The Supernatural and Therapeutic Psychology

The year after receiving my doctorate in clinical and counseling psychology, I visited my folks in northern New Mexico. Saturday night found me finishing a cup of coffee in a nearby café. I paid the cashier and headed to my car, only to hear a voice speak within me: “Dan, drive over to the rectory of the Catholic church. Tell the priest there that I love him very much.” 

What? I thought. Go where and say what to whom?

“A priest is praying to me. He’s lonely and depressed. Go comfort him. Tell him to take heart, for I love him and I am guiding him.”

Uncomfortable with this instruction from out of nowhere, I fished for my keys and started the car. I had no connection to the Roman Catholic Church, no knowledge of any priests living in the rectory, no desire to give a complete stranger a weird message that seemed to float down from heaven. I pulled out of my parking space and inched around the town plaza in indecision, the only car on the road.

The personality tests I’d taken as a doctoral candidate at the University of New Mexico had demonstrated sound mental health, so this couldn’t be a psychotic delusion. This must be God, then, and though I didn’t understand why and how he was communicating with me, I felt curious enough to find out.

I turned right on the road to the rectory. As I drove up the driveway, a light blinked on somewhere in the building. Nuts, I thought. Now I have to go to the door! Placing a hesitant forefinger on the doorbell, I pushed and heard a chime. The porch light turned on and the wooden door creaked open. 

A little man with dark hair peeked out. “Yes?”

I felt tongue-tied. “Uh, well, actually I was leaving the Plaza Café, when I seemed to hear an inner voice telling me to come over here and talk to a priest.”

“Someone sent you here to speak with a priest?” he said.

“Yes.”

“Who?”

“God.” My voice sounded as awkward as I felt.

“And your name is?”

“Dan Montgomery.”

“So you need to speak with a priest about God?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, come in.”

The man turned and I followed him down a hall to the kitchen. An overhead light revealed a white table with an empty glass and a half-empty bottle of wine. He pulled out a chair for me and I sat down.

“I am Father Francisco. May I offer you some wine?”

“Yes, thank you.”

He retrieved a second wine glass from the cabinet and filled both glasses with red liquid. “Forgive me for not being dressed properly,” he said, looking down at his sweater and Levis. “I was about to retire for the night.”

“I’m sorry to have disturbed you.”

He sat down, took a sip of his wine, and said, “Are you a Catholic?”

“No.”

“Yet you are seeking a priest to discuss your need for God?”

Once again my tongue seemed uncooperative. “Well, yes. I mean no, not exactly. I mean to say that actually I’m here to deliver a message from God to a priest who lives here.”

He raised his eyebrows. “A message from God? For someone who lives here? I’m the only one who lives here.”

“It must get lonely living here by yourself.”

“Yes. I miss my friends and family in Rio de Janiero terribly. Even though I also work as a clinical chaplain at the State Hospital.”

“What do you do at the mental hospital?”

“I work with some pretty severe cases. The boy I’m seeing this week killed both his parents. I’m trying to get him to talk about it. I want him to know God can forgive him. But it is very difficult.”

“That sounds depressing.”

“It is,” he said. “Very much so.” His voice trailed off. He sipped his drink. “Now tell me more about what brought you here tonight.”

“I think I’m beginning to understand. An inner voice spoke to me at the Plaza Café a while ago. I think God knows about your depression. He wants me to assure you that he hears your prayers and loves you very much.”

“This is very unusual, Dan. Normally, I am the one trying to reassure everyone else of God’s love.”

“But who takes care of you?”

Father Francisco smiled. “No one lately. That’s my problem. I’ve been feeling like everyone wants something from me, but no one knows how much I’m struggling. I have to put on a happy face, but deep down I feel like crying.”

“I’m like that, too, Father,” I said. “I was socialized to keep my feelings to myself. I know how to act strong, like everything is fine, but find it hard to ask for help from God or anybody else when things get tough.”

“That’s what’s happened with me. I don’t want to burden anyone with my troubles. But a priest has to set a good example.”

“So how are you going to make it through this?”

“That’s what strikes me about you coming here. I just told God a while ago that  maybe I needed to resign and go back to Rio de Janeiro. That maybe I don’t have what it takes to serve God anymore.”

“Wow,” I said. “That makes even more sense out of the message I came here to give you.”

“How do you mean?”

“God told me to offer you his comfort, that you are to take heart because he loves you and is guiding you through this.”

Father Francisco’s eyes pooled with tears as though he felt struck by grace. “God said he loves me and is still guiding me?” His voice was low and hushed.

“Exactly.” I recalled the authority with which the message had come to me. “Absolutely!”

His eyes turned upward toward the ceiling as he reverently made the sign of the cross. “Gloria a Dios,” he whispered. His eyes returned to me. “I’ve been reading St. John of the Cross. He calls what I’m going through the dark night of the soul. Tonight I cried out in my room for help and ten minutes later you rang the doorbell. Glory to God!”

Now his eyes were shining, his lips curled into a smile. He reached across the table and I shook his extended hand. “Thank you, Dan, for listening to God. He has heard my lament and I feel deeply comforted. Now I am very tired, so if you will excuse me, I’m must retire for the night.”

Exchanging a hug at the door, I drove home, pondering how the Great Companion—as psychologist William James called God—had expanded my conception of counseling and psychotherapy by healing Father Francisco’s wounded heart.

Now here’s the question. Was what transpired that night between Father Francisco and me spiritual direction or psychological counseling? Was it a holy encounter inspired by the vertical dimension of the grace of God? Or was it a healing conversation guided by the horizontal dimension of therapeutic psychology? And what carried the action forward to its climax? Was it the power of God or the power of psychology—divine intervention or human intuition?

 

Here is a reasonable hypothesis for analyzing the encounter between Dr. Dan Montgomery and Father Francisco: that spirituality joined with psychology to facilitate a therapeutic intervention that transformed disabling depression into recovered hope and purpose.

In fact, a unique dimension of Compass Therapy involves the integration of Christian faith with empirically validated principles of therapeutic psychology. Compass Therapy stands on a philosophical foundation that brings together openness to God with openness to behavioral science.