This is an email that i worte to someone recently
Some of my thoughts on the topic of psychology and the church. Many view them as irreconcilable, but in my view that is because they have thrown the baby out with the bathwater.
I will use TA vernacular here but all this applies to psychology in general , in particular humanistic (vs behaviouristic) psychology
It is a fact that for most in our society they do not have enough Free Child ego state, (except for special sub-groups like prisoners who have too much Free Child.) But in general society most neuroses result from too little or damaged Free Child. The Parent ego state via the biological parents damages the Child ego state .
The Parent ego state is a rule book that tells the FC what it can and can’t do, so the natural urges and feelings and so forth get stuffed up because it has to conform to this rule book.
What else is a rule book on how to live life? No, no prize for the right answer. The bible, the Koran or whatever. These ‘books’ very clearly and specifically define how the FC must be (ie the 10 commandments)
So psychologies, or more correctly some people using the psychologies have linked the the bible and the prohibitive parental messages
The Parent ego state and the bible are both a set of prohibitions so some psychologies have made the Parent ego state and the church teachings in the bible the same thing. Indeed many parents, particularly in the past would use the biblical teachings to get the children’s FC to do what they though was best. Often this did screw the youngster up.
The Parent ego state and the bible are both a set of prohibitions so some psychologies or those people using the psychologies have said that religion is bad because it messes up humans psychologically. Indeed this has happened when parents use the teaching of the bible to suppress the Free Child ego state.
However in my view this is a misunderstanding of the church/bible/religion. It misses out one factor and that is that thing called faith/belief/spirituality. Many psychologies would say that when a person has achieved a faith/belief/spirituality then they are more self actualized and more a complete person psychologically.
However many never get to that level of heightened self actualization . Instead they are at the level of just getting their basic shit together. So psychology has tended to see religion as a set of bad script prohibitions that just screw up the Child ego state. But that is a misunderstanding of religion. To have a faith or belief in whatever would be seen as a very psychologically healthy thing. So if one wants to use the bible as the thing in which they have a faith and belief then psychologically that would be seen as a good thing. If one uses the teaching of the bible to prohibit the natural human Free Child then you are going to get neuroses.