Page 351 - Orthodoxy Zizioulas

T H E C H U R C H , P S YC H O L O G Y, A N D T H E Q U E S T I O N O F H E A L I N G
Yet this cooperation cannot rest merely on techniques. The
psychiatrist cannot simply prescribe prostrations or repeti-
tions of the Jesus Prayer, nor can the spiritual father become
a psychoanalyst in confession. The common ground between
Church and psychology lies deeper than method: it lies in
their understanding of illness, healing, and the human person.
What is illness? According to Saint Maximus the Confes-
sor, the root of all sickness lies in self-love. Self-love is not
merely one passion among others; it is the mother of all pas-
sions. From self-love arise pleasure and pain, and from the
endless effort to preserve pleasure while avoiding pain there
springs the entire multitude of passions: gluttony, pride, ava-
rice, anger, envy, hatred, despair, deceit. The problem, there-
fore, is not simply individual symptoms, but the deeper distor-
tion at the center of the person.
For this reason healing cannot be attained by fighting indi-
vidual passions one by one. So long as self-love remains intact,
suppressing one passion merely gives rise to another. A person
may overcome bodily passions only to become captive to
pride or avarice. True healing lies only in uprooting self-love
itself. Likewise, pain is not overcome simply by removing it.
Pain belongs inseparably to pleasure in fallen existence, and
no genuine therapy can consist merely in relief from suffering.
The Cross cannot be bypassed. Healing requires accepting
pain and transforming it, not merely anesthetizing it.
Saint Maximus makes a decisive distinction between
things, their representations, and passions. A thing may be a
person, money, or any created object. A representation is the
memory or image of that thing. Passion is the irrational at-
tachment or hatred joined to it. The struggle is not against
things themselves, nor against their representations, but
against the passions attached to them. To flee from things is
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