that she believed that "Jesus became a part of the collective unconscious of the human race." Need more be said? This statement about Jesus is a direct heresy to the Christian faith and is a doctrine of demons. But there is more.... Sanford used words like “primal energy” and “the very life-force existing in a radiation of an energy ... from which all things evolved” that “God ... made everything out of Himself" and "He put a part of Himself into everything." While one might perceive a grain of truth in these characterizations of God, the language Sanford uses is right out of New Age modifications of Taoism, pantheism, and Jungian-ism. And yet more... In a positively disposed biography of Sanford (where I am getting all this information), she believed that: God could work through "good" spirits as well as the spirits of people who have died; she taught that God used some mediums to heal; she believed that angels and dead saints could "speak and act in and through us." Again, one can find a "small" grain of truth here, but what she seems to be talking about appears to amount to a form of necromancy, mediumship, and spiritualist-ism when all this is taken into its total context. So, if nearly all of the "healing of memories" and "interior healing" concepts of today, even among Christians, come from this seriously flawed and misguided source, is there a possibility to glean a correct notion of inner healing of soul and memories? Yes! We can find an inner healing and a healing of memories, but not through a neo-occultic Jungian psychobabble, or any other kind of mediumship or pseudo-spiritualist-ism. The inner healing we experience and the healing of memories that we may need come from the Sacraments of the Church, from forgiving the people who have hurt us, from letting go and letting God deal with those people who hurt us, from an inner conversion to Christ, though sacrifice of our ego and our selves to the Lordship of Christ, and through living out the Christ-life. Sanford called Jesus the "most profound psychiatrist". In this I agree. Jesus is the great psychiatrist when we follow His teachings, rather than the doctrine of demons borne out of humanistic or spiritualistic notions of the world and the cosmos. We only need to read and meditate and contemplate the Sermon on the Mount to see the great healing power of the Great Psychiatrist. In fact I often prescribe to my clients a meditation on Psalm 23 and the Beatitudes as a therapeutic method of inner healing. The greatest psychiatrists I know, beside Jesus, is St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross, and many other Saints. It is from this treasury of the Church and her Saints, not the corroded "treasure" of spiritism, that we find the true healing of our inner selves, our souls, and our memories. We will not truly find healing from nonsensical "re-experiencing" that has taken hold of New Age psychology. Francis MacNutt, (appropriate name) describes his notion of "inner healing" that includes a notation of a case history of someone he was praying for. He states, "we have seen adults re-experience in an amazing way the time before birth and verbalize it during the prayer: 'I'm not going to come out; I'm not going to be born!'" It is true that what happens to us in the womb and in our early years has an effect upon us for the rest of our lives. It is not true, however, that we have any memories of this. There is no memories to heal. The brain was not yet developed to the point that it could contain memories at that early age. This is just bunk. Thus, if these people who re-experience their birth and whatnot are not uncovering a memory, where does this "memory" come from? It is not from their brain. Who has a motivation for us to get involved in these silly notions? Run, do not walk, away from Francis MacNutt and his ilk of pseudo Pentecostal Catholic Jungian psychobabble para-mediumistic cosmic plasma collectively unconscious healers. If we need inner healing and a healing of memories, seek Christ in the Sacraments, spend time in adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, develop devotions to the Saints, live the good Christ-life, know who you are in Christ, search the soul to find any pockets of unforgiveness or bitterness, excise it out along with pride and rebellion, break strongholds and bondages in one's life, then one will find the inner healing and healing of memories that they seek. This is the approach we use in counseling. It works without once delving into Pentecostal notions, Jungian notions, or an notion other than Catholic. Thanks for asking this question. It is time that these things are exposed for what they really are. God Bless, Bro. Ignatius Mary --ducking from the rotten tomatoes and avoiding the lynchman For Assistance with Spiritual Warfare problems please go to our How We Can Help You page. For a direct link to sample Spiritual Warfare prayers see our Spiritual Warfare Prayer Catalog